A dramatic standoff was happening over Rex's bed. His Aerodactyl and Zweillous faced off, fur to snout, tilting their heads and growling at each other. His Aerodactyl was his number one, reflected well in his name, One. The Zweillous was just some nobody on his team! Number Twelve, at that, and yet she was allowed access to Rex! She smelled like Rex too, had he ridden the other dragon? Such betrayal! However, Rex's leg was gone...maybe he simply lost his sense in the incident?

...Twelve was just here for the fight, just loyal enough to linger around the man.

Both jumped as Bryan entered the room, sulking back and fixing the other man with protective stares. The only loyalty on Rex's team, and they were vicious creatures.

It wasn't long before Rex woke, blinking away bleariness and immediately trying to sit up with a groan.

"Ah...ow, ow, uh, hey there...what's your face?" Of course any face other than the likes of Gavin tended to escape him. "...I'm alive, unless we're ghosts or something...

"Heh, wish that were me." Powers and shit were all to often in Rex's sphere of awareness, immortality blipped on his radar about as much as a cool drink of beer did. A tempting and comforting idea.

Unfortunately for Bryan, Rex was not one to stay still. Hands raised to pat the two ferocious Pokemon near him, he answered airily, teeth gleaming in a smile. "Hey there, One. Oh yeah, I'm fine, lived didn't I? Hey, I had the craziest dream 'bout you, Twelve."

With an abrupt motion, he sat up entirely, bodily pushing his Aerodactyl away, "Ok, that's enough, you got a drink or something? One, get offa...my...leg?" The prehestoric beast had its foot right on his bed, and yet he felt nothing there, even though he should have.

Casting a panicked glance at Bryan, Rex ripped the blanket up. It seemed Bryan's want to stall wasn't gonna work out.

"H-huh? What's this?"

bryan delarosa

He remembered in a flash of panic. Turning to run, falling, all the blood. Last he remembered, it was gone below the knee, but now more was gone! "H-how does cutting off more help me!?" He couldn't breath, hands knotting the fabric between his fingers. By his side, One and Twelve warbled in confusion and rapidly turned to Bryan, snarling and blaming him for their master's distress.

"It blew off my damn leg! That, it was all real!?" Twelve growing giant, nearly bleeding out on the floor, the gigantic monster? With eyes that spoke to a completely genuine question, Rex called back his Pokemon's anger, whispering, "So, can they-can they fix me?"

They were Rocket right? They could fix anything.

bryan delarosa

He wasn't stupid enough to call Bryan a liar. He'd been here a buncha times, and the doctors never cut off a limb for funsies before. Rocket could fix anything, and if they couldn't fix it, it was impossible. Still didn't stop him from digging his nails into his Aerodactyl's rock-hard hide and grind his teeth. It just wasn't fair.

For a second, he thought Bryan was joking, ready to give a sarcastic "ha-ha" before double taking at the man.

"I...I am not letting Gav see me in a wheelchair." Turning into a monster couldn't be too bad, right? What if he grew cool armor, or wings? It wasn't death, and thus the concept of losing his mind flew right over Rex's head. It wasn't like it mattered, nothing important was there!

"What kinda monster we talking about? The cool type?"

bryan delarosa

"And you think I'm stable? I'm in Rocket." Indeed, he was simply a boy who joined for no other reason that he belonged nowhere else...except perhaps in jail. No wonder he gravitated to the violent and prehistoric Pokemon, Pokemon no sane mind would bring into this world. Turning into some kind of husk monster that pulled itself together just seemed...right.

Rex nodded along with the explanation, seemingly understanding but looking completely lost the entire time, "And you think you can bring my leg back, right?" As single minded as ever, he looked more happy than scared.

At Bryan's question, he coughed with a red face, beckoning One closer to shield himself from view. For a long second he considered answering in sarcasm, but the truth found its desperate way from his chest. If the guy was gonna be stitching his leg back from nothing, might as well be honest, right?

"...I care, 'cause he's not a loser and I was supposed to be better."

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Rocket was just a team of people willing to do anything to the extreme, Rex knew that well enough. Whether that was extreme logic or emotion, he never knew. At least in Bryan's case it seemed to be emotion. That was good, he understood that a little better.

Bryan almost got a competition, Rex opening his mouth to reply at the atrocities he had committed, and he didn't even have the excuse of horrible power...and the his jaws shut with a vicious snap. A rarity for him, he shut up. One could almost see the gears turning in his head as he examined just what Rocket actually valued.

He came to a conclusion.

"Gav got one of those, what, Shadow pokemon? Gotta torture the hell outta something to make it that way, make power outta something messed up. So excuse me that I don't believe "being alive" is the bar I'm supposed to clear. We've done alot, alot of screwed up stuff. This wouldn't be special, hell, they might even promote you." There was a friendly bump to Rex's tone, even as he bared white teeth in a facsimile of a smile. He wasn't smart enough to start a messed up experiment, but he might have found a way to be in one anyway.

bryan delarosa

His surroundings were a stark white, and yet Rex beamed brighter than anything around him. As far as he was concerned, a new leg, a better leg, was just around the corner.

"Heh, promotion, smoition, I just wanna see if this works!" His contagious glee started to rub off on his Pokemon, their claws clicking on the hard floor as they circled his bed, "I'm the best talker there is!" Rex spoke with the same tone of a boy, "I'll get them agreeing to this before I even remember this thing's gone!"

Purely selfish, and willing to do whatever it took for that selfishness, perhaps now was the moment Rex showed his color as a Rocket.

bryan delarosa