Chapter 178: Can I Catch This Lugia?
Lugia — one of the legendary bird Pokémon of the Kanto region.
Said to possess power so overwhelming it could only endure by resting in the deepest trenches of the ocean. Legend held that a single beat of its wings was enough to summon forty days of storms.
There was no question: Lugia was a legendary of the same tier as Ho-Oh. Caitlin had always been curious about it, in her way.
The Guardian of the Sea, the Pokédex called it.
But — this small?
"Lord Lugia..."
Zuki and Tamao were suffering visibly. They stared at the tiny Lugia — not even a meter tall — with expressions of profound spiritual displacement.
They had spent their whole lives hoping to one day stand before Ho-Oh and Lugia. To seek forgiveness for their ancestors' wrongs. To witness the legendary beings their family had served for generations.
This was not what they had pictured.
"Mrrh-ya~"
The baby Lugia wobbled upright and began toddling after Mammon on unsteady legs, waddling with the determination of a duckling convinced that the bread in his hand was rightfully its property.
It was absolutely unbearably cute.
"This one's young," Mammon observed. He held the bread out and the baby Lugia chomped it immediately, chewing with great satisfaction. "Can't be very old. I wonder where its mother is."
Even legendary Pokémon, it turned out, were this bewilderingly adorable as infants.
"Mammon." Caitlin's eyes had gone bright in a way she wasn't bothering to conceal. She was watching the baby Lugia with something very close to undisguised wanting. "Can I catch it?"
She'd liked the little thing the moment it arrived. And now that she knew what it actually was, she liked it considerably more.
Besides — she'd been the one to fish it up. Wasn't that fate? A natural affinity? And it was Psychic-type, which suited her perfectly—
"Catching it wouldn't be difficult," Mammon said, tapping his chin. "Its mind isn't mature enough to resist a ball. The issue is its parents."
He had a vague memory of how this went. The mother Lugia was intensely, almost pathologically devoted to her child — to the point that if the baby went missing, she would go into an outright rampage. The strength of that bond was not something to be casual about.
Which made sense, honestly. For a species that naturally sat at the apex of the world's food chain, producing offspring was almost certainly an extraordinarily rare event.
"Lugia..." Caitlin was quiet for a moment. The disappointment was there, even if she kept it contained.
She'd known, somewhere, that it wouldn't be simple. She reached into her bag and produced a custom-made box of Psychic-type Pokémon treats — the high-end kind she kept on hand for her own team.
"Would you like some of these?" She crouched down in front of the baby Lugia, her voice going soft. She opened the box. "I think you'll enjoy them."
"Mrrh-ya~"
The baby Lugia leaned in, sniffed, and its eyes went wide.
What followed was enthusiastic and slightly alarming. It devoured the treats at the pace of something that hadn't eaten in three days.
"Slower," Caitlin said gently, stroking the back of its neck with careful fingers. The feathers there were surprisingly silky. "There's plenty more. Don't choke."
Meanwhile, a few steps away, Mammon had crouched down to pick up a small feather that had drifted to the ground. He turned it over — pale, silver-white, with a faint luminescent shimmer.
"Wonder if these do anything."
In the games, a Silver Wing was the item used to summon Lugia. It was also one of the required components for the GS Ball — the container engineered specifically to hold Celebi, a Pokémon that existed across multiple points in time.
The Masked Man's entire objective — catching Ho-Oh and Lugia — came down to harvesting their feathers for exactly that purpose.
But those were adult Lugia feathers. Whether a baby's carried the same properties was an open question.
Rika and Ito, who had been napping and had wandered over to check on developments, were wondering the same thing.
Ito stared at the baby Lugia — which had climbed halfway into Caitlin's lap and was demanding more treats — and his brain had simply ceased processing.
"This is... fine, right?" he said uncertainly. He eyed the baby Lugia, which was not tall enough to reach his waist. "If the feather doesn't work, and the Masked Man gets upset—"
"You're asking me?" Rika shot him a flat look. "Who am I supposed to ask?"
Her instinct said asking Mammon for one small feather as a souvenir would be perfectly fine. The issue was whether the thing would actually be any use to the Masked Man.
"Hold on—" Rika's eyes narrowed. "Why is it getting dark?"
The sky had been clear and blue.
It wasn't anymore.
A mass of heavy stormclouds had rolled in from somewhere, dense and fast-moving, swallowing the sunlight. The sea, previously calm, had begun to heave and churn as though something vast beneath it was angry.
The air pressure changed. Something thick and suffocating settled over the island — the kind of weight that made it hard to draw a full breath.
"What's happening—"
Zuki pressed a hand to her sternum, eyes darting. That feeling — like being seen by something much further up the food chain than she was—
MMMRRRHHH—!!
A low, resonant cry rolled in from somewhere out over the water.
"Mrrh-ya~ mrrh~!!"
The baby Lugia perked up instantly, scrambling to its feet and waddling toward the churning shore with cheerful, excited noises.
"Looks like a parent came looking." Mammon stood, watching the sea.
A vast shadow was moving beneath the surface, approaching fast. Aimed directly at them.
Lugia had no Water typing — it was Psychic and Flying. But it didn't need Water typing to command the sea. Legend credited it with the ability to summon storms with a wingbeat, and the ability to calm the waves just as easily. The title of "Sea Guardian" came not from elemental affinity but from temperament: Lugia, like Ho-Oh, was at its core a gentle creature. It had spent ages rescuing sailors from disasters, answering distress without being asked.
People called it the Sea Guardian because it had earned it, one rescued ship at a time.
But gentle or not — it was possible to make Lugia angry.
"MRRRHH—!!"
The silhouette was nearly at the shore now.
An enormous silver-white Pokémon rose from the water with tremendous, cascading force, seawater pouring off its body in sheets. Same face-mask structure, same elegant build as the baby — scaled up to something that pressed on the mind just by existing. And its eyes, as they fixed on the people standing on the shore, were cold.
Furious cold.
"MMRRRHH——!!"
The pressure redoubled. Mammon heard Zuki make a small involuntary sound behind him.
"Sooo," Rika said, tone light, weight underneath it, "this one has definitely decided we're enemies, little bro."
Looking at the mother Lugia directly — feeling the actual, physical weight of that aura — Rika found herself quietly amused at her past self for thinking she was going to catch one. The Masked Man had managed it. That was because he was the Masked Man. Full stop.
"We haven't done anything to the baby," Mammon said, unbothered—
—and then he turned his head and noticed that the mother Lugia's beak had opened, and white energy was condensing in her throat with rapidly increasing density.
Aeroblast. That was the windup for Aeroblast.
"You sure about that, little bro?" Rika's hand had closed hard around a Poké Ball. Every instinct she had was screaming. If that hit — she wasn't certain there would be enough left of her to fill a Poké Ball herself.
Mammon, for his part, was genuinely caught off guard. He'd known the mother would be protective. But immediate Aeroblast, no questions asked—
That was a bit much.
"Kyogre."
No point gambling on whether she'd stand down. He released the ball.
The Lord of the Deep Ocean materialized above him, hovering in the air ahead of the group — massive, ancient, regarding the mother Lugia with calm, impassive eyes.
"What is that—"
Rika and Zuki both stared.
The mother Lugia stared too.
She'd seen clearly. That Pokémon had come out of a human's Poké Ball. A human had caught Kyogre.
She was shocked, in spite of herself.
In the collective memory of the Lugia line, Kyogre's temperament had always been... not what you'd call cooperative. A fundamental force of the ocean, yes. The origin of the sea, technically. But in terms of actually maintaining the ocean's health day-to-day? It did nothing. It rained, it expanded the sea, and that was the extent of its involvement.
Ocean maintenance fell to the Lugia. It always had.
And a human had caught it.
The white energy in her beak slowly, reluctantly dissipated.
If this was Kyogre's trainer, he probably wasn't trying to harm her child.
"There we go." Mammon smiled pleasantly. "Lugia, we weren't kidnapping your child. We were fishing. Your baby hooked itself."
He said this without a trace of embarrassment, which was impressive considering it was entirely true.
He genuinely hadn't planned to fish up a baby Lugia. And whatever else had happened here, the baby had not been mistreated — if anything, it had been fed to the point of mild structural expansion. Its belly was visibly rounder than when it came out of the water.
The mother Lugia exhaled slowly.
As her agitation eased, the stormclouds above began to break apart. The churning sea smoothed, gradually, back toward calm.
"Mrrh-ya~!"
The baby Lugia, apparently unbothered by the near-Aeroblast scenario that had just played out six meters away from it, opened its stubby wings wide and waddled at full speed toward its mother.
The mother Lugia dropped low, wrapped herself around the baby, and pressed her head gently against its. Back and forth. The tenderness of it was something that didn't require translation.
Zuki had gone very quiet.
Primal Kyogre glanced at the baby Lugia. Then at the mother. It seemed to be processing something.
"Mrrh-nya~ mrrh mrrh~!"
After a long moment of nuzzling, the baby pulled back and began making excited, chattering sounds at its mother, little wings gesturing with emphasis toward Mammon and the others.
The mother Lugia understood immediately. The look she turned toward Mammon carried something new in it — tentative, but unmistakable.
Apology.
"I'm sorry for frightening you. Thank you — all of you — for taking care of my child."
The voice arrived directly, warm and clear — a woman's voice, gentle in the way that deep water is gentle.
"No harm done," Mammon said. "Anyone would have reacted the same way."
"This one is only a little over a hundred years old." The mother looked at her child with a love that was almost painful to witness. "Still so young-minded. I worry constantly about her being taken advantage of."
"A little over a hundred."
Rika turned this over, expression complicated. She looked at the baby Lugia, who had resumed trying to locate more food.
...Right. For a species whose lifespan was measured in geological epochs, a hundred was probably equivalent to a toddler. Normal, she supposed, for a creature that might live until the ocean dried up.
Nobody asked how long exactly.
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