In which we use a game mechanic from the remakes that Brendan and May shouldn't have been able to use yet.
It was Lisia that assigned them their next mission, over the Pokenav phone. She'd heard from Flannery that Team Magma had returned to the volcano area, and the Gym Leader had decided that Brendan and May were the best for the job.
"I thought she was getting somebody on that for us," May complained, though she really wasn't surprised at all. "She wanted them stopped more than we did at the time, shouldn't she want it more than we do now?"
"Apparently not," Lisia sighed. "Just go back to Lavaridge Town, there's no Gym Leader in Lilycove. Your journey won't end here."
Of course it wouldn't. That would be too good to be true. So, Brendan turned off the Pokenav and started thinking things through, making an outline in his head that didn't feel quite legal.
"Do you think Latias can carry us over that distance?"
May thought it over. "I guess she can. If we're careful about it and don't do anything stupid, like fly her into a parallel universe or something."
It spoke volumes about their adventure so far when he didn't even question it. "And can she drop us off at the volcano, or is there a designated drop-off in town areas that say 'only in front of Pokémon Centers,' like they do for Fly and Teleport?"
May just faked innocence. She wasn't quite as good at it as Brendan was. "I don't think they thought of the possibility of two trainers flying a Latias when they made those laws," she pointed out, hands behind her back and rocking peacefully. "You do love loopholes, right, Brendan?"
"More than anything," he agreed, and May's faked innocence faded into a maniacal grin.
It turned out, Latias could drop them off at the volcano. Team Magma's meteorite machine was still in place, but they found nothing up by the lava.
"So where do we go from here?" Brendan asked, looking around hopefully, as if they could find Courtney or Tabitha or Maxie and get them to explain what they were doing.
"It was Flannery that gave Team Breakneck the mission," May said, almost to herself, following Brendan's stare. "Maybe we should head down to Lavaridge Town and get the full report from her."
"It can't be worse than sitting around here and waiting to get caught in an eruption." Brendan carefully counted all five of his occupied Pokeballs, and was relieved when he remembered that May had six more. "What the heck. Let's do it."
They didn't make it far before the Team Magma emblem in Brendan's bag started acting up. It had apparently been jostled around enough for a button to get pressed, and it seemed to be a remote control.
The earth shook, and for a moment, they thought that they had triggered an eruption. Instead, a boulder opened up to reveal a secret entrance.
May stared at it as if trying to wrap her head around something. "Huh," she finally said. "I guess there is something to Secret Bases, after all."
Brendan was already making plans. "Ok, Songbird, listen up. We burst in, I karate-chop a guard in the neck, you do a backflip through a window, and then we climb up into the air ducts, where we sneak through the building before dropping in Maxie's office for an ambush."
"Or," May pointed out, "we can just walk through the door, like this."
She stepped into the hole, and Brendan just rolled his eyes.
"Yeah, we can," he complained, following her in, "but that doesn't mean we should."
"And we can go up against countless grunts, plus three leaders and a bunch of Pokémon, with nothing but whatever combat training twelve-year-olds can get, but that doesn't mean we should." She gave him a pointed look, and he deflated like a popped balloon. "Does it, Brendan?"
"I guess not." He took the lead, dragging his feet a little bit, but didn't complain any more.
The Team Magma hideout wasn't really a hideout, at least as far as Brendan and May could see. It was actually more like the Fiery Path than anything, complete with the heat that could boil water on the ground. The kids weren't going to beg for protection right at this moment, and they continued on their way. Latias was used to move the boulders in the way instead of Strength, and they followed the straight path until they ran into a Team Magma grunt.
"You're not allowed here!" he barked at them, but they hadn't come by invitation. They could have figured that out on their own.
"We have reasons," Brendan tried to explain. "We're kids, we just want to play."
"The past says otherwise," the grunt pointed out, and they were allowed to share a smug look before he pulled out his own Pokémon.
Brendan eyed the Poochyena carefully, then called Adam out. "Double Kick."
And that was the end of that.
They first noticed the speaker system shortly after their second battle. How Maxie got it to work without it melting was a mystery, but they lost interest quickly. He was, after all, dressed like a mad scientist. Why shouldn't he actually be one?
It was what Maxie was saying over the speakers that caught their attention.
"In case you haven't noticed," he said, as bitter as if he had noticed that there were intruders in his Secret Base, "we've lost to children and to Team Aqua too many times. This is an unfortunate series of coincidences - first those two at the volcano, then Matt of Team Aqua met up with Courtney...that wasn't fun to explain to the rangers...and Tabitha's encounter with the green-haired Kirlia boy. So I've called for desperate measures. I'll be honest with you, we're throwing plans at the wall to see what sticks. We have one of these 'stuck' plans in action and one in reserves, so Team Aqua can go and-"
"Sir," said a calm, female voice, as if the speaker didn't really care but was being paid to keep Maxie focused. "The Orb?"
Maxie backtracked immediately. "Well, I'll let you finish that thought. I have an Orb to activate. Are you ready, Courtney?"
"Of course," the female voice agreed.
"Good. You and Tabitha come with me, I want to make sure this gets done with no outside interruptions."
The microphone turned off. Brendan and May didn't know what Team Magma was doing, but they planned to find out.
They got lost a few times in this investigation. They were challenged to battle even more often, but strangely, none of the grunts dared to disturb any of the three people important enough to actually have names the intruders actually recognized. Maxie must have demanded only Courtney and Tabitha be there, under strict punishment.
That or he thought the grunts were good enough to stop intruders, but they honestly believed that Maxie was capable of learning from his mistakes.
The most worrisome thing they heard was when at least four grunts mention the legendary Groudon by name.
"You're familiar with Groudon, right?" Brendan asked as he ducked to the side to avoid another grunt. "From your research and everything?"
"I've read a few things," May admitted. "You know how I mentioned that Heatran was worshiped as ancient Sinnoh's volcano deity?"
"Yeah."
"Groudon was Hoenn's." May's eyebrows scrunched again as she worked out the details in her head. "But that's not everything. When I was on my mythology kick, I was more interested in Hoenn's than anything else. I still have an entire notebook on it back home."
"Of course you do."
May ignored him. "The problem is that Groudon not only controlled the volcanoes, it was said to have created the land we live on. Even if it actually is just a myth to make it seem like an actual god, Team Magma probably wants to test that theory."
Oh. So Maxie actually was as dumb as he looked. Or maybe it was just a side effect of the natural heat of wearing a coat and old-timey full-body underwear around boiling lava.
The rest of their adventure continued in the same way, until they finally came to see Tabitha, waiting for them with a Pokeball in his hand.
"I was wondering when we'd run into you two again," he said, and the fact that he smiled as he said it unnerved both of them. "I was starting to think you were having your friends do all the dirty work for you."
"Wally acted on his own," Brendan clarified. "And Team Aqua hates us as much as you do."
"Then it seems like they've got one thing right."
With no more waiting, Tabitha threw the ball. The Pokémon inside it was a Numel, and Brendan had already had just about all he could take of those things.
"May, do the thing!"
"What?" May looked again at the Numel, then processed what he was saying. "Oh, fine. Jerry, take the stage!"
Jerry made defeating Tabitha all too easy. Finding Maxie was even easier.
Recognizing the giant, dormant Pokémon that neither had ever seen before was the easiest of all.
Maxie didn't see them, instead speaking only to the Pokémon. "You were waiting for the Blue Orb, weren't you? That's why all previous attempts to wake you failed."
"Tell me he's not," Brendan said quietly.
"He is," May whispered back, sounding more like a disappointed mother than the scared child she should have been. "He is."
A strong blue glow started from the orb in Maxie's hands, and the giant Pokémon that had to be Groudon slowly opened its eyes and started toward them. Then, with a loud roar and a splash of lava that barely missed them, it shot itself out of the volcano.
This was definitely not what Maxie had expected, as he had to stop himself from running right into the lava after it. "What's wrong?" he shouted up at the hole. "Wasn't the Blue Orb the key? The Red Orb would have been too obvious, I had to -"
Brendan's hand loudly connected with his forehead, and the sound distracted Maxie from his failed evildoing. Before he could get a word out, though, May waved a hand at the pool of lava.
"You really did just throw evil plans at a wall to see what stuck, didn't you?" she dared to ask.
Maxie was not amused. "You two," he said through his teeth. "I remember you. You ruined our plans before, with the meteorite. Were you behind this, too?"
"Yeah," Brendan said sarcastically, hoping Maxie was smart enough to pick up on it. "Because two kids barely old enough for a Pokedex journey could totally control Groudon without use of a Pokeball of any kind."
"Don't make his brain explode," May grumped, but her friend's smile and Maxie's glare weren't quite making her as pleased with herself as they usually would.
"You seem to think you're funny," Maxie said, and May hummed indifferently. "I can assure you, you're not."
May caught his hand's movement toward his belt, where his Pokeballs were kept, and grabbed the first one she could find. Torkoal was not the first choice she would have made, but she knew that Jerry and Latias alone would be enough and she hadn't actually used him in battle recently.
It couldn't hurt. "Torkoal, take the stage!"
Torkoal had fallen after getting rid of the Mightyena, but May had expected that from a Pokémon she'd caught for Contest and appearance reasons. Jerry had been called out to replace him, and Maxie had expected that.
It didn't do a thing to save his Camerupt from a furious Swampert, but at least the preparation had let him get a hit in. The Crobat was defeated by Pikachu, who looked more irritated with the possibility of her pretty pink skirt getting singed by stray lava than the battle.
Maxie held Crobat's ball in his hand, frowning. "How?" he said to the Pokémon inside. "How can a little girl defeat us? Multiple times, even?"
"A full party and a type advantage," May answered. "Basic battling 101."
"You don't even know what 101 means."
"No," May admitted, "but they use it a lot in movies."
Brendan made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a sneeze. When he had Maxie's attention again, he took his turn to point at the lava. "You do know that when you were wasting your time battling May, you missed your chance to put Groudon under your control?"
"I knew that," Maxie snapped, in a way that suggested he really hadn't. "I'm going to go after Groudon. You two are going to go home. You can take care of yourselves in battle, but I doubt you can handle what's coming next."
He headed to the exit, and he didn't seem to mind when Brendan and May followed him out.