Josh Devlin would tell Andrea Vaneau that this bear's owner was a so-so rider who relied far too much on the Gym Leader footing the bills whenever they went out to eat above the raceway he ran.

Fortunately for Doug's owner, and for Doug himself, Josh Devlin was not here. Remembering that Howard had lost that race was a wound that would never fully heal. It was best to avoid rubbing salt in the wound, so the bear simply grumbled and shook his head as he led Andrea and Ogerpon down a slope of Mt. Pyre.

Thick trees covered the area, obscuring the sky.

"Finally, I've found a set of statues to preserve!" Despite Hideo Kino's best efforts, there were many Loyal Three statues hidden in Hoenn's nooks and crannies. The clearing that Andrea, Ogerpon, and Doug entered was full of the things. They were stacked to Andrea's head, and a hatted fellow sat on top of them, clearly pleased with his actions. "These are gonna look great in my collection!"

After a moment, the hatted fellow noticed Andrea and her band of misfits.

"Hel-" Howard blinked once, recognizing the PokeManiac from the dreamlike prison. "Toukon!"

---

Andrea Vaneau

They played with chemicals mixed under duress. They danced with elements that should not be.

Hoenn's greatest enemy was itself. There was a time when the war between Team Rocket and the Pokémon League had been decided with ordinary Pokémon and the engines of war were Mega Evolution. That time had passed. Now they waltzed with giants and alternate realities and thought themselves kings.

This chalice was poisoned, and yet it was prudent to sup upon it in order to preserve the foundational principles of the world.

"You always see too much." There would come a day where the Visionary would see too far, and forget to look around at the world she was supposed to be seeing for. "Though now, we need that sight more than ever."

He needed it more than ever. If Nomi could see beyond the veil and return Hoenn's legacy to its rightful place, then he would not scorn her.

"Yet Ultra Space is only the first step. A dozen more must be taken. With Sootopolis submerged, we have lost much." Kyogre being used as a weapon of war caused his eye to twitch. "It'll be rebuilt, Nomi. You'll have a home again."

He assumed her house was drenched and ruined, given that the city had been drowned in seawater.

"And as for the Pokémon League...?" Howard inclined his head. "What do you see in their future?"

---

Naomi Sato

"Probably. Let the waking deal with it. They've got Underboss Quinn on watch. If something is happening, he'll resolve the issue. With Alba and Fenelle backing him up, I see little reason to panic." If there was anything the admin could rely on, it was Cillian Quinn bashing heads together. Howard took the books with a murmured word of gratitude. "I haven't read this one in... six years? I'm just brushing up."

Everything in this library was a piece of information that Howard Slayte had consumed over his life, organized into years with the methodical nature that only a historian could utilize. Large swaths of it were dedicated to archaeological findings, and an even larger swath was dedicated to language.

Ironic. That had been his specialization before he had learned how to communicate with giants.

"Cresselia is well within its right to stop our ascent. We are well within our right to seize it. We are the aggressors, and thus we will see if the indomitable spirit of man can overwhelm a spirit that dances on the moon."

He raised his Meltan glass to ameena abadi and Makoto Kurumi , before frowning and draining the rest of the Meltan-adjacent liquid.

"However, I'm pretty sure I'm drunk. About thirty percent." Howard placed Meltan on the table and fed it a Registeel-shaped fork. He poured another glass of whiskey and drained it. "Hm."

He frowned again.

"Forty percent."

---

Makoto Kurumi ameena abadi

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

The fact that Theo Beckett, an engineer of Team Rocket's seizure of Kanto was going to get fooled by a fishie store was something that would've likely destroyed any iota of credibility that Team Rocket had or would ever have. Luckily for the universe, that fact remained buried.

For now.

"It is." Howard confessed as he hopped from the fish store towards the ground. His eye flicked from the underboss to Regirock's Pokeball, before crossing his arms. It was a cheap container, shined and scuffed and held with little regard. "You got Regirock, splendid."

He did not turn to take it from the underboss. Instead, the archaeologist looked around, peering through distorted windows that reflected twisted visages back towards the admin. In one, Howard's original body stared back. That window, he pointedly ignored.

"How do we get back?"

---

THEO BECKETT

It wasn't fair.

There were only so many people in the world that knew that Aerodactyls weren't actually dragons, and Howard was with two of them. Not only that, but both born from exalted bloodlines while Howard's greatest ancestor was some conqueror from the steppes a thousand years prior. It felt like, somewhere, Howard had lost out on the genetic lottery.

Alas. That didn't stop Shirley from cozying up with Roy. The Rocket Admin's childhood friend was essentially a second, more abrasive Howard to the resurrected fossil.

Luckily, owning an Applin made Howard Slayte an honorary Draconid for the day. It was the only small comfort that the admin held as he led the way down a crack in the earth from the Three Days War, which led to an ancient, preserved village.

"Creighton told me about this place when I came back to lecture in Rustboro, actually." He blabbed to the people behind him as he picked his way down the crevice with remarkable ease. "Back when he taught my elective, the bastard tried to give be a B minus."

Truly, Professor Creighton was a heinous man. Gravel clattered against stone as they reached the bottom.

"Have either of you been down here, before?"

---

freya morningstar Roy Aker

Somewhere in Howard's soul, he knew there was no body. If Yveltal had left anything behind, it would be stone. When that cocoon opened, it would be reduced to rubble.

The admin initially planned to deny Cillian's request. There was no use in salvaging a body. Hell, there was still no use in returning for the Rocket Beast's body. Yet Howard cannot force Cillian to bend to his whims. Nor would it be just to. Ultimately, Hitoshi is the one who sways his mind.

Ahiki. Older brother.

"..." Howard allowed his voice to compose itself, before speaking. "We'll wait a week for Yveltal to stabilize. You can go after. Hitoshi."

His voice is as hard as rock and as cold as ice.

"Cut his restraints."

---

Hitoshi Inoue Cillian Quinn

The bear snorted at Andrea, before shaking his head and turning to the ogre.

"Little ogre, why is your partner dressed like a shaman? The clans from my homeland often dressed like her to ward off evil spirits." What that said about the Diamond and Pearl clans was better off unanswered, but it was luckily a secret that only those who studied Hisuian history would understand. Howard had a few books in his office, and Yuina Higashi specialized in the field. "Oh well."

Doug began to dig a deep hole, before scraping the statue fragments into the pit. Mud quickly filled the hole, and the statue fragments were lost to history.

Doug snorted with derision, before shaking his head.

"Now that I've found you, I'd like to enlist your help. I seem to have lost my trainer, and he has a tendency to collect rare things." The Ursaluna's eye gleamed. "I worry that he might try to collect one of these statues to use as a doorstopper, or something equally absurd."

Doug sat on his haunches, giving Andrea and Ogerpon a way to climb up the bear's side.

"Come."

---

Andrea Vaneau

He had been good at this, once. Yet as Hitoshi sobs and weeps over a life long lost, all the admin can feel is a begrudging sense of apathy. He had accepted Temp's death as they had left the Border behind. He had acknowledged and respected it, because Tempest Quinn had died in ensuring that his husband would live.

A man who would have drowned the world in blood if his husband had died was now ensuring that his husband would live on. Tempest Quinn was a cruel man.

"When you kill someone, Hitoshi, you kill them because it's personal. Stabbing someone in the heart and watching them die is more intimate than knives in the dark. You've stacked corpses high, Beast Inoue. Don't deride me because you have a view from the top of that mountan."

It was harsh. This was the extent of Admin Fox's capriciousness. Sometimes, the man had to die in order to allow the rest of the body to keep marching forward. If Howard had a soul resting somewhere within this body, it was a mauled, desperate thing. Every step forward turned another iota of it into fuel.

He'd run out, one day. Yet that day was not now. Sighing, he took a seat next to Cillian and bowed his head in apology.

"I am a coward. Yet your husband wanted you to live, Cillian. Don't deny that affection in order to join him in an early grave." He lowered his hat over his eye, so that his face was obscured from view. "Because even if he was a violent beast and tried to kill me back in the Ultra Deep Sea, he had a dream that you would live."

His face screwed up beneath the hat.

"Don't deny him that."

Only then did tears begin to fall.

---

Hitoshi Inoue Cillian Quinn

Two golems? Howard's eyebrows disappeared into his hair as he looked at Grigori.

"They're in Petalburg, shifting rubble and helping with reconstruction. They're not on me, today." He admitted shamelessly, before looking straight ahead. With Howard limited to deskwork under the God General's orders, he wasn't technically supposed to be out hunting monkeys while pretending everything was dori. "I could make a call, get Regirock Dynamaxed and march it out here. It'd probably kill us as it marches, though."

When a Pokemon grew to the size of a mountain, there wasn't much room for subtlety. Regirock and Regice were cudgels, designed to break things with impunity. They were not scalpels, to excise a threat. With the three of them mucking around in the brush, a Max Stonefall had a high chance to kill both Howard and Grigori.

As for Shred, who knew. Orichalcum was a fantasy metal, and it wasn't like the Rocket Beast was going to give him a free chance to study it. It'd likely cost Howard an arm and a leg, like two hundred thousand dollars.

"Grigori's right. It could be anything. I don't think they're illusions, but death means nothing anymore. They could be copies, alternate versions, or whoever knows what. Let's just kill them and drop their bodies in concrete."

Meanwhile, the Loyal Three stood around a campfire, laughing at each other and howling in amusement. Okidogi did a dance that reminded the admin of Andrea Vaneau's Ogerpon. He grunted, and got to his knees.

"I can get them with a Hyper Beam from here."

---

Shred Grigori Sokolov

"A true warrior doesn't need a sword, Thomas."

Though Thomas's answer was perfectly respectable. It scratched an itch in the admin's memory that few had ever bothered to scratch. A distant memory of dusty groves and a garden rang in the archaeologist's ear. The answer was acceptable. It was proof that humanity had not yet failed.

Their speceis would continue to triumph.

"But you fought for your beliefs, and you won. I can't fault you for that." Howard's eye shut behind his visor. "Hm."

A decision was made.

"Rustboro."

---

Thomas Benoit

The alternative. Howard's lip twitched in amusement.

"It is." He inclined his head. He was justified in killing Montgomery. The road that led him to this precise moment had been paved by that man. "That didn't stop me from trying that alternative."

Apathy. Detachment. A position that required no care at all.

"It worked for a bit, after letting my fiancée go. Until she crept up on me."

This is, ultimately, Howard's dreamscape. He and Ameena sat in his library, reading his books, and drinking his dream alcohol. It was Howard's domain. Naturally, he could tell when a fox was slinking about. Especially when that fox was a member of Nebula. It took a Fox to know a fox, after all.

"Come out, Makoto." Howard said in a bored voice. "And bring me that book on Johtoan metalworking when you do. Oh, and the Hoennian one, too. Should be to your left."

If he was going to be dreaming for the next several hours, he wanted to catch up on his forging research. See if he could figure out the historical process used to cast a giant out of an alloy belonging to Necrozma. How had Registeel been made? Why? More important, had its construction been taxed by the civilization that built it?

Plop! Whiskey splashed everywhere, and Howard turned to his glass.

"...Meltan?"

---

ameena abadi Makoto Kurumi Shred

Two hundred thousand dollars. That was how much money Howard had given Shred to go and deal with the Toxic Chain. Howard had no clue where the money had gone, but he was beginning to suspect that he would never see it again. Unfortunately, he couldn't blame Shred for failing to deal with the problem, given the fact that they had been abducted and placed in a fucking spaceship.

Still, two hundred thousand dollars! The admin missed that money dearly, and it was gone forever.

The trio sat on a ridge lined with bushes. Around the admin's head were two more strapped branches to make it look as though Howard Slayte had become one with the foliage.

"Yeah, I can see them." Howard chewed his lip in annoyance, his blood boiling as his eye fell upon the Munkidori. Apparently it had caused quite the scuffle at Petalburg, though Howard had been too busy climbing a walking mountain to take note of it. "They're all there."

He took the orichalcum binoculars and passed them to the Rocket Beast to his left. Between himself, Grigori, and Shred, those three fuckers wouldn't know what hit them.

"See them?" He pointed slightly to the left. "Down in that clearing."

---

Shred Grigori Sokolov