"i'm sure a lot of people would find that the best case scenario," he humors matias' nihilistic answer.

he shakes the crumbs off of his palms, continuing to talk without eye contact.

"would you die," kyle opens up, "if it's for the greater good?"

a controversial question that answered itself during the trip to the cloud with malcadena's final act. matias and kyle had not volunteered, showing a side that wasn't entirely selfless.

things change, however.

a skarmory appears on the screen as navy's last pokemon. assuming it's a replacement, given how sentimental navy gets, he pays it no mind at first.

"it's pretty cliche to see a mentor figure as the final boss," he mentions, "but a childhood friend works too."

he's not sure if he can call himself a mentor for gabe. at best, he just hangs out with him on the free time he gets whenever navy got too busy with work.

there might not be any actual mentoring, but with how highly he heard of gabe talk of him through navy, he likes to think the relationship's the same.

"all out? are you sure?" he looks at the screen that displays his team. "yeah, i think i can go all out with this team."

kyle lets his lucario out of its ball, joining the lycanroc out in the field. "your move, navidson."

it's the line he would have said in both timelines where either brother faced him.

"the place i wanted to go to is a good distance away from the building, alright," he tells cian. "we need to be there before it gets busy."

despite being a hole-in-the-wall restaurant, it was popular. the place was small, and the owner doesn't seem to have plans on expanding. lines only get big as its fame grows.

he really shouldn't be thinking of food, but instead, concentrate on the fight. then again, he's going the matias approach.

in a typical matias fashion, kyle decides to not give his pokemon clear instructions and instead, rely on the direction of the training he gave them. he did tell them to go aggressive beforehand, which contrasts the defensive style of kyle's own training.

confused by the ninetales, all instructions go south.

the electivire shakes the ground with earthquake, conveniently timing it with the raboot's landing, despite having a fire-type teammate. on the other hand, the arcanine burns up despite facing two fire-types, his flames spreading all over the ninetales.

ah, shit.

"you hold him off for a while," he instructs cian. "i'll call the authorities."

it's not like their tapu koko will be following his commands since the grave slight of denying him an avatar happened years ago. unfortunate for the tapu koko that it chose a person with zero interest in power at that time.

just like the other one, league's tapu koko ignores other objectives and, instead, concentrates on what piques its interest more: the shiny version of itself.

it attempts to intercept the tapu koko with a take down of its own, wanting to play rough with its counterpart. curiosity of its capabilities in battle was its current intent in its mind.

on the background, kyle distances himself from the fight since he wasn't the target. one hand readied a ball while another called from his phone. they were in ever grande, at least, so there's bound to be backup nearby.

"yeah, so remember the area where we told you we're visiting? yes, the tapu koko one. apparently, there's a second one, and..."

"right."

he answers, not knowing what the question was, just because he doesn't want to look like someone who doesn't know the obvious. part of him wonders if the implication is something in front of them, and he is quick to hold to that idea.

looking around for clues, he tries to infer what greyson meant. the only significant factors of the equation were the friendly one beside them and another of the same kind who showed aggression at their presence.

the last time they tried to do nice, it resulted to their death. he assumes that the elite four doesn't want to make the same mistake of calming the other one down. it leads him to conclude that he must meant they must knock it out instead.

just to be safe, he goes for the option that qualifies for both.

"knock it off its feet," he orders his honedge.

the sword zooms past, slinking into the shadows as the koraidon starts to charge at them, ready for an attack. the honedge pops back out, tripping the creature with a slash by its feet after a shadow sneak.

"oh, they look like that?" kyle hasn't seen it yet, and has only seen the one that looked like suicune. "that isn't as cool as the suicune one, then."

his expectations have now been pushed back to manageable levels.

navy was right though. their schedules never manage to line up for both of them to be open for actual missions together. it doesn't help that whenever kyle has to show up to catch up on his quota of work, navy has already worked himself to the bone with other enthusiastic volunteers.

his turtonator had been one of the more used pokemon in his arsenal back in the days. with the high-paced nature of hoenn, however, kyle supposed that it was much better off lent to members of slateport pd than join with the chase of the hype.

"yeah, they were pretty spooked," he informs navy. "it felt like imprison, but more, um, supernatural. the rules of the world were rewritten in front of us, after all."

he smiles as he turns to navy.

"i had my sygna suit on that time." meaning he was connected to his smeargle in a much deeper level. "it made me think my existence was going to be deleted right there and then."

this is why it's bad for him to get in with navy. kyle either kills his own productivity by filling the time with needless chatter instead of concentrating on work, or navy drags him out of his comfort zone since he can't leave him alone in spearheading the reckless shenanigans he's always done.

fear grips on kyle as noah presents him with their choices. there's a difference with being apathetic with the situation and not letting fear cloud his judgement.

he looks at noah, and decides to look at him not as a green unit that needed to be escorted to the end of the level, but as a resource he can use. it's the best thing he can do to keep losses at a minimum.

"quiet," he answers. "you know how to put them to sleep with a choke, right?"

using pokemon is risky given that the natural response to it is to bring out their own. besides, it was foolish to come here without utilizing tools in their disposal.

with fear comes caution, and kyle is one of the people who takes it seriously more than any other.

"i'll always return," he reminds him. "i always play it safe."

it cannot be said for his first trip to ultra space. while he had drastic measures set, things worked out before he had to rely on them. luck played a big part on securing their way back, but kyle knew he can make things happen should fate be against them at that time.

the future, too, holds something that he isn't quite certain of.

"i don't have the timing for things, but i have a feeling one of them is coming soon."

he already tested with kyogre. he already instigated the main fire starter. tinder is already set to burn up in any minute. it's only a matter of when an outside force adds the fuel to trigger for something to happen.

he holds noah's hand. he leans forward, smiles on his face.

"hey, when it happens, do you mind if you don't tell others about it?" he asks. "it would be funny, i swear."

kyle was trained to handle an armed suspect during his time in the force. a flag is raised in his head in the sight of one.

unlike pokemon, there's little time for them to act between the pressing the trigger and the bullet's travel time.

without a word, kyle swings the two-handed sword upwards with one hand in an arc that hits the gunman with its flat side. drugged by adrenaline, the short burst of power was a show of control rather than brute force.

for someone like gwyar who can recognize movements easily, the act is akin to the same swing one does with a police baton. the only difference was the extreme size difference.

"ah. i panicked."

a tool was a tool, as gwyar said.

it just so happens that kyle was more proficient with blunt weapons that the transition to similar weapons came with ease when the familiarity was cemented on his head.

the criminal lied on the ground as kyle's heart beats fast, contrary to the face of calm in his expression. one more target remained, and kyle can't count on terakion on making use of the little space provided in the tunnels.

"that option's not really practical," he reminds melody before softening his expression to a faint smile, "but i guess practical is nothing compared to personality."

she would get chewed at by the likes of the militaristic personalities of hoenn's top brass for having an ever-so-changing moveset that she has to adapt to every time she needs to use her smeargle, but he supposed idols are built different. they do manage to have entire routines for their shows that they quickly change the moment they're done.

kyle wasn't one, though. he just has to stick with what he's comfortable with as someone with no special training.

it doesn't occur to him that melody was starting to replace the drawings on the walls with her own. kyle had still been busy covering up the mess when she opens up with a proposition.

"are you sure?" he asks, "i'm not really known for my drawing, you know."

ironic, given the pokemon he decided to sync with.

he considers his skills to be above the basic stick men and basic shapes, but doodles and other sketches one fills the back of their notebooks with wouldn't be enough to put him above average.

kyle decides to shrug the issue off. "oh, well. better for my shitty art skills to be in this wall than what's previously here."

anything that doesn't have facts and logic backing it up were not good enough reasons for kyle, but time has proven that nothing works as intended in the real world. kyle surmises that it translates over actual fantasy titles.

the gut feeling was not something he should ignore easily this time.

"let's play it safe for now, yeah? we can take the risks later once we had our money's worth."

kyle remains in his ship within the orbit of the world they found.

with the ship's systems mirroring the capabilities of his pokemon, kyle tries to find a command for it to execute a move it should know. it comes with intuition, perhaps with how the dream works, that he knows how to perform it.

cosmic power is activated. what was used to disable avatar abilities and recall legendary pokemon back is now used to probe the planet, teasing for a feedback to his ship's systems.

"no need for thanks. it was my offer, anyways," he reassures her. "we can always leave if you aren't sure."

it was no big deal to escort her out if she's having second thoughts. the hint of the patronizing response is heard, but he gives her the benefit of the doubt for now.

wild carbink slowly populating their space from a distance becomes a telling sign that their target is nearby.

"what we're looking for is her, by the way."

kyle turns to a corner where the diancie peers from. once attention is on her, she slowly steps out, cautious as the visitor was.

"it's diancie. rock- and fairy-type. also one of the few ones that can also mega evolve," he explains. "i thought it would be nice to visit them since terastal crystals kinda look like diamonds and those are the current flavor of the month."

"i got it!"

a wall nearby has a plate stripped off, revealing machinery underneath its interior. gears and screws litter on the floor nearby, which kyle immediately goes for.

"just go straight at it!"

he ignores the chase and splits off to fix the puzzle as they always had. one glance at the open mechanism tells him the missing piece was an obviously large gear on the ground.

it takes him a moment to slot a gear in for repair, immediately moving the rest of the clockwork back to motion.

with matias on the chase, he repairs the few needed crews and bolts needed to secure the gear. they don't want to have their way out shut close again after all.