Like a phantom, Gavin steps from the shade of a nearby tree.

"What for?"

He interrupts the solemn apology with the deep timbre of his own voice, cutting through an otherwise quiet scene. He's careful to step around the leaves and other detritus so as not to scatter the local wildlife with his presence.

"He was threatening Eris Halla; why feel sorry for a decision that he's made?"

From Gavin's belt, a Klefki stirs. The air shimmers with its fairy lock as it wards against teleportation.

---

thread prompt: wolf & lamb
1/4

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"Could have," says Gavin dismissively, "but you didn't."

Blood leaks slowly from between the eyes of a corpse, pallid skin marked by streaks of red that pool among the leaves piled below the corpse. Eyes open, glassy and staring, accusing a murderer and weighing upon his guilt.

Gavin feels nothing, in contrast.

Eris Halla and bryan delarosa were safe. That was all that mattered.

"No use angsting over it now. What's done is done."

Something else Bryan said sticks with him, however.

"Holy ground? Why?"

His Claydol is called back out, its eyes blinking out of sync.

---

prompt: leaf pile
2/4

[nospaces]



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No amount of prayer will banish the body from this so-called sacred ground. bryan delarosa's apparent reverence of Xerneas and its tree won't help him, now.

"I'm not worried about the wildlife."

He's an avatar, for Arceus' sakes, with a small army of shadows at his back.

"But why do you think it's here?"

A gesture to the Claydol, the eerie hovering Pokemon continuing to blink its many eyes in a patternless method.

"It'll take us where we need to go, but I'm leaving that up to you."

A test.

A pause, from Gavin, then, "Your goals...?"

---

prompt: prayers
3/4

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"It's not the first Tree of Life I've seen."

Even if the tree he'd encountered during the Littleroot contest incident was the same as this one or the one they'd taken into their custody during the excursion on Route 113, he'd seen at least two of them.

He blinks, surprised, when bryan delarosa informs him of the latest experiment.

"It tried to consume it? Interesting..."

He doesn't have anything related to blue mulch, or revived by it, but...

"Have you tried any experiments relating to Shadow Pokemon?"

Yveltal seemed to despise them; how would Xerneas feel about the corrupted entities that Gavin so favoured?

Shaking his head, shelving the thought, he says, "I mean there's the HVAC, but I don't really think we should be clogging it up with corpses. We could give it to the labs as a cadaver, though."

It was still fresh, and if they were quick they could preserve it.

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"No," he frowns, "nothing quite this large, though I suppose it could have grown..."

But there's no way of knowing for sure, so he shelves the thought there. Instead, he focuses on the concern for what might happen if he were to bring his shadow Pokemon too close to the tree's heart. Would Lugia be in danger, here?

Would he?

"Remember the one we took from 113?" Bryan had been there, after all. "It seemed to be sentient, too. It protected us from Yveltal — or, rather, it protected itself and we reaped the benefits."

bryan delarosa wasn't reaping any such benefits now, covered in injuries from his attempts to venture further in.

"You should be careful; push too hard and it might decide to consume you."

For now, they have more pressing issues to attend to.

"Flint, or any of the other scientists who might need a fresh corpse."

Since they seem to be in agreement about taking it to the submarine, Gavin relays with HQ over his phone to make sure they're clear for entry before his Claydol opens all of its many eyes at once, then blinks.

And then they're somewhere else.

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"I don't know what it wants," Gavin admits uncomfortably. "In the few legends I looked up when Walsh set Rocket after the Trees, it's heralded as a being of life and Yveltal's opposite. But I don't know how much truth is in them."

He'd only scratched the surface level of stories, for his own focus had been on Sootopolis at the time.

He offers a derisive click of his tongue at bryan delarosa's self-sacrificing comment.

"Better you aid our goals without killing yourself in the process. Good work," he adds when Delarosa's quick-thinking begins the process of freezing the corpse. He flags down a passing grunt in the labs and asks them to find somewhere to put it.

As they wait, he entertains the question.

"I've been in Rocket nearly fifteen years, that's how. Couldn't afford to fall apart in Kanto."

Yet he had, so many times, in the privacy of his shitty apartment with none but his faithful Lucario for company. He still had nightmares, woke shivering and sweating with the belief that he's back in Kanto before his mind catches up to the delusion.

"This... person," he adds, cold, "made the stupid decision to take a shot at a fucking kid. He dug his own grave. Save your compassion for the ones who deserve it."

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"You didn't know?"

Gavin doesn't go around shouting it from the rooftops but he'd always assumed bryan delarosa knew. Then again, it wasn't like Gavin had been of particular note in Rocket before he'd come to Hoenn. He'd been little more than a lackey for the likes of THEO BECKETT and Raphael Pryde.

He exhales a bracing breath, thinks about it.

"It was horrible. Surely you've heard the stories about Blackwell." Rocket's unhinged leader, betrayed by his own — for good reason. "Bloodthirst and violence without reason. I killed a lot of people under orders and most of 'em didn't deserve it. It's why I invested so much of myself into Sootpolis. I didn't want to see it burn the way Kanto did."

He shakes his head, grim.

"I hear it's better, now, but I haven't been back since I was ordered to come to Hoenn."