Vance and the rest of them passed the time in that strained air.
The second day came round soon enough, and still nothing stirred.
None of the other bases had been attacked either.
It was as though the raid were over.
"Branch Chief..."
"Keep half the men on. The other half can rest first."
Vance gave the order with his brow still drawn, because there had been nothing back from headquarters, and that was a problem.
He had asked headquarters for support before this, and now there was no word at all. Something had certainly gone wrong.
He sent half of them off to rest. The thing was not finished, and the alert could not be lifted yet.
"Calder, Emery. If the two of you find the thing is past helping, get out as fast as you can. Take the tunnel."
Vance came over to the pair of them and said it low.
"Boss, is it that bad this time?"
Ambrose's face was grim as he asked it back.
"It should be. It may even be more than I can handle."
Vance said it with his eyes narrowed. His own strength was respectable enough now, but there was no sense in speaking in absolutes.
If something came out of nowhere, if some overwhelming existence took the field — it was not impossible.
Vance touched the Poké Balls on his belt and weighed his chances.
It depended on what class of thing was coming.
If it was too strong, then even he would have nothing to do but run.
They waited out another half-day and nothing came of it. All quiet.
"Nothing this long. Is it really over?"
A few Team Rocket rank and file were whispering in a corner. The Squad Leader beside them did not stop it; he let them talk, a contemptuous smile lifting the corner of his mouth. No wonder they had never made Squad Leader and were still rank and file. That was as far as they could see. No ability, and not enough patience either.
What was a spell of hardship? A man only had one life. No amount of care was too much.
What was this, set against that?
The good of it was that the few rank and file they thought well of had stayed on their guard the whole time, watching their surroundings carefully. The rest could be left to themselves.
"Boss, eat something first. The Pokémon can be kept up inside their Poké Balls, but you can't."
Ambrose brought over a savoury-smelling meal, still steaming, and handed it to Vance.
"Put it down there. I could go days without eating and be fine."
Vance jutted his chin at a spot. Days was putting it low; at an Advanced level of the Viridian Power, ten days or a fortnight without food was nothing to him.
One day was nothing at all.
All the same he did not refuse Ambrose's kindness. After a while he picked the meal up and ate it, a mouthful at a time.
He chewed a little. The taste was not bad. Not up to his own cooking, but not bad at all, and really quite good.
He made short work of it, set the container down and picked up a napkin to wipe his mouth.
"Calder..."
"Rrrumble—"
He had just finished wiping his mouth, and was about to call Ambrose over, when the base gave a violent shudder.
"Here they come!"
Vance fixed his attention and looked. Whoever stood behind this had come at last.
The rest of them tensed up too, and under the Squad Leaders and Division Commanders they formed into fighting order rather than scattering.
Above the base a dozen or so people had appeared, and a hundred and more Pokémon with them, all of them out at once. Several of those gave off powerful presences, and they were hammering down at the underground base.
A Dusknoir, a Suicune, a Rhyperior [?], a giant Gengar of peculiar shape... and others besides.
Under an attack like breaking surf the base's protective installations might as well have been paper. They were smashed through in an instant.
"Found it at last. Like a little mouse. Running this place down cost me some effort."
Auberon said it coldly.
Few as they were in number, the dozen or so were picked men, first-rate hands every one; the weakest among them had Elite-class strength, and there were four Gym-class Trainers besides.
In all there was one Near-Champion, six Elite-Four-class, a dozen or more Gym-class and getting on for a hundred Elite-class.
By report, the strongest thing the Team Rocket branch in Dark City had, its Branch Chief, was no more than Gym-class.
Against a line-up like this, what did he have to fight with?
His head?
Then they would have to see how hard this Branch Chief's head was.
As for the rest of the Team Rocket members, not one of them was even Gym-class — Elite-class rubbish, small fry not worth a glance.
"Whrrr—"
The roar of machinery went up, and a huge Meowth robot came charging out of the ground and let fly at them.
"Meowth, this time it's our turn to shine. Watch Meowth show them what it can do."
Meowth said it in the cockpit, and the two beside it nodded along and pressed the buttons.
Through the rolling dust and smoke the "trio" went straight at the enemy, with no idea yet how deep the water was.
"Boom—"
A beam from nowhere anyone could see burst across the machine's line of advance. The whole robot came apart in an instant, and the tension of it threw the three of them up into the air.
"Huh? Is that us finished already?"
Up in the air, Jessie said it, rubbing her head.
"Looks like it. Our machine's all gone."
James answered.
"Meowth, that robot of yours can't take a hit."
"It was over the limit, meowth. That much power was definitely past Elite-class."
Meowth answered from up in the air.
"So what do we do?"
"We should be all right, meowth."
Meowth did not sound sure.
It looked back and found a Fearow coming in at speed, and the "trio" were what it was aimed at.
"This is very bad, meowth."
Meowth's eyes went wide with the sudden sense of it.
Then a psychic force appeared out of nowhere, closed round the three of them and Teleported them down to the ground, and Vance's figure stood in front of them.
"Branch Chief, sir."
The "trio" looked at Vance gratefully.
"Go. This isn't something you can deal with. Those are."
Vance said it mildly.
"So you can deal with us, then? You, a little Gym-class Trainer? You really don't know what you're about, young man."
A nasty laugh came along with it, and Auberon appeared not far off, that unfathomable Dusknoir beside him.
A pair of blood-red eyes looked straight at Vance.
Not the Dusknoir alone. There was a Suicune as well, a Chandelure, two giant Gengar and two Golurk — one Near-Champion and six Elite-Four-class Pokémon in all.
To catch the thieves, take their king first. He meant to kill the other side's strongest in the first instant of the fight and break their nerve.
And he would get to enjoy their fear. That was a marvellous feeling.
"All of them Ghost types."
In a line-up like that the Suicune was the odd one out, and it told him that this fellow with the ugly laugh was a Trainer who specialised in Ghosts.
And Ghost-type Pokémon were usually hard to deal with.
Their abilities were uncanny and endlessly troublesome.
The Dusknoir above all felt to him like a lethal threat.
"A Dusknoir again. It seems I'm locked with these things. Last time as well."
Vance said it with nothing else left to say. The first time, the most dangerous of all, had been against an Elite-Four-class Dusknoir — Grady's last blow.
Now here was another Dusknoir to face, and this one more than ten times as strong as the first, a Near-Champion existence.
At Vance's present strength, against this Dusknoir there was a hundred per cent no chance of winning, however fast Gyarados and the others had come on.
He still could not beat it. He could fight above his tier, but not across a gap that wide.
Meet it head-on and there was one road only, and it ended in death.
Even running would not get him out — nine chances of death and one of life, or ten of death and none of life at all.
But that was going by his own team.
What he could call on at this moment was not only the strength in his own hand. There was Alakazam as well, outside help at Near-Champion strength.
Old as it was, the Alakazam was enough to stand against it.