There was a reason no grunt had been allowed into this room. There was a reason that Ameena had to sneak in.

Howard Slayte was a decrepit sight as Ameena Abadi beheld one of her direct superiors. Chunks of metal that had once belonged to a Sygna Suit fused to the flesh in artistic displays of man and machine. Layers of new skin draped over the admin's visage in an attempt to repair large swaths of damage to the admin's face and torso.

Team Rocket's doctors had learned much from Shred's decaying body, and had fine-tuned the required treatment for large swaths of burns and irradiation from Dynergy.

"i want to die." Blackened lips parted to repeat the same manta over as Ameena sank into the dreamscape. "i want to die."

Yet the dreamscape that the scientist entered was anything but a wasteland of death. Instead, it was the opposite. It was a garden at the ends of the earth. A world similar to the region where Ameena had lived, yet distinct and wholly different.






"Oh, it's you." From a field of flowers within the Slumbering Weald, the admin looked up and frowned. "How...?"

A deep sigh followed as Howard rubbed his temples.

"Right, dreams. I'd forgotten."

---

ameena abadi

It was not escapism.

It was a dream that he had lived with Navy at the climax of their battle. Three months, stretched into eternity, had become his world as he struggled to shoulder the weight of bringing the apocolypse to Hoenn. It had been an ending he had prevented with the help of many others, but it was still a heavy weight to bear.

This was not escapism. It was a life he had lived, a fraction of the twenty years many had spent in Galar.

"You can't keep your hands to yourself, can you? Always another dream, another dream, another dream." An Aerodactyl curled around the admin as he sat in a field of flowers. His Golurk sat in the distance, covered in Rookidees. "I'm just thinking. This is the only place where I'm... me. Lucid. Aware. Capable of rational thought."

He shrugged.

"I'm just resting before I have to wake up again. Do you know where we are?" He paused, but did not let her speak. "Galar."

---

ameena abadi

He couldn't expect her to understand, or to even believe him. The idea of an alternate Galar was an absurd one. Howard had hardly believed it himself, before being dragged into it in an attempt to right the wrongs he had caused.

They were both academics. They were both skeptics. Yet skepticism was both a blessing and a curse. Ameena would never be able to verify anything that the admin said as more than the ramblings of a man on the verge of death, comparable to an old man's final mutterings and wisps of wisdom that he parted before departing into the afterlife.

"No, wisdom can only be gained by experience. This place allows me to think. Sort through information like how you might sort through a study.

This was not the Weald that belonged to Navy nor Greyson Connors . It was a mimicry born of a closeness to Zacian. It would vanish into dust once the admin could truly wake.

All dreams died when the dreamer woke, lest they hold them ever so tightly.

"This is a Galar. One that never existed in our world, but it is one that existed. You can verify that such a world existed with many of Team Rocket's members. Whether this world is that one, I do not know. That's more of Lulu's territory."

Largely rational, save for the person moaning as they died in reality.

"I spent three months here, traveling. I can see it. Feel it. Touch it." Howard shrugged again, his eye boring into the scientist. He knew something about what she had done. Whether or not he had connected the dots yet remained to be seen.

Yet Ameena had infringed on his dream with june sleigh . A sin.

"Would you rather it not be Galar?"

---

ameena abadi

"I'm not hiding. I'm dying. I'm surprised I haven't keeled over already. How'd I look? Bad, I assume? My eye doesn't even work anymore. Can't see my body."

Good, it was charred to a crisp. It was not as immediately bad as Shred's incineration, but the damage was there. It existed. It was unavoidable, and to embrace it now in the throes of agony was simply too great an ask for Howard, especially from someone he hardly knew.

Someone who had played with his mind.

"Best way to do this is to show you." The admin rose, and his Aerodactyl grumbled as she stirred alongside him. He put a hand on his hip and gave Ameena a look. "Come along. I assume there's some sort of 'limit' to the time you can spend here. The dreamscape is unstable, anyway."

He offered Ameena his hand, a chance to take a trip through the garden.

"If you want to understand me at this precise moment, this is the best way."

---

ameena abadi

Then see.

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.

A million memories poured into the scientist's mind at once. Several were disjointed, remnants of an interlocking dream between two people who loved and hated one another. There's a flash of a cannon knocking a Talonflame from the sky, and june sleigh falling from the heavens.

Those are normal. Those are memories sifting through the dreamscape. There is a moment in the experience where the dream changes, from what Ameena Abadi understands into something distinct and alien.

Less of a dreamscape, more of an alternate world buried within crystals brimming with infinite possibilities. That world is what she is dragged through, the memories of a world that had truly existed.

Three months of wandering through a burned Galar. Flashes of the face of Navy and a knight whose face and name slips away each time it is seen or uttered. Zaria is a secret that only Howard and Navy will share. Even as an outsider looking in, that secret remains hidden from Ameena.

"Those three months were the worst of my life."

Chi-Yu, Wo-Chien, and Chien-Pao fall before their eyes, their chosen avatars defeated. Each battle is hard fought and desperate, yet each is a victory. They eventually face a version of Howard bonded to Ting-Lu, an anomaly that does not occur in their world. It falls the same.

Friends and foes line the paths they walk. The admin weeps over a large stone grave and a lifeless Ursaluna, the sheriff weeps for lost friends.

"But they were some of my happiest. You do not get to dictate them as false."

A scene of laughing around a campfire plays in their minds. A Spectrier stalks in the night, protecting the camp from outsiders. Noticeably older, the admin laughs at a jape from the faceless knight and who would become her avatar. The same Ursaluna dozes in a corner as Howard leans on the bear's body.

"This will be preserved. Engraved in my heart as a reminder."

The last scene is the forging of a sword and the slaying of a colossal dragon larger than the world itself.

"Of what I'm fighting for."

The collage ended, and the admin's face stared back at the scientist infringing upon his dreamscape. Fantastical fact reverted to the dreamscape that Ameena had dedicated her life to solving. He let go of the scientist's hand.

"Understand?"

---

ameena abadi

"Dunno." He swirled a streak of white hair between his fingers, a stark contrast in his dark hair. It glimmered faintly, like the facets of a crystal. "But it doesn't matter. I'm still me. I still stabbed my friend in the back, and I will still defend our world until my dying breath."

That was coming sooner than expected, it seemed. The collapse of his current body. Maybe the archaeologist would not get the opportunity to change for the better. This was possibly the end.

Yet there was more to do. Hoenn needed to survive, and its history needed to be remembered.

"Dreams are more than just things to pluck through and dissect under a microscope, Ameena. Our passion, our wishes, our longing changes them. You're the scientist, but do not underestimate the power of the human spirit and its ability to bend the laws of the world."

The dreamscape trembled. Their time was ending, and it was almost time to wake.

Yet even when they woke, this dream would never die.

"The sheriff changed more, anyway. It was his dream. His world. I was simply borrowing a place on the stage." His eye shined with resolve as he scratched his Aerodactyl on the chin. "Are you ready to wake up?"

---

ameena abadi

She was diametrically opposed to his existence. He was a walking quandary that demanded her attention, yet the more she looked at him, the more she saw that he twisted her field of study around her. He was the void that distorted, even as he proclaimed the strength of humanity.

A beautiful destroyer who tore Ameena's field to ash, cursing her with the knowledge that there had been another Galar without her that had been distorted by the threat of Eternatus.

So when Ameena left the dream behind and returned to reality, the man who proclaimed humanity's victory and survival against the great crumbling of their legacy was replaced with a corpse, eye cloudy and blind and lungs that groaned.

'aaaaaaa.' Howard's lips were parted in a mostly silent scream, though his eye never left the woman who had invaded his personal space. She could kill him here, should she wish. The anomaly that destroyed her study and knew what she had done watched Ameena. 'aaaaaaa.'

---

ameena abadi