"Little. My expertise lie elsewhere."

The admin was an academic. A man who held sway over the soft powers that guided the organization, but Howard Slayte had never been a warrior. The Rocket Beasts could trounce him, Jayden and his fellow admins could crush him, and the scientists and underbosses could snap him in twain.

The only reason that they didn't was because there was no reason to. The admin played with gold and coin. not swords and guns. The capacity to chain divinity was beyond him.

"I assume there are records of the phenomenon?"

---

THEO BECKETT

Kyle's Solgaleo? Hadn't they spent enough time chasing ghosts?

"I did not know it could strip away power." Howard said carefully. Necrozma's chosen had been chasing a symbol comparable to a sun for almost a year, now. Howard had done vague research into the symbol, but could find little on it beyond a comparable symbol in Ultra Crater. "But it is sequestered away in Ever Grande, Underboss Beckett."

A hop, skip and a jump from Sootopolis. It must've been frustrating for the leadership on both sides, knowing that the other was so close.

Yet Theo was right, the solution was simple.

"The League isn't going to give it to us, you'll have to create a scenario where they'll use it. If you walk up to Ever Grande and ask for it, they'll hang you."

The vision amused him.

---

THEO BECKETT

"What better time is there to create than wartime, where everything is in the process of change?" Howard hated change. A world in flux was not one where humanity could sit at the pinnacle. Change was required to enforce the will of their species, but when the ash settled?

A perfect world. Unchanging in every way. That was Howard's ideal. It was also his truth.

"The deck must be stacked." Howard said carefully. "If he knows of that Solgaleo's power, he will avoid it."

He tapped into his own goals for a moment, under Theo's watchful gaze. The Devourer would do what Howard also strove to do.

"Or try to seize it." His voice was low and fearful. "What kind of intervention are you proposing?"

---

THEO BECKETT

Of course it's fear. It has always been fear. It was the emotion that dictated Howard's every move. His loyalty to Rocket? Fear. His war against Eternatus? Fear. His hatred of the new God General? Fear.

That one emotion had dictated his past, present, and future. It was his everything.

"Honestly?" He peered into the underboss's eyes before continuing. His lip trembled as they parted to reveal the truth.

"I don't even remember." There had been a flash. A dead officer on the ground. An apathetic obelisk of a man that had dictated that because of an inconvenience, an innocent man had to die. It was the first true display of divinity that Howard had ever seen. "I just..."

Just...

Just...

"He looked at me, and he saw me. I studied gods in the margins of history books, but there was one right there." Howard made a trembling first with a hand scarred red. "Right. There. Something saw me, and it did not care."

Until it did.

Another meal. Another universe.

"We raised up a god, Theo Beckett. We dragged it up into the stars and it gorged itself on our reluctance to act. I saw what it left us, and hear me, Theo."

Always another universe.

"There are no stars left for us in the sky."

---

THEO BECKETT

"Not particularly. Not in the light that you and I are traditionally seen under." As an archaeologist or famous historian, sure. As a leader of one of the most infamous groups in the world? Less so. "I simply want to persist."

Not with the eternal life that bryan delarosa had been cursed with, but in a different form. He wanted his bones to be preserved under the land's gentle embrace, to be studied forevermore.

He wanted to be remembered. Long after Underboss Beckett and Admin Fox were buried, their names would persist. Those too, would eventually be forgotten. How many times would they die before their presence was fully erased from this world?

Too many.

"I am not a pessimist. I am simply... realistic about certain things." It was a common argument for a pessimist to make. What came after was not. "But I believe that humanity will succeed in fighting back this plague, and that the world we build will be full of light."

When, not if, they killed Necrozma. It did not need to be Theo or Howard who ended its life, but someone would.

"That is our birthright as humans."

---

THEO BECKETT

"And you should, too." It was not a criticism, but an observation attributed to all who marched under Rocket's banner. For every life you take, you burn our species' tapestry slightly more."

Theo Beckett stacked corpses to the heavens in the name of something the admin did not understand. Whether it was Rocket, himself, or some personal ideal, the lifeless bodies tied to his name could not be returned to life.

Threads on the tapestry charred black, impossible to recover.

"You owe it to your ancestors to survive this struggle. You owe it to your descendants to ensure their lives are worth living.

He did not bother to correct Theo on 'tomorrow'. There would be no tomorrow. There would only be today. The present. An unchanging world where everyone lived happily.

"Kill Necrozma. Kill its avatar."

---

THEO BECKETT

Ironically, that was what got a laugh from Howard. His tattered body shook, and he regarded the underboss with a faint flicker of bemusement.

"Even with Solgaleo, do I look like I can kill anything? Do I look like the peak of health right now? I'd kill for Xerneas to rouse itself." He complained slightly, lamenting Bryan's loss of the deer. It would have solved this issue long ago, when the ship from Dewford had carried his body to this bed. "I am a bureaucrat. I push papers."

The pile of papers on his desk had grown so tall that all it had taken was a gentle nudge to send them falling onto Dewford, and now scant remained of the town.

"Friend?" Sarcasm. "We are simply conspirators, fortunate that the people that want Necrozma dead are numerous."

---

THEO BECKETT