The Cave

I dusted off my jeans and made sure that I still had all six of them clipped to my belt. I checked my wallet; all eight of them were still clipped to the inside. The Feather Badge was coming loose, but I would have to fix that later. There was a mountain in my way, both figuratively and literally, and only on the other side were the rewards. Although it was almost too steep to climb, I trudged on. I had never been to Ever Grande City before, let alone climb a previously unknown mountain to get there. In fact, I wasn’t entirely sure this was a mountain; it seemed like it had shown up overnight.

Apparently that wasn’t an uncommon thing in Hoenn, actually. According to some of the townsfolk that I’d talked to on my journey, mountains tended to move from time to time. It was fairly new, having only started when Team Magma showed up, but after a while everyone realized it wasn’t dangerous and they calmed down. I had planned this trip carefully, but the mountain showed up all of a sudden, so I had to walk over it instead. That was annoying.

Ack!

There was some kind of hole that I had stuck my leg in on accident, and I couldn’t get it out. I was stuck at the hip; my upper body strength wasn’t good enough to pull me out. I reached down to my belt and took out my Mightyena, whom I had taught Rock Smash.

“Mightyena! Use Rock Smash, but be careful!”

Mightyena -recently made level 46- used Rock Smash as gently as he could on the ground near my hip. Instead of making a larger hole so I could dig my way out, Rock Smash had opened up a cave, and I tumbled inside. I bounced on my previously stuck leg after the ten foot fall, and I checked to make sure it wasn’t broken. The bone was out of place, but I could walk on it without too much pain. The cave was almost completely dark, save for the light streaming in from the hole above me… and somewhere farther down the cave.

Mightyena barked at me from his vantage point above, so I raised my finger to my mouth. I knew he didn’t like being shushed, but I wanted to see what the light was. It was a reddish glow against the harsh brown of the cave, which made me consider the possibility that Team Magma had a hideout here. I left Mightyena and hobbled to see what the light was.

I had no idea what was in store for me. Groudon, in all his firey beauty, was at home in a large pool of lava, soundly asleep and seemingly without a care in the world. Team Magma had left behind a Master Ball in their Lilycove base that I picked up; I readied it and took a deep breath, holding down the button with my thumb. Groudon was mine.

The Master Ball soared through the air, coming to a rest in front of the beast. Groudon shrieked as he woke up to realize that he was finally going to be caught. The red light pulled him in slowly, reacting to the massive weight of such a giant beast. The ball clicked; I had caught Groudon.

A week later, Maxie’s plans had come to a stop; I had hunted him to the end of the road. What I didn’t know was that he was hunting down Groudon, and the hunt would have been much easier had I not captured Groudon. Nonetheless, he was very, very surprised when I showed him the legendary monster in battle.

One would say he got a little heated over it.