Once a Pokémon grows old, the great ambitions and grand notions of before fall away, and all it wants is to live out what is left of its life quietly.
And the Alakazam itself was alone in the world, with nothing to tie it to anything. The one thing it still cared about was the Ralts.
Beyond that, there was the debt it owed Vance for the treatment that had spared it that piercing, burning pain and let its aged body move something like normally again.
The time left to it was for its old age: to help Vance a little where it could, and for the rest, to look after the Ralts.
That was how the Alakazam had arranged its retirement.
"He's coming. Alakazam—"
In front of it the space rippled, and Vance stepped out of it.
"Alakazam, you're back. How did your business go?"
Vance said it with a faint smile.
"It is all settled."
The Alakazam dipped its head slightly and answered.
"Good. Oh — the Ralts has evolved. She's a Kirlia now."
"So soon? I thought it would be a while yet."
On his belt the Kirlia's Poké Ball was rocking, and then it opened. The Kirlia sprang out, ran straight to the Alakazam and threw her arms round it with tears in her eyes.
"Kirlia, Kirlia—"
The Kirlia was telling it how she had missed it. Its sudden departure back then had left her frightened and unsettled; luckily Vance, who carried the Viridian Power in him, felt close and familiar to her.
"Child, you have to grow up as well. And isn't this a good life? The Trainer I chose for you is a fine one, is he not?"
The Alakazam stroked the Kirlia with a smile. It looked on her as one of its own, and to see her evolved and in better spirits than before made it glad and easy in its heart.
"Kirlia. My Trainer is very good to me, and Brother Gyarados and the others look after me too. They give way to me in everything, and they make me laugh."
"Good, good."
The Alakazam said it kindly, answering her.
By the feeling coming off her, she had been happy all this time.
"Let's go inside and talk."
Vance suggested it from beside them, and then took the two Pokémon down into the underground base, to the training room that was his alone.
The Alakazam kept itself hidden and followed behind Vance, and nobody in the base noticed it.
A Near-Champion Alakazam was so far beyond the people of that base that there was no possibility of its being found out, least of all while walking behind Vance.
Even Vance himself, back then, had not detected the Alakazam's concealment. It was only his sixth sense and his instinct that had given him a vague feeling of something, and in the end he had bluffed the Alakazam out rather than seen it or recognised it.
Only once they reached the training room did the Alakazam show itself.
Inside, the Gyarados and the rest broke off their training; seeing that it was the Alakazam, they relaxed.
And went back to their training.
"Remarkable, truly. Gifts like that, and they still work this hard."
The Alakazam looked round at them all, every one of them going at it with a full head of steam and force enough to lift the sky, and said it with feeling.
High natural endowment was one thing; to work that hard as well made them exceptional.
"Eh!" The Alakazam's eye lingered on the Gyarados. There was something strange about him that it could feel.
Aware of eyes on him, the Gyarados looked back, and the aura about him stirred slightly.
"Suicune!! That aura belongs to a Suicune."
The Alakazam had it now. It had seen that aura once before, on a Suicune. Only a glimpse from a great distance, but it remembered still: that was a Suicune's aura.
And to find it here, on this Gyarados, was strange indeed.
"A good eye. The Gyarados came by a rare chance lately, and got that power out of it."
Vance said.
"There's no measuring what he may come to."
The Alakazam said it in a daze. Wide as its experience was, even it was astonished.
"They are my companions, so of course I will raise them with everything I have. There was never any measuring their futures — because I am going to raise them well."
Vance said it mildly, with confidence in his voice.
"It seems that putting the Kirlia into your keeping was the best choice I ever made."
Vance laughed quietly, said nothing, and led it over to one side to sit down.
"So what are your plans now? Or have you still things to attend to?"
Vance came straight to the point and asked what he meant to do.
"Nothing left. I am old now. The days I have left—" the Alakazam's kindly eyes went to the Kirlia, "—I shall spend watching her grow up. There is nowhere else for me to go, and no more running about. I have run about all my life; it is time I stopped."
"Of course, if there is anything within my power that would help you, you have only to say so. Call it payment for the kindness you did me, and for the trouble I shall be giving you from now on."
"Ha ha ha, you put it far too strongly. With you keeping an eye on things I could hardly be more pleased — payment does not come into it. As for that kindness of mine, it was a trifling thing. I could not have borne to see the Kirlia's elder carrying an injury and suffering for it."
Vance answered courteously, and he meant what he said.
The Alakazam was much gratified to hear it. Staying, it seemed, had been the right thing too.
Vance was glad of the arrangement himself. It amounted to gaining a Near-Champion bodyguard; old it might be, but the foundation was still there.
A stroke like that brought a good deal of security with it, did it not?
Careful and cautious as he was, and at the strength he was now, he was in no danger — but there is a difference between having a sword and not using it and having no sword at all.
And if his luck really did turn bad and he ran into something?
Luck was a mystical business, and Vance never dared gamble on it.
Strength in hand was a great deal safer.
That evening, to welcome the Alakazam, Vance did the cooking himself and laid on a table piled high with good food to entertain him.
Wide as the Alakazam's experience was, Vance's cooking conquered its palate as well.
The Alakazam had eaten food made by humans before, but never anything as good as this — and it was not only good. The power held in it was complete and easy to absorb, and the ingredients, it supposed, had not been cheap.
The Kirlia's rapid growth had something to do with this food as well.
..............
In Dark City, Delaney went alone through the underground of his villa and put on the light. Ahead of him a Pokémon was being held.
A small thing, curled up tight. Seeing somebody come it bared its teeth, and then it turned and changed into a blue Pokémon.
Its fur streaming, the crystal on its brow glittering — the very shape of a Suicune.
"Oooo—"
There was no strength in the sound, and if you looked closely its legs were still weak under it.
"Very fine indeed."
Delaney said it with a heat rising in him, and walked forward, setting out one fine dish after another outside the cage.
"Submit to me and all of this is yours. Stay with me and you'll live off the fat of the land."
The Pokémon in front of him was what he had come away with this time, a very strange one, and the most valuable he had ever seen.
And so he had a mind to take it for his own.
If he could take it, Elite-Four-class might be no dream at all; with that and his own ability, the road ahead would be smooth the whole way.