Chapter 338: "I'd Give My Heart For Lord Mammon, Yo!" — Are Mammon's Fans Really This Bold?
Word has it that a certain "Big Rice Sensei" commandeered Hoenn Champion Steven's office computer and spent an entire evening slugging it out with someone's fanbase across a full thousand-plus forum posts, arguing until the whole thread practically wore itself out.
Just so everyone knows.
And apparently, the Hoenn Champion's office echoed for a long time afterward with a certain teacher's furious, unending screaming.
Hah-huh~ Hah-huh~
"Still not done?"
Steven, scrolling the forums from the couch, glanced over at Wallace and noticed his face had gone an almost unnaturally vivid shade of red — practically smoking.
"I'm challenging every single one of them to a duel, offline!!"
Master Wallace was thoroughly furious.
"They're saying I don't dare post proof-shots, that there's ABSOLUTELY no one in this world more handsome than Mammon? They haven't even SEEN my dress-up photos — how can they possibly say I'm not more handsome than Mammon?"
"Uh..." Steven blinked. "Then just post the photos, no?"
Setting everything else aside, Steven had to admit — purely on the merits of dress-up photography, Wallace really did have some serious authority to back that claim.
Wait, no — if you're competing on LOOKS against Mammon, why are you bringing up your cross-dressing photos specifically?
Steven suddenly caught himself on that thought. Or, Wallace, buddy — have you already privately accepted that your cross-dressing photos ARE your pride and joy at this point?
Steven's handsome face took on a distinctly complicated expression.
"I'm Wallace. Do you think I can't take on a couple of brainless fanboys?"
Wallace declared, entirely self-righteous.
"So this offline duel plan is...?"
"I'll use my female alt account to fight them online, and then just show up in full cross-dress when the time comes! They won't recognize me at all! I have to prove it — that I! Wallace! Am the most beautiful man in the world!"
Master Wallace had just deployed a genuinely world-shattering stroke of genius.
"...Whatever makes you happy."
Steven opened his mouth to say more, but settled on that instead.
Mammon! You really have a lot to answer for!! Look what state you've reduced Wallace to!
Privately, Steven gave Mammon a quiet internal thumbs-up — after all, his best friend cosplaying in various stunning outfits practically every day was genuinely, purely nice to look at. On that particular front, Steven felt like he'd never once come up short.
"And these ones! I'm challenging them to a duel too! Unbelievable! Do they have zero self-awareness? They're actually setting up some kind of Team Rocket fan club for Mammon???"
The absolute nerve of it!
Listening to Wallace's ceaseless, furious muttering, Steven rolled his eyes and shifted into a more comfortable lounging position.
"Just be careful you don't end up losing to Mammon's own fanbase, too."
"Ha? Steven, who exactly do you think you're talking down to?"
Wallace was thoroughly offended.
"I'm WALLACE, remember? There's no way I'd lose to a bunch of brainless fanboys."
Sure, Wallace wouldn't deny he'd been personally "captured" by Team Rocket a couple of times — but who exactly had he been up against? Mammon, Kagura, Caitlin, Colress — a lineup of Team Rocket's own top-tier executives. Wallace felt losing to them was no real black mark on his record.
But losing to Mammon's random fanboys online? Absolutely not. Not a chance.
"Hmph~ see, the moment I mentioned a duel, they all backed off instantly, didn't they?"
Wallace let out a couple of thoroughly satisfied snorts.
Then he went and started a whole new thread on his alt account, formally challenging every single Mammon fan on the entire internet!
Steven found himself lost in thought.
Ever since Wallace got blackmailed into that photoshoot that went viral across Hoenn, he'd only gotten increasingly absurd, more and more like a walking comedy act.
You're a genuine Master-rank Coordinator, a former Hoenn Champion — do you really need to be squabbling online with Mammon's fanbase like this?
Can't beat Mammon himself, so you're going after his fans instead. Wallace, you've really fallen.
"Huh? There's actually someone who accepted the challenge? Tch~ gotta respect the nerve on this one."
Wallace found, to his mild surprise, that someone had actually taken up his alt-account challenge.
"My dad's not Mr. 'Excuse Me While I Take Leave.'"
Looking at that particular username, Wallace found himself hesitating slightly — it was pretty obviously a kid.
And besides, he'd just gotten swept up in the heat of the moment — actually going through with a duel against random fans would honestly be beneath him.
—
Unova region.
"Touko!!!"
In a hotel suite in Nimbasa City, Mei's shriek rang through Touko's ears with a deafening clang.
"Are you trying to KILL me? My ears are practically bleeding!"
Touko snapped back, unable to hold her composure.
"No, seriously, huge news!" Mei came bursting over to Touko's side, buzzing with barely-contained excitement.
"Mammon is actually from TEAM ROCKET!!"
"Huh? What are you even talking about?"
Touko, who'd been about to say something, froze. Mr. Mammon is with Team Rocket? No way, that couldn't be right.
And then...
Half an hour or so later, Touko's face was a picture of pure, reverent awe.
"Mr. Mammon~ he's truly magnificent~!"
Touko sighed, thoroughly moved.
"Ahh~! Just as expected of the man I've set my sights on! AAAAHHHH!!"
Mei was already hitting a full-on fever pitch, letting loose a battle cry.
"What are you losing it about now?"
"Touko! What do I do?! I really want to pin Mammon down and just LICK him all over right now! What do I do, what do I do, tell me what to do!"
Mei stared at the video of Mammon, her eyes practically glowing red, clutching her own cheeks, her fair, innocent little face flushed with an entirely unnatural intensity.
"How can Mammon be THIS good-looking?! Waaah~! AHHHHH!!"
Gulp.
Touko swallowed hard, watching her friend hit what was easily ninety percent feral at this point, scooting her seat a little farther away from Mei.
Girl, is this how repressed you've been this whole time?
"Get a GRIP! You're scaring me, damn it!"
"Ohh..." Mei made a small acknowledging noise, dialing herself back down somewhat to something closer to normal.
Touko relaxed slightly at that — Mei just now had genuinely frightened her.
"I mean, I always knew Mr. Mammon wasn't your ordinary guy, but I never expected he'd actually have this grand of an ideal~"
Touko marveled, genuinely admiring. She didn't feel the slightest issue with Mr. Mammon being Team Rocket's leader — if anything, taking down the previous Team Rocket boss and rising to power himself in barely half a year only proved Mammon's genuine capability, didn't it?
Especially after Mr. Mammon had poured his heart out sharing his own story — Touko resonated with it hard.
A missing brother, a mother who died young, a father too busy to be present — and growing up in that environment, Mr. Mammon still turned out this warm, this bright!
He's just... I'm literally crying!
"AAAHHH!! I want to join Team Rocket too! I have to help Mammon achieve his ideal!"
"...Could you lower your voice? And besides, aren't we technically already Team Rocket, kind of?" Touko felt her head starting to hurt.
"I don't CARE! I want people to know I'm officially Team Rocket, not just some temp worker for a company called 'Alpaca Corporation'!"
"Yeah, yeah, sure — let's just tell Mr. Mammon that, alright? He probably didn't tell us the truth from the start because he was worried about Team Rocket's bad reputation."
Touko analyzed, and honestly, that was probably exactly right. If she'd known upfront it was Team Rocket, she genuinely might not have joined at all — Team Rocket's reputation back then had been thoroughly, unambiguously evil. Touko was a genuinely kind, upstanding girl herself; of course she wouldn't have signed up for that.
But now, things were different.
"I HAVE to get Mammon!! I'm going to make Mammon my HUSBAND!!" Mei's fighting spirit was blazing at full power right now!
"Yeah, yeah, go for it — just get past Caitlin first, okay?"
Touko rolled her eyes affectionately, scrolling through the forums.
"Look, you've got no shortage of competition."
Touko pointed at her phone screen, showing an overwhelming number of posts from female netizens gushing about wanting a boyfriend exactly like Mammon. There was already a dedicated Mammon fan club, apparently.
"Heh~ a bunch of clowns. As if they're qualified to compete with me for a man." Mei scoffed dismissively, not sparing a single one of those keyboard-warrior women a second thought.
"And this one — 'President of the Mammon Fan Club'? That title should be MINE! I'm calling her out!"
Watching Mei pick an online fight with a stranger over the title of "president of Mammon's fan club," Touko figured Mei had probably tipped fully back into feral mode again.
Touko simply shook her head and let Mei sort herself out — otherwise the girl was so pent up, she might actually run straight up to Mammon in person and just tackle him. Touko genuinely believed Mei's personality made her fully capable of pulling something like that.
And then Caitlin would surely end up in a full-blown fight with Mei, and Touko herself would inevitably get dragged into helping out.
Thinking about it, Touko decided this wasn't looking good at all.
Right at that moment, her phone chimed — a group chat notification.
"Unova Region Alpaca Corporation Temp Worker Coworker Group Chat" — that was the group name, set up by Zicao herself, apparently to make coordinating future missions easier.
"OH MY GOD! Mr. Mammon is actually Team Rocket's boss, has everyone seen it?!"
Zicao tagged everyone in the group with this message.
"Well, of course — that's my leader, no wonder! Legendary! I officially declare: Lord Mammon is my idol!" — that was Duruo.
"Mr. Mammon! I will follow Mr. Mammon for the rest of my life!" — that was an excited Wuli.
"Wiping out every dark, evil force out there — THAT'S what Team Rocket's actually about! Who says we're an evil organization?!" — that was Danyu.
Worth noting, Danyu was still just a temp worker, not officially enrolled in Team Rocket's formal ranks.
Message after message kept flooding in.
"Alright, glad to hear it. Oh, and if anyone wants to quit the company, just leave the group chat, okay?"
Zicao let out a relieved breath.
The group admin then renamed the chat to "Team Rocket Unova Regional Branch Trainer Group Chat."
Yeah — Zicao moved fast on that one.
No question about it, Mammon's interview had genuinely stirred up and electrified Zicao and the others. Combined with their prior direct contact with Mammon and their track record of actual missions against dark/evil organizations, the already-strong admiration Zicao and the others held for Mammon had only deepened Team Rocket's reputation further in their eyes.
Joining Team Rocket now felt like an easy call, with zero psychological hesitation whatsoever.
"I'd give my heart for Team Rocket, yo!"
—
Sinnoh region.
Cynthia sat at her desk, one fair hand propped beneath her chin, her lovely eyes fixed on Mammon in the video, an elusive, faint smile tugging at the corner of her refined lips.
As for the video itself, all Cynthia could say was that Mammon's delivery had been genuinely striking.
As for the rest of it? Cynthia didn't believe a single word.
She was confident she understood Mammon better than most, but...
Judge by actions, not intentions. As long as Mammon never strayed from the path he was currently on, wasn't he, functionally, a "hero"?
Watching the "playback complete" notice appear on her screen, Cynthia silently hit replay once more.
What a tangled, karmic bond this is~
Watching the young man on-screen, Cynthia's lovely, clear eyes drifted slightly out of focus.
It had been a while since she'd seen him. She realized, faintly, that she missed him.
Cynthia had always believed that when two lives crossed paths, something inevitably came of it — whether between people, between a person and a Pokémon, or between Pokémon themselves. It was always true. And often, that "something" defied easy description — feeling, bond, fate, whatever name you gave it.
Cynthia had never once imagined that whatever had formed between her and Mammon would end up being... romantic feeling.
But surely that was wrong.
"Caitlin..." Cynthia murmured the name softly.
Caitlin — her closest friend, and also, in a way, the "bridge" that had first brought her and Mammon together. But Caitlin, too, loved Mammon deeply.
If Cynthia truly chose to pursue Mammon herself, that would mean directly competing with Caitlin — what people commonly called "stealing someone's man."
But was that really... right?
No — technically, it wouldn't quite count as stealing, since Caitlin and Mammon had no formal, physical romantic relationship, and the two of them had never officially defined anything between them. And Cynthia, for her part, had already been intimate with Mammon — so strictly speaking, Cynthia felt her own progress was actually further along than Caitlin's.
The real issue, though, was that Caitlin had known Mammon first, and had already warned Cynthia outright that Mammon was the man she loved. That inevitably left Cynthia with a nagging, uncomfortable sense of guilt — like she was betraying her closest friend by pursuing her friend's own boyfriend behind her back. Not a good feeling at all.
But did she really have any other choice left at this point?
"Caitlin, in life, so often, you have to be the one who takes the first step."
Cynthia murmured quietly.
They'd kissed. They'd embraced. Mammon had already seen every inch of her. How was she supposed to go looking for another man after all that?
And honestly, Cynthia genuinely doubted she'd ever find a man better than Mammon. Sure, their positions differed. Sure, Mammon wasn't the faithful, one-woman type. But nobody's perfect — none of that changed the fact that Mammon was, undeniably, exceptional.
"Maybe... this is the opportunity."
Cynthia glanced at her phone, at the message the Sinnoh League Chairwoman had just sent her.
The Kanto League was gearing up for a major move — aimed squarely at Team Rocket. Put plainly: an all-out, League-wide showdown against Team Rocket was coming, with everything on the line.
Caitlin — you've always wanted to beat me, haven't you?
Cynthia took a deep breath and rose to her feet in one smooth motion. She knew it. She'd always known it.
Caitlin wanted to defeat her — because she'd never once managed to win against her. Well then. Let's do this one more time.
Let this coming battle settle it, once and for all!
"Garchomp!"
Down at the base of the League tower, Cynthia released her Garchomp.
She was headed for Mt. Coronet.
Cynthia understood perfectly well — Caitlin had already undergone her own transformation, and now had a Legendary Lugia to her name besides. Sure, that Lugia was still just a juvenile, but under Caitlin's careful, dedicated training, its combat strength was surely nothing to underestimate either.
According to her intel, the King of Mt. Coronet — Sceptile, corrupted by the Blaze Plate — lay dormant somewhere within the mountain. Cynthia decided to try her luck there.
If she could successfully catch it, her own combat strength would climb considerably too.
Let's settle this once and for all, in the coming battle.
And then...
(End of chapter)
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