There is a god, and Arceus does not care for jokes. This entire universe was beneath it, and it was for the best that mankind did not yet draw its ire. Many would find such a world depressing, but Howard himself found it beautiful. There was comfort in knowing that mankind had gotten this far without the aid of some benevolent god.

Yet whenever Howard thought of the Craftsman, his pride often soured into disdain.

"Abs, you need to get one of those stepladders for the top shelf liquor. I could barely reach it, and I'm not exactly tall." It's a familiar voice, which was both a blessing and a curse. A stranger would find a baseball bat embedded in their skull and a heron pecking at their eyes. A familiar voice implies a connection and sense of familiarity.

That, for better or worse, is a far more difficult emotion to parse.

"You thought you could keep the Calcifet XXIII hidden? Rookie mistake." Howard poured himself a bottle of bourbon from a glass taken from behind the counter. "I haven't been able to get a case imported from Galar since Sootopolis turned into a wreck."

He filled the cup and quickly drained it. Alcohol reeked on his breath. Grigori Sokolov would look at this man and call him a shadow of the man he had once been. Yet Grigori wasn't here to mock him. When Absinthe was here, Grigori was not. That was the arrangement Howard had crafted between the two.

Yet when the admin looked up, he saw Absinthe. Then, he saw the bird. The glass in his hand dropped and shattered against the floor.

"What the FU-"

---

Absinthe Blackwood

She tells him to shut up. He does. The logical mind is swaddled in thick blankets of inebriation, and thus Absinthe is able to cow the Rocket Admin into slowly shutting the door as he attempted to figure out how this had all happened.

The Loyal Three have been everywhere by this point. He and half of Rocket have run into the three bastards, and at every turn they've done little other than cause misery at every turn. Despite Hideo Kino's strength as a Gym Leader, even he was incapable of fully quashing this tide of poison.

Why, then, does Fezandipiti sit on the table now?

"What the fuck did you do?" Howard hissed at her, his voice stinking of liquor. She's dark and malicious and definitely defective, but so is everyone else in Team Rocket. Absinthe is not Jayden Cross, nor is she Elisabeth Fiorelli. If Howard can dance with them, then he can dance with her. "What's it doing here?"

He pointed at the bird with frustration.

"It's caused nothing but pain and misery." Howard glared at her, before drinking straight from the bottle. He wiped his lips of amber liquid and took a deep breath. He repeated it multiple times, until the lines of red circuitry that occasionally thrummed in his body turned dim with composure. "Explain."

His eye opened.

"Now."

---

Absinthe Blackwood

The real Fezandipiti trusted nobody. The only thing he believed in was the return of his lord, and in toying with the hearts of men and women for nothing other than perverse pleasure. He knows that from his experience in the Loyal Three's prison, where he had been whipped and beaten and bruised. Yet she doesn't know that. It's for the best.

That prison would've turned Absinthe from a human into something far worse, the more he thought about it. This woman was defective, used by a dead husband and buried in the past.

In his vaguely drunken mind, Howard wondered if Abby had ever existed. It seemed like such a delusional prospect now that he was looking at the bird preening at him from the countertop. There was no recognition behind his eyes, for Howard had been Munkidori's prisoner.

"I fear..." He swallowed dryly. "...I've been alive too long, with how many times I've heard that story. You're not the first to utter it, Absinthe. You will not be the last."

He let her justify her decision for several moments, before blinking once.

"You don't believe that." There's a shared, mutual understanding at play. Howard Slayte was often a prancing fool who played at distractions to keep himself sane, but the admin was a unique force on the board. If she killed him, giants would erupt from the earth and turn everything into glass. "Absinthe."

What saves them both is that somewhere in the admin's chest, despite his insistence, beats a telltale heart.

"Who knows?"

---

Absinthe Blackwood

"Have I not let you do that since the moment I hired you?"

The stink of alcohol is heavy on his lips, but as the admin speaks, his eye clears slightly. He's still afraid of her, of the bird that struts about like the king at his court, but the admin's greatest power is that when his back is to the wall, he is capable of pushing forward and making the impossible possible.

It's not a power bestowed by a god, and it's separate from the giants he commands that shake the earth like thunder. It's the power of a human being who understands other human beings. Empathy. Hatred. Self-loathing. Howard recognizes the emotions in Absinthe because he himself is defective.

"We all have a choice. It's about how you go, where you are, what we do, and how we stand before we fall." He put a hand in his pocket. Intoxicated synapses roar for him to kill the bird and crush it under Regirock's fist. "And you're standing on a cliff, Absinthe. I'm not going to deny you your choice, but I am also your superior."

He ordered her to kill the bird and the monkey and the dog, and she brought them into her bar.

"Answer the question." He closed the gap. He can hear her heartbeat, but she can't hear his. There's nothing left in his chest to beat. Whatever he is now, it's distinct from the humanity that he lauds. "For your safety."

He leaned in close.

"Who knows?"

---

Absinthe Blackwood

"Shit." The archaeologist sucked on his teeth, frustrated. "I should have killed her when I had the chance."

When they had fought, the admin had been down a giant. Regirock had fallen on Yuina like a rockslide on a sapling, and yet she had persisted with a mixture of clever ploys and personal failings. He should've brought Regice. He shouldn't have left. He should've, should've, should've...

And yet what Regice had found in that pit was the next step in restructuring the foundational principles of the world. Yuina Higashi was secondary.

And the admin couldn't bring himself to crush her. He liked Yuina. She was smart. She recognized the past. They were kindred spirits split by providence, and yet that fight with her had worried him. Every time he pushed her back, he suspected that there had been an extra trick in her back pocket.

She had been too calm. Too detached. Too inhuman. An anomaly. That terrified him.

"There's a chance she'll tell. She's smart, but historians know that keeping a secret goes against our creed." Yet Yuina has a mountain of them, unbeknownst to him. The war in her heart is hers alone. "But you won't be able to keep this secret forever. A time will come when you're pushed to the wall and the only way out is to play your ace in the hole."

There are some things that a Shiinotic with unstable loyalties cannot rectify.

"People will hate you." Regardless of how blind Absinthe is, regardless of her circumstances, she will be despised. "But you already know that, don't you?"

---

Absinthe Blackwood

No you can't.

Yet he didn't say that, because doing so would turn Absinthe's nightmare into a reality. It'd remind her that she was truly alone, and in a region that hated Fezandipiti and his retinue, Absinthe Blackwood had no hearth to call her own. No port would let her in, and she would again be friendless.

Perhaps in her own mind, she already was.

"Okay." It wasn't okay, actually. It was as far from okay as anything was. This was a betrayal of Hoenn proper, and to the organization he represented. Even if the admin hated Team Rocket and what they represented, this was where he stood now. Turning her in would be prudent. Killing the bird would be prudent. "Then I believe in you."

But that would mean rejecting one of Team Rocket's own, and in an organization that was universally hated, where did that leave her?

And if he had been in her position, he would've begged her to do the same. In a world where he was not an admin while still commanding giants as a dirty secret, he would've done anything to keep that hidden to avoid the weight of Team Rocket crushing down on his shoulders.

"And I'm sorry, because your life hasn't been a happy one." He doesn't know about her. Absinthe's other little secret. It's not his to know, though. "And I fear that it won't be getting any happier soon."

Unless she can right Absinthe's course. Arceus above, hopefully she can.

"And if that's the case..." He made a point to ignore the bird. "...then I think you'll need a hug."

---

Absinthe Blackwood

Howard Slayte reeked of alcohol and tobacco and shame. The signs of an addict that would eventually dig himself too deep a pit to crawl from. A day would come where his edge was dulled and he finally fell on the battlefield, or he'd find a knife between his ribs.

There was only one way his story could end.

When he spoke, his voice was soft. He hugged the chemist tight and gave her a pat on the back, comforting.

"Everyone in Team Rocket has been rejected by the world. We are the people who have placed ourselves above everyone else, because nobody else bothered to check and ensure that we were okay. We placed our dreams above the safety of others. Our happiness comes at the extent of others."

'We'. Howard supposed that by this point, he was Rocket. He sat at the table and dictated policy. He rebuilt what they broke. He stacked a mountain of corpses so high that he could no longer see the peak, so very far the pile had grown.

"I despise them. I despise you, but..." He paused, thoughtful. "...I'll never turn my back from you or any of them."

Because if Team Rocket betrayed Absinthe Blackwood, there was no group alive that would accept her. She would stand alone against the malignance of her own species. If the world had decried her an enemy, then Team Rocket would stand with her. That was the vicious cycle of this world.

"Just promise me, when the time comes..." He hugged her tight. "... that you'll keep your promise."

His eye flicked open, a violent, vindictive magenta.

"And use that bird to help kill a god."

---

Absinthe Blackwood