In the distance, a silhouette formed. The sun caressed their figure with a gentle touch that brought warmth and life and fire and pain and death. The charred and tattered remains of a cape flapped in the desert wind. Various edges of the armor smoldered, melted, and dripped onto the sand.

The heat, much like the energy exuded by Registeel's Dynamax Cannon, turned the sand below to glass.

It crunched under armored heels.

In the far distance, the hulking Registeel stands obscured by sand. It is still distant. There is a long journey to reach it before it flees into the tunnels beneath the region, but it has to be reached.

Otherwise everything Howard had done would be for nothing.

As he dragged himself forward, the admin's eye narrowed at the familiar figure. It's a minor detour, worth investing in. He changes his direction towards the conservationist. He stands above her and looks down.

"Roze." Admin Fox hardly moved. "You're alive."

---

Roze Falkner

"This land has been marred. I have no doubt that hundreds of Pokemon were killed in the skirmish as the land was ripped apart, but eventually the dunes will shift and this will all be hidden. A decade from now, a century, even. This will be nothing more than a footnote."

It was not immediate, but on a geological scale, the destruction of the land was a blink that could easily be fixed. The earth that humanity walked on could shrug them off like a case of Joltik, yet it didn't. They crawled across the world's corpse, but eventually there would be little left of the hairless apes that thought themselves gods.

"I'm more worried about us." He turned to face Roze. Half of his visor had been melted off, and a baleful eye stared out with concern. The flesh surrounding it was seared and melting, the man inside slowly cooking. It would take weeks, months even, of the finest specialists in Hoenn to repair the damage. "We failed. I thought we could beat it, and we failed."

His rage was too busy fueling his drive to live. He could do little but kick a pile of sand in regret.

"You shouldn't be here. You shouldn't have come. All you did was almost die, and it was for a Pokémon you've never seen before. Why?"

---

Roze Falkner

Registeel was a natural disaster, but so was every other Pokémon that existed in the world. Tyranitar destroyed mountains, Aggron ripped topsoil, and Gyarados destroyed towns by the hundreds. The world they lived in was a place full of creatures capable of remaking entire ecosystems if they wished.

Registeel was that but manmade. It was their great equalizer.

"It is a behemoth capable of remaking a part of this world, but do not call it a natural disaster. It is capable of such a thing, but that is not its purpose." Even when all facts pointed against it? Even when Regice had frozen Dewford and buried it in snow? Even when Regirock destroyed mountains in Area Zero? Even when Registeel had turned the Desert into a wasteland of glass and ash?

The histories were not wrong. They could not be wrong.

"It is our region's response to destruction. It and its sister constructs are white cells fighting against foreign threats. Our region's death throes." The admin's voice slurred slightly, his gaze turning red. Dynergy was toxic and caused hallucinations. "That golem is our legacy. Pray that it will fight for us when the time is right."

Because if it didn't and chose to fight Hoenn's inhabitants, then all was lost and Eternatus had won before this battle had even began. Had the Wishing Stars within the golems poisoned their programming? Melted their minds? Leaving them with nothing but misinterpreted objectives?

Roze's logic was similar. Her beliefs were born of personal ego and altruism, but if that was her dream than who was he to judge her? Her dreams were her own, and as long as they drove her, he could not mock them.

"Selfishness. Reaffirmation. Satisfaction. You've just described the human condition. To answer your question, though..." He chuckled slightly, before looking on. He paused for a moment, considering his words. He was making a mistake, but a distorted psyche and pain beyond count had rotted his mind.

He took the leap.

"...because I'm from Team Rocket, and I'm going to catch that Pokémon and use it to kill a god."

---

Roze Falkner

Roze's question was not hard to answer. Maybe it was the Dynergy in the air making Howard callous, maybe it was the fact that dozens of people were crushed under Registeel's heel.

Save the world. Save the people who live in it. Protect the Pokémon. The ends justified the means.

"Yes." His voice was a rasp. "We burn today for tomorrow. I hate that this is how it must be, but I would rend the earth, split the sea, and cleave the sky to give our children a better tomorrow."

Even if that meant throwing away today. Even if it meant bringing this desert to the brink of collapse only to seize a manmade machine in the name of humanity's triumph. Just as he had burned Hyakkaryōran Tsubaki 's Dewford, even if it had been a mistake that almost killed him, he would do it again in order to save tomorrow.

In order to protect her smile, their species must risk the end.

"It's never easy to be a part of Rocket. I never wanted to be here, but here I am. The machine demands that this gear turn in place, lest they find a replacement." It would not be hard for Elisabeth Fiorelli or Cillian Quinn or THEO BECKETT to raise another admin to his seat. He was, after all, flesh and bone.

And that flesh was slipping away.

"So now we've reached the end. There's not much to do but seize yesterday for tomorrow." He staggered and fell, before rising to his feet. Roze had no reason to be here. "And claim our legacy to fell a god."

He turned to her.

"Go home, Roze." His voice slurred. "Tomorrow is another day."

---

Roze Falkner

Slowly, he came to a halt. Howard wished he could grab her shoulder and make her look around. Yet the metal that armored him was hot and boiling and would burn her skin. Contact was impossible. His armor was the coffin that separated him from normal people.

Was there any better symbol for his association with Team Rocket? He doubted it.

"Look around." He invited her. "There will be a day where these dunes collapse in on their own weight and shift, hiding the damage we've done today. The sands will grind the glass to dust and spread what remains on the winds. Trapinch will return to build their settlements in the gouges left behind."

"It will not be today. It won't be tomorrow. But there will come a day where our children look around and will have forgotten that a battle was fought here at all. The children we saved by stopping Registeel. The children we saved by fighting back against something that wants us gone from this world."

Humans were victims of circumstances. If it weren't for Eternatus, humanity would not have built golems to defend their cities while they cowered in caves. They were weapons of war, built out of necessity.

Eternatus had made these. They would be used to rend it.

And after that...

"After...?" What happened after? He had never thought that far ahead. He had just assumed that Eternatus would be the end. "After we catch this one, and the others, and use them to save our world... that'll be it."

He gave her a look.

"Humanity will have won."

---

Roze Falkner

"No."

It's the firmest answer he's given in response to her query. She did not understand what they all fought against. How could she? Eternatus had been scrubbed from almost every historical record, existing only in tombs millennia old buried under sand and defended by giants.

She had not been in Galar during the great dream. Neither had he, admittedly, but he had gotten a glimpse into it, and that had sufficed.

"If we do nothing, this region will burn. I've seen poisoned skies and cursed earth that leaves nothing behind. We have to..." He swallowed, throat dry. The words stuck in his throat like bile. "We have to fight it. You can't see how this ends, but I can. I can stop this."

He had to. Him and Navy and all those who bore witness to Eternatus's grand threat. There had to be more. There had to be some great way to turn the tide. Humanity would win, just as they had before, but it was feeling more like a distant dream.

It was the final question that stumped him. He looked back slowly, his eye blank and dead from behind his visor. It told Roze Falkner all she needed.

He did not know.

---

Roze Falkner

"Keep yourself safe." His voice is soft and raw, burned away by sand and toxic energy and three months of dreaming. "The world needs people like you, who will inherit a broken world from evil people. No matter what you fight for, remember that. I..."

He swallowed.

"...I don't want you to die."

There was a greater need for conservationists capable of rebuilding arcadia, far more than there was a need for archaeologists who imparted every possible lesson they could into the next generation.

His journey was just beginning, but the end was clear. The death of Eternatus, and the promise of a better world for children like Eris Halla . That was why he had thrown himself into the core of a giant to atone for what he had done. He could not ask that of Eris, nor could he ask it of Roze.

"I don't think I'll ever have an answer I'm satisfied with. Still..." The winds picked up. "Thank you."

The dunes began to shift slightly, filling in glassy alcoves with new sand. As it shifted, dark metal emerged from the sand, alongside foreign minerals that did not belong to this world. Shining through grains was the thrumming heart of a bond between people and Pokemon:

The ore of a Mega Stone.

"You must live."

---

Roze Falkner