The man she opens the door to is not Admin Fox. He's too clean and well-dressed and his hair is not singlehandedly maintained by 'nine in one' shampoo and conditioner. A red eye flicked to Parker as he shimmied through the door.

It's only when he opens his mouth does it become clear that this, in fact, Admin Fox.

"Cool, neither do I." He blinked once, sheepishly. "I sold mine to make rent seven months ago."

And to pay for the fee of Grigori Sokolov breaking his door down to choke him over assault and battery, but Parker didn't need to know about that. She was an expert murderhobo, wherein Howard was a mere level one assaulter. As the admin looked over the shithole of an apartment, he feels content in the fact that there is someone in Rocket as broke as he is.

"I brought something better." In the street below is a massive pile of dirt and stone, laced with red lines of ethereal energy. With a red flash, a large pile of boulders wedged itself inside of Parker's apartment. Far smaller than its normal size, Regirock stood at the very tall height of 5'11. "It looks like a couch."

Incredible.

⠉⠕⠥⠉⠓. It blinked at Parker.

---

parker jones

Howard's legendary hat still existed, Regice had it currently. He made a note to steal the hat back when he got back to Petalburg.

"I think so?" He peered at the seven dots in confusion, even as they flash in multiple different hues. Years for undergrad, another handful for a doctorate, several hundred thousand dollars in debt, and the legal right to be referred to as a 'doctor', and the admin still has zero clue how the golem functions. It just does. "It's also my alarm. Sometimes the dots count down."

What happened when they reached zero was a mystery. Likely for the best, given the golem's tendency to throw mountains at anything that moved and killed hundreds of people.

Still, Parker probably had more kills under her belt. Howard gave her a look as he sat on the blanket next to her and took the controller from her. The admin had always been more of a Varoom Kart 64 and Thwacky Kong Racing kind of guy.

After a moment of contemplation, words fall from his mouth.

"Fuck yeah." He pressed the start button and let the two Shaymins do their little thing on the title screen. "But I'm maxing out your garden when we're done."

⠉⠓⠁⠕ ⠛⠁⠗⠙⠑⠝ The couch rumbled its agreement. Rad.

---

parker jones

"Shadow." He doesn't know how to get through the character select screen to actually pick Shadow. It was fortunate that the screen started on Sonic, otherwise Howard would've been fucked from the word go.

It's lucky that the admin can't read minds, otherwise he'd seriously consider following her into oncoming traffic. Parker Jones is a degenerate, but she's also Nomi's degenerate. The elusive Letter H flickers into existence next to the couch's face. They share an exchange fit only for the divine.

It also means that if Naomi Sato gives her Unown a peek, she'll find an extraordinarily large Regicouch staring back at her.

Ominous.

"Let's run the city level, I like looking at the cool truck. Reminds me of all the cool things I'll never afford." His wisdom is replaced with poverty, even as his apartment is filled with various knickknacks. "Smoke?"

Regardless of her answer, a cigarette finds its way into Howard's mouth. He offers the half-open box and a lighter to his fellow Sonichead.

---

parker jones

The admin doesn't tell Parker that her apartment is painted with lead. Instead, he rolled his eye and lit up.

Until she started the game before he was ready. She had caught him with his pants down, metaphorically. Howard wasn't Nomi, after all. It was a good thing too, otherwise he'd use her crazy powers to read Parker's mind and subsequently kill himself.

"You're a fucker, Parker. Eat my ass." The Unown broadcasted the exchange back to the Visionary, all while the Regicouch flashed the Unown in its alien form of braille that only the Unown could hope to understand. "Son of a bitch..."

⠉⠓⠑⠁⠞⠑⠗ ⠉⠓⠑⠁⠞⠑⠗ The pattern flashed again. ⠏⠥⠍⠏⠅⠊⠝ ⠑⠁⠞⠑⠗

The smoke curled up towards the ceiling. She's right, it would kill him, but he was already a dead man anyway. Might as well see if he can expedite the process by turning his lungs into popcorn. It's not like anything will care anyway.

Unless he can steal back the lead from this debt-collecting nutcase.

"Kinda sucks that they never made a third one. Or like, a remaster." One without the pointy boobies for Parker to go insane over, ideally. "Wonder why we never got one."

---

parker jones

Regirock is made of rock. Stupid Parker. She would've known that if the lead paint wasn't rotting her brain.

"That's a Nomi question. She looks at universes like I look at Varoom Kart 64 or Star Vulpix. We play twenty year old games, she plays with dimensions. That's pretty fucking insane if you think about it." Realistically, the true implications of her question for the admin don't manifest. If they did, it was likely that he'd combust into flames and die on the spot.

It's unfortunate. He's not being very helpful, and his archaeological wisdom fails to shine through.

"I bet there's a universe where Sonic and Shadow aren't little Shaymin hedgehogs."

Ah, there it is. True wisdom, with a smidge of eldritch horror to tie it together. Howard locks in, mirroring Parker in the same way that a younger sibling imitates the older. She's better at the game, so he mimes her as she butts his shoulder. It's a moment of solidarity.

The big fuck-you car is coming further in the level. He can smell it.

"Think there's a universe where our lives aren't complete dogshit?"

---

parker jones

Howard had learned it from cosmic brownies. Nomi had taught him that cosmic brownies weren't a food, but a brand one could buy at any supermarket with any self-respecting sugar addiction aisle.

"Not if I have anything to say about it. Or Nomi. We're gonna make things right. For this world." He fiddled with the joystick. "And for you too."

Maybe he wasn't as poor as he thought. Not that he had been born poor. He had simply squandered his opportunity for easily wealth and living in exchange for the opportunity to chase his dream. He had chased it across the world, but he had ultimately come up short. Archaeology had been his everything.

His family had tried to crush it out of him. They failed.

His friends had tried to convince him that it was folly. They failed.

His fiancée had left offered him her hand or his dream. He let her slip away.

Team Rocket was trying to destroy that aspect of him in favor of a gear. They were succeeding.

Archaeology had been his star, and he had tried to reach for it. Yet his hand had slipped in his arrogance, and he had fallen back down to earth. Maybe that was why he was playing Sonic Adventure 2 with a terrorist. Maybe that was why he enjoyed playing Sonic Adventure II with a terrorist.

Parker's hand slipped. The Regicouch beeped profanities at her ineptitude. Howard grabbed the ring.

"That wasn't fair. Run it again."

---

parker jones

Dead children. He thought of Eris Halla. His hands gripped the controller with a fervor. He wasn't as strong as Parker, so the plastic hardly creaked. Rather than let his rage boil over, he simply put the controller down on the Regicouch and rubbed his face.

This world consisted of human beings that were comprised of meat. Yet that was an unromantic view of the world that stripped the humanity from them.

Team Rocket consisted of scum. They all deserved to die with few exceptions. If Howard could, he would've razed Sootopolis to the ground, crumpled the submarine like a tin can, and set Petalburg to the torch. Yet he would not act on that deed. It was an act of cowardice tempered by something else.

"We're not good for anything." He took a deep breath of his cigarette and looked up at the ceiling, silently praying that the smoke detector didn't work. "Team Rocket is the worst thing to have ever happened to this world in the past century. I'm not gonna justify the shit I've done. I killed hundreds of thousands in Mossdeep because I was too slow."

If he didn't make it to the end of this war because he died on some battlefield somewhere, that would likely be poetic justice. It was better than the crushing guilt of destroying a city and razing a region.

"You're a complete piece of shit, Parker, but you're also Nomi's contact lens. You let her see." He tapped the cigarette against the Regicouch, letting a dusting of ash fall against the floor. "And without you, she'll probably lose it."

Deep breaths.

"Want a hug?"

---

parker jones