Chapter 237: Cynthia, I Have a Lugia Now — What Do You Have?
"I'm sorry, dear Steven — I've already become Alder's person. We can't—"
"Cut. Teacher Wallace, work on your expression. You need to look bashful and dazed. Like a girl who just—"
Mammon gave the direction without looking up from the camera.
They were filming. The scenario was simple enough in structure: Wallace and Steven, childhood sweethearts; Alder as the powerful senior figure who comes between them; a happy three-way resolution. Wallace played the girlfriend, in the classic female-wardrobe configuration that Hoenn's internet community had permanently enshrined after its first appearance.
The production timeline had originally been three hours.
Six hours later, they finished.
The primary obstacle had been that the scenario was, for the three participants, so profoundly difficult to engage with that every take produced expressions ranging from mild constipation to existential hollowness. Coaxing anything in the vicinity of "bashful and dazed" from Wallace when he was reading lines about being Alder's person required repeated attempts.
But they got there.
Mammon was particularly pleased with one shot: Alder, tall and broad-shouldered, one arm around a Wallace who had achieved something genuinely approaching the requested expression, both of them watching the sunset. And Steven in the far background, face carrying exactly the proportions of emotion Mammon had been aiming for — one third wistful, one third relieved, one third envious, one final portion that could only be called quietly bereft.
A perfect pie chart of heartbreak.
That one's the cover.
"Thank you for your hard work, everyone. Excellent performance across the board. Let's do this again sometime."
Mammon packed up his equipment with visible satisfaction, addressing the three expressionless Champions.
"Never again." Wallace's voice was very flat.
"I already have ideas for a sequel." Mammon had been developing the concept throughout the afternoon. Leon with a secret unrequited attachment to Steven, maneuvering through Wallace and Alder to get closer to him, eventual four-person household resolution—
Impact. It needs more impact.
"..." Steven's mouth moved without producing language.
"Until next time, teachers."
Mammon departed with Caitlin — serene, as always — and Elesa, whose expression during the entire filming process had been one of sustained, genuine fascination with what she was witnessing.
Left behind, the three Champions regarded each other in silence for a moment.
"He's actually going to post it," Alder said.
"He is absolutely posting it," Wallace confirmed immediately. "That is what that person does. He creates this content and then he releases it into the world and people watch it."
"The last time—" Steven paused, chose his words. "The photographs from Hoenn. Those did circulate widely."
Alder was quiet for a moment, doing the math on certain aspects of his public image and how they intersected with the content he'd just spent six hours participating in.
He had a grandchild approaching adulthood.
He did not want to think about the conversation that would produce.
"I genuinely hope he keeps it in Unova," Steven said, which was not optimistic but was something.
"He's going to put it everywhere," Wallace said. "He said as much. All regions. Everywhere."
Another silence.
"Alder." Steven looked at him. "I'm sorry I suggested this island."
"It wasn't your fault."
"It feels a little like my fault."
"It wasn't."
Wallace sighed, the exhalation of someone who has looked at a situation from all angles and found no angles that help. He was still in his filming outfit. He was going to need a while before he was ready to address that.
"Milotic is fine," he said, to himself more than anyone. "Milotic is completely fine. There was nothing harmful about any of that."
The Gyarados just sat on her.
That's all.
Everything is fine.
Elsewhere, walking away from the shoot site in the pleasant late-afternoon light:
"Lucky day," Mammon said, satisfied.
He hadn't expected to run into Wallace's group at all. Finding all three of them on the same island path at the same time, while he happened to have Caitlin's wardrobe resources available, was the kind of serendipity you couldn't plan.
"..." Elesa was processing what she'd spent six hours watching.
She'd understood, intellectually, that Mammon had a hobby. She'd heard references to it. She had not, until today, directly observed it in operation.
What she'd observed was — thorough. Committed. Mammon had approached the production with the earnestness of someone doing something they believed in, which somehow made it more unsettling than if he'd been doing it purely for chaos.
He'd had opinions about lighting.
"I'll edit it tonight and post tomorrow," Mammon said. "I think the comments section is going to be spectacular."
"You're really posting it," Elesa said.
"Why would I make it if I wasn't going to post it?"
Elesa couldn't argue with the internal logic.
"All regions?"
"Every platform. Every region. Unova, Hoenn, Kanto — all of them. If there's a network, it goes there." He said this with the matter-of-fact delivery of someone announcing a distribution plan. "I told them it would go viral worldwide. I meant it."
Elesa silently composed a thought about what Alder's parliamentary critics were going to say when they saw the Champion of Unova featured in this content, decided the thought was too elaborate to finish right now, and let it go.
Time constraints from the filming meant the three of them stayed the night at a small guesthouse on the island rather than returning to the castle.
"Mammon. Temperature's good." Elesa set a basin of warm water at his feet and stepped back.
"Good. And — you'll be heading back to Nimbasa in a few days. You've been at this a while."
Mammon settled back, phone in one hand, and extended a foot into the basin. The observation about Nimbasa was genuine rather than performative — she had, he thought, adapted to this with more composure than he'd expected when it started.
"It hasn't been difficult," she said, calmly.
She knelt to attend to this, hands unhurried, and was mostly truthful. The work itself wasn't demanding — particularly once Anthea and Concordia had taken over primary domestic responsibilities at the castle. The months of this had been, in a strange way, something other than what she'd anticipated.
She'd been at the edge of things she hadn't known existed before. The legendaries. The scale of the battles. The internal workings of an organization that bore no resemblance to the cartoonishly criminal entity she'd understood Team Rocket to be.
The world was significantly larger than Nimbasa.
"You've been a good sport about this," Mammon said, looking down at her.
"I'm a professional." She kept her voice level.
Something shifted. She found herself lifted — he'd pulled her up and set her on his knee before she'd registered the movement, close, his attention suddenly much more immediate.
"Mammon." She kept her hands raised, still damp from the basin. "I'm not Concordia or Anthea. I don't need—"
She didn't finish the sentence.
He had, over several weeks, established certain habits when she came to wake him in the mornings. This was not entirely different from those, except that it was evening and she was the one who hadn't started it.
She found her arms around his neck, which was a reflex she hadn't consciously developed but apparently had.
"Stay tonight," he said, after a while, quietly.
Elesa's breathing had taken on a quality it hadn't had a moment ago. She looked at him — at the face she'd been in proximity to for months, which had not become less frustrating or less appealing in that time — and thought about a number of things she wasn't going to say.
"Mammon." Her voice came out smaller than she intended. "Are you going to ruin my life completely?"
She knew what he was asking. She'd been tracking the arc of this, and she wasn't oblivious about where it had been trending.
The thing was: Caitlin. Caitlin, who was brilliant and composed and deeply in love with Mammon in a way that everyone in proximity to it could feel. And whatever Mammon's actual girlfriend was — unseen, in Alola, presumably formidable — she existed.
Elesa was a world-famous model. She was accomplished and she knew it. She wasn't insecure. But she was also a realist.
"I'm not trying to ruin anything," Mammon said.
He leaned into her hair and stayed there.
She didn't move.
"Fine," she said, eventually.
The guesthouse garden. Evening.
Caitlin sat by the small pond, watching Snowy play in the water — splashing, diving, surfacing with the concentrated delight of a legendary Pokémon approximately a hundred years old who had discovered that ponds were excellent.
Watching Snowy, Caitlin felt something soften.
Genuinely adorable.
"Snowy," she said, when the little Lugia paddled over to her, "starting tomorrow, how would you feel about beginning some training?"
She asked it properly, as a question. Mammon had said she could develop Snowy at her discretion, contingent on earning its affection. She had.
Several months of being Snowy's primary caregiver — feeding, walks, pool time, an endless supply of the particular treats Snowy had decided it preferred — had produced an attachment she hadn't entirely expected to feel herself. The aunt-smile that Mammon had described, that first time, had become something that appeared without effort.
Snowy regarded her with large, clear eyes and made a sound of enthusiastic agreement.
"Huwaaah~!"
"Good." Caitlin smiled.
Snowy was young — a hundred years old was barely adolescence for a Lugia — but the raw capability was there. Already larger than most bird Pokémon, wingspan already beyond what most Pokémon Center scales had experience with, and still growing fast. The potential ceiling was exceptional.
I'm going to raise you stronger than your mother, Caitlin thought, with the placid certainty of someone who has made a decision and intends to follow through.
And then, in the particular silence of the garden:
Cynthia.
Caitlin thought of Cynthia — her best friend, her most significant rival, the person she'd told "wait for me, our battle will come." The Sinnoh Champion who had Mega Garchomp and years of experience and the most effortlessly complete battling style Caitlin had ever observed.
I have a Lugia now.
What do you have?
She would catch up. She would surpass. That was the trajectory and she'd been on it for years and it wasn't stopping now.
I'm going to win, Cynthia. That battle is still coming.
"Huwaaah~!"
Snowy launched itself back into the pond, sending a spectacular arc of water into the evening air.
Caitlin watched the droplets catch the light, and the smile stayed.
(End of Chapter)
☆☆☆
-> 20 Advanced chapters Now Available on Patreon!!
-> https://www.pat-reon.co-m/c/Inkshaper
(Just remove the hyphen (-) to access patreon normally)
If you like this novel please consider leaving a review that's help the story a lot Thank you