Long after the exhibition match had ended, even though both Trainers had already left, the Battle Tower was still filled with the audience's enthusiastic applause and cheers.
From the initial skepticism toward Lucas, to his repeated exceeding of everyone's expectations, and finally to his explosive comeback against the Elite Four member Drake in a moment of crisis—followed by his victory speech—it could be said that after tonight, Lucas's name would echo throughout the entire Hoenn region's Trainer community.
Only a very small number of people knew that in this battle, Lucas hadn't even sent out his main team.
Backstage.
Under Professor Lund's arrangement, Lucas and Drake had a private, friendly exchange.
To Lucas's surprise, Drake—who appeared to be a stern, serious old man radiating an imposing aura—was actually warm-hearted, bold, friendly, and quite humorous once you got past the exterior.
When Professor Lund asked his assistant, Miss Yuko, to prepare drinks, Drake even specifically requested that his hot milk come with added sugar. From his appearance alone, no one would have guessed the old man had such a preference.
After chatting for a long time, Drake left his contact information and expressed his hope that one day he could battle Lucas's Dragonite. He mentioned that his ship was still docked at a port near LaRousse City, clearly indicating his intention to leave.
Thinking about the mountain of things that would inevitably happen tomorrow, Lucas naturally did not stop him.
Professor Lund and Miss Yuko personally saw him off.
Not long after Drake left, Ash and his group, led by the young Tory, arrived at the backstage area in a lively procession.
Lucas accepted the flood of praise, flattery, and admiration without much reaction. After all, defeating a slightly stronger Elite Four member was not something he considered routine, but it wasn't something worth getting overly excited about either.
As for the dinner invitation from the movie-version Ash group, Lucas politely declined. He used the excuse that Moltres and Victini had expended a lot of energy and needed a night of rest.
Once the group had left, Lucas was led by the returning Professor Lund and Miss Yuko straight back to the residence they had arranged for him.
After escorting him there, Professor Lund and Miss Yuko apologized, explaining that some devices in LaRousse City had suffered strange damage and malfunctions. They needed to investigate the cause. With that as their reason, the two hurriedly left again.
Standing by the window of his hotel room, Lucas gazed at the quiet night sky where the aurora had somehow already vanished without a trace.
He sighed. "Is this the last calm before the storm?"
"De-li?"
The Delibird standing on the windowsill with him tilted its head and let out a puzzled cry as it watched the night sky.
"It's nothing. Everyone, get some early rest and recover your strength."
Shaking his head at Delibird, Lucas turned to the Luxray and the others behind him and instructed them.
Although he planned to slack off, he wasn't going to do absolutely nothing. As long as it didn't affect the happy dumpling ending, handling what he could was still fine.
…
The next day.
Lucas received an invitation and once again arrived at Professor Lund's research institute.
Before entering, he saw that in the nearby ecological park, Professor Lund's son Tory was introducing his friends to Ash's group and a few others.
"What do you think of this proposal?"
Professor Lund's words pulled Lucas's attention back to the present.
Looking at the meteorite preserved in the culture tank, Lucas did not answer immediately.
It had to be said—Professor Lund truly was a genius. He had discovered Victini's uniqueness and understood it far more deeply than most people.
As one of the founders and managers of LaRousse City, while dealing with the mysterious malfunctions in the city's devices, he had impulsively pulled up the data recorded by the Battle Tower from yesterday's exhibition match. From that data, he had directly realized that Victini's enhancement on Moltres was far more than a simple Helping Hand move.
After thinking it over for an entire night, he had come to ask Lucas for help.
According to Professor Lund, the meteorite carrying the space Pokémon Deoxys currently only had its core crystal left because of insufficient energy, preventing regeneration. After four years of research, the method they had summarized was to convert the surplus energy saved during the operation of the entire LaRousse City into a special laser to activate the core crystal's activity and achieve self-regeneration.
Unfortunately, even after being extremely frugal, the energy generated by wind power and similar methods was still far from enough to awaken it. After all, what Deoxys lacked was not continuous energy supply, but a high-intensity burst of energy in a short time to activate and awaken it.
However, Victini's performance last night had given them new hope. According to Professor Lund's theory, within this week he would design and build a device capable of absorbing the fiery power released by Moltres after being enhanced by Victini and converting it into energy.
Clearly, Professor Lund did not understand that Victini's enhancement was a universal infinite energy source. He only thought it could strengthen Fire-type Pokémon like Moltres.
Lucas finally understood why Professor Lund's team had failed so many times, yet the protagonists succeeded on their first try in the movie. It turned out that the energy they usually scraped together couldn't run the awakening device at full load. Only when the city was paralyzed and most people had evacuated could they gather the entire city's energy to make it work.
But understanding was one thing—Lucas felt he had no real need to agree to Professor Lund's request. The main reason was simple: by the time they finished building the energy conversion device in a week, everything would already be over.
Just as Lucas was thinking about how to politely refuse, a sharp alarm suddenly blared inside the laboratory.
"What happened!?"
Professor Lund was slightly startled and immediately shouted to those around him.
However, the researchers who were working normally had no idea what was going on either.
At that moment, with a flash on the screen, a real-time video call forcefully pushed its way onto the large central monitor using high-level authority. A more mature-looking Officer Jenny with a fairly high rank appeared on the screen.
Seeing her face, Lucas's breathing subconsciously quickened. He knew—the movie plot was about to begin.
"Professor Lund, we have an emergency!" On the screen, Officer Jenny spoke in a grave voice. "The air defense system has detected two Rayquaza flying straight toward LaRousse City!"
Lucas: "?"
"Why Rayquaza?" Yuko's eyes widened as she murmured.
Professor Lund was also stunned for a second. Then, as if remembering something, he recalled the blurry red afterimage captured by the monitoring system last night while investigating the device malfunctions. Could that have been another Deoxys? Or was it, just as Lucas had warned earlier, that their previous protection measures had been insufficient, and the repeated awakening attempts had directly attracted the vengeful Rayquaza?
Numerous guesses flashed through his mind, but Professor Lund did not panic. He immediately ordered Yuko to check the public surveillance system using his authority.
Soon, Yuko discovered the figure of a Deoxys flying recklessly through the city.
Seeing this, Professor Lund instantly issued orders as the only remaining manager of LaRousse City still inside the city. "There is a Deoxys inside the city. It entered LaRousse City at some point. The Rayquaza's target is most likely it. If they fight, it could easily cause a tragedy. Immediately order the people in the city to evacuate!"
"Understood!" Officer Jenny nodded slightly and, while multitasking, activated the emergency evacuation system.
Just as she was about to head out to direct the evacuation on site, Lucas suddenly spoke up. "Wait. How many Rayquaza did you say there were?"
Officer Jenny's movements paused. She seemed confused why Lucas would ask that, a trace of puzzlement appearing on her face. Although the situation was extremely urgent, considering that Lucas had been invited by Professor Lund and that his strength as a Champion-level Trainer might be needed during the evacuation, Officer Jenny patiently answered: "Two. Is there a problem?"
Lucas didn't reply. Instead, Professor Lund and Miss Yuko could no longer hold back.
"Wait! You said there are two Rayquaza!?"
The two of them, who had initially assumed it was just a slip of the tongue in the emergency, were stunned. Where the hell did two Rayquaza come from!?
"That's right. One of them has a completely different color from the other. It appears to be a shiny Pokémon!"
Just as Officer Jenny said the words that made Lucas's expression twitch and began to pull up photos to send them—a massive explosion suddenly echoed across the skies of LaRousse City.
Even where Lucas and Professor Lund were standing, they could faintly feel the tremor in the buildings and ground.
On the other side of the screen, Officer Jenny's movements froze. As if confirming something, she shouted in shock: "No! The two Rayquaza encountered each other before reaching LaRousse City. They're fighting!"
Everyone: "?????"
…
At the same time.
The residents and tourists of LaRousse City were being orderly and quickly evacuated under the guidance of the Block Robots. Some people looked up at the sky, gazing toward the source of the loud noise. All they could see were violent explosions in the distant horizon and clouds scattered by the shockwaves.
This scene made everyone quicken their pace, including the trio of one boy, one girl, and one cat mixed in among them.
In front of them, a cross-sea bridge built from countless Block Robots was rapidly assembling in mid-air, directly connecting to the city's automated walkways.
Just as Meowth was about to be the first to step onto the bridge, a figure suddenly flew out. It was a humanoid Pokémon with an orange-red body, gene-spiral arms, and a round deep-blue crystal on its chest.
"Meow, what is that, meow!"
Meowth was so scared it spoke human language. The two humans beside it were completely unfazed by the sight, but their expressions turned grave as they stared at the figure, an instinctive chill running down their spines.
Jessie and James subconsciously took a step back. The crowd around them also hesitated to step onto the bridge because of the sudden appearance of this Pokémon.
At this moment, Deoxys had no time to pay attention to these interfering biological signal sources in its eyes. It raised its face—which had no nose or mouth, only two eyes and a slit—gazing at the sky not far away. Its usually expressionless face actually showed a human-like look of solemnity.
Not only was it the Rayquaza that had stopped it from taking its companion away four years ago, violently destroying its body and severely injuring it, forcing it to spend four years regenerating. There was also another Rayquaza with an even more powerful aura!
There were far fewer biological magnetic fields interfering with its vision in the sky, so it could clearly capture the other's figure.
The good news was that the two Rayquaza that had encountered each other did not hold hands and fly toward LaRousse City together. They were currently fighting.
The bad news was that even while fighting, the two giant dragons were still firmly heading this way—fighting and traveling at the same time.
"..."
Not understanding that it had just experienced an emotion called speechlessness, Deoxys instantly made a judgment. Before it found its companion, it could not let these two enter the city!
With that thought, amid the exclamations of the retreating crowd behind it, Deoxys began to change form. Its entire body became smoother and more rounded. This was its innate ability—the Defense Forme of Deoxys.
Without hesitation, the Defense Forme Deoxys brought its arms together. Surging psychic energy turned into an invisible force field. With Deoxys as the center, a massive barrier enveloped the entire LaRousse City. Even the wind power generators in the open areas stopped operating at this moment.
This also meant that LaRousse City was now completely isolated from the outside world. From this moment on, as long as the barrier was not broken, LaRousse City would be in a state where nothing could enter or leave.
To put it bluntly, even though Deoxys's psychic power was vast as the sea, doing all this still consumed a great deal of its strength. At the very least, most of its psychic power was now occupied with maintaining the barrier and could not be used.
But this should at least slow down the two Rayquaza somewhat.
After doing all this, Deoxys turned its direction. Its calm gaze looked down at the many interfering signal sources still lingering at the port. What it needed to do now was to remove these interfering signals that were hindering its search for its companion. Then it only needed to find its companion before the Rayquaza broke through the barrier.
With most of its psychic power unavailable, Deoxys planned to use its cloning ability to gather these people in one place.
—But it didn't get the chance to carry out the plan.
The two Rayquaza that had been fighting each other overhead had already slithered their way over.
The green one was viciously slammed against the barrier by the black one's tail, followed by a merciless Hyper Beam that surged forth.
Amid the violent roar, the entire barrier fluctuated.
—Then, something completely beyond Deoxys's expectations happened.
With a crisp cracking sound, the barrier it had placed high hopes on shattered directly.
…