"You..." Rex simply laughed as Hitoshi disappeared over the horizon, leaving the young man and his Gallade collapsed on the sand. Their chests heaved in unison as Rex struggled to catch his breath. "You..."

It was hard to catch his breath when he was laughing so hard. It was just so...

"Incredible! It's spectacular! If he's the lowest of the low, then I've got a long ladder to climb! I can't beat him, not yet, but I will!" Rex clasped a fist and let it fall limply to the side, his limbs shaking from exertion. Team Rocket was full of strong trainers. "I can't wait!"

A breath escaped his lips.

"You good, Gallade?" The knight raised a bladed hand in affirmation, and Rex chuckled in response. "Good! We've got a lot of training to do! We're gonna beat him, then we're gonna fucking kill him! Prove our point in the only way we know how!"

The battlefield shined on everyone, including a Wynaut that waddled nearby. A Pokeball rolled towards it. "In battle!"

---

Hitoshi Inoue
CATCHING WYNAUT

This was something strong. He could feel it. There was a thrum of power from the knight's flesh, a rippling of heat that caused the air around Volcanion to shimmer like a radiator on a cold day. This Pokémon was different. It was distinct. If Rex fought this thing, it was very likely that he would lose.

It took all of his will to not step forward and thrash it and crush it and rip into tired flesh to end its constant search.

"Wow! So this is Volcanion?" Rex's fingers itched as his gaze met the disdainful scorn of a knight surrounded with machines for so long that it had forgotten the sensation of man. "He has a cool donut on his back!"

Steam rushed from various exhaust ports, and Rex blinked in surprise, before stepping forward, as if to challenge it. Yet to do so would go against the small lady's wishes, and thus Rex kept a lid on his overflowing desire for conflict and tamped it down to watch as Eris rummaged through her book.

"I hope you find your princess soon, Volcanion! That way, we can fight!" He shadowboxed for a moment to explain his point. "We have a gift for you, too!"

He nudged Eris forward.

"Go on! Show him what you found!"

---

Eris Halla

He pushed her up one notch on the shelf, before turning to grab her hand. Keiko was surprisingly strong. Must be because of all those deliveries. If Rex had to drag packages across the region, he'd be unstoppable. He silently added package runs to his training curriculum.

"Wouldn't that get in the way of work? I'm already running every which way across the region as it is." He silently gauged the length of the next shelf and prepared to repeat the process. "I know I mentioned it before, but... do you really want to watch?"

He looked away as he gestured for her to take another boost upwards.

"Because I'll call you if that's the case." He wanted her to be there for every victory, even if they had barely met a few months ago. Call it delusion or childishness, but it was a genuine desire. "Oh, I have an idea! Why don't you take the challenge with me?"

---

keiko mori

robin coello was going to hell. If there was a way to send a medium to the next life without getting arrested for murder, Rex was learning that ritual as quickly as possible. How did one hunt for Victini without actually knowing what a soul wisp looks like? Did Victini have a soul?

Did Rex have a soul? This process was causing his brain to short circuit. Rather than learn how to become a medium himself, he decided to go to the next best thing: a semi-retired medium.

Emphasis on 'retired', if this run-down shack was anything to go by. Rex puffed his cheeks out and took a deep breath. He rubbed his forehead, then his temples, and then slapped his face with both hands to ensure that he wasn't losing his mind.

"WHADDYA MEAN, IT'S CLOSED!?" Rex shouted to the heavens, his voice echoing through upper Slateport. "ARE YOU SERIOUS!? I CAME ALL THE WAY HERE!"

He sat down on the floor, legs crossed, before doing the same with his arms.

"The one time I have a job for her! She was a big help with the Spiritomb, and now she's nowhere to be found!"

---

Mitsuru Kagami
BINGO: RITUAL

Getting groped while on the job? Being a police officer seemed like a pretty shitty profession in Hoenn, with the war going on and all that. Instead of getting to fight on the battlefield and feel the rush of the moment, Miyako had to dole out parking tickets and deal with Althus Rex.

Truly, it was a fate worse than death. Frankly, Rex was more afraid of Keiko Mori than he was of getting arrested.

"That asshole! I'll beat him up!" Rex clenched a fist in visible frustration, before his anger quickly evaporated to answer her question. "Yes ma'am! I'll get it right now!"

He turned to the nearby gang member and kicked him, causing the man to roll over with a groan. He kicked him again to express his frustration, before revealing a crushed package the size of a large hardcover book. Rex picked it up and shook it, and the sound of multiple pieces clacking against each other rang out.

He nodded, satisfied.

"Here you go!" He offered it to her expectantly. "Now, where'd my Pokemon go? He did most of the work."

Meanwhile, Miyako would feel a nudging sensation by her foot.

'toge toge?'

---

Miyako Noguchi
BINGO: WAR

She's a cop? Damn. Rex was cooked.

"I'm serious! Honest! I was delivering a package and they jumped me!" Rex's eyes grew as wide as saucers as he gestured towards his pocket, producing his phone as if it would save him from this scenario. Hopefully this copper didn't think it was a bomb or a weapon of mass destruction. "Look!"

It started ringing as a certain pink-haired courier's profile picture appeared on the phone screen.

"My boss-friend-girlfriend-not friend was calling me and they thought it was a wire!" The words sounded ridiculous as they fell from his lips. He was definitely going to super prison when this was over. "Aw, man. I'm going to prison. I knew I shouldn't have beaten them up!"

This had been one of his first jobs, and now that everything had gone south, there was little left to celebrate.

"What sort of Team Rocket gang orders Rare Candy anyway?"

---

Miyako Noguchi
BINGO: CELEBRATE

"What...?"

Rex's eyes widened as Hitoshi backed off, leaving his Lancelot to take the strike to save his own hide. Blood wells and dribbled into the sand, where the blood of man and Pokémon mix into pools of primordial water. The tone changed slightly, turning vibrant in tone.

As the Rocket Beast made space, Rex struggled to his feet, though his leg folded in on itself and he went sprawling into the sand.

"Come back! You can't run away!" The younger man protested in outrage as Hitoshi deemed him unworthy of execution. They were fighting, it had been glorious, and Hitoshi had denied him an honorable end. "We're not done! I can still fight!"

He wheezed and spat out a globule of blood.

"I can still win!"

---

Hitoshi Inoue
catching doduo

It was a peaceful afternoon in Hoenn's Slateport Cit-

BOOM!

Nevermind.

Smoke billowed out of an alleyway that had smoke curdle into the air and dissipate into the open sky. The distant sounds of shouts, yelps, and screams rang out, before pleads of mercy were quickly silenced with another explosion. As Rex stood in the small space surrounded by unconscious gangsters, he silently grimaced to himself.

keiko mori was going to kill him. He had one job. Deliver the package. Discretely, per the recipient's orders. Rex was already heading north to take on Josh Devlin 's gym, so this stop had been no inconvenience at all.

Emphasis on 'had'.

"He pulled a Houndoom out on me!" He shouted into the phone, before the sound of police sirens whirred in the distance. "Shit. Gotta go. Love you. Bye!"

The phone clicked off.

"Don't shoot! I'm innocent!" He turned, raising his hands as he did so. Someone by his foot groaned in pain. "I swear!"

---

Miyako Noguchi
BINGO: HOENN

Ultimately, it was the gravity that ruined everything. It made running impossible. He felt Keiko's knee pop as they ran and his anger threatened to bubble over. A laugh escaped his lips at the absurdity of this exchange, of the fact that this was over a package.

"Ha." He let out a laugh as he attempted to keep a grin from forming on his face. They couldn't run, so they'd do the alternative: fight. "No, but..."

He returned his Hitmontop. He'd need it later. Under this intense gravity, there was little they could do but fight, so he'd wait for a better opportunity to throw hands. His hand reached for another Pokeball. This one was dented, outdated, and old. He hadn't swapped out Azumarill's Pokeball in ages.

In a sense, it reminded Rex of Rex.

"...that doesn't matter. You know that trope where the losing trainer gives the victor their prize money?" Rex grinned as he was buffeted by the Dual Wingbeat. He pulled Keiko to her feet, his knees threatening to buckle under their combined weight. "That's gonna be you."

Hitmontop disappeared. Azumarill went in, starting off strong with a Rollout directly towards Alba's Dusknoir. A risky, unreliable attack, but it was easier to hit under increased gravity, since it was harder for everyone to move around.

---

keiko mori Grigori Sokolov Alba Evovae
+30 (posts)
+50 (thread flashback)
+50 (show throwing style)
+50 (get hurt by a pokemon)
+50 (importance of Pokeballs)

He stared at her, awestruck. Mentioning badges made him want to keel over and die on the spot. If she had been serious, he would've likely started to sulk. Instead, he flushed red and punched her arm, realizing she was joking.

"You're messed up." He grumbled, before looking away and crossing his arms. "Watch! I'm gonna go back to town when this is over, get my gym badge from Tsubaki, and then sweep up the rest of the gyms in a few months. Trust me! I'll be worth six million Keiko points when this is all over!"

So competitive, for a man saying that ten Keikos equaled one Togepi. Nonetheless, it was fortunate that the courier's faith in him went unmentioned, lest he turn around and kiss her while muttering incomprehensibly. Yet luckily they were saved from that faith from the shelf of rock. Rex grabbed the new information and latched onto it like a shipwreck survivor latched onto driftwood.

"Alright, I'll give you a boost." Rex crouched down and offered both hands as a foothold. "Couriers need to climb mountains too, right? Think of it as practice for your next delivery."

---

keiko mori
BINGO: SIX

"Hah..." His lungs rattled, desperately trying to push oxygen into blood saturated with dioxide. A blood vessel in his eye burst, turning the entire eyeball red. He could barely see through the marred eye, yet his other was clear and alert. "Hah..."

Rex spat out a globule of blood over the corpse of a Pokémon Ranger. For a horrible moment, Rex thought it was the face of ollie morales. If he could've afforded to breathe, he would've sighed in relief, knowing that the Head Ranger wasn't here. Yet he would've appreciated the older man's help, right now.

Because at this precise moment, Althus Rex was alone.

"FACE ME!" His Gallade speared a Rocket Grunt through the belly. He stepped over the unconscious body of his Hitmontop, before facing several grunts. His eye widened as he saw them reach for their Pokeballs. With a growl, Rex lunged forward. His Gallade cleaved the group in half. "YOU!"

He saw the man on top of the hill. It wasn't Hitoshi Inoue. For a moment, he thought it was. He was surrounded in bodies.

"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU, ROCKET BEAST!?" His wounds screamed as he stepped forward. His eyes burned with the passion of his moment. He had a large smile on his face as he stared down the Hoyeon. "FACE ME!"

---

Tempest Quinn
+10 post
+50 Pokemon KO
+50 (rock bottom)

The slaughter didn't surprise him. The constant parade of machinery didn't surprise him. The revelation that Eris had been involved with the first Type:Null didn't surprise him. What did surprise Rex was the claim that these bones had once belonged to people who had been sucked into machines.

"That's terrible! That's no way to go out! You can't feel anything if you're a machine. No touch, no rush of adrenaline. You may as well be dead." They were looking at the largest mass suicide that Rex had ever seen. It made his stomach hurl, knowing that there had been no grandeur to their deaths.

Their bodies had just... stopped. Now all that remained was steel.

"Does that mean they're... still alive?" He peered at Isolde, as if expecting the Magearna to look at him and start spouting off its credit card number, address, and date of birth. "Shit, man."

They eventually ended up at the door, which roused Rex from his troubled thoughts. They were about to meet Mr. Knight, the Mechanical Kingdom's Champion, Volcanion. A true threat, worthy of a good fight.

"Well!" Rex clapped and stepped forward. "No time like the present!"

The doors creaked open on ancient, mechanical hinges.

---

Eris Halla
BINGO: CHAMPION