The worst thing about learning that a myth turned out to be true, is learning it also turned out to be incomplete.
Professor Birch stares transfixed at the sight of the titan on his monitor, eyes moving restlessly over it. Armor plates cover its body from head to tail, even redder than a crawdaunt shell, and every step of its two massive lower claws sends rumbles through the earth. It looks like it would more naturally crawl on all fours, but instead it stands with a forward hunch, wide tail beating a secondary rhythm behind it with each stride. Though the helicopter is flying high enough to stay safely away from it, he can tell that it’s fast, faster than anything so big has a right to be. But that’s not what keeps him watching in horrified fascination.
When the footage first started airing, Groudon looked a little taller than a house. Now it looks as wide as one, and its head would probably tower over his three-story lab… and it’s still growing. But that’s not what keeps him breathlessly watching either, even as he feels his home shake around him with the quakes that continue to ripple through the region.
The helicopter’s footage abruptly wobbles as turbulence hits it, and a moment later the lingering sunlight that had illuminated Groudon is covered by a downpour, enough rain to make the titan only barely visible. It stops, flexes its body, and roars, the sound piercing through both the rain and the helicopter’s propellers. Between the red scales, Birch sees light flare, like magma deep within Groudon’s body, and within moments the rain cuts off to a trickle, and sunlight returns to reveal it.
There’s a moment of disorientation as the cameraman swings the lens up to the sky, clearly wanting to capture on video the way the rain clouds race away from Groudon in a ring. Even in the middle of setting, the sunlight somehow seems to blaze through the atmosphere, making the pokemon’s scales shine when the cameraman brings it back into focus.
And even that is still not what keeps Birch from the dozens of things he should be doing right now, including silencing his phone’s regional warning, which has been blaring nonstop (and rather superfluously, all things considered) ever since the quakes started.
What keeps Birch glued to his screen is what’s happening around the legendary pokemon. The copter caught up as it was approaching the coast, and at first it seemed like it would just walk straight into the sea.
Instead, new earth rose up to meet its steps as it approached the water, magma boiling the sea into steaming clouds before solidifying under its stomping claws. The beach now extends nearly a kilometer further than it used to, and the group of trainers (he assumes they’re rangers, but they’re hard to make out) that were chasing after it are clearly having trouble traversing the rough, newly risen ground.
Professor Birch wouldn’t believe what he’s seeing if he hadn’t already run through every dream check he knows, including slapping himself across the face. Now that he knows he’s awake, all he can do is stare in horror as the colossal pokemon wreaks havoc on his region.
It stomps down onto all fours, and a few seconds later he feels the quake hit his house; not the constant tremors that have been ongoing, but a real earthquake strong enough to make the whole house rock back and forth.
His phone shakes to the edge of his desk, then off it, and after a moment he realizes it’s also ringing in between the harsh buzz of the alerts. He hears it continuing to ring under his desk, and half shifts, half falls off his chair to get onto his knees, cursing his gut as he shuffles forward to grab it before it vibrates further out of reach.
“Hello?”
“Birch, where are the kids?”
“Norman!” Birch’s head rises too fast as he pulls back, and he smacks it on the underside of his desk. The stunning pain makes him bite back another curse as he settles a hand on ground to steady himself. “They were in Sootopolis an hour ago!”
“They’re not answering their phones!”
Fear jolts through the professor, and he pushes himself up only to fall back onto his hands and knees. “You think they…” He trails off, not needing to finish the question. He distantly hears glass breaking downstairs, and recognizes that the quake is still ongoing and he should get out of the building.
Instead he looks around, then shuffles on his free hand and knees toward his headset, looping it around his neck and turning it on so he can jam his phone into his pocket and shuffle back toward his computer.
After everything their kids have been through on their journey together, would Brendan and May be staying safely out of the way at a time like this?
Or would they be racing toward the crisis, hoping to help stop it?
“Where are you?” he asks as he climbs onto his chair, which wobbles but stays mostly in place.
“We’re forming a perimeter around Petalburg, local pokemon are panicking!”
Birch’s heart sinks the rest of the way down into the pit of his stomach. Hoenn sees its fair share of rampages, some even reaching Tier 3 status, but despite its size it’s not like Kanto or Johto, with their Birds and Beasts, or Sinnoh with its Titans. He always felt a mix of relief and guilt when he considered how much less stress he’s had to deal with, growing up and becoming Professor of such a relatively safe region. He’s not a battle trainer, never has been, let alone ex-Champion like Oak and Rowan.
Thirty-five years of relief and guilt, all wiped away in a matter of minutes as he stares at the monster that’s been slumbering under their “safe region.” A titan all their own, and one that’s affecting the entire island, skipping the mostly-theoretical 4 to reach a true Tier 5 event.
“Birch, are you there?”
“Yeah.” The Professor forces himself to minimize the window and pins his vibrating keyboard in place with one wrist as his other grabs his thankfully corded mouse to pull up the pokedex tracker. Hundreds of dots populate the map of Hoenn, and he clicks his most recent filter on. “The kids are…” He trails off, blinking.
“Are what, Birch?”
“I don’t understand, they’re… it must be glitching.” He clicks each dot to confirm he’s filtering the right three trainers. “They’re not with each other, it says Wally is at some tiny island while Brendan and May are flying over the sea.” He watches the dots move across his screen in real time, which is absurd given the distance involved.
Norman lets out a gust of breath, and mutters something that sounds like a prayer. “Thank Arceus, for a minute I thought… When did they get fliers?”
“They never registered any.”
“So they’re hitching a ride somewhere? Hang on, I need to take th-“
The sound cuts out as Norman puts him on hold, and Birch realizes that the quaking has finally trailed off. He opens the tab with the chopper’s live feed again and sees that Groudon is back on its hind legs, striding toward what looks like a new island that’s forming in the distance. The coast stops pushing out in every direction as magma stops rising at its edges, all of it concentrating on what looks like a land-bridge to the newly rising surface.
He gets another call of his own from Littleroot’s mayor and ignores it as he switches back to the tracker, cycling through a few other filters to ensure they’re working properly. Most of the other trainers he’s keeping tabs on are about where he expects them to be, so why—
“Birch,” Norman says, now outside from the sounds in the background. “Thanks for letting me know, I have to—”
“Norman, the kids are moving fast. Faster than any pokemon I know of.”
“What are you saying, they’re on a jet?”
Birch watches as the dots move independently from each other. “Two jets, more like.”
“Where would they… where the hell are they going?”
“It’s hard to tell,” Birch hedges, his heart pounding as he watches the dots move, erratically but steadily, in a particular direction. “They’re not moving in a straight line, but… it looks like they’re headed to…”
The Gym Leader’s voice is barely controlled. “No, they can’t be… they have to know there’s nothing they can do!”
Birch would have agreed with him even a year ago. But the things those three have gone through since they started their journey… “They’re not kids anymore, Norman,” he says as he sets his own fear aside. Well, Wally is, but thankfully they seem to have left him behind… how did he get to that island, anyway? “And this is their home, their world, too.”
He hears Norman let out a gust of breath. “I haven’t been the best father, Birch. I know that. But I can’t leave my gym.”
“I understand.” He just wishes he could go himself… that he wasn’t so soft, so weak…
He blinks as a thought occurs. This is a Tier 5 event. Surely the other regions…
“And I’m going to do everything I can to help them,” he finishes, already taking his phone out to make some calls.
“Thank you, Birch. I have to go.”
“Good luck, Norman.” Birch closes the call, then hovers his finger over Sam’s number before skipping it to call Lance first. Oak nearly died just a couple months ago, and he doesn’t know if these things create Pressure yet.
As the phone rings, he looks back at the screen and feels a fist form in his stomach, crushing the mild hope that had risen.
Groudon is definitely bigger than the last time he looked. And unless its density is surprisingly low, a heavy ball is no longer enough to contain it, if it ever was.
Up until the floor of the casino cracked like the shell of her favorite cream-filled chocolate egg, Lizzy’s primary worries involved the power plants. Even minor quakes could cause major problems for the more delicate types of infrastructure work, and her sister is overseeing construction of a new site to the north of Lavender Town.
Because of that worry, she expected the power to go out at any moment, and so already has her magnemite summoned and glowing by the time the air fills with crashes and screams, slot machines and people sliding into the dark depths of the earth.
Bretta clearly had other concerns, because she uses the same time to grab Lizzy’s arm to yank her toward the corner of the casino. The two of them run around card tables and chairs, some empty as people flee in a panic, others still occupied by people either paralyzed by fear or desperately trying to hold onto tokens that threaten to spill all over the shifting tables and floor.
Feeling the ground tilt under her feet as she runs is one of the scariest things Lizzy has ever experienced, including everything that happened in Vermilion, but they find firmer footing as soon as they reach the corner of the building. She turns back just as the emergency lights kick in and the quake subsides to a steady series of vibrations again.
The red-tinted casino is in shambles, the destruction centered around a rubble-filled crater close to the food court and rippling outward in a slope. The cries of the injured and scared are, unfortunately, still competing with the cheerful jangle of many slot machines, because of course a casino would put its game machines on the emergency power supply…
“Where’s Blue?” Bretta asks, looking wildly around.
“He was at the slots over there,” Lizzy says with a gesture, and her blood runs cold as she sees nothing but a pile of machines and broken rubble.
Most people are running for the exits, but Lizzy and Bretta turn to stare at each other, and in that moment she thinks of Aiko, crushed by a roof, then Bretta, standing alone against Surge on a dragonite.
“Don’t—” is all she manages before Bretta grabs her shoulders.
“Get the others—”
“You get the others, let someone else be the hero for a—”
Another quake hits, rocking them on their feet. It’s not as powerful as the last one, but they still hear things breaking outside the casino.
“You think it’ll be any safer out there?” Bretta asks. “I have the pokemon for this, you don’t.”
“Every minute we argue is one they might suffocate.” Fear makes her whole mouth taste like copper, her heart beating so hard she can feel her pulse in her throat, but she keeps her gaze on Bretta’s, and the fear she sees mirrored there keeps her anchored. “I’ll call them while you start, but I’m not leaving.”
Her friend scowls at her, then hugs her tight. She hugs her back, and then they’re moving toward the rubble as Lizzy gets her phone out.
“Liz?”
“Glen! Are you still at the gym?”
“Yeah, things are a mess—” There’s another quake, and she hears someone near him shout “Watch out, up top!” before there’s a crashing sound.
“What’s going on there?” she asks as Bretta summons a sandslash and sets it to digging. The two of them start working together to haul tables and chairs out of the pit.
“One of the buildings nearby collapsed against another. Pieces of it keep shaking loose when another quake hits.”
Lizzy curses as she strains to flip a slab of tile from the broken floor, feet slipping under her. “Ngh… figures…” She gasps with relief as someone reaches her and helps, and looks around after to see more people bringing pokemon out to start digging.
“What about you, everyone okay?”
“No, Blue got buried in—”
“What?!”
“—the floor of the casino, ow, don’t yell, Glen!”
“Is he… sorry!… do you need help?”
“Help would be nice,” she says faintly, and looks up at the roof as another mini-quake trembles through the earth. Luckily it doesn’t look like the ceiling is damaged at all, but another big one might change that. “Is the power out there too?”
“Yeah, through the whole city, looks like.”
Come on, Sis, get on it. “I need to focus on this… if you guys have a chance to come…”
“Yeah, we’re on our way,” Glen says. “Hang in there, Liz, and be careful.”
Relief courses through her. She knows part of her should feel guilty; there are other people in danger, and they might need everyone’s help more… but the idea of Blue down there, in the dark, injured…
“We need more light over here,” someone calls from another part of the hole, and Lizzy goes still as a new thought hits her:
Comparative advantage.
Hers is not digging through rubble.
“Bretta,” she says as she scrambles toward her friend. “They’re on their way, but I’ve got to go. I’m leaving my magnemite.”
“Go where?” Bretta grunts as she lifts a stone her pokemon cut in two, then hands it to someone else. People are forming a chain to move the rubble.
“To get the power back on.”
Petrel finishes climbing up the hatch and into the roof, taking his first breath of fresh air in over a day. He’s gone longer without it before, but the past 24 hours in Team Aqua’s headquarters have been hard to get through considering all the dead bodies in it.
He lets the rain pelt his face for a few precious minutes, treating it like a brisk shower to fight his tiredness, then pulls himself the rest of the way out of the hatch and lets it close behind him with a clang. The battle that raged through the headquarters left not just bodies, but broken machinery that allowed the base to function as a submarine port, and they just managed to finish repairing enough that it stopped taking on water when the quakes started. His muscles ache and his thoughts feel slow with exhaustion from both the battle and the cleanup, but he knows he has to report in before he can rest, now that he finally has a moment to get outside the base’s communication blocks.
He pulls his earphone out of his pocket and turns it on, then speaks Giovanni’s private number by memory, keeping his eyes closed as the storm rages above and the base continues to occasionally vibrate from the quakes beneath him.
It’s been months since he was stationed here, long enough to make some friends among Archie’s people, even if he didn’t quite buy into their mission. Giovanni didn’t ask him and the others to come here and convert, though; just keep tabs on things, gather intel, and help however they could.
Now the whole region is going to hell, tremors still occasionally rocking the headquarters as they struggle to keep things stabilized, and he hasn’t received any new orders from Archie in a day. He needs to know what’s expected of him, and the boss needs to know what happened here, if he doesn’t already.
Giovanni responds at the fifth ring. “Lambda?”
“Hey, Boss,” Petrel says, and can’t help but smile.
“You’re alive.” There’s relief there, too, but also tightly reined frustration. “I requested immediate alerts of any battles between Magma and Aqua, including major breakthroughs in the search for Kyogre or Groudon, even if it would blow your cover. Now all three of these things have happened, and I only found out about it in the past few hours.” Giovanni audibly takes a calming breath. “I’m happy you survived so I can ask you directly… what happened?”
“Sir…” Petrel licks his lips and tastes something bitter in the rain. “We were kept entirely out of the loop on any new developments after the orbs were retrieved on Mt. Pyre. Since then we’ve been stationed at Aqua’s headquarters without anything to do until it came under attack yesterday.”
“Magma?”
“Yeah, but others showed up too.”
“There’s no gym in Lilycove…” Giovanni trails off, then guesses, “Norman and Birch’s kids?”
“And others,” Petrel confirms. The two prominent trainers were among the group at Mt. Pyre that nearly managed to stop Archie and Maxie from getting the orbs that reawakened Groudon and Kyogre. “A shorter boy with green hair, a—”
“They were working with Magma?”
“I don’t believe so, Sir. I had a quick look at the security feeds, and they came in after. Magma came straight for us, but they fought only when challenged, and seemed to be after something else. Videos didn’t capture what.”
Giovanni is silent for a moment, and Petrel’s hand finds his side, still tender from where a Vine Whip cracked his rib. Potions applied to the surface only help so much with damaged bones.
“I don’t see any relevance there,” Giovanni finally says, voice terse, which Petrel thinks is the boss’s way of saying he has no idea what to make of it either. “Get me a copy of that feed and I’ll look over it myself. In any case, Groudon and Kyogre have been resurrected, within a day of each other. That cannot be coincidence, Aqua and Magma must have known where to find them already and kept that knowledge hidden. Has there been any word from Archie or anyone else from within the inner circle?”
“No, Sir, not since yesterday.”
“Then it’s possible they’re all dead. How are the others there reacting?”
“There’s an air of confusion and uncertainty here, but no one is panicking or acting as though they’ve heard something definitive.”
Giovanni sighs. “Alright, then. If Archie or any of his inner circle live, they’ll have the orb with them. Chances of getting it at this point seem low, but I need a copy of their research on it.”
That would be more difficult. “The research lab is still being heavily guarded,” he says to ensure he knows what the boss is asking of him.
“Do anything you have to, Lambda. You’re coming home after.”
A rush of relief eases some tension deep in his stomach, and Petrel swallows the thanks that rise to his lips. He should feel worse about having just been told to kill the members of Team Aqua that get in his way, some of whom he’s even grown to like and respect, but right now all he feels is glad he has permission to get the hell out of the region that still feels like it’s being shaken apart under him. “Yes, Sir. Should I pull everyone on this, or do they have their own orders?”
“This is the new priority. The fate of the world may rest on what we can discover in that research, even if it won’t come quick enough to save Hoenn.”
The end of the world, Steven Stone reflects as he mounts his skarmory and commands it to take off from the roof of the Sootopolis Gym, should not be so wet.
Oh, there are stories of the world ending in water, of course. From this very region, in fact. There are also myths that warn of the world ending in the pure oblivion of Arceus’s final Judgement, or all of life being drained away and turned to stone, or its light eaten away to leave them in eternal darkness. Fire, that’s a popular one too, as well as ice.
But water is just… undignified. He feels dampness seeping down his neck and reaches back to tug his collar more firmly against his skin. Even suits specifically tailored to be water resistant don’t look particularly impressive while sodden, and no one’s hair looks better wet, not even Wallace’s.
He wonders if it’s normal to worry about how your hair looks during the end of the world, then reassures himself that the world probably isn’t actually ending; just Hoenn, and maybe a few of the closer regions.
Though the sun is still in the process of setting, the massive rain clouds turn the sky nearly as dark as night… or they would, if not for the circles in the clouds that keep growing and shrinking. The visible beams of sunlight they let through turn the horizon into a gorgeous dance of light and shadow, but the largest, steadiest sunbeam illuminates a scene that makes it hard to focus on the beauty of it all.
Cold as stone. He heard it a number of times growing up (and once from a boyfriend during their breakup) for how unexcitable he was, whether from good things or bad. Once Devon Corporation started to grow internationally, his father changed the family name to Stone to reflect their beginnings in gem mining and excavation; Steven inherited his interest in studying rare minerals, particularly the evolutionary stones.
But his dad gets angry, and excited, and frightened, and passionate. No one’s ever compared his dad to a stone, not that Steven has heard at least. The calm… that seems to just be him. Excitement, fear, anticipation, anger… all things he understands in abstract more than any stirring in his chest. Losing his mother caused some, as did becoming Champion.
Steven’s pulse, a slow and steady thing even in the heat of battle, has barely changed since the earthquakes and rainstorms began. Even learning about the sudden appearance of the mythical pokemon didn’t change that.
It’s only when he sees them that he feels it, the thumping against his ribs, his pulse vibrating in a dozen different places throughout his body, sharpening his focus until every detail seems to burn into his memory.
The red one is practically glowing in the sunlight, or maybe it’s the body itself that’s glowing beneath the scales. It’s stopped traveling as it fights the other one, whose shape is only visible when it surfaces as a pattern of gleaming white circles and red lines along its body and fins.
Steven watches as waves rise up higher than a stadium, then crash against Groudon, trying to sweep it out to sea. It roars in defiance, the sunlight seeming to brighten as it stands its ground, then stomps its tail down. A spike of earth juts out of the water, barely missing Kyogre as it dives back under. A moment later it resurfaces on its opponent’s other side, multiple jets of water shooting out to pelt Groudon.
The impact of each jet is audible even above the rain and waves, but Groudon stays upright, then hits the ground again. Boiling magma sends a cloud of steam up near Kyogre, who swiftly retreats from what must be a much larger pocket of heat under the ocean. Steven quickly banks his skarmory to the side to avoid the hot cloud as it spreads upward, unable to tear his gaze from the battle below.
He thought he’d seen what pokemon could do when he visited Kanto and fought against Articuno. The power they held, power enough to bring a city to its knees.
What he’s seeing now are two pokemon who are turning the planet itself into weapons against each other, and everything happening to his region and those around it is just collateral damage.
Badump, badump, badump. His heart is pounding, his breaths uneven, and despite everything, he finds himself smiling as he raises a hand to his headset.
“I have them in sight. Still no Pressure.” Unless this stirring excitement counts.
“Roger that, Champion,” Drake says. “I’m five minutes away.”
“Three minutes,” Phoebe reports.
“Ten.” Glacia’s teleport point turned out to be the furthest.
Ten minutes before they’re at full force to engage, since Sidney won’t be joining them. As the only Dark member of the Elite Four there’s no way he’d be able to reach them anytime soon, which led him to defend Lilycove instead. It’s the first time the Elite being Dark has really felt like a liability, but they’ve never faced a threat that’s needed every member of the League before. He’d like to call in every Gym Leader too, and their Seconds and Thirds, but they’ve got their own troubles to deal with; there’s barely a town in Hoenn that isn’t facing rampaging pokemon, not to mention damage from the earthquakes and heavy rain.
He watches the battle for a few more moments, a plan slowly forming. “Some good news, this thing might just be a Ground type. As long as we stay high and mobile to avoid any rocks or steam clouds it sends up, we might be able to t—”
Groudon’s whole body suddenly flares with light, and a beam of superheated air escapes its mouth with a roar, sending clouds of steam up from a whole stretch of the ocean. “Nevermind,” Steven says once his ears have stopped ringing. “It just… did something, like a Solar Beam super-charged by a Hyper Beam, but also hot enough to flash-boil the sea.”
“Didn’t sound like you had much warning, either,” Phoebe comments.
“Barely a second.” Which means they need to get off their pokemon to fight it. “Going to find a place to land.”
Steven scans the area around Groudon for something safe, and notices a group of about a dozen people, close enough to stay within the circle of sunlight while far enough to avoid any of the massive waves that occasionally rise up to batter Groudon. He angles his skarmory to land in front of them. “There seem to be rangers already nearby,” he says. “Touching down now.”
“Rangers?” He can hear Drake’s frown in his voice. “CoRRNet didn’t report anyone nearby…”
“Yeah, looks like I spoke too soon again,” Steven says as he lands. They’re dressed in red and black, but they aren’t rangers. Rangers don’t hide their faces, and he’s seen these uniforms before; on the renegades that he helped fight off at the Mossdeep Space Center.
“You,” he says as he slides off his skarmory’s back and summons his aggron and metagross, “Should count yourselves lucky that I have a bigger concern right now than a pack of renegades, which are words I never thought I’d say, and leave while you can.” His pokemon both shine silver in the bright sunlight as they face off with the dozen pokemon in front of him, taking on battle stances despite the tremors that constantly undermine their footing. Steven trained both to overcome their weaknesses as much as he could, and they’re the only ones he trusts to take a hit from something that powerful.
The pokemon he’s facing are heavy on Dark, Poison, Fire, and Ground types, with what looks like the leader fielding the biggest camerupt he’s ever seen. The other man steps forward, one hand on his pokemon’s orange fur.
“Hello, Champion.” His voice is modulated by his mask, the upper half a visor that shows just a glimpse of the eyes behind it. Most of the glass is covered in some display too small for Steven to make out. “I understand your animosity, but believe it or not, we are here to help.”
Steven smiles, a distant part of him noting that his clothes are already dry, and that the sunlight is actually uncomfortably hot against his skin now that he’s holding still. “I won’t pretend this isn’t a desperate situation, but it’s not quite desperate enough to accept help from people I can’t trust.” Groudon slaps the ground again, and everyone’s knees bend as they brace and shift to withstand the tremor. “You have sixty seconds to get out of range before I blow the lot of you to oblivion. Fifty-nine… fifty-eight…”
The group is silent, or rather their leader is, and they all wait on his cue. Probably incredulous that he thinks he can stop them all himself, and he wonders if they’ll call his bluff.
Of course, “bluff” is the wrong word; he prefers “delay tactic.” Not that it might not be interesting to see how many of them his boys could take down, but he needs to save his pokemon’s strength if he can help it, and some of the pokemon they’re fielding are powerful enough that he’d actually lose.
Steven keeps counting, carefully not taking his eyes off the leader to check if Phoebe or Drake have arrived yet. He reaches “twenty-four” before their leader pulls a red orb out of his pocket.
Even in the harsh sunlight, the orb is visibly lit from within. Steven prepares for an attack, but instead the leader just says, “This was the tool to awaken Groudon, and also a way to control and empower it.”
Steven briefly wonders if they’re purposely delaying too, but the bait is too good not to bite. “You want me to believe you’re not only responsible for summoning that thing, but you’re actually controlling it?”
“Summoning, yes, but unfortunately control was lost. It seemed like our custom programs had tamed it upon capture, but during our tests it began to grow, subtly at first. It soon became too large to be contained in any ball, and shortly after stopped listening to even basic commands.”
“So you raised a pokemon that myths describe as a god, tried to run experiments on it, then were surprised when it escaped?” Steven shakes his head. “Jirachi’s tears, haven’t you people seen any movies?”
“Life is not a movie. You have ample reason not to trust me, but consider this: Kyogre was not our doing, and we did everything we could to stop it from rising as well.” Another quake nearly drowns out his next words, and he raises his voice to be heard over it. “We were attempting to be prepared for this eventuality!”
Steven shifts his feet and balances himself with his arms until the quake is past. “I don’t see how two island-destroying titans are better than one.” Steven takes his eyes off the group for just a second to glance at Groudon, who is advancing again on newly risen land. “Them killing each other would be too lucky, and meanwhile Hoenn is being torn apart and drowned.”
“If Groudon were not here, Kyogre’s power would go unchecked. Glaciers would be melting around the planet, releasing enough water to submerge every coastal city in the world, and—”
Phoebe lands beside him on her oricorio, its violet feathers practically pink in the sunlight. He really hasn’t seen any movies, Steven thinks. Or he’s watched too many League matches and thinks monologuing is a part of serious pokemon battles.
“Disperse.” The normally cheerful Alolan girl’s tone is flat as she summons her pokemon. Not surprising, considering he was still broadcasting everything he said to the others; they all know who’s responsible, now. Her palossand immediately forms a wall out of the hardened earth beneath them, and her marowak’s spinning bone burns brighter than he’s ever seen it, making it even harder than usual not to get unnerved. “You will not be asked again.”
The tension among the group has visibly increased, all except for the leader and the two contrasting figures on either side of him. But still no one moves to leave, and after a moment the leader slowly returns the orb to his pocket to free up his hand. And now we fight, Steven thinks, resignation stronger than any other feeling. Drake will be arriving within a minute, and with the three of them even a group this big doesn’t stand a chance. What a waste.
Instead of reaching for his pokebelt, however, the leader raises his hands to his mask… and unclasps it.
There’s a stir of surprise by those around the man, and even Steven takes a moment to understand what he’s seeing as the terrorist drops the mask to the quaking ground. A moment later he presses something on his visor, and reveals his upper face as well.
“Matsubusa.” Steven stares at the famous paleontologist as the pieces fall into place, irritation a mild prickle under his skin. “Studying them wasn’t enough, you had to prove they were real?”
“I knew they were real,” Matsubusa says, calm voice tinged for a moment with pique. “I had to ensure they were controllable, before someone else woke them with other intentions. Don’t be foolish,” he suddenly snaps, and it takes Steven a moment to realize he’s talking to his own people, whose hands are rising to their masks.
Soon they’re falling to the ground, one after another, and when the large subordinate to his left responds it’s out loud. “We will follow you to the end. You should have known that.” Steven isn’t sure if they’re a man or woman, but he vaguely recognizes their round face and wide smile from somewhere… One of dad’s employees?
“Our odds of survival do drop,” the girl to his right says in a detached tone as she shakes her hair out after pushing her own visor back, along with the hood that was covering her hair. “But it was not high enough to matter, if we do not survive together.”
Steven watches with mild fascination as Maximilian Matsubusa’s face, always calm on camera, twitches with some barely controlled feelings. Max has always seemed similar to himself in the way he emotes, or rather doesn’t, and Steven finds himself a little envious. Not of the loyalty shown, which he expects he would receive as well in a similar circumstance, but in the way it so clearly overwhelms the normally stoic man.
“This is touching, really,” Phoebe says, her voice just a hair less cold as Drake finally lands to Steven’s other side, his salamence kicking up a mild windstorm as it touches down. “But we don’t need your help.”
“You do,” the girl says as their leader regains control of himself. “If we leave now, there’s a chance it will weaken. Perhaps you will be able to defeat it, but then Kyogre will remain unchecked. How will you stop something this powerful, but underwater?”
Steven exchanges a glance with Phoebe, then Drake, who looks mad enough to Draco Meteor them all right now. The older man spits to the side from atop his dragon. “I can stop it, aboard the Tidal.”
The first henchman to speak shakes their head. “Your ship, while impressive, is not a match for the God of the Sea on its own, let alone one being assisted by a group of pirates in the stolen Explorer.”
Steven feels his irritation growing as he learns how connected the crime spree that has plagued his region was. “Of course that was related to all this. Next you’ll tell me Professor Birch is leading that group?”
“Birch?” The man(?) sneers. “That close-minded fool laughed at the idea that either could be resurrected.”
“Their leader is a pirate named Archie Aogiri.” Matsubusa looks like he bit into a lemon. “We used to work together, until he stole my research.”
“So both of them were awakened on purpose,” Phoebe says, her disgust plain. “You made it sound like Kyogre was going to rise on its own, and resurrecting Groudon was insurance.”
“I knew Archie, and I knew Kyogre was real. This outcome was entirely predictable.”
“With eighty-seven percent probability,” the girl to his left adds.
“Uh huh.” Phoebe’s hands are still on her pokebelt. “So where is this Archie now? Underwater, making Kyogre stronger with another of those gems?”
“We suspect so,” Matsubusa says, “As Kyogre has been growing in strength as well.”
“Then you’re saying he should be our target.” Steven turns to Drake, who nods.
“The sea’s in as fine a mood as I’ve ever seen her, but if he’s down there, we’ll find him and flush him out.” Drake salutes, then turns his salamence and guides it into a running leap before it soars off.
Steven turns back to the group and realizes the rain is approaching them, and glances at Groudon, who looks farther away. It’s hard to tell given that it’s still growing. “Is it taking the sunlight with it?”
“In a manner of speaking. It seems to create a localized high temperature atmosphere that—”
“Forget I asked, we need to move.”
“Then you’ll let us help?”
Steven considers the other man for a moment. “I don’t believe you’re being honest with me. Or maybe you’re just telling the story in a way that makes you look good, and gets us to focus on your rival.”
“Collateral,” Glacia suggests in his ear.
Steven almost nods, and wonders if she’s in sight of them yet. He holds out his hand. “If you really mean to help, give me the orb.”
Matsubusa stares at him, then slowly takes the red sphere back out of his pocket.
The round renegade stirs. “Maxie—”
“He’s right,” Matsubusa interrupts, and steps forward past his pokemon. The camerupt tries to stay ahead of him until he gestures with his hand, settling it in place. “We hold some responsibility for what has occurred. If this will help us make it right…” Despite his words, as he steps past Steven’s pokemon the Champion can see the reluctance on his face. Matsubusa gazes into the glowing gem for another moment, then slowly, regretfully, drops it into his hand.
It’s warm. No, hot. Burning, but without any real pain. Steven stares into the depths of the sphere, fascinated. It’s not a ruby, he’s almost sure of that; too flawlessly round, and not transparent at all, somehow. There’s a shape within it, gleaming gold… he can almost make out what it is…
“Steven,” Phoebe says, and something in her voice makes him turn to her. “Your ring…”
He follows her gaze as he turns his hand over, and sees the gem on his ring is glowing, a rainbow flame swirling at its center. “Huh.” He feels a mild awe stir in his chest, and looks up at Matsubusa to see naked shock on his face.
“What sort of gemstone is that?” the paleontologist whispers.
“Aggronite,” Steven says. He shifts the orb to his left hand, and the gem on his ring continues to glow for a moment, then slowly returns to normal… and as he suspected, the gem on the ring of his left hand has started glowing instead. “And metagrossite.”
“I’m not… familiar, with those names…”
“Yeah, I kind of made them up.” He pockets the orb. “Well, we’ll figure out what that’s about later. Your people will follow our orders, understand? I can’t guarantee amnesty after this crisis is passed, but first we need to make sure it does pass.”
“Understood, Champion,” the other man says, still clearly preoccupied by what he saw. “We’ll focus on Kyogre first, then?”
“I’d rather take out the one we can more easily get, especially if it will stop the quakes… but if taking this orb away from Groudon will make it grow weaker, then yes, we’ll help it beat Kyogre first.”
At first, Kawabata Gyokusho thinks Cinnabar’s volcano is erupting.
It’s an alarming thought, but not a catastrophic one. The lab was purposefully built here, after all, with every eventuality planned for, and more added in the years after 2.351 awoke and its capabilities became known. They ran simulations and drills, and even if the entire island gets covered in magma they could still survive in the lab for over a week as they use their pokemon to dig themselves out.
But instead of rising into an eruption, the shakes dip and rise and continue in sporadic bursts that make the whole structure groan throughout the day. The lab is equipped with the best seismometers in the world, sensitive enough to tell them if a diglett is moving anywhere in the mountain the lab is built into in case the experiment tried to drive other pokemon to attack the lab in an effort to free itself, but the data they’re getting from them don’t point to any local source.
It becomes clear that something unnatural is happening when the evening shift begins and the quakes start to chain into each other more rapidly. Eventually there’s a crack that everyone in the lab can feel through the floor, and things go downhill from there. Still, it’s only when the alarms start to go off that the fear hits.
Being one of the lab’s engineers shielded him from panic when the power cut out, and even when the elevator shaft collapsed. But the alarm he’s hearing now isn’t one he knows. It’s not the fire alarm, or the invasion alarm, or the subject escape alarm. Those would all be better, because by process of elimination, he can now guess what this alarm is.
When Kawabata joined the lab, the end of the interview process included an additional offer to be one of Mewtwo’s comforters if he was willing to live in the lab rather than the manor above. The idea that his free time could serve the double purpose of giving Mewtwo–then just the subject–a source of peace and positivity seemed a form of charity, something he was happy to do considering how little it impacted his own happiness; he’s always been one of those apparently unusual people who enjoy being inside as much as possible.
The downside was that, if something happened, he would likely have no chance of surviving. Every scientist, engineer, guard, cook, and plumber in the lab feels the sword hanging over their heads. You can forget it, most days, sometimes even for as long as a week or a month. But sooner or later you remember, and the fear returns, for a few minutes at least.
Fear of the final fail-safe.
They don’t all know what it is, of course. Or at least, the non-psychic, non-dark employees don’t. But they have guesses. Poison gas in the air supply. Bombs rigged in the walls to bury them in rubble. Things that would kill everything in the lab, in case it’s invaded by a hostile force set on capturing their research.
And, since the subject awoke, probably also in case it goes rogue.
But it isn’t trying to escape, and they’re not being invaded. The creators of the lab thought through a lot of possibilities, but did they imagine ceaseless, ongoing earthquakes that would make it seem like those things were happening?
Kawabata is prepared to die if it means keeping such a powerful pokemon from falling into the wrong hands, or becoming another perpetual Tier 3. They all are, or they wouldn’t be working here.
But dying to a freak accident… worse, the subject dying to it, erasing all their progress over the years, removing humanity’s best chance at defeating the Stormbringers and other legendaries? Something in him rebels against the thought.
It’s been months, but he remembers the day he met it like yesterday. They were all informed that the subject would be let out of its room for the first time, but he hadn’t expected it to just show up at his door, with Sabrina and Giovanni and Dr. Light all there with it, looking into his room as it complimented a drawing he didn’t ever name except in his own head.
The sight of it stayed with him ever since, and he resisted the itch to draw it for a long time, until finally one night he gave in… only to get a distinct feeling of sadness, and quickly destroyed the drawing. He knew that it had been with him, then, and that it didn’t like the way it looked.
The subject has occasionally touched his mind since, always at seeming random, to express gratitude and appreciation for the things he draws. Not being remotely psychic himself, he never knew it was there until he suddenly felt himself experiencing an emotion with no apparent cause.
He never told anyone that he had an invisible friend when he was young, and he hasn’t admitted that it’s been a bit like having one again… except real, this time. He’d think things at it, wonder how it felt about stuff going on around the lab that it surely also experienced through others. It never responded to his thoughts in words, but it was still like a conversation.
It’s dangerous to think that way. There are people that aren’t spoken of by name in the lab, past employees who left the project for reasons that are never spelled out. But negative space can form a picture too, and eventually it became clear that there’s more than one reason no one gets too close to the subject.
But letting it die just so they can all live, when it didn’t do anything wrong… worse, letting it die rather than letting it help save itself, and them all… it feels wrong. More, he can’t imagine that Giovanni would want something like that.
Which means he has to do something about it.
The alarm cuts off before he finishes putting a fresh voltorb in one of the backup power banks, then comes back on as he goes down the diagnostic list to ensure the transformer is undamaged, then cuts off again by the time he reaches Dr. Light’s office. There’s already a crowd there, and Kawabata stays near the back and listens as the project leader’s harried voice drifts over the sound of the quakes.
“—a station to get to, get to it,” she says. “We ran those drills for a reason, and nothing that’s happened so far is outside the scope of Giovanni’s predictions.”
“The Sevii Islands are sinking!” someone calls out.
“Well we’re not on the Sevii Islands, are we?” she shoots back.
“Director, are you saying Giovanni actually knew that Groudon and Kyogre would rise?”
Dr. Light makes a disgusted sound. “I know this situation is freaking everyone out, Leo, so I’m going to ignore the fact that you just asked me to reveal information that might be above your security cl—”
Another quake hits the lab, dimming the lights and causing a round of cursing as people are nearly knocked off their feet. Kawabata leans against the wall, feeling it vibrate under his hand.
“What I will reiterate,” Dr. Light continues once it fades, “Is that Giovanni and our security team predicted many circumstances, there’s a goddamn flowchart and everything, and we are still within the part that translates to not abandoning the lab while there’s still a chance of salvaging it.”
“Have we been in contact with him lately?” someone else asks.
“He checked in when everything started,” Dr. Light says. “We reported what was happening and he told us to stay the course.”
“That was before the power lines were damaged,” someone points out. “Have you tried raising him since?”
“Yes,” Dr. Light admits after a moment. “There was no answer, probably because he has other fires to put out!” she yells to be heard over the new outbreak of comments. “I’m not repeating myself again, people. Get to work or I’m going to start writing names.”
The iron in her voice quells the air of potential mutiny, if not quite the panic. The two fears clash silently for a moment, and then the crowd starts to disperse.
Kawabata almost leaves with them, but after a moment his resolve hardens. He has something legitimate to report, and he can use it to lead into the conversation. He steps into the office once the last person leaves, and weathers the glare Dr. Light aims at him with a salute.
“Oh put your hand down, Gyokusho, what is it?”
“Ma’am, the backup generator is online—”
“I’ve noticed.”
“—but it’s the second-to-last undamaged one we have.”
Her lips purse. “The others are being repaired?”
“Yes Ma—” Another quake pitches him forward, and he catches himself on the desk as Dr. Light grabs it to steady herself too. After it fades he straightens. “Yes Ma’am, but… in these conditions… with the ongoing damage, there’s no way to predict how long we can maintain this. It could be hours, it could be minutes.”
Dr. Light closes her eyes, hands massaging her temples, and he waits in silence as an after-tremor rattles the lab.
“The stairwells are still unblocked?” she asks at last.
“One of them is,” he says. “The other has some damage, but is still passable with a bit of work.”
“If they collapse while people are in them, those people will die,” she says. “If we all stay in here, we can dig through once the quakes pass.”
“Yes, Ma’am.” He bites his lip, but he can see the same thought in her weary eyes. If the quakes pass. They’ll have to eventually, of course, but it’s already been an hour. They might not survive another.
“You have an alternate suggestion,” she guesses. Maybe hopes.
Still, he hesitates. “Ma’am, what happens if we do evacuate? I mean what happens to… the subject?” He almost said Mewtwo, but one of the “superstitions” in the lab is that thinking of it directly can summon its attention. He doesn’t believe it, exactly… and yet.
“We take it with us, of course,” she says. “Its suit can sustain it for nearly four hours now, long enough that hopefully all this would be over and it can return to its pod.”
“I see.”
He doesn’t believe her.
She spoke with such authority, such conviction. Like it was the most natural answer.
But a moment ago even the simplest responses came out with… more. Call it grumpiness, for she could be grumpy, or stress, as they’re all stressed, but there was something that was there and gone between responses, and…
He shouldn’t be thinking about this. He shouldn’t be thinking about how, if they have to abandon the lab, there’s almost certainly a part of that flowchart that insists on ending the subject’s life… or that if it gets to that, she might just trigger the whole lab’s destruction.
It can’t be allowed to come to that.
“Ma’am,” he says, swallowing his nervousness. “What if it helped?”
The office is silent, or as silent as it can be while they hear the dim sounds of frenzied activity through the stone walls and ceiling. “Helped how, Gyokusho?”
“I’m not sure,” he says. “But it can coordinate people, right? And move or hold up debris, maybe it can even sense a quake when it’s coming, or help secure infrastructure…”
“Perhaps,” she says. “But its room is the safest, most secure area of the lab. Letting it out in such an uncertain situation to move about the building would be putting at risk the very thing we’re all trying to protect.” The lights flicker as another quake hits them, and she dismisses him with the words, “Still, thank you for the suggestion.”
“Of course, Ma’am.” He leaves the office at a jog to check on the generators again, still worrying over what he said, and what the director didn’t say.
Mixed in with those worries are a feeling of gratitude, and it isn’t until he reaches the power room that he recognizes it as separate from himself.
The director of the Hoenn Weather Institute is having a bad year.
First a bunch of criminals ransacked the place and stole some of their very rare, very valuable castforms.
Then the regional grant money was cut to help shore up “other deficits,” as if their losses didn’t qualify as a deficit worth shoring up.
Then his wife left him, probably because he started drinking again. He only did that to deal with the stress of knowing the board is probably going to vote him out once the year is over.
And as if all that wasn’t bad enough, or perhaps out of sympathy for his troubles, the world seems to have decided it might be time to just get it all over with… through torrential downpours and earthquakes, of course, so he’ll probably be blamed for this too. He can hear his soon-to-be-ex-wife already… Didn’t see the storm of the century coming, with all that fancy equipment? Working late with a bottle that night?
He was, as a matter of fact, but his subordinates weren’t, and they didn’t say shit about any of this. Which is why, while everyone runs around in a panic through the building, he is already drunk as a croagunk on the roof, where tables are set up for people to eat on their lunch breaks or after work. A wide umbrella keeps off the rain as he watches the anomalous weather shift and spread throughout the region, both on his laptop and right in front of his eyes.
The weather has turned particularly bad around the mountain they’re set on, and he can vaguely make out a helicopter as it struggles to fly in the downpour. Doesn’t make sense, he thinks for the fifth time as he takes a long pull of bourbon, feeling the burn slide down his throat as he watches the rain come down in sheets. Barely any wind. This much precipitation is absurd on its own, of course. Entirely wrong time of year for it besides, but what does he know, he’s just a self-pitying fool with poor administrative skills and…
The helicopter is spinning out of control. The director watches in sickened fascination as it fights to stay aloft, then to land… but it’s falling too quickly, and he raises his bottle in mournful salute as it drops into the distant hills, a brief flash of light signaling its end.
His other arm rises to wipe his face, and he curses the umbrella for not catching all the rain. Once his eyes are clear, he looks back at the laptop, feeling hollow inside as he sees rain clouds continuing to spread over every region on the island, and beyond them. Satellite comparisons show the ice at the planet’s poles are already noticeably shrinking, and there’s rising ozone depletion just south of Sootopolis, right above the biggest gap in the clouds. It’s nonsensical, the atmosphere thinning should be at the poles for the ice there to be melting… there’s no reason they should be melting at all, unless… he switches to measures of the ocean currents, stomach churning as he sees the graph of the temperature rising.
Doomed, he thinks, and raises the bottle to his lips again only to find it empty. He tosses it over his shoulder without a second thought and stares at the screen with eyes that see nothing… not even the thin line that’s forming in the clouds above Hoenn, parting the swirling white like a knife to cut its way toward the hole in the atmosphere.