The man they seek stands on a ridge made of stone, watching giants labor among men.

Stone fists attempt to shift destroyed city blocks and frozen fingers pluck at piles of rubble and move them to trucks to be carted to the edge of the city. Rubble is worthless, but it can be used as filling for the walls that will eventually have to surround the city in order to protect it from Rustboro and Oldale.

Eventually, Howard planned to dump any of it into Area Zero. Let the Paradoxes that gnawed at the earth deal with the follies of mankind, even as titans toiled to right the wrongs they had caused the city.

He looked to the Nebula member, and Makoto would see a stranger. A different face and body from the man they had tended in the hospital room bore into their flesh.

"Makoto." A pause followed as the admin looked over the city. "Welcome. I'm glad that you survived Mossdeep."

---

Makoto Kurumi

Regice was not necessarily an unusual sight for Makoto; but Regirock was. They couldn't help but stop for a minute to watch as they watched both of Hoenn's guardians work in cleaning up the ruins created in the war's wake...

... There is a certain irony though. That they were cleaning up Rocket's own mess. One would almost think that they'd see Rocket as an enemy, for all of this chaos being brought upon Hoenn, but... Legendary Pokémon seemed to have their own trains of thought, that were beyond that of mortal ken.

When Howard speaks, Makoto blinks - as though they recognize his voice, they almost do not recognize him by sight. "Howard..."

After a moment's thought, they pick out a path to climb up to him - nimble, even if a tad rusty. This wasn't too different, from climbing onto the rooftops of buildings for hiding spots and getaways.

But as they settle in next to him, following his gaze out across Petalburg... "... You've changed, haven't you." In more ways than one, they could see.

"I can assure you that I'm not particularly happy about it." He clenched a fist that was not his as Petalburg stretched out between two new mountain ranges. There was no Power Spot in Petalburg, thus the admin could not level the mountains with Regirock.

It was remarkably frustrating, but what wasn't these days? This was a punishment. A reminder that Dynamax was a curse upon this world, and that Eternatus was the real enemy.

Regirock would labor. Eternatus would die. Those were punishments that he could mete out with his power. It was not something to celebrate, but it was something that had to be done.

"Underboss Fiorelli is dead." The words are spoken with uncharacteristic hardness. He finally turned to look at Makoto, his red eye boring into theirs. "Killed in action."

Howard paused. He trusted Makoto, even if they were part of Rocket. They had kept his secrets before.

"Killed by me."

---

Makoto Kurumi
BINGO: CELEBRATE

When Makoto gazes out, and listens to Howard's voice, it isn't too hard to picture him, well and okay, the same as he's ever been, at their side. There is something - something they can't wholly put a name to - about the Howard that is next to them now, though, that feels anomalous when they actually glance over to him.

They are glad that he is alive. But in living, they feel as though he has become someone different - even if he is still, of course, their friend. And his next words are further confirmation of that.

At first, as Howard speaks his truth... They're quiet with shock - meeting his gaze and finding themself unable to break away from it, as if frozen by its crimson stare. They roll his words around in their head a few times - and the first words out of their mouth are two simple questions.

"Wh... Why? What happened?"

To kill an Underboss - unless the fighting had truly become that chaotic, then that'd essentially brand Howard a traitor, wouldn't it? It'd mark him for death. Yet, he's still here - still standing, still alive. Surely, there was more to all of this than that - and so, they wanted to hear their friend's side of this story.

As Makoto expressed their disbelief, Howard simply coughed into a fist. He had processed these emotions days ago, but even still his heart struggled with the revelation that he had killed one of Rocket's avatars. It was unnerving, how easily her bones had crunched and life had fled Elisabeth as an uncaring stone fist slammed down.

"She tried to attack me. She tried to kill Regirock. It responded in kind, and unlike her, it succeeded. She was a traitor." He frowned, as if trying to find remorse in his soul. "She had to die."

It felt odd for him to enforce Rocket's chain of command. He had killed Elisabeth. He had executed Kouji. These were the jobs that Rocket Beasts and higher members enforced. Yet there were few here. He was who remained, and thus it had fallen to him to mete out punishment.

"Have you ever felt so close to success, only for it to be stripped away in the eleventh hour? Did you ever feel like you were the champion of the world, that you couldn't fail?"

---

Makoto Kurumi
BINGO: CHAMPION

Had to die?

Makoto was uncertain on how true it was - self defense was self defense for certain, but there was a part of them that wondered if things had truly needed to go so far for someone to die. But then again, on the flipside, perhaps things were different went it was on the scale of Legendaries and Avatars. Perhaps there wasn't much stopping her short of death.

But as Howard continued speaking, Makoto listened all the same. And the answer they'd give is an honest one. "I'm not sure... Short of perhaps my childhood days, I've never really felt as though I was ever champion, or invincible. My time on the streets, cheating and stealing, I always had kinda felt I was treading a very precise tightrope." That one wrong step could ruin them - jail, death, or worse.

Certainly, there had been times where they were close to a success - be it in a heist or the like - only for it to make a complete 180... But they weren't sure if they ever felt the pride and hubris of feeling on top of the world.

"... Had things here gotten that bad?" They soon ask.

"They're worse."

Half of the city was gone, and what remained was struggling to shoulder the weight of those who had survived the end of the world. The land itself had been reshaped, and Regirock had buried a large swath of the city and replaced those portions with mountains that scraped the heavens.

The terrifying thing? They looked natural. With enough time, nobody would be able to tell that the mountains here had been placed by a golem.

The initial looting and pillaging was bad, but now it's the tallying of the dead and the clearing of rubble that is a problem. There's a pushback from the civilian populace. They don't understand that Regirock wasn't ours when it attacked the city. All they know is that it's ours. They blame it." He lit a cigarette and puffed it. His anxiety hardly lessened. He considered smoking another, but maintained composure for Makoto.

They didn't deserve to see him lose it again. He had already raged and screamed enough. All that remained was a weary obligation to fulfill his duties.

"They blame me."

Not that he could blame the city. He blamed himself.

"When I was climbing Regirock, I was so close to the summit when I was cast down. I fell, Makoto. I fell and I should've died when I hit the ground." A trickle of ash fell from the cigarette and disappeared into the wind. "I fell from the tightrope. It's a victory for Rocket, but sometimes it feels like a personal failure."

His eye flickered.

"I should've done more. I should've caught it earlier."

---

Makoto Kurumi

For as much as a victory as this was, there wasn't much to celebrate, was there? Those of Petalburg that remained were bitter towards Rocket now, and if anything here is run like it is in Kanto, they'd be given more reasons to remain bitter. A large part of the city was a complete mess that had to be sorted through before any work making it truly Rocket's can be done.

Would this war be anywhere near worth it?

Makoto was quiet at first, as they considered Howard's words. And before long, one question lingers. "... What more could you have done?" They asked softly - mostly in rhetoric, as they add "I... I don't imagine you'd be exactly slacking, in a life-or-death situation like that... It's hard to blame you for that..."

And on top of that, would catching it sooner have shifted the blame at all? They imagined it'd be hard to have subdued Regirock without some destruction - and there was still everything else that Rocket truly was to blame for. "I... don't imagine there's anything that anyone could have done, to avoid them blaming Rocket, short of maybe... Not coming here at all. If it wasn't Regirock, I imagine it would've been something else..."

But of course, they recognized that that wasn't exactly an option. Not with the bloodlust that Rocket's higherups seemed to share in.

"But it was Regirock. It was here, and it level and city and killed thousands. Now it's loyal to me, and that sin is mine to bear. Not Rocket's. Mine. If I had been faster, if I had been better, the city would still stand and our victory would be as pristine as dawn.

"But I wasn't."

He looked at Makoto, at a person who had nobody left in this world but Team Rocket and those that they called friends. That friendship was the fuel that kept them moving, without breaking down into tears and finding this entire struggle meaningless.

For a moment, he wondered if they hated him. The thought quickly died.

"This will keep happening. Our war will shake the earth and the earth will spit out horrors until we learn to stop trodding on its flesh. Nothing more we can do but do our job until the war is done." He shrugged, too numb to keep working through the horrors that came with war. "How was Mossdeep?"

Defeat hung in the air.

---

Makoto Kurumi

The mention of Mossdeep made Makoto's expression sour a little. "A mess..." They confessed, voice drooping a little. "Things getting out of hand at Sootopolis interrupted everything; but even if nothing had happened... I'm not sure if we would've been able to do much more than make a mess for League to have to clean up afterwards." That was their perspective on it, at least. If he wanted more concrete details, there would probably be reports he could read later.

"I had tried to infiltrate, to steal data from them... But it didn't go as planned..." Makoto sighed. "I had been able to find and read a bit about Deoxys - but I wasn't able to download anything, because people started noticing something was off. And then..."

...

Makoto trailed off, falling quiet. They looked down at their own hands, unable to help wringing them together a little. "... Honestly..."

"... Have you ever had a time where... Your body wasn't your own? Where something else was in control and - and you were only the passenger; able to watch, but not actually do anything about it?"

Before, he would have said no. Now? His opinion had changed.

"Look at me, Makoto." He squatted down to appear in Makoto's peripheral vision as they regarded hands now in symbiosis with otherworldly life. Howard took off his hat and let his hair tumble down to his shoulders. He rubbed the thin streak of white hair between his fingers, thoughtfully. "Does this look like me? This body isn't even mine anymore, Makoto."

Faint lines formed a latticework only reflected in certain lights. Occasionally, red energy would pulse like electricity through a circuit board. He felt less like a human and more like a machine than ever before.

"I'm a stranger in a stranger's home, being forced to puppeteer a body that should collapse into rubble." He reached out and gave their hand a comforting squeeze. "But I'm still Howard, and you're still you."

He met their gaze.

"Tell me what happened."

---

Makoto Kurumi

Makoto takes Howard's hand in turn. Squeezes it, like the lifeline that it was for their sanity.

It felt comforting, this human contact. Though, were they still fully human, they wondered? Or were parts of them just a facsimile of humanity, now?

"Things got... Out of hand, when I was discovered in the Space Center. Even if I have strong pokemon, direct combat has never been my specialty - and I was outnumbered. I had to bring out Erebus, and though it was able to fare a bit better, we were still getting pushed into a corner - a-and..." Makoto paused a second, feeling queasy and having to collect themself before they could continue. Their voice was quieter. "Erebus just turned around, and... Fused with me." It did not feel right to call it symbiosis - as if it were mutually beneficial, when all it did was terrorize them. "Sorta like it did with its first trainer - Killian. And it was horrible."

"I felt like I was drowning in it, while it was happening. L-like it was writhing beneath my skin - and I could still feel it, even afterwards. I could feel its heart in my chest, could feel it in every nook and cranny of my body; I was hyper-aware of every little part of... O-of us, I guess...!" Makoto did not seem aware of the way their voice gradually rose; not quite to a shout, but it was clear they were affected. "I barely had any chance to even adjust before it began moving - moving in my body - wherever it pleased, using me like some vessel to fight with..! And I just- I- All I could do was watch!"

Makoto's breath shuddered and hitched, as if they were trying to keep their emotions down. Realizing their own volume, they sucked in a deep breath - before continuing, quieter once more. "I was scared... I-It claimed it wanted to protect me. That they'd be defeated. And... Maybe that was true. But I was still scared as my body just. Faced those pokemon head-on. I thought I'd be crushed, or burnt to a crisp, o-or something, even if my body was the strongest it'd ever be... I still kept thinking with each clash 'this attack is the one that'll just kill us'..."

Another hiccup. A free hand rising to rub at their eyes. "A-and even after it was over, I just... Felt sick. A kind of sick that I- That I didn't wanna feel ever again. Giving myself up just so I can live, I...-" Makoto trailed off, stopped, wondering if they were beginning to say too much. Beginning to get too personal. Their free hand rises again, to rub their arm anxiously.

Instead of continuing that stopped trail of thought, they take in another deep breath, and glance to Howard proper. "... D-do you... Know any scientists, that you'd trust? That might stay quiet, if I just... Asked them to look me over? And make sure I'm still the same...?" They wanted to at least feel like they still owned this body. That there wouldn't be any lasting effects from all of this.

And they didn't want the fact that it all had happened in the first place to become common knowledge, even if they knew that everyone in the computer room that day had saw it happen. Otherwise, they worried that it'd become expected of them, in fights like these, to let Erebus simply puppet them...

It was moments like this that reminded the admin that Amor Rose had used Deoxys as a tool. It was a piece on his chessboard to reach a far greater prize. How could he care about a being that existed for the sole purpose of seizing Regidrago? A task that had fallen onto his subordinate when he returned to Kalos was his imprint on this region.

That, and the name Erebus.

"Oh, Makoto." He squeezed them tightly in a hug. Proof that, despite his belief in the alternative, Howard Slayte was still himself. Even if this form wasn't his, even if he wasn't himself anymore, this was proof that he was still human. "You're still you. No matter what happens, you are human because you have a human's heart. You care."

He did not understand Deoxys. He had held it for mere moments before giving it to Makoto. That was not enough time for him to even comprehend what the alien was capable of, but he did know that it was not of this world. Howard commanded giants, and he did not have the right to hold sway over aliens from beyond the stars.

It doesn't matter how many Zorua you surround yourself with, Makoto. That is no illusion." He let go and pulled out a pen and paper. His Aerodactyl pen scribbled against a notepad with a small Omanyte in the corner. "Report to the Head Scientists, if possible."

Normally, Deoxys had been transferred from Head Scientist to Head Scientist. That chain had been broken here and now.

"I know a chemist. She's... an asshole, but she lets me pass out on her bar without kicking me out. She's smart. She's also in town." He slipped a paper with Absinthe Blackwood 's information into their trembling hand. "If they give you trouble, let me know."

---

Makoto Kurumi