Chapter 91: Mew? I'm Its Daddy.
The massive avian Pokémon was drawing closer, and with it came a crushing, formless pressure — the kind that settled on your chest like a physical weight and made your lungs forget their job.
It hadn't even fully arrived yet, and already the air felt thick as syrup.
Then Dark Mewtwo's psychic energy bled outward in a slow pulse, and the pressure evaporated.
Ho-Oh completed its approach and came to hang in the air directly above the three of them — enormous, radiant, and looking down with eyes that carried the full weight of seven hundred years of dignity.
"Is that — that's the legendary Ho-Oh?!"
Erika's hands flew to her mouth. She'd recognized it immediately. The Pokémon from the myths — the one whose body blazed with seven-colored light, who left rainbows in its wake, who was said to grant eternal happiness to those who witnessed it.
Growing up in Kanto, you heard the stories. Every child did.
She'd just never imagined she'd be standing underneath it one day.
This is Ho-Oh. Even among legendary Pokémon, Ho-Oh was in a completely different category from something like Suicune. This was a creature out of sacred myth—
Although.
The more Erika stared, the more she felt something was... slightly off.
At a distance, it had felt genuinely divine. Breathtaking, even. Noble and otherworldly.
But up close...
emmm.
Ho-Oh had no idea what the humans below it were thinking. It had simply tracked the last spiritual traces of Suicune, Entei, and Raikou to this location.
And now that it had arrived, it could feel it clearly — all three of them were on the boy.
Ho-Oh's gaze cooled. This one's heart was not pure. Which meant there was no way the three beasts had willingly recognized him as their trainer.
It was confident in its retainers. They shared its values. They would not have gone quietly to someone like this.
And also, frankly — the way this human was looking at it right now was extremely rude. Ho-Oh couldn't identify exactly what the problem was, but something about that expression was deeply impertinent.
"Well, this is a first meeting, Ho-Oh." Mammon cleared his throat and offered the legendary a wave and an easy smile. "As magnificent as the legends say."
Close enough, he thought privately. It really does look like a giant turkey up close, but obviously I'm not going to say that out loud.
Ho-Oh's expression did not change. It could tell those were not his honest feelings.
Humans. Always so performatively sincere.
It exhaled inwardly. It genuinely wanted, as it always had, for humans and Pokémon to coexist — to understand each other, truly. That was why, seven hundred years ago, when the people of Ecruteak built the Tin Tower and the Brass Tower as a symbol of that shared bond, Ho-Oh had come to roost. Because the towers meant something.
And then, a hundred and fifty years ago, lightning had struck the Tin Tower — and Ho-Oh had left. Because it had seen the truth: the distance between humans and Pokémon had never really closed. It had departed with that disappointment still lodged somewhere deep in its chest.
It had not found the right person since.
"Human." Ho-Oh set aside the reverie and addressed Mammon directly, its telepathy flat and neutral. "You caught Suicune and the others?"
"That's right," Mammon said pleasantly. "I felt like we had a real connection."
"They are members of my guard." Ho-Oh's voice was measured. "I would not presume to dictate their futures by force. But I can feel it."
Its eyes fixed on Mammon.
"They did not recognize you and come to you willingly. Did they."
"Does that matter?" Mammon raised an eyebrow.
"It matters greatly."
Ho-Oh was firm on this point. It had learned this the hard way once before. Raw strength alone was no measure of compatibility between trainer and Pokémon. When values were incompatible, the conflict was only ever postponed — never resolved.
"My, how commanding." Mammon looked genuinely entertained. "So what would you like to do about it, Ho-Oh?"
"Return them to me."
A beat of silence. Then:
"Don't you think that's a little presumptuous?" Mammon smiled. "I caught them through proper battle. No dirty tricks, no outside interference. And now you'd like me to release them, just like that, because you asked?"
The smile didn't quite reach his eyes.
"You've got a lot of nerve, Ho-Oh."
"You prevailed through power alone. Power is not the foundation of a human-Pokémon bond."
"Absolutely," Mammon agreed, nodding. "I couldn't agree more. Connection between trainer and Pokémon is built on feeling — on genuine bonds that form over time."
Ho-Oh glanced at him, faintly surprised. It could tell that, at least, was sincere.
"But those bonds don't have to exist from day one." Mammon's tone shifted smoothly. "I'll be honest — Suicune and the others and I don't have much between us yet. But I believe that with enough time together, they'll come to understand me better. And I'll come to understand them."
If Ho-Oh had eyebrows, they would have drawn together sharply.
"Human. Your temperament is incompatible with theirs. A harmonious partnership is not in the future for you."
"That's a pretty bold assumption about something you haven't seen yet." Mammon put on his most picture-of-harmless-friendliness expression. "No one can predict the future. I have every confidence I can win them over."
Ho-Oh studied him for a long, measured moment.
"Further argument is pointless. Human — if you acknowledge that power confers the right to demand, then my power exceeds yours. And I have every right to ask you to return them."
Ho-Oh had decided to be rude about this. It did not believe a warm outcome was possible between this trainer and its retainers. The slick rhetoric was telling enough about his character.
"Ha." Mammon let out a short laugh. "So when it comes down to it, you just want me to release them — and yet you were delivering all those high-minded speeches about bonds and values. Why bother with the lecture?"
He tilted his head slightly, the corner of his mouth curving high.
"I've actually been curious to see what you can do, Ho-Oh."
"Mewtwo."
Dark Mewtwo slowly raised its head.
The limiter armor began to disengage automatically — helmet, pauldrons, chestplate — pieces lifting away from its body one by one.
In seconds, every piece had dropped to the ground with a series of heavy impacts. The immense psychic energy that had been pressed down beneath that armor began to seep freely outward.
Dark Mewtwo rolled its neck. The power that had been penned up inside it flooded through its body like a tide finally allowed to turn.
Filled — absolutely filled — with force that felt like it could go on forever.
...Ahh.
That's the stuff.
Ho-Oh's eyes narrowed slightly as it regarded Dark Mewtwo. It kept its wings in a slow, unhurried motion, and brilliant rainbow fire began to kindle around its body.
"Wait — the armor comes off?"
Erika startled. She'd assumed it was part of Dark Mewtwo's natural form.
"It's a power limiter," Caitlin said quietly. "Mammon had it made to suppress the psychic energy Mewtwo can't fully control yet."
"...What."
Erika stared.
Armored Mewtwo — that form, the one that had already far exceeded anything she'd imagined possible — was the suppressed version?
What.
"So. The legendary Ho-Oh." Dark Mewtwo's eyes ignited with deep violet flame. Its body rose slowly until it was level with Ho-Oh in the air, and its low, hoarse telepathy resonated outward.
Dark violet — shading almost to black — radiated from its frame: psychic energy that simply couldn't be fully contained, leaking from it like heat from an open forge.
"I'm curious what you're capable of."
Ho-Oh tilted its head. It had never encountered Dark Mewtwo before, but there was something — a trace of Mew's energy clinging to it. Faint and strange.
Now that it looked, the two Pokémon did share certain features. The coloring was wildly different, but there was a structural resemblance.
"You carry Mew's aura," it said, puzzled. "What is your relationship to Mew?"
Dark Mewtwo answered without hesitation.
"Mew? I'm its daddy."
Ho-Oh went completely silent.
Strictly speaking, Dark Mewtwo hadn't developed any particular emotional attachment to Mew since Mammon had talked it out of that fixation. Warm feelings? Absolutely not.
But "I'm its daddy" — that line was Mammon's contribution. Next time you run into Mew, he'd said, open with that.
Dark Mewtwo had spent enough time with Mammon by now to understand what the phrase meant. It had filed it away accordingly.
Ho-Oh said nothing. Its wings continued their slow, serene motion as the sacred rainbow fire on either side of its body grew and grew and grew.
The temperature began to climb. Fast.
The blazing fire spread outward like a sea of light — dazzling and terrifying in equal measure.
"It's hot—" Erika fanned her face with her palm. The heat had spiked absurdly fast.
And yet...
She watched the two of them face off in the air above her, and she couldn't quite suppress a flicker of concern.
"Mammon — is Mewtwo actually a match for Ho-Oh?"
She knew how strong Dark Mewtwo was. But this was Ho-Oh.
"Who knows."
Mammon shrugged. This was his first time fighting a high-tier legendary. He genuinely had no idea what Ho-Oh's ceiling looked like.
Which is the whole point, he thought. This is a live test — see what Dark Mewtwo can do when the limiter's off, and benchmark a legendary at this level while I'm at it.
Ho-Oh was fundamentally different from Nebby. Lunala had evolved recently and her power was still settling — who knew what she'd actually been pulled up to by the altar's stored energy. If you went by the games she'd be at level fifty-five post-evolution, but this wasn't the games, and honestly Mammon had strong suspicions she was probably around Dark Mewtwo's level — maybe even slightly weaker.
Using Lunala as a sparring target for Dark Mewtwo seemed wasteful. Ho-Oh, on the other hand, sat solidly in the middle tier of high legendaries — not in the same bracket as Rayquaza, Kyurem, or the Sinnoh creation trio, but definitely considerably stronger than a freshly evolved Lunala.
"Regardless," Mammon said breezily, "safety isn't a concern. Ho-Oh won't hurt anyone. Worst case, we hand Suicune and the others back."
Caitlin's brow furrowed. Those were hard-won captures, and this overgrown turkey is going to demand we give them back? "Isn't that a bit of a waste?"
"Does it matter? We can catch them again."
"...You can do that?"
"Sure. And besides —" Mammon's smile climbed higher. "I have Ho-Oh's dirt. If it pushes its luck, I'll weaponize it."
Ho-Oh's dirt?
Both Erika and Caitlin looked at him with identical expressions of intense curiosity.
This creature from sacred myth has embarrassing history?
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