Chapter 110: Let's Throw a Poké Ball at Kyogre!
"Hmph! Team Rocket, Team Aqua — the only outfit that matters here is Team Aqua! The one true chosen!"
Archie crossed his arms with the supreme confidence of a man who had never seriously doubted himself.
Kanto's Team Rocket? So what? Did they have a legendary ocean deity sleeping twenty meters away from them? He thought not.
The Blue Orb was all that stood between him and his dream now. One more piece, and he'd have everything he needed.
"Oh?"
Mammon's expression was one of mild, entertained interest.
"I don't know how many of you there are," Archie said, his easy demeanor starting to develop an edge, "but you've seen where Kyogre is sleeping. That means none of you are leaving."
He wasn't particularly worried about Team Rocket. Once he had Kyogre, the Pokémon League itself couldn't stop him, let alone some organization he'd never heard of.
But right now, without the Blue Orb — these people couldn't be allowed to spread what they'd seen.
"Interesting. You want to fight?"
Mammon's smile deepened slightly.
"Hmph! I don't lower myself to fighting children."
Archie dismissed Mammon's group with a sweep of his gaze. He operated on a principle of strength — and these young faces didn't impress him.
"Shelly. Handle them."
He turned back to Kyogre with an expression of devoted focus.
"Yes, sir."
Shelly's brow creased. Something felt wrong about this. Courtney was not a person you could "handle" casually, and whoever had managed to bring Courtney over had to be operating at a different level entirely.
Still — Archie was right that no one could leave with this information. The location of Kyogre's resting place could not get out.
"Don't think we're taking advantage of numbers. This information simply cannot leave this cavern."
Her expression was fully serious as she released her Mightyena.
The rest of the Aqua grunts followed suit. A mix of Mightyena, Sharpedo, and Grimer filled the underground chamber.
"Go ahead." Mammon waved a hand. "Small fry in any quantity is still small fry."
"WHAT."
"He called us small fry?!"
"I'll make that little—"
Shelly hadn't even given the order before her grunts were already vibrating with offense. Gladion stepped forward, face blank.
He released Zoroark.
"Dark Pulse."
A sharp fox-cry. Black shockwaves rippled outward in every direction.
And then there was nothing left to hit.
Under Zoroark's AoE, the cave floor was decorated with an even layer of fainted Pokémon. A handful were still breathing. Shelly's Mightyena was among the survivors.
"Couldn't take a single hit from Gladion's Zoroark," Mammon observed. "You call that not small fry?"
Shelly's wheat-tan complexion had taken on a slightly different color. Her chest rose and fell with obvious effort.
How are they this strong.
She stared at the Zoroark. Behind Mammon, Courtney was doing a poor job of suppressing her delight at the proceedings.
Being on this side, Courtney reflected, has its advantages.
"Haha~ Impressive."
Archie's low laugh rolled through the chamber. The muscled man in blue finally turned from Kyogre to study Gladion properly, with the reassessment of someone who'd underestimated a situation.
"Alright then. I'll take you on myself."
Gladion's eye twitched.
The physique. The posture. The general energy of someone who had strong opinions about physical training. It brought back memories he did not enjoy.
He released Silvally.
"I won't say I'm going easy on you, kid. Name yourself."
Archie rolled his neck, projecting the easy confidence of a man who had never lost anything he'd cared about.
"Team Rocket senior executive. Gladion."
"Team Aqua's Boss. Archie." He threw his arms wide. "The man destiny chose to change this world!"
His second-in-command posture, his declaration, the tight blue outfit — Archie operated at a level of self-expression that could only exist in someone who had never once been embarrassed about anything.
"The world doesn't need changing by someone like you."
Gladion's look was the particular kind of flat that communicated volumes.
"People like you could never understand what I'm after!"
Archie wasn't going to be rattled by a cold teenager. He was going to change the world, and no one had ever managed to stop him before—
"Come on then!"
And then—
"This can't be happening."
Archie was on his knees. Mightyena and Crobat down. His expression was the stunned vacancy of someone whose foundational assumptions had just collapsed.
He'd lost. To Gladion.
"I lost... has the world abandoned me?!"
He drove his fist into the cave floor, repeatedly, with what seemed like genuine existential injury.
The Aqua grunts watched their boss's breakdown in collective silence, and very quietly took one step backward each.
"What exactly are you having a crisis about over there?"
Mammon walked over at a leisurely pace and looked down at Archie.
"What made you think Kyogre would ever accept someone like you in the first place?"
He tilted his head.
"Is it the pectoral muscles? Is that the basis?"
"I'd have the Blue Orb!"
Archie's temper fired. He glared up at Mammon with an intensity that could have melted rock.
"Right, right. You'd have the Blue Orb." Mammon sounded genuinely amused. "And you think a single artifact can maintain indefinite control over a legendary that's been sleeping since the ancient era?"
He shook his head.
"There's always someone who thinks you can permanently subjugate legendary power with a tool. It never works."
The Blue Orb and the Red Orb were, at their core, fragments of Kyogre's and Groudon's own power. Yes, the Orbs could exert short-term influence. But sustaining that control was another matter — and the moment either legendary made contact with the Orb and underwent full Primal Reversion, the control was gone and you were standing in front of something truly catastrophic.
Pokémon: Evolutions had made this clear. Primal Groudon and Primal Kyogre had both made their respective trainers pay dearly for that assumption. Archie had canonically gotten a Primal Kyogre to the face — not a survivable outcome by most reckonings. Maxie had fared similarly with a Primal Groudon sun-beaming everything in range.
The Orbs didn't make you Kyogre's master. They made you Kyogre's brief, unfortunate acquaintance.
Archie's expression cycled through several things.
"You can't control what those Orbs contain by using the Orbs themselves," Mammon continued, moving toward the pool's edge. "The power is Kyogre's. Using Kyogre's power to control Kyogre — isn't that a little absurd?"
He looked at the sleeping ancient.
It was genuinely beautiful — and Primal Kyogre would be something else entirely. Its expanded, luminous form was one of the most visually spectacular things in the Pokémon world.
"You want to catch it?" Kagura had drifted over beside him.
She could read his interest clearly enough.
"I do. But it's a headache."
Mammon generally didn't like attempting things with poor odds. Kyogre was asleep — waking it up didn't require the Blue Orb specifically, it just required significant external force. Having Dark Mewtwo shock it awake with a Thunder was mechanically possible.
But what happened after that? Dark Mewtwo hadn't been able to match Ho-Oh. Kyogre was a comparable tier — possibly stronger in raw terms. And unlike Ho-Oh, a fully awakened Primal Kyogre was a genuine regional catastrophe in progress.
"Find the Blue Orb and it's yours," Kagura said cheerfully.
"You think I'm as short-sighted as this one?"
Mammon glanced at Archie, who bristled.
"How would you know if you don't try?" Kagura's expression was entirely too entertained. "Maybe Kyogre just happens to like you."
Mammon considered this.
She had a point, actually. With Ho-Oh, the outcome had been predictable — his values and Ho-Oh's were genuinely incompatible, and pursuing Ho-Oh's recognition was never going to work. He'd known that going in.
But Kyogre's criteria were unknown. Whatever Kyogre valued, it almost certainly wasn't the same "pure heart" standard Ho-Oh held.
"When it comes down to it, what you want most is natural energy and someone who can go head-to-head with Groudon. I can provide both."
He turned this over. Pulled out an Ultra Ball and started spinning it absently.
Kyogre and Groudon had fought for millennia over natural energy — the resource that fueled their Primal Reversions and their dominance over their respective domains. That conflict had left Hoenn on the brink of annihilation twice over.
But by now, thousands of years removed from those original resource wars, natural energy was almost beside the point. The moment both of them awakened simultaneously, they wouldn't need a reason to fight. The grudge was self-sustaining. Pure ancient mutual hostility — no ideology required, just the drive to absolutely destroy the other one.
"If you can hear me," Mammon said to the sleeping Kyogre, with a smile that somehow managed to be both earnest and entirely shameless, "give me a sign. I'll take on Groudon for you, and you'll be my partner. How does that sound?"
He let this hang in the air.
"If you want to refuse, shake your head. If you don't respond, I'll take it as a yes."
The assembled onlookers processed this.
Archie, now zip-tied by Gladion's Zoroark alongside the rest of his team, watched with an expression of pure indignant disbelief.
"That's — you can't just — there's no ethics here at all—"
What was 'refuse and shake your head, no response means yes?' Kyogre was sleeping like the dead. Could it even hear anything? Did it have any idea someone was talking to it?
Mammon evidently did not consider this a relevant objection.
Kyogre made no response.
Mammon nodded with complete satisfaction, cocked his arm back, and threw the Ultra Ball at the sleeping ancient ocean deity without further ceremony.
"All yours. Go!"
The Ball arced perfectly through the air and connected with Kyogre.
Kyogre's enormous body dissolved into red light and was absorbed into the Ball.
WHAT.
Archie stared.
He hadn't dared throw a Ball at Kyogre. The idea of casually lobbing a capture device at a super-ancient legendary while it was unconscious — he hadn't even considered it an option.
This kid had just done it.
He actually wanted to capture Kyogre?!
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