Chapter 198: Is This White Dragon Actually Serious?
Your truth... what is it?
Mammon raised an eyebrow.
Psychic communication. The word "truth." Honestly, if he couldn't figure out who was asking, he'd have wasted his entire life.
This is obviously the twin-tailed white dragon.
So coming to Icirrus had actually been the right call — Reshiram was already reaching out.
After that one sentence, though, the voice went quiet. No follow-up. Nothing else.
Mammon watched Touko's back as she jogged away, the corner of his mouth lifting slightly.
Under normal circumstances — without his presence disrupting the timeline — Reshiram probably would've found Touko, wouldn't it? The battle with the Shadow Triad alone confirmed she was already comfortably Elite-Four-tier. And she'd said she'd only started traveling this year. Half a year in, at that level — the raw talent there was remarkable.
Unfortunate, then.
"Kyogre. Someone just connected to me through telepathy. Did you pick that up?"
"A bit. What did they want, Mammon?"
Kyogre's telepathy came back low and direct.
Local Pokémon and their complete lack of manners. Did they know Mammon was Kyogre's trainer? If this rude newcomer was here looking for trouble, Kyogre was going to make sure they put on a very undignified display in front of Mammon.
"Relax. Nothing bad." Mammon had heard the irritation underneath the question.
"Can you locate where that telepathy came from?"
Kyogre answered with complete straightforwardness.
"...Can't."
"Fair enough." Mammon wasn't particularly disappointed. Tracking a telepathic source through return psychic sensing was far beyond reasonable expectation.
No problem. They'd go to Dragonspiral Tower tomorrow. All signs pointed to Reshiram being there.
He steered the group into the city, handing the Shadow Triad off to the local police station on the way — a brief stop that had Looker nearly trying to give him a commendation banner, which he politely declined.
It was summer, so the silver snowscapes that made Icirrus famous in the colder months were absent — but the city was genuinely pleasant in the warmth, green and alive.
The group checked into a hotel first, then went looking for somewhere to eat.
As it turned out, Touko had reached Elesa through their shared contact information — they'd apparently met before — and she'd returned the Larvesta to its owner and was heading back into the city with her friend. After a brief exchange with Mammon, Elesa forwarded her their restaurant location.
When Touko arrived with her companion, Mammon did a small double take.
Two neat buns. A fitted blue-and-white long-sleeve. Black tights and a yellow skirt-shorts combination.
Fresh, vivid, with just a little more going on than the word "cute" could entirely contain.
Nora. The Black 2/White 2 female protagonist.
Touko and Nora walking in together — he had the distinct sense of two generations of protagonists sharing a frame. Which was a very specific kind of novelty.
Though one of them looked noticeably less alert than the other. Nora's energy was distinctly subdued.
"Oh, hi hi~! Sorry — did we keep you waiting?"
Touko pressed both hands together apologetically, eyeing the already-crowded table.
"Not at all. The food just finished coming out — perfect timing." Mammon smiled. "Come sit. You must be hungry."
"Thank you~!" Touko tugged Nora — who appeared to be engaged in a semi-conscious war with gravity — down into a seat.
"Oh, right — I don't think we properly introduced ourselves before. I'm Touko, from Nuvema Town. I started traveling this year."
Her ease with strangers was pretty natural.
"I'm Nora, from Virbank City. Also started traveling this year." Nora shook herself a little more awake and caught up. "Nice to meet you all."
"Nice to meet you. I'm Mammon, from Kanto. This is my good friend Caitlin." He gave his own introduction pleasantly.
"Mammon." Nora looked at him properly. "Wow, you're good-looking."
She patted both cheeks to wake herself up further, blinking at him with wide, unguarded eyes.
She was, apparently, a person who formed opinions about appearance first and filed them directly out loud.
"Thank you. You're very cute, Nora."
Mammon laughed a little — he had a reasonably solid opinion of his own face, but meeting someone who just immediately said it to him on first meeting was still fairly unusual.
"Ehehe~ people say that a lot." Nora grinned and stuck her tongue out, utterly unemboldened.
Touko rolled her eyes, but didn't comment. Her friend was genuinely popular. This was known.
For what it was worth, Touko wasn't actually less attractive — but Nora's buns had a certain quality to them, and the black tights—
Caitlin glanced at Nora's general area, then down at herself. Her expression made a quiet, unannounced shift.
"Nora — you have noticeable dark circles. Did you not sleep well?"
Mammon had been curious about that since she walked in.
"Ah — it's not just last night, it's been two whole days." Nora's energy deflated further. Attention drawn to the dark circles she was quite aware of was not what she'd needed. "I haven't slept properly in ages."
"Do you mind saying why?"
"Mm..." Nora glanced at her travel companion. "Touko, you explain?"
"Okay." Touko sighed. "So for the past few days, this mysterious voice has been appearing in our heads."
"A mysterious voice?" Elesa, who'd been quietly making progress through her food, couldn't quite help looking up at that.
"It's so weird!"
Nora put both hands on her own face and squished it slightly, then slapped her cheeks again in a futile bid for more coherence.
"Sometimes for half an hour, sometimes for an hour — just suddenly there, in your head, completely without warning. It's been driving me insane!"
The frustration in her voice was palpable. Either she genuinely hated the voice, or she'd been driven to that point by sleep deprivation and had arrived at the same destination.
"It throws off my focus mid-battle. It just shows up whenever. And it's worse at night — I'll actually be asleep and it appears in the dream. Three hours last night. Three."
She melted further into her chair.
"Let me find whatever's doing this. Please. I will not let this go."
"Could it be a Ghost-type playing around?" Caitlin offered, genuinely puzzled.
"I don't think so." Touko shook her head, certain. "I think it's something's telepathy — and it started about two weeks ago. I was in Nimbasa then, and Nora was in Castelia. But when we talked, we'd been hearing the exact same thing."
That closed off the "local haunting" explanation pretty firmly.
Caitlin and Elesa both turned that over.
Ghost-types with mischief on the mind were a known phenomenon, but the matching transmission to two different cities with different audio ruled out anything so contained.
"What has the voice been saying, exactly?" Elesa found herself interested now.
"Truth... little one... your truth... what is it... tell me your... truth..."
Nora lowered her voice and delivered this in a deeply, dramatically foreboding approximation.
Mammon's expression did something complicated.
"It just does that, over and over, all day! And then when I try to answer it, it goes quiet! I can not handle this anymore—!"
Nora flung herself back in her chair.
"I had three hours of sleep, I cannot express to you how tired I am—"
And then.
Truth... your truth... tell me...
The voice drifted through him again — sourceless, gentle, arriving from somewhere that wasn't a place.
It appeared in Mammon's mind once more.
This time, though, Mammon sat with it. Because—
"There it is again, there it is again! Please, I'm begging you, leave me alone!"
Nora had reached her breaking point.
Touko's expression wasn't faring much better.
So it was a group broadcast now.
Mammon descended into thought.
What exactly is the white dragon's plan here?
"What brings you both to Icirrus?" Elesa asked — she hadn't heard the voice and had no idea what the other three were simultaneously processing.
"Honestly, no particular reason I can name. It's hard to explain — it just felt like something was guiding us here. I got here, and Nora happened to arrive too. I only found out when we checked in with each other."
Touko shook her head, searching for words that felt accurate.
"Maybe whoever's behind the voice is somewhere near Icirrus."
She sighed. It had been wearing on her too, though she had a somewhat higher tolerance for it than Nora did.
The honest truth was that Touko had a theory. She wasn't certain, but she had a guess.
"Truth," though. She didn't actually know what her truth was.
I wonder how many other people this dragon's been sending messages to.
Mammon was reaching his own limit.
Not only was it sending persistent unsolicited telepathic broadcasts — it had quietly steered both Touko and Nora toward Icirrus behind the scenes.
Including himself, that was already three potential candidates for "Hero of Truth."
And there was absolutely no telling how many others Reshiram had been running this on.
Is the white dragon seriously holding open auditions?
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