With Vance off the field it was naturally the turn of Aurelian against Wren, and this was what people had been eagerly waiting for.
Of Aurelian nothing need be said. He came of the famous Dragon Clan, of the same clan as Lance, the dragon member of the Elite Four, and closely related to him at that: they were cousins.
The other man, though he had had no reputation before and no record of any note, had been marked by everyone from the moment Raikou appeared.
A Trainer who owned a Legendary Pokémon.
And what followed was more unexpected still: after Raikou was beaten he threw out another Legendary Pokémon, a Darkrai, and defeated Elspeth, the Ghost-type prodigy who had been carrying all before her.
Now that the two of them had met, people were naturally very interested indeed.
"Aurelian carries the Dragon Power as well, and his team is Dragon type throughout, with three pseudo-legendaries among them. He ought to be able to make a try of it."
Lance looked at the two high-spirited young men up on the platform and fixed his gaze on Aurelian.
In this tournament it was not that the League could not take a loss, but that it did not want to lose to this Wren who had appeared from nobody knew where. If it lost to anyone else, he would think nothing of it.
It was only that thinking of the look on Elder Vayne's face put him out of temper.
The face of the League was at stake. How could it be allowed to go on like this?
Giving the championship to Emrys or Vance or whoever else would have been perfectly all right.
"Utter foolishness. Where is anything so simple as that? Quite apart from that utterly insubstantial long life — everything has its price. They are not three-year-olds."
Lance let out another deep sigh. He could not shake the feeling that this collaboration with the Godbeast Gang was not to be relied on.
Just as this Wren always set his teeth on edge.
Under the eyes of the whole crowd, the two on the field had begun.
Wren opened with the Raticate as before, sending it out first.
On Aurelian's side, a Dragon-type Pokémon was sent out, a Haxorus.
By its presence, an Elite-Four-class Pokémon.
Ten seconds and more later the Raticate lay on the ground unable to battle, and the first round ended there.
There was no joy of victory on Aurelian's face. What came next was the point of the thing.
"Raikou!"
"Roar, roar—"
The moment Raikou came out, black cloud suddenly churned up across the sky and arcs of electricity flickered.
"Come back, Haxorus." Drawing the Haxorus back, Aurelian took up another Poké Ball.
"Go, Garchomp."
"Awooo—"
A clear, carrying dragon-cry sounded across the field, and Garchomp came out.
Garchomp is shaped very like a shark, dark blue all over for its ground colour, red from the lower jaw to the upper part of the belly and yellow over the lower part of the belly.
Two projections grow from its head, there is a yellow patch shaped like an inverted five-pointed star at the tip of its snout, sharp teeth grow in its mouth, and there are three gill slits down either side of its neck. Its two claws are white and single-toed, its two feet three-toed, and there are two white bone spurs each on its upper arms and its thighs.
Garchomp's wings grow from its forearms, like a shark's pectoral fins.
By that deep, powerful presence, it had been Elite-Four-class a long while.
At this moment, facing this Legendary Raikou, Garchomp had not the least fear in it; there was fighting spirit in both its eyes.
Garchomp, one of the Dragon-type pseudo-legendaries, Dragon and Ground type, is an exceedingly fine Pokémon; and raised besides by the people of the Dragon Clan, who are skilled at raising Dragon types, the depth of its strength had reached a level to appal.
"Garchomp has the Ground type, which can cancel out a part of Raikou's attacks. It's the most suitable there is. It's this Darkrai that's the trouble."
Aurelian said it with his brows drawn together. As for beating this Raikou, he was reasonably confident; at worst it would be as it had been with Elspeth, spending Pokémon to fight Raikou down.
It was that Darkrai that was hard to settle.
Its uncanny, unfathomable attacking moves could not be got hold of at all.
And instances of anyone fighting it were few and far between.
"Dragon Rush!"
The match started, and Aurelian gave the order at once.
"Awooo—"
Garchomp went up fast, the power of the Dragon type opening out, the phantom shape of a dragon rising over its body, and it charged.
On the way, transparent barrier after transparent barrier came up to intercept it, and all of them were broken by that Dragon Rush; lightning of a violence beyond anything came smashing down at it head-on, and was broken through by Garchomp as well.
Then, through the dust and smoke, Raikou was seen coming straight on without dodging or evading, thronged about with lightning past counting.
One above and one below, one a dragon and one a tiger.
They struck each other in mid-air.
"Boom—"
The two collided, and the wild backwash of the fight slanted away on all sides, sweeping out in every direction like a storm.
"Whoo, whoo—"
The wind roared up and the dust flew, and there was no making out what was really inside it at all.
"Cleave!"
The crowd heard Aurelian's shout, and in that dim fog of dust a streak of blood-red light suddenly appeared: a killing wave in the shape of a blood-red blade.
This was a move he had bred into Garchomp specially, tailored to Garchomp's own characteristics, capable of doing an enemy a considerable slaughter.
"Raikou, full power!"
Over on the other side Wren gave that order, and then Raikou's snarl was heard with more force in it.
"Rumble, rumble—"
The layer of black cloud in the sky answered Raikou as well. Thick bolt after thick bolt of lightning struck down, drawn by the Raikou below, closing in around the region where the two of them were fighting it out.
A terrible, annihilating presence spread from it.
"Boom, boom, boom—"
Then out of the two of them a sky-filling blast of air was generated again, and the vast arena, under the full exertion of the two Pokémon, began to break up; all round it was cracked from end to end, and there is no need to speak of the middle.
The ferocity of the two Pokémon's fighting, and the performance they put on, went beyond anything imagined.
Draco Meteor rose into the sky and came smashing down; then a Hyper Beam broke through the curtain of smoke; the earth shook and roared, and the thunder did not stop sounding.
"Damn it, they're fighting like that and we can't see a thing. I give up."
Somebody complained. They could hear the sound of it, but the real state of the fight was blocked off by the dust and fog, and they could not see how the two Pokémon were trading blows.
"That's just it. You've got the noise and you've got the atmosphere — you just can't see it."
"This is what a duel between masters is. It has to turn heaven and earth over before it feels like one. It's only a pity we can't see the two of them going at it."
...............
People grumbled away, but grumbling aside they went on watching all the same, and some of them brought out high-technology binoculars to watch the match with, and could still see something of it.
None of this was any concern of Vance's, however. Whatever the state of the fight out there, it was all within his perception.
The dust and smoke outside could not block his looking.
The duel between Raikou and Garchomp was under his eye from every angle.
At present, Garchomp had gradually come to be on the worse end of it.
The fierce attacks of before were gradually showing themselves powerless too.
It had the Ground type and a resistance to Electric-type moves, but under Raikou's multiple thunder attacks it had taken no light injuries.
Vance knew it, and its Trainer Aurelian knew it too; he said to himself, *as expected* — Garchomp alone still could not bring Raikou down.
He had expected it, and there was nothing to regret. To fight Raikou into a crippled state was to reach his objective.
"Oough—"
A little longer, and Garchomp went down unwilling.
Raikou was gasping too, its condition wilting, with drops of blood falling here and there. Garchomp had been no match for it, but it had crippled it.
And from that outburst just now, Raikou had something of the feel of a thing with nothing left in reserve.
Aurelian had taken Elspeth's lesson to heart, and treated it carefully throughout, not daring to relax in the least.
"Salamence, I'm counting on you."
"Roar—"
A powerfully built Salamence came out, its dragon-scales gleaming, its hide vivid, in excellent condition; one look and you knew it had been very well raised.
The Wren opposite, as he had expected, did not take Raikou back either, but had it go on fighting on the field.
"Dragon Rage."
With the winning of it in hand, Aurelian still went about it soundly, pressing in step by step.
At last, after a certain price had been paid, Raikou was successfully settled.
And at this point Aurelian grew more serious still, because the creature that was to come out next was the crux of the whole thing.
The field was changed, the original one replaced, broken beyond all use as it was.
"Go, Darkrai."
Wren took Raikou back and then threw out a Poké Ball, and Darkrai appeared on the field.
With a pressure about it that could not be named.