Chapter 192: Your Ideal Isn't Real! I'll Strike You Down with Zekrom!
The white-clad young man with the low-pulled hat walked forward at an unhurried pace, his unfocused eyes hidden in the shadow of the brim.
"The King himself, in person. I didn't expect that."
Colress turned to face the approaching figure, his tone carrying its usual detached, mild curiosity.
N — Team Plasma's King. The figurehead Ghetsis had put on a throne.
Colress understood exactly what that arrangement was, at least. Ghetsis was a cold-blooded man who carried absolutely no sentiment toward N. N was, in his scheme of things, a utility — a tool built and maintained for a specific purpose.
What made it almost funny was that this "Hero of Ideals," endorsed by Zekrom itself, genuinely believed in Ghetsis with his whole heart.
Colress couldn't make sense of it. He also had no intention of saying anything about it. Watching from the sidelines suited him just fine.
"Colress. Father asked me to come get you."
N's voice had the quality of still water — no inflection, no warmth.
"I understand. I still need a bit more time to organize my research data. I'll leave the people out here to you."
Colress's smile was perfectly easy.
N looked at him for a long moment, and said nothing to refuse.
"Be quick."
His tone was flat. He didn't have warm feelings toward Colress — intelligent people of that caliber were difficult to manage, and Colress made no particular effort to show respect to either N or Ghetsis. But his usefulness was undeniable, and Ghetsis valued him. N held his silence.
"Of course." Colress turned and headed back into the base.
"That's him. That's Team Plasma's King?"
Looker's expression had gone completely serious as she watched the approaching green-haired young man. He looked like nothing threatening at all, on the surface.
Which meant, of course, absolutely nothing. Colress had been a perfect example of that.
Plasma's King had always been a near-mythic figure — known only through what Plasma members occasionally let slip, never directly confirmed. And now, suddenly, this phantom "King" was standing right in front of them.
"Looker, what do we do now?" Elesa's expression was taut, her voice carefully level.
Whatever the circumstances, this opponent had already exceeded anything she'd prepared for.
She'd walked into this with reasonable confidence — she was, after all, one of Unova's official Gym Leaders. But watching Genesect dismantle her Zebstrika without much effort had done real damage to that confidence.
Honestly, she'd been outperformed by the Blueberry students, particularly the Dragon-type boy. And now, with Colress retreating to the base, a "King" who looked even more dangerous had stepped up in his place.
"I've already alerted the League. Reinforcements are coming as fast as they can. We just need to hold on until they arrive." Looker kept her voice low.
"Reinforcements?" Elesa seemed to notice something. "Is that them?"
"What?" Looker blinked. Already?
She followed Elesa's gaze.
Three young figures were approaching. Looker didn't recognize any of them.
"Probably not." She wasn't sure.
Across from them, N had noticed the approaching trio too. His unfocused eyes shifted, and something in them flickered, landing on the figure in the middle.
This one is different.
"Well, well~ today really is full of surprises."
Mammon's smile broadened with obvious relish, taking in the striking young man ahead of him.
"N, leader of Team Plasma. I've been looking forward to this."
"Who are you?"
N's eyes fixed on Mammon, the question carrying no particular urgency.
The black stormclouds overhead pressed low, dark and heavy, rolling and stacking upon each other in dense layers that made the air feel thick and oppressive.
"Mammon. Team Rocket's Mammon."
His smile stayed warm.
Behind him, Looker and Elesa both reacted visibly.
Team Rocket?!
"I've heard your name from Father." N tilted his head slightly. Mammon — the name wasn't unfamiliar. Ghetsis had been repeating it for weeks with a particular quality of anger and hostility that N found genuinely hard to parse.
"Ghetsis." Mammon made a small dismissive sound. "That man really has no depth to him. But you — you're different."
He studied N with a look that was hard to classify. N noticed the weight of it and frowned slightly.
It was a strange sort of gaze. Something in it like acknowledgment. Something like regret. A trace of pity. Layered, complicated.
"Unfortunate that Ghetsis already got his hands on you. Straightening you out from this point forward isn't going to be easy." Mammon shook his head.
"I don't know what you mean." N's voice was even.
"My ideals are clear. There is no 'straightening out' to be done." The current N was a precise, methodical person — high intelligence, a particular aptitude for mathematics and physics. They sometimes called him "the magician of mathematics."
"But the ideals you're carrying right now — they aren't real."
Mammon couldn't quite help the small laugh.
N's ideals were, genuinely, unshakeable. His willingness to sacrifice everything for them was absolute. That conviction was precisely why Zekrom had chosen him — the Dragon of Ideals couldn't be moved by anything less than that.
But those ideals had been deliberately engineered by Ghetsis. Guided, shaped, aimed — like light through a lens — into something impossibly abstract, untethered from how the world actually worked.
That was the most pitiable thing about N.
He had genuine ideals. He could perceive genuine truth. In theory, he could have awoken either Zekrom or Reshiram — whether "ideals" or "truth," both were real things he was capable of reaching.
But every truth he'd ever seen had been a truth Ghetsis specifically chose for him to see.
From birth, Ghetsis had taken him in and deliberately cut him off from ordinary human experience. Pokémon who had been betrayed by humans, abused by humans, hurt by humans — those were the companions Ghetsis had surrounded N with as a child. N, who could sense Pokémon's emotions directly, had lived in that environment for years.
What kind of worldview would that produce in someone with a gift like his?
Honestly, the fact that N hadn't come out of that childhood hating humanity was entirely a product of his own inherent decency.
That upbringing had made it feel natural and obvious to N that Pokémon and humans together meant unhappiness. His ideal — separating them, drawing a clean line between black and white, giving Pokémon the freedom to exist as complete beings — wasn't a manufactured position. He'd built it himself, from his own experience, with his whole heart.
To any ordinary person, it was an absurd non-starter of an idea. But N believed it with everything he had, and that sincerity was exactly what Zekrom had recognized.
"My ideals are correct."
N's gaze settled and hardened, fixed on Mammon.
"You're only seeing part of it. The world is much larger than your little castle, N." Mammon's tone stayed level. "You've come out of that castle now. You've seen a great many different people and Pokémon."
"I have. And I still saw Pokémon being hurt by humans. Many of them."
N answered calmly. He didn't deny that there were Pokémon who had found happiness with human partners. There were. He'd seen those too.
But he'd seen the other side at least as often.
"That part is true. And it's something that needs to be addressed, slowly, over time."
Mammon nodded. Human nature's darker tendencies couldn't be eliminated by decree. There were trainers who abandoned their Pokémon because they didn't perform well enough — not many, but real enough to exist.
And then there were trainers like the earlier-generation anime character Shingo — a pure results-obsessive, running brutal training regimes to force out latent potential. To someone like Ash, who valued bonds and mutual understanding above everything, someone like that might as well have been cruel by definition.
But you couldn't simply say those trainers were wrong.
Strength-focused trainers existed in real numbers. Abandonment and brutal training would never fully disappear. That was simply a part of the cycle.
"There's nothing to change, and nothing that can be fully changed. The solution is to separate Pokémon from humans entirely."
N's voice was still even.
"I've already seen everything. The only path to true freedom for Pokémon is this one."
"Arrogant, don't you think. N — do you imagine yourself a savior?"
Mammon raised an eyebrow.
"I've never thought of myself that way. I'm simply walking the path my ideals have laid out."
N shook his head.
"I thought you might be the same as me. I thought you'd understand."
Something in his eyes dimmed again. From the moment he'd seen Mammon, he'd felt it — Mammon was unusual, in a way similar to himself. Both of them were able to perceive what Pokémon felt, what they meant.
They should have been alike.
But apparently, they weren't.
"Why would I agree with someone who's let a one-sided version of reality blind him entirely?" Mammon let a small laugh escape. "I told you already. Your ideals aren't real."
"Because of that partial truth you're working from, you've locked yourself onto a path that cannot be completed. You will fail. That's not a guess — it's inevitable."
N's conviction in his ideals ran bone-deep. But these ideals, shaped and directed into existence by someone else's hands, were destined from the beginning to come apart.
Ideals were called ideals precisely because they were difficult to achieve. They existed because the world needed them. But the world operated on reality more than ideals, at its foundation — and ideals, ultimately, could not override the real.
—Though actually, a thought struck him sideways, could I try applying for the position of Hero of Truth? The white dragon was pretty appealing.
"I see," N said.
He made no move to continue the argument. Verbal sparring had no point now. He couldn't persuade Mammon, and Mammon's dismissiveness couldn't shake his commitment to his path.
"Then I'll simply defeat you."
N raised his arm slowly. Behind the shadow of his hat brim, those unfocused eyes gradually kindled with light.
"With the power that acknowledges my ideals — with the one who stands behind the dream I'll give everything to make real—"
BOOM!
A bolt of lightning tore down from the churning clouds above, crashing behind N with a force that shook the ground, a column of smoke and debris billowing upward.
"Zekrom!"
From within the smoke, two red eyes ignited and brightened. The enormous black dragon took shape, vast and overwhelming, settling behind N with its full presence bearing down on everything around it.
The weight of a legendary Pokémon filled the air — the Dragon of Ideals from Unova's own founding mythology. Zekrom.
"Tch~"
Mammon clicked his tongue involuntarily, looking up at the black dragon.
"Zekrom!"
Kagura and Caitlin both reacted, eyes wide, taking in the massive legendary with evident shock.
And this is their criminal organization. Starting out straight away with something on this scale?
"Team Rocket." N's eyes burned as they fixed on Mammon, his voice dropping to carry across the space between them, reaching everyone present.
"A force of evil and chaos, one that breaks the world's balance."
"I will strike you down here, and this will become the cornerstone of the ideal world I will build!"
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