Team Aqua left.
The academy began arranging the evacuation in stages.
"Don't worry. I'll be fine. I'll be out in a moment."
Xu Mu wanted Cynthia to leave first, but this time she refused!
"You do this every time! You always leave me behind and go off on an adventure alone!"
Cynthia pouted, making her displeasure clear.
Don't you know? The viewers are already calling me a pretty face!
I'm the Sinnoh Champion, for crying out loud. I may not have reached my full potential in this world yet, but I'm no pretty face.
How do you expect me to feel when you treat me like this?
Xu Mu thought about it and realized she had a point.
He really had been a little overprotective, without considering Cynthia's feelings.
"All right, then. But I'm serious about this: if there's danger, don't worry about me. Get away immediately!"
"I can afford to get hurt. You can't!"
"Because you're my sweetheart! If you got hurt, it would break my heart!"
Well, that corny line left Cynthia stunned.
"Fine..."
It's not like I enjoy hearing sappy things like that!
With things settled between them, Xu Mu focused on the monster about to burst through the ground.
As everyone knew, the Pokémon World had all sorts of strange things.
Giant Dragonite and giant Tentacruel, for example, or thousand-year-old Gastly and Ninetales.
The anime had shown its viewers creatures like those.
Why did Pokémon like them exist?
Because it was a real world, and a real world could never stay exactly the same.
They were like two-headed turtles and two-headed lizards: mutations born of chance in nature.
The mysterious monster in Rusturf Tunnel was one of them.
Rusturf Tunnel had originally been a mountainside. Because it blocked travel between Verdanturf Town and Rustboro City, humans