Chapter 227: Three Dragons United — Kyurem! I Am the Strongest Dragon!!
Mammon didn't pay much attention to whatever was happening between Primal Groudon and Primal Kyogre. Those two had been in a state of mutually-assured antagonism for geological ages; whatever they were doing wasn't going to be resolved or escalate into anything genuinely concerning.
The interesting fight was the one in the sky.
After driving White Kyurem into the crater, Black Rayquaza rose to altitude, then brought its tail around in a sweeping downward strike — earth-colored energy building in the motion.
Earthquake.
The ground-type shockwave radiated outward in a visible ring from the point of impact.
A split second later, Black Kyurem shifted back — the fire burning off it reversed, the electrical surge running the length of its body again. Black Kyurem, once more. Its roar accompanied a hail of ice chunks descending on Black Rayquaza from above.
Avalanche.
Both moves landed.
The ground shook. The ice came down.
Earthquake caught Kyurem regardless of type advantage — real physical force, real impact. The Avalanche caught Rayquaza, which it did have a type advantage against, and which had the additional property of doubling in power when the user had already been hit in the same turn.
Rayquaza had hit first.
Mammon watched this sequence with a slightly analytical expression.
That was a poor trade.
Black Rayquaza was ahead in this fight and had been ahead throughout. In that position, there was no reason to go hit-for-hit with Kyurem when Dragon Pulse or another ranged option could deal damage and still leave room to dodge Kyurem's counterattack. Charging in and eating an Avalanche after landing an Earthquake was exactly the kind of aggressive direct exchange that had contributed to its loss at Larousse.
It was a habit, not a mistake. Rayquaza at its power level was accustomed to winning by being stronger. Being stronger didn't require strategy.
The problem was that Black Kyurem after absorbing Zekrom was close to that level.
Black Kyurem pushed to its feet, roaring with fury.
Rayquaza's Dragon Pulse hit it in the chest before it had fully risen — the detonation drove it sideways, but its tail was already moving, Outrage's blue-green glow trailing as it swung in a return arc that caught Rayquaza and knocked it back a meter.
They separated.
Black Kyurem steadied in the air, its eyes burning.
Difficult. Genuinely difficult.
Then it rose. Turbine alight with ice-blue energy, thin transmission lines running from the energy source along its back, the cryogenic cold concentrating rapidly into something dense and deliberate.
Rayquaza recognized the change in quality and went higher immediately.
The release came anyway.
From Black Kyurem's maw: cold. Not a beam of ice — a temperature, a concentrated impossibility directed at where Rayquaza had been a second before. The space it passed through went white.
Sheer Cold.
Not the game mechanic. Not an instant-KO. But the real thing — temperatures approaching absolute zero in a directed column, which was, if anything, more immediately terrifying than a one-hit elimination move.
Rayquaza had been above it. The cold swept through the air underneath and left frost on the ruins far below.
Black Kyurem launched upward after it.
Extreme Speed — the black shape crossing the distance before the eye could follow — and drove into Black Kyurem's chest from the front.
Kyurem went down again.
From the ground, Rayquaza's Dragon Pulse fired into the crater.
Another impact. Another pained roar from the crater.
"Black Kyurem is strong," Mammon said. "But it's still losing."
Caitlin had appeared at his side at some point — the outcome of whatever had happened with Leon leaving her with time to reposition. Her expression was composed. "The black Rayquaza is the more capable combatant."
"By a margin. Even with Zekrom absorbed, Kyurem can't match Rayquaza's mobility."
Rayquaza was longer, faster, more agile in the air. Kyurem's power was immense but its approach to combat was direct — and against something that could move as fluidly as the black Rayquaza, directness had limits.
He looked toward the other situation developing nearby and stopped.
Primal Groudon was on the ground, arms over its head, curled into as small a shape as a mountainous legendary Pokémon could achieve. Surrounding it at the four cardinal points: Primal Kyogre, the young Rayquaza, the Shiny Genesect, and Reshiram — each contributing to the situation from their respective angle.
Reshiram was, for the record, the most enthusiastic participant.
The attacks weren't particularly effective. The young Rayquaza and Genesect weren't landing anything that meaningfully hurt Groudon. Reshiram's contributions were similarly limited. Even Kyogre's Hydro Pump was operating under the suppressing effect of Desolate Land, which reduced Water-type moves without eliminating them entirely — the move landed but at a fraction of its normal impact.
Groudon was mostly just outraged by the principle of the thing.
"ROOOARR!!"
It shot to its feet. Red light blazed from its body, temperature spiking around it.
The assembled group immediately ascended to a safe altitude and arranged themselves in a manner suggesting they were simply hovering there innocently.
"Hmm~ (Angry? Come up here and hit me~)"
Primal Kyogre's golden eyes were full of something that was impossible to describe as anything other than mischief.
It had wasted years on frontal assaults when this had been available the entire time.
"ROOOARR!! (COWARDS!! ALL OF YOU!!)"
You couldn't fly and you have ranged moves were two facts that Groudon was currently grappling with simultaneously, both relevant, neither resolving the fundamental problem.
"Giovanni!!"
"Hm?"
"They're bullying me!!"
The psychic link carried the full emotional weight of the complaint. Genuinely aggrieved. Genuinely indignant. The dignity of a primordial legendary reduced to sitting on the ground while four Pokémon took turns being annoying at it from positions it couldn't reach.
This is worse than being waterlogged, Groudon communicated without saying it directly.
Significantly worse.
Giovanni considered the situation.
He had to admit that the inability to fly was proving to be a real tactical limitation in a battlefield where most of the relevant combatants had aerial capability.
He was beginning to draft possible solutions when the sound arrived.
Not from the crater. From the side. Close. Moving fast.
Giovanni turned.
Black Kyurem — battered, visibly damaged, radiating fury — was inbound at speed from a direction it shouldn't have been coming from.
Black Rayquaza was supposed to be keeping it contained.
Giovanni processed this quickly. Black Kyurem had evidently broken free somehow, and its trajectory was not toward Rayquaza and not toward Mammon and not toward any tactical objective that made immediate sense—
Its eyes were on Reshiram.
"MAMMON!! SAVE ME!!"
Reshiram had seen it coming and was already moving, wings beating hard, the Dragon of Truth demonstrating a genuine gift for self-preservation.
Mammon had seen it too. His hand was already moving, Poké Ball drawn—
"Return!!"
The red light reached for Reshiram.
Reshiram was not where Mammon needed it to be. It had drifted during the Groudon situation, and the distance was just — slightly — too much.
The first beam of DNA Splicer energy hit Reshiram in the back.
Then the next.
Reshiram's movement stopped. One pained sound escaped before it did — and then it was light, and the light was moving, pulled back along the beam lines toward Black Kyurem.
"Mammon—"
"I'm sorry — I can't—"
The voice cut off.
The orb of white light reached Black Kyurem.
Black Kyurem swallowed it.
For a moment: silence.
Then: white. Everywhere. Blazing white light pouring from Black Kyurem's body, the form cycling — black to white and back again, too fast to track, settling on something in between that wasn't quite either.
Then: the pressure.
What Black Kyurem had been before was substantial. What it was now was something else. The draconic aura it exerted had been significant before; it was now the kind of thing that made breathing feel optional.
"This is somewhat concerning," Black Rayquaza said, arriving overhead and looking down.
"Yes," Mammon agreed.
He was calm about it. He'd run this scenario. He'd known it was possible. He'd made plans.
"Rayquaza. Is your wife available?"
Black Rayquaza looked at him.
"…Human. Have you been using my entire family as your private strike team this entire time?"
"I prefer to think of it as treating you all as trusted allies."
"I haven't agreed to be your ally."
"That's more of an administrative detail at this point." Mammon's expression remained pleasant. "And I did arrange for alternative support. I just didn't think I'd need it."
He looked at the transformed Kyurem.
Three dragons united — Zekrom and Reshiram both absorbed, the full Dragon of Unova reconstituted inside Kyurem's hollow frame. The original Dragon. Complete.
How did that compare to Ultra Necrozma? The games had never shown it. Mammon genuinely didn't know. His estimate was "roughly equivalent, or possibly above."
He'd planned for this.
Far out over the ocean, somewhere well beyond Unova's shoreline:
Ho-Oh was flying so hard that the undersides of its wings had started to smoke.
Internal monologue: colorful and pointed, directed at a specific human who had sent a message asking for it to come immediately to a location that kept turning out to be further away than initially described.
The things it did. The things it did because of that Rainbow Wing.
You had better need me.
If I arrive and this is a waste of my time, I am going to make sure the next thousand years are very uncomfortable for a very specific person.
(End of Chapter)
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