"That's stupid." Howard's eye rolled to the heavens as he gave Shred a look. "You're stupid."

When had the academic process turned from a well-maintained chain of experimentation, theorizing, and discussion into throwing everything at the wall to see what stuck? Shred didn't even know how to spell academic, as far as Howard knew, and he wasn't even remotely close to a scientist, but his line of thinking was dangerously close to several of Rocket's sharpest minds.

Whether that was depressing or telling on Rocket's science division, Howard didn't know.

"Still, it's crazy to think that this is it. Reshiram." The Dragon of Truth being reduced to a mere white stone was something that happened in legends, but seeing it in person made the admin's eye twitch. It was a rock. He was getting paid to study a rock for once. "This is it."

His words were laden with meaning. The touchy subject of Shred's incineration sat between them like a subject neither dared to reach for. Perhaps this was the time.

"Was it worth it?" Howard blinked slowly. "Was this rock worth fighting for, Shred?"

---

Shred

"Why are you always trying to make me sad, man?"

How many days did you spend in that hospital bed? How many weeks were you confined to the medical bay? How many months will you be stuck eating modest soups? And how many years of surgery are ahead of you? Too many. And you've spent too much of that thinking about what you did and didn't do. You don't have any more introspection left to do.

Leave it to the archaeologist to be stuck in the past. You want to focus on the future. And to that end...

"Look, Reshiram is all about truth and shit, right?" You ask, though you don't give him a chance to spout whatever "smartier-than-thou" answer is resting on his tongue. "And Pokepedia is all a bunch of facts, right? And facts are basically just truths, so, you put that together, pump in a thousand pages per second, and... Shit, dude, I don't know! But what do we have to fuckin' lose? Not like we can make it any more of a rock than it already is."

With that half-impassioned-plea and half-bitching-out, you tap a Pokeball and release your Porygon-Z. At the same time, you pull out your phone, cracked and scuffed and held together by tape and dreams.

"You got a Rotom?"

---

howard slayte

The meekness of the question made Howard laugh. It was too ridiculous for him not to.

"'Cause I'm fucking miserable! I mine and I smuggle and I steal and I drink and I get paid jack shit while one of our Kantonian friends gets imported Kantonian whiskey that costs half a grunt's salary." Probably THEO BECKETT or Cillian Quinn or one of Rocket's scarred war veterans like jayden cross. "Plus there's this guy who keeps crashing on my couch..."

It was for the best that neither of them mention the Couch Incident. What happened during the Couch Incident would stay confined to the Couch Incident.

What wouldn't stay confined was the look that Howard gave his friend. It was the expression that Howard had whenever he had to send out an email to his colleagues. It was the same expression he had when trying to send a text, or a video, or take a selfie, or do anything remotely technical on a piece of hardware.

Asking Howard Slayte of all people for something that interfaced with machinery was positively stu-

"Yeah, sure. I've got one." He reached for his belt and threw out the Rotom's Pokeball. It buzzed around with the same energy as a hyperactive kid dosed with caffeine. "Take it away, man. If this works I'll buy you lunch."

When hell froze over, maybe.

---

Shred

"It probably won't, but hey, gotta try."

Reaching to your belt, you pull out a Pokeball of your own, tossing it up to release your Porygon-Z. It's not your typical choice of Pokemon, you'll admit, but it's real handy to have around. Shiny, too! Not that Howard would care, but you're sure that some of the scientists loitering about here are so jealous of you--

"my COCK grew two inches in one week! You'll never disappoint again!! Buy PENIS ENHANCEMENT PILLS now!!!"

...Sometimes, you're extremely glad that you're the only one that can hear the ramblings of your Pokemon.

Still, ignoring the spiel of dodgy sales pitches, you walk over to one of the consoles surrounding the Light Stone, shooing away a bored-looking researcher who was playing Spinarak Solitaire. Then, with a shrill exclamation about single mothers in your area, the Porygon-Z floats down and wriggles inside the screen. Then, you gesture towards a few loose sensor wires coming out from said console.

"Get your Rotom in here and hook this shit up. I'll go find some good pages to get us started."

---

howard slayte

The only way Shred Zeppelin's Porygon-Z was going to accumulate more polygons on its stick of RAM was if it started pilfering from the stockpiles of oscar clayton or Lulu Flint. Given that Oscar's stockpile was locked with a key and Penrose and an army of Lulu's Porygons were defending Rocket's servers, the Porygon's claims were impossible.

That required Howard to be insane enough to hear whatever the Porygon-Z was saying, and if that ever happened Howard was jumping off a cliff without a parachute.

"Yeah, sure." The admin plucked the Rotom's Pokeball from his belt and blinked. Two large eyes peered at him from the Pokeball, as if the Rotom had possessed it. Maybe it was best if Howard waited for it to leave behi-

ZRRRRT! Howard stuffed the Pokeball into the sensor wires and hooked them up appropriately. At least, Howard hoped they were appropriate, otherwise there was about to be a fire in the labs, in which case the Head Scientists were going to kill them both.

"Hit it!" Howard snapped his fingers. "Keep it off the 4Tree message boards!"

The last thing they wanted was for Reshiram to come back to life, deem this world a mistake, and try to kill them all.

---

Shred

"Hit it" was a little dramatic. It implied something about this experiment was thrilling, when, in fact, it was extremely boring.

First, a few minutes of clicking and typing. Pulling up Pokepedia, finding a few good pages on stuff like "Maths" and "Science", all that fact based shit. Then, you throw in a few good-looking random pages, like "Buizel" and "Paniola Town". Then, as the cherry on top, you throw in the pages on "Truth" and "Reshiram", as vague and nebulous as they might be. Better to play it safe, right?

After that, you need to figure out how to inject this data into the White Stone. That? Is easier said than done. You think about trying to write a program to do it for about two seconds, before you remember that you have no coding knowledge whatsoever. Eventually, you just settle for just playing audio files of the pages directly through the wires and into the White Stone. Is it a good solution? Fuck no. Nothing about this is even remotely good, and it barely counts as a solution, either. Fuck it, though: You ball.

Finally, you "hit it". And even with a Porygon-Z and a Rotom helping out, that also takes a long time, meaning it's also extremely boring.

Seconds pass.

Then, another minute passes.

Then another, then another. You glance down at the progress bar as it inches along, barely even 20% done. Arceus wept.

The fourth minute passes.

"...So, uh... Seen any good movies lately?"

---

howard slayte

Leaving Shred Zeppelin in charge of the technical science mumbo jumbo was an error, but it wasn't like Howard was much better. It was blind leading the blind, and Howard's depth perception ensured that the two were already halfway there.

"Shit, man. There's no good cable channels in Dewford, and everything we have here at headquarters is allegedly pirated, whatever that means." Howard had no idea how a terrorist organization had access to broadband television, cable, or streaming services, but he wasn't going to complain. "Saw the new Brycen-Man."

Silence followed. It was agony waiting for audio to continue running. When had it become so hard to talk to Shred.

What did they talk about? Shred had gotten blown up for this rock, and all it did was sit there and do nothing productive. Howard considered throwing it at the wall in a fit of rage, but the admin's love of rocks and potentially being labeled as 'the guy who shattered Reshiram' held him in check.

Meanwhile, the Light Stone was subjected to a Bloodmoon Ursaluna documentary.

"So... random question." Howard coughed into his fist as he remembered parker jones. "I heard you showed someone your nut."

---

Shred

"Oh, fuck me... Look, dude, the nurse told me to 'take my pants off'. How was I supposed to know she meant my trouser-pants and not my pants-pants? Besides, it wasn't like there was much to se--"

"BORED NOW. hmmmm i think i will play this audio at 10000% speed so that we might verily maximize the usage of our precious time, that we might better spend it MEETING HOT SINGLES IN YOUR AREA!!!"

Before you even have a chance to react, your Porygon-Z has already fucked up the delicate settings of this operation in ways that shouldn't even be physically possible. The calming text-to-speech descrption of Bloodmoon Ursaluna's dietary habits has become a cacophony. Migration habits of Skarmory bleed into the history of Goldenrod bleed into the complicated legislation behind using pesticides on berries. It's madness. The wires are vibrating. How the fuck was that even possible?

In the time it takes you to hit the red X and cancel the protocol, twenty hours of information has played in a little under two seconds. Yet still, the Light Stone remains dormant.

"...SHIT."

Having thoroughly failed in your shortsighted endeavour, you take a step away from the computer. Immediately, two web pages open up - One, the gacha games section of 4Tree message boards, and the other, the homepage for a dodgy looking plug-in called a "Bonsly Buddy".

"Well, that didn't work." You state the obvious. "But, y'know, we really tried, didn't we? We did our best, and... Well, okay, we did. BUT, hey, that still counts, right?"

---

howard slayte

The Rotom exploded out of the contraction, barely coherent after getting twenty hours of information poured into its brain. It exchanged a very robust series of words with Shred's Porygon-Z, before disappearing in a burst of sparks. Pulling it out of the submarine's electrical grid would be a chore.

"I'll log the experiment, I guess." This whole debacle gave Howard flashbacks to year one physics, where students would rush out the most asinine lab possible in order to get a passing grade. Given that Shred probably never went to college, or school for that matter, that realization tracked.

"Hopefully I don't lose my doctorate over this."

The silent scribbling of a clipboard followed, before Howard looked up at the computer monitor. He didn't know what a 'Bonsly Buddy' was, but it didn't make Howard particularly happy. If this was the fruit of their labors, then the fruit was rotten.

"Put the Light Stone back. Don't drop it." Howard grumbled as he tossed Shred the clipboard. "I gotta go find my Rotom."

He left the lab.

---

Shred