Lulu Flint's gaze could've turned flesh into stone. Unfortunately, that implied that the man before her wasn't already cast from it. That alone made the stranger suspicious. Howard tended to wilt when she glared at him. He was a craven and she had years of experience and authority under her belt.

This man hardly flinched. A baleful red eye glared back at the Noctowl, before turning to Lulu and a memory of Project Lockbox. It was a memory of Team Rocket's brilliance, but all things had their time in history. This project's era had concluded long ago.

Though with the war in full swing, it likely had interesting applications. Howard didn't bother to understand the intricacies of warfare.

"I'm hilarious, actually." Her angry face is met by his exhausted one. This sense of familiarity from a stranger seems exhausting. "Light me."

He pulls out his own cigarette.

---

Lulu Flint
BRILLIANCE

"I'm sick of getting gawked at, Lulu." Howard sighed as he took a deep drag of the lit cigarette. Nicotine and smoke made life worth living, especially as the work piled up. How many hours had it been since he had slept? He was reaching twenty.

How long had it been since Lulu had slept? She was probably reaching thirty.

In response to her query, the admin simply shrugged. His eye flickered with magenta, as if Dynergy demanded freedom from the flesh it had been shackled to. It was a body too symmetrical to exist, and Eternatus's leavings flowed through him like blood.

"I fell into a Dynergy storm in Petalburg. Came out different. Moving is stiff. My joints don't work."

It was like an old man complaining.

"Brought you a gift, by the way."

---

Lulu Flint

"People." The admin shuddered as he answered her first question. "Though you wouldn't be the first Head Scientist to gawk as of late. Run your tests later."

If he could take one thing at face value from Lulu, it was that they could both silently agree that people were, in general, too nosy for their own benefit. Though that didn't change the fact that the admin loved humanity to an almost universal degree. Even as he bled for them.

Even as he died for them.

"A little something that I picked up in Petalburg." The admin snapped his fingers. "⠗⠕⠥⠎⠑ ⠽⠕⠥⠗⠎⠑⠇⠋."

The sound he made was no language uttered in the human tongue.

The nearby cavern wall cracked, and seven orange dots flashed in the stone, before the cave wall exploded. Out of it stepped a colossus built from stone. It turned to the Head Scientist, braille flashing.

---

Lulu Flint

Lulu's reaction surprised the admin. He had forgotten that Regirock had a long career of harassing members of Team Rocket for six years. He didn't return it to its Pokeball, though.

"Lulu, it's fine! I've got it under control!" He raised his hands in the golem's defense, as if his own body of flesh and bone was somehow a prudent barrier in ensuring protecting Regirock from Lulu—and vice versa. "It's ours. It won't hurt you!"

He snapped his fingers, getting Regirock's attention.

"Sleep." It listened immediately. They were related by blood, after all. The seven dots as the light dimmed. Grimacing, he turned to face Lulu's wrath.

"Sorry."

Frankly, he'd rather deal with Regirock again than deal with the Head Scientist's chagrin. Unfortunately, he suspected he'd be dealing with both imminently.

---

Lulu Flint

Lulu Flint was a confusing woman. A revenant who hid every emotion behind an umbral shade of inscrutable expressions. It made interacting with her made him uneasy. Howard liked her in a lab. On the field? Much like Regirock, she was an unknown variable.

Thus, Howard regarded her warily. A plume of smoke curled up around the roof of the cave. She lit another one, and the admin resisted the urge to do the same. Every day, it felt like he was smoking more and more for an anxiety that he could never fully control.

"Okay." He looked at the clock as she returned from rummaging around in the bunker, before raising an eyebrow. "What's with the clock? I have a watch, Lulu."

One that didn't work, from a gift from someone he'd never see again. She didn't need to know that, though.

Instead, the admin followed her.

"Where're we going?"

---

Lulu Flint

The passage of time was a frivolous thing. It seemed absurd to utter it, but Howard knew it to be true. Dynergy gnawed at spacetime, alternate worlds where months could pass in seconds, and Lulu's Interdream Mist all made a mockery of a concept that had dictated the human condition since the dawn of life on this planet.

Ironically, it was the greatest proof of the human condition. A fun time passed quickly, whereas a boring time passed slowly. Perception could distort a field over which divinity had held sway for millennia.

"Fine, mostly. Nothing you'd consider a medical issue. I'm tired and everything hurts, but Petalburg and Regirock are to blame for that. Besides that, it's not so much my body as much as it is my brain." He tapped his temple with a finger. "I just feel different. Wrong."

Tera Crystals glimmered around them as Lulu led the way.

"Ever looked in a mirror and wondered who was looking back at you?"

---

Lulu Flint

A small noise of irritation escaped the back of the admin's throat.

"I looked in the mirror when I woke up today, and the person looking back at me was a complete stranger. This isn't my face. This isn't my body. This isn't me. There is no familiarity to it, and I suspect that it's slowly killing me."

There was no reason to tell Lulu any of this, other than that fact that she'd likely never tell. He had never pegged her for a chatterbox, and anyone this invested in the Interdream Mist had to have a mountain of demons in their closet. Who else would want to interface so wholly with dreams and nightmares?

What was there for a Revenant to reclaim?

"Physically. Spiritually. There's just nothing there but a record of humanity that can no longer be verified. I want my old body back."

He didn't want to hate himself when he looked in the mirror.

---

Lulu Flint