In Sootopolis City of the Hoenn Region, a meeting is quickly underway.
Those deemed qualified to attend this council are undeniably Hoenn Region's most influential figures — high-ranking officials and regional leaders who hold pivotal roles
Summoned by current Hoenn Champion Steven, they gathered in the city that hosts both the annual Ever Grande Conference and the region's political headquarters. Seated in a sterile conference room under fluorescent lights, every attendee stared at the impeccably groomed man at the long table's head. His marble-like composure extinguished any trace of levity in the chamber.
Frowns etched deep as the assembly grappled with the chaotic reality before them, their silence louder than any debate.
Beside Wallace, former Hoenn Champion Steven Stone had set aside his rock-hunting pursuits to occupy a specially designated seat next to the head position. With elbows planted on the conference table and chin resting on clasped hands, the steel-type specialist stared at the polished surface as if deciphering fossils in sedimentary layers.
Both men wore troubled expressions.
"Mr. Wallace, Elite Four members Sidney and Phoebe formed one squad, Glacia and Drake the other. Acting on intelligence leads, they've tracked fleeing Team Magma and Aqua remnants. Their strike teams already detained dozens from both factions."
Before the long table stood a man in the senior League investigator uniform, multiple commendations gleaming on his chest as he briefed the room on the Elite Four's ongoing pursuit of Team Magma and Aqua - the criminal syndicates responsible for awakening Hoenn's ancient Legendary Pokémon.
The rank-and-file members of these eco-terrorist groups now find themselves backed into a corner with no escape routes left, trapped under the Elite Four's relentless crackdown.
Most either surrendered without resistance or fell in desperate last stands against overwhelming force, their collective arrest haul now cramming the Hoenn League Correctional Facilities' permanent residency rosters.
Yet the report held nothing to lift Wallace and Steven's spirits.
The reason?
"Per interrogation logs, key figures remain at large: Team Magma leader Maxie with operatives Courtney, Tabitha, and Blaise; Team Aqua's Archie alongside Shelly, Matt, and Amber."
"Understood."
Even Wallace, whose elegance and grace defined him, had shed his composure after days of crisis. The Champion's response to the agent's briefing came as a toneless acknowledgment, his voice stripped of its customary luster.
"As for Groudon and Kyogre — their clash ceased when Rayquaza descended — both vanished without trace. Devon Corp's investigation remains ongoing, with neither intel nor R&D divisions confirming the ancient titans' whereabouts. Subsequent inquiries by the League's Psychic Ops and Legendary Research Bureau found Rayquaza itself has seemingly evaporated from Hoenn's airspace."
Under Wallace's impassive gaze, the investigator broke into a cold sweat while delivering his findings. Battling mounting discomfort, he pressed through the report about the vanished ancient Legendary Pokémon.
"Confirmed status: Groudon and Kyogre retain vital signs and pose an imminent resurgence threat."
The prosecutor's concluding statement laid bare the worst-case scenario haunting every mind in the chamber.
Wallace lowered his head, cupped hands pressed to his brow as a sigh escaped him.
"..."
Steven, silent, gave his friend's shoulder a brief squeeze. With a curt wave dismissing the prosecutor, he turned his gaze toward the politicians frozen in their seats — their tongues stilled, their pens hovering above untouched briefing papers.
The assembly is now in session.....
The session's objective was stark in its simplicity: to forge actionable strategies addressing Hoenn's cascading crises, with every proposal rooted in hard-field data from active disaster zones.
Neither Steven nor Wallace relished these proceedings, yet professional obligations bound them to the table.
To put it bluntly... the Hoenn Region is in critical condition.
Maxie and Archie, the architects behind awakening Groudon and Kyogre, miscalculated catastrophically. With the primal titans rampaging beyond control, the rogue leaders absconded with the Red and Blue Orbs. Their core operatives shed deadweight — abandoning disposable underlings — to exploit the chaos, slipping through the League's dragnet like smoke through barbed wire.
Armed with cutting-edge submersibles capable of navigating magma chambers and abyssal trenches with impunity, Maxie and Archie's escape routes span the entire Hoenn Plate. Tracking the leaders through this geological labyrinth — where every tectonic fault line becomes a potential bolthole — elevates manhunting to a geophysical chess match.
Compounding the crisis, Groudon and Kyogre remain primed to relaunch their primal feud over unfinished business. Rayquaza — the sole force capable of quelling their clashes — has seemingly abandoned Hoenn's skies. All three ancient titans now roam beyond human tracking.
The crisis is compounding. Groudon and Kyogre's clashes have devastated multiple metropolitan centers and towns along their migratory paths. Now the League juggles dual imperatives: apprehending both fugitive crime syndicates and containing the rampaging titans, while simultaneously spearheading reconstruction efforts across disaster-stricken zones.
A perfect storm of crises. For days, Champion Wallace had been juggling disasters on every front; the relentless onslaught now threatened to overwhelm even his famously unflappable mind.
In this crucible of chaos, Wallace finally grasped why Steven had relinquished the Champion's mantle to him — the crown's weight could fracture even titanium resolve.
The Elite Four remain entrenched in nonstop field ops, their pursuit of Team Magma and Aqua remnants unceasing as surgical drone strikes on confirmed holdouts.
Gym Leaders across all cities maintain vigilant posts at strategic hubs, their vigilance unyielding under the palpable apprehension that either titan could manifest within their jurisdictions — a cataclysmic contingency no badge-bearing defender dares contemplate.
Even retired Steven Stone, driven by concern for his longtime ally, emerged from abandoned mineshafts where he'd been cataloging mineral strata. The former Champion now deploys Devon Corporation's deep-earth sensor arrays in concert with League forces, triangulating seismic anomalies that could betray Groudon or Kyogre's subterranean/maritime movements.
Hoenn now operates under full wartime protocols. Every League-certified trainer with a registered badge has been conscripted into mandatory overtime — a mobilization necessitated by the apocalyptic force exhibited during Groudon and Kyogre's reawakening.
Left unchecked, Groudon and Kyogre — beings forged for tectonic warfare — radiate cataclysmic energy destabilizing not merely Hoenn but global plate systems. Should their seismic tantrums persist, we'll face cross-regional intervention from leagues mobilizing under Article 12 of the International Pokémon Emergency Protocol.
"..."
An hour later, the meeting came to a close.
Wallace and Steven Stone watched the politicians file out one by one, the weight of bitterness and frustration lingering like toxic smog in their chests.
To claim these politicians were useless would be disingenuous.
In truth, as seasoned veterans steeped in Hoenn's welfare, they provided the Champions with well-reasoned frameworks and actionable blueprints that alleviated critical pressure points — their decades of bureaucratic warfare yielding concrete countermeasures against tectonic-scale disasters.
For now, if Groudon and Kyogre's tectonic truce holds, Steven's Devon Corp resources combined with League manpower could address the disaster zones. But the true weight gnawing at them was an existential quandary — Rayquaza's disappearance had left Hoenn's ozone layer vulnerable to meteor bombardment, a cosmic-scale threat their current infrastructure couldn't possibly intercept.
"Metagross, your assistance is needed."
Steven deployed an ornate Luxury Ball. The pseudo-legendary materialized in a burst of prismatic light, its platinum-cerulean alloy body emitting quantum-grade psychic oscillations. Electromagnetic polarity generators within its four-armed chassis activated instantly, enabling frictionless levitation at the conference table's geometric center.
Shiny Metagross — Steven's ace and signature Pokémon.
『Meeetaaa——!!』"
Instantly, the Shiny Metagross' cruciform amber core embedded in its hyperalloy cranium flared. Scarlet optical sensors — devoid of organic warmth — dilated as its mechanized vocalizer emitted harsh, staticky tones. Quad kinetic arms pulsed with diffusing psychochromatic emissions, a psychic containment field materializing mid-air that enshrouded the chamber's perimeter walls in prismatic diffraction patterns.
The psychic dampening field erected by Metagross severed all external surveillance vectors to the chamber.
The Steel/Psychic-type knew its trainer and the former Champion required secure parameters for clandestine dialogue.
No entity — not even rival pseudo-legendaries — could hope to breach a Champion-tier Metagross' telekinetic barrier.
"Wallace, you've been briefed on the Rayquaza developments?"
"Mmh..."
Wallace kneaded his temples, the reply escaping him as a bone-weary exhale.
Steven cut the preamble. Reaching into his suit's inner lining, he produced a photograph — Rayquaza descending upon the Groudon-Kyogre battlefield, a critical piece of evidence captured by a League photog at mortal peril.
Yet unlike the sanitized frames broadcast globally, this high-resolution capture — shot at unprecedented proximity — contained forensically critical metadata: Rayquaza's ventral scale patterns mid-Mega evolution, atmospheric ion concentrations spiking at 12,000 μSv/h, and a faint but discernible energy tether arcing toward the Meteor Falls stratovolcano.
Otherwise it wouldn't have circumvented television news reports to appear on the desks of both Hoenn region Champions.
"This... look here."
Steven tapped his finger on the photo where Rayquaza's draconic head appeared, specifically indicating a faint, indistinct outline to Wallace.
"We suspect a person — a human."
Steven concisely presented the conclusion he and experts had debated.
"...I still can't quite believe it. Does this mean Rayquaza has a Trainer?" Wallace looked up, his handsome but exhausted face etched with disbelief and skepticism.
Steven spread his hands. "I can't believe it either, but this is the only answer that explains all the issues."