Chapter 92: Ho-Oh Got Its Feathers Knocked Off!
Mammon said nothing about Ho-Oh's embarrassing history. For now, there were more pressing matters.
In the sky above them, both legendary Pokémon's auras were reaching a fever pitch — the moment before a storm.
Ho-Oh moved first.
"Screeee—!"
A piercing cry rang across the sky. Ho-Oh threw its wings open wide, and a tide of blazing rainbow fire surged forward, roaring toward Dark Mewtwo like the sea reclaiming a beach.
Sacred Fire.
"Mewtwo—!"
Dark Mewtwo raised its right arm. A deep violet barrier snapped into existence around its body.
BOOM.
Sacred Fire crashed against the shield with full force, the brilliant multicolored flames gnawing and clawing against the barrier in a frenzy.
Dark Mewtwo's eyes flickered — twin violet flames juddering with each impact. It could feel that. The force behind it was not nothing.
But it would hold.
It poured more psychic energy into the barrier, steady and continuous, until the Sacred Fire finally guttered out. The hit had been stopped.
What extraordinary psychic power.
Ho-Oh studied Dark Mewtwo. To sustain a barrier of that scale against its attack — that was genuinely impressive.
No wonder it had to force the three beasts into submission.
"Thunder!" Mammon ordered without hesitation.
Lightning crackled across Dark Mewtwo's black body. Ho-Oh immediately beat its wings to gain altitude and evade —
But Dark Mewtwo was faster. It shot forward in an instant, closing the distance overhead, and unleashed a torrent of savage golden electricity.
Thunder connected. The lightning poured into Ho-Oh's body, crackling and searing, filling the air with an electric shriek.
"Scree—!"
Ho-Oh screamed — and fired back. Its beak snapped open, and a massive cross-shaped column of flame blasted directly at Dark Mewtwo.
Fire-type. Blast Burn.
BOOM.
The sudden Blast Burn gave Dark Mewtwo no time to defend. It took the hit clean — a thunderclap of impact, an eruption of scorching fire — and was hurled backward through the air.
With the continuous pressure gone, Ho-Oh spread its wings and shook off the remaining lightning in a single powerful beat.
"Wait — Thunder is supposed to be super effective against Ho-Oh," Erika said, staring. "How did it just tank that and counter-attack?"
Ho-Oh was Fire/Flying type. Electric moves hit it for double damage. That was basic type theory.
"Ho-Oh's Special Defense is extraordinary. It's not that surprising."
Mammon had narrowed his eyes slightly. Ho-Oh was powerful, but people often misread how it was powerful. It wasn't primarily an offensive legendary — not really.
Strictly speaking, Ho-Oh was a defensive legendary at heart. Lugia, its counterpart, was the same way. Both of the second-generation birds were built like fortresses rather than cannons.
And beyond that — Ho-Oh could resurrect the dead in this world. Its vitality was on a completely different scale. Even after taking serious damage, it could recover at a rate that defied explanation.
The perfect wall, honestly.
That type of legendary was genuinely difficult to handle. It wasn't that Ho-Oh's attack was weak — it was that its attack was only relatively weaker than its defense. In absolute terms, it hit hard. It just hit slightly less hard than it could take.
"Skreeee—!"
A melodic, soaring cry rang out as Ho-Oh climbed high into the sky, wings spread wide. Blue light blazed around its body, sacred and radiant.
Flying-type. Brave Bird.
"Mewtwo — Dark Pulse!"
Dark Mewtwo shot upward, right arm raised high.
The air went still for a single suspended moment. A sphere of dark energy — purple-black, seething — swelled rapidly in its palm.
Dark-type. Dark Pulse. Dark Mewtwo's signature move — exclusive to it alone.
Ho-Oh screamed into its dive, beautiful and terrible. Dark Mewtwo swung its arm down hard, and the energy sphere hurtled toward it at speed.
Dark Pulse and Brave Bird collided in midair.
The shockwave hit like a wall.
The dark sphere pressed downward, trying to crush through, and Ho-Oh's dive pressed back, refusing to yield. For a long moment they were locked — purple-black against deep blue, each pouring everything into the collision.
The colors flooded their entire field of vision. The sky changed. Shockwave rings radiated outward in expanding circles, one after another, the concussive force turning the air itself into a weapon.
The wind went absolutely haywire. Even down on the ground, all three of them had their clothes whipping around them.
"That's insane!"
Erika had ducked behind Mammon, both hands gripping the back of his jacket, eyes fixed on the sky above them that had become something out of a fever dream.
Gods fighting. Literal gods.
And then the stalemate broke.
KA-BOOM.
A detonation rang out that made eardrums ache just from the proximity. Dark violet energy swallowed the sky — painting everything dark, blotting out the sun for a moment.
The shockwave sent both Pokémon flying in opposite directions.
Silence. Then the dark energy slowly cleared.
Dark Mewtwo righted itself, straightened, and completely ignored the pain registering across its body.
Its eyes, burning with violet flame, found Ho-Oh — and blazed with something that wasn't quite bloodlust and wasn't quite joy. It was both at once.
Yes. This is exactly it. This — this kind of opponent is what I've been waiting for. Yo.
Every strand of its engineered DNA felt like it was vibrating. A fight where it had to give everything it had — this was what it had been made for. This was—
Ho-Oh felt that blazing gaze land on it and shuddered involuntarily. Its feathers ruffled. Goosebumps, for lack of a better word.
...Logically, Dark Mewtwo should have taken more damage from that exchange than I did. So why does it look like that?
"How are you feeling, Mewtwo?"
"Fighting! Great!"
"...I'm asking how you assess Ho-Oh's strength."
"Fighting!! Great!!"
Mammon watched Dark Mewtwo immediately charge Ho-Oh again and pressed his palm against his forehead.
How to put this.
It's a complicated situation.
Well. Fair enough, he supposed. Mewtwo was literally engineered for combat — its DNA endlessly recombined and refined until its battle capabilities had been driven to an absolute ceiling, with the most savage fighting instinct of any Pokémon in existence. That was straight from the Pokédex.
And Dark Mewtwo, thanks to that strange stone it had absorbed, was even more feral than a standard Mewtwo — even if it spent most of its time operating in calm, rational mode.
This was simply the first time it had found an opponent that genuinely pushed it. Some part of it had gone completely off the rails with excitement.
"Fine. Let it get its fill."
Mammon made no move to intervene. Better to let it run than try to stop it — Dark Mewtwo could fight until it was satisfied, and Ho-Oh could take the punishment.
Honestly, at his read of things, the current Dark Mewtwo probably couldn't beat Ho-Oh anyway. Especially not without direction. If you actually wanted to crack Ho-Oh, the play was to exploit its obvious weakness: quadruple weakness to Rock. And Dark Mewtwo did have access to Rock-type moves.
But Mammon wasn't going to step in. Let them fight it out. He'd sit down with Dark Mewtwo afterward and review the whole thing properly.
So the battle continued.
Dark Pulse versus Sacred Fire. Psystrike versus Brave Bird. Thunder versus Blast Burn.
The exchange was furious — but Dark Mewtwo was clearly on the back foot. There was nothing for it: Ho-Oh's endurance was on a completely different level.
By game logic: higher level, solid attack stat, extreme physical and special bulk, enormous HP, and a recovery rate that was frankly obscene.
Dark Mewtwo had been awake for, what, a few weeks? As newly-awakened legendary rookies went, it was doing impressively well. And it hadn't even Mega Evolved yet.
Mammon crouched down and picked up a feather that had drifted to the ground — brilliant, iridescent, unmistakably Ho-Oh's.
A Rainbow Wing.
Huh. It hasn't changed color. In the lore, a Rainbow Wing would darken and lose its power if held by someone with an impure heart.
He looked at the feather in his hand, undimmed and shimmering.
He glanced up at the sky, where Ho-Oh had apparently been shedding these as Dark Mewtwo knocked them loose. He'd already sent Shell Lady off to collect as many as she could find.
Wait, he thought, with a faint trace of genuine bewilderment.
Does this mean I'm actually... a good person?
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