The next day, inside the Pokémon Cottage, Ambrose was telling the other two something with great enthusiasm. Three expensive suits lay on the table.
"Boss, Emery — can either of you dance? Waltz, tango, that sort of thing."
Ambrose looked at the pair of them.
"A little."
Vance nodded. He had been taught it back at the Rocket base, and with how quickly he picked things up, he had it well enough.
"That one... I was taught, but not to a standard I'd want anyone to see."
Emery scratched his head, embarrassed, telling the plain truth.
"No, no, no. Standards, nothing. Real dancing is made by practice." Ambrose raised a finger and wagged it at them both, the picture of an expert.
Then he went on in the unhurried tone of a man telling a story, his face full of longing.
"Under music that lilts and carries romance in it, in that easy, cheerful atmosphere, when a man and a woman take one another's hands in earnest and dance together, turning the whole length of the floor — now that is a truly romantic thing."
"...That all sounds very fine, but I don't think you're going to gather intelligence at all. I think you're going to pick up women."
Emery had listened, and put his finger sharply on the point.
"Ahem. No, no, no. I am going mainly to collect intelligence. Women are necessary — even unimportant." Ambrose coughed and said it with a perfectly straight face.
"I did wonder, Fatty, why you were so keen on this. So that's it. Listening to you, it all sounds very lived-in — you've clearly been to a few of these." Vance looked at Ambrose smiling, with the air of a man who had seen straight through him.
"I have not. I don't go to look at pretty girls." Put like that, Ambrose went red and hurried to deny it, and then added, "A friend of mine told me about it. A friend of mine. Do you two understand?"
"Ah, a friend. Understood, understood. So are there any good-looking girls at this ball? Do tell."
Vance went on.
"Look, I've told you it isn't about the girls, heaven and earth bear witness. I don't know. You'd have to wait until the ball starts to find out."
Whether that was the guilt of a man found out or genuine ignorance, there was no telling.
"All right, all right. Boss, just say whether we're going. I've got the invitations here as well. Shall we go and have a look at it? Broaden the horizons a bit, call it a rest — and let Emery here, our little country mongrel, see something of the world?"
And with that Ambrose shot Emery a glance.
"...A little country mongrel?"
Emery felt insulted, and yet the man had a point; in certain respects he really was a country mongrel.
"Enough, enough, I'm a country mongrel myself. We'll go, then — have a look at how high society lives. These suits weren't cheap, were they? Ah, that was thoughtful of you. And it fits rather well."
Vance tried the suit on and found it fitted him exactly.
"Naturally. Boss, you look sharp in a suit! Even I in my prime would have to give way to that."
Ambrose stuck up a thumb in praise.
"He really does."
Emery added his own from the side.
The young man stood in a well-cut dark suit, his face pale, handsome and mild, his eyes black as ink, deep as a far-off starry sky, and in every movement he made there was something hard to put into words.
"I'm not flattering you, boss. Would you like to skip a few decades of the long way round? If you would, there's an opportunity tonight worth taking."
"Indeed. Then so splendid a thing I leave to you, Ambrose. For the squad. For the organisation."
Vance clapped Ambrose on the shoulder and said it with great solemnity.
"Heh heh. If a suitable one turns up, I shan't object. Heh heh."
"A man born into this world ought to strive his whole life long. How can you hold so slack a frame of mind?"
Before Vance could speak, Emery had said it from the side, righteousness all over his face and open disdain in it, as though the whole business of Ambrose's disgusted him.
"Yes, yes, quite right. You're absolutely right."
Ambrose did not argue; he only grinned as he answered.
"That's enough. Remember the main business tonight is still collecting intelligence."
The other two answered together that it was.
That evening the three of them came to a manor blazing with light and elegantly decorated, handed over their invitations, and were led to the ballroom by a man who looked like a footman.
Most of the guests had already arrived. At a glance, every man and woman there was in full dress and immaculately turned out, the men handsome and the women lovely.
The three of them found somewhere to sit, and Vance picked up a drink the barman had just mixed, looked about him, and with his good hearing listened for anything worth finding.
"In a while the three of us should split up. We'll turn up more that way."
Ambrose looked round and made the suggestion.
"We're not working together?"
Emery asked, turning a puzzled look on him.
"Working, he says. Don't make it so serious. Cheer up, brother. If you're not used to it you can sit off to one side, eat something and watch people dance. It's your first time — treat it as a novelty."
Ambrose said it with an easy face, picked up a greenish drink and took a mouthful.
"Bit weak."
"All right."
Emery said it quietly, and decided to treat it as an education.
"Relax, will you. The more natural the better. It's fine. There are so many people at a ball that, a few notable figures aside, who's going to care about the three of us? Easy now, easy."
"Click, click, click—"
Heels struck the floor, louder as they came nearer, and a woman with the look of a young wife approached the three of them with a glass in her hand.
"Are the three of you discussing some great piece of business? Any interest in letting an older sister in on it?"
She had a striking face and a full figure, in a revealing dress that left a broad expanse of white skin bare at the chest; seen from the side, what she carried there was on no small scale.
Vance noticed that the moment the woman appeared, Ambrose's eyes lit up beside him and he went straight over to meet her.
"You're teasing us. It's we who need you to pull us up. What's your name?"
Ambrose's eyes were eager as he moved in to talk to her.
"Hee. Call me Lila." Lila laughed behind her hand, and her gaze went past Ambrose to Vance behind him. Her red lips moved. "And you, young man. What's your name?"
"Vance."
Vance answered, watching Ambrose's ardour with a good deal of interest.
"So it's young Vance."
With that, Lila sat down opposite the three of them and looked at them, smiling.
"Allow me to make the introductions. This is Vance, the owner of our company; this is Emery, an employee of the company; and I—" Here Ambrose stopped, straightened his collar, and went on in a voice weightier than before. "—am at present Chief Executive Officer of Galaxy Pokémon Technology, a business research fellow reading at Mt. Silver University, and concurrently liaison and partner to a certain cross-League conglomerate... nominated last year as an Outstanding Young Person of the League..."
"Bloody hell!"
Listening to that torrent of high-end vocabulary coming out of Ambrose's mouth, Emery was staggered.
One after another, and he did not quite understand any of it, but it all sounded terribly grand.
He did not understand it, and he was deeply shaken. When had this wretched fat man become so impressive? When did it happen, and how did he not know about it?