"Kyogre!!"
Molly's voice silenced the entire office in an instant...
Time seemed to stop!
Then came a sudden chorus of gulps, a telephone clattering onto the tile floor, and chairs toppling over.
All at once!
"We're d-d-d-dead! We're doomed!"
"Ho-Oh above, I watched Big Fish & Begonia yesterday, and now it's actually coming true..."
"N-no! That can't be!"
The whole office descended into chaos. Rumi, wearing light makeup that did little to hide the dark circles under her eyes, blinked blankly, her long lashes trembling...
She, she, she...
"I haven't even gotten married yet..."
Sorrow welled up in her, and she felt an urge to sob.
Just then, a staff member in Tortoiseshell Glasses calmly opened the window, his face expressionless.
"Hmm. Bright sunshine."
Of course. The world was so harmonious these days. Surely the apocalypse wouldn't come out of nowhere.
The sunshine meant Kyogre either hadn't awakened, or something was wrong even if it had.
Molly saw the sky outside too and finally let out a long breath...
It wasn't that the staff were overreacting. Their nerves were on edge every moment of the day.
Pokémon Rangers and their support staff dealt with beings beyond ordinary limits as a matter of routine.
The Deep Sea, volcanoes, Celebi, Heatran—things that seemed impossibly distant to ordinary people were right on their doorstep!
And they had to be especially vigilant about beings said to be capable of "ending the world."
Even after Molly breathed a sigh of relief, her expression remained grave. Jackie loved to joke, but he never fooled around with serious matters. If he said he'd seen Kyogre, then he had.
Even Ditto, a master of transformation, could not reproduce Kyogre's innate, soul-shaking presence, no matter how perfectly it copied its form.
Nor should any ordinary illusion have been able