30
"Steady, everyone," I whispered, my hand subtly signaling the team to hold their positions. The air in the vault was thick with the scent of ozone and ancient dust.
Archie took a step forward, his heavy boots thudding against the jade floor. Behind him, several Aqua grunts leveled harpoon-launchers. "No more games, Anomaly. The Silver Orb. The Girl. Hand them over, and I might let you keep your life to tell the tale."
Phase 1: The High-Stakes Stall
I stepped forward, putting myself between Archie's gaze and May. I didn't reach for a Poké Ball; I reached for his ego.
"You're a leader of the sea, Archie," I said, my voice echoing with a forced calm. "You claim to love the ocean, to want its expansion. But look around you. This vault was built by the people who lived with the deep. They didn't wake Kyogre to 'save' the world; they built the Quiescent Orb to keep it from drowning."
"Lies fed to you by land-lubbers and suits like Stone!" Archie roared.
"Is it?" I countered, pointing to the mural of the Seer. "Look at the markings on May. Look at the carvings. The math is right there. If you use a 'Vessel' to force a Primal Awakening, you don't get a bigger ocean. You get a boiling, pressurized tomb where the currents stop moving and the oxygen fails. Even a Sharpedo can't breathe in a dead sea, Archie."
I saw his jaw tighten. For a split second, the absolute certainty in his eyes flickered. He looked at May—not as a tool, but as a living piece of the history he claimed to worship.
"The ocean is a heart," I continued. "And you're trying to give it a heart attack. Is that your legacy? Being the man who turned the cradle of life into a graveyard?"
The Result: Archie hesitated. It wasn't a surrender, but it was a stall. His grunts looked at each other, the "Logic Bomb" I'd dropped earlier on Courtney having clearly traveled through the grapevine.
Phase 2: The Great Escape (The Cultist's Path)
"Now!" Soran hissed.
The old cultist slammed his staff into a specific tile on the floor. The pedestal holding the Silver Orb sank into the ground, and a section of the wall behind us ground open, revealing a vertical shaft filled with rushing, bioluminescent water.
"Into the Vein!" Soran commanded. "It leads to the sea floor! The 'Abyss Breath' will protect you!"
Archie snapped out of his trance. "SUBDUE THEM!"
"Kage, Solar Flare! Genji, Smoke Screen!"
Kage slammed his ironwood stick into the floor, releasing a blinding burst of stored sun energy that turned the vault white. Simultaneously, Genji unleashed a thick, black fog.
We dove into the water.
Phase 3: The Abyss Descent
The water was ice-cold, but the moment we submerged, May's Shell Bell and the Soul Dew Shard created a shimmering, indigo bubble around us.
The Lead: Soran and the cultists swam with unnatural speed, their bodies moving like eels through the tight rock crevices.
The Pursuit: We could hear the muffled thrum of Team Aqua's mini-subs entering the water behind us.
The Guardian: Raven swam at the rear, her horn cutting through the dark, using Psycho Cut to collapse small rock arches behind us to block the subs' path.
"Just breathe, May!" I signaled through the bubble.
She wasn't panicked. In the water, her amber eyes looked calm—at home. She grabbed Genji's hand, and the Froakie used his frubbles to tether us all together as we were sucked into a high-speed current.
The Surface: Dewford Outskirts
Minutes later, we were spat out of an underwater vent a mile off the coast of Dewford. We breached the surface, gasping for air as the sun began to set over the horizon. The Granite Cave was a dark silhouette in the distance, now swarming with Aqua and Magma ships.
Soran climbed onto a jagged rock, his eyes fading from amber back to a dull grey. "The Silver Orb is safe. It travels the deep currents now; it will return when the 'Singer' and the 'Vessel' are ready."
Brawly's boat, The Big Wave, pulled up alongside us, the Gym Leader looking frantic. "Dudes! The sensors went haywire! I thought the island was gonna sink!"
I hauled myself onto the deck, shivering but alive. I looked at May, who was clutching the Shell Bell, looking out at the ocean.
"We're safe," I whispered. "For now."