"I don't know." His gaze locked with hers, the firelight sending waves of colors across their faces. Sparks danced in the air, before flickering and dying in the night air. "I'd rather not find out. Night, Keiko."

As she went towards the makeshift tent, Rex looked down at his palms. They shook.

Why?

Why was he alive?

Why was she alive?

Why were they stuck on this island together? What was the point? Where was the meaning in being castaway? As he thought, a realization came to him: this was why he fought. The rush was part of it, as was the adrenaline. Yet when he was on the battlefield, he wasn't thinking about this.

Keiko was lucky. Everything was so simple to her. All she needed was faith. As the hours ticked on, Rex yawned and sighed, his eyes falling on the tent. It was time for Keiko's watch, so he groggily meandered towards the tent.

Heat. It was warm. Far preferable to the air outside, cool and biting as it was. He reached out to tap Keiko's shoulder, before his hand retreated with only the faintest of brushes. There was no threat to letting her sleep.

He poked his head out at the Gogoat.

"Watch for us." His head retreated back into the tent. He hated calling it that. It was more of a ramshackle imitation than a genuine tent, but it was still warm and homelike. Instead of waking the courier, he started to doze aside her. "Night."

Warm. Vastly preferable.

---

keiko mori

He let her words wash over him. Whispered murmurs of a dream of spring where god is benevolent and kind. The truth of Dialga is a simple one. Trapped in chains of red and dragged about by a DRK Triad member, it was not itself. God had been chained, and little people were poorer for it.

Yet Rex did not know that. Neither did Keiko.

Her Almighty Sinnoh had been chained, and now it had fooled an entire generation of people into believing that it wanted them dead. He would fight it. He would win. Victory had a delicious taste, sweet and delectable. If he could chase that high, he would be content to stifle the void in his soul.

"I can't even remember their faces anymore." Rex's voice was small as he looked up at Keiko "Too much time has passed. There's nothing left but sensations. Hints of a memory. If too much time passes, I'll forget what they went through."

Gallade appeared between trees. He nodded to Rex, bowed to Keiko, before returning his Pokeball in a flash of red light.

"I don't want to forget." Pelipper was not going to make it back. He could feel it in his bones. The bird would get lost, rest, and find them eventually. It would take even longer for help to arrive. They were about to spend a lot of time on this island.

Too much time.

A yawn broke the silence.

"I can stay up for the first watch." Rex's gaze lingered towards the tent. "Go get some sleep."

---

keiko mori

He looked up from the fire, cheeks still red and slightly puffy. Trees crashing against the ground muffled sound quite well, leaving plenty of time to cry and scream.

How childish.

"Yeah, he's practicing his form. He evolved recently, still hasn't gotten used to his body. Dancing through the trees lets him get used to controlling his blades." A sword with no sheathe was of no use to Rex, so Gallade still danced through the woods. Every once in a while, a tree would fall, signifying an error. "It's bittersweet. I can't hold him anymore, and his arms make it hard for him to hold anyone else."

In Littleroot's cellar, they wouldn't have been able to hold one another as the world threatened to end. The emotion in his chest was impossible to describe. What had he felt during that moment?

Fear? Longing? Anger?

"This Gogoat." He shouldered on, burying his unhappiness for this woman in his soul. "Think it'll stay?"

The sun was setting. Rex whistled, signifying that his Gallade return.

---

keiko mori

"I believe that people I loved died!" Rex's voice cracked. The mask of the trainer cracked, and the boy hiding in the cellar peeked out. The boy and the Ralts he swore to protect, to get stronger for, to find meaning alongside. "Because I-"

Tears spilled down his cheeks. A rattling gasp fled his lips.

"Because I was too weak to save them." He turned away, rebuilding his composure. "Go. Go and chase your goats. Hopefully your Almighty Sinnoh is kinder to you than he was to me."

When she came back, several trees in the area had been felled, sliced clean through with a Gallade's Leaf Blade. Simple training. Cleaving and dicing and severing through wood in an attempt to strengthen the blade. Rex still sat near the fire, watching its sparks dance.

"How'd it go?"

---

keiko mori

Keiko had reached Hoenn far too late. She had not seen the dragon that had ripped space apart, nor the one that caused time to fray and bend and snap. If she did, she'd understand the utter fear of being told by a god that people did not deserve to exist.

It had certainly broken him.

"If the Almighty Sinnoh's will is for people to die, then the Almighty Sinnoh is a fucking murderer!" He did not practice Sinnoh's theology. He didn't necessarily care. Miles of scripture penned onto miles of scrolls did not substitute for the genuine truth that Rex had seen. "He-"

Wait. Rex's eyes narrowed as he realized what Keiko had uttered.

"He only punishes who, Keiko?" His voice had turned from hard to dangerously soft, like a knife being slipped from a sheath. "Who does he punish?"

---

keiko mori

"No." The sound of a clock ticking and shattering against the floor rang in his mind. "Not a lie. A lot of people saw it over Littleroot a few years back."

How long had it been? Almost three years, now? Years since Dialga had descended from the heavens and dictated that the small podunk town had zero right to existence. It had bellowed and shouted and screamed and roared as chains had wrapped it like a shroud and dictated that their lives had needed to end.

Three years since he had started living like a shade, hiding in the outskirts while he chased a dream of being a champion. The dream was a lie. It did not matter. The climb was what mattered.

"Why?" He looked at her, shaking. The Gogoats were a passing memory. All that mattered was the ticking of the clock and the creaking of the cellar door that had led to a ruined town. "Why did Dialga descend from the sky and tell my friends and family that we needed to die?"

They had so little time in the world, yet a god with nothing but time to its name deprived them of even that.

---

keiko mori

"You haven't heard?" Rex seemed puzzled by the question. Everyone in Littleroot knew about the Mechanical Kingdom's Prince. There were rumors that if you did a certain chant and boiled a ton of water, he would appear in a flash of steam and grant you a mechanical doll as a companion. "He's this big red guy that makes explosions of steam. I've never heard of a stronger Pokémon, so I want to test myself against it!"

He mimed a few fists, as if he could somehow throw hands with a Legendary Pokémon that could topple a mountain with a vast explosion of steam. Still, his eyes gleamed with manic passion at the idea of fistfighting the mighty.

"This place showed up out of nowhere, but it's all the kids at Littleroot talk about now. I'd pester Hideo about it, if he wasn't so busy." And if Hideo Kino wasn't the final stop on his journey to the top.

The Skarmory flies away. Rex's eyes reflected their glowing light. Illumina was a familiar concept to the young man.

"Hopefully we don't wander for too long." Their feet made small splish splashes as they walked. "It's a big place. Super easy to get lost."

---

Eris Halla

"Aha!" Sparks flew as Rex pulled a hard drive from a tower. The monitor immediately blue screened as Rex tinkered with old and dead technology. When he looked up at Thomas, the computer tower had begun to smoke. "Got it! Did you find anything?"

He peered over the files that Thomas had been shuffling through, unaware of Thomas's pilfering of important government conspiracies. Togepi, meanwhile, looked up at the former Elite Four with wide eyes.

'toge toge?'

Special Translation: 'I know what you did.'

Rex, meanwhile, meandered towards the door. "Ready to go?"

---

Thomas Benoit

Small lady fixing something up has the same ring as Rex not sleeping in a tent. It sounds off. Wrong. Like Arceus himself has descended from the heavens with the sole purpose of judging the sins of his creations.

"I walked past seventy broken mechs on my way here." Rex inclined his head in his confusion in an attempt to deduce Eris's actions. He struggled to ponder how one little kid was going to fix this giant, dead world full of nothing but lifeless steel and broken machines.

This world's only purpose was to let him practice his blade without lamenting destroying anything of note. Steel could not weep.

"Well, guess I'll have to help! You're gonna need a bodyguard. Come on!"

---

Eris Halla

The fact that this little girl knew that much about mechanics made Rex's head spin. He pursed his lips thoughtfully.

"Let's go scavenging, then. I can't wait to run into the prince!" Rex whistled, his walking to his side. His knight was eternally loyal, profound, and extremely stiff. He wouldn't have looked out of place engulfed in steel, as depressing a realization as that was. "Someone's gotta protect you."

His eyes lingered on Reiner for several moments. He had never seen such a powerful Luxray. He longed to clash with it, but such a fight was meaningless so deep in an unknown world.

The city awaited them, and thus Rex would answer its call. As the younger girl led the way, Rex cocked his head in confusion. "So you know what we need to fix this doodad, right?"

---

Eris Halla

The locker froze for a moment as Rex contemplated this revelation.

"You gotta let me out, even if Togepi wants it! The ship is sinking and there's no way in hell I'm going down with it!" The man in the locker peers through small vents, seeing only the obscured face of the former Top Champion and part-time dog trainer. "Please don't make me beg!"

As if on command, the Togepi began to waggle his fingers with fervor, producing a bright light that threatened to erupt into a Hyper Beam if not properly maintained.

"It's my Togepi, I swear!"

The light grew in intensity, blinding Rex through the small slits in the locker. He let out a shriek of fear and pain as Togepi prepared to fire a mighty strike.

"PLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASE...!"

---

kyle lopez

The locker's shaking ceased for a moment, granting Kyle a rare moment of peace and quiet not felt since he had been atomized and sent to the Hoennian equivalent of hell. Inside, the prisoner was clearly shocked at Kyle's abrasiveness.

What a cruel and heartless man, he was.

"I'm not with the mob! Do I look like a member of Team Rocket?" The locker continued to shake and shift as the man within attempted to escape. The man within began to hyperventilate. "I got teleported into here!"

"toge toge?" Togepi waggled a finger, before nudging Kyle's foot and pointing at the locker, which began to shake even more intensely. Togepi's eyes grew wide as he pleaded with Kyle. "toge!"

"Is that Togepi!? That little bastard!" The locker was practically hopping up and down. "He teleported me in here! Don't trust him, stranger!"

---

kyle lopez
11. Set up temporary shelters for those in need.

The question was an ambush, done before the young man could prepare himself for what was to come. He had barely returned with brush, firewood, and long strips of grass to masquerade as rope. Enough to tie their makeshift camp together when night truly fell and things got cold.

"..." He pretended not to hear her, though the courier's gaze didn't leave his back. After trembling and meeting her glare, he shivered. "It's not important."

Roar of Time rang in his mind as friends and family snapped from existence.

He tossed a few sticks onto the fire and stared at it as he tied long strips of grass together into makeshift rope. Several dozen were remarkably sturdy, Rex realized. It was almost like camping, if not for the hunger gnawing in his gut. He suspected that Keiko was hungry too.

"I can try fishing if the Gogoat plan falls through. I've never tried, but there's a first time for everything, right?"

He laughed, though he didn't meet Keiko's eyes again.

---

keiko mori