Walking into the dimly lit club, Enzo found Viper already sitting alone at the large circular table, holding a glass filled with amber liquid. Approaching the veteran with a smile, Enzo decided to joke about the early start.
"What, you already started without me?" Enzo asked.
Letting out a loud laugh, Viper pointed at the empty chairs.
"Put that ugly bag down and sit your ass down, kid," Viper replied.
Dropping his heavy bag onto the floor, Enzo took his seat, waiting just a few minutes for Proton, Ronnie, and Anna to finally join them around the table.
Pouring drinks for the entire group, Enzo raised his glass high, looking proudly at his successful team.
"To all of you, for the work, the patience, and for sticking through every part of this mess, we would not be here without every single one of you," Enzo toasted.
Rising from his seat with a bright grin, Ronnie immediately raised his own glass to return the favor.
"To the best squad leader in the world!" Ronnie cheered.
Swallowing the burning liquid left everyone smiling except Proton, who stared into his empty glass harboring visible doubt.
"I still think this is a terrible idea. Every time we celebrate, something goes wrong," Proton muttered nervously.
Proving his fears entirely correct, the front doors of the bar suddenly swung wide open.
"Who is ready to get absolutely fucked up tonight?!" Lt Surge yelled, stepping into the room wearing a massive grin.
Turning around in his seat, Enzo stared in pure shock, knowing he had never told the Kanto Gym Leader about their secret get-together.
Marching straight over to the young squad leader, Surge pulled him into a crushing hug.
"Heard what happened! Hell of a deal, kid, proud of you," Surge boomed loudly.
Releasing the breathless leader, the electric specialist turned toward the table, extending his left hand to greet the veteran mercenary. Staring at the extended hand, Viper looked down at the empty space where his own left arm used to be, letting a heavy silence hang over the table.
Locking eyes for a brief second, the two men burst into hysterical laughter, making it instantly obvious who secretly invited the chaotic guest. Dropping into an empty chair, Surge slapped the wooden surface.
"Alright, let's drink," Surge demanded.
Lt Surge grabbed a bottle, filling every glass to the very brim to officially start the heavy drinking. Slipping into a rhythm of pure celebration made the squad abandon all restraint, turning the quiet private club into a loud, rowdy mess.
Raising his glass every single minute, Ronnie started a continuous chain of ridiculous toasts, cheering to the Galar deal before immediately drinking to their incredible profit.
Catching the infectious energy, Proton abandoned his previous hesitation, lifting his own drink to toast their continued survival.
Clinking his glass against the wooden table, Viper laughed loudly, cheerfully drinking to his missing left arm.
Matching the dark humor, Surge roared with laughter, demanding another round just to celebrate Viper's right arm.
Watching the environment grow increasingly loud and out of control allowed Enzo to feel a rare moment of genuine relaxation, letting the alcohol warm his chest.
Turning his head to check on his team, he noticed Anna sitting perfectly still. Staring blankly at the wall, the young girl swayed in her chair, eventually letting her heavy head drop straight onto the table with a soft thud.
Realizing the young girl had crossed her physical limit, Enzo stood up, carefully lifting the heavily intoxicated girl by her shoulders.
"I am taking her back to the hotel, but I will be right back," Enzo announced, looking at the laughing men.
"Make me proud, kid," Surge cheered, raising his glass once again.
Carrying the mumbling girl on his back, Enzo made his way out of the club and toward the quiet hotel just down the street.
Anna kept shifting against him, slurring pure drunken nonsense into his ear as her arms draped loosely over his shoulders.
Every few seconds, she fumbled clumsily.
"Stupid Enzo," Anna mumbled against his shoulder, her words soft and slurred. "You changed so much... even your face is different now..."
Enzo let out a quiet laugh under his breath, thinking that was just another piece of drunken nonsense.
Then she spoke.
"So..." she muttered, her voice lower this time. "Are you going to do what they were saying? Are you gonna take advantage of me, Enzo?" She paused, barely sounding aware of her own words. "I've never been with a man before... but if you take off that mask and promise you'll be careful... I can maybe..."
Enzo nearly stumbled, heat rushed straight to his face. That was the last thing he had expected to hear.
Pretending he hadn't heard a single word, he kept walking without answering.
Anna frowned against his back and gave him a weak little smack in protest.
A moment later, she started pawing at his mask again with clumsy fingers, looking less seductive now and more like a stubborn child trying to pull a toy apart.
By the time they reached her room and he got the door open, he was already annoyed and half out of breath.
He lowered her onto the bed, and the moment she hit the mattress, she was out like a light.
Letting out a quiet laugh, Enzo stepped back into the empty hallway. He pulled out Porygon-Z from his TR Device and sent the digital Pokémon out. "Take me back to the club," he said.
Porygon-Z gave a sharp electronic cry. A second later, space twisted around Enzo, and in the blink of an eye, he was gone.
Flashing brightly inside the club, Porygon Z deposited Enzo right back beside the circular wooden table.
Turning to look at the sudden arrival allowed the four intoxicated men to let a heavy beat of silence pass before bursting into hysterical laughter.
Slapping the table hard enough to rattle the empty bottles, Lt Surge wiped tears from his eyes, loudly congratulating the kid for beating every single expectation.
Leaning back in his heavy chair, Viper flashed a wicked grin.
"Damn kid, that was a bit too fast," Viper laughed.
Failing to keep his usual composure, Proton let out a loud snort behind his glass, joining Ronnie in the relentless open mockery.
Rolling his eyes, Enzo waved them off, trying desperately to hide the rising color burning his face.
"Alright, alright, shut up," Enzo muttered. "Can someone at least get me a drink?"
Hearing the desperate request only made the drunk man laugh harder, prompting Ronnie to push a bottle across the sticky table.
Grabbing the glass, Enzo poured himself a full drink to take a long swallow, letting the burning alcohol settle deep inside his chest before dropping back into his seat.
Allowing the laughter and drinks to keep flowing freely melted his slight embarrassment away, pulling the young leader right back into the same reckless drunken mood currently swallowing the rest of the table.
By now, the alcohol had hit Enzo hard. Looking around at the rowdy table, he suddenly realized something deeply unfair.
While they were all here having the time of their lives, Executive Nero was probably still out there working his ass off.
Staring down into his empty glass, Enzo frowned. "You know this is bullshit, right?" he said. "We're all here having fun while Nero's still working."
The rest of the table, already deep in their own drunken haze, immediately nodded in heavy agreement.
"Yeah, poor executive…" Ronnie muttered, almost crying.
"That is a tragedy," Viper declared.
"A complete injustice," Lieutenant Surge added.
Slapping a hand down onto the sticky wood, Enzo suddenly straightened up. "I've got a great idea."
Grabbing his TR device, Enzo switched on the audio channel and took a deep breath.
Then he screamed into it at the top of his lungs.
"HELP! HELP ME! They caught me! I'm going to diiiiie!"
He cut the transmission immediately, attached his exact coordinates, and sent it off to the executive.
For one second, the table went silent.
Then everyone burst into hysterical laughter.
Viper slapped the table and pointed at Enzo as he had just witnessed genius in its purest form. "Kid, you're a fucking genius."
Grinning proudly through the alcohol, Enzo gave him a small bow from his chair. "Thank you," he said, absurdly pleased with his own stupidity.
Surge lifted his cup and grinned. "A toast to that!"
Less than five minutes later, the front door opened.
A Killing Horror stepped into the club.
Nero had arrived.
One look at him was enough to tell that he had come prepared for something serious.
His posture was rigid, his expression cold, and there was still tension in the way he held himself, like he had expected gunfire, hostages, or at the very least a bloodbath.
Instead, he found five drunk idiots laughing around a table full of bottles.
Nero stopped in the doorway.
He looked at the scene in silence.
His eyes moved over Enzo, Viper, Proton, Ronnie, and Lt Surge, all of them varying levels of drunk and all of them clearly far too pleased with themselves.
He slowly turned his head to the side.
And vomited onto the floor.
Not violently. Not messily. Just one clean, controlled expulsion of disgust, as if even his nausea had military discipline.
He straightened again, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and looked at them once more with the same dead-serious expression.
No one at the table seemed bothered in the slightest.
Enzo's face lit up the moment he saw him.
"Finally! He's here!"
Viper immediately lifted his glass and smirked. "Oh, Nero, did you bring me my arm?"
Lieutenant Surge waved him over like they were in the middle of a perfectly normal reunion. "Come on, don't just stand there, man. Sit down."
Nero stared at them, visibly offended by the entire existence of the room.
"Do any of you," he said slowly, "have the slightest idea how many teleports I had to use to get here?"
Viper shrugged without an ounce of shame. "Well, if the kid hadn't pulled that stunt, you wouldn't have come at all. We know how you are."
For a moment, Nero said nothing.
Then his eyes shifted toward Viper. He stared at his old friend for a long second, as if debating whether to strangle him or Enzo.
In the end, he let out a long, exhausted sigh and dragged a hand down his face in total defeat.
The table burst out laughing again.
Lt Surge leaned back in his chair and lifted his drink toward Nero with the easy confidence of a man who had already decided the outcome.
"Come on. Just one drink. The kid closed a big deal. You can at least sit down for that."
Nero did not answer straight away. His gaze shifted toward Enzo, who was already far past sober and now looking back at him with the kind of miserable, wide-eyed expression that made him look less like a captain and more like a lost dog waiting to be let inside.
For a long second, Nero simply stared at him.
Then he sighed.
It was the slow, defeated sigh of a man who knew he had already lost this battle before he even walked through the door.
Without another word, he moved toward the table and dropped into the empty chair beside Ronnie.
That was all the invitation Enzo needed.
His face lit up at once as he reached for a glass, shoved it toward Nero, and nearly spilled half the bottle trying to fill it. Once the drink was poured, Enzo raised his own glass with the sort of drunken sincerity only alcohol could produce.
"To Executive Nero!" he said. "For showing up!"
Viper lifted his drink with a grin. Ronnie did the same. Proton followed, and Lieutenant Surge raised his cup like this was the most natural thing in the world.
Nero looked at the glass in front of him, then at the five idiots around the table.
For all the noise, all the stupidity, and all the chaos, there was something undeniably familiar in it.
Something dangerously close to belonging.
At last, he picked up the glass.
The others immediately raised theirs higher, and together, they drank.
Enzo emptied his glass, set it down on the table, and looked around at the group with the unfocused seriousness of a man who had just discovered one final flaw in an otherwise perfect evening.
"You know…" he said, "now all we need is Giovanni!"
Viper and Nero reacted at the same time.
"No!"
Lt Surge nearly choked on his drink before slamming his cup down and staring at Enzo, as he had just suggested setting the building on fire for fun.
"Kid, do you actually want to die?"
Enzo blinked at them, clearly offended by the lack of support.
Nero dragged a tired hand over his face and let out a slow breath. "No. Absolutely not! Enzo, give me your TR device!"
The order hit Enzo harder than it should have. His mouth twisted into an annoyed pout, and for a second, he looked less like a feared Rocket squad leader and more like a sulking child who had just been told he could not make things worse on purpose.
Without another word, he grabbed the TR Device, shoved it across the table, and dropped it in front of Nero with all the wounded dignity his drunken state could manage.
Nero stared down at it, then back at Enzo.
Enzo folded his arms and looked away.
The table burst out laughing.
Raising his glass next, Viper surveyed the table already drowning under a ridiculous number of toasts and half-empty bottles.
Sporting a flushed face and a lazy grin, the veteran let his voice carry the rough warmth belonging to a man deeply lost in alcohol.
"To Squad Omega, may we reunite in the next life!" Viper cheered to his fallen comrades.
Prompting every glass around the table to rise at once, Ronnie echoed the sentiment loudly, watching Proton follow right after with a quieter but equally sincere.
Lifting his cup high with a massive grin, Lt Surge cheerfully drank.
Still resisting the chaotic mood in his own quiet way, even Nero picked up his glass without a single complaint to swallow the burning liquid.
Letting the laughter return immediately brought more pointless remarks and terrible jokes to the group, blurring the late night into a loud mixture of slurred voices and careless pouring.
Finding that specific warmth only exists when exhausted people finally let themselves collapse, Enzo eventually raised his glass once again.
Shifting the mood entirely before a single word was spoken, the table quieted down, noticing the young squad leader standing. Looking across the wooden surface, Enzo let his gaze settle directly onto the terrifying executive.
"This one is for executive's Nero Brother, may we meet again in the next life," Enzo said softly.
Standing up first, Ronnie showed his immediate respect, prompting Proton to follow without hesitation while lifting his drink in pure silence. Refusing to speak, Viper and Lt Surge both looked at Nero first, waiting patiently to see exactly how Nero would react.
Staring at the drink resting in front of him, the disciplined man kept his eyes fixed on the glass as if the answer might be waiting somewhere inside the amber liquid. Holding completely still for one long second, the entire room watched Nero reach forward to pick up the cup.
"To Liam…" Nero stated softly.
"To Liam!" Viper echoed, lifting his own glass a little higher.
"A hell of a soldier," Lt Surge added respectfully.
Abandoning all the previous jokes, the group drank together, allowing a heavy and entirely real silence to settle comfortably over the respectful table.
They drank a lot after Liam's toast, enough for the silence that followed to lose its shape and dissolve into something warmer, looser, and far less stable. One round became two, then five, then too many to count, and before long, the whole table had sunk into that ugly, familiar stage of drunkenness where everyone felt both heavier and softer at the same time.
Viper was flushed and grinning at things that were no longer funny, Surge had started talking louder than necessary, Proton had lost the last of his careful restraint, and even Nero, despite still holding himself together better than the rest of them, had that slight delay in his gaze and the faint tension of a man whose self control was no longer fully sober.
Then Ronnie finally turned toward him. He looked completely wrecked, slouched in his chair with red cheeks, glassy eyes, and the dumb, helpless expression of someone too drunk to understand he was about to say something that would change the whole mood of the table.
"Sorry about your brother," Ronnie mumbled, lifting his glass a little in Nero's direction and almost missing the motion halfway through.
Nero looked at him for a second longer than he normally would have, as if the words had to travel through the alcohol before reaching him properly, then gave a slow nod and muttered, "...Thanks."
That should have been the end of it. Nero clearly thought it was, because he lowered his eyes to his drink again and took another swallow like the matter had already passed, but Ronnie kept staring at the table with his lips parted and his brow furrowed, trying very hard to hold onto whatever thought had just floated into his head.
"I had a sister, too. Or maybe I still do. I mean... she's probably still alive, I don't really know..." He let out a weak laugh at that, though nobody else did.
"She didn't like me very much. She used to beat me up every day because I was ugly, she said I was so ugly our mother left because of me." He paused to squint at his own glass like he had forgotten it was there, then kept going in the same miserable, wandering tone. "So she'd hit me for it. Sometimes she even brought other people with her. So, they could hit me, too. It was like... like a whole thing. A whole event."
The table had gone quiet, but not in a sharp, sober way. It was the slack, heavy quiet of five drunk people slowly realizing they had just stumbled into something awful.
Viper's grin disappeared in stages. Surge stopped moving altogether, one hand still wrapped around his cup. Proton stared at Ronnie with wet, unfocused eyes, like he was trying harder than usual to process what he had just heard.
Even Enzo, who had spent the entire night bouncing between laughter and stupidity, was now looking at Ronnie with the blank shock of a man too drunk to hide what he was feeling.
Ronnie rubbed clumsily at his face, missed once, then dragged his hand down it anyway. "But you know what the worst part is?" he asked, his voice softer now, almost thoughtful in the broken way only drunk people could manage. "I promised myself that one day I'd find her and apologize for our mother leaving us. That was my plan. I was gonna find her and say sorry."
That hit all of them at once.
Viper was the first to react, though he still sounded half drunk and halfway to tears when he leaned back and muttered, "That is... wow. That is the saddest, dumbest thing I've ever heard. Your sister sounds like an absolute bitch."
Proton nodded too fast, as if his body had not caught up with his head. "Yeah. Yeah, no. That's not... no. That's not on you."
Surge pointed at Ronnie with the full seriousness of a drunk man who believed he had just solved something important. "Listen to me, soldier. You were a kid. A kid. That wasn't your fault. Your mother leaving wasn't your fault, and your sister turning into a psychopath wasn't your fault either."
Enzo nodded immediately, almost angrily. "Exactly. You were just a kid. That's not something you apologize for."
Ronnie looked around the table like he genuinely had not expected anyone to say that. His face crumpled a little, not quite enough to cry, but enough that it looked dangerously close.
Through all of it, Nero said nothing. He just sat there with his drink still in his hand, staring at Ronnie in the long, heavy silence of a man who had also drunk too much and was no longer detached enough to pretend the words had not gotten under his skin. When he finally exhaled, it was slow and rough, and there was something unsteady in it that had not been there before.
Then, without warning, a fist came down on the table hard enough to rattle every bottle on it.
Everyone flinched.
It was Nero.
He was drunk, that much was obvious now. There was a faint looseness in the way he sat, a slight delay in his breathing, and the glass in his hand had already been emptied more times than anyone sensible would have allowed. But somehow that only made him worse. The alcohol had not softened him. It had stripped away whatever thin layer of restraint had been keeping the darker parts of him seated and quiet.
He stared at the table with a deep frown, jaw tense, one hand still planted against the wood.
"No," he said.
Nobody spoke.
Nero slowly lifted his head, and when he looked at Ronnie again, there was something cold and furious behind his eyes.
"No. This is not right... She has to pay for what she did."
The table went still in that strange, heavy way only drunk people could manage, where nobody was fully steady, nobody was fully clear-headed, and yet everyone could feel the mood shifting all the same.
Ronnie blinked at him, confused. "What?"
Nero turned toward him fully now, the movement slow but deliberate, as he had just arrived at the only logical conclusion available to him.
"We are not sitting here and accepting that story like it is normal," he said. "That woman abused you, turned your childhood into a torture exercise, then disappeared. No. Unacceptable."
The words were slurred only slightly, but the sheer seriousness in his tone made it absurdly clear that, in his head, this had already stopped being a conversation.
This was now an operation.
Viper stared at him for a second, then slowly straightened in his chair with a look that suggested he was just drunk enough to think this made perfect sense.
"I mean..." he muttered, pointing vaguely with his glass. "He's kind of right."
"He is completely right," Lieutenant Surge said at once, already nodding far too hard. "This is a military-level family problem."
Proton, who looked like he had lost the ability to separate reason from alcohol several rounds ago, adjusted himself in his chair and squinted at Ronnie with grave concentration. "Yes. Yes, I agree, we must behead the bitch!"
Enzo stared at the table, then at Ronnie, then at Nero, and somewhere in the thick fog of alcohol, his face lit up with the kind of stupid awe only a drunk man could feel in the presence of terrible genius.
"Oh shit," he breathed. "We're doing this."
Nero pushed himself upright in his seat, still unsteady, but carrying himself with the rigid authority of a man delivering battlefield orders.
"Listen carefully," he said, raising one finger into the air like a commander addressing a squad before deployment. "This mission is now active. Target: Ronnie's sister. Risk level: high. Priority level: maximum."
For one second, the table absorbed that in reverent silence.
Then Surge slammed his cup down and pointed across the room like he was saluting a superior officer. "Affirmative."
Viper raised his drink. "Affirmative."
Proton followed half a second later, more solemn than the situation had any right to be. "Affirmative."
Enzo nearly tipped sideways trying to stand, caught himself on the table, then shot upright with a huge drunken grin on his face. He raised his glass so fast he almost spilled it everywhere.
"Affirmative!" he shouted. "Oh, we're so doing this!"
Ronnie just stared at them all in complete disbelief, his face flushed, his eyes wet, his brain clearly too soaked in alcohol to understand how his trauma had somehow turned into a classified operation in under thirty seconds.
"You guys are serious?" Ronnie asked.
Nero looked at him like that was a stupid question. "Completely."
Then he leaned forward slightly, already thinking ahead.
"We need a photo. If you do not have one, draw your sister's face. We need something to start spreading around if we are going to find her."
Nero's eyes shifted toward Enzo.
"Do you know anyone in Galar who can find people?"
Enzo, who had been hanging halfway out of his chair with the loose focus of a man barely being held together by alcohol and bad ideas, suddenly lifted his head. His face brightened with exaggerated importance as he raised one unsteady finger into the air.
"Oooh," he said, dragging the sound out while his thoughts struggled to catch up with his mouth. "Only if it's Raaaaatchet the rat fucker..."
Nero frowned. "Ratchet the rat fucker?"
Enzo gasped as the answer had just descended from the heavens. "RRRRRRRRRRRRaaaaaaaatchet!"
Before anyone could stop him, Enzo suddenly reached across the table and stole Proton's device straight out of his hand.
Proton just sat there, staring at his captain with the dumbfounded face of a man too drunk to process the fact that he had just been casually robbed by his own squad leader.
Enzo nearly fumbled the device, caught it against his chest, switched it on, and screamed into it with all the force his alcohol soaked lungs could manage.
"RATCHET! YOU HAVE TEN SECONDS TO GET HERE, OR I'LL KILL YOU!"
He cut the line and slammed the device back onto the table with a grin so proud it looked completely unhinged.
For a second, the whole table just stared at him, then all of them burst out laughing. Viper nearly spilled his drink.
Even Proton, still looking personally betrayed over the stolen device, broke into helpless laughter.
"It was extremely necessary," Enzo declared at once, puffing up with drunken pride.
Less than a minute later, hurried footsteps came pounding from outside.
The door flew open, and Ratchet stumbled into the room completely out of breath, his chest heaving, his hair a mess, and his eyes wide with confusion. He looked like a man who had run the entire way there in pure survival mode, only to arrive and find the worst possible scene waiting for him.
The whole table was very drunk.
Ratchet stood there panting, looking from one face to the next without understanding anything.
Enzo lit up the moment he saw him.
"Raaaaaaaaaatchet!"
Before the poor man could answer, Enzo lurched out of his chair, staggered toward him, and grabbed him by the back of his clothes with both hands as if he had just found a long-lost best friend. Then he started shaking him excitedly.
"Ratchet, Ratchet, Ratchet—"
"Wha— stop— what is happening—"
Ratchet's head began to wobble with every violent shake, his words breaking apart as dizziness hit him almost immediately. He looked completely helpless, arms half raised, too confused to even defend himself properly.
Ratchet barely had time to steady himself before Enzo shoved him down into the chair across from Nero.
The poor man sat there panting, dizzy from being shaken, his clothes crooked, his breathing ragged, and his eyes moving nervously from one drunk face to the next until they finally landed on the worst possible one. Nero was leaning forward now, one elbow resting on the table, his half-empty glass set aside, his expression unnervingly calm in a way that felt much worse than shouting. Even drunk, there was something deeply wrong about how composed he looked. It was the kind of calm that made Ratchet's throat tighten before a single word had even been spoken.
Nero studied him in silence for a few seconds, then asked, "Do you know where Ronnie's sister is?"
Ratchet opened his mouth, probably meaning to ask who Ronnie even was, but he never got the chance to finish the thought.
In one sudden motion, Nero drove a knife down through Ratchet's hand and into the wooden table.
Ratchet's scream tore through the room so hard it almost sounded like it hurt the walls. He jerked back on instinct, only to feel the blade holding him in place, and the panic on his face turned immediate and absolute.
"Answer the question, rat fucker!" Nero said, his voice low and furious. "And start talking fast, because if I decide you are wasting my time, one of my Pokémon is going to freeze your cock and balls and make a snow cone out of it!"
Ratchet broke instantly. Tears sprang to his eyes, his whole body shaking as he looked down at his trapped hand and then back up at Nero with pure horror written all over his face.
"I do not know anything, I swear! I do not know who she is! I do not know anyone! I will tell you everything, I will tell you absolutely everything, just please get the knife out!"
Nero narrowed his eyes and leaned back slightly, clearly drunk enough to become offended by the performance rather than convinced by it.
He watched Ratchet for a long moment, then let out a disgusted breath through his nose and gestured vaguely at him with one hand. "Look at him, he's good. Really good. I've interrogated thousands of people, I know talent when I see it, and this bastard is acting. He's giving us the performance of his life."
Ratchet stared at him in total disbelief, crying openly now. "I am not acting! I am literally telling you everything! I do not know anything!"
Before Nero could escalate any further, Lt. Surge suddenly pushed his chair back and stood up, planting both hands on the table with the heavy seriousness of a drunk man who had become completely convinced of his own expertise. "Nero, let me handle this. I have experience with this kind of thing because of the war."
Nero looked up at him, already annoyed. "I was so close."
Even in the middle of his panic, Ratchet looked between them like he could not believe this was real.
In the end, Surge simply reached down, grabbed the chair, and changed positions.
Nero rose in a huff, irritated beyond measure, muttering, "Fuck. I was almost getting the information," as he stepped away from the table with all the wounded pride of a drunk man removed from command at the exact moment he thought he was winning.
Ratchet nearly collapsed with relief as the terrifying lunatic moved away. He was still sobbing, still in pain, still nailed to the table, but some part of him clearly decided this was an improvement. He looked up at Lt. Surge with the desperate hope of a man who thought he was finally being handed the reasonable adult in the room.
That hope lasted about three seconds.
Surge slapped a sheet of paper onto the table so hard it bounced once beside Ratchet's injured hand. Then he leaned over it and barked, "Have you ever seen this person in your life?"
Ratchet looked down.
The drawing was horrific.
It was, somehow, meant to be Ronnie's sister. It looked less like a person and more like the memory of a person seen by a child with a head injury. The face was just a circle. The hair was green and wildly uneven. The eyes were two dots. The nose was barely a mark. The mouth looked like it had been added as an afterthought. It was the kind of sketch that explained nothing and accused everyone.
Ratchet blinked at it in stunned silence.
Surge mistook that silence for recognition and immediately slammed a finger onto the paper. "What was that look? You know her, do you not? Where is she?"
"I do not know!" Ratchet cried. "How am I supposed to know from that?! That could be anybody! That could be nobody!"
Surge leaned even closer and raised his voice until it filled the room. "Do not play games with me! You reacted! I saw it! Where is she?"
By now, Ratchet was fully unraveling. The knife in his hand, the screaming, the drawing, the fact that every person in the room was drunk enough to mistake nonsense for progress, it all hit him at once.
He started babbling over his own tears, desperate to say anything that might keep the situation from getting worse. "I can find out! I can try! I know people in Galar, I can ask around, I can spread it around, I can look into it, just please do not kill me!"
That was enough to bring Nero back in.
He stepped forward at once, all irritation forgotten, and reclaimed the center of the operation with the grim satisfaction of a man who had known brute force would eventually produce results. Ratchet flinched the moment he saw him again.
Nero looked down at him with cold, drunken authority and said, "Good. Then you are officially assigned to this mission. You will search for her in Galar. You will use every method available to you. I do not care if it attracts attention. I do not care who you have to ask. I want answers as fast as possible."
Ratchet nodded frantically through tears. "Yes. Yes. Fine. I will do it. I swear I will do it."
Nero held his stare for another second, then gave one short nod as if this had now become a legitimate operation. Around the table, the others looked on with the solemn focus of men far too drunk to understand how absurd they all were. Somewhere behind them, Enzo was grinning as he had just watched the greatest interrogation in human history.
By then, the table no longer felt like a table at all. It felt like the command center of some completely deranged operation built on too much alcohol, too many bad decisions, and just enough emotion to make every terrible idea sound righteous.
Ratchet was still pale and trembling, his hand hurting, his eyes darting nervously between faces that all looked far too drunk to be making serious plans, while Nero stood over the table with the heavy, dangerous authority of a man who had crossed the line from intoxicated into purpose. Whatever this had started as, in his mind, it was no longer a drunken conversation. It was a mission.
He turned toward Enzo, who was slouched in his chair with flushed cheeks, glassy eyes, and a stupidly pleased grin spread across his face, as he had just been promoted for public misconduct.
"We are going to need distractions," Nero said.
Enzo reacted instantly, straightening with the exaggerated urgency of a man who was in no state to straighten at all. He nearly tipped sideways, caught himself badly on the edge of the table, then pointed at his own chest with enormous drunken pride.
"Distractions are me," he declared. "I'm the best at distractions."
Nero stared at Enzo for a moment, as though still trying to decide whether that was reassuring or a catastrophic detail to build a mission around, but whatever doubt might have existed in a sober mind had long since drowned under several glasses of alcohol, so he simply gave a slow nod and accepted it as fact.
Before the conversation could move any further, Viper reached for the nearest bottle and lifted it slightly off the table. "One last drink before we get moving."
That suggestion was met with immediate approval. Glasses were shoved forward, arms reached across the sticky wood, and liquor sloshed over knuckles and table edges as they poured with the clumsy confidence of men who had long ago stopped caring where the bottle ended and the cup began. Ratchet, still trapped in the middle of all of it, looked like he was watching the collapse of civilization in real time.
Viper raised his glass first. "To the mission."
"To the mission," Surge echoed at once.
"To kill Ronnie's sister!" Proton added.
"To distractions," Enzo said proudly.
Nero lifted his own drink last, eyes heavy, voice low, the alcohol dragging at his words without dulling the conviction behind them. "To results."
They drank.
By then, the burn barely felt like anything. Enzo swallowed, let the glass slip back toward the table, then reached for it again without really knowing whether it was still full.
Around him, the others kept talking, their voices rising over one another in a blur of half-formed plans, shouted confidence, drunken corrections, military language nobody there was sober enough to use properly, and bursts of laughter that no longer seemed connected to anything specific.
At some point, someone stood up. At some point, somebody else nearly fell. There was movement, noise, another bottle, the scrape of chairs, the beginning of something that felt like they were about to leave and actually do this, but Enzo could no longer hold any of it in place.
The room was starting to drift.
The lights above the table looked too bright and too far away at the same time, the faces across from him refusing to stay sharp for more than a second before softening again, and the sounds around him began to lose their edges until it all blurred into one long, distant hum, as though the entire bar had been pulled away from him inch by inch while he sat there trying and failing to stay inside it.
He heard his own name somewhere in that haze, once as part of the laughter, then again with more urgency, and by the time the voice reached him a third time, it no longer belonged to the room at all.
The sound reached him through the thick, sinking haze in his head, muffled and distant, as if it had to fight its way through layers of alcohol before it could reach anything resembling thought.
He tried to ignore it, tried to sink deeper into the dark warmth pulling at him from below, but the voice came again, sharper this time, close enough to scrape against his nerves.
"Enzo. Come on. Hurry up."
His eyes opened to a dim, filthy room that made no sense.
For a second, he just stood there inside his own confusion, unable to understand how the club had become this place.
The walls were cracked and stained, the air damp and cold, and everything smelled faintly of rust, sweat, and old dirt.
There was no polished table, no half-empty bottles, no laughter, no sign of the others. The warmth of the alcohol was gone too, replaced by a dull ache buried deep in his body.
Ronnie was standing in front of him.
But not the Ronnie from the bar.
This Ronnie was thinner. Much thinner. His face looked hollow, his clothes were filthy, and the rough gray uniform hanging off his body marked him as a Material Grunt, one of Team Rocket's disposable workers.
Enzo stared at him, still trying to drag his thoughts into order. "Why are you dressed like that?"
Ronnie frowned like the question itself was wasting time. "Just move. Hurry up. If we take too long, they'll be on us again."
Again.
The word struck something ugly in Enzo's chest, though he did not know why. He let himself be led, his body moving with the strange heaviness of a dream where nothing felt entirely under his control. Ronnie shoved the door open and pushed him toward a sink at the far end of a miserable little bathroom lit by a single weak bulb overhead.
Enzo reached the cracked mirror above the sink and froze.
The face staring back at him barely looked human.
He was gaunt, almost frighteningly so, his cheeks hollowed in, his skin bruised and smeared with grime. There was dried blood matted into his hairline, fresh blood at the edge of his temple, and dirt streaked across his jaw and throat.
The same rough Material Grunt uniform hung from his shoulders, too loose in some places, too tight in others, as if it had been worn for too long by a body that had not been properly fed in months.
For one disoriented second, he could only stare.
Then instinct took over.
He turned on the tap and shoved his hands beneath the water, watching red and brown swirl together and vanish down the drain.
He scrubbed at his fingers, at his wrists, at the grime trapped beneath his nails, then splashed water over his face once, twice, again, trying to wash away the blood, the dirt, the headache, the whole impossible weight of the scene pressing down around him.
Cold water ran down his chin and dripped from his jaw as he braced both hands against the sink and slowly lifted his head.
The reflection was no longer his.
Deoxys was staring back at him.
Enzo jerked so violently that the sink rattled beneath his grip, and the world tore apart in the same instant.
He woke with a sharp breath lodged halfway in his throat, his whole body tensing as he sat bolt upright in bed.
Sunlight spilled through an open window.
Warm air drifted through the room.
Everything around him was quiet in a way that felt almost obscene after the nightmare.
For a few seconds, he just sat there, breathing hard, sweat cooling against his skin, waiting for the cracked walls and dirty mirror to return. They did not.
Instead, he found himself in a bedroom he did not recognize, with pale walls, a wooden dresser, scattered clothes, and the soft creak of curtains shifting in the morning breeze.
Then he realized he was naked.
That thought hit him a second before the next one did.
There was someone beside him.
Enzo turned his head slowly and found a woman asleep under the sheets, her back half turned toward him, one bare shoulder exposed above the blanket. He did not know her. Not vaguely, not distantly, not at all. Her face meant absolutely nothing to him, and that somehow made the situation much worse.
For one frozen moment, he simply stared.
Then the panic arrived in full.
Very carefully, very slowly, Enzo pulled the sheet off his legs and slid out of bed, moving with all the desperate caution of a man trying not to wake up the evidence of his own disaster. He grabbed the nearest pile of clothes and started dressing in a hurry, wincing every time fabric scraped against skin that still felt too hot and too real after the dream.
As he reached behind his head, his fingers brushed the familiar raised edge of the mask's locking mechanism.
The mask was still on.
A rush of relief hit him so fast it almost made his knees give out.
"Okay," he whispered to himself, voice rough with sleep and panic. "Okay. That's something."
He found the rest of his things scattered across the room, including his belt and Poké Balls, gathered them as quietly as he could, and glanced back once more at the sleeping woman, still trying and failing to understand what kind of catastrophe he had apparently lived through between the bar and this bed.
Then he slipped out of the room.
Stepping outside the quiet little house made Enzo freeze completely, feeling his entire body go rigid upon recognizing the peaceful countryside stretching beyond the yard.
Knowing this specific place immediately with the sharp, horrible clarity of a man recognizing the scene of his own future execution pushed his hungover brain to instantly identify the famous starting town of Postwick.
Realizing this was not just any random building, but the exact house tied directly to the future protagonist of Sword and Shield, left Enzo standing there in complete silence, trying desperately to process the catastrophic scale of what he had potentially done.
Crashing through his skull with enough force to make him grab his aching head, the terrifying thoughts hit him all at once, forcing him to turn back toward the wooden door as if repeating the motion might somehow change his bleak reality.
"No, no, no, no, no," Enzo muttered.
Spiraling into a massive panic, wondering what he had done and exactly who he had slept with made his mind race through every single possible disaster.
Knowing that sleeping with someone connected to the future story turned a simple drunken mistake into a massive timeline catastrophe forced Enzo to take a slow breath, trying to think logically through the pounding headache.
Deducing the strange woman could not possibly be Gloria, since Leon was still just a child without a single Gym Badge to his name, which meant the future protagonist was not even born yet.
Finding absolutely no comfort in that logical deduction allowed a much worse possibility to take its place, forcing Enzo to slowly lower his hands from his face while staring into the middle distance with pure dawning horror.
"What if that was the protagonist's mother?" Enzo whispered.
Hitting him so hard he nearly took a physical step backward, the horrifying thought made him glare at the open fields like the region itself had personally betrayed him.
"If the kid ever finds out I was here and what I did to his or her mother, I am dead, I am actually dead," Enzo groaned, dragging a trembling hand down his face.
Pressing into his skull utilizing the combined force of pure panic and a truly savage hangover, the full weight of the terrifying situation felt entirely fake when trying to explain it out loud.
Lacking any concrete memories regarding the previous night left him knowing only that he woke up completely naked inside the most suspiciously important house in Galar beside a woman he did not recognize.
Glaring at the peaceful house one last time did absolutely nothing to make the situation feel less catastrophic. Enzo let out a long, miserable breath, then turned away from the front door with all the false calm of a man trying to walk off a disaster before it had time to become official.
He had barely made it a few steps before another house farther down the road caught his eye, and even through the haze of his hangover, he recognized it immediately as Hop and Leon's house.
What stopped him cold, however, was not the house itself, but the people moving around it. Several figures in League uniforms were circling the property, checking the area around the entrance and scanning the perimeter with the kind of focused urgency that told him they were not there by accident.
Enzo immediately ducked his head and slowed his breathing.
Why was the League police here?
His eyes narrowed behind the mask as he watched them from a distance, every alarm in his body going off at once. That alone was enough to kill any thought of getting closer. Whatever had happened here, the area was already too hot, and the last thing he needed right now was to get spotted anywhere near one of the most suspicious houses in Galar while half-dressed, half-hungover, and fully guilty.
Then his gaze shifted past the road and landed on the path leading away into the misty distance.
Slumbering Weald.
He knew that path too.
That was where the future protagonist would one day encounter Zacian and Zamazenta. More importantly, if history still intended to play out the way it should, that forest might also hold something far more useful than answers.
A Rusted Sword and Rusted Shield. Relics like that would be priceless in the future.
Enzo glanced once more toward the League officers near Hop and Leon's house, then back toward the road into the woods.
"Yeah," he muttered to himself. "I'm definitely not going over there."
With that, he adjusted the belt at his waist, pulled himself together as much as his ruined state allowed, and started making his way toward Slumbering Weald instead.
The farther he walked, the quieter everything became. At first, it was only a subtle change, the distant sounds of the village fading behind him while the trees ahead seemed to swallow more and more of the open morning air, but before long, the silence started to feel unnatural, the kind that pressed against the ears rather than settled around them.
Then came the noises. A rustle where there should have been none. A low movement somewhere deeper in the mist. The faint suggestion of something large shifting through the undergrowth just out of sight.
Enzo slowed.
The path ahead was already beginning to disappear beneath the thickening fog, and with every few steps, the white haze wrapped tighter around the trees until the whole forest looked half real, half imagined. In any other situation, he would have turned around and called the whole thing a terrible idea.
Unfortunately, the combined effects of a brutal hangover, catastrophic curiosity, and his own chronic lack of self-preservation kept him moving forward.
By now, his nerves had started doing most of the thinking for him.
This was Slumbering Weald.
This was where they were supposed to be.
Zacian. Zamazenta. One of them had to be here eventually, and for all Enzo knew, he had stumbled into exactly the wrong place at exactly the right time.
A sharper sound cut through the mist somewhere ahead of him, making him tense so hard his shoulders nearly locked.
"Oh, come on," he muttered under his breath, already regretting every decision that had carried him here.
His hand moved to his belt almost on instinct.
A second later, he pulled out a Poké Ball and released Corviknight in a burst of light, the steel bird emerging with a harsh metallic cry before turning its dark gaze toward the fog ahead. It looked from Enzo to the unseen shape in the mist and seemed to share his confusion immediately, though unlike Enzo, it at least had the dignity not to spiral out loud.
"Zamazenta?" Enzo called into the fog, his voice noticeably less steady than he would have liked. "Is that you? Zacian? I mean no harm."
The mist shifted.
Something moved again.
Corviknight lowered its stance, ready to react, while Enzo tried very hard not to embarrass himself in front of what might have been a legendary beast capable of cutting him in half.
"I'm serious," he continued, forcing a strained smile as if that might somehow help. "No harm. No tricks."
The shape ahead seemed to grow larger.
Enzo's heart thudded once, hard enough to make the hangover in his skull feel even worse.
"I can also be useful," he added quickly, because at that point he had fully committed to negotiating with the silhouette. "Very useful, actually. If you're Zacian, I respect swords. If you're Zamazenta, I also respect... shields. A lot. Huge shield supporter. Always have been."
The figure kept coming.
At that point, Enzo was no longer sure whether he was trying to calm the thing in the mist or himself.
The shape kept coming through the fog, slow at first, then with enough definition to make Enzo's confidence evaporate completely. Whatever it was, it did not move like a wolf, and it definitely did not feel like the grand, mythical entrance of a legendary Pokémon. The outline was wrong. Too upright. Too uneven. One side of it looked almost normal, while the other seemed stretched out by some strange, unnatural limb that dragged the silhouette into something far more disturbing than majestic.
Enzo narrowed his eyes, trying to make sense of it through the mist.
"That is... not a dog," he muttered.
Corviknight let out a low metallic sound beside him, which did absolutely nothing to help.
As the figure pushed closer, the details only became more confusing. It was humanoid, unmistakably humanoid, and the longer Enzo stared at it, the less any of this resembled Zacian or Zamazenta and the more it started to look like some cursed drunken hallucination brought on by the worst hangover of his life.
Then the fog thinned just enough for the truth to step out.
It was Viper.
For one full second, Enzo simply stared.
Viper looked like he had been assembled from a hangover, a bad idea, and whatever scrap metal alcoholics could find in an emergency. His left arm, or rather the place where his left arm should have been, had been replaced by a grotesque, improvised construction made out of empty beer cans strapped together into a long, crooked imitation of a limb, ending in what looked like a glove jammed onto the end for no reason other than commitment to the bit. With his actual hand, he was clutching the side of his head like his skull might split open at any second.
Then he opened his mouth and shouted, "Enzo, stop yelling, for fuck's sake. I've got a massive headache."
The entire forest seemed to pause around that sentence.
Enzo looked at him, looked at the beer can arm, then looked at Corviknight as if asking whether it was also seeing this.
Corviknight gave him a flat stare that strongly suggested this was somehow still Enzo's fault.
"You," Enzo said slowly, still trying to recover from the emotional whiplash, "are not Zacian."
Enzo pointed at the arm. "What the hell is that?"
Viper glanced down at the monstrous construction hanging off his shoulder and gave a tired shrug with the only real arm he had. "This was your idea, stupid."
Enzo stared at him for another second, then he let out a long breath.
Enzo was still staring at the beer can arm when the more immediate problem finally forced its way through the shock.
"What are we even doing here?" he asked, turning back to Viper with a mix of confusion and growing dread. "Why are we in Postwick?"
Viper squinted at him for a moment, then let out a tired laugh and rubbed at his temple with his real hand as if the question itself hurt. "You really do not remember any of it, do you?"
Enzo frowned behind the mask. "I remember the bar. I remember Nero stabbing Ratchet's hand. After that, nothing. It is just gone."
That answer only made Viper laugh harder. He shook his head, still wincing through what had to be a brutal hangover, and looked at Enzo with the kind of fond disbelief reserved for a man whose stupidity had crossed into legend.
"Oh, man," he muttered. "It was one of the best nights of my life."
Enzo's unease only got worse. "That is not reassuring. Just explain why we are here."
Viper gave a small shrug. "We came here because you were obsessed with some Charmander. You kept saying you had to come to Postwick and switch your Charmander with some other kid's Charmander. I did not fully understand what the hell you were talking about, but you were out of your mind, so I came with you to make sure you did not get yourself killed."
For a second, Enzo just stared at him.
Then his hand moved.
Slowly, almost fearfully, he reached for the Poké Ball clipped at the spot where his yellow potential Charmander should have been. He pulled it free, stared at it, then checked the status again, and the moment he saw the result, his stomach dropped.
Light blue potential.
He went completely still. That was not his Charmander, not even remotely his Charmander.
His own had one of the worst potentials imaginable, and the one in his hand now was the exact opposite. Ridiculous. Absurd. The kind of stat line that only belonged to someone important.
Enzo felt the blood drain from his face.
"Oh my God," he whispered.
Viper, still too hungover to appreciate the full scale of the horror, kept talking as if this were all perfectly normal. "Yeah, you were completely fixated on it. Kept saying you had to steal it for Red. I do not even know what or who Red is, by the way."
Enzo lowered the Poké Ball very slowly, only one conclusion that made any sense, and it was so catastrophically stupid that his brain refused to accept it for a full second.
He had stolen Leon's Charmander, the future Champion of Galar. He had stolen that Charmander to give it to Red.
Enzo made a sound that was somewhere between a gasp and a silent scream, then grabbed the sides of his mask like that might somehow hold his thoughts inside his skull.
"We have to leave right now. Do you have any idea how much police attention there is around here?" he said
Viper stared at him, then started laughing again, slower this time, like he could not believe Enzo still had the nerve to be surprised by anything.
"Of course, there is police around here," he said. "You broke into a house and punched a pregnant woman. What did you expect, a medal?"
Enzo froze.
Then he turned to Viper so slowly it almost looked painful.
"I did what?"
Viper's expression did not change at all. "You heard me. You hit her hard, too. One punch. Dropped her completely. Then you vanished and left me while I was stuck in this fog nightmare with a beer can arm."
For a moment, Enzo forgot how to breathe.
His fingers slowly tightened around the Poké Ball in his hand as the words replayed in his head with increasing horror.
A pregnant woman, that gotta be Leon's and Hop's mother
His voice came out thin and strained. "I punched the mother of the future champion."
Enzo turned away and stared into the fog as it had personally betrayed him. He could feel the hangover pounding behind his eyes, but it was nothing compared to the wave of panic now crashing through him.
For a long moment, he just stood there in silence, trying and failing to assemble the pieces into something survivable. Then he turned back to Viper with all the stiff desperation of a man standing at the edge of a cliff and asking for directions down.
"Viper," he said carefully, "please. Slowly. Calmly. Tell me exactly what happened last night."
Viper looked at him for a second, then broke into a grin.
"Alright," he said.