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Rhys felt almost at home, for the first time in a long while.
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The hospital was bedlam, of course. The incursion of Rockets had spurred both the League and the civilians of Petalburg into a frenzy, and it seemed that everyone congregated around the main floor of the hospital, frantically scooping up supplies for the wounded, wheeling bespoke wounded to odd corners of the corridor when it became apparent that the emergency room's beds were too full to cope, and generally creating an enormous mess.
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It was naturally for this reason that Rhys had adopted a top-down approach for his mission. When Elisabeth Fiorelli had told him that he would be assigned to Petalburg, he'd assumed he would be safely ensconced beyond the city limits as a field medic for any Grunts - or otherwise - that required immediate treatment. To find himself in the very thick of things was at first a nerve-wracking proposition, but once he slipped inside amid the chaos, it felt more like an unexpected gift, something that he'd long been denied.
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He was in his element. He'd even eschewed the Rocket uniform or anything similarly...tactical...for his lab coat, a loose tie, messy hair - all things that were nondescript enough to keep him from being identified but in place enough that, as long as he moved with purpose, wouldn't call him into question.
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So he found himself on the fifth floor, rifling through a file cabinet replete with the medical histories of the League's best and brightest, carefully selecting those whose names he recognized and slipping them into his satchel. He was alone, as Medical Records was hardly the hub of activity given the circumstances, and so his light, almost jaunty humming was interrupted by the door sliding open and someone stumbling in, panting.
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He turned too quickly, his eyes wide for an instant or two before his trademark lazy, bemused smile fell into place, eyeing the nurse who regarded him with confusion. "I'm sorry, Doctor, I didn't see you- oh my gosh, Doctor Collins?"
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Fuck.
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The woman lit up, relief easing the creases on her features as she took him in. "Oh my goodness, you haven't rotated here since your residency! Although, gosh, I know it's a stressful field, but you look ten years older than you ought to, young man!"
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Rhys gulped, carefully maneuvering his satchel behind him as he offered a bright smile. "Nurse Sweetbriar, how are you? I'm so glad you're still here, they called me out to help with the mess. I don't know how we'll hold up, if I'm being honest."
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She offered a laugh, weak and without the empathy of feeling behind it, but smiled nonetheless. "We'll make do, you know we always have, here! Come on, let's get you down to Emergency, there's a cardiac emergency and not enough hands on deck."
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The scrub-clad woman turned and beckoned him through the door, though something caused her to pause. "...Doctor Collins? Who did you say sent you here, again?"
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A flash of light caused her to turn, and she came face-to-mask with the narrowed eyes of his Galarian Slowking's mask. Rhys sighed, his shoulders slumping.
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"I really, truly wish you weren't so sharp, Amelia." The Slowking unleashed a PSYCHIC NOISE that reverberated through the doorway's narrow aperture, causing the woman to shriek and clutch her head. Rather than relent, the pokemon built the assault, stepping forward as she sank to her knees, only ceasing once she had crumpled to the floor, motionless, blood pooling slowly from one ear.
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Rhys stared at the dead woman with the focus of obsession, his brow furrowed. She'd been a friend, once, or at least an acquaintance. He could have handled this a dozen different ways and still come out successfully. Surely.
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No. There was no time to play nicely, not when he had a job to do and a number of people who would do far worse expecting him to do it. He'd asked for this, after all. Had wanted it, and played to get it. He couldn't feel badly about his choices now.
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He'd see her when he closed his eyes, he knew. But he couldn't feel badly about it.
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Cursing under his breath, he slammed the file drawer shut and nudged the body out of the way with his foot as he stepped over it, Brahms trailing him obediently. He'd picked through this office as much as he could, so his next destination was the office's mate across the hall. Entering revealed no occupants, and he set about his task, filtering through the drawers once more.
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He silently hoped he wouldn't run into any more old friends.

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BY GUNSMILE

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A commotion behind him had him recalling Brahms faster than he could think, the fading flicker of light the only telltale sign of the pokemon's former presence before Rhys turned at the address, offering an expression of perplexed bewilderment that wasn't entirely fabricated.
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Should he have pretended to be a member of the maintenance staff instead? He hadn't expected to be so brazenly directed in this scenario. Then again, he supposed that medical emergencies bred desperation, and he really should have thought of a contingency plan.
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He moved forward with purpose, dropping his Beast Ball on the far side of the office door as he went, and approached the side of the brusque woman's charge with a frown. "What's happened?" He inquired shortly, eyeing the woman with a once-over, then a twice-over as he fully took her in.
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She was slight, but determined, putting her full force behind each compression. Her eyes were hard, purposeful, and determined; this was no hourly employee acting as though she was trying to make a difference, she was well and truly committed to her work, and made sure everyone around her knew it.
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He'd been that way, once upon a time. Then they'd killed his mother in this hospital.
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The man was pale and unresponsive, and while he stood a chance of recovering if he was given proper treatment, Rhys had neither the time nor inclination to provide it. Still, he had to make it look believable if he didn't want to end his day being forced out of a fifth-story window.
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"Adenosine, where are the supplies? His heart rate isn't-" He was cut off by a distant explosion, then another that erupted through the wall further down the hall, a Guzzlord barreling through the wall itself like some clawed TentaCool-Aid-Man. Licks of flame curled outward from the site of egress, burning papers and sparking machinery left in its wake.
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Rhys couldn't very well leave any records he didn't take himself, after all.
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The beast roared with a cadence that shook the fluorescent lights in their housings, turning to orient on Rhys and his erstwhile taskmaster.
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"Oh noooo," he murmured quietly. Then, louder: "What the HELL is that?!"

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BY GUNSMILE

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Of the potential reactions to an otherworldly creature bursting through a wall in a wreath of hellfire and hunger, none of this slight, determined woman's had made it onto Rhys' mental list. Compassion for the fallen man. The cool collectedness of one well-used to emergencies, calling for an evacuation even as she readied her own answer to the threat. The tactical wherewithal to tell Rhys to put up or shut up, fight the enemy or get out of her way.
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It could have been him, he reflected, as his Guzzlord was driven back a dozen feet by the Ursaluna's furious attack, roaring in pain that spanned three octaves at once. It should have been him, if things had gone differently. There were times - and this, he noted, was one of them - where he wondered if in lieu of joining a terrorist organization to force a change in the status quo, he might have been better served crushing that doctor's head like an overripe watermelon.
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He didn't set out to hurt this woman. He hadn't set out to hurt anyone, but they simply insisted on sticking their noses into his business, and if they would just do what he wanted, none of this would be nearly as disastrous as it was shaping up to be.
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Not from his hands, at any rate.
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No - here he was, skulking around like he didn't belong, executing orders for people who wouldn't otherwise give him the time of day, and who wouldn't care what he'd put himself or anyone else through to come back successful. He'd sacrificed friendships and golden opportunities in favor of eating cold ramen in the steel belly of a subaquatic rat trap, and yet here this woman stood, in the face of utter chaos and insurmountable odds as Rocket poured into Petalburg, and dared stick out her jaw in defiance. Dared stand up for her convictions to the last. Throwing it in Rhys' face as though she knew precisely how weak-willed he was, how quickly he folded, how very little he cared about being his own person instead of folding facelessly into the innumerable, disposable appendages of Rocket.
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No, he decided. He'd watch that conviction leave her eyes before he finished his mission.
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She would burn with the rest of them.
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"Forget the damned bear, kill her!" he snarled, all pretense forgotten as his envy, his anger, boiled to the surface. "How dare you?" he wrenched at her, fury twisting his face. "It's useless. You can't save anyone. One person can't make a difference, not here!"
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The Guzzlord roared again, azure-crimson flames wreathing its body as it barreled into the Ursaluna in response to its trainer's command with a DRAGON RUSH, attempting to brute-force past the ursine to its directed target, claws scraping against the floor, walls, and ceiling from all directions as its limbs flailed wildly.
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Rhys stepped back, scoffing. "I'll light a candle for you, when you're gone. No one else will care, I fear."

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BY GUNSMILE

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Vindication struck Rhys as his Guzzlord struck the woman, the flash of bright blood a scarlet cape against the bullheaded focus he now possessed on seeing this woman, this embodiment of everything he ought to have been, snuffed out like a candle. Quickly, methodically, and without anyone to mourn her - the same way his life had been instantly and irreversibly plunged into darkness.
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The fucking Ursaluna was tenacious, though, and before his Guzzlord could get a truly telling blow on the slight paramedic, it was sent howling backward once more, the bear's telltale Fairy-type attacks carving great gouges in its armored hide. Certainly it made for a good show - it was giving as good as it got, or as best as it could, but Rhys fumed, eyes narrowed through his glasses as he regarded the beasts. He spared no thought for the woman before him - what would she do, guilt him to death? No, he just needed his Ultra Beast to listen for once in its miserable damned life and devour her like a piece of sashimi.
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"Coward."
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His eyes widened, a full-body flinch jerking through him as he snapped around to regard the woman. "A coward?" he echoed. "You- do you-" Anger. Indignation. Fury. A rage so profound he can't speak around it, as much as it's choking his throat and constricting his chest at the simple, single word she spat at him.
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The Guzzlord fell back under the Ursaluna's next blow, a telling screech ringing through the air before its manifold claws and arms twitched and fell still, the hulking beast lying against the unforgiving hospital flooring unmoving. Rhys spared it a glance, then two - his trump card, fallen in the opening moments of his mission. Brought down by a woodland scavenger and a sanctimonious school nurse of a woman, of all things. His patience and analytical awareness of his mission subsequently evaporated alongside it, his mind running wild with contingencies, none of them coolly- or carefully-considered.
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Face contorting in disgust - at himself, at her, at the situation, at the Ursaluna, at the goddamn world - he recalled his fallen Guzzlord and replaced it with Jude, the Toxtricity scarcely materializing before unleashing a PUNK ROCK-amplified BOOMBURST that blew through the hall and into the stalwart ursine with a nearly physical presence.
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Deep breaths were not doing Rhys a lick of good as, satisfied with his replacement, he turned to regard the woman with bared teeth, even as she darted toward him. How dare she? She didn't know him. Know what he'd been through, what he'd fought for, what he was fighting for still.
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A coward would have stayed the course, all those years ago. He did not.
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His fingers twitched. Forget the pokemon, he would strangle her with his bare hands. Perhaps Zev Harcourt would enjoy hearing about it.
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He lunged, screaming.

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BY GUNSMILE

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Vindication boiled through Rhys's blood sweet as any drug as he laid hands on the woman, driving her to the floor. He knew where to press, where to part, where to hold, such that she'd never move again, and all he needed was a moment, just a fleeting instant -
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"-out, there's-"
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Jude's BOOMBURST rocked the hallway, and no sooner had he quite literally gotten his hands on the object of his hatred than he was as quickly divested of it, the shockwave sending him rolling across the floor as she was torn from his grasp.
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"-peat, Petalburg Gen-"
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His glasses were gone, and she was blurry as she came to a seated position and called back her fallen bear. "No," Rhys groaned, as much from physical pain as emotional turmoil as she insisted on surviving. And speaking. "I am a VISIONARY!" he snarled back, stumbling to get to - -lins. COLLINS!" - his feet unsteadily. "I will change the goddamned world, and there will be no place for you and those like you, you sanctimonious bi-urk."
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His diatribe was interrupted by a violet shape impacting his face, scorpion-like tail flailing dangerously in the area of his chest. Shrieking with incoherent rage, he batted at the Gligar ineffectually, the smaller pokemon dodging his clumsy swipes as it chittered madly.
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"-airstrike on Petalburg General, evacuate now or stay there forever."
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Kenjiro Yamada hissed in his earpiece, and Rhys cursed doubly, swiping the Gligar from his face and casting around wildly. He recalled Jude with a flick of his wrist and, fumbling blindly at his satchel without his glasses, threw a pokeball that mercifully resolved into his Galarian Rapidash. With a whinny, she took him up and capered in a tight circle.
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"Bad luck," he spat at the woman's fuzzy shape, his features twisted in a rictus of distaste before Rapidash took off at a gallop, trampling rubble and survivor alike before crashing through the window at the end of the hall.
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If he made it out of this, he'd ensure she wouldn't.

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BY GUNSMILE