Flat metal beds were meant for torturing underpaid focus groups and prisoners of war. The fact that Ameena had actually gone through the effort to replace them with couches was commendable. It also worried the admin that she had gone through that much effort for something like this.

It did little to abate his nerves.

"Understood." The admin tottered on a remarkably thick cast, designed to set bone and numb the pain. It was amazing what one could afford when Team Rocket was footing the bill. Blisseys. Comfeys. The whole nine yards turned several months of hobbling around into a remarkably quick experience.

He clapped Ameena on the shoulder as he passed.

"If anyone asks, this is on Nebula's dollar." The message was clear: tell Rocket and I'll end you. "Let's start, then."

He fell onto the couch with a huff and hid from the light by using his hat. When he spoke, it came from beneath the muffled headpiece.

"It's safe, don't worry." Howard told June, as if lying for the thirtieth time would make it true. "I've got Z-Crystals if you need them, Ameena. I assume you have a stash here at the lab, though?"

---

ameena abadi june sleigh

Teleportation felt weird. Wrong. Doubly so when she went from somewhere open to somewhere not. She could feel it from the pressure in the room, and how stuffy it was. Instincts shot up, but she took a deep breath. The blinding light was actually helpful right now. A shocker, in all honesty.

“Oh, like the holiday slog,” she said nervously. It was a state she knew perfectly well, even if undesired. Her wired muscles shook as she sunk into the comfortable couch. “We’re not that far underground right?”

New Mauville sprang to mind. Awful, awful place. Howard would have to pry Regieleki from her cold, dead hands before she stepped foot in there. Screw the safety of the experiment– it didn’t mean nothing if a collapsed support beam trapped her in again. Underneath tons of stone and debris.

Her already shot heart rate jumped a few more beats-per-minute.

“I’m ready, though. Send us in.”

One answer of many, perhaps even the least important of them all– but it was a start. Time to find out what actually happened. What made Howard go insane, and what made her unable to sleep well ever since. 

---

ameena abadi howard slayte

Realistically, if Ameena bothered to explain how Howard and June's messed up brains were likely to ruin the experiment, it had a fifty-fifty chance of causing them to either fall asleep due boredom or start freaking out. Especially if the earth started to tremble and quake again.

It was best not to think about that, though. Howard was getting good at avoiding thoughts in order to get through the day without punching a wall. Another perversion of the ideal that academics sought. They were supposed to uncover and discuss uncomfortable truths, not balk from them in favor of reassurance and safety.

Howard's eye twitched.

"My dream as the base, right?" His voice was still muffled from beneath the hat. The couch felt remarkably abrasive, all of a sudden, like it was threatening to scratch and scrape his skin. "Lucky you, then."

The admin smiled wryly from beneath the hat as mist flickered with visions of a hospital room.

"I've got a good memory."

This could get her out of Team Rocket, and it'd all be over. No muss, no fuss, no need to give a damn about anything that ever happened with this woman again. She'd be out of Rocket when she remembered what happened, and they'd be back to square one. Howard envied that.

Sometimes he wished he could get that back as well.

---

ameena abadi june sleigh

“Oh, my bad,” June muttered as dream mist filled the room. “How come I didn’t think of that? I’ll just ignore the weight above my head is all.”

Not that far underground. Even earthquake-safe. That had to mean something, right? Yea. Right. Totally. It wouldn’t collapse on top of them, even if an Exc–

“Then make it happen faster, lugnut,” she said suddenly. Her fingers dug into her cold arms. If her normal phobia would cause problems, that one would ruin everything. It couldn’t. Not when she was so close to whatever had made Howard so…

Himself, recently. Different. Whatever it was.

“Is… is that it?” June pointed forward, into the middle of the pink space. From the threads of mere discolored air came a scene. Blurry, full of static, but a scene nonetheless. She squinted at the start of something, desperate to make out any details at all. There was a lot of white, some blue, and two figures.

“That’s… us, right? And… that looks like a hospital room,” she rose slightly from her reclined state. Curiosity and desperation drove her now.

“What part is this?”

---

howard slayte ameena abadi

The immediate reaction to the world created from the archaeologist's memories was that everything was slightly off. The spatial dimensions were distorted, a reminder that the admin's vision was marred slightly by a lack of depth perception that caused him to perceive the world differently.

In a dream, Howard could have two eyes. Yet it had been so long since his sight had been whole that even in a world without the limitations of damaged flesh, Howard could not dream of a world where he was complete. There was no world where he could fly, because he worked in chains and dreamed of them when he slept.

A hospital room. Food.

"You got any food?"

"What do you remember?"

Besides that, the dream was remarkably pristine. Stable. A year of hiding within Rocket had made it remarkably easy for Howard to compartmentalize his thoughts and allow June and Ameena into this precise moment. It was not perfect, by any means, but it would suffice for what they were trying to do.

"You collapsed and went to the hospital." Howard murmured slightly. "I called Grigori. He couldn't appear immediately, so here we are. You always work way too hard."

It was strange, looking at Howard and June like this.

"My old body. I almost forgot what I looked like."

---

june sleigh ameena abadi

“Yea, well– ah, you already know,” June sighed. How many times would they have this conversation? A million dollars didn’t disappear overnight, and she wasn’t about to ask for handouts. Thus, she worked. Besides, sitting at home made her think. And thinking brought bad times.

The less she thought, the better.

But the more the dream played out, the harder it was to do such a thing. Suddenly, Howard was talking to some strange girl. She thought there was a flash of bright light, but it was impossible to know. And maybe, just maybe, that was… no. Probably just her imagination.

“Different look, same guy,” she waved her hand. “Besides, you look close enough. Don’t stress it out too much– you heard the lady, right? Don’t fuck up the vision, or however it works.”

Ah, so this this where things went south. She– herself– looked pissed now.

“I shouldn’t have made that threat.”

“Then why do it?”

June raised an eyebrow. That felt important. While her copy droned on, she glanced towards the archeologist. “So you threatened me? That was it? What, you said you’d close my business or some shit? I can’t imagine anything that would…”

Oh. Oh no. Even current her, without a single clue as to the original event, felt her blood boil and heart pick up the pace further. A scowl, then a deep, deep breath. The encroaching TV static faded away. Damn dream technology.

“You threatened Matchstick, didn’t you?”

---

howard slayte ameena abadi

The dream answered her question.

YES. YES. YES. YES YES. YES.

The behavioral issue that Ameena wanted to understand is not tied to the dreamscape. It is tied to reality, to war, to the thousands of bodies that the admin has stacked to the heavens over the course of a campaign in Dewford and in Petalburg. They've grown so high that there is nothing more to be done but simply sit at the pinnacle and look down on the world from a throne made of flesh.

He had lied. To June and to that bird and to himself.

Now, standing atop a pile of innocent corpses and lies and Talonflames and Howard Slaytes, the admin realized something.

I've garnered quite the view for myself.

The dream distorted for a moment when the question is asked. Even though he was prepared for this outcome, Howard still grimaced at the question. He didn't look at the dream. There was no need to. He simply hid beneath his hat, his hand pressed firmly down to ensure that it didn't move.

"Yes." The archaeologist said. He self-sabotaged remarkably well. Howard had always been remarkably defective. Selfish, too. Yet that was what Team Rocket needed from an admin. "There's no combination of words that can justify my actions. There's no need to justify them. What I did was wrong. It was a mistake. I didn't mean it."

He had said 'sorry' enough for one lifetime in regards to this sin. He'd let this dream do it for him. Yesterday could shoulder the sin of today, just this once.

"Do you think I'd do it? Still?"

---

june sleigh ameena abadi

“Of—”

June couldn’t get the violent affirmation past her lips before it got caught behind her teeth. Slowly, her mouth closed and doubt clouded her vision. The dream and its contents were momentarily forgotten. Would he?

Really? The apologies were tiring. Awful. She’d heard them plenty enough from the start. The first sin had been expressed as a mistake, an accident, a regret– the whole nine yards. Even if he’d done the unthinkable. Committed a crime worse than murder. Filled her heart with a fear that’d never be matched, not even by the–

“I… don’t know.”

If only there was a better way to describe the tumultuous emotions that warred inside her. How she had to suppress them for the sake of the dream.

“But it doesn’t make it right,” she finally spit out. Why did it always have to be so complicated? annalise henderson had at least kept things simple. Howard made everything sideways, intentional or otherwise. It’d be so much easier if he was just a permanent dick. Much easier to generalize and blame and try to forget.

But he was quite the colorful character. “The fact that you did it at all is pretty stupid. What, you wanted me to avoid Rocket or something? Little late and impossible for that to not happen.”

Ironically, her capture of Regieleki had made her live. And life underneath a fuck ton of debt wasn’t a life worth living. His failure to stop her had made her act as she now did. For better or worse.

But it was impossible to not blush and turn her head away as dream June admitted to the… problems. Annalise returned to her mind. She wasn’t that oblivious to her problems, was she? Like the ranger claimed? “Whatever, you already know my life enough. I don’t need to explain it again, do I? Will I be repeating what I just said before?”

---

howard slayte ameena abadi

This felt personal. Ameena had seen too much for this to be comfortable anymore. She was Nebula, and that meant that she was almost family. Yet that did not mean that he appreciated her looking in on business that did not include her.

Yet to obscure information was against Howard's dogma. He did not distort the dream for her to hide the truth.

The admin's memory was solid. Remarkably so. For a man who spent much of his time misplacing his keys and struggling with computers, he kept his mind relatively organized when it came to recollections. Years of sorting, filing, and chronicling historical events by the date of their occurrence ensured that no story was forgotten.

There were imperfections, of course. Yet the Boundless had none. She, he remembered perfectly with not a hair out of place.

"It doesn't. You're right. So hate me if you want to. Hell, you should. I've done nothing but bring you misery. That's all we do in Team Rocket. We just make lives worse while proclaiming that we're just and that our pain should be everyone's pain." Yet he was rehashing the same bullshit again. It was all he did. Cycles upon cycles upon cycles. "But I'm not letting go until your debt is repaid and you're free."

The dream continued to play like an accelerating film, as if the admin was trying to skip the part that would ruin everything.

"Doesn't matter if it's ten dollars or a million or a fucking quintillion." Money was worthless. It was just paper that people agreed had value. If that was the case, then when this war was over, and if Rocket won, Howard would reassign that value has he saw fit.

"Because I wish someone had done that for me, instead of forcing me to live like a slave. If someone had decided that I wasn't worthless because I had a few less zeroes in my account, I would be with the Pokémon League right now."

The film slowed slightly towards the damning moment. Just because one stupid delivery girl delivered rocks really well. Just because she worked really hard. Just because he had never once seen her alive.

"So if you leave Rocket because of this..."

'I-'

"...please wait until you have nothing binding you."

'-loved you.'

---

june sleigh ameena abadi