When May was approaching the archipelago leading to Ever Grande City she felt a large presence of Aura on a nearby island and thought, 'That's odd. That's not Wailmer Island. As a matter of fact…' May extended her senses. 'I was right! There are more people there than there are on Wailmer Island!' She frowned and said, "Wait! This feeling…it's almost like…" 'But the Red and Blue Orbs were destroyed!' She said, "Charizard, we're going to be taking a bit of a detour," and nudged her on the right of her neck, telling Charizard to bank left. When they were over the island that May was feeling the energy from the Red Orb, she said, "Okay girl, hover here for a bit," as she reached for a pokéball from her belt.

XXXXX

Inside the mountain, things had gone from bad to worse. Now, not only was Team Magma continuing to unearth whatever the structure was, now they were fighting against Team Aqua, who had somehow managed to get into their base. That was a quandary that Admin Blaise was angrily trying to figure out from within the structure, thinking, 'What the hell is going on? How did they know that we were active here? Let alone getting in to distract us from completing the new red orb! Although we've been having enough problems doing that as it is. It's almost like there's a component missing, but what could it…'

Outside the megalith, Team Magma and Team Aqua had released all of their Pokémon and were pairing off against one another, their numbers being much the same. There were Zubat fighting against Gligar, Houndour, and some Houndoom, squaring off against Golduck & Buizel. In amongst all of this was one member of team aqua that hadn't released any of his Pokémon. Max. He was currently slinking around the side of the cavern, attempting to get into the megalith before whatever team magma was after had been found, knowing that it could only spell trouble for the world. Before he could get there though, he saw some bits of stone fall in front of him and thought, 'What the…?' and looked up and saw cracks opening up in the roof of the cavern.

His eyes widened in shock, and fear, thinking, 'What the?! A cave in? Now!' and released Crobat, and was about to tell it to use Protect, but stopped as he saw two Pokémon emerge from a cylindrical hole in the cavern's roof. He thought, 'What the! Flygon and Charizard? Wait. They look vaguely famil…' then he saw something occur that gravely concerned him. Charizard changed. He thought, 'What in the?! But Charizard is a fully evolved Pokémon. It can't evolve again.' What he saw next straight up frightened him though. He saw a woman drop through the same hole.

She was wearing a pair of tight black pants and a red tunic tied off with a wide black pokébelt. She wasn't wearing her normal bandanna, having abandoned it for this match, replacing it with a cavalier hat that had one side folded up. It had a silver feather attached to the brim by a red crystal. She was wearing a pair of black leather close-fit fingerless gloves that reached halfway to her elbow that had red strips running down the back, an angular simulacrum of the bones underneath, though they stopped before the fingers. She was also wearing a pair of black leather boots. But that wasn't what was freaking Max out. The woman looked almost like his sister, except she had black hair that had light blue tips, her eyes looked to be made blue fire and she had some kind of translucent light blue pauldrons extending forward and back from her shoulders and wings that were spread out to a truly dramatic effect.

Max quickly said, "Crobat, use protec…!" but he was cut off from his Pokémon as he saw the woman raise what looked to be a staff of some kind of red crystal above her head and a red light shine from it, illuminating the entire cavern.

The entire inner structure lit up, the lines all through the megalith glowing red. Inside a chamber at the centre of the structure, Admin Blaise blinked, stunned and confused about what he was seeing, but, as he saw the ingredients pour into the spherical mould in the altar, a manic smile appeared on his face. He exclaimed "How the hell did that happen?"

The man in a white lab coat standing next to him looked at him and said, "I don't know. It could be that we were missing one final element for the completion."

"Do you know what it was?"

"Not entirely." Seeing Blaise glare down at him, Professor Conley hurriedly said, "Well, we had hypothesised that the lines could potentially be used to convey power to the device. But I assure you, we had tried everything that we could think of!" trying to save himself from Blaise's notoriously quick temper.

"So why now?"

"I don't know. It could be that a certain number of Pokémon and people needed to be within a certain range for it to work by some kind of thermal or magnetic energy. I just don't know."

Blaise grunted and said, "Fine. But I expect you to do a thorough analysis of everything that has happened here when we're done."

"Of course, He he he he, if I didn't, I wouldn't be doing my job," Dr Conley said, sending chills down Blaise's spine, unsure if he wanted to know what else the professor thought that his job entailed.

At the same time, outside the megalith, the woman in the air lowered her gaze to the ground, searching through the aura's below for her brothers. She found it almost immediately and created a red barrier around both him and his just released Crobat. Max pushed up against the barrier and cried out , "No! Let me out!" and started banging on it.

He stopped when he heard a familiar voice in his head angrily say, "Max! Stop that. We'll deal with your recklessness later. For now…"

"What! May!" Max thought.

May picked it up, having yet to sever the connection, but used her aura to augment her voice and announced, "I'm putting an end to this now." May communicated, "Max. I don't have time to deal with you right now."

"You don't have time to?! I don't have time to be stuck in here."

"Too bad. But you needn't worry. This won't take long." With that, Max saw May flap her 'wings' and she flew to the ground.

Max thought, 'There's just one problem with that plan May.'

Max heard, "And what's that exactly?"

'Heh, your powers can't contain me.' Max then channelled his powers into his limbs and his nails turned black and hardened into claws. He then thrust them into May's barrier. To his shock, dismay, horror, he couldn't decide which, nothing happened. He thought, 'What the…that's impossible! My powers should be stronger.'

Max heard, "I can go into great detail about exactly why you, and Mum, are weaker than I am later."

'Wait! You know about Mum and me?' Max communicated as he saw May ducked under a punch, spun and rose back up, forcing her elbow into the Aqua Grunt's chin. 'For how long?'

But May had cut off her link to her brother, knowing that if she kept it open any longer, she could get distracted, and, given the current situation, that could have fatal consequences. When she got the chance, she released Glaceon and Venusaur, who joined Flygon and Charizard in attacking the grunts' Pokémon while their master took care of the human enemies.

As May moved through the dual armies, the grunts started getting scared as she hadn't even started to use the staff that she had with her, taking them all down using simple hand to hand. Of course, she was augmenting her body with aura, but hey, they didn't know that.

Inside the structure, Blaise's manic grin faded into a satisfied one. He looked at Dr Conley and said, "Can we take it now?"

"Hmm…" Dr Conley said. "I don't see why not. However…"

"However…?" Blaise asked.

Dr Conley sighed and said, "I just don't know. You see, it's this red energy running through the lines. It's almost like it's more like it's responding to something rather than providing energy to this site."

"It's responding to it? Do you know what it's responding to?"

"No. but if I could get a sample I might be able to analyse it properly at my lab in Cameru..." Blaise coughed, cutting the professor off before he could finish, silently glaring at him for almost revealing where he would be conducting his research, violating Team policy. "…but, of course, you don't need to know where it is, do you?" Blaise grunted before looking back to the orb. The professor grabbed a grunt that had been guarding them and said, "You, use that laser cutter over there to cut out some of that glowing red stuff."

The grunt nodded, saying, "Sir," and grabbed the cutting tool. When he picked it up he went back to the nearest glowing line and knelt next to it. He looked up at the professor and asked, "So, how much will you need?"

"Take about one foot of it. But make sure you only cut it from the top."

"From the top?"

"Yes," Dr Conley angrily said, mentally cursing the grunt's lack of intellect. "If you sever it completely, depending on how this system was set up, it could cause everything to blow up."

"It could...!" The grunt exclaimed, his eyes boggling out to comic proportions. He nodded rapidly and repeatedly before he held his breath and very carefully did as ordered and shaved a length of the, what he supposed must have been some sort of crystal, out of the line in the floor. When nothing happened he let out the breath that he had been holding and was surprised, and comforted, to hear two more coming from Blaise and Dr Conley. The grunt looked up at his superiors and asked, "What do you want me to do now sir?" not really caring which 'sir' answered him.

Blaise looked to the professor for an answer, as this wasn't really his specialty. Dr Conley said, "Hmm…" and went over to a bench that they had set up within the chamber. From the bench he picked up what appeared to be a briefcase of some sort, except for the fact that it was completely made out of a light metal and had wires running all through it. Dr Conley walked over to the grunt and said, "Put it in this," as he opened it on the ground.

"What's that?" Blaise cautiously asked.

"It's a special containment case that I created should we need to take any dangerous specimens away from a site. I made many of these and distributed them throughout the science division."

"What about security?"

"They are all programmed with the same code so that, should one of us fall before we can get it open in a lab, another scientist can come along and complete what we were doing."

"I see. That's very…noble? Of you."

"Not really. I also included a secondary code to identify which scientist is opening it. If it's not entered within thirty seconds a highly corrosive gas will be released that will completely destroy both whoever opened it, along with the specimen itself." Blaise smirked at the revelation, being rather concerned with security himself. "In any case,…" Dr Conley said, closing the case and entering the original code again. "…how are we going to get out of here? Those grunts that we brought clearly aren't going to be enough against that girl," nodding to the security monitors that they had set up as he went and got another case to put the orb in. With the case in hand he nodded at the grunt and then tilted his head at the orb.

"Right," the grunt nodded, calmer now than he had been originally when he had cut the crystal shard from the line on the ground. When he picked the orb up off of the table, Blaise and Dr Conley saw his eyes start to glow blue.

Dr Conley thought, 'This is an interesting phenomenon. I wonder what caused it. Well, it's obvious that it is involved with the power of the orb, but…'

Blaise however, was on a different train of thought. 'This feeling I'm getting! It's just like what happened when Archie locked me in that damn sub with Tabitha and Amber.' Seeing the pained look on the grunt's face, he thought, 'Is he fighting against the power of the orb? If that's so then…' He firmly called out, "Quick! Put it in the case!"

The grunt screamed, "GRRRNNNRRGGG-IYAAAAAAAAAAAA," as he painfully forced his arm out so that he could drop the orb in the case that Dr Conley was holding open under it.

When the orb was in the case, Blaise said, "Quick Doc, shut that damn case now!" Not seeing, or feeling, the urgency that Blaise was, Dr Conley calmly and methodically went through the same process as he had earlier with the shard. Blaise wasn't going to let his orders be dismissed as arbitrarily as Dr Conley seemed to think that they could be and said, "Do it now, before we start to get controlled by it!"

"Before we…!" Dr Conley exclaimed as he hurriedly followed through with what Blaise had directed him to. When he was done entering the code, he looked back at Blaise and asked, "Now, what did you mean when you said that it could 'control us'?"

Blaise sighed and said, "Back when Maxie was in charge, and the original Red and Blue Orbs were destroyed, there was a theory that only those that possessed a strong mind could control the powers of the orbs and that anyone with a weak mind would be unable to and get controlled by it in turn. But we were wrong and when Archie got a hold of the Red Orb he was taken over by it and he went on a rampage with Kyogre. I was just getting the same feeling from that grunt," nodding at the grunt lying on the floor, "as I did from Archie at that time."

"I see, I see…" Dr Conley said, "I'll need to look into this before I can say that it can be safely used to fully control Groudon." Blaise grinned and nodded. "But in the meantime, how are we going to get out of here? That girlie seems to be putting up quite the resistance out there."

Blaise frowned and said, "She got in here by making a hole in the roof of the cavern, didn't she?"

"I believe so, yes."

"Then we can just go out that way. I think that your bio said that you had a flying type, didn't it?"

"Yes."

"Good. Then it'll be easy," Blaise said as an evil grin formed on his face.

Dr Conley nodded and said, "Lead the way."

As Blaise and Dr Conley made their way through the structure with the grunt, who had just woken up as they were leaving, struggling to keep up with them, Dr Conley realised that they weren't actually headed to the main entrance that they had used to get into the structure. He asked, "Blaise, where are you leading us?"

Blaise said, "Why, to the exit of course," and kept on walking.

When they reached their destination, Dr Conley's and the grunt's eyes widened at the sight before them. It was a wide space with a massive gap in the outer wall of the structure. The grunt said, "This is just like a…"

Dr Conley said, "The hanger bay on the…" cutting himself off when he saw Blaise glaring at him again.

"Yes. From what we have been able to ascertain, this room served that very function, though they have been unable to discover exactly why it is unable to be seen from the outside, or even why it exists in the first place, given that the structure was made out of the rock inside the cavern. But that doesn't matter right now. What does is that we can use it for its original purpose."

"Right," the grunt said.

Blaise looked at the grunt and asked, "You have a flying type too then?"

"Yeah. I caught it before I came to work for Team Magma and transferred it over to one of my Team Magma pokéballs."

"Is that so?"

"Yes sir!" The grunt said.

Blaise thought, 'I might see about getting this guy assigned to me. He seems to be able to follow orders and is competent enough to keep up with both me and the doc.' He said, "Alright. We'll release our Pokémon at the back and fly at full tilt so that she doesn't have time to stick her Flygon and her…Charizard?...on us."

"Yes sir," The grunt said. Blaise, Dr Conley and the grunt then went to the back of the hanger and released an Aerodactyl, Pidgeot and Noivern respectively. They got on them and flew out of the structure one after the other at top speed.

Even though May did sense them, she didn't have enough time to send either Flygon or Charizard after them. She grunted in irritation as she continued fighting against the grunts from both sides as she saw them fly through the opening that she had created in her rush to get inside. Her eyes widened as she felt the ground start to shake after the three from Team Magma had escaped and though, 'What the…?' and sent her senses outside the cave and what she saw horrified her. On top of the cave she saw a Camerupt and a Magcargo standing on the top of the mountain that the cavern was inside of and they were sending tremors throughout the entire island, using the Magnitude and Earthquake attacks respectively.

XXXXXXX

A/N

Please review people, it helps keep the creative juices flowing, and me interested in continuing on with this story.