Katherine had quite the tenure, it seemed. It felt more prudent to comment on how a Gym Leader who had once been a member of Team Rocket had somehow clawed their way up into the League's Elite Four, but if Remiel Calcifet can dine at the table after his list of crimes, all Howard can do is shrug.

"Shit, man. The Giratina Gal? I thought she went missing! Any chance she ended up here?" The admin's voice became a hushed whisper. He knew nothing of her disappearance into the Distortion World, only that declan walsh desperately wanted to return and seize her crown of fantasia.

Of course the Malevolent appealed to Walsh. It wouldn't surprise Howard if the Rocket Boss decided to kill four Rocket Beasts just to get an avatar with the epithet of 'The Bad'.

"We have Regirock. You have your menagerie. We can take her." Howard said in hushed tones as Regirock lumbered into a room with a colossal statue holding up the world.

"Help! Somebody, anybody, help!"

Stormy Silph's voice rang out from the statue.

"Cillian...?"

---

Cillian Quinn

He shrugged in response.

"When I was wandering through Kalos, I once stayed in a duke's estate for a few days. I had amused him, and he decided to shelter me from a storm." One of his few good interactions with nobility. Remiel and Diana caused too many memories to resurface for him to enjoy their company. "I found a room near mine that was empty, but as soon as I opened the door, it was like I had just missed someone sitting in a chair."

There had been no dust upon the seat, despite the rest of the room being unused. The door had creaked loudly, so it had not been opened in recent times. The duke's family had not been large enough to require use of the room.

"When we touch something, we leave a bit of warmth behind to prove that we were there. Do ghosts do the same thing?" Howard cocked his head in confusion. "Or does the land just remember? Maybe our actions are being recorded, even now."

Howard spoke not of the Cloud. He had little care for multiverse backup storage systems.

'Reverse it!' Cillian Quinn's voice emerges from the statue of a Pokémon the admin had never seen before.

"Huh." Howard turned to Cillian. "Since you're not dead, I'm betting on memories."

---

Cillian Quinn

Cillian did sound far more tinny when his voice was echoing from a coffin of stone. It didn't help that he was a few years younger back then, as well.

"If you were fighting Registeel and Regirock in here, I'd be surprised that you all got out alive. I wonder how they got that statue to move?" Howard mused, pondering the statue that Cillian spoke of. Given that Regirock could move on its own, getting a stone statue to move wasn't the issue. Yet what separated it from genuine golems? What did it lack?

A heart?

Dynergy?

A memory of it?

"Hey, Cillian." He looked up at the statue that held up the world. He worked his jaw slightly as he prepared to speak. "Have you ever heard of the Craftsman?"

The statue swallows the word, and it echoes through dusty, abandoned halls.

Craftsman. Craftsman. Craftsman. Craftsman. Craftsman.

---

Cillian Quinn

Regidrago and Regieleki were anomalies. They made no sense. Why were three constructs carved from common materials, while two were formed from energy. How had they been built by ancient cultures, and where did they fit into the great puzzle that was Hoenn's bygone age?

Still, they filled Howard with pride. Humanity had built them eons ago. Millennia ago. If they could do that, then what wasn't humanity capable of? Though it did make him fear for June's well-being. Her seizure of Regieleki had been a mistake. Still, it was... comforting.

Comforting that knowing that, even though she didn't care, Howard wasn't alone in shouldering the weight of giants. It was a selfish comfort, and one that june sleigh would never hear of.

"I don't know. When Registeel fled, it unburied ruins with an ancient braille script. It spoke of a Craftsman. A creator." Strangely, the admin's voice turned angry. Furious, even. "When I look at those giants, I worry."

Craftsman. Craftsman. Craftsman.

"I worry that these giants weren't built by us. If that's the case, then our initial victory against Eternatus thousands of years ago was nothing more than a lie."

---

Cillian Quinn

THE CRAFTSMAN IS THE LAST RESORT.

"The text spoke of a singular craftsman, and there were murals of a three fingered hand in those ruins, raising up statues into giants. Statues like that little statue you and priam conrad pulled from these ruins." For four years, that statue had sat dormant and had done nothing, before finally rousing itself in Petalburg's eleventh hour. "And that hand..."

That hand. It was ruining everything. It had ruined everything. The Desert Ruins. The Island Cave. The Ancient Tomb. How long had it scraped against the earth to form cities in its wake?

"Every since we pulled Regice from those ruins, I've thought that we built those statues. I thought that we breathed life into those golems using parts of Eternatus that we pried off. Cillian, you..."

He punched the statue, causing magenta blood to fall from his knuckles and drip against the floor.

"FUCK!" He spat.

"I'm proud to be Hoennian, Cillian! I'm not a member of royalty, I'm not a Draconid or a rich businessman! I'm just me. That's all I've ever been. Groudon, Kyogre, and Rayquaza are strong without human interference. We could fight them on equal footing with our own engines of war."

When he had fought freya morningstar, it wasn't Regice that had been deficient. It had been Howard. Machinery was not secondary to blood. Ice and rock were not inferior to scale and claw. That was why declan walsh had given him Regice, and it had not been seized by the admin's hand.

Humanity's legacy had been given. Howard had not earned it.

"If something else beat Eternatus, then humanity did not triumph over the divine. Cillian..." Howard looked at him, his breath stinking of liquor and tobacco and painkillers and shame. "...what if my belief is a lie?"

---

Cillian Quinn

The underboss's words gave the admin pause. They're cruel, but they're not heartless. Because, at the end of the day, Cillian Quinn was a man who shouldered the woes of thousands. His purpose was to lead, and to lead meant understanding the failings of the weak.

That was the burden of the mighty.

"I'm trying. I'm really trying. I just..." He looked up at the ruin ceiling, where crudely carved stars and constellational movements were marked as the people who had once lived here tried to chart the heavens, before realizing that they were people of the land.

The Draconids were exalted, living in the heavens. The Hoyeon were eternal, living with the sea. The average people of Hoenn were of the land, and they carved it from rock and ice and steel.

"...I just don't know how much I physically have left to give. I almost killed myself to tame Regice in Dewford. I lost my body in Petalburg. What else is there to trade? How much more can one person offer to bring down a god?"

He chuckled once, holding his head with a Dynergy-burned hand.

"Guess we keep on going, huh?" The statue that carried the world offered little and less. It simply continued to whisper lines spoken by those long dead. "No road left but the one that leads to the end?"

He chuckled again.

"You're a crass piece of shit. You know that, right?"

---

Cillian Quinn