Early the next morning, Alex and the girls, including Lyra and Mika, who had teleported back to participate, gathered around the long table in the command center, their eyes fixed on the projector at the far end displaying an image of the open sea. It showed the exact coordinates of Team Dominion's main base, which Sabrina had given Alex the previous day, unchanged since it was first displayed during their initial discussion. They were waiting for the inevitable attack on Team Dominion's base, a supposedly historic moment for their organization.
"So... you're just going to drop a bomb on it?" Kaia asked skeptically. "Can't they, like, run away?"
"We determined yesterday that there was no feasible way to prevent that," Alex said. "First of all, we have no idea what we're even looking at, so we can't properly plan a ground assault. Secondly, even if we deployed Iris to create a psychic blockade around the place, we don't know what kind of defenses we'd be walking into."
"Even if we moved forward with that plan assuming the worst," Nyx continued, "the resulting battle would be too devastating. Imagine trying to infiltrate this base without knowing what was inside. We'd be no different from Team Dominion when they tried to pull that off here and at the base in Johto, and we all know how that ended."
"So, we decided to just blow everything up and pick through whatever scraps are left behind," Alex said. "It's safer, and we'd be knocking their technology back by decades, more than enough time for the League to catch up and surpass them. Plus, we might recover some fancy tech, and I might even get to feed Guzzlord. He's been getting antsy lately, so the trash clearly isn't enough to keep him satiated."
"Okay~ I'm good on my end," Rhea announced over the intercom.
"You can go ahead anytime," Alex replied.
"That's no fun! I want a countdown!" she shot back.
"I'm pretty sure you're supposed to do that on your end," Nyx retorted.
"I want a countdown!" she insisted.
"Alright," Alex said with a chuckle, indulging her. "10… 9… 8…"
"What!? You're already starting!? Wait a minute, wait a minute—"
"7… 6… 5…"
"Almost there," Rhea muttered, the sound of rapid typing filling the background.
"4… 3… 2…"
"Alright! Let's gooo…"
"1…"
"Lift off!" Rhea shouted as she slammed her fist onto a large red button.
On the screen, a tiny silver sphere materialized in the sky, appearing via teleportation. It began to fall slowly at first, gathering momentum as it descended, its surface flaring with intensifying silver energy. Within seconds, its form became engulfed in a churning metallic glow, transforming it into a silver meteorite tearing through the atmosphere.
From sea level, counterfire erupted. Bullets and concentrated energy beams streaked in from multiple directions, extending well beyond the initial scope of the feed. It was immediately clear through the projection that their target was far larger than they had first assumed, prompting a rapid zoom-out of the display.
As the descending sphere was bombarded, the impacts forced it off course, but it didn't stop. It pressed downward relentlessly, the surrounding energy cloud thickening until incoming rounds began to vanish outright on contact.
Then, a kilometer above sea level, it detonated.
A mushroom cloud of silver energy erupted across the screen, swallowing the entire visual field. At its core, briefly visible before being overwhelmed, was a dome-shaped energy shield that only became apparent at the moment of impact. It flickered under the sustained pressure of the blast, the remnant energy chewing through its structure until, like glass under strain, it finally shattered, revealing what it had been hiding.
Beneath it lay a massive island crater, with a military base at its center. Over a hundred airships hovered or docked across its expanse, alongside thousands of aircraft, dozens of buildings, space rockets, and vast stretches of training grounds. Dense forests ringed the perimeter, broken by multiple building-sized turrets and constant patrols of circling aircraft overhead.
At first glance, the island appeared only lightly affected, completely protected from the blast. But a closer look revealed the devastation layered beneath the surface. Craters pocked the terrain, airships were riddled with holes, and aircraft and buildings alike had been torn to shreds by shrapnel. Rhea's bombs were coated in Feint energy designed to bypass Protect shields, so it made sense that the fragmentation had penetrated; the primary blast, however, had been absorbed by the now-failed energy dome.
"That… is impressive," Nyx said with a whistle. "Is there a possibility for us to take control of that island as is?"
"Nope," Alex said, shaking his head. "Look closely."
Like a Beedrill nest that had been disturbed, an army erupted from the buildings and underground entrances. Soldiers, robots, mind-controlled Pokémon, and an array of vehicles poured out in coordinated waves by the thousands. They surged toward the airships, aircraft, and remaining installations, rapidly reorganizing into defensive formations as they prepared to repel further assaults.
"I don't think we can take that on even with all the members of the Silver Network," Lyra commented. "I doubt even the League would find it easy to do that."
"Good thing I have more babies then," Rhea said over the intercom, followed by the familiar sound of her fist slamming onto the same big red button. "Ei!"
Another silver sphere appeared in the sky, concealed within the dust cloud. It fell as before, wrapped in intensifying silver energy, until it finally emerged into view just beyond the area previously covered by the dome.
This time, however, it was already far too close for the defenders to intercept. They barely had time to react before it detonated in a second, far more violent eruption.
A mushroom cloud of silver energy rose from ground level at the island's center, ripping outward in all directions. Everything above ground was obliterated, including the perimeter defenses surrounding the crater, while the blast also tore deep into the earth beneath.
It took nearly 10 minutes, but eventually the bottom of the crater was revealed, a labyrinth of interwoven metal structures. It resembled a Durant nest, illuminated by the cold blue glow of energy cells powering everything within. Smoke rose in thick plumes as secondary explosions erupted sporadically, indicating that critical damage had been dealt to the facility.
Still, it didn't look like it was enough as a swarm of androids came out, immediately beginning repairs. They put out the fires, welded the ruptured piping, began moving the power cells around, and overall prevented critical failures from continuing.
"That goes pretty deep," Nyx commented, impressed. "Their level of technology must be even more advanced than we initially thought."
"Still not enough!?" Rhea complained before shouting, "How many times do I have to teach you this lesson, old man!?"
"Rhea, you can stop now—" Alex started to say, but it was already too late; the familiar sound of the big red button being pressed cut him off.
Above the cratered island, a third silver sphere appeared before it began to fall. It went completely undetected since there was nothing left capable of detecting it as it crashed through the metal labyrinth and detonated deep within.
At the center of the crater, the detonation flared outward in a sudden surge of overwhelming bright silver light and force, swallowing everything in an instant. The blast tore through the already hollowed-out interior and forced everything away, sending a shockwave that tore open the crater even further.
When the light receded, the entire crater had changed; what was once layered metal infrastructure was now a fused, reformed basin of wreckage, its interior walls coated in slagged debris and welded scrap. The surface glowed in places with residual heat, shifting between dull red and burnt black as molten metal cooled unevenly, turning the whole center into a scorched, metallic cavity lined with the compressed remains of the facility.
"I… don't think there's anything left to salvage," Mika pointed out.
"What are you talking about?" Rhea asked. "Look, there's plenty of scrap metal."
"Either way, that's more than enough," Alex said as he stood. "Let's get down there and see what's left."
"What are the chances they have a self-destruct button ready to blow everything up?" Lyra asked.
"Slim to none," Nyx said. "I doubt they have anything as devastating as what Rhea made, so they likely went for a distributed system designed to trigger a chain reaction to bring the entire place down. Given that the ceiling has already been fused like that, there's no remaining structure left that could meaningfully propagate a secondary collapse. If anything, they'd have detonated it already if they intended to prevent retrieval of sensitive materials."
Alex, Lyra, and Mika, already fully geared in Champion ranked bounty hunter equipment, made their way to Rhea's laboratory, which looked more like an airplane hangar filled with all sorts of tech. There, they spotted the device responsible for long-range teleportation, a smoking crystal surrounded by a dozen of Iris's Butterfree performing a coordinated Teleport.
Through yesterday's tests, Rhea had discovered that a single Pokémon, even one of Gardevoir's caliber, wasn't enough, as the distance was simply too great. To remedy this, a single teleporter was to be supported by a dozen others to amplify the energy, bypassing distance limitations through precise coordinates that stabilized and facilitated the calculation.
"Why is it smoking?" Mika asked, concern evident in her tone as she stared at the crystal, which had shrunk since the last time Alex had seen it.
"That's just impurities in the crystal overheating from the energy being passed through it. Don't worry about it. It can definitely handle one more use before it needs to cool down," Rhea replied as she joined them, wearing her Champion ranked exosuit.
All four of them stood around a clearly marked circle on the ground, right next to two more 5-meter-diameter silver spheres suspended in the air by automated cranes, both primed for detonation.
"Nyx," Alex called out as everyone prepared. "You can send out the airship for extraction now, and feel free to put the League on hold during the operation. They'll definitely want a slice of this pie afterward."
"Got it!"
With a flash of light, the four of them vanished and reappeared at the island crater, ready to finally put Team Dominion's threat down once and for all.