Charon didn't acknowledge Ash's anger. He wasn't performing indifference. He simply didn't care. Beyond Team Galactic's leader and his own research, very little registered as significant to him. His Pokémon, other people's Pokémon, wild Pokémon, all of them occupied the same category in his mind: tools that either served a purpose or didn't.
"You'll understand when you're older," Charon said, looking at Ash with something between amusement and contempt. "Everything used to achieve a goal is a resource. Pokémon, people, it doesn't matter. A boy playing at being a Trainer shouldn't need to concern himself with any of this. Leave Lugia here and go home."
Ash stepped forward.
Cynthia's hand came down on his shoulder immediately. "He's baiting you. Don't."
She was right, and she had seen it faster than Ash had. Charon didn't talk like this normally. He didn't need people to understand him or agree with him. The fact that he was saying any of this, specifically to Ash, specifically about Pokémon being tools, meant he had done his research and knew exactly which words would make Ash stop thinking clearly.
The disappointment that crossed Charon's face when Cynthia intervened confirmed it.
"The Sinnoh Champion, naturally." Charon withdrew the expression and adjusted his approach without missing a beat. "I wanted to deal with the boy first while he was distracted, but with you present, that becomes less practical. So. Let's proceed directly."
He extended one hand and snapped his fingers.
The pressure arrived from both sides simultaneously. Two auras descended on the corridor like a physical weight, heavy enough that even Cynthia's expression shifted.
"God level," she said, her voice dropping to something flat and controlled. "Two of them. What exactly has Team Galactic been doing out here?"
"Modifications," Charon said simply. "Minor ones. The plan to acquire the third was already in motion and would have concluded today, but Mars managed to turn a straightforward task into this situation. So the timeline moves forward."
Two pillars of light erupted through the hull of the submarine, one orange, one dark red, punching upward through the metal and water above them. Two figures stepped out from the light.
From the dark red pillar came an enormous bird wreathed in flames that burned the wrong color. From the orange pillar came another great bird, its feathers black at the base and orange at the tips, every feather raised as if charged with energy that wasn't releasing.
Misty stared at both of them. "Those look like Moltres and Zapdos. But they're wrong somehow."
She had grown up near water and around Pokémon her whole life. She had never seen the Legendary Birds in person, but she had seen enough illustrations and heard enough descriptions to know what they were supposed to look like. These weren't quite right.
The bird that resembled Moltres was burning with dark red fire, not orange-red, and when Misty focused on it, she realized she couldn't feel any heat coming from the flames at all. Moltres burned hot enough to be felt from a distance. This thing was producing flames that looked vicious and radiated nothing.
Ash checked the other one and found the same problem from a different angle. Not a single electric ion was leaking from the Zapdos-like bird. A Legendary Pokémon of that level, at God level strength, should have been radiating its attribute constantly. There was no lightning in it whatsoever.
Cynthia spoke after a moment of quiet thought. "The Galar region has its own variants of the Legendary Birds. Same Flying type, different secondary attributes, different appearance. They're rare enough that most people outside Galar have never encountered documentation of them." She looked at Charon. "You didn't bring these from Galar."
"No," Charon agreed. "We converted the Legendary Birds already living in the Orange Islands."
The silence that followed was complete.
The confirmation landed like a blow. None of them, including Cynthia, had considered that possibility. The Legendary Birds of the Orange Islands had been here all along, and Team Galactic had turned them into something else.
"What did you do to them?" Ash's voice came out harder than he intended.
He had quietly reached out with his Aura the moment the two birds appeared, trying to make contact. The response had been immediate and violent, a force pushing him back before he could establish anything.
But in that fraction of a second of contact, he had felt something clearly. Both birds were in pain. Not surface-level distress. Something deep and constant and suffocating, the kind that couldn't be faked through Aura.
Their expressions showed nothing. They glared forward with predatory focus, ferocious and controlled. But the emotions underneath, the ones that leaked through regardless of what their faces were doing, told a different story. Even their ability to show what they were feeling had been taken from them.
Ash had been angry in battles before. This was different.
Charon shrugged. "A conversion experiment. I extracted the base data of the Galarian Legendary Bird forms and injected it into these two. Their bodies accepted it with very little resistance, which honestly suggests the Galarian form may be closer to their original state anyway. After the conversion, a power controller kept them in check. Two God Realm enforcers, acquired cleanly."
He said it the way someone would describe adjusting a piece of equipment.
"The God level sounds mythical until you actually study it," Charon continued, more to himself than to any of them. "Find the right point of vulnerability and the gap between a god and an ordinary Pokémon closes considerably. Technology bridges the rest. Gods are only gods because people have never thought carefully about how to approach them."
The two birds screamed and launched forward like arrows released from a bow.
"Ash, Mewtwo gets us out now!" Lorelei's voice was sharp and immediate.
Every figure in the group vanished from the corridor in the same instant.
Shamouti Island's surface was completely dry. The storms raging around it on all sides hadn't touched the island itself in what seemed like years, as if something was keeping it sheltered. Ash and the others materialized at the island's edge. Mewtwo emerged from its Poké Ball and floated quietly beside Ash.
"A serious fight is coming," Mewtwo said into all of their minds simultaneously. "Anyone below God level shouldn't be close to it. Ash and I will handle this."
Cynthia and Lorelei both understood what that meant without needing it explained further. Cynthia thought for a moment, then nodded. "Then we'll go look for Articuno and try to find any sign of the God of the Sea. Hold until we get back."
Ash tilted his head. "Hold on? You think we're going to be the ones struggling here?"
Cynthia looked at him for a moment. "Fair point. Try not to end it before we have something useful to contribute."
"No promises."
Before anything else could be said, the sea split open.
The Team Galactic submarine broke the surface in an eruption of displaced water, sending waves several meters high in every direction. Mewtwo raised one hand and the incoming wall of water simply stopped. A slight flex of its fingers and the whole thing shattered into scattered droplets.
Two large hatches opened on top of the submarine. Two figures shot upward through them and hung in the storm-lit sky, one ringed in black fire, one surrounded by crackling but electricityless energy.
"Let's go, Mewtwo."
Light wrapped around Mewtwo. Its body shifted. Smaller, more compact. The long tail was gone, replaced by a slim appendage that fell from the back of its head. Cream-white across the body with traces of purple at the limbs. Every line of it sharper and faster-looking than the form it had replaced.
Mega Mewtwo Y.
"Mewtwo can Mega Evolve." Lorelei said it quietly, like someone recalibrating everything they thought they understood.
Cynthia let out a slow breath. The tension that had been sitting in her shoulders since they left the submarine released itself. "So that's the card you were keeping back. Now I understand the confidence." She glanced at Ash. "We'll find Articuno. Don't leave us with nothing to do when we get back."