Chapter 201: Reshiram, I'm Here to Be Your Partner!
Eight in the morning.
Caitlin opened her door — normally she'd still be asleep at this hour, but Snowy had been making water-related requests since dawn, and the hotel's back courtyard apparently had a pool. The baby Lugia liked water. Nothing to be done about it.
She stepped into the hallway.
The door to the adjacent room opened at the same time.
Elesa emerged like someone committing a very quiet crime — careful footsteps, minimal noise — turned her head, and found herself looking directly at Caitlin.
Silence.
The corridor went very, very still.
Elesa did not quite know where to put her eyes. After a moment she brushed a hand through her hair and affected the expression of someone for whom nothing unusual had occurred.
The main complicating factor was Caitlin, who was looking at her with an expression that could not reasonably be called warm. The quality of that gaze carried a certain weight.
Elesa was acutely aware that Caitlin was a Champion-tier psychic user. If she actually got under that particular person's skin, no Pokémon were strictly necessary for the situation to deteriorate.
That was the elegant thing about psychic ability as a power set, really.
"Good morning, Caitlin." After about fifteen seconds of this, Elesa decided to treat the problem head-on and greet her before excusing herself.
She'd been a world-class model. She had some pride.
"Tell me why you're coming out of Mammon's room."
Elesa had barely turned before the question arrived, delivered in a tone that managed to be both entirely composed and very cold.
"Staying overnight in your employer's room. Is that part of a maid's duties?"
The second sentence landed before Elesa could answer the first.
Elesa's hand tightened slightly.
Her night had not been restful.
To be fair: Mammon had, initially, kept his hands entirely to himself. He'd fallen asleep with an arm around her waist and hadn't moved.
Then he'd fallen fully asleep. And at some point after that, his hand had migrated. She didn't know when. What she did know was that it had demonstrated a level of practiced unconscious navigation that was genuinely alarming in its implications.
Then morning had arrived, and her back had informed her that something additional was also pressing against it, and she'd needed a moment to process that information before she could formulate a response.
Extracting herself from those arms had taken effort. Walking out into the hallway to find Caitlin staring at her was the logical conclusion of what had clearly been a cursed twelve hours.
"I don't believe that's any of your concern." Elesa turned and met Caitlin's eyes directly.
She knew what Caitlin was — a Champion-tier trainer, clearly from an aristocratic background based on every visible quality about her. Strong. Poised. Used to being the most formidable presence in most rooms.
So what.
The one who'd spent the night with Mammon was her. Not Caitlin.
"You're Mammon's companion. Not his wife. Not his girlfriend."
Elesa said it clearly, with clean logic.
The words landed.
Something moved behind Caitlin's composed surface — and for a moment the air in the corridor went sharp and heavy, pressure that had nothing to do with any visible Pokémon.
The deep blue light in her eyes kindled. Her hair stirred without any wind.
Elesa felt the faint luminescence appear across her own skin and registered immediately that this had just escalated past the verbal.
Please don't actually do anything—
Two seconds.
The blue light receded. Caitlin pressed the situation back under control.
Elegant. Remain elegant.
She'd nearly put Elesa through a wall. That would have been disproportionate.
"Mammon is my future husband."
Her voice was level again — an announcement of fact, and also a warning.
She walked past Elesa, unhurried and deliberate.
"Do your maid duties properly. If you develop any other ideas about him, I'll feed you to my Metagross."
The Pokédex entry on Metagross was not ambiguous. It was classified as one of the most dangerous wild Pokémon encountered in open terrain. It pressed prey down with four limbs and considerable body mass, and ate through the large mouth in its abdomen.
Actively. While the prey was alive.
Elesa's temperature dropped a perceptible degree.
She genuinely could not determine from Caitlin's tone whether that was a figure of speech.
Caitlin reached the elevator at the end of the hall, pressed the button, and waited.
It's fine. Just another woman Mammon plays around with for a while.
She didn't actually care about Elesa. The woman was attractive and had genuinely exceptional legs, she could acknowledge that — but beyond those two qualities, what else was there?
Only she herself was the one who would end up as Mammon's wife. That was settled.
The only reason she'd said anything was because Elesa had said two specific things that had gotten under her skin. She wouldn't have bothered otherwise.
Everyone knew Caitlin was a fundamentally generous person.
Eleven o'clock.
Mammon woke up thoroughly well-rested.
The Elesa-brand body pillow had been, it had to be said, excellent.
He cleaned up and came down to the lobby to find Caitlin and Elesa both seated on a sofa. The atmosphere between them had a quality that he noticed and filed away without comment.
"You're awake." Caitlin looked up from her magazine and offered him a mild, pleasant smile.
"Did you eat already?"
"Long ago. It's nearly noon." A faint note of reproach in her voice.
Elesa kept her expression entirely neutral from her position on the other side of the sofa.
"Alright. I'll grab something quick and then we head out. Where are Touko and Nora?"
"They left Icirrus already, I think."
Elesa contributed this, filling the conversational gap.
"Got it." Mammon considered this briefly.
Ten minutes of a fairly minimal breakfast later, they set off north from the city. About half an hour's walk brought them to an ancient stone tower, weathered and imposing.
"This is Dragonspiral Tower?"
Elesa seemed to have a dim memory of it.
"You know it, then."
"Anyone who grew up in Unova knows the story of the founding dragon. And people who've done a little reading about the Tower itself—" She looked up at the crumbling stonework with a thoughtful expression.
"Fair enough."
Mammon nodded and kept walking toward the entrance.
"Mr. Mammon, you're here to—" Elesa seemed to arrive at the obvious conclusion.
"Have a look around and see what I find."
He smiled and went in first, Caitlin and Elesa following.
"Two thousand five hundred years ago," he said, almost conversationally, "Unova was founded together by a pair of twins and a single dragon. But the twins had different visions — the older sought truth, the younger sought ideals. The gap between them widened until it became a war."
"The dragon, unable to choose sides, split into two — Reshiram, who carries truth, and Zekrom, who carries ideals."
"Zekrom's already been awakened by N and taken by Team Plasma. But Reshiram hasn't appeared yet."
So that was it. He'd come for Reshiram.
Elesa went quiet. She'd half-suspected it from the moment they'd arrived.
The Tower was said to be where both dragons had been sealed after a war a thousand years ago — it was in most accounts of Unova history. But people had been visiting this tower occasionally for years, and no one had ever encountered anything unusual.
Was Reshiram actually here?
The interior was visibly ancient — crumbling supports, collapsed pillars, stonework that had been quietly giving up for centuries. Compared to Sky Pillar in Hoenn, which was around a thousand years old and still stood up to it, Dragonspiral Tower at over two thousand was on a different level of structural entropy.
And then—
"Are those Team Plasma members?" Caitlin tilted her head at the trussed, tape-gagged figures visible near one of the collapsed sections.
"Someone got here before us." Mammon raised an eyebrow.
He could guess who.
This dragon really is holding auditions.
"Keep going. Up."
They climbed to the top floor. Two familiar figures were already there.
"Wait — handsome guy, you came here too?"
Nora and Touko both blinked at the appearance of Mammon's group.
"What a coincidence." Mammon waved at both of them, smiling. Not particularly surprised.
And—
Truth. Young one. What is your truth?
This time, the telepathy was different. No interruptions, no fragmented fade-in-and-out. Clear.
Reshiram was here. No question about it.
Watching them from somewhere in this tower.
"Truth is truth." Mammon's expression had settled into something sharp-edged and genuine. "This world is truth. Pokémon, people — I can feel the reality of their existence right there in front of me. Ideals can't compete with what's actually here."
He looked up — at the ceiling, the air, wherever the white dragon was watching from.
"Reshiram. My truth is solid enough to carry yours. Come on — I'll be your partner. I'll help you put down the black dragon and its champion."
And if you don't, he added privately, I'll have Kyogre introduce you to Origin Pulse until you reconsider.
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