"It makes no sense at all."
Ambrose muttered it.
"It doesn't matter. As long as the business gets done properly. Next time she comes, you go up and deal with her."
Vance shrugged, indifferent to it.
"Mm. So where did you go?"
Ambrose grunted and asked it. The two of them had come indoors by then and found somewhere to sit.
"Cinnabar Island. Something good came my way. The Gyarados has come on a great deal."
Vance answered, and smiled at the thought of the change in the Gyarados.
With that help behind it, the Gyarados's road ahead would be easier going.
"Hah, good. And I've got good news of my own to share with you."
Ambrose said it with delight all over his face too.
"Oh? What good news?"
"Heh heh. Have a guess."
"You're taking a wife??"
"Pfft. That's a good one. A man like me, married? Out of the question. I, Ambrose, go in for romance with no intention of marriage."
Ambrose gave a snort of laughter, shook his head, and went on.
"My Pokémon has broken through to Elite as well. From now on, I, Ambrose, am an Elite Trainer too."
"Oh. An Elite Trainer. Your reputation precedes you, sir, it quite precedes you."
Vance cupped his fists and offered his congratulations with an air of total unconcern.
"Get away with you. Precedes you, indeed. How long have you been there yourself? You can trade blows with Elite-Four-class. A little shrimp like me isn't worth that from you."
Ambrose cursed him cheerfully. The two of them were entirely natural together; the gap in their positions had put no distance between them.
Ambrose was grateful too for the way Vance had brought him up. He had come to Dark City and been raised to Division Commander, with everything a Division Commander enjoyed.
Then there was the pressure of the work; with pressure comes drive, and he was a great deal more diligent than he used to be, with Vance's constant coaching and backing besides.
If he could not reach Elite-class with all that, Ambrose felt, he had no business being a Trainer at all.
"Good, then. The greater the ability, the greater the responsibility. Mm, mm... so we'll give you a few more things to be responsible for."
"You're not about to increase my workload again, are you."
Ambrose's mouth twitched.
"Heh heh. Have a guess."
Handing Ambrose's own words straight back to him left the man looking thoroughly glum, and Vance burst out laughing.
That evening, in the enormous training room, Vance opened the material on the USB drive Blaine had given him and put it up on the screen.
"There shouldn't be any after-effects, then."
Vance murmured it when he had finished the part on the analysis of the energy.
Drawing on the Viridian Power in him, he went over every part of the Gyarados carefully, and found nothing wrong.
Inside the Gyarados everything teemed with vitality, life energy surging, far more vigorous than before.
"Roar, roar. Boss, there's nothing wrong with me, is there?"
The Gyarados watched him warily.
"No. The opposite — you're better than you were. Digest it quickly and make that power truly your own. There's still a great deal of room to work with."
"Then I'm easy in my mind. Roar, roar."
"Mm. Go and train. I'll read through this material for a while."
Having sent the Gyarados off, Vance went on reading.
The material on it covered a great deal of ground. Blaine had kept nothing back there; he had even sent along some of the results from the leading edge of the technology.
"Pokémon cell propagation techniques, bone-tissue transfer, forced fusion techniques...... So this is what they're researching?"
When he had finished, Vance felt his eyes had been opened wide, and that he had profited from it no little.
His understanding of Pokémon was deeper for it, and it would help him in raising them; some of the theory in it could be put to use.
Vance knew, too, that the Mewtwo to come might well owe its birth in part to material of this kind.
He was no expert in the field, but he could see the direction the research in it was taking, and setting that against the things he knew of the future, the two bore each other out and let him work it through.
It was only that the theory and the technology of the present had not reached that point yet; there was room for them still to develop.
In the part on Pokémon cells, for instance, it noted that ordinary cells cannot carry a power that goes beyond them; a stronger medium has to be injected, and only the cells produced from that can carry it.
In the carrying of it there were further factors to consider — the type of the energy, conflicts between energies and so on. A vast and tangled business.
It gave Vance a headache to read, and he took in no more than the general shape of it.
...............
"Rumble, rumble, rumble—"
Inside the trial area, swathes of trees came down as a giant robot drove through, and from the robot's chest grappling claws shot out one after another and seized several Pidgeotto flying ahead of it.
"Pidgeo—"
The Pidgeotto struggled, their wings glowing, beating hard at the steel claws, and could not get free.
"Wah hah hah! Stupid birds, you could beat at it for a hundred years and never beat it off, meow. The robot I, Meowth, built is very strong indeed, meow."
Inside the robot's cockpit, Meowth watched the Pidgeotto beating away and laughed in wild triumph.
Jessie and James beside him exchanged a glance, then saw the confidence all over Meowth's face, decided there was nothing to worry about, and started laughing along with him.
Now the Pidgeotto were not getting away.
"Hey, hey, hey. Meowth, James, look at that — the wrist of that mechanical arm, is it sparking?"
Jessie had sharp eyes and had spotted something wrong: as the Pidgeotto beat at the claw and shook it, arcs of electricity were jumping at the wrist.
"Meow! I forgot. The claw's material is strong enough, but the jointed parts aren't."
"What do we do, Meowth? Think of something, quickly!"
James said it in a hurry the moment he heard.
"Don't panic. I, Meowth, reckoned on this and made other preparations, meow meow."
After a moment's alarm Meowth had his confidence back, and he put out one finger and wagged it.
"Is that so? Then hurry up with it, Meowth."
"The work of a moment."
Meowth flipped open a red button on the console and the claws suddenly blazed with lightning; the fierce current left the Pidgeotto caught in them crisp outside and tender within, their bodies blackened all over.
"Pidgeo—"
With that single blow the Pidgeotto had no fight left in them, and lay sprawled inside the cage the mechanical claws had made.
"Hah! Five Pidgeotto in all! Turn that into points and we're already ahead of a great many people! All thanks to you, Meowth."
Jessie said it in excitement, and took Meowth's paw in her hands.
"That's right, that's right. I said we were the best combination going, didn't I? And here are the results to prove it."
James chimed in from beside her.
The three of them really did work well together; it was their first time driving the robot today, and already they had it running smoothly between them.
"How dull. Caught them without even trying."
Meowth lounged back in the driver's seat, looking thoroughly bored.
"Not at all. I think this will do nicely."
James said what he honestly thought. He really did think it would do. What was wrong with easy?
Then came a lurch. Something outside was attacking their robot.
"Who's that? The nerve of them! Daring to attack us."
Jessie said it in a temper. That lurch had knocked her head against something.
"This is bad, meow!"
Meowth went white, every trace of his confidence gone, for he had seen what it was outside that was attacking them.
It was a Pidgeot!
Having struck once, it wheeled swiftly back into position, put on a Quick Attack and slammed into them again.
The lurch was worse than the last, and under the Pidgeot's attacks cracks had already appeared in the robot's outer shell.
The robot could not stand up to a Pidgeot's attacks.
It was past what the materials could bear.
"Attack it, quickly. Drive it off."
"I'll try."
The robot put out its mechanical arms again, arcs flickering over them, and loosed off a string of lightning attacks, every one of which the Pidgeot dodged.
Rolling through the air, the Pidgeot came in front of them, both wings lit with the colour of steel, and swept them across; the mechanical arms that had been put out all fell away.
It turned again and slammed into the thing, attack after attack, every one of them landing on the robot.
"Boom!"
With one great crash the robot suddenly blew apart, black smoke rolling up, and in that same moment three figures flew out of it and away into the distance.
"Pidg—"
"Stay where you are!"
The Pidgeot made to give chase and was blocked. A few exchanges drove it back, and then the person looked off in the direction the three had flown and slipped away into the trees.
Hanging in the thick branches of a tree were two people and one Pokémon.
Jessie, James and Meowth, precisely — carried off by the explosion.
"What a horrible feeling this is."
Jessie said it blankly. All that hard-won gain, gone just like that.
At least the two of them and the Pokémon were unhurt. They had made some preparations beforehand, and the explosion had done them no injury.
They climbed down from the tree with their clothes still whole, and these were no ordinary clothes but clothes that could turn aside a great deal of damage.
The two of them and the Pokémon talked it over, and then set to work again. Even without the robot they could still come away with an outstanding score.