Chapter 232: Ho-Oh: I'm Warning You, I Will Actually Get Angry!!
Meanwhile:
Zoroark and Beartic had both been knocked out.
N looked at the field — his last remaining Pokémon, badly damaged — and then at the woman across from him. He tilted his cap down slightly, and his expression was heavy in the way of someone who has done everything they could and arrived at an honest answer.
The Champion of Sinnoh. She really was exceptional.
He'd gone all-out and it hadn't been enough.
"You're not going to win this. Give up."
Cynthia's voice was even, without condescension.
"I can't." N shook his head.
He understood his situation completely. He'd understood it before the fight started. But understanding it hadn't changed anything that mattered.
"Champion Cynthia." He looked toward Mega Garchomp, the blade-sharp silhouette of it, the ease with which it had moved through his team. "You can understand this, I think. If Garchomp were in danger — if it were somewhere you couldn't reach — would you give up? Would you be able to stop?"
Cynthia was quiet.
She knew what Garchomp meant to her. The Gible she'd raised, the battles they'd fought together, the championship she wouldn't have reached without the partnership between them. If Garchomp were lost—
She couldn't answer confidently.
"I understand." She exhaled slightly.
If she couldn't persuade N, the only remaining path was to subdue him. She understood his reasons. She could even respect them. But her position and his were opposed, and that was simply true regardless of how much she sympathized.
Then N's expression changed.
Something in his eyes — a shift from heaviness to something else. He looked past Cynthia at the sky.
A low draconic sound, familiar and approaching.
"Zekrom!!"
Cynthia turned.
A black shape closing fast from the direction of the ruins.
Mammon defeated Kyurem.
The implication hit her a second after the identification. If Zekrom was free and heading here, the battle with Kyurem Complete was over — and Mammon had won it.
"Zekrom!!"
N's voice had an unusual quality — not quiet or controlled, genuinely urgent, the composure that was his constant resting state stripped to something simpler. His eyes were moving.
Zekrom came down and landed heavily before N, folding its wings and lowering its head to look directly at its Trainer.
"N. I'm back."
The mental contact was steady and warm.
N's expression did something involuntary. The tears arrived before he had time to organize a response to them — he noticed them, wiped them away with one hand, and walked forward to stand in front of Zekrom.
He put his hand against Zekrom's leg. Just rested it there.
"Welcome back, Zekrom."
He looked up at it and smiled.
He could feel, clearly, what it was: the specific completeness of having something returned that you'd thought was gone. His chest, which had been carrying a particular kind of hollow weight since the night at the prison, was simply — not hollow anymore.
He was genuinely grateful to Mammon. The promise had been kept, exactly as stated.
Elsewhere:
"You lost, Kyurem."
Mammon approached the fallen ice dragon at a measured pace, stopping a short distance out. He spoke without hostility.
(Worth noting: Reshiram was behind him. This did not help much from a geometric standpoint — white dragon, significant size — but what Reshiram lacked in physical concealment it made up for in commitment to the principle.)
Kyurem's eyes moved to Mammon. The look it returned was not friendly.
"Even after absorbing Reshiram, you still lost. That tells you something."
Mammon didn't respond to Kyurem's expression. He extended his hand — the green luminescence of the Power of Viridian flowing outward, finding Kyurem, beginning the work of restoration.
Kyurem felt it. Looked at him with evident surprise.
You're healing me.
"What are you trying to say?" The mental contact that came back was low and rough.
"In raw terms, you're already extraordinary. But this world doesn't reduce entirely to raw power." Mammon kept his voice easy. "Our teamwork still beat you — even as Kyurem Complete. There are things here worth knowing. Things that could make you stronger, if you engaged with them."
The gold eyes moved without pattern for a moment, catching and releasing the light.
The defeat had done something to Kyurem's certainty. Not broken it — but genuinely impacted it. It had believed that at full three-dragon capacity, there was nothing in the world that could beat it. The belief had collided with evidence.
"If I hadn't been outnumbered, I wouldn't have lost."
The pride was still there. It would have been strange if it hadn't been. The black Rayquaza had beaten it, but the black Rayquaza had been loaded with Dragon Dance boosts and Helping Hand stacks and Victini's blessing. That was a fair accounting of events.
"Even so, you lost," Mammon said pleasantly. "And as for Reshiram and Zekrom—"
"I'll let them be." Kyurem's gaze drifted to the white shape partially hidden behind the human. "For now."
It was grudging, but it was acknowledgment.
"Kyurem. Would you consider traveling with me?"
Mammon extended the offer with a calm smile.
"This journey — I can promise it's interesting. You'd encounter things you haven't encountered before."
Reshiram, hearing this, went very still and then very alert.
With Kyurem.
Same team as Kyurem.
This meant Kyurem in close proximity to Reshiram on a daily basis. This meant Kyurem potentially deciding it wanted to eat Reshiram again at any moment. This meant living in a permanent state of low-grade terror about its own continued existence.
Reshiram felt that the sky had fallen again.
Primal Kyogre looked at the clouds and thought quietly about rain. If Kyurem joined, its current standing in the power rankings dropped immediately. There was no version of this where Kyurem outranked Kyurem Complete, and Kyurem Complete was above Primal Kyogre.
Senior status: gone.
It wanted to make it rain.
Kyurem's gold eyes settled on Mammon and stayed there.
Silence.
A few minutes of it.
Black Rayquaza, floating at a comfortable altitude, watched this exchange with an expression that communicated nothing except mild interest. It idly moved its tail in a slow arc.
Interesting question. Would Kyurem say yes?
And then:
"If you want me as your partner—"
Kyurem rose. A flash of lightning ran the length of its body — the shift back to Black Kyurem happening in a fraction of a second.
"—come beat me in a fair fight."
The gold eyes found Mammon's one more time.
"Human. I'll be waiting for your challenge at Giant Chasm."
Black Kyurem turned and launched upward, becoming a shrinking shape against the grey sky, and was gone.
"Hm." Mammon watched the empty air where it had been.
Every top-tier legendary operated on the exact same pride logic. The black Rayquaza had said the same thing. Now Kyurem.
He looked at the black Rayquaza.
Black Rayquaza appeared to feel this was aimed at it.
"Human. I would recommend you handle Kyurem first before you challenge me again."
Its tail moved in a small contented arc. I remain harder to defeat.
"I wouldn't assume that," Mammon said, with a slight smile.
If he caught Kyurem — Black Kyurem, specifically — combined with access to N's Zekrom and his own Reshiram, he could form Kyurem Complete on demand. N would probably cooperate; Mammon had rescued his partner for him, which established a debt that N would want to settle.
The arithmetic of that was interesting.
"In any case — thank you. Genuinely. Today wouldn't have worked without you."
"It was enjoyable." Black Rayquaza's voice carried something that wasn't quite warmth but was perhaps adjacent to it. "That level of power — I've never felt anything like it before."
The combination of Victini's blessing, Helping Hand stacks, and maximum Dragon Dance had been something new even for something that had existed as long as Rayquaza had. For a moment near the end of the fight, it had felt a genuine impulse to go challenge Arceus.
It was glad it hadn't acted on that.
"I'll leave now. Work on the young one — the child has potential and no discipline."
Black Rayquaza glanced at the young Rayquaza, which became very interested in a section of frozen ground nearby.
"Goodbye. Take care of yourself."
A single nod. The resonant cry. And Black Rayquaza was gone.
Mammon turned his attention to Ho-Oh.
"Ho-Oh. Thank you. You held up well."
Ho-Oh was currently staring at something.
Specifically, at Jirachi and Victini, who had returned from their mission and were now standing in front of Mammon carrying armloads of rainbow-colored feathers. Various quality — some pristine, some coated in the frost residue from the battle. Most salvageable after cleaning and sunlight exposure.
Jirachi and Victini, feeling the intensity of the gaze, edged slowly toward Mammon's back.
"Human!!"
"Yes?"
"You deplorable, shameless, naturally villainous human—!!"
Ho-Oh's composure had reached its operational limit.
Having her feathers collected while she could see it happening was — it was one thing to lose feathers in a difficult fight. It was another thing entirely to watch the people responsible for said difficult fight immediately collect those feathers while she was still standing there. In front of her. Making eye contact.
Could they at least have waited until she'd left??
"I understand your frustration," Mammon said, with the tone of someone who doesn't. "But you know the value of what you produce. Letting it go to waste would be—"
"Don't you dare finish that sentence." Ho-Oh's beak clicked once, sharp. "Don't."
Mammon closed his mouth.
Ho-Oh's chest rose and fell several times with visible deliberation. When she spoke again, her voice had returned to something approaching composed.
"Human. That is the second favor fulfilled. One remains."
"Correct."
"And I want you to know—" Mammon thought he heard something like real feeling in her voice, under all the irritation— "you genuinely are an effective force to work alongside. I find you insufferable, but you're capable. If you were a different kind of person, I might have enjoyed this."
"That's the nicest thing you've said to me," Mammon said.
"Don't push it."
"Completely understood."
Ho-Oh turned. Wings extended. She paused with her back to him.
"—And I am warning you, right now, for the last time." The voice was very deliberate. "If the next favor involves anything at the level of a Shiny Mega Rayquaza or a three-dragon Kyurem—"
She turned her head just far enough to look at him with one eye.
"—I will actually be angry. That's not a figure of speech. I will be genuinely, specifically angry."
"Noted," Mammon said.
"I mean it."
"I believe you."
A beat.
"Goodbye, human."
She left. The rainbow trail of her passage faded over the frozen ruins.
Mammon watched her go.
Third favor. He turned the possibilities over in his mind. Something that wasn't at Rayquaza or Kyurem's level — so something below absolute apex tier. That left quite a lot of options. He'd think about it.
(End of Chapter)
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