No sooner do the Team-people head off than Steven flies over.
Lucki!
I’m sorry I could not be here sooner. He turns away, looking at the sky. Presumably, his apology is less to me and more to the world. Terrible. So this is what was being depicted in that painting in Granite Cave. If this doesn’t stop, all Hoenn–no, the entire world–will burn up. Nothing could live in such a land of death–neither Pokemon nor humans! This dreadful blaze… It must be caused by the sweltering heat wave forming above Sootopolis…
See, game? That was a perfectly good clue I should go to Sootopolis. You could even bluetext it! No need to have anybody somehow know exactly where Groudon was going because of the exact location of something used for a type of evolution that hasn’t even existed since cave painting days.
Come on, Steven… Think! What are you going to do?
…Give me a ride?
I mean, right now the greatest threat to the world is the fact I haven’t been to Sootopolis yet so my pokemon can’t fly me straight there.
… …No. There’s no point in agonizing over the situation from here… I have to do to Sootopolis. There must be answers there. Lucki… I will count on you to help with this crisis. But…please… Promise you won’t do anything reckless.
I will definitely not do anything personally reckless!
Blatant disregard for the wellbeing of the planet only, I promise.
Well then. I’ll go ahead to Sootopolis.
Dammit, Steven! What good are you.
Good luck to you.
And he’s gone.
That was honestly kind of annoying. The dialogue was more natural than the godawful Team Magma and their whole “I, Name”, “That person, Name” business, but they got to talk first so they already covered the same stuff.
It’d have been decent, maybe even decent enough to overlook how Steven should just take me to Sootopolis, if Steven had shown up immediately and said this to everyone or if the rest of them had been separated from me before going on about exactly where Groudon is.
Anyway, surfing time I guess.
Hey, more dive spots. Let’s travel underwater!
oh my god they still have underwater hidden items even though for some reason they programmed the item detector to not work while surfing WHY WHY WHY WHY
But relicanth just appeared so that’s good.
Relicanth is a Pokemon species that existed for a hundred million years without ever changing its form. This ancient Pokemon feeds on microscopic organisms with its toothless mouth.
…Huh. Really?
Because coelacanths have teeth, and relicanth have heads that resemble dunkleosteus.
And I mean, it’s true one might say the dunkleosteus had a “toothless mouth” in the sense it did not technically have distinct tooth structures, as it was too busy having giant jagged bone plates to sheer through the flesh and bone of whatever macroscopic life made the mistake of getting in biting range.
Hm, BUT. Another point could be made that it’s actually in debate how much the modern coelacanth resembles its fossil kin.
Consider this lovely little description of another species pushed even deeper into the depths. The vampire squid is the only known cephelapod to live on detritus rather than hunting live prey. Perhaps in the pokemon world, the same thing happened to relicanth. As it was retreated downward, the low-oxygen waters couldn’t support the active lifestyle of a predator. It began to scavenge, then it began to scavenge smaller and smaller items as it went ever deeper into ever more barren and oxygenless zones, and finally it was living off shit-covered rotting flesh dust, toothless.
Also it appears to be contradicting my hypothesis about pokemon evolving rapidly, BUT if original fossil pokemon were the first result of Groudon/Kyogre’s conflict, perhaps they functioned differently than the more mutable modern ones.
Anyway, continuing on.
I find my way to a beautiful hidden area where there’s secret base holes everywhere. It’s so lovely and remote…but it lacks any human aid if secret base creeper shows up.
You know, screw him! I already have one legendary and I’m about to enslave the embodiment of the Earth’s inevitable destruction. I want to have my base in this lovely place and if he ever does appear here I’ll kill him.
… So yeah, base is there now.
I continue on to find a woman standing in front of a mysterious cave entrance. Just barely visible from the camera angle is an even more mysterious doorway. Oh, that’s the tower, isn’t it. What’s cool is it’s not on the map at all. I mean, there’s a spot colored in to indicate there’s a landmass, but it’s not listed as an actual location and is totally unnamed.
Also, I’m going in the wrong direction, so I turn around.
With Groudon awake, all attempts at using water moves immediately evaporate into uselessness, which is a bit weird when you’re on the water at the moment. Also, ice beam still works, which is pretty weird.
I suppose it could make sense from a magic standpoint. Groudon is opposing the very concept of water rather than the very concept of cold. And because of that active opposition, it falls most strongly on any attempt to actively manipulate water – thus, water attacks instantly evaporate, while the passive sea isn’t disappearing before our eyes.
No idea why water veil still works, though.
