Oz reads through the prompts with a somewhat incredulous expression. Not at the idea of the great doggos of course. They were pretty sweet.

He mostly didn't understand how a leaf snail or a goldfish was meant to keep up with giant weapon-wielding puppers. After a second of debating between the last two, Oz made his selection. It was time for a cat-on-dog fight!

❤️

The dressed avatar of Dahlia is truly stunning. He wished there was some kind of emoji to pound under there. Or, at the very least, he'd gotten to pick the compliment.

Well, these options were a little dramatic. Who would want to slaughter heroes? And, for that matter, what kind of "good guys" enslaved so-called gods?

With a shrug, the CEO picked what seemed the most obvious answer.

LEAVE THEM BE

PURCHASING/REDEEMING

welcome to the poké mart!

1X Lotad Flower Pail(200 PD)

HARVESTING

be sure to visit the pretty petal flower shop near rustboro!

1X Kebeia (20)
1X Tamato (10)
2X Rabuta (10)

TOTAL

do come again!

240 PD

It was the great doggos! Sweet! It'd be nice to see them around.

Oz stared at the prompt before him for a moment. The outfit selection struck him as odd. Why did none of these items match? Hadn't Miss Goode heard of wardrobe staples? Ah well.

The Sygna Suit was quickly eliminated. While it'd certainly catch attention, people would probably see it as panicked or combative.

As to the white dress, well, people were sexist a-holes. Then, of course, came the fact that white implied purity and ignorance. Not exactly what you wanted in a high-stakes meeting. Some of them might use it to justify a belief that she was fragile and unfit.

So, in the end, he went with a classic.

A fancy black dress with gloves.

Apparently, the rest of the region enjoyed angering HR. Though his selected option didn't win, Oz couldn't deny the art and animation that followed were adorable. The way they drew her mussed hair earned a ten from him, though he doubted Miss Goode would appreciate it.

With the three options presented to him, Oz smirked. The last one was tempting, solely for trolling purposes. But it also flew in the face of everything the game had presented so far. And, if he wanted to play assistant, he should keep things more realistic. Even if he WAS a total catch.

SAPPHIRE

To say he'd been glued to his phone throughout this event was an understatement. The potential insights and trolling opportunities were far too much for the man to resist. When the event announcement was made, the man immediately browsed the new routes. After a moment, he selects the Commissioner's game.

After so long being CEO, he found the premise of playing assistant an amusing one. Perusing the choices, it doesn't take him long to make a decision. He was a guy. Most women didn't take too kindly to being touched. And, he was a bit of a germaphobe himself. Crossing his fingers that his AI self had good choice in ringtones and music, Oz pressed the button.

Ring an alarm/song from your RotomPhone.

If Oz noticed Thomas’s glaring (spoiler: he did), no outward sign of it showed. The shit-eating grin didn’t move or waver. Though, if he knew he was the older guy, the CEO might have started sobbing. It wasn’t like he had grey hair or wrinkles yet! The idea that he was getting closer to the age-that-should-not-be-said was not something Ozni wanted to acknowledge. Hopefully, he conquered death before that hill was conquered.


When the Comfey finishes, she gives the young lady a smile. The injury already looks less severe. Before he can ask how she’s doing, however, the one-eyed man beats him to it.  “Great job, Lei! Live that Tinkerbell life!” With that, she returns to her place around Ozni’s neck. His open high-five—meant to give her #praise—was completely ignored. When the girl introduces herself, Oz grins. “I mean I’ve heard of you, so you must be.” The dark-skinned man watched the Gengar approach with his best neutral expression.


The resulting spook received a giggle-snort in response as he buried his mouth in one thick hoody sleeve. When Thomas arrived, the dark-skinned man suddenly turned serious. That didn’t sound good. He shooed his Porygon down the tunnel, giving the viewers a quick view of the opponents below—his attempt to make this feel more real. “I’m not sure if spirits obey the laws of physics—” He’d only ever hung out with Mr. Make-It-Rain—Chip—before. And that walking pile of Bitcoin didn’t walk through a ton of walls. “But we could head deeper into the tunnels.” One hand gestured towards the tunnel where Vanessa emerged. “Numbers don’t matter as much in tight quarters.” Unless you were a panicked mob turning people into toothpaste.


“Find the other way out.” Blue eyes then shifted to Vanessa. “Wherever Speed Racer came from.”

On went the Krookodile tears. Those Adebayo blues filled with faux moisture as the lanky man forced his bottom lip to quibble. “Et tu Nikky?” A melodramatic gasp tore from his throat. “ Your words wound me.” Which he did have by the way—no matter what Twitter said. But the faux stagger that followed ended pretty quickly. He’d just been teasing. His tendency towards flippancy made the moments where he took shit seriously really unnerving. Fortunately, this wasn’t one of them. “Whatever floats your Gogoat, dude.”


As long as the Pokemon had someplace to stretch, the number didn’t really matter to him. Even if the space compression thing was like his worst nightmare. He was too tall for tight spaces. Courtesy of his grandfather the scarecrow man. “What kind of store are we talking about?” The talk of his Pokemon assistants was met with a whistle. Keeping the names in his family straight was hard enough. This sounded like a nightmare. “Man, if I run into you again, you gotta tell me where those names come from.” Sure, some made sense—like Gojira. But what was Slick about a Bagon?


“Good the cops did their jobs for once." Ozni murmured at the talk of jail time. Some part of him wished he’d get to see his dad in orange, but being wealthier than Midas had perks. Foremost amongst these was a talent for escaping the not-so-long arm of the law. “Well, here’s hoping the guy actually learns something from all of that.” A lot of people got out of the clink angrier than a rabid Emolga. From what he’d seen, it had the opposite effect of whatever genius thought it up intended.


With the bird in his pocket, Oz pushed himself into a sitting position. His hand reached up to investigate the worse of the scratches, wincing. A bit of floral healing from the Comfey served to stem the bleeding. “This better not scar.” He muttered to himself as he stood. Wiping his blood off with a designer sleeve, he moved into the staircase. Above, an old lightbulb still swung. “Or this place will get the worst Yelp review.” A lot of his faux bravado was gone, replaced with a shaken surliness. “0/5. Totally haunted. Rabid birds. Tacky curtains. Would NOT recommend.”


Before long, he emerged back out on the ground floor. Only a scuttling Zigzagoon and a Mawile interrupted their progress. Just outside the building, an electric sportscar sat, its lights now glowing a bright blue. Oz jerked one hand toward it. "You good?"

People said that absolute power corrupted absolutely. Others said that money was the root of all evil. Another subset asserted that wealth changed people. His girlfriend apparently thought all three were true. One day their non-profit had been humming along, and the next he walked in on her packing things into shipping boxes. The conversation that followed was one of the most hurtful he ever remembered having. Even now—as he strolled through an apartment building he was thinking of buying--her barbs still dug into him.


The stuff the company got caught for after he ousted the old man was not his fault. It wasn’t like he could just derail millions in investments because something suddenly made her squeamish. He wasn’t the one who had changed. She’d just suddenly cared where all the money came from. Fortunately, the talk of the piggy’s name was a good distraction. “Pfffft.” The man shook off the hard look in his eyes in exchange for giggling. Some part of him would always be a 13-year-old boy. “I’d go with Emperor Oinkatus. Or, Pigpen.” Suddenly, the Comfey was grateful for her new moniker. It could have been so much worse.

Ozni watched as another Pokemon vanished into a ball. “Apparently it was a rare species and some hippies got up in arms about rebuilding. And nobody wanted to touch it with a 10-foot pole after that.” So, with the downfall of it, these Pokemon around them had gained a safe place to call their own. Seeing the strange habitat that had formed, the planned teardown was starting to seem like a bad idea.


When Nikky discussed his rationale, the man nodded. “I guess that makes sense.” Kind of like a museum versus an art collector. One actually interacted with what they collected and the other kept it behind walls and action-movie laser beams. “Have a pretty big yard for them, I take it?” His garden really looked out of place in this wartorn region, especially with the native Alolan vegetation everywhere.


“Glad to hear things are on the up-and-up. Hopefully, that driver got his fair share of community service.” The man approached the staircase down to the third floor. “We better hope we don’t find any Zubat.” He winked as he tugged the door open. Two Pokemon, frightened by the sudden light exploded into a flurry of movement. The Banette made a strange hissing noise before phasing through a wall.


The bird meanwhile charged up the stairs, bowling the CEO to the ground in a flurry of kicks. “Shit!” The man yelped as he lifted his hands above his head. One arm moved to protect the little Comfey as he huddled over it. “Chill out, Big Bird! Geeze!”


Fumbling at his belt, the man moved to press a ball to the mad lad’s side. An angry slash ran down one side of his cheek. Which was definitely better than it could have been. Those dang things could disembowel a Pyroar.