A patch of soft ground; the earth stirred, and Vance dug his way up out of it.
He shook his head, shook himself off, beat the dirt from his clothes, then pushed his psychic sense out over the area. Only once he was sure he was safe did he let out a breath.
Since breaking out he had run into three separate search parties, but his psychic power had helped him — a technique to still his breath and smother his presence, and the dark to hide in, and not one of them had found him.
"Rotten luck. I came out here thinking I'd pick up an easy piece of credit, and it turns out to be a pit. Even a Division Commander with Elite-Four-class strength went down. The Pewter City branch has to be gutted after this."
Vance thought back to Division Commander Percival strung up in that thin mist, and sighed to himself.
To kill a Trainer with an Elite-Four-class Pokémon, the other side had to be Elite-Four-class at the very least, and stronger than Percival, who had only just come into it. And Percival was Team Rocket; he would have fought his way through plenty. He was no pushover.
Which was why, the moment he learned Percival was dead, Vance had not stopped to think. He had simply run.
With an Elite-Four-class enemy out there, getting away at all was luck enough. As for the rest of the Team Rocket people, there was nothing he could do. They would have to look out for themselves.
Fight an Elite-Four-class Trainer? With what, his head?
He could not win. There was no winning it.
The next day, travel-worn and filthy, Vance reached Celadon City.
Pewter City may sit on Celadon's western side, but there is a fair stretch of country between the two.
A short while later he came to the Team Rocket base under the Game Corner, had his identity checked and passed, and went in.
His cover was still intact. On paper he was an honest citizen, free to move about in the cities the Pokémon League governed.
"Boss, what happened to you? Why do you look so worn out? Wasn't that a free three-star job?"
Ambrose had run into him head-on inside the base, and that was the first thing out of his mouth.
"That job was a set-up. A pit, dug by the League. If I hadn't been quick I'd have gone into it with the rest."
"How do you mean?"
Ambrose perked up at once and pressed him.
"Come inside." Vance opened the door and went through into his quarters.
"The job failed. The League sent an Elite-Four-class Trainer. I doubt anybody who went out on it is coming back."
"Elite-Four-class!"
Ambrose said it in shock; it had never occurred to him that someone of that level would appear.
"Yes." Vance nodded. "The Division Commander running the operation had a Pokémon that had broken through to Elite-Four-class himself, and he still died at their hands. The water is far deeper than anyone said."
"Boss, you came back alive. That's already good."
"Mm. Is our Division Commander in?"
"He is. I saw him a moment ago."
"I'll rest a while, then go and report."
"Get your rest, boss. I'll leave you to it." Seeing how worn Vance looked, Ambrose left.
A few hours in his room took the worst of it off him, and Vance made his way to the door of Sylas's office.
"Knock, knock—"
"Come in."
Vance opened the door and stepped inside.
"Ah, Vance, it's you. What is it? This one should have gone smoothly." Seeing who had come in, Sylas spoke with a smile.
"It failed." Vance's face was grave. "Division Commander Percival is dead as well."
"That's impossible! Wasn't the job an easy one?"
Sylas did not believe it. By all the intelligence he had, it was as near a certainty as these things came — and even if the job had failed, how did Percival end up dead?
He knew perfectly well what that senior colleague of his was worth.
"It was a set-up. The League had someone Elite-Four-class in it..."
Vance laid out what had happened to him, and the colour drained from Sylas's face as he listened.
If he had been the one to go, his name would be on the list of the dead.
"Were you the only one who got out? Was there anyone else?"
Sylas steadied himself and pressed the question.
"I don't know. The moment I sensed an Elite-Four-class presence I pulled off the ground. After that all I heard was a few explosions."
Sylas listened, his eyes dark and deep, and what he was thinking no one could have said.
"How did you get out?"
Sylas put the question that had been sitting in his mind.
Vance had known it was coming. With practically the whole force wiped out and one man walking away safely, suspicion was only natural.
"You're a Psychic?"
Before Vance could open his mouth, Sylas tried it on him.
"Well. No point hiding it from you, Commander. I'm a Psychic, and that is exactly why I got away."
"Ha! Who would have thought it — you, a Psychic. You've kept that well buried, lad."
Sylas looked at him the way a man looks at some rare animal.
"Why say nothing about it? With an ability like that you'd certainly have been taken up and trained. You could have stayed at headquarters."
Sylas did not understand it. Psychics were scarcer than rare animals and had more potential than ordinary people; in Team Rocket or in the League alike, they were singled out for training.
"A branch out here suits me well enough. Keep it quiet, Commander — I'd rather look harmless and take people by surprise."
"Understood, understood."
Knowing the man was a Psychic, Sylas thought a good deal more of him.
"As for the work ahead, your squad's assignment is gathering intelligence inside Celadon City."
"Right."
They talked a while longer and then Vance took his leave. He had long been prepared for his power to come out; it was only ever a question of sooner or later.
That it had gone unnoticed this long was only because he had not yet run into a higher-grade Psychic or Pokémon.
"Starmie, did you not notice anything?"
Once Vance had gone, Sylas spoke to one of the Poké Balls on his belt.
The ball shook a few times, and a reply came out of it.
"You couldn't sense him either? With Advanced strength, and still nothing. This Vance hides himself deeply. He'll bear watching from here on."
Psychics had methods of every strange kind; that Starmie had missed it was something Sylas could accept.
He turned to his computer and searched out Vance's file, and everything on record since Vance joined Team Rocket came up on the screen.
"So the Black Dragon Gang was this boy's doing as well."
Reading it through and setting it against recent events, Sylas found himself thinking that the destruction of the Black Dragon Gang was very likely this Squad Leader's work.
"The new intake in Team Rocket these days is something else. And if that's how it is, the man can't be a League mole."
Putting all of it together, Sylas made his judgement.
"A mysterious one, all the same."
A few days later a shop selling Pokémon supplies appeared in Celadon City. The owner was Vance, with two hands working under him, and the two hands were of course Ambrose and Emery.
The three of them had set up their little shop at the back end of a pedestrian street — a business on the face of it, and intelligence-gathering underneath.
"That lot of Berries comes to 3,200 all together. Nothing else to add?"
Vance finished counting the man's Berries and named a price.
"That's all of it, that's the lot. Three thousand two, is it — couldn't you go a bit higher, young man? Look at the condition of them. They're not easy to pick, either."
The seller was a young man with an older man's face, and he wanted the price pushed up.
"That's already a high price, friend. Take them to a Pokémon store and see whether you get three thousand." Vance replied, and then went on, "Everything in our shop is good quality, and whatever you need you can buy from us. We've a promotion on these few days — I'll give you ten percent off."