Mt. Chimney smoked-- and steamed-- and smelled of sulphur.  Jess sat astride her Dodrio with her goggles over her eyes to protect them from the heat and gases, looking out over the rim.

I have to go back.

The grim thought had sat on her chest for weeks now, infringing on her peace with every beer she drank alone or every gallon of expensive fuel she pumped into her helicopter. 

For all its rage and power at the start, Groudon had saved them. It felt wrong to simply give it up as a martyr, to abandon it to some eternity battling Regidrago in the upper mantle. The League had showed no interest in rescuing the wounded Pokemon, or even investigating whether it was alive or dead. They'd given up on it. A lost cause.

Because it couldn't be controlled.

And when Pokemon couldn't be controlled by humans, humans didn't care.

"Just don't sit right with me," Jess muttered as the three-headed bird beneath her paced the rim of the volcano, its great, broad talons surefooted on the rough lava-rock. "Those patches of the past, the way that orb summoned 'em..." She didn't know what to make of any of it. She'd been hoping a birds-eye view from her helicopter would turn up some answers, but bizarrely, it just created more questions instead.

The helicopter sat on a patch of smooth ground a little ways away, its rotor blades still. The ground had been flattened as if by giant hands, reduced to a perfect landing pad after the forces which had shaped the mountain had disappeared. 

Sure wasn't this shape before...

Dodrio crested the eastern rim of Mt. Chimney, drawing close to the place where Groudon had tackled its enemy through the side of the mountain into the inner chambers, freeing the magma trapped inside. Last time, she'd been too busy running from the lava to investigate.

To her surprise, however, someone else was already here. Jess raised a hand towards the silver-haired stranger in greeting as the Triple Bird approached at a trot. "Thought I was the only one crawling this mountain," she said as she pulled up. "Didn't see you on my flyover. You ain't a civilian, are you?" The Dragonite at his side suggested he wasn't, but his immaculate appearance crawled with good breeding and old money. Neither mixed well with lava. "Big battle here recently. No place to be treasure hunting."

She lowered her goggles. Her lips quirked. "'Course, if you're lookin' for Groudon, that's another story."

Amor Rose  | Zac Ramsay

Of course the man had business motives in mind. A war of resources, where whoever found the prize first won. Wasn't that just the way of the world?

But it wasn't Jess's world.

Words sizzled past her lips before she could stop them, her posture unwinding, relaxed, dangerous. "Sure. I'm here same as you, just huntin' power and control and all that. Maybe I'll even catch Groudon while it's weak and make it my Avatar or whatever the hell you people do. Easy answer, right?"

Sarcasm done, her eyes wandered away from Amor's, becoming distant.

"Just feels bad," she said, softer. "Feels wrong, after it saved us, like you said. So much going on in the world out there with Sootopolis and all... everyone's forgotten about it."

"I haven't forgot, though." The former ranger turned back, narrowing eyes lined by sun and shrewdness. "Just late to the party. Doin' what I can. Can't ask for much more."

She changed the subject as if the serious tone made her uncomfortable, turning away and offering an elbow for Zac to bump in greeting. "Name's Callow. Think I saw you from the air, Big Red." Her mouth twisted wryly. "You responsible for flattening the crater up there? I owe you one. Made a great landing pad."

She tugged on the reins and turned her Dodrio around, scanning the bleak landscape for an entrance to the caves Amor had mentioned. "You can have any Red Shards if I find 'em, dragon boy," she said over her shoulder, shading her eyes as she looked up into the sky. A small shape was soaring overhead, riding the natural thermals produced by the geothermic activity. Yellow primaries flashed on the undersides of its wings-- a wild Fletchinder.

Jess put two fingers in her mouth and made a sharp, strange sound-- somewhere between a whistle and a loud, smacking kiss.

A moment later, the curious bird had drifted down close enough to see clearly. Jess thumped her Dodrio on its side, getting its attention. "Ask it to look for cave entrances, will you?" she asked. The Triple Bird let out a chorus of noisy squawks, and after a moment of hesitation the wild Pokemon beat its wings and wheeled away, flying wider, broader circles around the area.

"Ain't nothing like a bird for scouting," Jess said matter-of-factly, squinting up against the light. "They got sharper eyes than we do." 

It wasn't even a minute before a trill came from above and a small, sleek shadow skimmed the ground as the Pokemon returned. The Fletchinder had found something. Whether it was the same entrance Zac already knew about, Jess didn't know-- but she knew she'd rather trust a local any day over a couple of guys arguing over directions.

"Maybe I'll see y'all down there," she said, putting on her goggles and starting after the waiting Fletchinder. "Maybe."

Amor Rose  | Zac Ramsay

Nope. Jess understood Amor just fine.

The issue wasn't misunderstanding, except maybe on Amor's end. To someone with infinite resources and infinite justification for his actions in name of 'the greater good', someone like Jess couldn't possibly just disagree with him. She had to be confused. Right? Maybe she hadn't heard him properly! Imagine having contradicting worldviews.

Here's the thing: something being logical and something being factual didn't make it right.

Your average trainer would have seen nothing wrong with the man's explanation. He hadn't been cold, he hadn't been rude, he'd just openly stated the facts and the reasoning behind his motives. Decent motives, most people would agree.

There was no flaw in his mechanics-- Jess was just driving a different machine.

He'd said it himself. Groudon was a byproduct. He didn't care about the wounded titan any more than he cared about random strangers.

Well, Jess didn't care about Rocket or time travel or goddamn Sootopolis. Not any more than she cared about the ego of privileged civilians playing Gotta Catch 'Em All in the ashes of an eruption. She cared about a big, injured Pokemon that everyone else in this godforsaken region had given up on just because it'd eaten its last trainer, so anyone who tried to plant faction politics in her way could get lost.

"So sick of these goddamn League regions," Jess muttered to herself as she picked her way down the cave entrance Fletchinder had found. She didn't trust a freshly-dug tunnel any more than she trusted an unpaved road-- she'd take her chances with the natural cave formations, thanks. The bird swooped ahead of her, tucking its wings smartly. She was trusting the native Pokemon's Flame Body ability to protect it from any lava-related surprises, though she couldn't say the same for herself and Dodrio. 

"That's about deep enough," she said after some time descending into the depths, hauling on the reins to stop her mount. A red glow lit the tunnels, signifying active magma nearby. Can't believe I came back here of my own free will, she thought, mopping sweat from her brow. Back for more lava. Come and get me, Groudon.

The big guy-- Zac?-- had claimed his two Heatran would check on Groudon if they found it, but depending where the tunnels led, there was no guarantee either of them were on the right track. In reality, both tunnels led to the same inner cave network, though Jess had been forced to double back once or twice due to cave-ins and dead ends. 

"All right, Dodrio. Lemme hear your Uproar."

Swordlike beaks opened, throats swelling with discordant birdsong. A chorus of three guttural shrieks, each at a different pitch from a different head, built to a crescendo. Jess plugged her ears and braced herself, grateful that years of piloting a helicopter had trained her to block out loud noises.

The tunnels carried the sound like screaming winds, an unearthly noise sure to stir Groudon from its slumber. If there were any signs of life, there was nothing like a living alarm clock to piss it off enough to wake it.

Amor Rose  | Zac Ramsay

Jess wasn't surprised when the magma curtain parted to reveal not Groudon, but four irritated-looking Magcargo. She was just disappointed.

"Y'know, they say those things are hotter than the sun," Jess said to the closest Dodrio head, who stopped its personal contribution to Uproar immediately. One of the other heads squawked something at her. "Hang on, hold your horses. I want to stick around for a minute..."

A Salazzle slithered up the ceiling, its purple tongue flickering hungrily like flame. The volcanic rock of the caves began to tremble, but not from a stirring Groudon-- from Graveler in the walls, breaking themselves free from the silica in rough, sharp-edged chunks. They flexed powerful arms and legs, turning towards the source of the terrible noise. 

The Uproar dissolved as Dodrio's last head turned on her. She was unanimously outvoted.

"Damn it," Jess cursed as the Triple Bird wheeled around, talons dancing on rough rock. "Must be deeper in. All right, bird, get us out of here." 

She wouldn't lie and say she'd expected every predator on the mountain to come out of the woodwork, but it told her a lot. Surprised there's so many around after the big eruption. When they'd raided Mt. Chimney, she'd seen almost no signs of wild Pokemon save for the Archeops who'd poured out of the time rifts from the primal world.

Groudon's corrupted presence had spelled disaster for the native inhabitants. If they were back, even after the recent eruption--

Groudon isn't here.

Or if it was, it was so powered-down (dare we say dead) that it didn't show up on these Pokemon's radar. Not the way a screaming Dodrio did, anyway.

"Run Away!"

They fled pell-mell down the lave tube shaft, towards higher ground. Run Away was Dodrio's ability, and Jess'd be lying if she said she didn't fall back on it more times than she could count to get away from pissed-off wild Pokemon. Wasn't great, but she wasn't worried (except about the damn legendary probably rotting in the crater).

...Then she ran straight into the massive, cavern-sized head of a Steelix. A familiar red-haired man was perched in the center of it like a comically small hat.

She hadn't been expecting a rescue. 

"...Aw, hell. Watch out, Big Red, they're right behind us!"

Dodrio didn't hesitate-- its claws carried it right up and over the Steelix's head, launching off its chiseled titanium cheekbones. Three heads ducked to avoid the encroaching cave ceiling. One head (Jess's) didn't make it in time.

BONK.

"OW! Son of a bitch!"

Dodrio hopped and sprung from stone to stone on Steelix's back, paying little attention to its (probably concussed) rider. Jess managed to groan acknowledgement as she saw Amor and his Garchomp closer to Steelix's tail-- with the number of Graveler rolling after her, Zac would need all the help he could get. 

Amor Rose  | Zac Ramsay