“What do you mean? You don't like it?” Mint asked, hands resting in the pockets of his coat he followed Howard around. His ex-subordinate led him around the labs with ease and he smiled, more than happy to let him. He waved at the ice golem before adding, “There's only a few copies and it's strictly for upper management. It's fine.” He said with a small shrug. “Rocket's insurance, you and I won't go rogue.” He said with laugh. As if he would or Howard could.

"Trust me, I've contributed plenty of photo and footage to the science archives for study. We'll be fine.” He said, clapping a hand on the Admin's shoulder. Mint looked back at Regice before greeting it. “Morning Regice! How are you feeling?” He said, quirking an eyebrow at it before back at Howard. “Not to tell you what to do, Dr. But this isn't a little…” he trails off.

Mint takes pause before tilting his head. “What for?”

howard slayte

The freezer door opened, revealing several things required to keep Team Rocket functional. Frozen foods, coolants, research materials, Beast Zeppelin's stash of illegal substances, and so on. Stashed by a massive stockpile of vanilla ice cream was the titan Regice. The entity had taken much time to reform after it had been destroyed, but it was firmly in Team Rocket's hands.

The golem turned to Mint, before beeping.

⠓⠑⠇⠇⠕⠀⠎⠑⠇⠋⠊⠑⠀⠍⠁⠝.

"It's a good photo!" Howard said, pointedly ignoring the Regice as he spoke. "It just makes me feel a little... dirty."

Could. Right. Howard could never defect. Not now. He had been promoted, and Admins did not receive amnesty from the League. Howard wasn't some low level grunt anymore. His promotion was the rope that bound him to Mint and all the others. He was not an Admin. He was a slave.

Howard hated it.

"...for hiring me." Howard said it casually, but through gritted teeth. It was a complex feeling. "If it wasn't for you hiring me, I never would've gotten to study Regice. You've given me a good opportunity."

Howard shrugged. He hated this feeling.

"So thanks."

---

mint frost

The golem beeps at him and Mint choses to believe its friendly. As friendly as a legendary creature he'd just unboxed from an industrial freezer could be. He waved happily before turning back to the Admin. "We can take a normal photo if you'd like?" he suggested, not exactly understanding the problem.

"Oh, yeah, no problem. You're eating better now right?" he asked after a moment. He tilted his head, having had extensive knowledge of Howard's debts and the people he was dealing with. Some loan sharks had tried to bite back only for Cacio to eat them alive and end those qualms. The debt, in the grand scheme of things, was inconsequential to Rocket. Howard brought far more to the table. At least, that's what he'd argued to the higher ups. And he'd been proven right with Howard's promotion. "Congrats, by the way. On your promotion. Hope you have more time to focus on your archeology." he said lightly.

"Hehe, I told you~ Perks of the job." he said clapping a hand on his arm. He reached into his pockets and booted up a handheld device as he looked up at the golem. "Well, if this is where they're most comfortable, I can run it here. You don't mind right? It's nothing intrusive." he said looking back at the Regice.

howard slayte

Mint really didn't get it. Howard wanted to throttle the Rocket Beast. If he did that, though, he suspected that the Beast would stuff him in the freezer and throw away the key.

"No... the photo. It's... forget it." Howard threw up his hands in annoyance.

Howard wasn't particularly sure if Regice was friendly. After translating the glyphs in the ruins it was guarding, Howard had come to the conclusion that it had been made by an ancient civilization with the intention of defending Hoenn. Now that those people were gone, Howard didn't know if the golem would protect a new society that had forgotten about it.

Judging from the Hyper Beam it had fired towards him back in the Regice Ruins, Howard didn't want to find out.

"The food..." Howard flashed back to his fridge, which was empty barring a few cabbages. With the extra zeroes at the end of his paycheck, Howard had been able to snatch up a few sarcophagi that he had been interested in purchasing. Beyond that, his quality of life hadn't improved much.

It would improve, if he would stop spending his money on fossils and knickknacks.

"Go ahead. It's the least I can do." Howard stepped back, though he looked worried. "Just don't damage it. This Regice is pretty valuable, and I only just got it."

---

mint frost

Mint snorted at Howard. "If you're worried about it getting out, only a few people have copies. Me and a secure file in the Science Corps archives. Locked and everything to specific clearances" he said with a shrug. As an image with one of the few remaining glimpses at the REGICE's chamber murals it was worth its weight in gold, research wise. For now anyway.

"Honestly I wonder if we can get some aquatic pokemon down there to research the cave ruins." he added, trialing off.

The Beast huffed at the warning. "We're not in a training center, can't engage it properly here." Not that he wanted to. He'd rather set it loose on Slateport. Nevertheless he steps forward, unflinching against the massive amount of cold the ice golem put out. "I'm just gonna take a couple of readings, ok Regice?" he said, speaking slowly so he wouldn't offend the sentient iceberg.

He trails the handheld over the golem, listening quietly to the beeping spike, and the numbers change. "Well...that's interesting..." he murmured as he tapped something on his screen. "This'll be harder to catalogue. I don't think I have many sources of Dynamax energy annotated." he said out loud.

howard slayte

"It's not just Dynergy."

The archaeologist said as he walked up to Mint Frost, and looked up at the Regice. His breath frosted in the air, and his clothes were already beginning to freeze. Of course Mint Frost would be fine with it, Howard's winter coat was beginning to feel like frozen cardboard. Howard was used to the cold, but not this cold.

What the hell was Mint Frost's winter training regimen?

"This is an automaton born from a shard of Eternatus, so naturally it outputs Dynergy. That's it's whole shtick, right?" Calling the fundamental state of being for a god like Eternatus a 'shtick' seemed disrespectful, but Howard didn't hold the monster in much reverence. "But it's also a Pokémon. It outputs Infinity Energy as well, I theorize. I'd kill to know how the ancients of Hoenn constructed such a work of art."

Regice didn't seem to respond to that, and its beeping had become slow and methodical. That wasn't surprising. Howard wasn't even sure if the machine could feel.

"We could try to dive down there, but I suspect that much of the ruin has been crushed by the pressure. That, and those blasted crystals." Howard said aloud. "How many sources of energy do we have catalogued?"

---

mint frost

"Fancy that." Mint said after a long pause. Ice begins to fleck on hiss hair and his eye lashes, as if they were outside in the Silent Icelands. "Can we take it out of this fridge? Just for a test run?" he asked, intrigued at the different source of energy before him. This whole thing was more oscar clayton 's deal, but he'd heard the guy ramble bits and pieces enough to get the gist of it. Funny how poignant it all was now for his new project.

"Well everything living outputs infinity energy to a degree." he began with a small shrug. "It sounds similar to Golurk and how it took a life of its own after first being built as a defense system. Similar to the Regis." He doesn't deign to know how exactly Regice became living. "Maybe the answer was on those fucking murals we lost." he said with a sigh, his breath coming out in a thick white cloud.

"We have knowledge of most I'd say. Tera, Infinity, Primal, Dynergy, Z-Move energy...Most of the things we unearth fit into these categories." he said as he finished logging the Regice's stats for later study.

"Regice, would you like to go for a walk sometime? I want to see you fight something." he said before turning to Howard. "I've got what I need. No need to sample chips of it or anything." he added.


howard slayte

"Splendid. Cracking off flecks makes my skin crawl. It's like spitting on a painting./font]" Breath frosted in the air as Howard nodded. He walked to the freezer's entrance and opened the doors to the freezer. "Alright. Move out!"

Howard snapped his fingers, and the automaton began to glide forward. Regice did not 'need' to do anything. It didn't 'like' anything. That included walks, battle, or anything. It was built for one purpose, and that purpose was known only to it. In Howard's opinion, it had no free will. Instead, it simply fulfilled its objectives as ordered, as that was its purpose.

Yet to Howard, it was glorious. A primordial chunk of the world itself, and it was free for Howard to study. His to observe. His to appreciate. It had been stuck underwater for centuries. What was a few more months in a freezer?

"A test run? You didn't see enough of it in action when it was blasting us with Hyper Beams?" Howard asked, amused. If Team Rocket wanted to use Regice for field tests and battles, Howard was the wrong person to give it to. The Admin was a desk jockey, constantly studying trinkets and ensuring that the organization had money.

It would've been better off with Frost. Howard thought for a moment, before shoving the thought aside.

"We'll find more murals. There's four other ruins." All of which were either buried, missing, or already studied. Howard heaved a silent sigh. "Where did you want to test it?"

---

mint frost

"I want to test one Ice creatures power against another. We're going to the Silent Icelands. Get your coat." he said with a grin. He nodded along. "Fine, fine. Want to go check them out some time?" he asked. "See if Regice reacts to anything inside them and all that." he said as he let out a Beheyeem who after a moment TELEPORTed away and back with his helmet.

"I'll give you a few to grab some gear but I just want to see how it holds up against Kyurem's GLACIATE." he said, pulling on the helmet. The front panel whirred to life, before imitating his grin underneath. He would pull on the subsequent clothing items his Beheyeem brought him from someone's ( jayden cross 's ) office, and prep for the outing. It should be fast.

After letting Howard prepare, his psychic type would gesture for them to huddle up before beginning to send them into the middle of the ice patch, a location it was already familiar with thanks to Mint's frequent outings.

howard slayte

"The Silent Icelands? Something there's caught your eye, I take it?"

Whatever was there, Howard hoped it didn't take his, as well. Howard only had one eye left, after all. When Mint mentioned Kyurem, the archaeologist's blood chilled. The dragon was a husk, but from what Howard had heard, it was a large husk that had grown fat and bloated on the pain of the defeated.

Could Regice even compare to something like that? The golem was powered by Dynergy and Infinity Energy, but was it enough?

"Of course." Howard nodded, refusing to let the person who recruited him see his fear. "I'll get my coat."

After Teleporting away with his Claydol, Howard returned, bundled in a thicker jacket and woolen boots. The Beast and Admin were then whisked away by Beheyeem.

When they landed, Howard was struck by cold. It was the same type of cold that Regice exuded, but harsher. Regice tolerated Howard, Mint, and the rest of Rocket, so it didn't freeze them. This place was different. It was out to freeze them all and keep everyone here.

"Mint! Where's our destination? You'll have to guide. I've never been here." Howard's breath frosted. "Is it always this cold? I'm freezing my ass off!"

---

mint frost

He grinned at Howard as the snowy winds and chill overtake them both in an instant. Thee Silent Icelands, unforgiving as ever. "Don't worry! We're close!" he said pointing out a little waving orange flag in front of them, only 20 ft away.

Mint leads the group closer to the flag before gesturing with a hand. "This is the approximate impact point of the GLACIATE attack." Gnocci was already clearing a patch of snow underneath the thick feet of snow. "I want to see if Regice can crack this ice. How does the dynergy stack up? Can it make a better dent than Paradoxes?" he said with a grin as he and his Beheeyem gave the pair clearance.

howard slayte

"You marked where it struck?" Howard asked, his coat fluttering in the wind as he trudged after Mint. His eye flicked to the orange flag, and the archaeologist whistled. "Impressive."

He was genuinely impressed. Mint was a big stream junkie, a playboy, and a skilled fighter. Yet few people were this meticulous when it came to marking land. Howard often did it for archaeological digs, but Mint had done this for a chunk of ice. The Rocket Admin looked at Mint with a strange expression.

"This means a lot to you, then."

He stared at Mint, looking for some sort of tell. After a moment, he looked towards the Glaciate's impact point.

"Very well. Regice!" The golem beeped at attention. Howard snapped his fingers. "Fire!"

For a moment, the Silent Icelands weren't cold. It was hot. Stupidly hot and stupidly cold. There was the brief flash of a Hyper Beam from Regice that was blinding to look upon. After the strike came a remarkably loud BOOM that echoed out for miles and miles.

Yet the attack was strange. It didn't seem as powerful as the Hyper Beam that it had fired back in its frozen city. It seemed like a pale imitation, much like the far smaller Regice that Howard now held.

"Did we get it!?" Howard blinked as he looked back at the impact site. "Mint?"

---

mint frost

"My best educated guess anyway." Aka days of trying to map the ice bath without being approached by Rangers. Brute forcing his way around with thermal dye. He bristled slightly, turning to Howard with a glare for a split second. He held himself back from calling the man an 'idiot' and instead offered something more polite. "You've never seen Kyurem but I was out here when this-" he gestured at the entirety of Silent Icelands, "happened. Nobody on the continent has enough power to survive this thing the minute it GLACIATEs."

"The ice reads as normal H2O, but it's impossible to break through, and what shards I've salvaged have insane cooling properties. Not to mention they're frozen solid but preserve all the people and pokemon inside them." he nodded towards the gravestone. "Every one of those pokemon is alive."

As Howard moved to order the golem around Mint pulled behind Howard, yanking him back by the shirt a bit as his pokemon summoned a PROTECT shield in front of the both of them. Snow and heat blasts outward on impact, and it still rattled him despite the protection.

He grips Howard a little tighter in case the stick man went flying and looked up as the wind and heat settled. A pool of water trickled all around the impact point, snow that hadn't vaporized, melting into fast moving little rivulets. The ice is dry, and Mint moves to the HYPER BEAM impact point, putting a hand on the thick ice. "Barely hot." he murmured. It would take a lot more HYPER BEAMS for this to work. Regice probably needed a minute to recharge. But that noise would soon lead the League's dogs to them.

"Not a dent." Mint said, eyebrows knit together in mild concern. The chances of that had been high, but he had still hoped a Legendary creature would do better against the mountain beast. And unlike the other attempts, this method wasn't even conducive for shard harvesting. He checks quickly, holding up a pocket magnifying glass and quickly squatting and moving around to check. Not a damn thing.

"Thanks for trying. Unfortunately, Regicee's test has also been another failure." he announced as he pocketed the palm sized lens. "We should go, before someone comes looking for us." He added, finally turning to Howard.


howard slayte