The Slaking had taken the attack, and it had plainly cost him something to do it, but it left every man watching thunderstruck all the same.
That... that absurd?
Their confidence wavered. They looked at one another, unable to keep the shock out of their eyes.
What had they just seen? Two Elite Pokémon standing up to an attack from a Legendary, from Suicune itself. They half suspected their own eyes of lying to them.
Clumsily, and at some cost — but they had taken it.
Two threads of the Viridian Power settled over the two Pokémon. Their auras rose a little, and the strength they had spent began to be made good.
"Hm?"
Korran was taken aback as well, and looked at the Suicune.
The Suicune shook its head too. Something stirred in its dull eyes, and its bearing straightened. It was in earnest now, and done with the manner it had worn before, of a strong hand knocking weaklings about.
"I'll hold him. The rest is for you."
Vance said it to Talbot and the others, and then went up to meet the Suicune with the Gyarados and the rest of them.
The tougher of these men had been dealt with by the Zweilous and the others; the ones who were left, they ought to manage.
"Branch Chief..."
They watched Vance's back as he went, that young back, and to every man there it looked immense, as though some light they could not name had been laid across it.
Who would have thought that this Branch Chief of theirs was so generous a man — willing to risk himself for the men under him, and unafraid to stand in front of an Elite-Four-class Suicune.
In that moment Talbot and the others were moved.
"Is that Slaking the terrible, uncanny Vigoroth from back then? Evolved as well, has he. And that Vance has come this far. What a failure I've made of it."
Rufus had recognised Vance too. Who would have thought that a Team Rocket recruit out of his own intake would come this far, far enough to stand against an Elite-Four-class.
He still remembered coming off worst at the man's hands.
"Still, I shan't be left too far behind!"
Rufus soon had his spirits back in order.
Vance's arrival had lifted them all, and with the strongest of the enemy held off, the will to live came up in every one of them.
Before this, facing the Suicune, the whole lot of them had lost heart and felt there was no getting out alive; but the sight of the Slaking and the Gyarados taking the Suicune's attack put the heart back into them.
Because what they saw was that the Branch Chief looked able to hold this Suicune — and they knew as well that Vance was a Psychic of Gym-class strength.
"Rufus, let's be off, and quickly."
With the strongest of them held back and a way out in sight, the men found strength far past their usual, broke the cordon and tore open a line of retreat.
"The Branch Chief is a Gym-class Psychic. If we stay here we can do nothing, and we'll only be a weight on him."
"Rumble, rumble—"
While they were speaking, over where the Suicune was, the water had already risen and swept round in a mass and smashed a small hilltop to pieces.
"There is something wrong with this Suicune, sure enough. It isn't like that Zapdos!"
Vance narrowed his eyes and studied the Suicune closely.
The weight of a Legendary on it was very faint, nothing at all like the Zapdos he had met before.
That one, by the pressure of its presence alone, could make ordinary Pokémon bow their heads.
That pressure held them down and wore them away.
Its real fighting strength was somewhat above the Dusknoir he had met earlier; with the strength of his whole team added to his own, he could still deal with it.
An Elite-Four-class, was it. It was not as though he had never fought one.
"Splooosh—"
The huge waterspout burst apart, and the Gyarados and the other four Pokémon showed inside it.
In the space of a breath the two sides had already traded several blows. With the strength of all five of them together, the Gyarados and the rest could stand against this Suicune — they had the worst of it, but for the moment they could hold.
Korran could not accept it.
It made no sense.
His Pokémon was Suicune. Suicune, a Legendary, no ordinary Pokémon at all — and only a short while ago it had broken through to Elite-Four-class.
How could it fail to settle a handful of Elite Pokémon?
This world was too fantastical by half!
Suicune was an Elite-Four-class!
Then all at once Korran felt a chill go up his back. Someone was coming at him from behind!
And the man coming at him from behind was, of course, Vance.
Take the bandits by taking their chief; in a team fight, hit the back line.
That was how Psychics thought. It was an advantage they could use to cut the head off a Trainer.
If one blow could settle it, the battle was over.
Just as Vance struck, several Poké Balls on the man's belt stirred, and out came a handful of uncanny Pokémon that knocked Vance's power aside and attacked him in their turn.
Seeing that his ambush had failed, Vance did not stay to fight it out, and got clear at once.
Those Pokémon were uncanny indeed.
An Alakazam with two heads. A Nidoking of some deformed shape. A Raichu with three tails.
It was not only the look of them. The auras coming off them were uncanny as well, and if one more word had to be found for it, that word was evil.
Several kinds of power ran against one another inside them, and their faces were numb and cold, without any of the liveliness, the sense of a living thing, that a normal Pokémon has.
If it had to be put plainly: they were machines. Machines without feeling.
"What is it your Godbeast Gang are doing, that you turn out things like these??"
Vance said it with his brows drawn together, once he had pulled clear.
"Ha ha ha, you don't understand, do you. This is our Sacred Order's Pokémon science. It can break past a Pokémon's original aptitude and carry it to a new stage."
Korran laughed aloud, and there was a particular pride on his face.
"These were my partners before. Not one of them could have broken through to Gym-class — Elite was barely possible for them. But after our Sacred Order's alteration, they have risen to Gym-class, and they hold all manner of powers besides that no one would credit."
Standing in the middle of the three Pokémon, Korran felt very safe indeed.
"Boy, I see you have talent. Why not come over to the right side and join our Sacred Order? Come with me, and we'll take that traitor Rufus in together. With your aptitude, you'd be a Godbeast Envoy of the Sacred Order one day, and no mistake."
Seeing what Vance was worth, Korran had a mind to recruit him.
The Godbeast Envoys he spoke of were, naturally, the Trainers furnished with Legendaries. Not every man of them had one; you had to reach a certain standing first.
Legendaries were a considerable drain on resources.
For the Sacred Order to grow it needed talent, and there was no small reward for bringing a talented man in.
"No, thank you. I'd rather my Pokémon didn't end up as things that are neither one thing nor the other."
Vance turned the offer down flat. What a joke. He was doing perfectly well in Team Rocket, and Giovanni thought a good deal of him — why would he change employers?
And this Godbeast Gang business had a thoroughly ghoulish look to it.
If the Gyarados were altered like that and turned into one of those monsters — he could not stomach the thought of it.
There were plenty of ways to change a Pokémon's aptitude. There was no need to go down that road.