Professor Oak's high estimate did at least give Vance a showing in front of these people.
Even Steven and Cynthia were looking at him.
"So you know Professor Oak already. There was I making a business of it."
Steven said it with a chuckle. He had meant to introduce Vance to Professor Oak, and had not expected that Vance already knew him — and was thought a great deal of by the old gentleman besides.
"You never asked."
Vance answered, and the two of them laughed. Cynthia covered her mouth and laughed a little as well; she found it amusing.
"You have come for the Indigo League Conference, I take it."
Professor Oak turned and put the question to Steven and Cynthia.
"That's right, Professor Oak. The two of us were invited to attend this Conference as witnesses."
"Ha, very good. The committee asked me to come as well. A pity — I am busy with a project just now and can hardly get away."
"Is Professor Rowan well? Has his theory of Pokémon evolution come any further along?"
That was put to Cynthia. Professor Rowan was a well-known professor of the Sinnoh region, an acquaintance of Professor Oak's whom he had once worked alongside, and a formidable researcher.
"Professor Rowan is well. His research has had a breakthrough of late."
Cynthia's answer was brief.
"That's good to hear."
"Gentlemen, I must see to these fine young people, so I shall not go on with the tour. There is nothing much to see in any case — I know the place well enough; I worked here a good long while myself, after all."
"Of course, Professor Oak. Don't let us keep you."
Those behind him took the point as well, and went off one after another.
"See that you look after them properly, then, Oak. I have matters of my own to attend to, so I shall not keep you company. If any of you need anything, you have only to ask our staff."
The president of Celadon University went off as well.
What mattered most to him was research and its fruits; that he had come here today was for Professor Oak's sake.
As for the fighting strength of Celadon City's younger Trainers, that was so much decoration on the brocade. He did sigh over it now and then — there was no one of the first rank among the young — but taken as a whole, and set beside other cities, Celadon was not so bad.
After that Professor Oak and the three others came to a detached house, one of the residences Celadon University kept for its visiting experts and professors.
"Sit down, sit down."
Professor Oak said it once they were inside, and poured each of the three a glass of water.
Having taken his seat, Vance saw a sheaf of draft papers lying on the table, with these words on the front page: "Conjectures Concerning Pokémon Types".
"Professor, may I have a look at this draft?"
Curiosity got the better of him, and Vance asked Professor Oak whether he might look at it.
"Oh, that. Certainly you may. I have no thread to follow in it yet. Have a look."
Given leave, Vance picked it up, opened it and began to read.
What was written in it were Professor Oak's conjectures about a new type of Pokémon, arising from one chance discovery of his — an Alolan Ninetales he had come across in the Alola region — and all the guesses he had built on that.
The more Vance read, the more familiar it felt, and above all when he came to the phrase about its seeming to hold the Dragon type in check.
This looked like the Fairy type!
Turning further and reading closely, he felt it more and more: what Professor Oak was putting forward, and what the figures showed, was the Fairy type!
Fairy-type Pokémon appeared not to have been discovered yet. The many Pokémon professors of this world were all at work on it, but so far there seemed to be no published paper or document establishing that the Fairy type existed.
Wait. A flash of light went through Vance's mind. An undiscovered Fairy type seemed to leave a great deal of room to work in.
Could he not work something out of it himself, and turn a certain profit by it?
Find some way of bringing this Fairy type to light, for instance; raise his name in the research world; set himself up as a Pokémon professor into the bargain?
It seemed it could be done.
In society as it now stood, Pokémon research and Pokémon training did not clash in the least. Some went from Trainer into research, and some from research into training.
That was how Professor Oak had come by his own road; and in time to come Gary Oak, still in his teens, would go the same way.
Training and research were not two separate houses.
"Well? You're reading it very closely. Can you follow it?"
Steven said it with a laugh, seeing Vance sunk in thought.
"Professor, I have some understanding of this 'new type'."
"Hm? Surely not. You don't actually?"
Steven was startled. A casual look through it, and he had really got something out of it? Could a thing be so absurd?
Vance said nothing, only smiled, and looked at Professor Oak.
"Oh? And what understanding is that?"
Professor Oak said it with a light laugh, wanting to hear what views this young man he thought so well of might have to offer.
"I believe this new type certainly exists, and that it holds the Dragon type in check to an extreme degree."
That drew Cynthia's attention as well. Her own ace was a Dragon type, a Garchomp.
If another kind of Pokémon had appeared that was strong against Dragons, she would have to take note of it.
"Tell me. My own line of thought has broken off, I find."
Professor Oak had turned serious now as well.
"I only found it after I began raising my Kirlia. It came out during a training session, with Kirlia and Zweilous working together. The reaction was very faint, but I caught it — I am a Psychic, after all, and I am sensitive to power."
Vance explained it slowly, filling in the ground behind his own claim, and filling it in so that it leaned toward the Fairy type.
The Fairy type really did exist, in any case, so he was not talking nonsense.
There must be people working on it now; some Pokémon professors would have caught a dim sight of it, only they were still confirming it, and nothing had been brought into a system yet.
Because putting forward a type is not a matter of the data from one or two Pokémon; it takes a very great deal of it.
But that was nothing to stop Vance, who had transmigrated here; and this was precisely the moment to make a transmigrator's advantage tell.
On the strength of that one piece of foreknowledge he could stand a stride ahead even of a Pokémon professor of Professor Oak's rank.
At least where discovering the "Fairy type" was concerned.
The more Professor Oak listened, the more sense it made to him. Much of what Vance put forward tied into his own research, though there were a good many leaps in it that he would have to verify.
Naturally Vance did not say all of it, only put forward a part.
He was still turning over whether he could make something of his own out of this; and in offering as much as he did, he meant to win the trust of an expert like Professor Oak.
"Hold on — you're in earnest. You really do know about this."
When Vance had finished, Steven's face was all astonishment. Here was a question at the front edge of scholarship, a thing Professor Oak and a host of other Pokémon professors were still working on, and Vance had explained it just like that — and, by the look of it, correctly.
"Vance's discovery may well be the truth of it."
So Professor Oak settled the matter of what Vance had said.
"Only there are several details in it to be worked over, and then extended and set out in full; and after that, confirmation from the data."
Professor Oak added that afterwards.
*Data? There's no shortage of that.*
Vance thought it inwardly. Where data was concerned he really was well placed: seen from the forward vantage of a transmigrator, the data was already there in plain sight.
As now: the Fairy type had not been worked out yet, and Vance already knew which Pokémon were Fairy types.
Kirlia was one, and the Alolan Ninetales was another.
And as for the Kanto region, one need hardly begin.
Clefable, Jigglypuff, Wigglytuff, Azumarill.
What the Pokémon professors would have to research their slow way toward, Vance knew already.
And there was the source of the data, right here; he need only begin from here, dress it up with the proper technical vocabulary, and the working out of this Fairy type would be settled and done.