Ignorance was hardly a step above malice, but the bar was so low that the devil couldn't limbo under it. The only thing that saved Ameena was that there had been time for rage to cool, and because there was too much work to be done in Petalburg. Especially with his presumed execution approaching.

Killing Elisabeth was not a popular move. He could sense it in his bones.

"One line of code." For a moment, his eye flickered with inner light. "You marred my friend's psyche because of one line of code?"

Calling June a friend seemed like a poor label, but that was hardly important. Throttling Ameena was higher on his priority list at this precise moment in time.

"Both. She forgot both." A trembling hand brushed a streak of hair behind his ear as he regarded the scientist. The only barrier she had was that being ignorant was a precursor for academia. It was the scouring of ignorance that was Ameena's labor. "I had the most productive conversation with her in months, and she can't even remember it."

His eye narrowed.

"I don't often pull rank, Ameena. I loathe the chain of command." If anything, that was the truth, given how he had disregarded it to kill an underboss and carve out a kingdom in Petalburg. "But I will for this. Fix it."

---

ameena abadi

Truth be told, he thought she was busy losing Mossdeep and Sootopolis. He was half-right.

"Tapu Lele." His eye twitched. Each word was a proclamation of doom. "Drank your serum and fucked off?"

Surprisingly, that was what seemed to relax him. That sounded exactly like something Tapu Lele would do, and it gave the admin another reason to want to punt John Sullivan into the stratosphere and rip his false guardian apart when he got his hands on it. Behind Ameena, a phantom of Tapu Lele that only he could see danced.

Annoying. His constant companion.

"I'll deal with Tapu Lele when it rears its head again. I almost lost Regirock to it." He grumbled, silently furious at Doug's interjection. Sleepless nights. Nightmares. Phantom Tapu Leles running around in the background. The damn thing had cursed him good. "But that is not important."

He gestured for her to continue.

"Elaborate."

---

ameena abadi

"That will not be necessary. There is no need to create a choice when we both know that one of those decisions will simply bring us back to this point." Furthermore, it was a cyclical weakness. Forcing June to make that decision again was paramount to torture.

No, she would simply need to bear witness to it. If she had decided to excise those memories from her personal life, than Ameena and Howard would simply have to remind her.

Yet the cost of that was dangerous. If he let June bear witness to that dream, then she'd see his confession of love. He had loved her. Maybe he still did. Yet reliving through that experience was almost too heavy a burden to bear.

But...

"If you can use my dream, then I accept." He would suffer the consequences of that decision. Running from it was unacceptable. "Wait."

He frowned, then flushed slightly.

"Have you seen the results of your study? Have you seen each individual dream?"

---

ameena abadi

Good. Howard intended to keep his that way. Ameena had hurt herself by running this study. It had made her many enemies and few friends, and someone without friends was someone without power. There were few shields in this world that could save her if she enraged the entire upper brass.

And much like an angel with wax wings, she was flying very close to that sun. Eventually, she would spiral down and collapse against the earth.

"I see." He said in a voice that exhibited a remarkable amount of control. His face slowly returned to its normal hue as the potential embarrassment of that dream was buried. That exchange was not hers to study. It belonged to him and the woman who had once delivered fossils to his doorstep. "Very good."

Howard coughed into his fist as he regarded her small smile coolly.

"She'll come. I can arrange a meeting. Where would you run this experiment? It cannot be done at headquarters." He arched an eyebrow. "Non-negotiable."

---

ameena abadi

"Ameena." He steepled his fingers, refusing to blink as she leaned in. His eye scanned her face, a flickering red orb lined with Eternatus's blood peered back at her. It was intense and vindictive, a paradox that worked against his nature as a keeper in a group of takers.

A start contrast from the man during the Tower. What remained from that age threatened to curdle and die, though the admin forced that aspect of his personality to remain through sheer force of will, just as he had forced her to embrace his memories of Galar.

"I have one question for you. In the name of what you've done, and as my rank demands, you will answer me honestly."

He would dance between waking and dreaming to right past wrongs, if Ameena would light the way.

"Is this the best way to restore her memories?"

---

ameena abadi

There was a long pause. He could hear his own heartbeat.

A dream was a knife. It could twist in his brain until it left nothing more than gray matter floating in a mindscape formed from the mist of fantasia. He knew much. He knew more than any human could realistically be expected to reveal. His plans for Rocket, his opinions on his colleagues, his utter contempt for the group that he called his own.

His goals for this world could be laid bare.

In his heart, he knew what this study would reveal: his desire for an unchanging world where time did not move. A world where history did not extend into infinity, where humanity could finally stop and enjoy the fruits of several millennia of development.

Such a world was paradise hell.

"When I was younger, there was someone who sat in front of me in a class on ancient architecture." His voice was low as he regarded the Galarian. "It was the first time that I forgot to take notes in class. I asked her for a pen and if I could peek at her notes. She gave me this... stupid pen with an Aerodactyl on it."

Howard chuckled to himself, covering the lower half of a face he didn't recognize with a gloved hand that did not belong to him.

"It was such a stupid pen."

Why had he accepted that pen? It had ruined his life. In a sense, it had brought him to this moment. It had brought him to this organization, to this room, to this person. What was Ameena's Aerodactyl pen, he wondered?

"I rose too high, loved too hard, and dared too much." His eye glimmered with reminiscence. There was a world where he joined june sleigh and annalise henderson on better terms, where he had seized Regieleki and stolen the burden of legacy from June's hand. "I tried to grasp a star, I overreached, and I fell."

That would not happen again. He would grab this star before it broke apart.

"I will arrange the board. Be ready."

---

ameena abadi