A deafening noise of battle rose over that stretch of country, and the energy coming off it was oppressive even from a long way away. It was hard to imagine what level of intensity had been reached inside the fight itself.
Slaking appeared again and went hard at the other Golurk, easing the pressure on Blaziken and Aerodactyl.
The first Golurk it had already finished.
Slaking was in better condition than it had ever been in its life. With Vance's Viridian Power concentrated on lifting it, the presence coming off it had reached the standard of level 57, and when it broke loose all at once, even an Elite-Four-class Golurk had been settled in a stroke of lightning.
That was the battle plan they had fixed on as well.
The enemy strong, themselves weak: open with a lightning strike and it might do very well.
Over the other way Gyarados was one against two and getting braver the longer it fought, and it had the two Elite-Four-class — the Suicune and the Chandelure — hemmed in with it, giving as good as it got, and at the cost of light injuries it had done the Suicune serious harm.
The remaining two Elite-Four-class Pokémon, the pair of Gengar that looked as though they had been inflated, were one held in check by Zweilous and one called back by Auberon to guard him at his side.
Blaziken and Aerodactyl were free now and had thrown themselves in on Zweilous's side, three Pokémon setting about it together.
Only they were not Slaking; they could not finish their opponent off in any short time.
The giant Gengar stood on the ground with a space of its own inside its belly, and Auberon stayed in there and directed the battle.
Calling it back to protect him had not been a choice made out of weakness: Vance, not far off, had his eye on him and took a shot at him now and again.
The destructive power of an Advanced Trainer was not to be sneered at either. If Vance got his chance, he would be carried off in a single burst.
And the state of the battle shocked him profoundly. He did not understand it — not by ten parts, not by a hundred, not by a thousand.
A few Gym-class Pokémon, and his own could not match them.
It was absurd.
What had happened to the world.
Auberon was beginning to doubt his own life. It felt as though everything he had understood about the world since he was a child had been knocked over.
Were the other side's Pokémon too strong, or were his own simply that poor?
And besides — had they not said the other side's Branch Chief was only a Gym-class Trainer?
Even if one or two Elite-Four-class Pokémon had turned up out of nowhere, he had allowed for that and made his arrangements against it.
Who could have known there would be a Near-Champion Pokémon in it too? The rest of them were Gym-class, true, but their fighting power was off the scale.
The Gyarados and the Slaking above all. They looked so little like Gym-class Pokémon that it seemed a fraud.
Only the presence on the surface was Gym-class; in the bodies themselves, in how densely the power was packed, there was no difference from an ordinary Elite-Four-class.
The target of this raid was uncanny beyond all measure.
Of that dead certainty he had had before, he did not know how much was left after so many turns.
Vance was well satisfied with how the fight was going. Their showing had gone beyond even what he had expected.
Gyarados above all had made a leap of a different order.
They had all grown up. Worthy of the care with which he had raised them and of every resource he had poured in.
And they had got this far with Mega Evolution still unplayed. Vance was quite satisfied.
Still, while his own fight was steady and gaining ground, on the other side of it the Team Rocket members were running in all directions, no match for the attackers.
Vance had drawn off Auberon, the strongest of them, but what was left was more than the rest of the Team Rocket members could handle.
It was because there was no Gym-class existence on their side, and because they were not like Vance, who could fight across tiers and was a Psychic besides with any number of cards in hand. Naturally they could not match them.
And by now Vance had no attention to spare for them. He had done what he could.
At a time like this a man could only look after himself. If he truly could not win he would leave at any moment and give no thought to the other members; life and death had their own appointed course, and he hoped they would get out.
There was no telling whether something was badly wrong with this man, to move so much strength against one little Team Rocket branch.
"Blaziken—"
Blaziken's Flamethrower washed over the surface of the Gengar, and a light shake of its body swept it aside.
"Gengar—"
A huge Shadow Ball came down out of the sky and struck where Blaziken had been.
Slaking sprang up; a ghostly claw came clutching out of the ground, and the grim cold in that power made even the Fire-type Blaziken feel the chill.
"Roar — Blaziken, get up here."
Aerodactyl had flown across just then, and shouted it.
"On my way. Blaziken."
Blaziken was perfectly in tune with it, sprang onto Aerodactyl's back, and a single exchanged glance told each of them what the other meant.
Their ordinary training covered this as well — combined attacks at any moment in a tangled fight.
Between Blaziken and Aerodactyl it had certainly been trained, and at the time Vance had jokingly called it "Blaziken Rides Aerodactyl".
"Let's see how you like what Aerodactyl and I can do. Here we go."
Blaziken lay flat on Aerodactyl's back, flame breaking out over it and wrapping round Aerodactyl as well.
In front of Aerodactyl a flame in the shape of the character for "great" appeared, spinning at tremendous speed and drawing to a cone at the front like a lance levelled for a charge.
The two Pokémon became one, and came down together, and the heat of it was in your face before they had even landed.
The Gengar below was five metres of bulk, fat-handed and thick-legged, its body a strange mottle of grey and white.
"Gengar—"
"Bang—"
The blinding great fireball struck the Gengar square.
Aerodactyl and Blaziken landed, and more moves broke out after it — Flamethrower, Heat Wave, Ancient Power, Fire Blast, one after another.
"Awooo—"
A dragon's cry went up. Zweilous, hemmed in as it was, tore itself loose, and its two heads, one fire and one ice, struck together.
Ice and fire twined in mid-air, opened outward, and made a thing shaped like a flower, carrying a terrible, ruinous power.
The moment that presence appeared, the two alongside Zweilous felt it and went up fast.
By the time they had reached a safe distance, Zweilous's attack had arrived.
The violent force tore at it, and the Gengar cried out in pain again and again.
Nor was that the end of it; two more forces came down out of the sky.
"Gengar—"
Under an attack from all three the Gengar could not hold.
Its Trainer, far off, could give it no direction; it had only its own battle experience to meet a fight this tangled with.
"Thud, thud—"
Slaking and the Golurk traded a punch head-on and went skidding back; Slaking, rather than give ground, came forward, its shape shifting unpredictably, showing up everywhere, and it could always find the Golurk's weak point.
Taking one blow from the Golurk, Slaking followed with Counter and gave it straight back; as they met again it used Teleport to shift its position round to the Golurk's flank.
The Golurk carried straight on under its own momentum, and unable to react in time it could only guard in a hurry and take Slaking's move on its side.
The next second its whole body came off the ground and went flying through the air.
A chill went up its back — Slaking had appeared behind it again — and all it could do was guard itself, a screen of green light rising in front of it.
Slaking's attacks came down in full, like a gale and a cloudburst,
every one of them savagely hard.
The two of them came down to the ground together, and another burst of clashing energy spread out from them.
"Roar, roar—"
Under Slaking's hammering arms the Golurk's Protect was declared over, and in the instant it broke the Golurk spread both hands — a Focus Blast [?] in one and a Shadow Ball in the other.
"Boom—"
Still they did not touch Slaking. It vanished again, avoiding the solid and going for the empty, appeared once more at the Golurk's side, and poured it on through the gap.
The Golurk was being worked over badly. None of its restraining moves could restrain a Slaking that came and went like a ghost.
Its solid attacks could not land on it either, and did it no damage; whereas Slaking's moves were sharp and enormously powerful, and every exchange did no small amount of harm.
The power it put out was not far short of the Golurk's own, and the density of energy packed into its two fists was thicker still.
"It's over. Roar."
Slaking gave it a cruel grin. It had caught the moment for the kill.