Chapter 94: Only I Am Worthy of Being Mammon's Wife!
"What a cheapskate. Won't even spare a few feathers."
Mammon shook his head as Ho-Oh disappeared into the distance. Stingy bird.
"And absolutely no manners either. Who goes around yelling at people on their way out?"
He was genuinely aggrieved.
Ho-Oh had, in fact, delivered a parting monologue — something along the lines of "Greedy humans, hopeless, do you have any idea how important feathers are to a bird" — and Mammon found this deeply unfair. He'd only asked it to perform a live molt. One little molt. And it had yelled at him.
The nerve. The absolute nerve of this bird. No wonder it hadn't found a chosen human in seven hundred years.
"..."
Erika smiled awkwardly. She very much wanted to point out that Ho-Oh had declined to incinerate him with Sacred Fire, and that this represented considerable restraint.
"Anyway. Good haul overall. Let's head back."
Mammon stretched his arms wide and addressed Caitlin and Erika.
Dark Mewtwo quietly used its psychic power to call the limiter armor back into place, piece by piece — returning to its Armored form. The battle had revealed new gaps in its control. When its psychic output pushed past a certain threshold, fine precision broke down. The armor was a genuine help.
The three of them made their way back to Lavender Town.
Back at the villa, Mammon went to the rear garden and released one of his Poké Balls. A flash of white light, and Suicune materialized before him.
"Mii!"
The instant it appeared, Suicune put immediate distance between itself and Mammon, baring its teeth and letting out a low hiss.
Still very much not pleased.
"You lost the battle, and you couldn't break out of the Poké Ball. That makes me your trainer, whether you like it or not."
"MII!!"
Suicune glared at him with full-intensity indignation. It had refused. It had made its position perfectly clear. And he'd forced it anyway.
"Your feelings about it don't change the facts." Mammon raised an eyebrow.
"But — take a look at this."
He produced the brilliant Rainbow Wing Ho-Oh had given him and held it out.
Suicune's expression shifted — suspicion giving way to something uncertain. That's... Lord Ho-Oh's feather?
"Exactly." Mammon gave the feather a slow, deliberate wave in Suicune's direction. "Ho-Oh gave this to me personally. That means Ho-Oh acknowledged me too. So how bad can things really be?"
Something flickered in Suicune's eyes. A small crack in the hostility.
It could tell. This was unmistakably one of Lord Ho-Oh's feathers — fresh, luminous, clearly plucked directly from the source. Lord Ho-Oh's judgment was never wrong.
If Lord Ho-Oh's feather had gone to this person...
Maybe Lord Ho-Oh's eye for people is reliable?
Mammon saw the hesitation and pressed forward.
"I won't claim to be a good person. But I genuinely care about Pokémon — deeply. And I've dedicated myself to building a world where humans and Pokémon can truly coexist."
He kept his tone sincere, because he was. He knew the type: Suicune would respond to this.
"There are dark corners in this world. People acting out of selfishness and ambition every single day — that's the reality we live in." A pause. "But we can do something about it. Facing that reality honestly is the first step. And clearing out the rotten, deranged things that fester in those corners — that's necessary work."
He wasn't lying, exactly. Team Magma, Team Galactic, Team Plasma — not one of them wasn't either a fanatic or a lunatic. Absorbing and dismantling every one of those organizations was, by any reasonable accounting, a public service.
Mammon privately felt that he was, in fact, a great benefactor of humanity. The persistent slander of "the evil Team Rocket" was, frankly, a little hurtful.
"For a world that's cleaner and clearer than the one we inherited." He met Suicune's gaze directly. "Let's work toward that together."
"Mii!!"
Suicune's composure broke.
It hadn't expected this. It hadn't expected this human to carry an ideal like that. No wonder Lord Ho-Oh had chosen him.
It stepped closer — this boy standing before it — and let its instincts run. The prior impression it had formed began to give way. This person wasn't deceiving it.
Because Lord Ho-Oh was never wrong.
Lord Ho-Oh had given him the finest Rainbow Wing on his person. That was proof.
"Good. That said, your current strength isn't quite where it needs to be." Mammon's tone shifted to brisk and businesslike. "So starting now, I'm putting you through serious training, Suicune. You up for it?"
"MII!!"
Every trace of earlier resistance had burned away. Suicune squared up with the full fire of a Pokémon that had something to prove.
"Perfect. I like the energy."
Mammon was pleased. Suicune's baseline strength was already exceptional — it had, after all, been reborn through Ho-Oh's power. But for Mammon's purposes, exceptional wasn't enough. It needed to be extraordinary.
The following morning.
"Mammon, time to wake up — wait! Please don't — you can't just — mmph —"
Erika had come to rouse him again.
And had once again ended up pressed into the bed.
Her face had gone completely crimson. The kiss was thorough and disorienting and her hands, which had been pushing at his shoulders, had gone entirely useless.
Then, at some point, the hem of her casual clothes started going the wrong direction.
Ten minutes later, Erika bolted out of his room with both hands over her eyes.
Terrifying. This man was absolutely terrifying.
The well-bred young lady who loved flower arrangement staggered into the hallway, head swimming. She wasn't going to be permanently damaged, was she?
What she didn't know was that on the other side of the corridor, a single eye was watching her through a door left open just a crack.
"Mii — it's fine, he's just using her for practice, mii —"
The young lady with the beautiful golden hair gripped the door handle with both hands, murmuring reassurances to herself, forcibly suppressing the urge to entomb this woman who kept getting sampled in the garden wall.
She couldn't do that. Mammon would be unhappy. And anyway — this was just a housekeeper. A housekeeper.
No threat whatsoever.
With her composure successfully reconstructed and her emotions restored to their proper arrangement, Caitlin stepped into the corridor with her customary graceful stride, bearing the full weight of her usual elegance.
Only I, Caitlin, am worthy of standing as Mammon's wife.
Lavender Town.
A town wrapped in quiet — the kind of quiet that settles into the bones. Even in the afternoon, the streets barely stirred. Sunlight fell through the gaps in the leaves in drifting, shifting patterns, dream-like and a little unearthly.
The town took its name from its color: lavender, the purple of noble composure. Most of the buildings carried that tint. And Lavender Town was Kanto's preeminent resting place for Pokémon — the Pokémon Tower at its center had served as a cemetery for generations, until the second generation saw it converted into the Lavender Radio Tower, with the interred Pokémon relocated to a new memorial structure, the House of Memories.
Mammon and his companions had come to Lavender Town, but not for the Tower.
He pushed open the front door of the Pokémon House and walked in.
The interior was plain and functional, divided into a series of small enclosures, each housing some variety of Pokémon in need of a home. Bellsprout, Rattata, Doduo, and others moved about in their spaces.
"Hello! Are you here to adopt a Pokémon?"
A small girl in a floral-print dress came running over, peering up at the three of them with wide, curious eyes.
"Not today. We're looking for Mr. Fuji — do you know where he is?"
Mammon offered her his warmest, most unthreatening smile.
"Grandpa Fuji is giving Nidoran a bath right now! You might have to wait a little bit." The girl blinked her large eyes.
"That's fine, we're happy to wait." Mammon reached into his bag and produced several bags of Pokémon food cubes and some snack cakes, setting them against the wall. "We brought a few things — please share them with everyone here."
The Pokémon House was, in simple terms, Mr. Fuji's personal project: a home for abandoned Pokémon and those who had lost their caretakers. A welfare shelter, not unlike the Aether House — but where the Aether House had the full backing of the Aether Foundation, the Pokémon House ran entirely on the old man's own efforts.
"Wow!! Thank you so much, big brother! This'll keep Rattata and everyone fed for ages!"
The girl's face lit up with the completely unguarded joy only a child can produce.
"You're super handsome and you're super nice!"
Mammon laughed. "You've got a real talent for compliments, kid." He pulled a lollipop from his bag, unwrapped it, and held it out to her.
"Thank you big brother~" She beamed so hard her eyes curved into crescents.
He chatted with her for a few minutes — enough to confirm that the Pokémon House ran on tight margins. Without the occasional donations from Lavender Town residents and passing trainers, the place would have folded long ago.
About twenty minutes later, a bald man in a grey-white shirt shuffled in from the back hallway, a freshly-bathed Nidoran trotting at his heels.
"Grandpa Fuji! The really nice big brother is here — the one who brought all the food!"
The girl rushed over to announce this.
"Is that right? Well, we'll have to thank—" The old man looked up. His expression changed. "—Mammon?"
"It's been a long time, Mr. Fuji."
Mammon smiled.
"...So you finally came." Mr. Fuji's face had gone pale. He kept his voice from trembling through visible effort.
"It's nothing alarming. I only want to talk. Nothing more than that."
Mr. Fuji took a slow breath. "I understand. Come with me."
Some things had to be faced sooner or later.
They settled outside the Pokémon House. The little girl had been gently redirected back inside to tend to the Pokémon — she was obedient about it. The afternoon light filtered down through the trees in shifting, gentle patterns.
"This really is a peaceful place," Mammon said, settling onto a bench beneath one of the trees. "No wonder you chose to retire here."
"I've severed all ties with Team Rocket." Mr. Fuji spoke first, wearily. "You know that. And I've never disclosed any information about the organization. Not once."
This mild old man used to be in Team Rocket?
Erika was caught off guard. He looked so completely ordinary — a kindly grandfather with no particular edge to him.
"Of course. Which is precisely why we've never disturbed you, isn't it? Did you really think we couldn't find you?" Mammon's tone stayed light. "Your departure without notice did cause us some inconvenience, I'll admit. But Mewtwo had essentially been created by that point — it was only waiting to awaken. I was willing to respect your wishes."
Mr. Fuji said nothing.
"So, Mammon. What do you want from me now? I'm done with research. I'm finished."
The old man's voice was flat with exhaustion.
And there it was. This was the man who had brought Dark Mewtwo into existence — the research director. But in the final hour, he'd had second thoughts, and had fled New Island along with another scientist.
"That's such a waste of your abilities." Mammon sounded genuinely regretful. "Someone with your gifts deserves better circumstances."
"Creating Mewtwo for you." Mr. Fuji's voice came out rough. "That's the greatest sin of my life."
Creating — Mewtwo?
Both Caitlin and Erika turned sharply. Mewtwo was an artificial Pokémon?
...What?
"Why frame it that way?" Mammon tilted his head. "Yes, we enhanced Mewtwo's combat capabilities — but that's simply what it was meant to be. Mr. Fuji, you still have a bias against us."
"Mewtwo shouldn't exist to fight!" The old man's voice rose despite himself. "It's a new life. It has its own future — its own possibilities!"
His hands gripped the edge of the bench.
"And especially — to fight for Team Rocket's ambitions. That's wrong."
"I understand your feelings entirely. But please hear me out calmly." Mammon's eyebrow arched. "I didn't come here to argue. No one in this world understands Mewtwo better than you do — except perhaps Mewtwo itself."
He leaned forward slightly.
"So I'm asking for your help. Mewtwo's potential hasn't been fully realized. There's a deeper power inside it. I want you to help unlock it."
His meaning was clear enough to himself, if not to the others: Mega Evolution. Dark Mewtwo's Mega Evolution Stone wasn't going to materialize from thin air — and in Mammon's estimation, the only people in the world who could produce one were Dark Mewtwo and the man sitting across from him.
"Absolutely not." Mr. Fuji refused without a flicker of hesitation.
"Oh?" Mammon's smile didn't move.
"I suppose no matter what I say, you won't believe me. So let's skip to something more concrete."
He tilted his head slightly. Something dark and deliberate crept into the corner of his mouth.
"You wouldn't want anything to happen to the Pokémon inside that house — or to that little girl — would you, Mr. Fuji?"
All the color drained from the old man's face.
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