Killian Decker will doubtless spot Lugia before he sees Gavin; the shadowed leviathan soars over the bay of Sootopolis with a chilling cry reminiscent of the night the city had fallen. The spines along her back stand out stark white against the dark of the sky, her shadow slicing across the full moon.

Gavin watches her fondly on his approach, his own cigarette almost burned down to its filter.

"We're both busy people," he acknowledges in agreement. "But it's good to see your casino's coming along well, Killian."

It still feels strange, to say that name, though that's no fault of the man who bears it.

"I've been..." Heartbroken, paranoid, under threat of assassination from otherworldly entities they don't understand. "... fine."

Because he's got to be, because it's what Rocket needs.

"Yourself?"

---

bingo prompt 1/4 - full moon

Against the light of the full moon, Lugia looked as majestic a deity as her legends claimed. The black hue of her corruption only added to her otherworldly air.

"Assuming nothing happens to derail the construction, it should be finished next month."

The admin's lips flattened to a line. Gavin's answer doesn't fool him, and he makes that clear with a look. Fine is the universal signal for not okay but don't ask me about it. Killian would know. He's been telling it to Alexandra Briarwood for months.

"Stressed." he replied dryly.

"Have you talked to Lulu recently?"

Cillian Quinn

"Not long now."

The look Killian Decker gives him is noted, acknowledge with an arch of Gavin's brow. But when the admin admits to stress, the underboss huffs.

"Aren't we all."

It's less a question or dismissal, and more a quiet admission of his own. It was hard not to be stressed, in their line of work.

Mention of Lulu Flint piques his interest.

"Recent enough," he shrugs. "Why? This have something to do with Exodus?"

He knows they're both involved in that project.

So Lulu hadn't told him.

Killian frowned. He's not sure if that's a good thing or not. Maybe she wanted him to be the one to deliver the bad news. That sounded like Lulu Flint or at least the version of her he'd built in his head.

"If only." he sighed, "No, this has to do with something personal she's been helping me with."

He took another drag from his cigarette and let the smoke drift slowly from his lips.

"We made contact with something in outer space." excitement and dread dance together in his tone. Excited to be so close to the thing he's been searching for. Dread for what he's learned by trying to find it.

Cillian Quinn

"Hm."

Gavin's surprised, then, that it's the first he's hearing of it — maybe he shouldn't be. There's no reason his sister has to tell him everything that's going on in her life, but he feels excluded all the same.

In spite of the excitement surrounding alien contact, a goal he knows Lulu Flint has had for some time now, there's something grim in Killian Decker's tone.

"Something unfriendly?"

He can't help but think of Necrozma as he crushes his cigarette beneath his boot.

"Hard to tell." but when was anything on Hoenn ever friendly? "But it did give us a warning."

Killian tensed, shoulders rolling as he flicked the ash from his cigarette. He'd done enough beating around the bush, he supposed.

"There's an asteroid on its way to Hoenn. Should be here in ten years if you looked into yourself, but according to whatever we reached, it'll be arrive in a year."

The possibility it's lying is there, but given the events of the Soiree, Killian doubted it. "Officially, it's going to pass right by us. I'm sure that's a lie, though." he dropped his cigarette to the ground and crushed it beneath his shoes.

"I doubt whatever we contacted would have been so panicked if that were the case."

Cillian Quinn

Gavin is a man ruled by his fear of death.

Naturally, Killian Decker's news offers nothing but dread. It settles deep in his bones and Lugia must sense her avatar's sudden anxiety, for the leviathan banks hard in the air and begins to approach them.

"A year." His tone is flat with forced calm. "Is there any chance of stopping it? Did it tell you anything else?"

He stared, cautious of the deity as it flew closer. It apparently sensed something that Killian couldn't.

"Unless you want to send Lugia to space and try having it smash it? No, I'm not sure we can."

Would she even stand a chance? He didn't know.

"We didn't get anything else from it other than a cry. It doesn't belong to any Pokemon that I know of, sadly." But he thinks, he hopes, it's Deoxys.

Cillian Quinn

Wind from Lugia's wings buffets them as she circles overhead, landing with an impact that makes the ground tremble underfoot. Her thick, spiked tail lashes out as a barrier from the cliff's edge should the quake unbalance them and her ruby gaze fixes upon her avatar.

He blinks at her, slow, and it seems like something passes between them.

Gavin's expression is grim when he looks back to Killian Decker.

"Necrozma was bad enough. I'm not taking that risk. Not Lugia alone. If she had help, maybe, but..."

A slow shake of his head. He doesn't want to think about losing her.

"Was it similar to anything you've heard? We've got regional varients; who's to say there aren't varients in space?"

He shrugs.

The darkness in Gavin's face is noted. It's a worry that the two of them share. Killian can handle Pokemon and Avatars. They're threats that can be reasoned with or killed if necessary. A meteor? Words won't divert it from its course. And if Gavin isn't sure Lugia can handle the rock, what good will any other Pokemon do?

"Necrozma. That was one of the Ultra Beasts, wasn't it?"

He'd read it about briefly. It was a dangerous entity for everyone in Hoenn.

Killian shook his head, lips tucking into a frown.

"No, it wasn't similar to anything."

He paused, thought carefully about what he wanted to share - what Lulu Flint might share. His frown deepened.

"I think it might be Deoxys."

Another person - another enemy let in on the thing he hunted. But when the world could end at any moment, grudges felt trivial. So much came into perspective when your life was on the line.

Cillian Quinn

"I don't know," he admits of Necrozma. "It came out of a wormhole, so that would be my guess, but..."

He shrugs, and doesn't share details about the dark fragment or the way it had led to the parasitic inhabitation of Chu-e Choi. He's still not sure how to bring that up to Rocket, or if they even should.

What if Choi was marked as a liability?

Brushing that concern aside, Gavin focuses on a different name.

"Deoxys. Is that an Ultra Beast? A Pokémon?"

It's not a name he's heard before.

Killian Decker

"It's an alien."

He looked up at the sky. The hunt for Deoxys consumed him lately. Alexandra Briarwood called it an obsession, but Killian didn't see it that way. He wasn't sure what to call his search. He only knew that he needed the creature.

"It crashed landed in Meteor Falls during the three-day war. The League had a piece of the meteor it rode in on stashed away in Mossdeep until recently."

You know, because he and Lex stole it.

"I don't know much about Deoxys, admittedly. Lulu was helping me locate it when we learned about the asteroid."

Cillian Quinn

An alien.

So, closer to an Ultra Beast than a Pokémon. Closer to Necrozma. Gavin's neck prickles.

"Meteor Falls?" He frowns, dredging up snippets of the reports he'd read from Rocket agents on the warfront. There had only been one of particular note in Valerio, and he'd been missing as of late. "I was in Mauville at the time."

Perhaps Killian has read Gavin's own report on that.

"Had?" Gavin picks up on the tense. "Who has it now?"

He can hazard a guess.

"Well, if I come across any information pertaining to Deoxys, I'll pass it along. Do you think it might help us with the meteor?"

Killian Decker