“That’s not what I– okay, okay, fair enough,” June finally broke free, and she turned back to the horizon. Then, she started to pace with her hands behind her head. “Yea, I know the name of it already, you told me.”

“But what is that thing? Why the hell are there two of them,” she clarified. “And who the hell is Remiel, and why did he put one of his own things in here? What, are they like gods or something? Or just really big collector Pokemon? Like the kind you get on the black market.”

Wouldn’t be her first run-in with someone who had a lot of power over these legendary creatures. Naomi Sato came to mind, with her really strange collection of the alphabet. It still unnerved her whenever Dee came out. It’s eye aware of everything. So Annalise not only knew of another one, but apparently hated his guts.

Probably right to– but she couldn’t pin down the reason why. It also wasn’t as important as their literal near-death experience.

“What’s this fuckers deal anyway? Pissed that we’re ‘invading his land’?”

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annalise henderson

“As far as I know. D–y’know-who, never told me otherwise,” June shot out. “Does it matter?”

Probably didn’t. Annalise probably had some connection between her living in Hoenn all her life and either this alien world, this Zekrom, or this Remiel guy. And further knowing her, it was probably going to be mean about Remiel. It explained why she talked about him like he was a Lemon.

Not that June was going to bat for the stranger. But if she was going to insult him for something, it wasn’t going to be for the Rocket life. “Well, the odds of an ex-rocket admin defecting a second time are zero, so I don’t see how that’s relevant either. But you’re right, people do ignore the wrongs of League officials all the time.”

“But can we go back to how my residency matters to the conversation? Worried that the Zekroms don't have passports?”

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annalise henderson

“And that’s the point of that one program: to make sure they’re actually legit,” she rolled her eyes at Annalise’s own gesture. “Like I said before, pretty sure if you defect from Rocket, they’ll give you some concrete shoes and a trip to the middle of the ocean if you try to go back.”

June really didn’t want to do this now. She breathed in deeply and stopped for a second to properly lock eyes with Annalise, “And it’s not relevant. Look, Meteno was… difficult, to say the least. It was a year after… y’know. I don’t remember everything about it.”

Too much debt, too much grief.

“But if you’re about to suggest that some strange people put these two strange Pokémon in here to re-enact fucking Fortnite, then I think you’re a little nuts,” she said. Then, she went back to her pacing. Relentless, back and forth over the same path. Gears watched her with a curious stare, its head tilted to the side.

“What is there to destroy? Some alien world no one has any serious investment in? Let them wreck everything– looks like they aren’t even trying,” she whipped her hand around in a circular pattern. There were still plenty of rocky outcrops to land on, and decrepit power plants to poke their noses in.

Clearly the two electrical, mythical beasts had other priorities.

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annalise henderson

June had heard similar things from Naomi Sato , and she’d been just as skeptical back then as she was when Annalise said it. If anything, it just made her look more insane than June could’ve ever suspected alone. She earned a sideways eye from June as she put a rut into the rock. “Not what sane people say.”

A Catch-22: claim sanity and look even worse, or say nothing at all and let the idea go unopposed. June put her in the perfect deadlock. A real sane person wouldn’t have played the game at all.

Not like she was much better herself, though.

“Okay, so they already succeeded. Cool,” June stopped suddenly, mid-step, and swiveled on a point to the ranger, “so why haven’t they been brought to Hoenn then?”

“If something could make them battle royal this place, then they either died or forgot to put them into our world,” she said. “So, again, we’re missing a few lug nuts for our tire here.”

This was boring, tiring, and most of all: pointless. As she told Count von Count back at the start of the year, she was just a delivery girl-slash-ranger-slash-contracted-worker-slash-mechanic. Not her place to save the world. Or figure out how. Or even the why, really. It shouldn’t be Annalise’s either.

“Look, if you want to discuss this later, when I’m not high on adrenaline or fresh out from a scrape with death, then sure,” June finally recalled her Magearna and approached Midnight. It roused from its slumber and gave its trainer a half-hearted grumble. “But until you come up with something vaguely more coherent than crack-pipe theories, I’d like to focus on the real reason we came here.”

The trick room worked. That meant it should work on Regieleki. This would be the key to its capture. To her promise with dad. As long as nothing got in her way… she could finally fulfil her promise. Escape the past and enter the present. Even look to the future.

“It’s not like I think you’re lying. I just can’t care, or I’ll go insane too,” she smiled to the ranger.

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annalise henderson