"Nah, never been." The admin swallowed nervously as he poked through the wilderness. In truth, he had been, once, with Necrozma's chosen. He tried to bury that memory though. For the purpose of this visit, this was his first time. He couldn't rely on the Devourer for protection this time. "Reminds me of Fortree, though."

Hoenn's jungles were thick, humid, and dangerous. At least those jungles had Tropius berries. These just had explosive bamboo spaceships that could level a rainforest on liftoff.

Luckily they were in a cave.

"Not to worry. Caves are my specialty. Your small hands will be a huge asset down here!" Even in another universe, child labor lived on. Eris yearned for the mines, after all. "I doubt we'll be safe for a little while. We need to get deeper in to avoid the chaotic surface. Getting really sick of Celesteelas."

As if to prove his point, the admin kicked a stone wall as they descended deeper into the crater's bowels.

CLANG!

Instead of stone, Howard's foot struck steel.

---

Eris Halla

If they went deep enough, Eris and Howard could die to a cave-in instead of Celesteela's liftoff.

"Nice work, Reiner." Howard let out a laugh and scratched the Luxray's ears with jolly merriment. Reiner was almost as reliable as Shirley. He would've liked to see his Aerodactyl interact with Eris's Luxray, but Howard didn't bother to bring the Aerodactyl with him anymore.

Not after Area Zero. Shirley was constantly by his side, and had been since the beginning. She was his first Pokémon, and the one that mattered most to him. They were inseparable, but after she lost her eye, those similarities had become too close.

He could not bear to look into her remaining eye and see himself.

Deep in thought, he stumbled, catching himself on Reiner's fluffy form. After standing up, Howard poked around the bunker, looking for clues. After Eris found a tattered book, the admin poked his head out from behind her shoulder. He peered at the notebook, silently translating it. With dozens of languages under his belt, learning another had been no issue.

"It looks like a soil report." He said over her shoulder. "They were probably trying to bring materials back to their own world to revitalize it. Desperate. Can't do anything without light."

Howard pointed at a stairwell descending deeper into the bunker.

"After you, little lady."

---

Eris Halla

The Megalopolans. Howard was getting pretty sick of those blue fuckers after Route 119.

"Yeah, it wasn't an easy translation, I'll tell you that. Most languages I know can ultimately be traced to the same tree. When it comes to another universe's languages, we're talking a completely different forest. I had to relearn everything from scratch."

It helped that Rocket had Velmos and Jules in their custody. Their testimonies sped up the process greatly. Even if they were enemies, and Jules was partially responsible for the displacement of New Mauville's Regi Ruin, Howard used whatever assets he had in the pursuit of knowledge.

If he was going to be a part of Rocket, it was best to reap the benefits.

"Sure. Let's see if the Megalopolans left us anything useful after running this place into the ground." Howard followed Eris down the stairwell. When they reached the rock basement, there was another large door. With Howard's great (poor) physical strength, the exit door to the bunker grinded open.

"Wow." Howard's eye widened as he and Eris bore witness to a giant Celesteela that had partially fused into the stone walls of the cave. Around its fallen corpse, life bloomed. Flowers and trees dotted the inside of this pocket of Eden. "You seeing this, little lady?"

---

Eris Halla

There is no way to easily verify how the Celesteela made it so deep underground, but the admin had his suspicions. As an archaeologist and geologist, he could make an educated guess.

"This is an old world, little lady. Constantly changing. It could've simply failed to launch, or a mountain could've collapsed on it. It could've just died. The best way to describe this would be..." The admin snapped his fingers. "...a living fossil!"

When hundreds of tons of stone collapsed onto a living being, all that remained were the whispers of the past.

"This place is pretty lively, though. Look at all these plants!" Howard sucked on his teeth as he looked around. Suddenly, he had an idea. oscar clayton and bryan delarosa would likely agree that this was a prudent strategy. "I'm going to take a few soil samples. See if we can replicate this back home."

Without blinking, Howard began to grub about in the dirt while Eris watched. The familiar sensation of soil getting under his fingernails reminded the archaeologist of a better time.

He was silent for a spell.

"Did you really want to learn?" He said quietly. "Megalopolan script, I mean."

---

Eris Halla

"You think so?"

He thought about it for a spell. The Megalopolans were their enemies. They sought to invade Hoenn for their own means. Both League and Rocket had chained up their highest ranking militant leaders under the guise of integrating them into human society, as if such a thing were possible. Rocket did not even pretend.

Jules and Velmos were criminals, and they had been chained up to be sharply questioned. That was the extent of their futures within Rocket.

Did they pray for a League victory, as well?

"I'd like to see that. A world where we can coexist. We live alongside Pokémon, why not them?" It felt like a distant dream, though. Humans were ruthless, violent, and had a penchant for self-destruction. Perhaps that was all they were capable of. "A world with no strife."

He looked up the Celesteela.

"A world where you can grow up happy."

---

Eris Halla