Rivals

Why had a seabed cavern that once existed mysteriously vanished?

As far as Baimu knew,

perhaps only Secret Power, the move that could carve out a Secret Space in a rock wall in the games, could explain the strange phenomenon.

Or it could be a Mirage Spot.

Mirage Spots were unusual locations in Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire. In the games, they could only be discovered and reached by soaring through the sky with the Eon duo. They did not exist all the time, much like the original Mirage Island.

On the screen, the miniature submarine surfaced and stopped. No one came to retrieve it, even after a long wait. Only after checking other files did Yanagihara learn that the command to surface had not come from the ship.

When the Sharpedo rammed the miniature submarine, internal components had been damaged. Porygon misread the ship's recall command, and the network connection went down as well. When the submarine surfaced near Sea Mauville, its strange, unfamiliar appearance immediately drew the attention of curious Wingull.

Some of the bolder ones flew over and pecked at it, apparently trying to break it open and see what was inside.

Under attack, Porygon immediately switched to an offensive mode—

It used sound waves to drive off the wild Wingull.

Much like the beloved Milotic had driven off the wild Gyarados, the sound waves proved highly effective. The wild Wingull fled in an instant.

Unfortunately, their attacks had already damaged the miniature submarine. With its earlier damage on top of that, the camera feed suddenly grew blurry.

Through the haze, black smoke seemed to rise from the submarine's hull.

Then the camera went completely dark.

The recording had more than ten minutes left, but Baimu could already guess what came next.

*Was this the countdown