In less than a second, Heath had flown right by the machine, her tail catching the Aqua machine as she flew past. Mikale tried to grab it but he missed, instead letting it fall down into the volcano's crater, catching on the jagged rock as it fell. Heath dived down after it, but the heat was too intense for Mikale, burning his face, and he had to tell Heath to abandon the chase. Below him, the machine hit the glowing molten rock and started to slowly sink beneath the surface, bright yellow covering up the red-hot metal.
Heath flew up and out of the crater. "Sorry," she told her trainer.
"It's not your fault. I should have jumped off so you could have caught it," Mikale said heavily. He'd ruined Magma's plans by being thoughtless. Still, he'd ruined Aqua's, too.
Archie was fuming worse than the lava when Mikale reached the volcano's lip. He pointed a shaking finger at him. Heath stopped flying upwards and hovered there, three hundred metres above boiling lava, letting Mikale listen to Archie's ravings.
Mikale grinned. Ah, there was always a furious arch-enemy leader to vent your anger out on. He urged Heath a fraction of an inch forward and let the water boss speak.
"You... you, boy!" he spluttered, obviously furious.
"Yeah, me," Mikale replied coolly.
"You!"
"Me."
"You've.. ruined everything! All our plans- you've demolished them all!"
"I am to please."
"How dare you?"
"I don't know. I scare myself sometimes."
Mikale heard a shout and tore himself away from the conversation. Maxie was flying over on his pidgeot. "Mike, what happened?"
"I'm sorry, Maxie. I knocked off the machine just as he was activating it- I'm afraid I lost the meteorite." His speaking slowly reduced itself to a mumble.
Maxie put a hand on his shoulder and sighed. "I'm sure you can make it up. You know this was only a small thing anyway."
Mikale nodded but still felt guilty. He knew about Maxie's plans for awakening Groudon, and he knew that this meteroite thing wasn't that important comepared to that. He was just worried that he'd missed his chance to prove to Maxie that he could be more than a grunt. He wondered briefly what Mark would say, and sighed. He'd be dissapointed.
"We'll get you back for this," Archie was shouting, shaking his fist.
Maxie sighed. "Careful, you'll give yourself a heart attack." He smirked at his furious rival.
Mikale scanned the area. Where was that Aqua girl? She didn't seem like the kind of person to abandon a mission when it went wrong. He turned away from the bosses' conversation and looked furiously for her.
A fireball spun out of nowhere. Without thinking Mikale urged Heath forward, and she dived towards it, in front of Maxie, back towards the oncoming fire. Mikale slipped off her back and hung off Heath's other shoulder, sheilded from the attack by her fireproof skin. There was the sound of fire being snuffed out, and Heath rolled over so that Mikale could climb back on, shaking.
All that happened in barely a few seconds, but if Heath hadn't stopped it, Maxie would have been knocked off his pokemon. And Mikale had a suspicion who had fired that attack.
"Heath, flamethrower," he ordered as a shadowy figure emerged from the volcano's smoke. The shadow dodged the flames and kept on flying strong.
"Brave little runt, aren't you?" the girl shouted once she was close enough. "Sacrificing your dignity like that..."
"Wouldn't you do the same?" he asked her.
She gave a short burst of mock laughter. "Huh! Archie's a bit too clever to be hit by any of you."
"What a bet?" he asked, furious. "Heath, Flamethrower."
But the Team Aqua leader had been following the conversation, dispite his carefree appearence towards it. He threw a pokeball onto the small space in front of him, ducking down. "Crawdunt, harden."
The lobster clasped its claws together in front of it, while a white light shone over its body. The fire hit its claws and obidiently bounded off in five different directions. Both the pokemon and Archie remained unharmed.
"Plucky little scamps on your team, Maxie," he spat. "But maybe you need to think about your plans some more. In case you hadn't noticed, you all seem to be rather close to a rather unpleasent death. One little topple..." His crawdunt held up its claws, ready to attack. "I mean, that might hurt your leadership a bit, right?"
The aqua girl had pulled out from the volcano, her dragonite flying behind Archie. Other Aquas were gathering there, ready for what looked like a fight.
Maxie gave an almost audible sigh. "You know, I really can't be bothered to go through all this."
Mikale felt other Magmas crowding behind him and Maxie on their flying types. Paolo was next to him, hand holding a pokeball.
"Goodbye," Maxie said calmly.
Heath recognised the signal and spat out a smokescreen. At the same time Mikale partly saw Paolo order his koffing to do the same, before they all followed Maxie up and out of the cloud, back to base.
Anya coughed as the smoke filled her eyes, nose and mouth. Next to her she saw Archie doing the same, and she had an idea. "Listen, sir," she said. "I can follow them back to their base- I've got a dragon who can fly through this as easily as fresh air."
Archie nodded, still coughing. Behind him, someone was throwing up. Anya wrinkled her nose and Ozone took off before anyone else could stop her.
One they were high up enough, she halted her dragon. "Gust," she ordered him, and held on tight as his body began to rock violently, a wind picking up and blowing away the worse of the smokescreen.
Satisfied, she turned and Ozone flew back off, the way in which she had seen a tail-flame, standing out remarkably in the dim light, fly over and away from the volcano.
Anya let her dragonite do the steering and turned briefly back to see Archie calling everyone to go back to base. She nodded, happy that she was doing this mission alone, and urged Ozone to go faster.
She knew that Team Magma had moved base, because they had ambushed the last one but found nothing except an empty shell. A few pieces of abandoned machinery, some old pokeballs... nothing of any value. If she could follow these ones back and find out where this new base was without being seen, she would be able to tell Archie so that they could ambush it easily. Unlike themselves, who had a mobile submarine, the Magmas couldn't move around too easily without being seen.
Ozone gave a small cry.
"What?" she asked. "You can still see them, can't you?"
"Yes," he replied. "But they're ducking down."
"That could be the base," she told him. "Unless they saw us?"
He shook his head. "Nobody could have seen me."
He went to land. They were some way north of Mauville, a bit too south to be in desert, but quite far away from the city. There was a quite narrow pass here, with rock cliffs bordering it. Plenty of caves.
They were landing behind a rock, in the middle of some bushes. "The base is about one hundred metres down that way," he whispered as she slimbed off his back. "On the right-hand cliff face- stick to the rock, and if they're stupid enough the guards will chase you. You'll know where it is then."
"OK," she said. "Thanks, Ozone. I couldn't do it without you, right?"
He shook his head. "You'd find a way. Just call if you need me."
She nodded and removed his pokeball, calling him back in a mist of red light. She could do this on foot- it was unlikely that they had a sky entrance. But they had to know that she wasn't a Team Aquya member, just a poor, innocent trainer who had no idea that the nasty, bad orginization was here, really...
Grinning, she took off her bandana and placed it in her small backback, before pulling out some plain clothes. There wasn't anything else in there apart from some food, and she pulled out a rather suashed sandwhich and started to eat while she got changed.
Finally, she looked like a normal trainer. Now, which was the most un-aqua pokemon she had? She knew that Magmas were annoyingly suspicious- they were likely to relocate if a trainer with a water type came across them, even if they ran away screaming.
She picked out Frost's pokeball and positioned that for easy reach. Ice types weren't too suspicious, and there were a lot of dark trainers nowadays. For extra safety she put on some sunglasses. That wasn't as strange as it sounded. they were, after all, near the desert, where sandstorms were common.
Coughing a little to releave herself, she swung the backpack over her shoulder, and emerged out of the bushes, brushing leaves off herself. I'm just an innocent little trainer, just an innocent little--
A boy who looked ten or so ran up behind her. "Hey, want to battle?" he asked.
She glared down at him. "No. Run along, little kid."
"No," he said, folding his arms. "You have to battle. It's a rule."
"Do I look like I care? Now run along." So much for the little-innocent-trainer story. She hoped that the Magma base was as far down the passage as Oxone had predicted. She guessed that it was only around fifty feet, excluding the distance she had just walked.
"Yeah, well, if you don't battle, you're breaking the rules."
Kyogre, was he annoying. She sighed and turned her face to him. He stared back up at her. "What do you want? Money? You kids always want cash."
"No. I want a battle."
He wasn't letting go. If she walked on, he followed. And she couldn't hurt him; she was no good at knocking people out, a scream would be suspicious, and anyway, there were too many trainers about. She sighed and pulled off corphish's pokeball. She'd named him earlier- Pinch. But as of yet, they hadn't battled.
"Fine. One-on-one only."
"Yes, I knew you would! OK, go Ratty!"
He threw a pokeball and a rattata burst out. Anya almost fainted with dispair. This was a humiliation. She threw Pinch's ball anyway. "Let's get this over and done with, OK? Use Bubble."
Pinch sent out as tream of glowing bubbles at her command, each of them hitting the rat pokemon with upmost accuracy. Anya clicked her tongue and shook her head. "From the way you kept going on about this, I thought you might actually be an OK battler."
He scowled. "Ratty, use Bite!"
"Harden," Anya told Pinch. "And then Scratch it when it's close enough."
He obeyed her, white flowing over his body, causing the rattata to open its mouth and get hit back with a claw. It gave a cry and landed in front of its trainer, moaning. He knelt down, shocked.
Anya shook her head. "Now you know that when someone doesn't want to battle, it's for your own good."
Mikale pushed the binoculars to his eyes again and stared out at the girl. He'd left the base moments earlier on a gut feeling. After all, if that girl was so tough she wouldn't have given up and gone home. She would have followed them.
He was in plain dress, and he saw that the Aqua had done the same. She was also wearing sunglasses, but the hair and face shape were the same. He woul dnever forget that face shape, or, even if they were hidden now, those glaring eyes, teasing him, daring him to fight. So uniqe, yet just like him. How?
He could hear her voice now, carried on the wind. Derfinatly the same, although the scorn was aimed at someone else. And the pokemon- please! Did she not have any subtlety whatsoever? A water type, it was staring him right in the face.
Mikale was alone. This was his gut feeling, this was his mission.
The girl wasabout to demonstate why you should never think you have the upper hand over Team Magma.
E/N: Yes, I have updated. Nothing else really to say except for "please review". And as for you who have cleverly spotted that I use the name "Frost" for a sneasel in BTM as well... I just have to say that I like that name. Eh heh