Chapter 139: Kyogre Feels Like the Sky Is Falling
The black Rayquaza's imperious eyes swept downward. Its presence radiated without restraint, pressing down on everything beneath it.
"Father!"
The moment it appeared, the Rayquaza that had been very quietly playing dead immediately flew back up.
Dad's here! Let's GO!
The black Rayquaza glanced at its offspring. Its eyes traveled to the frost damage on the smaller Rayquaza's scales and narrowed very slightly. It said nothing. It just looked.
The smaller Rayquaza looked back at its father's increasingly dangerous expression and quietly swallowed. Every scale on its body was prickling.
Oh no.
"A space bug. And something unidentifiable."
The black Rayquaza turned its head toward Dark Mewtwo and Deoxys. A low telepathic voice resonated in the smaller Rayquaza's mind.
The displeasure was unmistakable.
A member of the proud Rayquaza lineage, and it couldn't handle these two? It had called for help?
"Father, I feel like I can explain this."
The smaller Rayquaza pressed on through the discomfort, scales crawling.
"If they hadn't ganged up on me two against one, I would never have lost! That's the only reason!"
It had a legitimate grievance. One against two. Under normal circumstances it would have won, absolutely.
"And if I could Mega Evolve—"
The resentment was real. With Mega Evolution, it would never have lost to this pair.
"You can't Mega Evolve. Who's fault is that?"
The black Rayquaza's displeasure sharpened. The weight behind those words made the smaller Rayquaza shrink.
"You are two thousand years old. You still haven't learned Dragon Ascent. Do you think you're a hatchling?"
The smaller Rayquaza became very interested in a point somewhere in the middle distance.
"When the humans outmaneuvered you — why didn't you call for us then? Because you thought you had it handled. And then? Your Lorekeeper died in front of you."
"Today you couldn't beat two opponents. Are you going to lose to the lizard and the fish when they wake up next? Is that what this is heading toward?"
"You are going to destroy every bit of dignity the Rayquaza lineage has left."
The black Rayquaza's frustration was the exasperation of someone watching three centuries of family reputation be dismantled one loss at a time.
The Rayquaza lineage had dominated the sky for three hundred million years. When Groudon and Kyogre's ancient war had threatened to tear the world apart, it was the Rayquaza who had descended and imposed order, establishing the three-way sovereignty of land, sea, and sky — with the sky paramount. Humans had built the Sky Pillar and the Embedded Tower in their honor, dedicated resting places for their kind.
And now this offspring — assigned to patrol this region — had failed its Lorekeeper, and was losing to a space visitor and an unidentified black creature.
The black Rayquaza had come very close to making its feelings known physically. It had shown considerable restraint.
"..."
The smaller Rayquaza had nothing left to say. It stared at the ground.
"Think about it yourself. If your mother finds out about any of this — that's your problem."
The smaller Rayquaza went cold.
The black Rayquaza was angry and disappointed, but it wasn't violent. The mother, on the other hand, had a temper that operated on completely different principles. If she learned about the Lorekeeper, the two-on-one loss, the call for help — she was genuinely capable of destroying the current model and starting over.
The black Rayquaza exhaled internally. Infuriating. But still its child.
Its eyes returned to their natural expression — imperious, remote. The vast draconic presence resumed its slow, deliberate expansion. The black form began to drift forward.
A space bug. An unidentifiable black creature. Both had laid a hand on its offspring.
Hm?
The black Rayquaza's eyes shifted — a flicker of something unexpected passing through them. It turned its head slightly toward a high-rise some distance away.
Its vision, naturally, was extraordinary.
A human. White jacket, dark trousers.
The natural world's blessing was on this one. That was unusual enough to note.
But that wasn't what had caught its attention.
"The fat fish is with this one. It actually chose to accept a human?"
The black Rayquaza turned the thought over with something approaching genuine curiosity. It knew Groudon and Kyogre's presence as well as it knew its own.
In its experience, both of them were categorically incapable of reasonable behavior. Their entire existence, as far as it could tell, consisted of waking up and immediately trying to kill each other over natural energy. Over and over. For millions of years. What else could you call that but a medical condition?
And both of them had always been entirely indifferent to humans — not hostile, not warm, simply not interested.
Kyogre choosing a human was something the black Rayquaza had never seen.
Has it finally developed some sense?
"Where am I? Wasn't I in the water? Why is there such a strong Rayquaza smell—"
A dazed, gender-neutral telepathic voice filtered into Mammon's mind.
"Wait wait wait wait. That's the DARK-SCALED one's smell! Oh no. Rayquaza is attacking?!!"
The confusion rapidly became something closer to panic.
"Well, well — Kyogre. Good morning. You finally woke up."
Mammon's eyes lit up. He produced Kyogre's Poké Ball and smiled pleasantly at the ball that was now shaking with considerable agitation.
"A HUMAN?! What did you DO?! WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME?!"
The fat fish had completely lost it. The ball's shaking intensified. Furious telepathy flooded Mammon's awareness.
Can anyone understand this?
It had been sleeping perfectly peacefully in its little pool — having a very nice dream — and then an overwhelming Rayquaza smell had punched through its sleep and woken it up with all the subtlety of an explosion.
This evil human had done this to it.
"The water in that pool was turning into paste. I moved you somewhere more suitable."
Mammon felt that Kyogre's morning disposition was somewhat intense.
The funniest part was that it wouldn't come out. The ball was shaking from the inside, but it hadn't broken free. Which it absolutely could do — Kyogre could escape any Poké Ball at will. It was just choosing to stay inside and verbally abuse him through the shell.
"Nobody gave you permission! Human — I will not forgive you for this!"
"Get me out of here! Now! Immediately! Right now!"
"I'm afraid I have to decline. The ball can't actually hold you, so you can just come out yourself whenever you'd like."
Mammon refused without hesitation.
"YOU—"
Kyogre was incandescent.
"You brought me here and now you're telling me to walk away on my own?! You're responsible for this! You were supposed to take me BACK!"
"Apologies. I'm currently occupied with fighting a Rayquaza. Difficult to step away."
Mammon found the fat fish genuinely endearing right now.
"Kyogre — are you scared of Rayquaza?"
The tried and tested method for dealing with stubborn Pokémon: provocation.
"Ha." Kyogre's response was a short, cold laugh. No further comment.
The ball stopped shaking. Something in it seemed to regain composure.
"I've heard quite a few stories about you. Every time you and Groudon fight each other to a standstill, Rayquaza shows up and defeats you both."
"Looking at it that way, a certain amount of Rayquaza-related anxiety would be completely understandable."
Mammon delivered it in a tone of dawning realization.
"Hm hm…" Two more cold laughs from Kyogre — but the displeasure underneath them was audible.
"If I hadn't been completely drained from fighting the stupid lizard every single time, how would Rayquaza ever beat me?"
It couldn't hold that in.
"Oh, I see. Is that how it goes every time?"
"Of course it is."
"So between you and Rayquaza — who's stronger?"
"Rayquaza, obviously."
Kyogre didn't take the bait. It answered immediately and without shame.
"Tsk — I was expecting you to say yourself."
"Ignorant human. You have no idea what Rayquaza's power actually is." Kyogre stated this as simple fact.
"Is that why you won't even come out to say hello to one?"
"Ha. I haven't done anything wrong this time. Why would I go out there and get beaten up for no reason? Rayquaza is the second thing I hate most in existence."
Kyogre was righteously indignant.
When it and Groudon clashed and disrupted the environment, fine — Rayquaza coming down to stop them made a certain kind of sense. It accepted that.
But this time it hadn't done anything.
It had been sleeping in its own home, minding its own business, and the only reason it had woken up at all was that its sensitivity to the Rayquaza lineage's presence was deeply and unfortunately involuntary.
Without that, it would still be in its warm water having its pleasant dream, blissfully unaware.
The shock of smelling Rayquaza while half-asleep had been genuinely terrible.
"And by the way, human — you're going to fight that black coal-colored one? I'll watch you die."
Kyogre's voice had the unmistakable quality of someone settling in to enjoy a show.
It could sense things. This human who had snatched it away while it slept was not ordinary. There was a powerful Pokémon on him — unrecognized, but strong.
Still. That black-coal-colored Rayquaza was an entirely different matter. Terrifyingly strong.
"Oh? Kyogre — you're sure you don't want to come out and help?"
"Don't even think about it."
Utterly merciless.
If it was Groudon, Kyogre wouldn't even need to be asked — it would be out of the ball and charging before Mammon finished the sentence. But fight a Rayquaza? This Rayquaza? Was it looking for an excuse to suffer?
Mammon's eyebrow went up. He turned Kyogre's Poké Ball slowly in his hand.
Fine. Kyogre wasn't going to fight the black Rayquaza. That tracked — it couldn't even beat a normal Mega Rayquaza. There was no version of this where it chose to engage the stronger variant. It wasn't stupid. Why take a guaranteed loss the same morning it woke up?
And Kyogre clearly didn't believe Mammon could win either.
To be fair — with current assets, the math was rough. Dark Mewtwo couldn't Mega Evolve yet. Deoxys was badly hurt. Lunala was an option. But without Primal Kyogre, the numbers weren't there.
There was something else incoming that might help. But without the fat fish, it still wasn't enough.
Fortunately, Mammon had exactly one lever to pull with Kyogre.
"Rayquaza!"
Mammon raised his head toward the black Rayquaza — which was, at this exact moment, watching him with something approaching interest.
"?"
The black Rayquaza heard the human call to it. Curious. Was the human attempting to negotiate?
It had already registered the connection — that Dark Mewtwo carried this human's scent all through it. His Pokémon, without question.
"Kyogre says your black skin looks like charcoal. Says it's hideous!"
Mammon held up Kyogre's Poké Ball and shouted it clearly.
"???"
The black Rayquaza went very still.
Then its eyes began to narrow.
The already-oppressive atmosphere became heavier.
The smaller Rayquaza quietly edged backward. It did not want to be within splash distance when this resolved.
"HUMAN!!!!!"
And from inside Mammon's mind — right on schedule — Kyogre's explosion of pure outrage arrived.
How could one human be this shameless.
Kyogre, at this particular moment, felt as though the entire sky had just fallen on it.
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