Chapter 179: The Terrifying Dark Lugia! Mammon's Interest Is Piqued
Once the mother Lugia understood that Mammon's group hadn't been mistreating her child — or trying to abduct her — her demeanor warmed considerably.
Lugia, as a species, were naturally gentle and good-natured. Easy to get along with, provided you didn't touch the one thing that wasn't negotiable.
"So — Lugia," Mammon said, curious, "where's Snowy's father?"
It was something he'd wondered since the start. Snowy had seemed like a reasonably catchy name for a baby Lugia, given the obvious color scheme. Naming her "Silver," the way the anime did, was off the table for obvious reasons — he already had a brother by that name.
"...Her father."
The mother Lugia's expression shifted instantly. Something complicated. Something with grief threaded all through it.
"Something happened to him," she said quietly.
"Could you tell me more?" Mammon kept his tone gentle, and gestured up toward Kyogre, who was still hovering above the water with the cold dignity of someone striking a pose. "If there's anything we can help with, we'd like to."
I caught Kyogre's trainer. Whatever the problem is, you can tell me.
That was the subtext, anyway. Building goodwill with the Lugia line was never wasted effort — there was no telling when it might matter down the line.
"...I don't know how to describe it."
The mother glanced at Kyogre, hesitated, then decided to continue. She really had been struggling with this. Maybe — just maybe — Kyogre would have an answer she didn't.
"Long ago, humans on this sea fought each other over territory. My husband grew furious and split the island into four pieces to stop the war."
Her telepathic voice was soft, gentle — and underneath it, something fractured.
Mammon nodded slowly. If the male Lugia had been capable of cleaving an entire island apart in a single strike, his power must have been staggering. Looking at the mother Lugia in front of him now — formidable as she clearly was — Mammon doubted she could manage the same feat. That had been a whole island, once. Not a small one.
"Afterward, he went into the great waterfall. And from that point on, he began to change."
Her tone dropped, heavy with old sorrow.
"An aura of evil began to surface in him. His temperament shifted — dramatically. Even when I tried to get close, he would drive me away. Sometimes he attacked."
"...?"
Mammon stared at her, genuinely confused.
Even Kyogre, hovering above, seemed bewildered by what it was hearing.
"Sorry to interrupt — when you say 'an aura of evil,' what exactly do you mean?" Mammon couldn't help asking.
Lugia were Psychic/Flying legendaries. Pure white. The color itself was meant to reflect their nature.
"I don't know how to put it into words. But it was an aura that made my fur stand on end." The mother shook her head.
The vagueness of it gave Mammon a faint headache. Too little to work with.
"Human." The mother's tone shifted, suddenly direct. "You've never met Yveltal, have you. Nor a freed Hoopa?"
"Correct," Mammon said, eyebrows lifting slightly. She had to mean Hoopa Unbound. And it was worth noting — both of those were Dark-type legendaries.
"A hundred years ago, the malice radiating from my husband was already denser, more terrible than Yveltal's. It could rival a freed Hoopa's."
"And now—"
Her voice grew heavier still.
"Twenty years ago, I tried to visit him. But by then I no longer dared go in. He had become... something that frightened me."
She was reliving it as she spoke. She hadn't even fully approached the bottom of the waterfall when two points of crimson light had ignited in the darkness beyond the falling water — eyes brimming with violence and malice, an aura so saturated with menace that fear had rooted her in place before she'd even processed what she was looking at.
"This is..."
Mammon rested his chin in one hand. Honestly, the sheer volume of information in what the mother had just told him was difficult to process all at once.
Lugia — the Guardian of the Sea. Gentle, selfless, kind to its core. And she was describing a malice denser than Death Wing Yveltal's. Denser than the Djinn of Mischief unbound.
Did that even track?
It was a Psychic legendary. Not a Dark legendary. Unless—
Mammon thought of his own Dark Mewtwo.
Could this be... a Shadow Lugia?
"Could I ask — before these changes started, did that Lugia come into contact with anything unusual?"
He posed the question carefully.
Shadow Lugia, like Dark Mewtwo, belonged to the line of Shadow Pokémon from the franchise's spinoff media. In Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness, Shadow Lugia was billed as the single most powerful Shadow Pokémon ever recorded — a Pokémon that, in the games, could never fully be purified.
But here was the strange part: according to the mother, this "inverted" Lugia had apparently been entirely normal before — and had then begun "darkening" all at once.
"I don't know." She shook her head again. "Our daughter had only just been born. I was occupied caring for her. By the time I noticed the change in him, it had already happened."
There was real regret in her voice. If only she'd stayed by his side the entire time.
"I see. Don't worry — if there's a way to restore him, we'll help."
Mammon offered what comfort he could. He understood now, with sudden clarity, why she'd reacted with such force when she'd thought her daughter was in danger. Her husband had already fallen into something like madness, and she was powerless to do anything about it. If something happened to her remaining child too — that might break her completely.
"Thank you. But please be careful. He's nearly lost what remains of his reason."
"Is he still at the waterfall now?" Mammon asked.
"Yes. That was while he was still lucid enough to think clearly — he asked me to help him build the seal. To prevent himself from doing something irreversible once he lost control entirely."
"The seal is still intact. He's been fighting to hold himself together this whole time."
Her tone was a mixture of complicated things, grief chief among them.
"Could you take us to see him?"
Mammon considered it briefly, but decided he wanted to assess the situation directly.
"If we're going to help him out of this, understanding his current state is necessary."
"...Very well."
She wanted nothing more than for her husband to recover. And beyond that—
She was afraid. Genuinely afraid of what would happen if he lost the last of his self-control and tore through the seal to unleash whatever was building inside him on the world. The scale of that devastation wasn't something she could let herself imagine.
"Alright."
Mammon turned to Caitlin and the others.
"Caitlin — stay here with Snowy. I'll go with Lugia to check on the sealed one."
He didn't know exactly what they'd find at the waterfall, but everything the mother had described suggested danger. Better not to bring the others along, just in case.
"Be careful," Caitlin said, nodding.
Mammon glanced over at Rika, who shrugged. She would have liked to come along too, honestly — but Mammon clearly wasn't extending the invitation, and on reflection, personal safety came first.
"Kyogre."
Kyogre descended and lifted Mammon onto its back.
The mother Lugia spread her wings and dove into the ocean. Kyogre followed close behind, vanishing beneath the waves.
Caitlin watched the spot where they'd disappeared, sea wind tousling her gold hair. Beside her, Snowy sat on the sand contentedly working her way through a large apple, utterly unbothered by anything happening around her.
"Not worried about little bro?" Rika ambled over, genuinely curious.
"Mammon won't be in any danger." Caitlin's voice was even. "There's no one in this world who can hurt him."
The confidence in her voice was absolute, and entirely without irony.
"Oh? I wouldn't be so sure." Rika smiled, noncommittal.
She hadn't expected Mammon to have caught Kyogre on top of everything else. The man's strength was genuinely staggering.
But Rika still believed the Masked Man was stronger.
If she had to name someone who might one day surpass him, though — Mammon was probably the closest candidate.
Regardless, she was increasingly confident that joining Team Rocket had been the right call. With Mammon involved, the inevitable clashes ahead with the League were going to be interesting.
As for now—
Her gaze drifted to Snowy, still working on the apple. Something glinted in Rika's eyes.
"I'll warn you now." Caitlin's voice was level, but carried an unmistakable edge. "Don't get any ideas about Snowy. Neither Mammon nor that adult Lugia will let it slide."
Caitlin, unlike with Kagura, didn't trust Rika even slightly. A Dark-type specialist with that kind of unreadable energy, and a background nobody could pin down — that combination of raw power and total obscurity didn't add up to anything reassuring. For all Caitlin knew, Rika had some significant hidden backstory she simply hadn't disclosed yet, the same way Kagura had.
"Ara~ how strict." Rika arched a brow, smiling easily. "Relax. I have no interest in being hunted down by an overprotective Lugia mother for the rest of my life."
She held up one long finger.
"But I'd like one of her feathers. That's not too much to ask, is it?"
The mother's feather was not something Rika was brave enough to request — that first appearance had left a lasting impression of exactly how dangerous that particular bird was.
Snowy's feather, though? Completely different matter.
"Go ask her yourself." Caitlin gave her a sideways look. Ask a Lugia for a feather. Sure.
"Will do."
Rika swayed her hips as she walked over, pulling a handful of snacks from her bag. Coaxing children — especially the simple, trusting kind, like baby Lugia — was never difficult.
Meanwhile, with Mammon.
Kyogre had wrapped him in an energy field that kept the seawater at bay; breathing wasn't an issue.
The mother Lugia swam fast, but Kyogre kept pace effortlessly. Two legendaries cutting through the deep, weaving through an underwater cave system, until they finally broke the surface inside a vast cavern.
Ahead of them: an enormous waterfall, the current roaring down with tremendous force.
"This is the place."
Her telepathic voice arrived right on cue.
Mammon stood on Kyogre's back, taking in the churning water — and just as he opened his mouth to speak, everything changed.
A dense black aura began creeping outward from the base of the waterfall.
Two points of crimson light ignited behind the falling water — lantern-bright, fixed, unblinking.
SHREEEEEK——!!
A piercing shriek tore through the cavern, owl-like and ragged, the sound reverberating off every stone surface. It hit something primal in the eardrum — the kind of sound that put gooseflesh on a person's skin before conscious thought even caught up.
The pressure in the chamber rose, thick and immediate. The black aura moved like something alive, twisting, spreading, swallowing more of the waterfall by the second.
In moments it had consumed more than half the falls.
The malice radiating off it was suffocating.
How dense could malice possibly get?
Mammon wasn't a stranger to malevolence — Dark Mewtwo was, after all, a Shadow Pokémon in its own right, and its aura was nothing to sneeze at.
But this was different. This wasn't the same category of thing.
The malice pouring off this Lugia had crossed some line into territory that made the skin crawl. Genuinely nauseating.
SHREEEEEK——!!
Another owl-shriek, and the cavern seemed to darken further, as if the black aura itself was eating the light.
"Mammon! We need to leave! Now! Something's seriously wrong with this thing!"
Kyogre's telepathy hit Mammon's mind with uncharacteristic urgency, its eyes fixed unwaveringly on the twin red points behind the waterfall.
This "Lugia" — whatever it currently was — was terrifyingly strong.
And Kyogre had a distinct, unshakeable feeling: the longer they lingered here, unfamiliar presences in its territory, the more it would agitate whatever was barely holding together behind that seal.
It might lose what little control remained.
It might come through.
☆☆☆
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