MAGIKARP SPLASHING IS A WAY OF LIFE. TO ABANDON THE SPLASH IS TO ABANDON YOUR HUMANITY. IT DOES NOT MATTER IF IT'S A ONE IN TWENTY CHANCE OF MAGIKARP SPLASHING. YOU WILL KEEP GAMBLING.

KEEP CHASING MAGIKARPS.

GET YOUR MATERIAL REWARD.

---

MAGIKARP SPLASH
NY0fq8CR

The two sit in the sheriff's garage, where the sound of Dewford's sheriff tinkering with his truck rang out like the peals of a bell. Iron and steel clanked together in harmony.

The sounds of automotive repairs was undercut by a small CRTV in the corner with an old game console hooked up. In front of it was Dewford's Judas, Howard Slayte. Long before he betrayed the island, he meandered at the sheriff's place occasionally to poke around or slack off.

He was never sure how much Navy appreciated his company. The admin was no kyle lopez, after all.

"Stupid fucking Varooms...!" Howard muttered to himself before groaning as he got hit with another Squirtle Shell, sending him from first place to sixth. "Fuck...!"

Shirley sat dozing nearby, her eye barely opening to regard the archaeologist, before turning to the sheriff. She snorted before going back to sleep.

---

Navy

And when the chime came, it cut through the silence like a knife.

The door creaked open. The person the chemist wanted to see least in the world walked in. A blue eye littered with specks of red from Dynergy poisoning surveyed the room. Naturally, he came alone. No guards. Only his Pokémon. They, of course, remain at his belt.

There is no use of startling the snake in its den, though perhaps pit is a more accurate term. Luckily for both Howard and Absinthe, the pit is empty besides them, though the archaeologist's eye lurked in the shadows.

declan walsh's domain. Damn that man.

"You're here. That's good." He crossed the room to the counter. He sat before her, looking up at the walking corpse going through routine motions to keep her mind sane. How he knew that feeling. The constant desire to do anything to maintain functionality. "Absinthe?"

His eye inspected her, looking for any crack in the guise. The scent of spores on her is noxious.

"You look terrible. Not enough sleep?"

---

Absinthe Blackwood

Mossdeep was expensive. It was practically highway robbery. It would've been if the city wasn't placed on an island and had an actual interstate running through it, at least.

Still, it was obscene how much they charged for a cup of coffee at any shop within walking distance of the Mossdeep Space Center. Given that much of the island was walkable, that meant that every single coffee shop threatened to gouge Howard's wallet and leave him dangling.

To see an old colleague, though? Howard would take a few dozen dollars to the shins and walk it off.

"I've waited eight months for these rocks, man. She told me she'd get them!" Howard hissed into an old flip phone. Yeah, I know. I know. Listen, I'll call you back later. This Skarmory is eating my biscuits."

The small Skarmory chick hopped across the table set outside a small coffeeshop. The sea breeze caressed the admin's face as he wrestled a biscuit from Steelheart's gaping beak.

"Stupid bird." He muttered, before his face brightened as he raised an arm at the woman in the distance. "Phoebe!"

---

Phoebe Vega

It was a hard question. When Oscar uttered it, Navy syncing up with two Pokémon at once entered his mind.

"You feel powerful." Howard said simply. He didn't feel powerful when he wore it, but the sensation was there. The thrum of energy as the human body was pushed beyond its limits and into the realm of miracles.
"You feel warm. Your emotions link up to your Pokémon's and you two become one. I feel what Shirley feels. Her rage, her primal desire, her love."

They did not need a Sygna Suit to display their bond. Howard's Aerodactyl had been with him from the beginning, and all it took was a glance at their shared scars to discern their unbreakable bond.

It was one not forged in steel, like the Genesects that Oscar produced. It was primal, ancient, and old beyond measure.

"But it's a power we shouldn't have. Our love for our Pokémon and for one another should be what guides us, but if we must use it, we will." Howard was silent for a spell.

"Do you love every Genesect you've built, Oscar?"

---

oscar clayton

His eye narrowed in on the guns. Then, they went wide.

"Monty." The archaeologist rasped, trembling as he stared at the gun. Was this it? Was this seriously how it was going to end? "Plea-"

BANG!

The ceiling cracked slightly as the tomb was broke open like an egg. Light filtered down, harsh and hot, the first true light that the tomb had seen in millennia. The Cofagrigus screamed and Howard along with it. It took several seconds before he realized that he hadn't been shot.

"You scared the shit out of me! The fuck's wrong with you!" Howard hissed as the Cofagrigus writhed as it attempted to scurry into a dark corner. Crumble, meanwhile, wrapped the duo in a series of Reflects and Light Screens. "Shoot it! Not the tomb!"

---

Montgomery James

He had owned a few copies of her father's book, before selling them during his darkest eras of financial woe. To sell pieces of history was a shameful thing, but it had been required for Howard's survival.

He had read them, but the contents eluded him. Perhaps it was a guilty conscious refusing to allow him to remember the pearls of knowledge held within dusty tomes he had sold for material gain. Maybe it was a response to committing a sin of academia. Maybe it was connected to his inability to recall the Devourer's name.

The cost of wisdom and knowledge sat heavy on the archaeologist's shoulders.

It's a shame that I never got to see Rayquaza here. I always wondered if the sketches and murals were accurate." He confessed, though his expression darkened slightly at the mention of Remiel. "I work with him at the museum in Slateport. I'd rather not shift our relationship beyond that."

A deep breath followed as he turned to face the councilwoman. His pupil was a slit, despite his soft features.

"Is Remiel a good man, Freya? As good as the tabloids say?"

---

freya morningstar

The sound of stone scraping was a horrendous sound. It rotted the mind and harassed the ears.

It reminded the admin of tectonic plates groaning under the stress of eons. Yet as the two crashed against each other, Howard found himself raising an eyebrow as Adrian started searching things up on his phone. The admin didn't even have a Rotom Phone. He had a flip phone from a company that went out of business in 2006.

"Adrian! What're you doing?" Howard shouted over the scraping of stone. "Make a command! You were meant to battle, right? You're a soldier! Yveltal chose you for a reason!"

Serizawa lunged up into the air, gas shooting from the vents in its body to propel it upward.

"I'm trying to figure out why! Show me!"

The pupa came crashing down, gaining speed as it prepared to quake the earth.

---

Adrian Malcolm

Even in a virtual world, Shirley is as strong as ever. Her wings cut through the digitized space like a scalpel as she aimed fast and true towards the Tsareena's form. The blow landed, but the fight was not yet over.

There was, as always, a second phase.

"C'mon, this'll be easy!" Howard breathed at the screen. The virtue of games was that Howard did not need to show his ability on the field. He could press buttons and the game would do it for him.

He rarely worked with Shalin, despite their quest together. The chance to do a combo attack was too delicious to ignore.

"Alright, how does this work? Alright, Shalin." Howard muttered at the screen as he tapped away at buttons. "We're gonna do something really cool."

A Drill Run to pierce through the beast's defenses, and an Iron Head to nail it in.

"Let's call it... Ground-Cracking Spear."

---

COMBO ATTACK
uTRxufRU

At first, the rumbling quake reminded Howard of Regirock. The stone golem tunneled through Area Zero with mechanical impunity, searching for something that the archaeologist had to discover.

Yet that wasn't important. He had to focus in on the battle.

"Two Serizawas..." The admin's eye grew focused and intent, as if he planned on burrowing a hole through the false pupa's shell. Serizawa was already strong, even in this middle-stage. Yet an imitation lacked his rage and it was instead replaced with the mirror of an imposter. "Hm."

That was a weakness, though. Ditto lacked Serizawa's absolute rage.

"You can take it! Rush forward and thrash it!" Howard ordered, confident in the Pupitar's physical might. The ground rumbled and rocks fell on the pupa as it rushed forward, though that did not stop it from striking at Adrian's mockery. "Knock it over!"

---

Adrian Malcolm

He saw something in Adrian's eyes that made the admin give him second pause. The roll of exasperation, perhaps.

"I don't know, Adrian. I really don't. Most things in life have consequences, and Tera Crystals are a growth that rot our region from within. They're foreign, Adrian. They shouldn't exist in this world. Who knows what they do to our Pokémon?" He had used their powers to travel between worlds and to escape Regice's wrath. They were too flexible to be completely trustworthy. "We shouldn't be using these powers, but..."

He echoed BARNABY FINCH and fern delaney's words from their meeting in Sootopolis.

"...what choice do we have?" He was silent for a spell. He would purge the Tera Crystals and Dynamax and all these accursed phenomenon from this world, should the opportunity arise. This world would be fixed and it would be pristine. "Serizawa?"

He regarded the Pupitar, then Adrian. His face flickered into a grin.

"I have. He mostly trains himself, but I do what I can. Want to see?"

---

Adrian Malcolm