"It's interesting. You open your mouth and everything I've ever thought comes out."

He resists the urge to punch the man in the jaw. That'd imply that the deputy was getting to the admin, and rather than let Montgomery sit above Howard, the archaeologist elects to shrug, let it go, and keep moving forward.

"Nineteen lives. I killed them, and I know their names. I will never forget them until the day I die. But those deaths happened, I caused them, and all I can do is keep doing what I'm doing. That's the only way to ensure that the people I killed lived lives that mattered in the end."

And the terrifying part was, as he said it, it became clear that Howard Slayte believed it. He genuinely believed that what he was doing was, in some way, justified. He spoke with certainty, mixed with self-loathing and the understanding that there was no going back from what had happened in Dewford.

"I will shoulder every one of those sins until Eternatus is dead."

He'd just keep moving forward.

"If I need to kill another nineteen, I'll do it. If I can avoid it, I will. If I can't, I'll still accept their deaths once I've caused them. That's more than you, Montgomery. Do you remember every person you've killed? Every child you've orphaned? Every spouse you've widowed?"

He leaned in, his voice stinking of metal.

"How many communities did you turn to ash? How many corpses did you pile towards the sky? How's the view from up there, Montgomery?"

---

Montgomery James

It was remarkably easy to slip away. When at a party of giants, the ant avoided getting crushed by being beneath the notice of stronger trainers, kinder people, and better humans. That's what Howard thinks as he Teleports into a Rocket-owned building for his attire.

I look like shit. The face in the mirror was not his own. His eye was narrow and the shine of excitement was gone. All that remains is a dull gleam that occasionally remembers to spark into an inferno. Why did I even come? I knew Rocket would show up.

Maybe he hated himself. Whatever. It was too late to turn back now. mint frost didn't deserve to shoulder the scorn of everyone at the banquet. He didn't deserve that much contempt from so many people pressed on his shoulders. Team Rocket looked out for one another. Even if Minthad started him down this path, he'd still stand by his side in this precise moment.

Hopefully, that meant Mint would stand with him when he needed it most.

These clothes aren't his. The coat is too heavy, designed for northern climates rather than Hoenn's temperate one. Cillian Quinn would chastise him for sweltering from the heat, but hot and cold feel like distant memories. He placed the helmet on his head and took a deep breath.

Be Fox. Be Fox. Forget Howard. Fuck Howard. Shoulder the weight. He punched the wall in frustration. And keep marching forward.

...

Step. Step. Step. The doors forced open by Neon's entrance remain so. They rattle in the wind as Admin Fox marches in after Neon's scathing remarks.

"A member of the Elite Four." He pointed at Melody as her voice goes unheeded.

"A councilwoman." He pointed at Freya as the ship with no port finds no reprieve.

"A ranger." He pointed at Ollie as he waits patiently for his other half.

"...and a Head Professor." He pointed at Eva, she who had once shouldered a meteor for Hoenn.

His eye flicks over other countless names. The man with the sniper rifle is here, as is the Galarian ambassador. There are a few Rocket members as well, though they cannot stand up and visibly join their side. He carries their hearts in silence.

"Worthless. This is our opposition, Neon?" His voice is as dry as the desert, his voice a static buzz. "These... dregs? I expected more from those that cracked the city's walls like an overripe berry."

---

HE'S BACK
HE'S MASKED (DRIP IS HOVER)
AND HE'S HERE TO YAP WITH MINT
YAP AT HIM AND CALL HIM MEAN THINGS

As Theo talks, Howard simply cocked his head in response. Occasionally, it's forgotten that the admin is a simple bookkeeper. He generated wealth for Team Rocket and snapped his fingers to make gold appear, but his strength came from other sources. Howard Slayte was not strong. His golems were. Team Rocket was.

Thus the light of power shined through the admin's transparent body. It was his, but it did not come from him.

When the underboss mentions compatibility, Howard simply laughed, his voice echoing through the dark recesses of this alternate world. He starts walking after Regirock, his hat fluttering as he did so. After a moment, he turned to face his superior.

"Are you human, Theo Beckett?"

---

THEO BECKETT

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

Howard Slayte didn't wake up. He was rarely so lucky.

Instead, he floated with Makoto Kurumi and Naomi Sato . Shred , meanwhile, was nowhere to be found. Instead, Howard had Meltan. He'd take a Meltan. Yet still, the dream did not end, for the dreams of people had no conclusion. They would reach on and on into the vastness of the horizon.

Yet it seemed like the method to escape this chaotic hellscape was clear. If they all woke, then nothing could harm them. Yet to wake was to abandon the dreams that moved them forward.

"Hm." Howard picked up the two pictures off the floor, his eye flickering as he did so. Multiple universes in a multiverse on the brink of collapse. "No."

He let the two pages fall to the ground, before shaking his head.

"I refuse to let go of my dream. Not like this. I'll carry it into wakefulness, but I will not destroy it. If dreams vanish when the dreamer wakes, then I'll simply sleepwalk." Howard cocked his head, his eye looking for the Head Scientist he often collaborated with. "Nomi, I have a request."

He pursed his lips.

"How long can you hold things in the Unown Dimension? Items, I mean?"

---

Howard chillaxing, refuses to break his dream
Looks at the remaining pages from his library
Asks Nomi a question
PoV3DYqj

The drunken mind moved slowly, attempting to shift through memories in an attempt to communicate with this ghost.

"No, you met me but you never knew me. Why would you? I'm insignificant. But you?" He shook his head, eye wide and ecstatic. "You shine like the sun."

Howard fell to his knees. His hero was alive. Even after Bosch and Cooper had disappeared into the void, Kyle was still here. Kyle was alive. He was alive. The tears came quickly, and the admin wiped them from his still working eye. Even still, liquid fell from his marred one. Drunken tears fell freely.

"I always knew you'd come back. I had faith." He staggered to his feet. "I never stopped believing!"

His voice dripped with pride upon making that statement.

"And now that you're back, you can fix the region! You can solve everything! You can end the war!"

---

kyle lopez

People improve Pokemon. They allow them to fight better and live more fulfilling lives. The Electivire does so as Kyle injected it with power, which caused the earth to tremble and the large construct to fall over. Rocks rattled free and fell loose, and the golem's size diminished slightly as the quake continued.

Yet Regirock is alone. There is no person to improve its function, for it has already reached its zenith a thousand years prior. There's no human to give value to its struggle, nor is there anyone to activate an ability to charge it further.

So it meets the Earthquake with a Bulldoze. Fallen trees and scrapped buildings are systemically leveled and pressed into the earth, creating a flat terrain with little room to hide. In the background, Crumble floats about.

It has a role to play, but not here and not for this Regi.

Raising a colossal fist, the golem Locks On as it attempts to predict the Electivire's path. The Pokemon is too fast, and Regirock far too slow to reasonably get a grip on it. Rather than elect to play the Electric-type's game, Regirock elects to destroy the board. Dynergy coalesces in its fist, and it prepares to swing.

"WAIT!"

Someone steps into the clearing, clothing askew. His hat is askew. There's the faint smell of whiskey emanating from him, as if recently roused from a hangover. Through the dust and stone, Howard Slayte's eye widens in amazement.

"...Kyle?"

---

kyle lopez

There's a moment where the admin meets the underboss's gaze. There's an unspoken question, there. A query about Theo Beckett's loyalties. It's as if a bond of something beyond Team Rocket was threatening to form.

"What my underboss advises, I strive to accomplish." The admin closed his eye and bowed his head. "As you say."

He doesn't tell Theo that the release from Rocket Admin would be one of bliss.

The Pokeball is taken, and the moment is lost. The admin tossed it up into the air, and it cracked open. Regirock towered over the buildings in this phantasmal world, and any attempts from the Distortion World to sever it seemingly fail. The world doesn't seem to desire the golem's destruction.

It was, instead, celebrating its return. This was its home, after all, before its original trainer had disappeared into the bowels of this corrupted world.

"But I'm serious, Theo. There will come a day where I fall, and it will on Team Rocket to ensure these golems remain active. In the case where I fall, you all must continue my work to create a world without Eternatus."

At the mention of the Skeleton Gigantic's name, the golem twitches, before marching forward. There's something in the air, and the golem can sense it. Regirock's massive body scrapes against the fishie store, destroying it as it marches forward.

Towards its destiny.

Towards the closure that Katherine Fairburne owed it.

---

THEO BECKETT

Love. The word was a curse. Love was the greatest curse of all. It had marred Shred, it had marred Absinthe, and it was slowly but surely breaking every single member of Team Rocket as they were forced to choose between love and loyalty, death and duty. They were all learning that love was the death of duty.

It was better to make one's way through life unencumbered. It was objectively correct to omit love from one's life while the war waged on, and to continue marching forward until Howard and June reached their respective endings.

Yet he had tried that. His fiancée...

Stop.

"That's not-" He was forced to listen to her as they descended into the earth. Every criticism hurt like a knife wound twisted into his flesh. They were correct, yet he refused to fully integrate them into his soul. Acknowledging a flaw did not automatically correct that flaw. "You're-"

He almost said that she was good at rejecting everyone's help. The words almost fell from his lips.

A rung snapped. She fell. He knew it would happen. It had happened before, after all. Except instead of June, it had been someone else. The admin silently prayed that it didn't happen again. He couldn't stand another loop in this samsara. As darkness crushed down on them, he fell next to her.

Claustrophobia. Damn. Even their phobias mixed like oil and water. June's breath was panicked. He reached out and gave her hand a squeeze. Even if she couldn't gauge the space, she could gauge where he was. A faint light flickered to life. The wax from a Litwick dripped down onto sandstone.

"I'm right here." He squeezed again. "I've got you."

He took a step forward into a long antechamber. Phantom lights floated about, belonging to ghosts of long-dead kings and explorers that had come before.

"Just don't let go. It's just a few steps. Step with me, now.""

---

june sleigh ameena abadi

When Kyogre threatened to drown the world, it didn't do so quietly. In certain places, the water level still bulged in spite of the waxing and the waning of the moon and the shifting of the tides. The oceans did not so easily abate from their ceaseless swelling, even if Kyogre had entered a troubled slumber.

Team Rocket and the Pokémon League had made the bed with Kyogre. Now, it was on them to lie on it and fix what needed to be fixed. Given that the former had sentenced him to rebuilding Petalburg and the latter had spiked his rent due to another 'wartime tax increase', Howard was beginning to realize that if the world was to be righted, people needed to do it themselves.

Admittedly, 'beginning to realize' was a droll term. Howard had always known it. He just expected other people to do the work while he sipped pina coladas from a Sootopolan beach resort.

Alas.

"Ferries are down, y'know." He tells the young woman as she passed him by. He's leaning against a propped up log, and the pathways that connect this small town of logs and Corsola colonies. A suit that had clearly started the day well-pressed and pristine is now slightly rumpled with the jacket hoisted over the man's shoulder. "They'll be down until the end of the week."

His Aerodactyl eyed the Johtoian curiously, her sole functioning eye making a perfect combination with her trainer's eyepatch. He grinned wryly.

"You picked a bad time to travel."

---

Alina Hamako

The colossus groaned when it heard the response. A dull, low sound that caused gravel to rattle on the ground and knock people to their feet. It was a sound made by something inhuman, without even an iota of biological life beating in an artificial form. When it responded to Uxie, it was slow and labored.

⠊ ⠁⠍ ⠗⠕⠽⠁⠇
⠊ ⠅⠊⠇⠇ ⠞⠕ ⠎⠑⠗⠧⠑

It thought of little. It dreamed of little. It was a machine that fought solely because that had been its way for thousands of years. When the war between Team Rocket and the Pokemon League began, Regirock's ruins were revealed. There, it killed many to serve its directive.

Two years later, it killed again.

Three years later, and it was here.

Those directives have not changed. With a flash, it cut communication with the pixie so that it could begin its attack in earnest. With its attack dodged again, the golem switched tactics with the help of its trainer. Howard looked up at the golem, then fingered the band on his wrist.

"That's what you want?" Howard asked it, before chuckling. "If you insist."

The band glowed a cruel magenta as the admin prepared to shoulder the sin of Eternatus's power. His lips parted into a weary sigh as Regirock Dynamaxed, rapidly swelling in size until it was comparable to a massive, moving mountain. Each limb was an interstate, each contusion of stone was a building.

And as it Dynamaxed, a wave of raw Dynergy knocked everyone backwards.

---

Hideo Kino