"Boss, don't be so severe about it. You'll frighten them."
Ambrose said it with a laugh, and then pointed at James.
"This one is James Quillon. My cousin — my own cousin, by blood."
"Oh?" Vance looked at Ambrose, and then at James. Well — he could see nothing in it either way.
He could make nothing of the pair of them, come to that. He had heard of the Quillon family, another of the great houses; and as for Ambrose, if he and James were cousins then his own family was presumably nothing to sneeze at. What Vance could not understand was why these two should throw up a perfectly good life as young gentlemen of fortune and run off to Team Rocket. Looking for a thrill?
"I'd never have guessed it."
"Naturally not. I'm as handsome as this and my cousin's as ordinary as that — how would anybody guess?"
Ambrose said it in love with himself, and stroked what he took to be his "English" features.
"You're..... quite something."
Vance managed the one word, beaten by the man's vanity.
Seeing how easily the two of them talked, James and the other two glanced at one another. It seemed this superior of theirs was not so difficult to get on with after all.
"Oh — Boss. Why not make the three of them a squad and put them under me?"
Ambrose put it forward while the moment served, asking for James and the other two to come into his own division.
"Are you willing?"
Vance turned to face the three of them and asked.
"We are."
James nodded and nodded again.
"Very well, then. The three of them are yours."
Seeing that the three of them had no objection, Vance agreed.
He might look at them through the filter of the anime, but even so they would get nothing special. Things would go as things went; there would be no favours.
At the same time, he wanted to see whether this remarkable combination of three would prove as useless as it was in the anime — no good at anything it turned its hand to.
So far they seemed passable enough, if a little flighty.
And so the Team Rocket combination of two people and one Pokémon came to rest at the Dark City branch, attached to Ambrose's division and under his command.
Ambrose in his turn answered directly to Vance, so the combination stood within Vance's direct orders as well.
Having seen them off, Vance went back into the training room and watched his Pokémon go on with their training.
The Aerodactyl was crouched low to the ground, the aura about it rising and falling unsteadily, as though it were breaking through.
The aura climbed slowly and reached a threshold.
"Pfffft—"
The Aerodactyl's swelling aura checked, and then dispersed; like a balloon jabbed with a needle, it went suddenly slack.
This time the Aerodactyl's breakthrough had ended in failure.
With the energy lashing wildly back at it, the Aerodactyl had taken damage inside its body.
"Failed the breakthrough, then."
Vance came over to the Aerodactyl and set the Viridian Power going, wrapping the Aerodactyl up inside it.
The Aerodactyl had been in too much of a hurry; that was why the breakthrough had failed.
It was also a rare instance of a failed breakthrough within the team.
Most of the other Pokémon came through on the first attempt; failures were few.
"Aerodactyl, didn't I tell you to leave the breakthrough a few days? Why do it now?"
Once the healing was done, Vance put the question to the Aerodactyl.
"Roar, roar—"
The Aerodactyl was a little abashed. It had not taken Vance's word for it and had gone for the breakthrough early, wanting to make Gym-class in one leap. It had been too impatient.
"Rest and mend for a few days. You've the experience of it now; the next breakthrough will take."
Vance did not scold it. With him there, a failed breakthrough would do it no great harm and would not damage its foundations; at worst it meant a certain amount of pain and a few days lost.
That was the security an Advanced Breeder brought with him — an Advanced Breeder carrying the Viridian Power, at that.
Only now did Vance notice that the Slaking had broken through into level 54 and caught the Zweilous up.
Perhaps it was the Slaking's breakthrough that had made the Aerodactyl so anxious to break through itself.
The Aerodactyl's frame of mind was still not quite right.
The security in its own standing that Mega Evolution had given it was entirely gone now.
And now the old sense of urgency was coming back to it by degrees.
"Kirlia—"
Vance went over to his seat, and the Kirlia carried a cup of hot tea across and set it obediently in front of him.
"Thank you, Kirlia."
Vance thanked her with a smile, picked the hot tea up and took a mouthful.
"Kirlia—"
The Kirlia laughed with her eyes narrowed, and carried another cup over to the Alakazam beside them.
The Alakazam took it with a chuckle of his own, sitting in his rocking deckchair, drinking his tea and reading his book in perfect comfort.
A retirement like this was exactly what the Alakazam had pictured for himself.
Easy living indeed.
Apart from giving the Kirlia pointers, this was how leisurely it all was.
Vance asked nothing much of him either — only that he take the field when it mattered; and given how carefully Vance went about things, perhaps that moment would never come, though there was no saying.
"That Meowth, actually able to talk. Remarkable."
The Alakazam said it with a soft laugh. With perception as strong as his, Meowth and the other two had naturally not escaped his notice.
"It is remarkable. Though it's one in ten thousand — rarer than rare."
Vance nodded in answer.
It was not only the talking that was remarkable. The point was that this Meowth was absurdly capable in other ways too.
He could build a robot out of a heap of scrap metal, for one thing, and make it fireproof and shockproof into the bargain.
He was extremely good with his hands, and the files headquarters had sent across said as much.
"So it seems."
The Alakazam nodded too. In a whole life out in the world he had come across very few Pokémon that could speak human speech.
While they were talking, blue light flickered over the Gyarados, his aura lifted all at once, and he passed into level 57.
The breakthrough was perfectly smooth, without the least check to it.
That power was digested completely by the Gyarados, and became power truly his own.
"That Gyarados of yours — the ordinary run of Elite-Four-class Pokémon are no match for him now."
The Alakazam looked at the Gyarados with the deep blue energy wreathing him, and delivered his judgement.
With his practised eye he could see the fearful potential in the Gyarados.
"About that, yes."
The phone at Vance's elbow rang. It was Ambrose.
"Hello, Boss. Meowth and the others have applied to go down to the manufacturing department. They say they want some machinery and materials."
"Let them have it. And allocate them a sum of money while you're about it — we'll see what comes of it. In future you can decide these things yourself."
Vance agreed at once, and put a further grant of funds on top of it.