"I think we can talk. And you had better talk to me, or the price will be more than you can bear."
Kai Farrow said it in a heavy voice, with a threat laid into the words.
"???"
The words left Vance's whole face full of question marks. Did the lad know what he was saying?
"I should rather like to see this price I can't bear. And as for this business, Young Master Kai, I do mean to return it in kind."
Vance said it coldly. Had he not shown enough yet? Any stray cat or dog could come and make threats to his face.
The Farrow family was no more than an Elite-Four-class family. Where did so great a sense of superiority come from?
Because they carried some weight in Saffron City, did they suppose it was the same once they stepped outside it?
Elite-Four-class held no fear for Vance any longer. If he really met one, Gyarados and the others would blow it apart on the spot.
His threat, as Vance saw it, was nothing but a joke.
"Return it to me?" Kai Farrow said, as though he had heard a joke, and then came out with the hard words. "I'm telling you, you had better hand the two of them back to me, or we shall see what we shall see."
"We shall see, is it. Then wait and see."
With that a psychic force settled on him, lifted him up and threw him aside.
"Thud—"
Before he had caught up he was sprawled on the ground, like rubbish tossed away without a thought.
Just then people happened to look over and see him in that sorry state.
Kai Farrow felt he would go mad. When in his life had he been brought so low? And the man in front of him had given him it. His face went crimson on the instant, his body shook with rage, and he got up off the ground.
"Aaah, I'll kill you!"
He let his Pokémon out, and they appeared in the open.
Vance did not so much as look. These few Pokémon were Elite-class at most; to other people that counted as formidable, but to him it was rubbish.
Vance went on standing where he was and did not even turn his head.
The moment Kai Farrow made that display of himself, several uniformed officials came hurrying across the ground and quietly closed in around him.
"Fool."
Vance said it under his breath.
"You... you..."
By now a little of the reason Kai Farrow had lost was coming back, and angry as he was he did not strike after all, but recalled his Pokémon.
The officials looked him over for a moment, then came across and put questions to him. As for Vance, an official came to him as well, asked a few things, and let him go.
"Fool. With a head like that, no sense of where he is wherever he goes, and that for his vision and his breadth of mind."
Vance swore under his breath. He had seen a great many rich and well-placed people, second generation and third, and this one was about as low-grade as they came.
He would settle accounts with the man later; for now the tournament came first. It bore on his own plans for what came after, and he was not going to let one stupid man affect him. That would not be wise.
The whole affair made no sense, got up like something out of a television drama, but with matters come this far, how it had begun no longer mattered. Somebody had come pushing him about, and Vance would not be polite about it.
As just now: when there is nothing to be said, half a sentence is too much, so he had thrown the man aside to save him blocking the way. Call that humiliation a little interest collected.
Things having come to this, there was no need to keep anything up.
Bearing it earlier had been for want of strength; now that he had strength in hand, there was no need to give way.
Bear it when you are weak, and bear it still when you are strong — then what was the point of raising that strength at all?
He had not been sitting long before Cerise was standing in front of him, with an apology in her face.
"Sit down. Why stand about there?"
Vance said it with a smile, and gestured her to a seat.
"Have I brought trouble on you?"
Cerise said it with real regret. She had seen the whole scene between Vance and Kai Farrow from out on the field.
"It has something to do with you, but it's my business now."
"I'm sorry."
Cerise apologised. She had not expected it to bring trouble on him either.
"You needn't apologise. If you want to show you're sorry, sit here and keep me company with a little talk."
Vance said it easily.
"Why?"
For a moment Cerise did not follow. Surely he did not want comforting?
It did not feel like it.
"Him. I've offended him already, so let's make him angrier still."
Vance nodded towards Kai Farrow over there, with fire in both his eyes. He was being swept along by several men towards a building some way off, and could not have come over if he had wanted to.
"Hee hee." Once she understood, Cerise laughed, and did not refuse; she sat down beside him and paid no attention to Kai Farrow over there.
"Elite-Four-class. Can you handle that? If it goes badly later you can come in with me. I have ways."
As they talked, Cerise offered him a plan: if there was trouble they could face it together, and she could be of help.
"No need. Once I've taken the championship at this tournament, they are the ones who will be in a hurry."
Vance said it in a clear voice, with confidence coming off him.
Something odd showed in Cerise's fine eyes. Put that way, this companion in front of her was stronger than she was, and still had cards he had not laid down.
There was always some surprise about him.
"Elite-Four-class, is it?"
Cerise guessed at it inwardly. Perhaps only Elite-Four-class could give a man that much ground under his feet — to take the championship of the tournament, and to count an Elite-Four-class family as nothing at all.
Having come to that guess, Cerise was privately astonished. How had he managed it?
With curiosity in her and a wish to find out, she fell into talk with him; they could trade experience, and she could pick up what she might. Perhaps she could do the same?
"There's something not right about that Raticate. What comes off it is rather like the Zorua that time."
Even while they talked Vance was watching the matches out on the ground, and he had noticed one man.
From first to last the man directed a single Raticate, and every time he carried off the win by an overwhelming margin, which had made him no small name.
What sort of Pokémon is a Raticate?
Even people with no trade in Pokémon at all knew it was as ordinary as a Pokémon can be.
Yet this man, on the strength of one Raticate, had won four rounds in a row, and those four had held no shortage of Elite-class Pokémon; there had even been one of Gym-class fighting strength among them, and it had lost as well.
That record was even more striking than Vance's.
Up to now none of his other Pokémon had been seen, but on this alone he was one of the "title contenders" in the mouths of the gossips.
On the so-called "rankings" he stood ahead of Vance, in third place. Wren was the name, it seemed.
First was a man of the Dragon Clan, by the name of Aurelian, of the same clan as Lance, with an extraordinarily rich line-up, every one of them Dragon type and none of them weak.
He was a young Trainer of long-standing reputation too, who had shown Gym-class fighting strength a year ago already. His present strength was unknown; only two of his Pokémon had been sent out so far, and those at Gym-class only.
Second was a girl by the name of Elspeth, said to be a relative of Agatha of the Elite Four. The Pokémon under her were Ghost types as well, unfathomable and thoroughly uncanny.
Among the Pokémon she had sent out so far there was already one of Gym-class.
Fourth was likewise the son of one of the great families of Kanto, and no small power himself.
Most of those after him were much the same.
You might say that everyone the present list had taken in had shown Gym-class strength.
Gym-class strength at the very least was needed before a man would be taken into it at all.
Vance had got onto the list earlier because a single boost of his had raised his Kirlia to Elite-class, from which they judged that he had Gym-class strength himself; and it gave people the sense of something deep and hard to fathom about him.