Chapter 126: Turn About

A short while later.

As the guests arrived one after another, the auction officially began.

The auctioneer in charge looked very professional, holding a small hammer, introducing the various products with saliva flying everywhere while using tense, exciting words to urge others to keep bidding.

What Baimu hadn't expected was that the celebrities' signed photos and used belongings seemed especially popular, with many people bidding.

The Orei region actually had fans of them too?

How ironic.

Soon, a batch of single-headed Dragons was also wheeled onto the stage by the staff, and their lively, rampaging appearance inside the cages drew admiration from many.

Seeing how full of vitality they were, Baimu wasn't quite sure whether they were genuinely healthy, or had been fed some kind of stimulant before going on stage — it was really hard to tell from a distance.

And when the host introduced this batch of Pokémon, the claim from his mouth was naturally—

"From the hometown of Unova Champion Iris, powerful and ferocious initial forms of the Triple-headed Evil Dragon — six single-headed Dragons in total! Ladies and gentlemen, please inspect them!"

A champion's fame was indeed extraordinary; the moment those words left his mouth, many people around grew excited along with him.

Of course, coming from a champion's hometown and being personally raised by a champion were ultimately different things, so after the price was continuously called up to fifty million, the pace of raised paddles gradually slowed.

By the time it reached sixty million, only two people were left competing.

The final price locked in at sixty-five million.

A single single-headed Dragon was worth over ten million!

Baimu clicked his tongue inwardly — this sum could even buy that Arcanine he'd seen before; starting from executive-level and rocketing straight up, who would buy a Dragon-type Pokémon that was only level twenty or thirty and hard to evolve?

A pseudo-legendary had to evolve to its final stage before it could be called a pseudo-legendary.

However, high-level, older "finished" Pokémon had one drawback: their nature and specialty ability values were already fixed — like a Pokémon whose effort values had been distributed haphazardly and had missed many important moves.

The key was there was no way to find an NPC to bring back memories, nor could they use berries or NPCs to trim effort values — giving people the feeling this account had been raised into ruin.

With the level of trainers in Iron Town, it would be very hard for them to raise these to the next stage.

Then.

The Pokémon planned for bidding — the Solrock and Lunatone pair — appeared; it was said they were "splits" of the two belonging to Hoenn's Rustboro City Gym Leader Maple and Xiaonan.

What was a "split"? It was a special breeding method for some genderless mineral-group Pokémon, since there weren't that many Ditto around to let them have offspring — life very naturally found a special way to reproduce.

This sort of thing was probably only seen in anime background lore, like the Pokémon clone offspring that were born as Nidoqueen in Mewtwo Strikes Back, or the legendary beast Lugia that originally shouldn't have been able to have offspring but did anyway.

Baimu participated in the bidding on behalf of "Shanen," and when the people around looked over, he kept a blank expression, the very picture of a lackey.

"Shanen" sat with a slight smile, wearing sunglasses with an extraordinary air, as if everything was firmly in his grasp.

However.

What surprised Baimu was that after he placed a bid, for a moment no one dared to follow — after all, even the worst Pokémon couldn't be claimed by just one person, let alone the "splits" of a Gym Leader's Pokémon.

His face carried too much weight.

While he was thinking this, "Shanen" beside him suddenly changed expression, revealing an angry look.

He was stunned for a moment, then saw someone raise their paddle.

Huh?

What did that mean?

"The organizers saw I was unhappy, so they had a shill bid against me." Shanen's slightly amused voice reached his ears. "My spoiled image these past days wasn't for nothing."

Baimu listened while watching "Shanen" turn sideways, covering his mouth with his hand, looking as if he'd said something.

In reality, he hadn't let out half a fart.

Shanen in the earpiece, meanwhile, kept talking: "Just give up on the bidding — act like you're throwing a tantrum."

Breathtaking.

Baimu really wanted to clap, but held back.

Shanen: "Need me to repeat your mission again?"

He had no way to respond.

"We're about to enter the antiques segment; the pace will pick up. The host, trying to heat up the atmosphere, will leave bidders unable to react, and the backstage will get rushed and chaotic — that's our moment to move." Shanen kept talking to himself.

"When the time comes, you don't need to do anything — just follow the Ditto and run outside, then go cause trouble for the person in charge, and curse along with those people."

As his words fell.

Just as the other had said, the auction moved into the antiques and jewelry segment. These products, directly tied to money, drove the white-gloved ones into a frenzy; the speed of raised paddles was like gophers popping out of holes.

Even Baimu, under Shanen's direction, hastily raised his paddle — and the face he'd had earlier seemed to count for nothing in front of these things.

—Normal.

Which one of those present wasn't here with a mission to obtain something, something? Solrock and Lunatone could be given up, but antiques and jewelry could not.

As the scene grew tenser and more exciting, Baimu also put on a symbolically curious look, turning his head back and forth like the people around him, observing those who raised their paddles.

And when the finale's grand treasure — the second-to-last antique — came on stage, the host excitedly shouted:

"This is from the Kalos dynasty of three thousand years ago — squeak!

!"

The speakers suddenly let out an unbearably piercing screech of static, making the guests in attendance cover their ears and frown quite displeasedly at the host.

But the next moment.

The entire venue suddenly went dark.

"Power cut?"

"What's going on?"

"What is your auction doing — no one's going to use this chance to steal things, right!"

Clamorous voices echoed everywhere; then the lights came back on, and everyone looked at the antique on stage covered by a glass case — thankfully, it hadn't been stolen.

The host, a little embarrassed but also a little proud, said: "Ladies and gentlemen, there's no need to worry — our security measures—"

The voice cut off abruptly.

Because the lights had gone out once again, and along with them, the host's subsequent voice had grown faint as a mosquito's hum.

"The power's out again — if you can't run an auction, don't bother holding one!"

"Get your manager out here!"

The clamor rose once more, everyone hoping the lights would come back on.

And indeed, the lights did come on.

Only they lit up for an instant before exploding with a boom, as if overloaded!

Peng peng peng!

Countless shards of lightbulbs flew everywhere, screams and shouts rising in their wake; then the ground began to tremble, and from overhead came the constant sound of things crashing down.

"Earthquake—!"

"Run!"

"Get outside!"

Someone shouted, and the crowd immediately surged wildly toward the exit. All Baimu, with his Ditto and Alakazam, quietly blended into the throng, watching everything unfold with a strange expression.

The auction house's response to the sudden attack seemed a little slow — had no one ever dared to cross them?

Fair enough.

After all, the town mayor was the one behind it.

Not long after.

All the guests had made it outside, and the vast majority of the staff as well; a small number clutched antiques and gems, while another small number carried Pokémon.

All Baimu couldn't spot Shanren or Awu among them, having no idea whether they'd succeeded, so he stayed put and looked around.

He watched the staff running about in every direction, with people now and then rushing back inside, then hurrying out again in a panic.

From the scattered fragments of conversation, he seemed to hear reports of many items being stolen, and the expressions of the auction house people rapidly grew anxious.

Many?

All Baimu's expression turned a little odd — Shanren had said the target was only the Axew, so had they run into some fellow thief?

He pressed his earpiece, wanting to know if this one had said anything.

But no.

Soon the news of the thefts spread among the guests as well, and they hurried over to the person in charge, loudly demanding what would be done about the items they'd already won.

All Baimu, as planned, rushed in and shouted a couple of lines; seeing the person in charge explaining something with a troubled look, he couldn't help finding it amusing.

Thieves and robbers getting stolen from and robbed — how interesting.

"You two staying so quiet — isn't that a bit off?" he said, returning to where he'd been and turning his head.

He hadn't expected—

"Staying quiet is enough for now."

Shanren suddenly spoke up. Seeing All Baimu's eyes go wide, he said, "Stay calm — who knows if there are cameras around."

"Cameras?"

"Just kidding. No matter how many there are, they've already been remotely hacked. This bunch of lowlives relies entirely on Pokémon for their IT — how would they know that the true masters of the network are still humans, especially the human information experts among them?"

His words struck a deep chord with All Baimu.

In the Dawn Wings short story, the secretary of Galar League Chairman Rose seemed to be a seriously impressive IT expert, beating back the wild Rotom attackers until they were crying for their parents.

"That's about enough — let's go in."

Shanren spoke.

The crowd filed back into the auction house, and as they passed the person in charge, the two of them even received his sincere apology.

"We are truly, deeply sorry for what you've experienced today — this sort of incident was entirely beyond what we anticipated…"

The man blabbered on at length, but Shanren simply took off his sunglasses, fixed him with a cold stare, and the man shut up at once.

"Impressive."

"Just leaning on the elders behind me — nothing to do with my own strength."

At this moment Shanren looked exactly like one of those rich second-generation heirs who refuse to rely on their family and strike out on their own.