Notes: This part is based a bit on Emerald, but also on ORAS. In ORAS, you can only catch one, Kyogre or Groudon, not both. In Emerald, neither goes to Cave of Origin iirc.
~.~.~
#5 Groudon
Once you had four legendary Pokemon, it only made sense to get the rest, right? If you can't beat fate, embrace it, and all that.
Having decided this, May felt a great sense of relief. It was also nice to have a goal again. She'd beaten the gyms, the Elite Four, and even the Champion. There was the Battle Resort and the PokeDex, but May didn't really want to become a battle maniac like her father, and hunting down every single Pokemon in Hoenn seemed more Brendan's thing. He had it covered.
Also, the expression on Maxie's face, when he walked into his office to find her sitting in his chair, feet up on his desk, was absolutely priceless.
"How did you get in?!" he hissed. "How did you even find this place?"
She got the location of the Team Magma base from a grunt at Battle Resort. But May didn't tell him, just smirking. Maxie shot her a glare, pushing up his glasses and trying to pretend she hadn't seen him lose composure.
"What do you want? Despite what you might think, my team and I are earnest in our desire to change," he said. "We have given up our old ways and will work toward the future the right way."
"I believe you," May assured him. She even believed that Archie meant it too, when he said the same thing. "I just wanted to ask you something. You and Team Aqua were a lot alike, right? And you said you might have ended up being the ones who caused a disaster like they did. So that means you guys tried to find and awaken Groudon, right?"
This time, Maxie managed to contain his reaction to just a twitch of his eyebrow, but May had been watching closely.
"So where is it?" she asked, without waiting for his pointless denials.
She and Maxie stared at each other stubbornly.
"Do you wanna battle for it?" May suggested.
It was hard to keep a straight face when Maxie winced and glared. "Fine," he bit out. "I show tell you. I suppose, if anyone should know, just in case..." Gesturing for her to follow, he headed out of his office.
~.~.~
Team Magma's base occupied a cave system deep within Mt. Chimney — one of them, at least, just off the Jagged Pass. The air in the tunnels was sweltering, and May had no idea how the Magma members could handle it in their thick red turtlenecks.
It only grew hotter as Maxie led the way deeper and deeper, the halls growing empty of his subordinates, the walls increasingly less touched by human construction, until they were making their way through an untouched rock tunnel.
May had an increasingly bad feeling about this. She knew this atmosphere — from the deep seafloor and the cavern there.
"...You found it," she said flatly. "You actually found Groudon?"
Maxie shot her a dirty look over his shoulder — he'd probably been looking forward to make a shocking revelation out of it. "That oaf Archie found Kyogre," he pointed out waspishly. "My team is certainly capable of much more."
Nevermind, May knew what had happened. "Was there a girl with short dark hair who told you where to look?" she guessed.
Judging by Maxie's expression, she was right. 'Zinnia...'
It made sense, if you looked at it from Zinnia's admittedly twisty perspective. All she wanted was a super-ancient Pokemon to rampage and draw Rayquaza down to Hoenn, it didn't matter which one. So why not hedge her bets with two teams of gullible idiots instead of just one? It wasn't like Zinnia would have cared which one got awakened.
There was no telling why she'd gone with Team Aqua in the end, of course. Zinnia, like Steven, had ditched the moment no one was looking. May was going to be watching Wallace very closely for any signs of wanderlust.
"So you know about that woman. She did provide us a hint about where to look," Maxie admitted sourly. "But she disappeared before we could confirm our successful discovery and find out anything else she knew. We were searching for a way to awaken Groudon when Archie went and claimed the Blue Orb. If he had been just days slower to act, it might have been Team Magma that you faced at Mt. Pyre instead."
He turned away, lips thinning — he was well aware, now, of the danger of his plan and, more importantly, that relying on super-ancient Pokemon to fix things for you just didn't really work out.
Unless your problem was a meteorite. That did work.
They had reached a larger chamber that pulsed with a rather ominous red glow. Mining machinery had been left against the walls, the large drills similar to the monstrosity mounted on Team Aqua's stolen submarine. There were other machines too, but May couldn't guess their purpose.
The red light grew brighter as she moved past Maxie and approached a ledge where the ground dropped away... straight into a pool of lava, far below, just like the Mt. Chimney summit.
And in the center of the pool was a large, motionless form — Groudon.
It was in the same petrified state as Kyogre had been at the Seafloor Cavern, until Archie exposed it to the Blue Orb. May sighed. 'Can't catch it like that... Maybe it's for the best,' she thought. At least this way, any other idiot with a brilliant plan would need to hunt down the Red Orb first.
The Red Orb...
Oh no. Oh no...
"We will close off this area soon," Maxie said, standing next to her and looking down at Groudon as well. He smiled thinly. "Humanity can't advance by relying on the power of ancient Pokemon. We will—"
He was cut off by a sudden tremor running through the cavern. A red light, different from the lava, was shining from May's bag, and she could see the exact moment Maxie realized what it was. His expression, when his eyes met May's, was full of disgusted disbelief.
"I'm sorry!" May burst out, shouting over the rumbling. "I forgot, okay?! I didn't think it was actually going to be here, you know!"
If Maxie made any reply, it was drowned out by Groudon's roar, as it awakened with the power of the Red Orb that May had been carrying with her. He might have called her an idiot. It would have been very deserved.
~.~.~
Mega Latias braked sharply only an instance before she and her trainer could plow into Sootopolis's white cliffs. May was leaping off her back even before the dragon had come to a stop, tripping, rolling, stumbling to her feet, and taking off at a sprint.
Blinding sunlight was beating down on the city, reflecting off the stone and making the paths blur into one white expanse. May could just barely make out the dark shape of the ancient tree in the center of town, marking her destination.
Wallace was already there. "You! What did you do?!" he yelled when he spotted her approach. Maybe he could sense her guilt.
"Sorry, sorry! I'll fix it right away!" May shouted back without slowing down. Skidding a little, she took a sharp turn and scrambled up the last set of stairs — up to the Cave of Origin.
Groudon, it turned out, was basically Kyogre, sun version, right down to swimming off (through lava) immediately after being awakened and heading straight for Sootopolis, abnormal weather and everything. It said something about the circus May's life had become that going to face a legendary Pokemon, quite likely in its super powered state no less, just made her feel annoyed.
She wasn't the only one sick of these super-ancient fiascos. Huffing irritably, Wallace tried to find enough shade to hide in — he could already feel the sunburn on his arms and sides. Maybe it was time to consider a more... conservative outfit.
~.~.~
"Here," Maxie said, holding out something for May to take.
It was a Poke Ball, but a design she hadn't seen before, with a purple top and the letter "M" on the front.
"That is how I had planned to control Groudon — the Master Ball," he explained. "It has a perfect catch rate, no matter what Pokemon it's used on. It's a prototype that Tabitha stole from the Devon Corporation. But given your record, it seems you'll get the most use out of it."
"Wow," May said, turning the ball over with interest. "You had a plan?"
"Get out of my office."
~.~.~
