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Kouji’s eyes danced around the place, this was his first time in Littleroot, like many at the time around the region, they thought it would be lost…Unlike most, he had been disappointed when that had not been the case. Now he was in Rocket, and yet the two of them were looking around.
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He adjusted his high collar and his cap, just to make sure he wouldn’t make much of an impression. ”Aye aye sir. So…What are we looking for?” He said with a slight tilt of his head, his expression was partially hidden; but there was a bit of confusion that was visible in his golden eyes.
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He wasn’t about to admit that he hadn’t listened during the briefing before they met, but at the same time, he wasn’t sure if it had been brought up in the first place. He had been busy imagining punching in John Sullivan’s face at that moment.
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”I can look casual easily enough.” He said with a hidden smirk, his eyes squinted ever so slightly as he watched the rather quiet town and the Café they pulled up to. ”My treat, for last time.” He said as he went for his wallet.
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”What do you want?”

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In truth, Zev did not know what they were looking for. But he was not about to admit that to anyone, let alone a grunt, so he simply shrugged and shoved his hands in his jacket's pockets.[break][break]

"Anything that looks out of place, like it belongs to a different time period or region. Rends in the fabric of reality. Maybe even interdream mist or your own doppelganger."[break][break]

As fantastical as those clues sounded, they were all very real possibilities.[break][break]

They reached the café and Kouji made his offer. Zev stared, halfway incredulous that the boy would pay for his senior. But he nodded in the end and said, "Just a large black coffee. No cream or sugar."

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Kouji nodded as he gave the order to the clerk and paid, he now knew what they were looking for, but held his questions for a moment as he tried to point out a seat; outdoors was better. It was a calm enough day, and he’d get a wider view point.
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So, that’s where he went. His steps were slow, his hands were tucked into his pocket and he practically fell into the seat which rocked back and forth for a moment. ”So…Like that Ultra Deep Sea huh?” He said as he looked around Littleroot.
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Wasn’t this one of those special locations too? Kouji only knew it as a smuggling route, the river that ran on the outside edge of the town. ”Thought there’d be more milk goods here from Sinnoh.” He had wanted a Sinnoh-Style cheesecake, but he had settled on chocolate, and green tea.
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Still, everything looked calm for the moment. That was when the bell of the Café door rang, and the clerk carried their orders, a large coffee, a tea, and a chocolate cake.
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A small silence as Kouji enjoyed the green tea; his golden eyes looked over it all as he deliberated whether asking such a question was prudent at all, the one that danced in his head. For once, his thoughts weren’t on the series of mistakes that he had faced since their last meeting, but a burning question that came up whenever he was talking to a senior rocket.

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"In a way, but also different."[break][break]

Zev took a seat and accepted the large coffee when it arrived. He sat facing the woodlands that surrounded the sleepy town. Six months ago, he had waited there to attack, camouflaged with bryan delarosa, Levy Alinsky, and priam conrad.[break][break]

"When you're finished eating, I'll show you what I mean," he said before taking a sip of his coffee. The bitter heat of it washed over his tongue and warmed his throat.[break][break]

Kouji was being uncharacteristically quiet, signaling to Zev that the boy was ruminating on something important. The Beast waited, patient. He had learned long ago that if one waited long enough in silence, the other person would speak without any prompting.

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Being the chatter bug that he was, Kouji disliked the silence; it pressed a quiet pressure on him. As he nibbled at his chocolate cake; fluffy, airy, and so full of nothing but sweetness…He couldn’t help but think about the question that sat in his mind, it was annoying, and it ate at him.
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It felt like he was playing to the beat of a drum he was unable to dance to, and it frustrated him, like many things did in the past couple weeks.
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But he didn’t allow such a thing to show on his face, he placed the last piece of dessert into his mouth before he gulped down the tea, ignoring the burning feeling that seemed to singe his tongue, to the point he could no longer feel the burning itself.
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”Haaaaaaaaaah.” He released a long, pained sigh before he stood up and slammed his hands down on the table. ”Ready to go sir? I got something to ask ya, and this ain’t the place for it. We can look and talk, right?” He said as he pulled up his hood once more.
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His hands sat in the pocket that was at his stomach, his eyes were once more looking up and down those that passed down the way.
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Still, he couldn’t see anyone, or anything that was strange, out of place.
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So he decided to finally ask his question. ”Where you at Kanto?”

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Zev stood from the table when Kouji did, his coffee finished, the caffeine flooding his veins with the energy he sorely needed. There weren't enough hours in the day to get a decent night's sleep, especially lately.[break][break]

He led the boy westward, to the edge of Littleroot Town where the theater was located. The building sat in the distance, a beacon to Zev as they walked down the quiet streets.[break][break]

There, in the seclusion of the town's outskirts, Kouji gave voice to his question.[break][break]

Zev raised his eyebrow at the grunt. "I was born and raised in Kanto."[break][break]

This was not new or secret information. Any member of Team Rocket who read Zev's dossier in the member database could have learned it. Of course, grunts didn't have access to read everything about him, but his long career as a contract killer for the syndicate's Kanto branch was not confidential.

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Kouji began to nod his head slowly in regards to that answer as if that had answered everything else he wanted to follow up with.
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”Explains a lot.”
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Then as if he had never asked his eyes went back to the surroundings, to the theater, and the lack of people flowing to it. For a small town like this, he expected it to be a more major thoroughfare.
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But all the same.
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”All looks normal here.” Kouji had to resist the urge to go on all fours, and look around on the floor. Something off, something weird, somethi-
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”Why aren’t there any Starly’s chirping?” It was the lack of sound that had gotten to him, wasn’t it getting a little cold too? Maybe he was just imagining it, maybe he was overreacting, maybe there was simply a big pokemon. But he still carried on walking, because this.
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”Feels like we’re walking into a haunted theater.”

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Kouji did not ask more questions about Zev's past, which is exactly how the Beast preferred it. Instead, he continued to walk, even as the boy had started to notice just how different this part of town was.[break][break]

They finally turned a corner and found themselves at the edge of an enormous sinkhole that dwarfed the theater building, making it seem like a dollhouse in the distance. Fencing surrounded the sinkhole, a flimsy attempt at keeping civilians from falling into it.[break][break]

Zev knew that the League had posted security around the crater's perimeter immediately after the operation on Littleroot Town. In recent months, however, other, more urgent matters drew personnel away. Now no one guarded it.[break][break]

Pulling aside a part of the fence that had been torn, Zev stepped through the hole and stopped at the very lip of the sinkhole. Leaning over without fear, he peered down into it. Far below, at the very bottom, sat the Mechanical Kingdom — the Wilds realm that Team Rocket could access by using Zev's primal crystal shard.[break][break]

"This is why," he finally said to Kouji, gesturing.

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Kouji turned the corner, and his jaw almost dropped; it was a large sight, an insane sight.
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”The hell…Why don’t they just cover this up?”
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He didn’t know what to say to this, the lack of everything…Wait no, it was most likely the same as that other place, the ultra deep sea.
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The thought of having to deal with the mist again, once more, it brought a fear to him; one he quashed behind the veneer of confidence, a smirk on his face. ”We going in here? Or tryna see what comes out?” He said as he looked into the depths of the hole, there was nothing moving in there.
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He couldn’t see the bottom of it either, but at the same time he was happy enough to just stand at the very edge of it. The idea of taking a step, of taking a plunge into the unknown, a world beyond his imagination.
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”No…” He tried to get his brain to work, to tick; to move, in front of this person he didn’t want to drop a stupid answer, not agai-, no his last answer wasn’t stupid. But this one needed to be smart.
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”What kind of ridiculous creatures are in here? That mist had those weird pokemon, so what’s in this one?” Kouji tried, but the best he could muster was a question instead.

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Zev shook his head. "No. We'll remain here on the outside and see if we can find anything unusual nearby. This was formed when Dialga attacked us here months ago, so perhaps there are some remnants of it that can tell us where it currently is."[break][break]

Taking cautious steps, with one hand on the chain link fence, he started to walk along the edge.[break][break]

"Down there is the Mechanical Kingdom, a similar place as the Ultra Deep Sea. And there are strange creatures there — Pokémon, I guess — who do not have souls. Everything is clockwork, and there's a song that plays constantly."[break][break]

Zev had not ventured far enough in the Mechanical Kingdom to learn the source of the song or the true natures of the Volcarona that resided within it. He hadn't reached the energy source they'd detected earlier, either.[break][break]

Dispelling those frustrating thoughts from his head, he turned and looked back at Kouji. "Anyway, start looking around."

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Dialga?
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That was a big name when it came to Legendaries, but at the same time, Kouji didn’t know what it represented. His family had never been one for faith nor one for mistaken beliefs, the place of God, of Arceus, had always been that of Rocket. From the day he had been born, that was the only thing he was allowed to ‘worship’.
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”So, we’re hoping to find that monster huh?”
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It was a hope, there was no other word for it, a simple hope. So, Kouji took out his knife, and flicked it out. The hand that came from the sleeve, scarred from palm to knuckle and then the wrist below. Used as a weapon against humans, rocks, wood, and stone, it was the weapon he used to fight against the world.
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Yet the weapon he used to embrace that same world, take of that same world; was being used to give back to another world altogether. He took his favored flick knife, and opened it; the two megastones embedded in the hilt caught the light, and the blade caught his palm as he pressed it harder and harder. Breaking his skin, it finally began to drip with blood above the great hole that stood in front of them, his smirk seemed to be just a little strained.
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"Just a little something as a gift. I don't know about Legendaries, but I know people; gotta give them something worth their time, to give you that time. Time, money, a goal, a dream, something worthwhile." He said as he allowed his blood to drip onto the hole below, the flow of blood steadily increased. "Can't say this is worth much, but I hear monsters like a sacrifice, something might come out to take a nibble after a lil' taste."
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Yes, it was not a sacrifice to a God, but a mere appetizer; there was no symbolic worth in his blood, he didn't see such a thing to begin with. The sense of an animal, that was the only thing this man was trusting in. Bait, a lure, that was what this simple action was, and all that it could be.
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"I've gotta think outside the box if I want to become shar-" He stopped himself before he said those words; the smirk fell flat in a moment as he stared down into that abyss. He wasn't going to say those words, and certainly not to this person, that was the line he'd draw for himself.

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Zev watched from a distance as Kouji bled into the wind, the droplets falling into the massive sinkhole that spread out away from them. The Beast's gaze slid down toward the barrier that separated their world from the Mechanical Kingdom, waiting to see what might happen.[break][break]

But nothing did. The great rift pulsated minutely, its edges shivering with faint vibrations, but other than that, not a thing changed in the world around them.[break][break]

Disappointment pooled in Zev's chest, but he had half-expected the search here to be fruitless. If Dialga had shown up again at Littleroot Town, surely someone would have noticed and reported it.[break][break]

He turned and continued along the edge of the sinkhole. "I'm going to walk to the theater building," he yelled out so Kouji knew his plan. "If we don't find anything between there and here, we can head back."

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Kouji stared at his hand for a moment, then another, and then another.
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He was stuck in the same pose for a moment, watching his blood drip down, and then was swallowed up into the deep deep darkness, and the pulsing underneath. But nothing else happened, nothing else came from it.
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His face reddened for a moment, he dragged down the hood over his face, and began to walk the moment he heard Zev’s voice. ”Kill me now…” He said as he picked up the pace of his steps. He had gotten so pulled into the atmosphere of that moment, and had gone long with something that had felt right at the time.
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But now he felt stupid, as stupid as someone could ever feel.
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He made a rotation around the hole, and towards the Theatre, going faster with each step, and without saying a singular word as he pocketed his knife, flicked back into place without even cleaning it.
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That was when they had reached it, but Kouji’s eyes shot up as he found himself, or rather a mirror copy of himself. The hood was pulled low, the shadow stopped him from seeing the eyes, the low face mask stopped him from seeing the mouth. But he knew that hair, and he knew that stance.
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It wasn’t simply him, but a copy of Zev stood there just as well, yet, there was a subtle haze as if the image was just filled in within that moment.

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