Chapter 226: Groudon and Kyogre — The Dragon of Truth Is Exactly This Genuine
Primal Groudon stared up at the black Rayquaza — at the way its draconic pressure filled the space like something more than just a large Pokémon — and shook its head emphatically.
"No. No no no. Giovanni, you want me to fight THAT?"
It had a very clear mental image of what that would look like. The image involved itself on the ground looking extremely bad. The image involved the black Rayquaza standing over it.
"That would end poorly for me specifically."
Giovanni made a quiet sound of amusement. The situation was genuinely entertaining.
"And you're certain the fat fish actually beat that thing?"
Groudon was back to this. The more it looked at the black Rayquaza, the harder it was to accept.
"Absolutely certain."
"Impossible. There's no version of that where that happens."
Primal Groudon was not being unreasonable. It had direct, firsthand knowledge of relative power levels across millennia. It and Kyogre were roughly equivalent. Mega Rayquaza was meaningfully above them both — that had been the established order since before anyone had thought to record it. Kyogre beating Mega Rayquaza should have been like a Magikarp beating them.
And yet Giovanni's expression wasn't the expression of someone who was lying.
"That was genuine, but there were… specific circumstances involved."
Giovanni considered how to characterize what had happened at Larousse — Kyogre's stacking Calm Minds, Dark Mewtwo's support, the accumulated conditions that had made it possible — and concluded that "specific circumstances" was sufficient.
Groudon fell into a period of silent, troubled contemplation.
Above, the atmosphere had drawn tight.
The frozen sky hung overhead — dark, inverted with ice formations, snowflakes still drifting down through the cold air — and under it, the Shiny Mega Rayquaza moved.
Not toward Kyurem immediately. Just — repositioning. Flowing. The minute air currents surrounding it were doing something deliberate, Delta Stream manifesting not as weather but as a kind of personal atmospheric management, keeping the worst of the cold at a slight remove.
Black Rayquaza was still weak to Ice, even with Delta Stream eliminating its Flying-type vulnerability. It wasn't quadruply weak the way Rayquaza without the barrier would be, but it wasn't comfortable either.
Black Kyurem watched it move.
"ROOOARR!!"
It committed.
The turbine at its tail blazed blue-violet, electrical arcs crackling around it in rapid, continuous bursts. The energy built quickly — filling the dragon's frame, coalescing into a ring of lightning-infused force, beautiful in the way that things of genuine danger often are.
Freeze Shock. Black Kyurem's signature.
It drove directly at the black Rayquaza.
"ROOOARR!!"
The black Rayquaza answered immediately — no hesitation, no repositioning, straight into the charge — its body blazing green, the light intensifying as it built speed until it formed into something clean and precise.
Fly.
It hadn't been called, hadn't been given a command — there was no trainer behind it issuing orders. It moved on its own, the way something that has existed long enough to not need guidance moves.
Fly vs. Freeze Shock.
BOOM.
The collision was centered between them, but the shockwave wasn't. The impact expanded outward in every direction simultaneously — a sphere of force that cracked the frozen sky further, drove the snow sideways, and caved in a section of the ruins below.
Primal Kyogre and the others scattered, putting distance between themselves and the blast radius. Dark Mewtwo materialized at Mammon's side in the same instant, psychic barrier up.
The sky above the two combatants was no longer uniformly dark. The impact had split it into deep green and blue-violet — two colors occupying the space where the battle was happening, contrasting brilliantly against the ice.
"Strong."
Even Primal Kyogre, floating at a distance, delivered this assessment flatly.
The Freeze Shock and Fly had hit at the same time, each absorbed by the other's force, and for a moment neither combatant moved.
Then the black Rayquaza's tail found Kyurem's side.
"ROOOARR!!"
It swung with everything — the blue-green glow of Outrage — and Kyurem took it. All of it. The consecutive impacts landed, Kyurem's frame shaking with each one, and it was driven backward with a sound like continuous thunder.
Simultaneously, Kyurem's Ice Beam fired.
Upward. At close range.
The blast caught the black Rayquaza's upper body, and between the Outrage drenching it in kinetic energy and the water from Primordial Sea still heavy on its scales — the freeze spread fast. One second, two—
Black Rayquaza's upper half was solid ice.
For approximately three seconds.
Then it flexed.
The ice shattered from the inside out, fragments spinning away, and Black Rayquaza emerged from it looking annoyed in the way that only something that has been frozen solid and immediately broken free can look.
Black Kyurem's eyes flared.
This opponent.
This is a real opponent.
"Both of them are extraordinary," Giovanni said quietly.
He wasn't wrong. Even watching from the ground, the scale of the exchange was difficult to fully process. Not just the power involved — the quality of it. Two things at the genuine top of their respective categories, neither one holding anything back.
"Hmm. That flying green Caterpie is going to win."
Primal Groudon had made its call, delivered with the certainty of something that has decided where its loyalty lies.
It had spent significant time being annoyed at Rayquaza in the abstract. But Rayquaza was, categorically, the apex of the sky — and that made it, by extension, the apex of Groudon's natural order. A win for Rayquaza was, arguably, a win for the correct hierarchy of things.
Kyurem could get absolutely destroyed as far as Groudon was concerned.
Had frozen it. Twice.
"Your analysis seems reasonable," Giovanni said, "though—"
"GROUDON!!"
The Hydro Pump came from behind, fast, and caught Primal Groudon squarely. It went forward — driven by the water pressure — and caught itself before it went all the way down, spinning to find the source.
Primal Kyogre. Floating there. Looking at absolutely nothing in particular.
"ROOOARR!! (YOU AMBUSH ME WHILE I'M WATCHING THE FIGHT—)"
"Hmm. (I don't know what you're talking about.)"
Primal Kyogre's expression was a masterpiece of innocence.
Groudon's eyes narrowed.
"(You ridiculous round-headed fish, come DOWN HERE and fight me like a Pokémon.)"
"(I don't fly. But if you could somehow get up here, that would be quite something.)"
"(Get DOWN.)"
"(Get UP.)"
"(You—)"
Giovanni watched the exchange with an expression that had evolved, over the course of several minutes, into something that could not quite be called amusement and could not quite be called exasperation.
He kept trying to identify the right word.
"Bickering" was close. "Aggressive flirting" was closer and much more unsettling.
He decided not to examine it further and turned his attention back to the actual battle happening in the sky.
"How are you holding up?" Mammon asked.
"It's strong." Black Rayquaza's mental voice was low and unruffled. "But not stronger than me."
"Do you want support?"
By which Mammon meant Dark Mewtwo's psychic intervention — the kind of assistance that had, over the course of an extended Calm Mind accumulation, allowed Primal Kyogre to push the black Rayquaza to its limit the last time they'd met.
"No."
The dragon's eyes lit with something that was pure, clean fighting spirit — the specific energy of something that has found an opponent worth its time.
"I am the strongest Dragon. I don't need it."
Mammon watched the black Rayquaza drift back toward Kyurem with the unhurried confidence of something that has already decided the answer.
"Same as always," he murmured, the smile small but genuine.
Dragons were proud. It was inherent to the type. And the ones at the absolute apex of Dragon — Rayquaza, Kyurem — carried a pride so fundamental it wasn't even posturing. It was just what they were.
He believed it.
White Kyurem announced itself before it arrived.
The fire bloomed from Black Kyurem's tail and ran the length of its body — instantaneous transformation, white where there had been black, feather-crested where there had been hard angles.
White Kyurem.
"ROOOARR~!!"
And with it: Blizzard. Full power, filling the sky, a wall of ice and wind that obscured everything behind it.
Black Rayquaza went straight up.
Not sideways, not into the Blizzard — straight up, faster than the storm could follow, until it was above the cloud ceiling, above the frozen sky, and then it turned.
From above, a vortex formed. Delta Stream manifesting not as passive atmosphere but as active force — a twisting column of concentrated wind that descended from where Rayquaza hung in the sky above, pulling the Blizzard and the rain and everything in the air into it.
The Twister descended at White Kyurem like a grey tower.
"ROOOARR!!"
White Kyurem's response was immediate — the ice-blue ring expanding outward from its body in a wave.
Glaciate.
CrackCRACKcrack—
The Twister froze.
Mid-air, the entire column of rotating wind crystallized — a massive pillar of ice where there had been storm — and hung there for one impossible second.
Then Black Rayquaza hit it.
Going down now, at speed — the full weight of its body and the full force of the dive — smashing through the frozen Twister, which shattered into ice fragments the size of boulders, and continuing through to White Kyurem before the ice had finished falling.
Black Rayquaza's body wrapped around White Kyurem. Not a grab — an envelopment, the long serpentine form coiling once around the ice dragon before Kyurem could respond.
White Kyurem's claws came up. Immediate, vicious—
Black Rayquaza was already moving.
It drove downward. Full speed. White Kyurem secured against it, no escape route available—
BOOM.
The impact left a crater.
The entire ruins site shuddered with the force of it, fractures running outward from the point of contact, every person on the ground involuntarily lowering their center of gravity.
White Kyurem lay in the crater and roared with fury.
I am Kyurem. I am the body of the Dragon of Unova. I should not be losing to a flying green—
"Woo!!!"
Primal Groudon had stopped arguing with Kyogre and was staring at the crater with eyes that said everything necessary about its current emotional state.
"That's Rayquaza! That's what Rayquaza does!"
The solidarity was real. The pride was genuine. You could feel it.
Then the Hydro Pump hit it in the back.
"ROOOARR!! (FAT FISH, DO YOU HAVE ANY DIGNITY—)"
"Hmm?? (I don't know what happened, I was just standing here.)"
"You—"
"(Friends! Come help me! Groudon is attacking me!)"
Primal Kyogre's appeal went out to everyone in range.
The young Rayquaza looked up. The Shiny Genesect's cannon rotated slightly. Even Reshiram, which had been pressed against a wall for the past several minutes hoping not to be noticed, perked up with sudden interest.
"Beat it up! Kyogre, you go first!"
The Dragon of Truth was delighted.
The Dragon of Truth was always delighted when someone else was the target.
Primal Groudon: Σ()
…Is this right? Is this the correct outcome here?
(End of Chapter)
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