"Because I need to ask it something." His eye flashed. "I need to know if I'm still me."

The wind caused his jacket to flutter, revealing two Pokeballs at his belt. A foreboding presence emanated from both, radiating remarkable power. He regarded them for a moment, before unclipping them from his body and tossing his belt behind him. It clattered against the monument.

"If you can betray me and chain me in a shroud of red, you can do this for me." He spread his arms. "Nothing to protect me. Call it."

---

Eris Halla
BINGO: PROTECT

"Yes." He nodded once. "I believe it would want to understand the life it holds in its arms."

It was no surprise that she thought that way. How could it be, with the weight of the legacy that she had to shoulder? Especially when the one that had carried it with her had passed into another life, and left behind only a Shiinotic loyal to a directive that reached into the postmortem.

"Of course." Her silent war is hardly noticed. There was much to be done, and only so few people in this city to do it. Kanto's Rocket consisted of slackers, and Monroe himself was the emperor of delegation. He truly was a former Commissioner of the Pokémon League. "I'll have someone show you the way, as well."

With a whistle, a Kantoan grunt stands to salute the Rocket Admin. They are on the same side, but of different branches. Yet hierarchy remains respected, especially when the admin could raise mountains and raze cities with but a word.

"She'll take you to your quarters. If you need me, send a courier. I'll try to make time." He blinked wearily with the expression of a man on the verge of collapse. They both know that if she calls, it's unlikely that he'll be able to answer. "Enjoy Petalburg, Absinthe."

He does not tell her that he is likely to die, soon. The killing of an underboss is a grave crime, and although no official sentence is stated, the admin will likely die for his crimes. Howard Slayte was not needed to command giants.

He left the chemist to her devices, and to the grunt that would lead her to her new residence. He closed the gap between himself and Regirock, stopping several meters from the golem.

There, it struggled with moving a wall, its hands thudding helplessly against concrete. What was once a flower shop was now rubble. For a moment, the pattern flickered pink as Regirock remembered Eris Halla and Mesprit. It nudged a fingerless hand against a flower mural.

In a fit of rage, the wall was shattered by stone fists.

---

Absinthe Blackwood
BINGO: SURPRISE

As if in warning, the stone colossus 'looked' upward at the paradox that hid above. Its expression did not change, nor did it make a sound beyond the shifting of boulders. Yet when faced with an entity that did not belong to this world, the golem could not help but draw interest to it.

Yet that was secondary to the opera happening under its ancient gaze.

When the strike flew, he took it with all the grace of a Wailmer doing ballet. June hit hard. Maybe it was rage. Maybe it was all the packages she carried all the time, or maybe it was the debt collectors she constantly ran from.

"I..." He spat out a globule of blood, which splattered against the concrete below. Distinctly red, distinctly bright, thrumming with power and the infusion of Eternatus. "Deserve thaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-"

Wafer-thin lines of metal within the suit simultaneously fried and bubbled under the electrical heat as Infinity Energy mixed with electricity fried the systems within. Another flaw in the suit, another thing to be fixed. As the suit smoked, it threatened to sear his flesh.

How was this possible? It was an anomaly. Where was her Sygna Suit to let this occur?

He saw nothing of the sort.

"Because I was afraid." Rather than focus on the horrible implications of this power, he answered the question. He spoke through sparking, jittering teeth. "Afraid that if I told you what happened, you'd hate me. That if I told you, you'd get involved in Team Rocket."

His laugh switched into a groan of pain with another electrical jerk. This was justice. It was fair.

"And when I told you, I fucked it up. It sent you down a path that you hated." The warehouse loomed around them, Regirock slowly getting to its feet as it decided if this constituted as mortal peril. "And I was right. Welcome to T̴̲̚é̸̥a̷̹̿m̴̼̋ ̶̲̒R̸̭͆o̴̖͌c̴͍̈k̷͓̓e̴̙͝t̴̠͆."

The cost of her journey was the culmination in a paradoxical nature. The Boundless of tomorrow bound by the acts of yesterday.

"Try to remember the hospital room!"

---

june sleigh

Gabriel. The nameless phantom that had started two tales at the expense of his own was finally labeled. To elucidate his existence was to remove the mystique. If Grigori showed the admin a photo, Gabriel Sleigh would become another dead man among countless others.

Yet that countless man had, unbeknownst to him, had mountains moved in his name.

"She would've been too young to learn it from him, I suspect. Though from how you describe him, he sounds a lot like her." A meme inherited through genetics was not one at all, but that was what it reminded the admin of. "I'd kill to know what June told the cop."

He chuckled to himself before shaking his head. Absinthe Blackwood would have to tolerate someone incapable of mixing alcohol, and instead tolerate someone skilled with a baseball bat instead. He suspected she wouldn't mind, even if the baseball bat ended up being a hammer.

"I have a question."

---

Grigori Sokolov
BINGO: MEME

Aoki Hana's arrival was foretold.

His first thought was one of surprise at the swordswoman's formality. The second one was far more childish, and it was that one that he almost allowed to leave his lips.

I get a samurai? This is so fucking cool!

That thought does not manifest verbally. She wished to honor tradition, and thus he would as well. It was a lockstep motion of honorable custom bleeding into the modern age, where samurai and ronin could dance amongst soldiers and gods. A few grunts bear witness to the exchange, and run to tell their Kantoan brothers and sisters the news.

The news that Admin Fox is protected by another sword.

"Rise, Tsubame." A red eye regarded the woman, trying to place her on the chessboard of political players in Petalburg. They both play at tradition in this masquerade of a city. "Rise, and pick up your sword. We have much work to do."

As the ceremony closes on the beach where Rocket first landed in Petalburg, his smile turns wry.

"Did you find Sootopolis to be a sufficient whetstone for your blade?"

---

Aoki Hana

"Is that so?" It was clear that he didn't believe her. "I don't see a Pichu with you, but I don't doubt that something capable of binding a god can hide in other ways. That is the fantastic nature of myth."

Even now, he still admired that pink sprite. In their eleventh hour, it had teleported him and Shred to safety after the war with Kyurem.

Shred. Blackened flesh. Lenore. Blackened bone.

The talk of fire was thick in the air today.

"When I was on the cusp of seizing Regirock, I felt my mind still. Everything became... right. For a moment. I felt at ease. Happy, almost. An island of lucidity in a sea of fear. When I threw that statue, I knew it would land. Even if it broke my body to throw it."

There's no reason for him to tell her this, but he suspected that she of all people would understand. That moment had been perfect, but the discontent had been growing over the past month.

There was no joy to Regirock's seizure. No applause to laud it joining humanity. Maybe that was because humanity had never seized it after all. He had to act on this suspicion before he changed his mind.

"Call it."

---

Eris Halla
BINGO: CHANGE

The historian had left nothing behind but ash and cooked meat and blackened bones. In exchange for chronicling yesterday, she had not been allowed to persist into tomorrow.

But her daughter had.

"That's a terrible way to go." A cigarette was lit, dangling from his mouth and allowing smoke to trail into the sky. It was one of his worst habits, and one Eris had told him to abandon dozens of times. Yet it was his only relaxant in a job that demanded the world. "I'm sorry, Little Lady. She was a wonderful woman."

She was mottled with layers of wounds. Her body wasn't meant to handle this strain. Neither was Howard's, but this strain was expected from him.

An exhale sent more smoke flying to the heavens.

"Where is it?" The admin blinked once. "Mesprit."

---

Eris Halla

"Yes."

There was no further explanation. He turned back to face the grave as the boulder unfolded. Colossal arms the size telephone poles extended as a giant the size of a building roused itself from an ancient slumber. The pattern flashed with the phrase ⠁⠺⠁⠅⠑⠝.

It was a spell before he spoke again.

"Team Rocket consists of people who were rejected by the world, or by those who decided that it was more important to chase their dreams than to conform to society as a whole. Yet there are people I'd call worse than others."

Regirock toed the cursed tomb, before backing off. It could sense the latent grudges that permeated the foliage.

"The person buried here was someone definitively worse than you." Howard smiled without mirth at her. Aisling, too, had been changed by slaughter. "Unless you also plan to destroy the world?"

---

AISLING O'CONNOR

Hunu wanted to have his cake and eat it too. How bold of him. How arrogant of him.

Yet greed was an important aspect of human desire. Without it, there would be no aspiration for humanity to reach for greater heights. Howard desired a pristine history, a flawless tomorrow. Hunu simply desired a good fight. Who was the admin to deny that, even if it resulted in annihilation?

"How fortunate of me." He smiled wryly. "And how fortunate of you. After all..."

Thud. An envelope slammed into the desk, thick with paper. It must have weighed almost a pound. Howard raised an eyebrow at the Alolan.

"Your pay. Don't spend it all in one place." Howard took a seat at the desk and waved his hand. "I have to meet with Monroe later. Skedaddle while I finish signing these papers."

---

Tangaroa Emzar
BINGO: CAKE

He stood at the monument with no helmet to hide his face nor modulator to mask his voice. There is no grand plan to hide his identity, nor was there a need to. There was nobody who could recognize a new body, carved and mechanized in the crucible of war. Dynergy was potential unmasked.

"Lenore."

Her voice is a curse that few recognize. Her time in this chapter of history ended years ago, with her bones buried beneath the earth and their memories imprinted upon the soil.

"How would you feel about the way the world has changed? It's hardly been a year, and I can't help but suspect that time has passed me by."

He can hear her footsteps behind him. The childish shuffle, marred by pain and misery. It's the walk of an older person, even though the child that carries that gait cannot process the weight of war. How could she? Howard barely could.

"Tell me, Eris." He turned to face her as she walked up to pay her respects to the departed. "Do you know where your mother is buried?"

---

Eris Halla

Howard does not blink. "I promise."

Unlike much of Rocket, the admin kept his word. He did not worm behind double meanings, nor did he stab others in the back and twist the knife to ensure their demise. He simply wanted to study archaeology and preserve the foundations of this world. If that made him a conqueror or a king, then he would be crowned with ice and stone and his shroud would consist of dust and steel.

Hunu crushed his hand like a vice, but the admin did not wince. He would not defile this moment with weakness.

"But until then, go into the city and instill order. Knock some skulls. Capture anyone who runs amok with our peace." He paused. "That includes any of the Rockets from Kanto."

---

Tangaroa Emzar
BINGO: CAPTURE

"In the tunnels? It'd be a terrible punchline. I might throw something." The admin frowned. "I suppose. Everything ends up in the earth's varicose veins, lined with crystal. A sibling of steel found its way down there, recently."

As much as he hated to admit it, there was a chance that the Tera Crystals and their tunnels had rotted that section of the region away into nothingness, leaving little behind but infinitely faceted gems that peered into other worlds. If the ruin had fallen that far, it would be impossible to recover.

Yet they had to try.

"Carry on. I'll be coming back for Regice later." Howard turned and stepped away from the lab, his shoes clicking against the floor as he straightened his hat. "Ah."

He stopped.

"Jules."

He turned.

"I never knew you when you were pretending to be one of us, but you would've been a fine human. Not a good man, but a human..." He pursed his lips, thoughtful. "Yeah, you would've excelled in that field."

He stared at the icebound colossus, before meeting the Megalopolan's eyes for a moment from beneath his old war helm.

"One day, I'd like you to show me where your wife fell so I can mark it. I can't bring her back, but I can immortalize her in time." He shrugged again, before turning away after vowing to engrave a traitor into the human consciousness eternal. "After I tear down that Power Plant, of course. Tomorrow will not be allowed to get in the way of today. Goodbye."

Click. Click. Click.

The admin left the lab, leaving the Megalopolan behind. Suddenly, the golem blinked to life.

⠽⠕⠥ ⠺⠊⠇⠇ ⠚⠕⠊⠝ ⠓⠑⠗ ⠎⠕⠕⠝ ⠕⠥⠞⠇⠁⠝⠙⠑⠗

---

It was a good trade, if the two were on equal standing. There is a world where this man sits at a table as high as his, where he can be miserable and slowly drown in the blood of slaughtered innocents until his lungs fill with fluid and his laughs are nothing more than bubbles in an endless sea of red.

That world could be this one, but it did not need to be today. It would come tomorrow, or the day after, stretching into infinity. Hunu could play the role of wildcard for a little while longer.

"Alright." The admin shrugged slightly, turning to face the Alolan. "Do what you will. Just know that when this war is over, and if we don't both hang, we will be obligated to face each other."

It is a fight that the admin would struggle to win without his army of giants, Howard suspected. Hunu's story was only beginning. There was plenty of room for him to grow. It would be a good fight indeed.

He suspected that the Alolan would like that.

"And when that happens, I will crush you in my palm." He clenched a fist. "And we will see whose will is stronger."

His fist unclenched and became a handshake.

---

Tangaroa Emzar
BINGO: WILDCARD