"They're trying to escape into the Dragon's Maw!"
On the bridge of the Pokémon League flagship, a staff officer watched the Team Rocket fleet's strange movements on the radar and immediately shouted.
"Trying to use the complex terrain to escape? Naive!" A cold sneer curled Lance's lips. As an heir to the dragon-taming clan, he knew far more about the sea than most people. Of course he knew how dangerous the Dragon's Maw was, but that was all the more reason he could not let these lunatics escape into it.
"Pass on my orders! The entire fleet is to follow! Let's see how long they can last in this death zone!" Lance's confidence came from the Pokémon League fleet's performance, which far surpassed Team Rocket's, and his absolute faith in his Dragonite's formidable strength. Without hesitation, he gave the order to pursue.
The Pokémon League's elite fleet followed close behind like sharks scenting blood, plunging headlong into the forbidden waters shrouded in eternal fog.
Yet the moment they entered the Dragon's Maw, they sensed something was wrong.
In this fog, where visibility was less than ten meters and submerged reefs lay everywhere, Team Rocket's fleet did not slow down. Instead, they moved with the ease of ducks strolling through their own backyard. At every critical moment, they made precise turns, skimming at the tightest possible angles past enormous submerged reefs that emerged like specters from the thick fog. Their formation remained perfectly intact, and they were even sailing a little faster than they had on the open sea.
The Pokémon League fleet, meanwhile, found itself in serious trouble.
"Warning! Submerged reef spotted thirty meters to starboard!"
"Unidentified current to port! We're losing control of the ship!"
"Severe interference with the radar signal! We've lost our lock on the Team Rocket