"How are you?"
Pheobe looked at Baimu with concern. He seemed dazed.
He did not answer.
Several seconds passed before he came to his senses. "I'm fine. I just got yelled at."
"Yelled at?"
Pheobe did not understand.
Who here had yelled at him? Who would dare?
Baimu rubbed his temples. "Basically, Groudon caught me touching the Red Orb."
Pheobe: "???"
The Vermilion Orb could connect directly to Groudon? Why had that never happened to her?
She did not touch it every day, but she handled it now and then.
Faced with Pheobe's confusion, Baimu did not know where to begin. He was just as bewildered.
His instincts told him it probably had something to do with the Heart of God.
The Heart of God required focus and contact to activate. He had met both conditions, and somehow, the Vermilion Orb had served as a medium connecting his mind to Groudon's.
Why would Groudon open up to some stranger? Naturally, it had thrown him out in a fury.
Regice had been right: using the Heart of God on an unfamiliar Legendary Pokémon was dangerous. Pheobe had pulled his hand away quickly, yet Baimu had still felt as though his soul had been plunged into a hell of molten rock.
It was hard to imagine what would have happened if he had kept touching it...
Whatever happened to him, an earth-shattering battle in Hoenn would have been inevitable.
Neither Aggron and the others nor Calyrex and the others back on Platinum Silver Mountain seemed like Pokémon that could be reasoned with.
"Why don't you... try touching a different one?"
Pheobe picked up the indigo orb and held it out to him.
Baimu waved both hands. "No, thanks. I don't want to offend two of them in one go."
"I see."
The