The admin's fist clenched with rage.

"Because Derek Hoffman is one person. When Regirock's attack fell from the sky and leveled Petalburg, how many people do you think it killed? How many corpses did Team Rocket make when we stormed your city and put it to the torch?" More than nineteen, to be sure. That was the admin's count after sacking Dewford. Now, he couldn't even begin to count. "Forget everyone else that died on that battlefield. All I've seen are dirges for him and your precious Composed."

A spark of Dynergy erupted from his forefinger, and the admin grunted in a mixture of annoyance and frustration. He had worded his statement wrong, but it hardly mattered.

"Derek's death is a crime, but if I hear another word about how he was gone too soon while ignoring everyone else, I will rip down Oldale's defenses and put the city to the torch. Both sides have forgotten the mountain of corpses we've stacked while remembering the few." The admin stood, cape fluttering slightly as he did so. "So."

He looked down at the Gym Leader and his Ralts, eye twinkling with malignance. Hideo had done nothing wrong. He was on the right side. The League was faulty, but it was a government during wartime.

And yet...

"This war is not your fault. You are not to blame. I charge you, instead, with the sin of caring. I charge you with the sin of turning a dead man into a symbol while trampling on the sins of the slain." The ground began to shake, and chips of stone began to rattle across the earth as the vibrations increased. "Are you guilty?"

---

Hideo Kino

• player/ooc name: magnetic
• character tags: Althus Rex howard slayte
• dropped characters' tags (if applicable): lol
• ic posts for characters: Howard Rex
• are characters in directories?: Y
• any notes/comments:

"Tsk." Instinctively, the admin took a step backward, cursing himself for stepping back and balking in the eyes of a predator. Yet there's no shame in quavering before Lugia. She was the queen of an entire walk of life. Her rule over Cillian's menagerie was unchallenged. "Damn."

Another step back. The admin was not a craven, to hide under a rock until the storm blew over. He had grown beyond that.

It was not cowardice to step backward. It was bravery to step forward after stepping back.

Step. So he did.

Though it ended up being wholly unnecessary. Hitoshi Inoue had sided with him, and even Lugia herself had decried the Harbinger's decision as nothing more than the folly of someone unequivocally guided by love. She, more than any other Legendary Pokemon, knew the weight of love. As poisoned and noxious as it might have been.

"Thanks, Lugia. I'd rather not fight you. Crushing an ant is hardly worth the time. Crushing two, less so."

Despite the Pressure holding him down, the admin closed the distance between himself and the underboss. He had no need to balk from the cold. Ten months of exposure from Regice was enough for the admin to consider this Blizzard nothing more than a modest breeze. After sneezing, though, the admin made a note to bring better attire next time.

"I'm sorry, Cillian. You don't deserve this, but..." The admin shouldered the underboss, before stepping away. "...we can't lose you too. We've lost one Quinn today."

He trudged off.

"We're done." The admin shouted. "We're falling back, Hitoshi!"

Good riddance. Yet as they trudged off, the admin made a note of the tears freezing to his face.

---

Cillian Quinn Tempest Quinn Hitoshi Inoue

"Then everything is lost." He said, not believing that truth for even a moment. He shook his head once, then twice, then thrice. "Because it means that we've forgotten yesterday while reaching for tomorrow. If I've lost humanity, than that means you have too."

He met her gaze as he walked down the monument to pick up his belt. Pokeballs jingled from it as he did so. Regice's was beginning to scuff and fray. Regirock's was new, but its Pokeball was unnecessary. It would receive a new one, soon.

"Slowly but surely, this world is ruining us. It's ruining you and Tsubaki and Eddie and Navy and Isaac. None of us are the same as when this all started, and by the time it's over..." Howard didn't even want to think about it. He and Navy would be dead, most likely. Tsubaki would grow up dysfunctional, as would Eris. Eddie and Isaac would simply persist. "...well."

He smiled.

"You'll have to call their humanity into question. But I won't accept a criticism of my heart and will from you, little lady." He turned to her. "Not when you can't even save a knight and his princess."

---

Eris Halla

Bang! Shatter.

Ice cascaded down, tinkling against the ground as the bullet shot through nothing but ice crystals. Where the admin once stood was nothing but a memory of ice and snow. Several barriers shattered in rapid succession, and for a brief moment, the deputy, his steed, and his Skarmory were winning the battle.

Illuminate cut through the storm, guiding the way forward. It was a beacon of hope in a battlefield that was devoid of nothing but life. Regice stood proud, one barrier flickering, ensuring that the golem remained Dynamaxed. As long as it remained so, this fight would not be fair.

Something shifted in the snow. A silhouette. A one-eyed phantom grinned at the sheriff from the depths of the storm.

"You'll take no more steps forward." Howard's voice rang in the deputy's ear as he rode forward. "I learned this one from you."

While Montgomery had lunged forward, desperate to connect with the Dynamaxed Pokemon before him, it had left him blind to his surroundings. From the snowstorm, several automatons and dolls lunged forward.

"Consider this..."

Cracks of light erupted from their shells as the Pokemon prepared to explode.

"...a blast from the past."

Beep. Beep.

BEEPBEEPBEEP.

KABOOM!

---

Montgomery James

After a long moment, several sparks of electricity flung from the appliance before it spoke again.

my SISTER I would be honored to consume fine BEVERAGE with a pretty LADY Such as YOURself!!!

With an innocent click, the washing machine's door unclasped and dangled open, awaiting the bourbon. Bringing a ghost with alcohol was completely and utterly insane, but given that Absinthe's boss was now on the roof and groaning in pain, it was likely wise to give into the machine's demand.

On the roof, meanwhile, the admin's eye flickered open.

"Fuuuuuuuuuuuck..." His eye wandered across the shingled roof, before landing on a lawn mower.

Wait.

A lawn mower on the roof?

Uh oh.

---

Absinthe Blackwood

A long moment passed where the admin regarded the Gym Leader. Then, Howard snorted in amusement.

"No." He shook his head, eye boring into the Ralts like a drill marring stone. "But I had to ask. In the chance that you had agreed, lives would've been spared. If I can spare a life with but a sentence, I'd do it. Since you declined, we'll have to seize Oldale by force."

He had negotiated with PENELOPE LIVY behind closed doors under a masquerade of the concept known as 'truth'. The admin believed in it. An iota of him believed that the Coveted did as well, back when her profession had been reporting on the news.

Now? She was rotting. What sliver of integrity was collapsing in on itself like a sandcastle build on mud.

"The moment that the Pokemon League had decided to seize Sootopolis, they gave away Petalburg. Your future was decided by a government that prioritized one city over the other. That's not their fault. They stopped the apocalypse, but they traded a group of lives for another. Regirock appearing only sealed our victory."

It was somewhere nearby. The admin hadn't placed it into a Pokeball yet, so it typically wandered the warfront, relying on the Odd Regi Statue within its breast to prevent the League from capturing it.

"Why do you treat the death of DEREK HOFFMAN like some abhorrent crime?"

---

Hideo Kino

"We are cogs in a machine that incorporates all evil into itself. The only thing we have is each other."

Yet he was far more willing to toss Temp aside than Cillian was. Cillian loved him. Howard hated him. Even now, months later, the Ultra Deep Sea was not a wound that abated without a mass of scar tissue to protect it. Temp had looked him in the eye and told him that if push came to shove, he would damn Howard Slayte again.

There was no world in which Temp prioritized another life over Cillian Quinn. There was no reason for Howard to follow that dogma.

Yet was this what Rocket had become? A group of interchangeable parts, according to THEO BECKETT's belief? As long as there were those who wished for more than they were given, Team Rocket would live on. Did that mean they had to damn every failure to the scrap heap?

Was that why bryan delarosa languished in prison? Why Tempest Quinn's death was acceptable?

"If you step near that cocoon, you won't come out. You will die, and Team Rocket needs you more than it needs him. Rocket Beasts are cheap. Underbosses are not. He said it with the flippancy of a man who had made a Rocket Beast with a snap of a finger. Hitoshi Inoue could hate him for the proclamation, but it was true. "Cillian."

He barred the way forward, and Regirock stood with him.

"Take another step forward, and I'll beat you bloody. I can't win, but I can stall you." The admin's eye flickered. "Isn't that right..."

He looked up towards the shadow-crusted sky.

"...Lugia?"

---

Cillian Quinn Tempest Quinn Hitoshi Inoue

"Hm." The admin raised an eyebrow from beneath a helmet and visor at the child that approached him. "Hideo."

The Gym Leader needed no introduction. Compared to his colleagues, he was an anomaly. Old enough to fight in a war, too young to actually have an opinion on the matter. It was a bemusing sentiment, but the admin knew from Eris Halla that children were not fools. They were just as competent as adults in a world where the strength of a trainer did not rely on the might of their body.

Yet he wasn't too young. The youth was growing lanky. Even Eris was, now that he thought about it. Soon they'd be adults, given a few years. That assumed there was still enough childhood innocence to wilt away for there to be a transition from childhood to adulthood.

A tragic feeling, that.

"I'd rather not fight you, if I'm being honest. There's a good chance you'll win." The admin said while sitting on a boulder. Old corpses littered the route, dusty from disuse. "Any chance you'll just give me Oldale, like the League gave me Petalburg?"

Howard chewed on his lip, feeling shame.

"That was rude. I apologize."

---

Hideo Kino | ARMOR

On the reverse side of the world, the distorted replica of Petalburg was unmarred. There were no mountains that formed valleys in once verdant fields. There was no war. No destruction. It was Petalburg, but a version in which certain colors were incorrect. Time did not flow. Space did not expand.

Nothing worked.

Yet before their eyes, the city begged for destruction. Certain buildings sagged under the weight, and replicas of mountains flickered into existence before vanishing again. The Distortion World wished for replication, yet could not provide it.

A set piece was needed.

"Dammit." The admin groaned from a nearby wall as he stood. He straightened his hat, before looking around the building that gravity pulled him towards. A pet store catering to Magikarps and other Water-type Pokemon stared back at him, and the admin looked around until he saw Theo. "Shit. You're here, too?"

Several ledgers floated in the air between them.

"So this is the Distortion World, then? The place that Walsh wants to invade?" Howard put a hand on his hip. declan walsh asked, and it was like reality obeyed. "Mark that off the list, then."

---

THEO BECKETT

"Mine does." By this point, the admin was too resigned to hide his true beliefs. He and Cillian had argued over every aspect of morality and obligation that Team Rocket expected, yet both of them were still here. Here, they would continue to stay. "But don't worry, I'm not leaving when Eternatus is dealt with. I'll still fight with you."

He raised an eyebrow, bemused at the underboss's reaction. He chuckled and shook his head.

"You'd kill me, otherwise. I can't beat you, Cillian. Even if I did, you'd crawl out of the Border and ruin my life. You Quinns are impossible to kill." He looked over the map of Hoenn with a tender expression. "But my purpose will have been served. If Eternatus and Necrozma are dead, and the world is repaired, it doesn't matter which side wins. League. Rocket. Two words, and they each describe humanity."

Even if he could beat Cillian, it wouldn't matter. There were too many strong trainers, and the admin was sick of living a life full of fear.

"Do you know why Registeel impresses me?"

A whisper of a long-gone woman echoed through dusty halls.

"Don't worry about me, it's but a flesh wound."

---

Cillian Quinn

Thud. Thud. Thud. Absinthe kicked at the washing machine with the frustration of a thousand suns. Each one dented the washing machine slightly more, and the admin simply watched, before snapping a few photos to send to his friends. He didn't tell Absinthe what he was doing, on the off chance that she'd look at him in surprise at the prospect of him having friends.

Howard was ninety percent sure that would happen. As the chemist knocked the washing machine onto its side, the admin silently corrected it to ninety-five percent. Maybe a hundred, on a good day.

Though Howard supposed a good day was reliant on his perspective.

"You done vandalizing washing machines? Want me to swing by the bar and get your bat?" The admin's tone was so dry it could be mistaken for stone. He pulled out a phone. "I have Grigori's number in here somewhere..."

Yet before he could text Grigori, the washing machine stood up. Static blared from some speaker in the machine's body.

DeAR ARCEUS in UNOVA that is DISGUSTING CLOTHING woMAn take a shower and GO TO HELL!

The washing machine's door opened and a Hydro Pump missed Absinthe and shot towards Howard, blasting him onto the roof of the house.

"Ughhhhhh..."

---

Absinthe Blackwood

"If that's all, then." The admin stood, dusting his palms as he did so. His skin crawled at the proclamations of his colleagues, and of jayden cross 's warning. He had dug his grave, and it was time to lie in it. "I've got work to do."

And a prison break to plan. The admin silently thought, lightning another cigarette as he looked towards the building's exit. bryan delarosa had not been forgotten, and there was much work to be done. Inhale. Drag. Inhale. Drag. He let the cheap cannabis calm his nerves at the prospect of punishment.

It did little to abate his nerves.

"Cities to rebuild, money to find, people to tax. Budget cuts and reallocations and whatnot. Boss Monroe will surely be kind enough to open Kanto's treasury to me." The admin chuckled, smoke pouring from his mouth as he did so. "Have fun in Ultra Space!"

Put on a front and smile. Pretend that this meeting wasn't a complete disaster. Find Ting-lu. Kill it. Discern Ruination. Prevent it. The God General and fern delaney could dig into Ultra Space as much as they desired. Dead worlds could provide only so much, but Hoenn had millennia of history.

This region rested on the shoulders of giants, after all.

Plus, I have a Regieleki to catch." june sleigh would not hold it for long, regardless of the affection that the admin held for her. It belonged with its kin. with him. Shred had damned him by playing that card, but if the Rocket Beast wanted him to play his hand early, he would capitalize on it. "Glory to Rocket."

His footsteps clicked on the floor, echoing as the admin left the room. Only then would the admin allow himself to rage.

---

Howard gets up and leaves, worried about the Walsh glare
GOD I HATE MONROE
BACK TO WORK POG