Following its near-disastrous awakening of Kyogre almost a decade ago in Hoenn, Team Aqua has been subject to a precipitous loss of clout and force in the Hoenn underworld. Although much has been discovered regarding the structure and activities of this eco-terrorist syndicate, much of Team Aqua's past remains an enigma to observers.
Activities
As unlikely as it may seem when considering the disparate remnants of this once-formidable organization, until recently, Team Aqua's activities greatly exceeded their present scope of their campaigns of sabotage against deep-sea mining equipment and ships carrying toxic cargoes and their petty harassment of Wailmer and Lapras hunters. Prior to their successful re-awakening of Kyogre, Team Aqua had also been known to engage in a diverse array of activities of varying degrees of illegality in the name of "defending and expanding" the world's oceans, ranging from theft of Pokémon, industrial prototypes, sea vessels, and historical artifacts, corruption of minors, the use of Pokémon as weapons and instruments of intimidation against suspected opponents and members of rival eco-terrorist syndicate Team Magma (one particularly infamous incident involving an attempted attack against a minor aboard a crowded commuter train), deliberately damaging ecological preserves by converting sizable areas of land into artificial marshland to benefit Water-Type Pokémon, and corrupting local media outlets in order to drum up and direct public outrage at Team Magma while downplaying Team Aqua's own activities.
Some of Team Aqua's activities are still very-poorly understood, and were known only through the organization's recent awakening of Kyogre and later seizure of a cache of syndicate documents by local authorities. One of these activities was a series of infiltrations and thefts from offices of various governmental agencies, media outlets, and other private entities in what appears to be an attempt to purge all unfavorable records of activities by Team Aqua members, with a focus on information pertaining to syndicate Leaders and Admins. The full scale of this infiltration is still unknown, though conservative estimates have suggested that at least 200 operatives were involved in infiltrating governmental organizations alone. Although it was long presumed that Team Aqua did not engage in campaigns of wholesale slaughter against creatures associated with its rivals as Team Magma did, it appears that Team Aqua may have engaged in a similar scheme involving captive Fire and Ground-Type Pokémon. According to the seized documents, Team Aqua had hacked Hoenn's PC Network on at least 4 separate occasions, and pilfered hundreds of Pokémon in each attack, primarily Water-Types, Fire-Types, and Ground-Types, which appear to coincide with a series of mass disappearances of stored Pokémon that were initially believed to have been caused by system glitches. Although a vast majority of the pilfered Pokémon have since been recovered following a series of raids on Team Aqua facilities after the Kyogre incident, no trace was ever found of the missing Fire and Ground-Type Pokémon. It is widely presumed that these missing creatures were exterminated en masse, though a small number of unconfirmed accounts suggest that some of the stolen Fire and Ground-Types may have been transferred to a criminal syndicate based in a distant land engaging in inhumane behavioral and psychological experiments upon Pokémon in return for funds.
Organization
In its heyday, Team Aqua enjoyed a level of centralization that its primary rival, Team Magma never fully achieved thanks to its relative lack of public infamy and a seeming inability for law enforcement officials to provide evidence substantiating most allegations of illegal activity by Team Aqua members. The organization appeared to be structured around a central Leader planning out various campaigns, which were executed by operatives under the command of a small number of admins, with communication between all levels of command appearing to have been carried out via encrypted electronic messages. At the time of Kyogre's awakening, Team Aqua was led by a figure known as "Archie, " who was later determined to be Hoenn TV Director *** ***, with two confirmed Admins "Shelly" and "Matt, " with a third known as "Amber" rumored to have been active. The whereabouts of all of these figures is presently unknown, though online messages from "Shelly" and "Matt" have periodically surfaced. Presently, Team Aqua, or rather the disparate groups that claim the Team Aqua moniker, consist of a collection of small, autonomous cells, often based in difficult-to-access coastal hideouts, which rarely interact or collaborate with each other.
History
Team Aqua's origins remain a mystery to observers, though the organization is known to have been active as an eco-terrorist syndicate in some form for at least 40 years. Numerous hypotheses have been put forth regarding the source of Team Aqua's inception, ranging from being the spawn of a student environmental activist group, the product of a regional gang embracing a water-centric and environmental-warrior ethos in order to broaden its ranks and public standing, an evolution of a local paramilitary organization, and a recently published and hotly-contested hypothesis that Team Aqua and its nemesis organization Team Magma may share a common descent from a Team Rocket splinter group. In any case, it appears that the awakening of Kyogre became a central goal to Team Aqua almost immediately after its first exposure to the broader public in Hoenn, and is known to have predated "Archie's" leadership over the syndicate by at least 15 years. Prior to the incident involving Kyogre which was ultimately subdued by a minor whose identity has remained withheld from the public due to security concerns, Team Aqua was known to be well-received in some public circles, and was occasionally the subject of civic honors and awards.
