The historian had left nothing behind but ash and cooked meat and blackened bones. In exchange for chronicling yesterday, she had not been allowed to persist into tomorrow.

But her daughter had.

"That's a terrible way to go." A cigarette was lit, dangling from his mouth and allowing smoke to trail into the sky. It was one of his worst habits, and one Eris had told him to abandon dozens of times. Yet it was his only relaxant in a job that demanded the world. "I'm sorry, Little Lady. She was a wonderful woman."

She was mottled with layers of wounds. Her body wasn't meant to handle this strain. Neither was Howard's, but this strain was expected from him.

An exhale sent more smoke flying to the heavens.

"Where is it?" The admin blinked once. "Mesprit."

---

Eris Halla

"Is that so?" It was clear that he didn't believe her. "I don't see a Pichu with you, but I don't doubt that something capable of binding a god can hide in other ways. That is the fantastic nature of myth."

Even now, he still admired that pink sprite. In their eleventh hour, it had teleported him and Shred to safety after the war with Kyurem.

Shred. Blackened flesh. Lenore. Blackened bone.

The talk of fire was thick in the air today.

"When I was on the cusp of seizing Regirock, I felt my mind still. Everything became... right. For a moment. I felt at ease. Happy, almost. An island of lucidity in a sea of fear. When I threw that statue, I knew it would land. Even if it broke my body to throw it."

There's no reason for him to tell her this, but he suspected that she of all people would understand. That moment had been perfect, but the discontent had been growing over the past month.

There was no joy to Regirock's seizure. No applause to laud it joining humanity. Maybe that was because humanity had never seized it after all. He had to act on this suspicion before he changed his mind.

"Call it."

---

Eris Halla
BINGO: CHANGE

"Because I need to ask it something." His eye flashed. "I need to know if I'm still me."

The wind caused his jacket to flutter, revealing two Pokeballs at his belt. A foreboding presence emanated from both, radiating remarkable power. He regarded them for a moment, before unclipping them from his body and tossing his belt behind him. It clattered against the monument.

"If you can betray me and chain me in a shroud of red, you can do this for me." He spread his arms. "Nothing to protect me. Call it."

---

Eris Halla
BINGO: PROTECT

Howard Slayte knew Eris Halla better than most. He knew about the innocence of childhood and the weight that it put on those aware of its purity.

Humanity was incapable of shouldering the innocence of childhood.

"I knew you would come." His gaze lingered on Mesprit's ruby, its brilliance shining in salt-kissed wind as waves crashed against a distant shoreline. It could not help but approach in its attempt to understand the maelstrom of emotions swirling, yet unsaid. "Being of Emotion."

His coat flapped in the wind. The two Pokeballs sat by the monument, dormant. Yet the admin was bound to them in blood.

"You could not help but heed the call of one suffering from the domain that you command." His eye flicked from the sprite to Eris. "Just how you couldn't help but meddle in my struggle against Regirock."

His fist clenched.

"I'm furious."

---

Eris Halla
BINGO: RUBY

"I'm furious that this happened. Why did you help me? I was going to succeed! I could do it! I know I could! And yet..."

He clenched a fist, furious. He didn't know if it was Mesprit's doing, but his emotions were bubbling and boiling in turmoil. Were his emotions even his own in this precise moment?

Did it matter?

In exchange for being born with control over the concept of emotion, Mesprit had never been allowed the freedom to express its own opinions besides rambunctious tantrums before meeting the child that watched Howard rage. It was incapable of functioning as an emotionally vindictive god.

A god was meant to rage with greater intensity. A god was designed to love with greater passion. A god was designed to cower in theatrical proportions.

But a Being of Emotion cannot be allowed to be blinded by the field it holds sway over. Thus Mesprit could never be allowed to understand the human heart, and it had bonded to someone that had never held control over her own emotions or logic to begin with. It was a cycle of tragedy.

"I was never given the chance to succeed."

---

Eris Halla

Howard Slayte would meet multiple people at this monument. Ghosts from yesterday that haunted today. Eduardo Hisakawa and Roze Falkner looked upon him and did not recognize the man that had made their lives undeniably worse. Eddie was a soldier and had a soldier's will. Roze was simply... alone.

A tragic thing to be in a world with no friends, and where every other person was a Rocket plant who wanted to stab their foes in the back.

He met those who carried Dewford's legacy, in front of the monument that held Howard's greatest shame. It was also at that monument, in this precise moment, where he met Eris Halla.

"If I had failed, it would have been my failure. I would have held it as I fell to my death, and it would have been my final mark upon this world." He should have died. He wanted to keep living, but occasionally there were moments where self-annihilation called his name. A human life for Regirock? He would have accepted that bargain.

Yet that exchange had never mattered. He had never mattered.

"I could have done it. Eris, why? How could you be so blind?" He bemoaned the twisted view of a child who had been raised for war. "We could have won in that moment. If I couldn't catch Regirock, then how the fuck am I going to kill Eternatus?"

She refused to let him grow. She refused to let herself grow.

---

Eris Halla