"Then we shall make new beasts."

The boldness of the words surprised him. Cillian Quinn would call it bold. THEO BECKETT would call it overstepping. Elisabeth Fiorelli could rage from whatever corner of hell she was curdling in. Yet Bryan's seat had lost its last traces of warmth, and Hitoshi would fill the vacancy nicely.

Order would be fulfilled, and weakness would bloom into strength. Intimacy was not required for ceremony.

"Then become strong, Hitoshi. Become the strongest." The admin knew little of strength. He could not comprehend it. His blood was poison, yet the blade supped from the toxic chalice. "Help me raise a Petalburg that we can be proud of."

He returned the blade to Hitoshi.

---

Hitoshi Inoue

Lulu's reaction surprised the admin. He had forgotten that Regirock had a long career of harassing members of Team Rocket for six years. He didn't return it to its Pokeball, though.

"Lulu, it's fine! I've got it under control!" He raised his hands in the golem's defense, as if his own body of flesh and bone was somehow a prudent barrier in ensuring protecting Regirock from Lulu—and vice versa. "It's ours. It won't hurt you!"

He snapped his fingers, getting Regirock's attention.

"Sleep." It listened immediately. They were related by blood, after all. The seven dots as the light dimmed. Grimacing, he turned to face Lulu's wrath.

"Sorry."

Frankly, he'd rather deal with Regirock again than deal with the Head Scientist's chagrin. Unfortunately, he suspected he'd be dealing with both imminently.

---

Lulu Flint

Silence, then a right turn.

"I'm sorry." Every time he uttered the word, he expected June to hit him. Apologies brought back memories of Matchstick. Matchstick brought back the fact that she wanted him dead. They were associates. She worked for him, and he did for her what nobody had done for him.

When he had joined Rocket, they had bought him and turned him into a slave. His future was closed to anything but Team Rocket. June didn't deserve that. He suspected it would kill her.

What was the Boundless if they were wrapped in chains?

"You know the answer to that." They both knew it, but as soon as the words were uttered into existence, they were given meaning. It was the same reason that he hated thinking of himself as Team Rocket. Every day, he woke up and realized that this was his existence. Every day, he wanted to die a little more.

He had told someone that he wanted to live, once. Who was that?

"Rocket is the one that did that to you. Remember that. Blame the hand that cast you down, not the absence of the hand that should've been there to help you up." He sighed and gave June a side-eye, before quickly focusing back on the road.

"When I signed up for Rocket, I needed money. They offered it, and I signed my future away. Remember the Excadrill? The coffee shop? The Funtasia? I was so close to leaving Rocket. Then they pulled me up and said I was special. If I leave, they'll kill me." His eye stared off into infinity. "Is that worse than the League being a moderately inept government?"

"Or are we just complete fuck-ups?"

---

june sleigh

June telling him how to drive was hilarious, given she was the one who had been dragged out on bail. He wondered how often she got hit by road rage.

"Stop that. I'm not your punching bag, and I'm concentrating." He shoved her elbow out of the way as he made a morally questionable left turn. "You always fight first and ask questions later. I think this is the first time you've actually used your words."

And she had immediately gotten arrested. If there was a Pokeathalon medal for trouble with law enforcement, June had to have the bronze medal. Maybe the silver one, if she was lucky.

Or if she punched another cop.

"The Game Corner? Seriously? That place is a front. We launder a lot of our funds through it." It was partially how Rocket paid for Howard's salary. He decided not to mention that June was getting paid with Game Corner blood money. "Did you lose a bunch of money?"

A million in debt, and there were a lot of ways to funnel money down the drain.

---

june sleigh

"If I wanted to kill myself, there are far better ways to go. Keep your electricity." Maybe Shred was right, and simply indulging in vices until one's heart gave out was the best way to handle living in a world where there were those chosen by providence. "You couldn't even shoot me in Ultra Plant, June."

He met her gaze. A magenta eye met heterochromatic pupils. When had her eyes changed color? What point was there to that, besides painting a giant target on her back?

Maybe she just wanted to pick a fight.

"I dig it out. I hired a courier, not a miner. It's not the kind of stuff you can just pluck off the ground, either. Don't take it out of the bag. It's bad for your health. It knocked me off my ass for a month."

He turned away, clearly done with the conversation. He picked up the satchel and tossed it to her. Even if it hit the ground, the satchel would not open.

"I'll have other jobs for you, and you'll still get to deliver my various fossils and whatnot. It'll be like old times, except you can hate my guts." Regirock disappeared into a Pokeball, and Howard slowly walked towards the exit. He stopped by the door.

I wish you could remember how it felt when Matchstick got out of her cast. She was free."

The door slammed shut.

---

june sleigh

He wanted to kill this man. To crack his crystal like a mediocre piece of obsidian and laugh as the shards were cast down to earth.

Yet the God General was not some ceremonial piece. He had been given a place of honor in a court of jesters and now thought himself a king. Howard couldn't blame him. Yet it was so frustrating. How could one man be so untouchable? How could one person be so detached from the world?

How could one human transition so wholly into godhood?

"You are not immortal. I don't know who'll do it, but someone will see if your heart is as black as your precious armor. Gods can bleed, ■■■. I've seen it. I've lived it." The admin swallowed in outrage as the blade disappeared. He had been so close. So close to freedom. "And you are not a god."

■■■'s smile was wrong. It was as if he had forgotten the motion. As if the memory of humanity had been scrubbed away in exchange for further invulnerability.

"You're just..." He shrugged weakly, his muscles hardly working. "...necessary. For now. But the world I aim to build has no need for you. The banquet's ending, Devourer. Eat your fill."

He met ■■■'s gaze.

"If you can suck the light from a star, then someone can kill the sun and the rain."

---

@■■■

Without a word, the admin unclasped his eyepatch and stared at the scientist with one functioning pupil. His other eye had been replaced with a Key Stone, and had turned a faint magenta due to John Sullivan's influence. Faint scales covered the connecting flesh.

"Yes." The word was heavy with meaning, and cursed with knowledge. There was a void there, as if emptying one's soul through suffering would somehow allow knowledge to fill what remained. "Though I suppose you'd call it 'two of a kind', hm?"

The eyepatch was reclasped, and the admin tipped his hat down slightly to avoid the flicker of Tapu Lele's scales in this scathing desert heat.

"I've come to the conclusion that human beings break far too easily." Shirley appeared and put her head on the admin's lap, an eyepatch covering her right eye. "Pokémon, too."

---

Alba Evovae

Their thoughts are similar. It is clear that he had mused through the same process as her, though it likely had not been as immediately rational. Instead, it had occurred over several nights as he toiled with the revelation of murder.

In another world, he would've been raised to the rank of Head Scientist. It was the rank that Howard had originally wanted, before being shunted off to a position of bureaucracy and administration. Yet there is no 'other world'. There is no other world where Howard Slayte was greedy enough to join Team Rocket.

In all other worlds, he is a dead-end clerk. Here, he is a murderer.

"There was a body. I saw it. She was utterly crushed. There's nothing to bring back." Suddenly, he looks ill. The memory of a mangled body falling from Regirock's fist into a grave causes his stomach to churn. He put a hand over his mouth as he paled. "I killed her."

Underboss Fiorelli had infringed upon Petalburg, and now the city was Elisabeth Fiorelli's tomb. Why had he done that?

"It had to be done. She was going to kill Regirock, Nomi. I worked so hard for it." He wanted to vomit. "But still, fuck..."

He had never seen something so carelessly crushed until it was unrecognizable before. It had never felt so personal.

---

Naomi Sato

"Frost can do what he wants. If his goal is to make my life miserable, he's already succeeded. Let him find something more productive to do with his time."

Of course it had been Mint. That man would never stop stalking him as he carved himself a small alcove within Rocket to pursue his passion for archaeology. He simply wanted to live and be who he was meant to be, but it was becoming harder and harder as this war threatened to spill over the region.

Team Rocket didn't need an archaeologist anymore. They hardly even needed Howard Slayte. That knowledge angered him. It made him bold.

"Frost is not a relevant piece on the board." He didn't know what to do about Mint, but as for the new God General? "I assume he'll want to celebrate. That should give me time."

Anger did make him bold.

"Time to think of a way to put a stake through his heart."

---

Cillian Quinn

"People." The admin shuddered as he answered her first question. "Though you wouldn't be the first Head Scientist to gawk as of late. Run your tests later."

If he could take one thing at face value from Lulu, it was that they could both silently agree that people were, in general, too nosy for their own benefit. Though that didn't change the fact that the admin loved humanity to an almost universal degree. Even as he bled for them.

Even as he died for them.

"A little something that I picked up in Petalburg." The admin snapped his fingers. "⠗⠕⠥⠎⠑ ⠽⠕⠥⠗⠎⠑⠇⠋."

The sound he made was no language uttered in the human tongue.

The nearby cavern wall cracked, and seven orange dots flashed in the stone, before the cave wall exploded. Out of it stepped a colossus built from stone. It turned to the Head Scientist, braille flashing.

---

Lulu Flint

The scholar and the swordswoman meandered into an alley. It almost sounded like a bad joke, which was an apt descriptor for their lives up until this point. Tsubame fought Navy, yet the sheriff still drew breath. The admin fought the Liberator, and yet he had escaped into the mists brought on by the north wind.

They were both failures. It just so happened that the admin's felt a magnitude larger in the current circumstances. Every piece of rubble was a reminder of his failure, of his mortality.

"The funny thing? I don't even blame the populace for fighting us. We took everything from them. All they have left is hatred and vindication. Normally, I'd have Beasts Conrad or Inoue deal with this. Yet they're overworked. We'll lighten their loads. We help each other." The cherry at the end of the cigarette glowed brightly as the admin spoke. "Because we're Rocket."

That sentence rang out through the alley. A rusty door creaked open. Further down, another rang out in harmony. Dirty men and women emerged, carrying pipes and other cumbersome weapons. Their Pokemon, meanwhile, were remarkably tame. Masquerain. Gardevoir. Pokemon native to this town before it had turned into a ruin.

They fought with what they had. Howard respected that. Yet when this city was rebuilt, those who resisted would not look upon it.

"You said bait, right?" Howard's head jerked in Tsubame's direction. He was pale and shaking slightly, but he barreled on. "I offer you the alternative: 'and switch'."

Their assailants lunged forward.

---

Aoki Hana