… Who was that woman? And the way she spoke to us… It’s almost as if she came here for some kind of confirmation…

Maybe she’s the sort of person who wants to make sure she’s not targeting innocent people before the stabby stabby begins. That probably confuses you.

And yet… I feel as though I should know her from…somewhere.

At the rate this is going, I wouldn’t even be surprised if Devon shoveled her family into the furnaces or something.

Steven turns. Ah, Professor, forgive me. I believe you were trying to tell us something before that woman interrupted us?

Uh… Yes… Ah, you see… he stammers, perhaps trying to put aside any doubts reawoken by the conversation. Or perhaps just thinking that maybe forest ninjas expressing disgust with your morals may not be conductive to a long life. In order to complete the warp hole, we will need another Meteorite Shard, an extremely pure one…

What would pure even mean in this context?

Then should we head to Granite Cave once again?

No… The kind of Meteorite Shard we need this time can only be found at Meteor Falls.

What does that mean? What are the actual criteria here.

Look, game, I get that this is just a plot device, but this is an example of lazy shit that should’ve been technobabbled away properly. Just say that they need meteorites made of different materials. It’s not like “meteorite” is a single distinct substance.

Anyway, this shocks Steven for some reason. Meteor Falls! Yes, who could’ve guessed there’d be anything meteorite related there. I see… Perhaps we will learn something there…

Like maybe Lucki could learn proper backstabbing, as an example. It’s not like you have morals either, Lucki, why won’t you just stab them and end this horrible plot already!

I will head to Meteor Falls at once.

But yeah so maybe now we can meet up with Magma?

Follow as soon as you are ready. I feel we might discover even more than a Meteorite Shard there…

So yeah totally Magma.

And yay, enormous cutscene over! Now to celebrate my freedom by going up to everyone to see what they have to say.

First up, evil head scientist Cozmo!

I think we will be able to complete our preparations if we can get a Meteorite Shard from Meteor Falls. Young Steven has already set you. I trust you’ll follow him…

Come to think of it, why am I? I went to go get the other shard on my lonesome and okay yeah, a forest ninja ambushed me in the cave with her flattery and all, but I didn’t tell you that happened so that shouldn’t be a worry.

Lady whose job it was to stand at the steps but apparently is on break right now?

That girl who passed by… I was petrified by the overwhelming strength that I could feel from her!

I too am confused and pleased by all this! It really does feel like this is part of a later, more inclusive generation, and makes the rest of the game a little better by suggesting that the pokemon series as a whole isn’t planning on stepping backward and it’s just that the remake nature of this led to it reproducing a lot of the problems from back then.

(That doesn’t explain why Brendan is so much worse or why the opening is boy only, but still.)

There’s a lot of bad possible reasons behind Zinnia, like love interest or that it’s supposed to make her behavior more shocking, but I’m not fluent enough in Japanese stuff for that to be obvious, so none of that can wreck this for me.

Other guy scientist!

Mossdeep has many clear days, and its wind patterns are stable. That’s why it’s an ideal location for launching rockets into space.

You’re pretty chill about the whole imminent death thing, aren’t you.

Still another guy scientist!

Problems just keep popping up one after another… We’re supposed to be carving out a bright new future with the power of science, but…but this mess. Sigh…

You are aware that everything runs on genocide, right?

Well, time to go back to Meteor Falls.

And hey, a druddigon!

 

It races through narrow caves, using its sharp claws to catch prey. The skin on its face is harder than a rock.

Deino!

They cannot see, so they tackle and bite to learn about their surroundings. Their bodies are covered in wounds.

Truly a fitting entry for the emo pokemon.

Also a clefairy but it runs away before I can encounter it.

Must say once again that the water effects in this place are just gorgeous.

And now, an old couple battle. They’ve got relatively strong pokemon which makes sense. Also, my sceptile and Raiden end up out together, and I realize that you can use detect to protect against moves that hit everyone on the field, so it’s got an additional use in double battles to offset the possibility neither opponent will target you. Rare to see that sort of balance in the franchise.

Their dialogue afterward is the standard “my wife wins our arguments” stuff. But it prompts a clefairy to appear, so it’s not all bad.

On every night of a full moon, groups of this Pokemon come out to play. When dawn arrives, the tired Clefairy return to their quiet mountain retreats and go to sleep nestled up against each other.

One of the things about a lot of pokedex entries is they highlight some behavior that doesn’t make sense. Clefairy partying themselves to exhaustion several days each month doesn’t seem very evolutionarily fit. Either people are misunderstanding what’s going on (perhaps they’re collecting moonlight, not playing), or pokemon were created by something other than evolution and bear the marks.

Ah, and finally I’ve found Steven. He’s talking to an old lady, probably thinking to himself what a waste it is that she’ll die on her own time rather than being thrown into DevonCorp’s furnaces. So unfair you can only shovel in pokemon when there’s so many other things that also scream and die too!

Lucki. We have the Meteorite Shard. And I have come to understand many things, as I suspected might happen.

Is this some Buddha-like thing where if he ever talks to other human beings he’ll suddenly grasp morality and he’s just self-aware enough to know it might happen?

Allow me to introduce you. The honorable lady you see before you is a descendant of the ancient Draconids.

O…kay.

Yes, I am one of the Draconid people.

Look, unless you’re about to tear off your skin and explain you’re one of our reptilian overlords, I’m not sure why there’s the emphasis on you being part of some ethnic group I don’t know or care about.

One of those ancient folk tasked with passing down the knowledge of Mega Evolution

You realize that like no one knew it existed? Which is especially bad given that it’s not like glowy stone pairs = bonus evolution is something particularly challenging to pass on. No wonder no one else has ever admitted to being part of your failure group.

–with the great lore of Lord Rayquaza, who was the beginning of all.

Also pretty sure I’ve heard way too much about mega evolution without that guy being relevant once, therefore I think this is some splinter religion you guys invented.

Since times long gone, Hoenn has repeatedly suffered great disasters. At times, the destruction took the form of a huge meteoroid, which fell upon our land from distant space. At other times, the Primal Reversions of our own super-ancient Pokemon brought us to the brink of destruction.

Given how many people are involved in Devon’s genocide thing, I’m going to assume the people of Hoenn are inherently biased towards Neutral Evil and kept attracting divine retribution. Meteors in particular are defined as not having any connection to a planet’s existing topography. If you’ve found yourself facing “rocks fall, everybody dies” type stuff multiple times while it’s never been an issue anywhere else even once, maybe ask yourself what’s pissing off your DM so much. Maybe it’s the part where you’re roasting skinned orphans over a fire, or whatever you guys did for fun before Devon found genocide beam tech to play with.

Each time, Lord Rayquaza has saved us from doom.

Wonder what his motives are!

Maybe worldhearts don’t form planets, maybe planets are just their habitat. Maybe he’s been grooming us to fuck up the world enough to poison both current world hearts. Maybe, given he likes to stay away from our planet most of the time, oxygen is toxic to him and he’s keeping us alive until we can find a way to completely wipe out all life on the planet – oh, or maybe he needs us to kill the magnetic field, so that the entire atmosphere can be scoured away by the solar wind and he’ll be able to nest on the void-touched surface at last.

The chosen Lorekeeper, standing before a stone that shone with rainbow light, offered up a wish to the great one. And Lord Rayquaza’s body was suffused with a brilliant light and transformed. In its transformed state, Rayquaza’s power was more devastating than ever before, overcoming even the super-ancient Pokemon with all their primal power.

Steven chinhands in maximum thinking mode. Incidentally, his hands are covered in very chunky rings. A rainbow-colored stone… An invocation from the Lorekeeper… And a Rayquaza unlike any ever seen…

“Unlike those rayquaza flying all over the place now, I mean. God, you can’t do outside without having to duck every few seconds or get hit in the head.”

I see. It does resemble what we know of the process of Mega Evolution…

Steven, “the process of mega evolution” is stones and rainbow glowing for a couple secs. The description IS mega evolution, and the rest of the non-stone part is probably just people getting religion all over things. This isn’t some huge revelation.

Yes, it does indeed, says the old lady. Now, she’s old enough she could be pretty senile, but that’s no excuse for the other two people in this conversation not remembering she OPENED by saying her people’s whole thing was mega evolution and so this whole “omg, is it mega evolution” is stupid.

A Pokemon, a person, a stone of power.

“A healthy disrespect for the idea pokemon could ever be people…”

The bonds that tie them all together… The transformation of the Pokemon that occurs as a result of this phenomenon was called “Mega Evolution” by later peoples.

Steven gets the shocked exclamation mark.

So the mechanism for Mega Evolution was discovered as a result of the first meeting between humanity and Rayquaza…

Or it was independently discovered by different people. I mean, it’s clearly rare in Kalos but here we’re tripping over the stuff. And it’s not like people need a reason to try carrying around shiny rainbow rocks.

Hmmmm. But I have one last question. That “Lorekeeper” you spoke of…

The Lorekeeper is the one who has inherited the knowledge and power to summon Lord Rayquaza when disaster imperils this world, says the old lady. “We thought it best that only one single person knew at a time, to ensure the maximum chance of something going wrong.” The true Lorekeeper of the current generation is the one called Zinnia. Oh, that’s worrying. She seems to be on her second or third “let’s not all die” plan, so clearly something’s gone wrong. Can’t imagine how making sure the fewest people possible knew how to prevent the apocalypse could’ve led to that! The disaster that now approaches our planet, as it has twice before… Zinnia has been trying for some time to avert it…in her own way. To draw Lord Rayquaza to our sphere, she joined a certain organization that sought to revive the super-ancient Pokemon. She taught them the secrets needed to bring back these threats and summon the great Dragon itself.

Ah, so either Rayquaza is paying less attention this time around OR the original way of getting Rayquaza’s attention was lost due to this stupid, stupid system.

And now it seems she travels the land, scouring the world for Key Stones…

Ahaha yeah whoops should’ve left Groudon alone.

So it was true… says Steven. As I had suspected, that woman who appeared at the Space Center was one of the Draconoids… But I never dreamed she was involved in the attempted revival of the super-ancient Pokemon… In full knowledge of the power they held, fully understanding the terrible changes they could wreak upon our world…

For the ten minutes before Rayquaza shut them down?

Still she helped bring that situation about? Did she give a thought to the many people and Pokemon whose lives were put at grave risk by her actions?

Were they even? I mean, how long does it take for Groudon to actually start causing damage to the environment? Whatever it accomplished while awake seems to have improved the environment, unless I guess the new pokemon that appear are actually better viewed as invasive species taking advantage of stressed natives and if we came back to the game in a couple years it’d look a lot less diverse.

Anyway, certainly my Emerald game had Groudon and Kyogre rampaging around with no ill effects once Rayquaza did a bit of hovering, so there.

Also, YOUR ENTIRE COMPANY RUNS ON GENOCIDE.

Could she accept the inevitable sacrifice of so many lives, in order to protect the planet from the coming meteoroid?

STEVEN YOUR PLAN IS TO MASS MURDER POKEMON TO PROTECT THE PLANET. THE ONLY DIFFERENCE IS THAT A) YOUR PLAN IS THE ONLY ONE WITH ACTUAL INEVITABLE AS OPPOSED TO POSSIBLE SACRIFICE AND B) YOU WERE ALREADY COMMITTING GENOCIDE FOR WORSE REASONS BEFORE THIS AND WILL PRESUMABLY CONTINUE TO AFTERWARD.

Was this section written by someone who hadn’t read anything else in the game?

Old lady turns away. Balance must rule this world. History is doomed to repeat itself… While our people have overcome many disasters in the past, it was always through great, great sacrifice…

Whose sacrifice, though?

Yet we have continued to struggle to preserve peace for as many years as we can. That is how we have protected this world, upon which we now live. People… Pokemon… All nature… And yes, even you. I do not know exactly what you plan to do.

So is that the writer of this actually having no clue?

But do you believe that you are not sacrificing anything for your own protection?

It really seems like the only possible way to write this like it’s some sort of deep question would be to be unaware of the entire rest of the plot. Like, maybe they were just assuming Steven and Player Name were the plucky heros trying to find a way to save everybody and this is the bit of the story where the establishment is all “but do you really have a better way, maybe there is none and you should just accept it” but then they find a way. I mean, if you asked me to guess, that’s sure what I’d assume and not that the idea is Steven’s managed to find a way more bloodsoaked plan.

Zinnia will follow her convictions until the very end. Even knowing the sacrifices they will require. Even if the sacrificial blade is leveled at her own heart.

… replies Steven. Given genocide, my best interpretation of this is him being sad that they can’t make all their sacrifices suicide to power his not-a-cellphone’s batteries and save so much time and effort currently wasted on needing other people to carry out the genocide. Is that right? … I understand. Thank you for everything.

He then looks at Lucki, who, by the way, is currently wearing the bouncy glow antenna. What is this… This vague sense of apprehension… And my intuition is often proven true. I am going back to Rustboro first. I have to get back to Devon.

Oh boy is Zinnia going to burn down Devon? I don’t know what that has to do with the rest of the plot but she seems to be a decent person and that’s basically the only decent thing to do at this point.

Steven rushes off, hopefully not fast enough to save Genocide Inc. Well, old lady, got anything more to say about Zinnia or morals?

That silver-haired dreamboat said he was headed back to Rustboro.

…