Grigori attempted to drive but the absolute terror of not only driving at all, but in Slateport of all places, made his hands shaky. Cars passed them by the droves, and he did his best to tune out the furious honking and tailgating. His eyes shifted to Howard for a brief moment. The next, he swerved back between the lines furiously.

“Mr. Fox,” he said between pressed teeth, “did I ever tell you that my father was an alcoholic? Because I think I should mention that my father was an alcoholic. It led to his demise.”

The irony of Grigori manning a bar in any capacity was Arceus’ way of retribution for June only being arrested for stupid reasons instead of justified ones. “That, and I must rise at the early hours of dawn to make it to the construction site on time.”

Sootopolis and Petalburg were not rebuilt with idle hands. His eight-hour days were going to be sixteen-hour days.

“If you want, I can pay for her bail and fines,” he offered. The car slammed to a halt as they approached a red light. “She’s my responsibility. In a sense.”

Not really. Not anymore.

---

howard slayte

The scribbling stopped. "Ah."

An awkward pause followed as a car cut across three lanes in front of Grigori. A cyclist in his rear threatened to get brake-checked. Slateport traffic was a wonder. Hopefully Grigori's insurance company job could net a fine premium, if that wasn't some ten-layered Rocket front the admin was unaware of.

"This was an insensitive ask, then." Every Rocket ask was an insensitive ask, these days. Everyone was on the fringe. "I'm sorry."

An alcoholic father explained a lot, then. It explained why Grigori was with Rocket. It left few options available, to be boxed in from all sides by abuse. It reminded the admin of Dewford's sheriff.

"I'll pay for it, unless you're going to tell me you taught her how to bribe a cop and fail. With all the money I rake in, Rocket will forgive twenty grand in favor of saving a 'asset'."

He made air quotes with his fingers.

---

Grigori Sokolov

“Don’t apologize,” he said instinctually. Like he read off a script. “It was thirty-one years ago. But it does mean I know nothing about what I’d be serving. How to make the stuff.”

He left out the part about how he’d likely kick out anyone that had one too many without a second of remorse. Everyone had their little things they kept to their chest. Shred was the only one he pitied.

The rest of them were better off scorned, and left to their own devices alone. Away from the vulnerable.

“I did not tell her how to bribe a cop,” he said. The light flashed green, and he very slowly started to inch forward. The cyclist went around them and smacked on the hood with a gloved hand. Grigori ignored it. “It might’ve been Gabriel– her father. He was the type to…”

“When I knew him previously, rather, he was never fond of the law or higher ups. The only time he didn’t like to ‘go with the flow’, as he put it,” he mimicked Howard’s own air quotes. His hands shot back to the wheel when it drifted towards a parked car. He wondered if Howard could hear his heart race.

“Like father, like daughter, perchance.”

---

howard slayte

Gabriel. The nameless phantom that had started two tales at the expense of his own was finally labeled. To elucidate his existence was to remove the mystique. If Grigori showed the admin a photo, Gabriel Sleigh would become another dead man among countless others.

Yet that countless man had, unbeknownst to him, had mountains moved in his name.

"She would've been too young to learn it from him, I suspect. Though from how you describe him, he sounds a lot like her." A meme inherited through genetics was not one at all, but that was what it reminded the admin of. "I'd kill to know what June told the cop."

He chuckled to himself before shaking his head. Absinthe Blackwood would have to tolerate someone incapable of mixing alcohol, and instead tolerate someone skilled with a baseball bat instead. He suspected she wouldn't mind, even if the baseball bat ended up being a hammer.

"I have a question."

---

Grigori Sokolov
BINGO: MEME

“I’d like to not know personally,” Grigori said. The umpteenth car passed them, and he tried his best to keep between the lines. Impossibly hard, and forever changing. How did people do this not only daily, but on their phones? It seemed not possible, physically.

If it was anything similar to what she said about the things she read on her phone, or saw on the TV, then it wasn’t something he didn’t know. And if it wasn’t something like that, then it would be horrifying. Best to leave it to the imagination. There, it could be believed to be unreal.

Grigori couldn’t tense any further than he already was, but his body did its best regardless. “I will try my best to answer, Mr. Fox.”

---

howard slayte

The admin made a silent note to ask June when he next saw her. His mirth quickly deteriorated into somber tones.

"Is it true?"

His voice was low. Thoughtful. His eye narrowed as he scribbled against ledgers, before taking a deep breath and sighing. He hated this topic, but he needed to ask it.

He needed to know.

"Grigori, has..." He regarded the older grunt. "Has Shred ... changed?"

---

Grigori Sokolov

The stress from the potential of a question evaporated as the attention did not go to June, but Shred. What a question indeed. What was he supposed to say? There were many facets of the man that was Shred Zeppelin. A depressed alcoholic, a man who strived for more yet never received.

A sociopath who only cared about himself and never the woes of others. Many things made up a person, and that was never so visible as it was with him. Unfortunately, Grigori knew a touch more than most.

“A safe conclusion,” he said. The car swerved into another lane, and his forehead nearly met glass in the process. “But you might need to be more specific. Physically, he’s never been more different. Psychologically, there might have been a snap. Mentally… it feels like he is still the same man beneath it all.”

Confidence still oozed from the man, the little they interacted. All it took was a life-changing bond with a paradox that shouldn’t be. One that also changed June forever more. "What did you mean specifically?"

---

howard slayte

"Nothing in particular, I'm simply being childish."

Nine months had passed. Nine months since Shred's body had been melted and replaced with a husk. Nine months since the admin had been able to look at the man without feeling a twinge of disgust and a mountain of self-loathing at the suffering that he had caused the older man.

It didn't matter if his attack had been seized. He had done it.

"Recently, a woman told me that people can change. I was obligated to believe in her." freya morningstar and her dragons, and her musings on the human condition. Yet could someone whose purpose within the League boiled down to slaughter truly understand the human heart? "I don't know if she's right. Instead, it seems to me that every human has uncompromising values. Our personality just shifts to indulge those values."

People who snapped did not become new people. It simply revealed what was already there, festering and rotting.

"We've both changed. Physically and mentally." A car whirred past as the admin gestured for Grigori to take a left. "Where, then, does that leave you?"

---

Grigori Sokolov

“Values change, Mr. Fox,” he said darkly. The temperature in the car dropped several degrees out of nowhere as he spoke, but maybe that was because his arms slammed into the dashboard as he tried to take the sudden turn. There were many honks as he did so. Very, very many.

“And so too do people. As our lives move forward, so must we– lest we remain stuck in a world no longer present,” he explained. That’s how you obtained those like june sleigh , or annalise henderson . Two kindred spirits, left to rot in the dust because of the actions of others.

By his own hand, he damned June to a life in the past. His heart suddenly ached, and a tear threatened to streak down his skin.

“Even if you pose that values do not change, I will suggest that the overall value might remain the same for a select few. But it is the form of it that changes. If you take a sphere and flatten it, it is still made of the same material. But it is no longer a sphere.”

Yet he had ignored the most important part of Howard’s point. The meat of the matter. Where did the grunt come into all of this? His opinions on the matter, ironically, mattered little to the words he spoke. They conveyed a grander purpose, one fully beyond him. To return to Grigori, he had to return to scale.

Monumentally insignificant.

“I have tossed out my sphere, so to speak, and replaced it with a cube of different cloth. An illegal value, foreign to our line of work.”

If Grigori could become paler, then he did so. Taboo thoughts threatened to topple all that he held. One slip, and he was wiped from the face of the earth instantly. “For your question, I have a comment.”

---

howard slayte

To move forward was a frustrating thing. It meant that there was more of yesterday to draw from, and more time to chronicle. If mankind could stay in today, then that would truly be paradise.

Yet it could not happen. Not yet. Freezing the clock now would leave this world in a constant cycle of suffering. They had to wait until the war was over before enforcing an eternal peace that would preserve the world forevermore. Such a perspective was hidden grom Grigori.

The man had suffered enough.

"If the material stays the same, then something within the human heart remains unchanging no matter how you try to force it. There is something that fundamentally cannot change in our species, but we can reshape the sphere into something more useful. A hexagon, perhaps."

Hexagons were remarkably useful, after all. As Grigori paled, the admin simply smirked and looked out the window at the road. They were almost to the bar.

"Your treason is safe with me, Grigori. What's your comment?"

---

Grigori Sokolov

“I can no longer ignore the problems of our organization,” Grigori spoke in a hushed tone. His knuckles threatened to tear the wheel from its axel.

“Team Rocket is a plague, a blight upon the world, and one I no longer want to be a part of.”

---

howard slayte

The car grew silent. If these words reached anyone else's ears, only one thing could happen:

Grigori Sokolov would be branded a traitor.

"You're right." Howard's voice was a whisper. An exhausted expression overtook his face as he stared out the window. "Team Rocket will wage its war, like it did in Kanto. It will overextend, much like it did in Johto, and we will fail."

He clenched his fist as he thought of Cillian Quinn.

"But you can't leave."

It was the realization that had struck him when Howard became an admin.

"You just can't."

He crumpled a ledger in his hand.

"They'll kill you, Grigori."

---

Grigori Sokolov

“I’ve been killing defectors for the last twenty-six years, Mr. Howard,” the grunt choked out. Relentlessly. Without remorse. Full of misplaced rage and despair of his own situation.

The kind that led him to a lonely mechanic’s shop in the dead of night on December 27th, 2001.

“I’m well aware of the fate that befalls them,” he said. The car finally came to a crawl as he attempted his first-ever parallel park. They went in relatively smoothly, and the gear shifted as he tried to fit the car into a tiny spot. How did people do this?

It was less a realization for the older man, but a truth. If you left, you would inevitably die. Gabriel probably thought himself safe all those years ago. And look what happened. Eventually, someone would show up and you’d die. Simple as clockwork.

“I will watch your associate's place,” he resolved. He bit his tongue as he inched closer to the car behind him. At the last possible moment, he stopped. “And I will continue to work in rebuilding Sootopolis and Petalburg.”

“It is the least I can do for my crimes.”

Those real and imagined. Treason was a high price.

---

howard slayte