Gavin picks up on the words left unsaid, offers a curt nod of understanding. The war seemed so long ago, what with his dreams of Dialga and his battle with the Light Devourer that followed, but he knew that for many, the trauma weighed heavily upon them still.

His lips curve into an amused smile at her demand.

"If I tried to release them all here, we'd suffocate," he says lightly... but it's not a refusal. He taps the Corviknight with their pokeballs, and gestures to the door of the lab. "Come, we'll have them bring us to one of the isolated islands nearby. Unless you have your own means of teleportation?"

He had his Claydol, but it seemed too risky to attempt to transport the both of them at once when the submarine was under the sea.

Gavin cants his head, fixing her with a curious look. "We're busy people, but we've set aside the time for work that could be completed later."

A lazy flick of the wrist indicates the gathered samples. Eager as he was to get his hands on results, there were several other steps preventing the immediate conclusion of their research. If they would need to wait regardless...

"What better time?"

He continues walking, but would stop if she did not follow.

The island is one he's been to before; sweet memories of a fortnight spent in isolation with Emma Wolfe colour his perception of the place as the psychic Pokémon pulls from his thoughts. In a silent flash, they find themselves upon its sandy shores with a fierce sea breeze pulling at hair and clothes.

He had picked the island not for its memories, but for the knowledge that it was deserted.

"Much as I would love to show them all at once, their temperaments might disagree with one another." A wry smirk suggests he's speaking from experience. "We'll save the best for last, but which ones are you most curious about?"

He lists them, as well as their methods of acquisition: Sandslash, from Rocket's own labs. Aerodactyl, Eelektross, and Tyranitar from his battle with the Light-Devourer. Corviknight, Cryogonal, Roserade, and Miltank who had once belonged to others.

"You've seen Corviknight," he amends, "but it's... different, when it's awake."

Gavin, too, loathes Hoennian weather. The sun scalds against fair skin, but a light tan along his arms betrays the years he's spent on Hoennian soil. Just as Rocket has marked him as their own, so too has the harsh tropical climate claimed him.

"Hm. A tough choice."

One pokeball is selected immediately, frost forming a thin layer across its surface. Gavin releases its captive immediately, the Sandslash snarling at the wind and sand. Its steely claws dig at the earth as if searching for shelter before it summons a hailstorm to chill the air. The cold it brings is pervasive, biting deep beneath the skin. The risk of frostbite seems high.

Appropriate, then, that the next Pokemon released is a fellow ice-type. The Cryogonal is passive in contrast to the shrew's evident aggression, hovering off the ground and glistening in the few rays of sunlight that penetrate the veil of ice.

"My first," he says of the Sandslash, then motions to Cryogonal, "and one I've sworn to care for. It was Emma Wolfe's, once."

He gestures for a demonstration of their power, and Sandslash eagerly leaps toward Cryogonal. Its metal claws threaten to rend the snowflake in two, but suddenly Cryogonal is surrounded by an icy shield.

"Baneful Bunker," Gavin reports. "A move thought exclusive to the Mareanie line. Were Sandslash not a steel-type, it would be poisoned. And if Cryogonal weren't ice-type, or fire, Sandslash's ice chills deeper than anything I've witnessed. It freezes things easily, and those it doesn't freeze, it kills slowly with frost."

There's a dangerous pride in his gaze. Where many feared shadow Pokemon, Gavin adored them.

"Sandslash is... incredibly aggressive. Cryogonal, on the other hand, is the tamest shadow Pokémon I've ever interacted with. I'm not sure why."

Home.

Gavin catches Lulu Flint's look of disgust and laughs, softly, shakes his head. "Doesn't feel like home any more, does it?"

Around his sister, the vise of his false accent loosens. He allows the words to slip back into their native cadence, the only trace of no-longer-home that feels familiar. Lulu, too, has changed much from the child he'd left behind.

Of his shadows, he says, "They are all useful in their own right. It's a matter of discovering their hidden potential." Sandslash snarls and rounds on Cryogonal as it drifts too close, and he recalls them both before further damage can be done. "No. Cryogonal was the product of the Megalopolans, just before the war. I suspect Corviknight's origin to be similar."

He sends out the Corviknight, then, and the dark-feathered avian emerges shrieking to the skies. Gavin motions toward a tree with his wrist, his silent hand signal to attack. The bird sheds its feathers like they're dead weight, then hurls them toward the tree. Like daggers they embed themselves deep into the wood, and with extreme speed the bird dives to score its talons through the bark.

"This one is still too aggressive to safely train with my others," he says. "It was not mine to begin with. I found it abandoned in the wild; I think it was attracted to Lugia's power."

"Meteor Falls. No idea where it came from originally."

There had been a lot of new shadow Pokemon created during the toxic takeover of the Megalopolans; Corviknight had likely been one of them, and Emma Wolfe's Cryogonal certainly had. Not having been called off, the Corviknight continues to savage the tree trunk, talons scoring deep scars into the wood to expose green bark beneath. It vanishes in a burst of red.

"When it sheds its feathers like that, it's faster than my ordinary Corviknight."

Next, Gavin sends out a trio of shadows with crystalline growths protruding from their bodies. Aerodactyl wheels overhead, a dark predator in search of prey, while Tyranitar looms above the sibling duo and lets out a terrifying roar. Though Gavin was accustomed to the shadow titan by now, the sound still chills his spine. Eelektross seems almost ordinary before it opens its mouth to reveal its teeth have been replaced with sharp shards of black.

"Don't get too close to the Eel," he advises. "Her bites don't clot like they should."

"Of course," Gavin acquieses, inclining his head and gesturing toward several feathers still embedded deep within tree bark. "Take as many as you like. I've got a stock of my own already."

Tyranitar remains wild and furious; with a stomp of its great foot, the titan summons tiny shards of dark crystal from the sky that swirl like a dark sandstream. Beads of blood form on exposed flesh where the sharpest of the shards hit, and Aerodactyl turns with a furious shriek to dive the offending dual-type. Blinding light gathers in its maw, Gavin's glasses adjusting to the sudden brightness before the hyper beam blasts Tyranitar point-blank. Aerodactyl recoils as if it had hurt itself, as well, but its vicious assault continues otherwise unimpeded by the exhausting nature of the attack. Its fangs crackle with lightning as Tyranitar swipes back.

The eel coils as if in hopes to protect itself from the crystal sandstorm, and Gavin shakes his head to Lulu Flint's question.

"Electric, mono-type, so far as I've been able to determine. Its bite causes bleeding for much longer than usual; I made the mistake of allowing it to bite me, once. Bled for hours, had to spend some time in the medical bay."

He sounds remarkably all right with such a dangerous experience. Glancing down at his arm and seeing numerous beads of blood, he recalls the trio of Pokémon and swipes a hand down his arm, smearing red.

"Then there's these two... they also appear to originate from the Light Devourer."

Miltank seems rather ordinary but for black crystals that sprout like scabs across its body. Roserade's flowers have been crystallized, the shards drinking in sunlight and seeming to swallow it whole.