"Oh yeah? Think you can fit a way to stop a shipwreck into your kit as well?" Rex asked as he sharpened a piece of bark against Gallade's sword-arms, bemused. "Maybe I'll start carrying one too. Together we can, like, punch at any tropical storm that tries to mess us up."

It had been a remarkably weird storm, too. They hadn't seen it coming, had they? The memory was a blur.

Using his makeshift knife, Rex pulled the Tatsugiri from Gallade's arm, letting the blood drain as he did so. He hardly blinked as he systemically butchered the Tatsugiri, easily cleaning the scales from its carcass and excising the entrails from within. It wasn't a particularly clean job, nor was it a perfect one.

Where Rex himself could not issue a cut, Gallade did it for him. Those cleaves were far cleaner than anything Rex could do with a mere wooden dagger.

Soon, the smell of sizzling meat filled the air.

"How do you think the next iteration of the Keiko Survival Kit™ will shape up? Anything else you miiight want to add?"

---

keiko mori

Ah, right. Food. His stomach growled. That was pretty important.

"Sorry, I got distracted. It'll probably happen again." At least he was honest about it, in a 'totally shameless' sort of way. He placed the courier down gently, before turning towards the sea of green that separated the beach from their camp. He would've tried to carry Keiko through the trees, but he suspected she'd clip her leg. "Gallade will have the fire ready by now."

Not 'probably', but 'will'. It was the same as Keiko's Pelipper. He had described it as coming back, not that the bird might not return. Still, Togepi was a contingency.

They returned to a cookfire that sent smoke up into the sky.

"We'll have to butcher it, then eat. Shouldn't be too hard, since I've done it a dozen times. I'd kill for a non-Gallade knife, though."

---

keiko mori

Something tangible? Rex thought about it for a moment.

"I..." He looked at Keiko for a long moment. For a painfully long moment, he worked through the proper thing to say. He considered something softhearted and sappy, but Keiko saw too much. She would see through some mediocre guise and the moment would be shattered.

He could not lie again.

He would not.

So he spoke honestly, pulling from a memory foggy and faded, like a photo with the color sapped from it.

"Do you think you could get me a camera? To preserve moments like this?"

---

keiko mori

"Because when Dialga descended and wiped out my town, that's what was left. Nothing. People just... disappeared."

It was the first moment that made him acutely aware of the sensation that humans could be atomized with the snap of a finger, if one was simply strong enough. It was the reminder that humans were just meat animated by some spark of circumstance known as life. Keiko would call it a divine blessing from the Almighty Sinnoh. His hometown would call it his soul.

But what if it was simply nothing?

"You're describing something terrifying, Keiko. What if I let go and carrying this weight was for nothing? Doesn't the feeling of struggling for no reason terrify you?" There was only one thing to do. To set the past right, he would fulfill the promise he had made to his childhood friend and neighbor.

'We'll be champions!'

"When I become champion."

---

keiko mori

Keiko could walk, but Rex wanted to carry her. So he would.

She was lighter than he expected, skin and bones from the time they spent on this island. Rex was likely in the same state, but he had always been stronger than most, and Sea Mauville had elevated his strength after running around the preserve for a month.

"I wanted to try this, just once. If you want me to stop, I will." He looked away, embarrassed. "Otherwise, I've got you, and I'm not letting go."

In fact, he held her tighter, though not to an uncomfortable degree. It was only when Keiko forced Rex to look at her that the issue became clear. Gallade had been his first Pokémon, a reminder of a better time. Now, he had evolved and he was different and everything was strange.

What if Rex got left behind as time passed him by?

"What if I let it go and there's just... nothing left?"

---

keiko mori

Wet eyelashes against his cheek made him think, for the shortest of moments, that she had been crying. That was quickly buried as his face reddened. Keiko's attempt to flatten Rex's hair were met with failure. Even if she had tamed him, taming his hair was an entirely different challenge. One that required different skills than island survival, and a comb.

Hunting for bones had never looked so appealing.

"He is my sword, but I can just tell that he's not used to it yet. He's been cutting a lot of trees to perfect his form." In his soul, Rex suspected that Gallade simply wanted to become a sword. His first and closest friend was struggling with the change. "No hands, only blades."

He reached out and squeezed Keiko's hand.

"He can't experience this." He pecked her on the cheek. "Or this."

Rex swept Keiko from her feet and carried her in his arms.

"Or this."

---

keiko mori

"Huh?" He asked, clearly distracted by the courier as she prodded at her clothes. "Whazzat?"

Gallade rolled his eyes, and Rex grinned at his knight. The fish halfheartedly dangling from Gallade's blade-arms made Rex want to snicker, though he suspected that Gallade would likely whallop him for it later. They were friends and allies, but Gallade still had feelings, even if he buried them in his attempt to become a blade.

It was a humbling thing, knowing that his Pokémon would never hold things like they once did as a Kirlia.

"That was more of a 'me' thing, honestly. When he was a Kirlia, I tended to cook what he could catch. We can grill it up, no problem." They nodded in remarkable synchronization, before Gallade returned to camp to breath life into the embers that remained in their dead fire pit. "Between you and me, I think he actually misses being a Kirlia."

He averted his eyes so Keiko could change.

---

keiko mori

Age is a virtue. Wisdom is not a sin. Yet arrogance, when fettered and tempered over many years, curdled into a very dangerous blade. Rex was not yet there. He would not make it to the zenith of his capacity for a long time.

"Temp? You mean the guy on all the wanted posters?" Rex frowned at the mention of Tempest Quinn, one of Team Rocket's longest-running beasts. The younger man had always wanted to try his mettle against a Rocket Beast and see if he could win. How hard could it realistically be? "I could take him. Maybe I wouldn't win, but that doesn't matter. Think of the fight! The rush! The excitement!"

He clenched a fist, eyes wide as his Gallade fell forward. His Gallade had once been knighted from a fairy tale, but that tale had disappeared when Dialga had descended from the heavens and buried a city in the sands of time.

That name was lost, just like the Pokémon itself as it fell forward. Yet Gallade caught himself on a bloody hand as he turned to face Lancelot.

"Who cares who dies? We're all gonna make it to the end eventually. As long as our last expression..." He spread his hands. "...is a good one, it doesn't matter."

---

Hitoshi Inoue
CATCHA THE RABSCA

There was, eventually, no Keiko to cuddle. Such a tragedy was exchanged with the fact that there was finally room in the shelter for Rex to spread out. A worthy trade, if not for the fact that the sun was rising.

Dreaming gave way to dozing, and dozing gave way to wakefulness as Rex's eyes shot open.

Gallade, meanwhile, stood vigil over Keiko as she played in the surf. His gaze was sharp, though he often averted his eyes in the same way that a knight would when protecting a princess's modesty. The Gallade had a name, naturally, but Rex rarely used it. A knight from a distant fairy tale had been sealed away and only the name of the species remained to the loyal knight.

That fairy tale had been stripped away by Dialga. Now the knight toiled in the realm of men.

Still, the knight clapped in appreciation as Keiko emerged from her tussle victorious. That sound eventually summoned Gallade's master, who slipped through the trees like a shade. Rex's bedhead had grown even more frazzled. Perhaps a comb was necessary.

"Woah." His eye widened as he saw the courier. "Nice."

Whether he was talking about the Tatsugiri or its captor was up in the air.

---

keiko mori

Rage is a noxious thing, ugly and cruel. Black-hearted rage is responsible for much of the suffering in the world, and this Annihilape proves it as it sends Gallade careening through a dozen large, sturdy oaks before the thirteenth brings the knight to a stop.

Shadow Pokémon hit like sledgehammers. Rex wanted one. Yet first, the animalistic part of his brain needed to deal with the blade embedded in his arm. It hurt. It bled. It was proof of existence in the most vile way possible. His body could drip blood onto the floor, which meant that it could continue working.

Compared to the sensation of being removed from existence, Rex decided that fighting like this was vastly preferable. The rush of adrenaline was enough.

"Like fighting nature, you say?" Rex pulled out the blade, before dropping it as a spasm of pain coursed through his arm, searing and hot. Confidence threatened to crumble. "You're describing a battle that I can't win, right?"

He chuckled as he clasped at a locket around his chest.

"That sounds..." Energy poured from the Key Stone embedded in the locket's center. A reminder of Littleroot.

"FUCKIN' INCREDIBLE!"

Suddenly, the nearby forest is cut in two by a mighty Psycho Cut, seizing an innocent Cincinno in the process. Through discarded groves, a knight emerges with a fluttering cape.

---

Hitoshi Inoue
CATCHA CINCCINO

"Tsk." Rex peered down at Keiko as she sprawled out all over the shelter. "What the hell?"

What was this chick doing? She had laid claim to the entire shelter! What a tyrant. She was the type to purchase a queen sized bed and splay out everywhere, kicking off any nearby stragglers as she laid claim to plush pillows and fluffy comforters. Keiko Mori was an evil woman.

Rex nudged her. She didn't move.

"Hm." He shuffled around to find a corner he could sleep in. He tried to slide in next to her, but he didn't fit. "Hmmmmm..."

He tried another angle. No dice.

This was unfathomably ridiculous. Finding a comfortable sleeping position was harder than wading into saltwater with a dozen cuts. She was making this impossible. She may have dreamed of nothing, but neither did he. Incidentally, that was because Rex couldn't actually get to sleep.

"Fine. Let's try..." He forced Keiko to scoot slightly in order to sleep next to her, using the courier as a makeshift pillow as he did so. "...this."

---

keiko mori

She stormed off, and Rex couldn't help but smile.

"Don't worry, big guy." He pat the Gogoat on its side and scratched into the foliage that adorned its neck. The sensation reminded Rex of wandering through the tall grass to catch his Ralts when he was younger. The sense of nostalgia made him smile. It was one of the few times he liked to look back. "She'll come around."

Probably.

"You just gotta stop eating cards, but I'm sure she likes you deep down. It's just... super deep down."

Probably.

He nodded to Gallade, who sat in silent vigil as his eternally loyal knight. A sword with the sole purpose of engaging in warfare. Rex returned him to his Pokeball and held the orb against his lips.

After a moment of waiting, he meandered towards the shelter.

---

keiko mori