While Isaac and his Dhelmise focus on clean-up, Gavin lights up a cigarette. Exhilarating as the battle had been, he craves the wash of calm that only a horrible addiction to nicotine can bring. He exhales grey smoke and black miasma, and his gaze flicks to Isaac when addressed.

"Defector."

A simple word with a brutal implication. He had been Rocket, once. Had battled, bantered, and bonded with them. Had betrayed them, in the end, by the simple act of leaving the life behind.

And he had paid the price.

Gavin was an enforcer. He took care of problems.

Sometimes, those problems had once been people.

"Not important," he shrugs, "any more."

Ash scatters from the tip of his cigarette, and he at last crushes the butt beneath his heel and pockets it. Even infamous terrorists can be against littering.

"The grave should be around here. Luca Liotta was his name." With the assistance of the ever-eager Subject G, Gavin begins to search.

They fan out, Tyranitar and Dhelmise pairing up while Subject G hitches a ride on the back of the Dodrio. They squawk irritably, but Gavin's miasma curls around them and seems to sedate their foul temper.

Gavin keeps pace with Isaac, amber eyes scanning over graves. Some names are so weathered as to be barely legible, and these are ignored. Liotta was a recent burial, and among the fresh stones on the mountainside his grave eventually comes into view.

It's a simple thing, a stone slab set into the ground with naught but a name and date of birth and death. Liotta had been a Kanto transfer, inducted into the organization against his will in the midst of war. He, like Gavin and many others, had chosen not to take advantage of Cadis' period of amnesty. Any hope of leaving in safety had been dashed, then, and his fate had been sealed when he'd sought refuge with the League. There were no family left to mourn him but those he'd made and betrayed in Rocket.

Gavin spits on his grave.

SHADOW POKEMON are recalled to their capsules, leaving only the Riolu as witness to the golden Steelix who emerges from a retrieved capsule. He'd brought her along special for one purpose: to DIG.

She does so carefully, using her spade-like jaw.

Sitting on another grave nearby, elbows on his knees, Gavin asks, "How do you feel about Rocket?"

A loaded question, given the circumstances.

Fortunately for Isaac, Gavin is not psychic. He's passing the time with a question he asks all Rockets he meets eventually. As an underboss, he feels it important to judge the mentality of those beneath him. Were they fresh-faced idealists hoping for the organization to solve their problems? Jaded criminals seeking sanctuary from the law? Psychopaths searching for an outlet for their violence? In Isaac, he seriously doubts the latter.

Idealist, he thinks. Unfortunate.

There is a place for them in Rocket's ranks, but less and less as the organization shifts toward the eventuality of war. The meteor hanging over the collective heads of the world has stayed the fighting in the way little else can, but beyond it? Should they survive?

There will be bloodshed.

"We have," Gavin agrees, of taking things into their own hands. "We will. But are you ready for what that might mean?"

"There is always a choice." His smile doesn't reach his eyes. "That doesn't mean you'll like the outcome."

Isaac could choose to run, but Rocket would follow.

He shakes his head at what's said next.

"No. When you joined Rocket, you made that choice for yourself."

There were many in Rocket's history who'd been forced at gunpoint to join the organization, but even that had been a choice. Join or die. Gavin had joined willingly, and yet he'd still made his choice when Theo had ordered him to kill a man. Him or you? Those who'd had the luxury of joining Rocket without blood on their hands didn't know the luxury they'd been afforded.

Hoenn was not Kanto, but Rocket were not good.

"Whatever it takes," Gavin echoes, scattering the ash of a cigarette to the wind. "Do you know what that might be?"

How far are you willing to go?

"Perhaps," he allows, inclining his head in agreement, "but some still make the opposite choice."

As an enforcer, he'd executed more traitors than he'd care to count. To count their number meant to put value on their lives, and that was something he'd long since been taught was fruitless. A traitor was an enemy, and their enemies were to die.

Simple as that.

He nods to acknowledge the weight of Isaac's words, considering them. After a pause, he allows, "As would I."

Rocket had changed him. Broken and beaten him down, melted his steel to reforge it as a weapon to be wielded for their cause. There was little of Cillian Quinn left in Gavin Merlino; only a name, and a memory. Yet he'd do it all again, because Rocket have raised him to heights he'd never have thought to dream in Galar. Underboss. Avatar. Powerful.

His smile is somber as Isaac acknowledges his crime.

"He betrayed our cause." Gavin stands as the thud of metal on wood signifies the Steelix hitting her mark. The grave is open to them. "I hope that you never do."