EDITOR'S NOTE: "I had an embarrassing pseudo-crush on Wallace when I was young, and that is probably why I found his redesign personally offensive. It is not why he is such an important character in the next few chapters, but it is the main reason I make fun of that redesign. The chapter title is how I first described it out loud." (RE-EDIT: "I could have sworn it said Sky Pillar. That's what we get for doing Sinnoh before Hoenn. We even had the legend say 'sky' to help us remember...")

They didn't make it more than ten steps before they heard the thundering of footsteps and shouts of angry voices. Sure enough, Maxie appeared seconds later, leading Tabitha and a grunt along behind him. All three were very wet and very, very unhappy.

"I knew I'd find you in here," Maxie spat at Archie. "You awakened Kyogre, didn't you? You're going to drown the landmass until there's nothing left but Water-types!"

"Don't start that with me," Archie spat back. "Wasn't it you that had the 'brilliant' idea to wake up Groudon?"

"Boys!" May snapped, getting between them as Maxie tried to huff a protest. "I get it, you don't want to play nice. But as the token good influence here, I say that we have to play together to stop the bullies from taking over the playground."

"I'd rather swallow a live Tentacool," Archie snapped, at her this time.

May straightened herself to her full, entirely unimpressive height. "Let's not forget who owns you now," she said quietly, almost as if it was a threat. Brendan had never been so proud.

"I don't mean to bring down the party," Shelly said, gesturing to the cave ceiling, "but I think it might be necessary for all of us to suck up our pride and listen to the kids. They're the only ones making sense right now."

"Don't we know it," Tabitha agreed.

Maxie and Archie stood there for a moment, the typical stubborn men, and then Maxie gave up. "Fine," he said, as if it left a bad taste in his mouth. "As this whole disaster is partly my fault, I'll help your stupid little team. Even if it means I have to work with him."

"I'm with ya, kid," was all Archie had to say on the matter. "This idiot and I need to fix what we started."

Brendan had a moment to think about how cool it was that he had an army, but stopped before it went too far. "Outside," he repeated. "I'll be honest, we've made it our whole journey by throwing plans at a wall to see what sticks. Who knows, maybe we'll get some outside help."

Archie and Maxie both came to the conclusion that Brendan and May were either psychic or had somehow managed to harness the raw power of good luck. Neither wanted to know how, but it gave them a little bit of reassurance that they could fix their mistakes as long as the kids were supervising.

Steven Stone, arriving as their 'outside help' almost immediately after they reached the surface, didn't seem to have the same idea.

"So you...convinced them to come to our side?"

May grinned. "It wasn't hard."

"Yeah," Brendan agreed. "They all seemed to understand that they messed up."

"Not helping," Archie told him.

"I want nothing to do with them," Benjamin added.

Steven pretended that it all made sense, and turned on Archie. "And I'm sure you know that the source of this is Sootopolis City, the place my closest friend calls home."

Archie whistled innocently. "Can your friend swim?"

"That won't matter, if the fish tank he lives in fills completely."

"We can handle it," Brendan promised. "Your friend's life is in our hands."

Steven had a moment of panic, but he brushed it off. "Wallace is more than capable of handling it himself," he tried to object, but Brendan shook his head.

"Nope. You can't get out of it. I need to get the badge from Sootopolis anyway, might as well stop a disaster while I'm at it."

Steven took a deep breath through his nose, then let it out through his mouth. "Let me go ahead and give him a head start," he decided. "You should prepare yourselves...and deal with them." He gestured to the team leaders, or whatever Archie and Maxie were now. "Good luck."

And he flew off on his Skarmory, leaving them all behind.

Brendan handed a Pokeball to Maxie. "Take this Wailord to Mossdeep City. Return it to Professor Birch for me, May and I will be using her Latias to fly. If you decide to keep it for yourself, you will be faced with Tate and Liza, who would be the kind of creepy twins you might see in a hallway in a horror movie spoof. They are loyal to May and me - May's got Tate sworn into Team Breakneck already."

"No I don't," May tried to protest, but it was ignored by everybody.

"Archie and Shelly, you have Water-types. I'm assuming you can use Surf."

"I have a Corphish," Benjamin suggested. "I don't use it for battle, but it can take us back to the base."

"The base is flooded by now," Archie said, as if he no longer cared about his plan. "We'll go to Sootopolis with you."

"Not necessary." Brendan pointed in the direction of Mossdeep City. "Go there and let the twins give you your initiation ceremonies."

"We don't have -" May started, but Brendan shushed her.

"And tell them that we want it on video."

The former team leaders, and their respective 'first mates,' showed no sign of willingness, but they had all sworn to take orders from the kids, so they felt no choice.

"Revenge is underrated," Brendan said, watching them leave. "That felt awesome."

Flying Latias in good weather conditions was easy. Flying Latias in the middle of a storm was not. For one thing, they were much closer to the lightning now, and the Pokémon they were searching for...

Well, that was the other thing.

They found Kyogre as soon as they entered Sootopolis, and, as luck would have it, they found Groudon there, too, standing on the only patch of dry land that they could see. Even as they watched, it made a face at Kyogre, prompting the blue Pokémon to scream in frustration.

"It sure likes to scream," Brendan commented, surprised that he could still hear. "Should we get involved, or just leave them here?"

"I'd leave them here," May decided. "Who knows, they could actually be friends, in an opposites-attract kind of way."

At that precise moment, Kyogre jumped for Groudon's head. Brendan glared at the back of May's head.

"Any other brilliant ideas, May?"

"I'm done," was the quiet response, right before she pulled Latias in for a landing.

Latias centered her landing around a familiar face, and another face that wasn't quite as familiar. Brendan still knew him at once - this had to be Lisia's uncle. The similarities were too great, and he looked too young to be her father. They had the same hair and eye color, dressed in similar colors (though the man almost made Brendan choke with barely-restrained laughter) and, judging by May's starry-eyed stare and the sudden hit to Brendan's self-esteem, both Lisia and her uncle were almost supernaturally pretty even without the use of stage makeup.

"What are you wearing?"

May's hands clamped over her mouth, and her eyes went wide as the horror of her question fully dawned on her. She was following her friend into what was almost certain doom, met a celebrity on the way, and the first thing she said to said celebrity was a comment on his costume?

Steven found it funny. The other man did not. "Steven," he said, as if the name were a dirty word, "when you said you found heroes, I assumed you meant heroes who were not children."

"Then you don't know me at all, do you?" Steven moved to stand behind Brendan and May, a hand on each child's shoulder. They couldn't shake the feeling that they were being used as human shields. "Besides, Lisia's told you about Team Breakneck, hasn't she?"

"Four teenagers getting into trouble do not add up to them saving the world."

"Technically, there are six kids in it now," Brendan cut in. "Five and a half at minimum." When neither paid attention to that, due to the legendary battle going on right in the middle of the city, Brendan changed the topic. "Are you the guy known as Flannery's 'partial' romantic partner?"

That got their attention, and Lisia's uncle took only a few seconds to decide whether or not to just tell them about it.

"It was a photo manipulation on the internet," was the short story. "She found it on a lesser-known gossip website, run by people with far too much time on their hands bent on forcing romance out of budding friendship, and was attempting to do the same with us. We've been submitting our own articles ever since, with increasingly unbelievable content to see if any of it got through screening. The latest story is still unpublished, but states that I won her hand in marriage through a poker game."

"That last part just raised further questions," May commented under her breath. "What made you think it was Wallace, Brendan?"

Brendan pulled out his badge case, and showed both of them the Heat Badge. "She said her partial fiancé was 'hard to miss' and looked like a drunk genie," he explained. Wallace's pointed glare at Steven went unnoticed. "I didn't get context, and I don't think May heard the genie part at all, but Flannery said you might have the power to stop Team Magma for her."

"So this is the guy she said would help us?" May's star-struck opinion of Wallace was quickly fading. "Why did Brendan and Steven and I have to do it, then?"

"Never mind that now, we're wasting time." Wallace gestured to the cave behind him. "This is the Cave of Origin. Inside you may find the key to stopping Groudon and Kyogre's rampage. I would do it myself, but it's sacred ground to the people of Sootopolis. No man or woman born in this city may enter."

"Can't you send Steven?" Brendan complained, the previous conversation forgotten. "He was probably born in Rustboro, so he has to be able to go!"

"No," Steven answered. "I have to help Wallace evacuate the town."

"Why can't I help evacuate the town?" Brendan whined.

"Because you have to go into the Cave of Origin."

"And because Steven knows he can't trust you," May added. "But I do. You'll be fine."

Brendan caught on immediately. "You're not coming with me, are you?" May shook her head. He understood that, too. "I get it. Not when you have those faces to look at."

"Don't be so grumpy," May huffed, but Brendan saw her smile. "After all, this is Lisia's uncle we're dealing with. All he has to do is say one word to her parents and POOF! No more Dancing Shadow, only a Contest star from now on. And THEN how will your relationship work out?"

"What relationship?"

"You know," May teased, elbowing him in the side. "Like mine and Tate's."

Oh. That. "I didn't mean anything like that," Brendan complained. "It was fun seeing him worked up, and then you got worked up whenever I brought it back to your attention so I kept it going."

"Oh," May said with a grin. "I know."

And she pushed him into the cave and disappeared without another word. She had essentially left her best friend to die.

But he'd be ok. Probably.

Brendan had been in the cave for no more than ten minutes before Masquerain showed up, bringing Wallace and May along with her. That was confusing.

"What's Wallace even doing in here?" Brendan asked, unable to keep the accusation out of his voice. "He just said that it was sacred ground and Sootopolis people aren't allowed in here!"

"That's my fault," May admitted. "I said I was concerned about you getting lost, and then Steven said something about our history with Archie and Maxie might cause the destruction of Sootopolis if you went into the Cave of Origin unsupervised. Then Wallace said a word I'm not allowed to repeat and told his Pokémon to go and evacuate the people without him, leaving me in charge of keeping angry Pokémon off of him as he makes sure we don't end up starving to death in here."

Brendan wasn't convinced. "And if he was born in Sootopolis and this is his first time in the cave, how does he know where we're going?"

Wallace glanced at Masquerain, who seemed to have the same question at the front of her mind. "I haven't been in here before," he told them, "but that does not mean that I haven't sent people in here with cameras or map-making equipment." When Brendan gave him a funny look, Wallace instantly switched to defense. "I was curious and I found a loophole. Is that not how you and May have survived this long?"

Brendan focused on the mission once again. "Can't argue with that."

"So did your friends ever find what you needed them to find here?" May asked. "What are we even looking for?"

"Rayquaza."

The word was strange to Brendan, but judging by May's reaction, it was yet another legendary Pokémon. "What does that one do?"

"According to legend, it could calm Groudon and Kyogre. Steven found it in this cave when we were children, and has the photo to prove it." Wallace stopped, looked at a crater in the ground, and struggled not to let his anger and disappointment show. "And it seems to have gone back home."

"All that worry for nothing, huh?" Brendan shrugged. "Don't worry, Wallace. We've gotten ourselves out of stickier situations using nothing but pointless destruction."

"I don't doubt you have." Wallace didn't say it like he believed they could stop it. He sounded like he was making plans to evacuate the area.

May reached for her Pokenav, and called not Lisia but Wally. "What's the situation in the Littleroot to Petalburg area?"

"I don't know," Wally replied, unsure of why she was calling. "I'm in Fortree City now. It's really hot here, and Winona's getting scared, thinking that the trees might catch on fire. Should I go home?"

"No. Stay there and try to calm Winona down a little. If you have a Pokémon that can use Rain Dance, do it now. Even a few minutes is good enough."

"Is this a Team Breakneck thing?"

"It's definitely a Team Breakneck thing."

"So I'm in charge of saving Fortree?"

"Yes." May could just imagine Wally being so proud of his first official mission. "And if the rain lasts more than an hour, call something else to use Sunny Day. Good luck, agent."

"To you, too, boss," Wally said, and switched off.

Brendan didn't even wait before asking something from his living mythology encyclopedia. "Where does Rayquaza live?"

"The sky," May answered absently. "That's what the myth said...though there's some that say the sky doesn't refer to the literal sky, but to the highest place in Hoenn."

Wallace's attention span, which had been drifting in and out of the conversation as he tried to come to conclusions on his own, was suddenly pulled back. Brendan could almost see the cartoon light bulb over his head. "Sky Pillar," he said, as if that answered everything. "I've never taken mythology seriously, but now I'm starting to wonder. It was Hoenn's Olympus back then...and if Rayquaza is a god, where better to look for one?"

May's eyebrows scrunched, as the name of the place rang a bell in her head but she couldn't remember anything about it. "Wallace, we don't even know where Sky Pillar is."

"But I do." Wallace turned around and started to leave the cave. "Follow me, and I'll keep you alive. Until Rayquaza finds you, in which case I will have no hesitation in sacrificing you in exchange for saving the rest of Hoenn."

It was hard to tell if he was joking or not, but it was also hard to take him seriously with his drunk genie costume. They'd assume it was just a dark joke until he proved he was willing to murder them. Then they would have Pikachu Meteor Mash him and sacrifice him to Rayquaza.

Wallace had taken his Gyarados, as the people of Sootopolis would miss a giant, evil-looking serpent the least, and it was Gyarados that led them out into a small cluster of islands, as Brendan and May took Latias. They wondered how he managed to take it out of Sootopolis without using Dive, but decided that maybe it had and he just hadn't given the command out loud.

Wallace, for his part, was trying very hard to keep a clear head, especially as they came to shore. "Another ancient Sootopolis secret," he explained, stopping May from wandering ahead. "My ancestors sealed this place. You won't find it alone."

"So how can we hope to find Rayquaza?"

Wallace had no answer, but found a secret cave effortlessly. "In here," he instructed, and pulled them inside. "We have to hurry, no time for sightseeing."

It was a shame, May thought as she followed behind. This place, these ruins, were more than perfect for a story setting. She was thinking ancient gods and goddesses, the human avatars of the legendary Pokémon of Hoenn...

The sound of a Pokémon came from below, and before any of them could process it, there was a large Claydol standing in front of them. Wallace went for Gyarados, but Brendan took a stand first.

"Lairon, do the thing!"

May caught the signal, and looked back up at Wallace. "He'll catch up," she told him. "You go and get Rayquaza."

"And you?"

May tapped a ball at her belt, the one Wallace suspected held Latias. "I'll be your bodyguard. I already have one legendary on my side. If it won't listen to us humans, maybe it will pay attention to her."

There was no further objection, and Wallace led her away, deeper into the ruins of Sky Pillar.