"Team Rocket. That's quite a name to be throwing about. I......"
Before he could finish, a gale came straight at him, and then Air Cutter after Air Cutter came down.
"Boom, boom, boom!"
It was the hangers-on beside the man who had moved, several Pokémon striking together.
"Careful, mind. Those two Kirlia are worth good money. Not too hard — kill them and the price drops a long way."
The man said it savagely.
"Right, right, understood, chief. Only — we aren't Team Rocket. Why say we are? Haven't we only just come to the Kanto region?"
"Idiot. Who goes abroad these days without getting himself a name that rings? In the Kanto region, who has a bigger one than Team Rocket?"
The one they called chief snapped it out at the top of his voice.
"Oh. Right."
"This one's yours. The rest of you, come with me and take the woman. She's worth a packet, and she's not badly built either. Once we have her I'll have my turn first, and then you lot can have yours."
"Yes."
Their spirits rose sharply; they were in high good humour.
Women and money were the well that never ran dry for them.
The woman they were chasing was woman and money both — two birds with one stone.
The buyer wanted only certain things she had on her. The rest was theirs.
As for the lad who had appeared, they did not need so much as a look at him; send the youngest of the party and he was safely in hand.
"I've brought this on you."
The girl on the Flygon said it softly, though at that moment she could hardly save herself.
The Flygon under her had Gym-class strength as well, but it was not the equal of their Pidgeot, and there was more than one of them.
The Flygon was the only fighting strength she had. Once she was surrounded, the odds were bad.
"Flygon, Supersonic."
"Vreee, vreee—"
The Flygon turned and threw a Supersonic back at the Pidgeot behind it, but the Pidgeot dodged, and it caught only one of the hangers-on further back.
"Pidgeot, Quick Attack. Get in close to her, then use Air Cutter."
"Flygon, Dragon Rush."
"Bang, bang, bang—"
The two Pokémon locked together, blow for blow, and held level; but with the others behind coming in, the Flygon began to give ground.
"Ha ha ha. Kirlia, here I come."
The man charged at the place where Vance stood, his face lit up with excitement.
And found Vance's face smiling back at him, two Kirlia and a Gastly beside him — and a new Pokémon that had appeared as well.
A Gyarados with a murderous look to it was watching him coldly, its presence towering up and overriding everything else.
Facing that, his expression went from excitement to shock and then to terror.
God help us!!
Where had that Gyarados sprung from? As strong as that, and as savage with it.
Any way you looked at it, it was stronger than his own chief's Pokémon. Its presence was unfathomable, and carried a weight that put the fear into you.
"Whooosh—"
A wave of water swept past and took the man without his managing a single stroke in return.
Before he had caught up with what was happening, his Pokémon was out of the fight and he himself was taken.
At that moment, his will to live being uncommonly strong, he produced the loudest sound of his life.
"Chief!! Help me!!"
"Hm?"
At his shout the men closing in on the girl stopped and looked back, and saw that he had been taken, with a Gyarados of terrifying presence standing over him.
"This is bad! The mark's a prickly one."
The Gyarados's appearance told the chief something was wrong. They had been far too sure of themselves.
Having set the Gyarados on the man, Vance did not follow it up, but lifted his head to the sky.
Something extremely powerful was coming down out of it.
He had felt the weight of it from a long way off.
A dragon's majesty, blazing, with an uncommon presence about it.
"Awooo, awooo—"
A long, resonant dragon-cry came from the edge of the sky, out of the distance and nearer.
The Gyarados's body went rigid in an instant, its bearing grave; it felt that whatever was coming was not something it could stand against.
Not even with all its companions added in.
That presence was the only one of its kind it had met in its life. Even the Near-Champion-class Alakazam fell a long way short of it.
The dragon's heavy majesty came down all at once, and space itself stalled under it.
Vance and the Gyarados and the rest could hardly move under that force, and stood frozen where they were.
Over on the other side, the men chasing the woman all came down to the ground together, shaking, feeling a great calamity directly over their heads.
The girl's face lit up instead. That presence — her grandfather had come.
"Awooo—"
Before the eyes of Vance and the others a Dragonite appeared, and on its back stood an old man in a white coat.
Hair greying, eyes bright and keen, his frame still sound; a white coat on him, and an uncommon air about him all the same.
But when he saw the girl a kindly colour came into his face, and he rode the Dragonite over to her side.
"Ohh — Grandfather, you've come at last."
The girl threw herself into the newcomer's arms and cried her heart out, letting go of the fear inside her.
"Child, Grandfather's here. It's all right now."
The newcomer soothed her, and looked across at the men who had closed in, his eyes unfriendly and cold enough to make your scalp crawl.
These were the ones who had hunted his granddaughter, were they? Did they truly imagine he had no temper?
Had Samuel Oak been retired so many years that he could no longer put the fear into anyone?
Vance's face was all surprise as well. He had never expected to meet Professor Oak here — a figure who turned up again and again in the anime, and who in the anime had never shown anything but kindness and warmth.
Now the old man of his recollection had turned into this one, cold in the face, with a bitter chill about him.
And the frightening part was that the object of his anger seemed to take Vance in as well. Wrapped in the Dragonite's killing intent, he could already taste death, and was filled with a sense of his own helplessness.
This Dragonite's strength was past the Alakazam's. Its body had not shifted from where it stood, yet it had already sealed off the space all around, and with the energies meeting as they were he could not so much as Teleport; something had caught hold of him, some power blocking the way.
"Grandfather, he was dragged into this because of me. He was pulled in. It's nothing to do with him."
After a few sobs in Samuel Oak's arms the girl lifted her head and explained it to him.
"We ought to thank him, in fact. He held that man up and took some of the pressure off me."
Only after that did Samuel Oak signal the Dragonite beneath him to let go of Vance.
The others were not so lucky. Under the Dragonite's gaze they shook and could not move.
They wanted to run as well, and found they could not; the space around them was no longer ordinary, and full of resistance.
They were trapped there!!