"A few weeks. Maybe less. Maybe more." Howard wiggled his hand in uncertainty. "The timing is nebulous. I require more time to place the pieces I need on the board."

Grigori Sokolov was the perfect piece. Loyal, capable, adept. It pained Howard greatly to use the older man in this way, but the man's nature was ironclad. He was a friend, but he was also an asset in this war, and he was the perfect tool for many operations. There was a tool for every task, and a task for every tool.

The chain of command was to be acknowledged. The hierarchy was to be maintained. To question it was akin to treason. If Rocket expected it from him, then he'd use what Elisabeth Fiorelli had taught him.

Make a spectacle. Make a spectacular spectacle, and nobody would ever doubt you again.

"No choice but to trust me?" Howard's voice reeked with amusement as he gave Grigori a look. "You don't trust me normally?"

Not that he blamed Grigori. Howard hardly trusted himself anymore.

---

Grigori Sokolov

Howard Slayte was becoming the perfect admin. The situation, the broad time to get things into order, even down to the metaphor of a chess board. Grigori wondered if his soul agonized as much as his own did. If for the same reasons. And if not, then how? Things best left unsaid and unknown.

But the mind ever wandered.

“Only slightly personal,” he explained. Unfortunately, as his eyes glimmered, his mouth kept its signature ever-so-slight frown. “From December. But most of it is the position. No hard feelings.”

So, that meant… late May, if everything took as long as possible. Early May, if they were lucky. These people would know peace for a month. The people had a penchant for impending doom, and maybe they would notice the stillness of the wind before the monsoon of disaster. Some surely would. Nature had a way to warn its people, directly or otherwise.

“What will you have me do, to prepare? What little I can do, with the new training regime,” he asked. The glimmer died. Replaced with a momentary thousand-yard-stare. Hours upon hours of physical endurance tests, fights, stratagems. Hours of something he loathed, for a fight that’d drain his sanity. Then, he was back. “Even more training, I presume?”

---

howard slayte

"Of course. I feel the same. If my past self saw where I was now, he'd spit on my shoes. He'd be right, of course. I can't help but feel that I've changed."

Threatening June, learning of Eternatus, being tasked with the objective of harnessing Regice's power for the glory of Rocket. He made a silent vow to himself to capture the other giants in the future, but such a task was impossible without amplifying Regice's existing power.

When had he started to chase power? He had never been suited for it. Howard Slayte was a scholar. He should've been back at Sootopolis, inspecting every inch of Regice to gleam its secrets and what it meant for Hoenn's history. Instead, he was here, preparing to use it as a tool against Eternatus.

It was simply too much.

"Train up some men. Discretely. Prepare. Inspect the island, the defenses that Navy has placed on Granite Cave, and report back to Sootopolis." Training would be easy, given jayden cross's policy towards improving the capacity of Rocket's newest grunts. The Offense Admin did his duty well.

Too well.

Howard would not be scrutinized by his superiors, allowing them to wait for him to err before executing him. There was too much work to be done.

"One last thing." A contingency. "If anything happens to me, you will take command of Regice. Use it to reactivate the other four golems and save this region."

It'd be a lot less stressful if Howard knew that he could tap out halfway through. A slacker 'till the end.

"Your word, Grigori."

---

Grigori Sokolov

“Change is natural, over the course of a life,” was all the comfort Grigori offered. His change was the realization of his position in life. How much pain he’d caused, and how much he regretted it. Nothing physically monumental, but every journey started with a single step.

Howard’s was that he was a lot more capable of doing bad things than he’d like to have admitted. Such was the nature of a human and their soul. Capable of many great things, like pioneering a mission to save a region, and perhaps even the world.

Capable of many awful things, like the furthering of the goals of a self-admitted totalitarian government.

“I will do my best,” he promised. Their current training left many too tired to even complain by the end of it. It’d have to be augmented of what they already did; adding more would guarantee his failure. Even then, he didn't suspect he'd obtain more than a half-dozen bodies for the misison. But it'd have to suffice.

“And… Mr. Howard?”

Grigori patted him on the shoulder, a momentary pause as he started to leave the kitchen and back to the front door. “I will die before the situation deteriorates like such. We both know it.”

“And for that, you have my word.”

He did not let the admin try to say anything otherwise. He strode with purpose back to the moving truck, his shoulders rolling all the while. Their break was over. It was time to return to work as a mover. A much simpler, thoughtless job. And for that, he was grateful.

---

howard slayte