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[attr="class","skulltitle"]導通抵抗

[attr="class","skullbody"]Okay. There was no time to think about anything Elinor Anderson had told him. There was only time to get to work. By now, this routine had been embedded into his mind. Pop out of the rift. Catch his breath. Take a Teleport back to Sootopolis to swap out his most tired teammates and fill up a fresh set of Pokeballs. Then he could get back in action with a new search party.[break][break]

That plan got derailed the second he saw the pile of rubble rolling out from the left. Shit. Was the lucky break he'd caught with this tunnel finally running out? Nervously, he looked up to the ceiling, wondering if this little side-path was going to end up getting sealed off. No more easy exits. No more sneaking people off the battlefield. No more getting to do his thing away from the main force.[break][break]

Were it not for the desperate voice that followed the rubble, Isaac would have thought he was more bummed about this than anyone.[break][break]

The sounds of strain and exertion almost smothered the soft whimpers coming from beneath the stone. Instinct took hold of Isaac as he charged out from the tunnel, Echo's Pokeball swelling up to fill his hand. Maybe he was running into a trap. Maybe he was running into an active battlefield. Maybe he was just running into someone who didn't want to see a Rocket right now.[break][break]

None of that mattered to him. In the moment, Isaac could only hear a life being snuffed out right before his eyes.[break][break]

"Echo!" Isaac called as the Pokeball hit the ground. "Try and lift that rubble! Hurry! I don't know how much time we have!"[break][break]

The Ralts clapped his hands together, Psychic energy shimmering around the rocks. It was a massive rockslide, to the point where a Lucario, a Scizor, and a very concerned looking trainer could do nothing to make an impact in the pile. Little Echo, even with the power of Pokerus fueling him, likely couldn't make a sizeable difference in their efforts. Nevertheless, he pulled at the rocks with all of his might, trying to lift them away to aid in the digging efforts.[break][break]

Surely, they weren't too late . . . were they?

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[attr="class","skulltitle"]導通抵抗

[attr="class","skullbody"]"Damnit . . ."[break][break]

Ralts were hyper-empathetic creatures. It was all too obvious to Isaac what happened when Echo stopped struggling. The Ralts flopped limply against his leg, bowl cut covering grief-stricken eyes and leftover psychic power ebbing away from his body.[break][break]

"It's okay, Echo," Isaac said, gingerly stroking the Ralts' hair. His voice was little more than a hushed murmur, not wanting to detract from the grieving of the fallen Pokemon's trainer. "You did your best out there. You really did."[break][break]

There was surprise in the trainer's eyes as he turned to see who had helped him. It was nothing Isaac wasn't used to. Back when the Hoenn region's worst seemed to be behind them, Blackjack had doubled as a face of vigilante activity. Since the new year, that had changed. Rocket's renewed ambitions for conquest left Isaac uncomfortable going around publicly in his Rocket guise. New success in his own life meant he no longer needed to hide behind the mask to feel worthwhile. Sometimes, Isaac was unsure whether he was trying to protect Blackjack or outgrow him.[break][break]

When he stepped away from the main warfront to help the lost and the injured, it was with a mixed reception. Some, especially Rockets and the particularly desperate, were all too happy to accept his aid. Others, especially League diehards, viewed him with suspicion at best and active disdain at worst. It was a mixed back, but he had to accept it. It was just the way things were.[break][break]

In this man, who Isaac could've sworn he'd seen before, Isaac could see a third reaction. There was a weary confusion in his voice as he spoke to Isaac, wondering why he'd even stepped in to help.[break][break]

That voice was familiar, too. In all regards, this man looked like the renegade Elite 4 member who publicly denounced the League. The grey hair and scars threw him off at first, but perhaps it wasn't a surprise. The horrors of war had clearly started to take their toll.[break][break]

"Nobody deserves to have to lose a Pokemon like that," Isaac said, voice quiet. "I . . . I figured even if it was a long shot, I should've at least tried to do something, right?"[break][break]

"I'm sorry I couldn't do more . . ."

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[attr="class","skulltitle"]導通抵抗

[attr="class","skullbody"]Thomas Benoit was a man who told the League and Rocket alike where to shove it. Was it really a surprise that he cut the bullcrap and asked Isaac the question that had been gnawing at his mind all day?[break][break]

It was funny. Around Ruby Garcia and Ashley Shepard, he asked what they were even doing sticking around with Team Rocket. Around Josh Devlin and Elinor Anderson, he spoke on behalf of Team Rocket and highlighted the League's crimes. He was a dark mirror, reflecting the fears, concerns, and wrongs of those he'd spoken with. In the process, he was able to process his own fears, concerns, and wrongs.[break][break]

Even with Caleb Harcourt, Isaac had been a mirror first and foremost. His struggles were a proxy for Caleb's own, allowing both of them to navigate their pains and doubts on a far deeper level than they could alone.[break][break]

Now the script had flipped, and Isaac had no idea how to react.[break][break]

"This point, I don't know if I've got a million answers to that question, or no answer at all." Practical reasons. Bad gambles. Ideologies. Loyalties. Isaac had gone over his reasons for joining Rocket time and time again, but none of it seemed to mean a thing in the face of the war of aggression they'd been pushing. "All I know is I sure as hell never expected it all to end up here."[break][break]

"Guess you'd know how that feels, huh?"

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[attr="class","skulltitle"]導通抵抗

[attr="class","skullbody"]?"Heh. Wish I could say it started that selfless." Would the Isaac from a year ago go out of his way to try and help pry a dying Pokemon out of rubble? . . . Okay, maybe he would have. But would he have gone out of his way to put himself in a dangerous mess like this in the first place? Probably not![break][break]

"I was just some burnout wandering the region back then. Met a Rocket on the job. Thought maybe if I stepped in, I could make a difference." Normally, this was where unlikely hero ended up on the path to glory, having been thrust out of their bland waste of a life by the call of adventure. Not so for Isaac. "Buddy, she wrecked my ass. Didn't stand a chance, no matter how hard I tried. But the way I kept trying caught her eye. Maybe she was impressed. Maybe she was amused. Maybe she just pitied me."[break][break]

"So she let me off easy, long as I just went to the sub and heard what they had to say."[break][break]

It had been a deal with the devil, but what else could one make while on the business end of a demon's fork? "Not sure if it was just 'cause I was desperate, or if it was because Rocket was saying the right things at the right time to someone who slipped through the cracks. But the more I heard them out, the more it all started to make sense."[break][break]

"Don't get me wrong. I knew they weren't heroes." Isaac sighed, thinking what he'd accomplished with the loose leach his time with Rocket had given him. "But I figured, shit. Neither are the League. Not when they're letting kids slip through the cracks. Not when they're letting Silph run their government. Not when they're trying to damn another world 'cause its the easy way to save their own hides. So I figured, fuck it. How bad could it be?"[break][break]

"One look at Littleroot's enough to answer that."[break][break]

He'd never been aboard the meteor plan. Many Rockets weren't, during or after. However, he'd at least expected all of that violence to have a point. Instead, as far as Isaac could tell, the operation was little more than a senseless bloodbath, with the League quickly catching up to any gains that Rocket may have made from it. Was this the future of Team Rocket's plan? Trying to strongarm a region far bigger and stronger than they were, which had fended off advances both overt and subtle for over half a decade? What was he even fighting for anymore?[break][break]

"Since that day, I just tried to focus on protecting the people I'm close to. Maybe I could save 'em from the League's wrath. Maybe I could stop 'em from turning into Rocket's monsters. But . . ." Isaac sighed as he remembered what unfolded last night, the way Rocket's uppermost echelons brought Ashley Shepard out for his coronation. "Sometimes, it feels like all I'm doing is easing them onto the meathooks."[break][break]

It was probably a bad sign how similar he'd become to this weary, haggard man. Isaac laughed weakly as he processed the ups and downs his psyche had taken over this past year. "Same boat indeed, huh?"

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[attr="class","skullbody"]Isaac had lucked out compared to Thomas. In part due to Gavin and Zev's acute knowledges of his skill sets and the lines he drew, he'd been spared the worst of Rocket's brutality. He'd been an audience to their crimes, especially the larger-scale ones that couldn't be avoided. His all too lethal supply run with Gavin had been proof of that. However, they kept him away from the direct, man-to-man brutality in which many other Rockets thrived.[break][break]

Perhaps they realized that he needed that degree of separation to properly delude himself.[break][break]

Yet these wrongs were getting harder and harder to ignore. The dirty work that Isaac tried to distance himself from reasserted itself as the norm within Rocket. The friends he told himself he was protecting were being broken into monsters under their command. The ideal of a Rocket that could be better than Kanto was being swallowed up under the cold, hard reality that even Thomas recognized.[break][break]

Isaac wished he could tell him how right he was. He wished that he could tell him that, when one Underboss spoke for rising above Kanto and the other spoke for sinking back into its depths, the promise of old glories won out. Though new blood filtered into an increasingly large number of positions, even those who had never been to the region were forever marked by it.[break][break]

Unless the specter of Kanto was completely exorcised, it would haunt Rocket until the end of days. Until then, even the most well-intentioned Grunt would be bent, broken, and reshaped in its image.[break][break]

"I'm no good man," Isaac argued, his protest limp and feeble. Enough people had told him that he was good by now that it was becoming increasingly hard to ignore the swell in his chest at their words. "But I won't let them take what decency I've managed to hold together."[break][break]

There was so much left unsaid. He wished he could ask Thomas how he knew so much about Rocket. He wished that he could ask him about his own experiences with the League. He wished that he could even just say goodbye, and see him off with some well-wishes before he disappeared. However, there was just no time to spare.[break][break]

Thomas was gone, and Isaac was left alone with his thoughts.

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