His eye flicked to Naomi Sato . He regarded the Head Scientist for a moment, before returning to deal with Shred. She was an ally. Yet as the secret grew , so too did its ability to leak. Shred had already upset the chess board, though. He was so hardhanded, and his ascension had done little to curb his ego.

He was becoming a liability. As their foreheads met, the admin's voice turned low, so the others could hear little.

"Just like you fucked up with Kyurem, Shred? I didn't see you dragging the Light Stone back with your head held high. You fought ferociously, you fought bravely, you fought nobly. For the first time in your life, you fought for something other than yourself, you piece of fucking shit. And you know what?"

Howard's flesh was not warm. It was cold, like stone and ice, sapping heat away from the Boundless to continue its own kinetic motion. Dynergy thrummed faintly beneath the surface.

"You lost."

The words are cooed with the softness of a gentle caress, meant exclusively for Shred and Shred alone.

"So while you were beating up little girls and cashing my checks, I was conquering cities and seizing world-enders. Even your successes are fuck-ups, and my failures are not. That's why you'll always be Shred Zeppelin."

It was why he'd always be ■■■■ ■■■■■■, even if that name had been scrubbed from the annals of history.

Nomi and Tempest Quinn drag the admin out of his stupor. Howard leaned back, taking a drag of his cigarette. He coughed into his fist, before nodding to Temp in agreement.

"Naturally. We will seize her golem and use it to locate the rest. No muss, no fuss." Howard said loudly, now speaking for everyone in the room again. He meandered back to his chair, whistling as he did so to contain his rage. When this was over, he'd expedite Shred's reunion with his old body.

As his body returned to freezing, the admin took a seat at next to his fellow admins.

He would deal with Shred after the meeting.

---

Yaps to Shred exclusively, before speaking up for the rest of Rocket regarding Regieleki. Plans to kick Shred's ass when the meeting is over. Returns to sit back with his admin buddies and play Flappy Pidgey.

There was a phrase uttered by the truly deranged, but was known by a scant few.

Instead of simply taking Howard's left hand...

And taking Howard's right hand...

June simply wrapped her hands around his throat and completed the circuit.

"ZZZZZZZZZZZAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" The sensation was like being thrown into a bathrub with a toaster or having a Rotom possess the microwave in Team Rocket's breakroom. A guttural shriek left the admin's lips, which sounded suspiciously like he was being zapped with Miyako's taser.

June was a brutal degenerate. Who distracted a cop with nudity? This was something Shred would've pulled in order to avoid a speeding ticket. Maybe Violet had chosen her for that reason.

After several deep breaths, Howard let out a dull groan.

"Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck..."

---

june sleigh Miyako Noguchi

Shred was going to ruin everything. Here, in front of the entire upper command. If Howard didn't kill him, Grigori Sokolov would.

Shred could lap on his blood until he drowned in it.

"Hmph." The admin turned from the Rocket Beast and slowly walked around the table, passing Elisabeth Fiorelli's empty chair as he regarded the open door, torn off its hinges in a fit of childish rage. The reek of nicotine and Shred's ungodly stench made his frown deepen. "And yet failed to capture it. How capable, you are."

Regieleki was already his. The admin did not believe in fate, but June would hand over her giant by the time everything was over. He would have three, and two would remain.

But first, he would lie.

"Beast Conrad loaned a statue to me. Its pattern lights up when a giant is in our plane. A fourth dot activated recently, and Regidrago remains out of reach." It's a lie, but a lie that priam conrad and Cillian Quinn can support. They've both seen the statue, and now it sits within Regirock as a genuine heart. "I keep an eye on things that interest me, and Walsh tasked me with Regirock's seizure."

He turned to face Shred and leaned in close, letting the king place his poisoned dagger at the admin's jugular.

"Just as he will entrust me with the rest."

---

"Assets?" Howard raised an eyebrow. "She's broke. She doesn't have-"

Miyako licking her lips was wholly unnecessary. Unfortunately, it was also the bridge to jump from financial matters to perversion. The admin's face flushed slightly, before slowly turning to June.

She did, actually.

"You fucking degenerate!" He hissed at her. "Does she even like chicks? Do you even like chicks?"

---

Miyako Noguchi june sleigh

"I think I've seen those in a Kalosian museum, actually. I'll make a few calls when I get the chance." Howard scratched his chin, and then coughed into his fist. "Wait. Waitwaitwaitwaitwait..."

Record scratch. The archaeologist looked towards his colleague.

"Fifteen years? Arceus above, man." He almost felt bad for the Crown Prince for the first time in his life. Remiel was a scoundrel and the medieval equivalent of a trust fund baby, but nobody deserved such an abhorrent fate. "That's rough."

Howard was sat for a spell, before pointing.

"HE'S WEARING VIVILLON SOCKS!!!"

Much too loud.

---

Remiel Calcifet

Shred's wrappers were haunting Howard a year later. Yet if he could escape Top Champion with a future Rocket Beast in the passenger seat and a dead body in the trunk, he could deal with some parking officer. What he couldn't deal with was this one being the one to put him out of 20,000 PD.

He hadn't been bled that badly since buying those funeral urns at auction, which now unceremoniously sat on his coffee table. It hurt even more that they were likely replicas.

"Afternoon, offic-" He cut off as June handed him an envelope with all of the registration information for his vehicle. "Wait, you know each other?"

He gave June a murderous glare.

"Please, my driving is immaculate. Kyle praised it, you know. I just got distracted, officer. I apologize." He slipped the registration information through the window. "It can't be as bad as whatever she did for you to pull her over."

His eye flicked to June, before leaning in to Miyako.

"What'd June do?"

---

june sleigh Miyako Noguchi

Dead children. He thought of Eris Halla. His hands gripped the controller with a fervor. He wasn't as strong as Parker, so the plastic hardly creaked. Rather than let his rage boil over, he simply put the controller down on the Regicouch and rubbed his face.

This world consisted of human beings that were comprised of meat. Yet that was an unromantic view of the world that stripped the humanity from them.

Team Rocket consisted of scum. They all deserved to die with few exceptions. If Howard could, he would've razed Sootopolis to the ground, crumpled the submarine like a tin can, and set Petalburg to the torch. Yet he would not act on that deed. It was an act of cowardice tempered by something else.

"We're not good for anything." He took a deep breath of his cigarette and looked up at the ceiling, silently praying that the smoke detector didn't work. "Team Rocket is the worst thing to have ever happened to this world in the past century. I'm not gonna justify the shit I've done. I killed hundreds of thousands in Mossdeep because I was too slow."

If he didn't make it to the end of this war because he died on some battlefield somewhere, that would likely be poetic justice. It was better than the crushing guilt of destroying a city and razing a region.

"You're a complete piece of shit, Parker, but you're also Nomi's contact lens. You let her see." He tapped the cigarette against the Regicouch, letting a dusting of ash fall against the floor. "And without you, she'll probably lose it."

Deep breaths.

"Want a hug?"

---

parker jones

"Hm?" Howard looked at the Pokeball and saw his reflection in the shining surface. It distorted as he spun the ball in his hand. The face that reflected back didn't look like his own. "Ah."

He handed the ball back.

"I see."

He steepled his hands together.

"But would you lose?"

---

Eris Halla

"You are pretty strong." Howard smirked as he scratched his chin, deep in thought. "You could beat me, I bet."

He acted like it was a big accomplishment, even though Regice was unceremoniously stuffed into a nearby industrial freezer.

"But..." Howard raised an eyebrow at her. Dewford didn't have a Power Spot due to Navy's wariness of Dynamax, but there was one on the nearby Route 105. "If I Dynamaxed Regice..."

A moment of silence.

"...would it be stronger than you?"

---

Eris Halla

Howard had learned it from cosmic brownies. Nomi had taught him that cosmic brownies weren't a food, but a brand one could buy at any supermarket with any self-respecting sugar addiction aisle.

"Not if I have anything to say about it. Or Nomi. We're gonna make things right. For this world." He fiddled with the joystick. "And for you too."

Maybe he wasn't as poor as he thought. Not that he had been born poor. He had simply squandered his opportunity for easily wealth and living in exchange for the opportunity to chase his dream. He had chased it across the world, but he had ultimately come up short. Archaeology had been his everything.

His family had tried to crush it out of him. They failed.

His friends had tried to convince him that it was folly. They failed.

His fiancée had left offered him her hand or his dream. He let her slip away.

Team Rocket was trying to destroy that aspect of him in favor of a gear. They were succeeding.

Archaeology had been his star, and he had tried to reach for it. Yet his hand had slipped in his arrogance, and he had fallen back down to earth. Maybe that was why he was playing Sonic Adventure 2 with a terrorist. Maybe that was why he enjoyed playing Sonic Adventure II with a terrorist.

Parker's hand slipped. The Regicouch beeped profanities at her ineptitude. Howard grabbed the ring.

"That wasn't fair. Run it again."

---

parker jones

The admin's shadow, meanwhile, was not his own. Instead, it was 'his' own.

The shadow of his old body followed the sculpted form of the new. It mimed his actions perfectly, and the light in this realm was so shoddy and unreliable that it was difficult to discern. Much like his current body, his old one's shadow still wore his iconic hat. Yet it stalked him.

A memory of a form that no longer existed.

"The Border was never meant to be accessible to living beings, so why did it shape itself into a form traversable by the living? That makes no sense." Human beings were meant to explore the world and seize it all for themselves. That was their will and their right. Yet it caused them to ignore the fact that the world had not been built for them.

Why, then, should this one be traversible?

"I suspect it's just returning to the form it once had before we marched in and ruined it."

The admin's shadow lengthened as he walked behind Adrian.

"I wonder if we'll find bryan delarosa's spirit, here. I heard he passed during the battle in Sootopolis."

---

Adrian Malcolm

They protected things they cared about. Their Pokémon. This world. Each other. Their universe was allegedly dooming all others to a multiversal trash heap. Howard had made a vow to Nomi to live, but he had also vowed to help her realize her vision of a Hoenn that would last into eternity.

When had her dream become his? Had they ever believed in anything different? If Yuri and Karin looked upon their daughter now, would they weep at what she wanted to achieve, or would they blossom with pride?

She speaks three names. Fourteen dots turn to face her as Naomi Sato becomes deemed worthy of notice by giants that had shaped the world in its dawn age.

⠥⠝⠙⠑⠗⠛⠗⠕⠥⠝⠙

⠇⠕⠎⠞ ⠊⠝ ⠁⠝⠕⠞⠓⠑⠗ ⠺⠕⠗⠇⠙

"Regieleki is caught." Howard begrudgingly admitted. It was a secret he shared with both Boundless, though Shred's actions would not reveal themselves for some time. "I will get it back. I will seize it, but don't utter a word of its capture. Its position is... perilous."

An understatement, but an appropriate one.

"Registeel is underground. Regidrago is still in Land Hoenn, to my knowledge. We cannot track the former, and reaching the latter..." It was one of the few times annoyance flickered onto the admin's face. "...difficult."

---

Naomi Sato

"Your dad made you move mountains, June. Even his memory is stronger than the average person. I wish I could've met him."

It was such a small thing. It was just one life impacted out of thousands. That life did not matter when weighed against the millions that lived in Hoenn. Team Rocket had exploited her. Team Rocket had broken her. Yet she blamed the League because her suffering had been systemic compared to their personal affront.

The League didn't care about Gabriel Sleigh or Shred Zeppelin. Rocket didn't care, either. A Rocket Beast was replaceable. A grunt was even more expendable. In that vein, June Sleigh didn't matter either.

"I car-" He muttered silently as he ran another red light, almost hitting a minivan in the process. Howard let out a yelp and served, narrowly missing it as he continued across the intersection. A million miles away, Kyle was laughing in his grave at Howard falling for the same shit twice. "Oh, son of a bitch."

A police siren blared.

"FUCK!" The car pulled over.

---

june sleigh Miyako Noguchi