The admin doesn't tell Parker that her apartment is painted with lead. Instead, he rolled his eye and lit up.

Until she started the game before he was ready. She had caught him with his pants down, metaphorically. Howard wasn't Nomi, after all. It was a good thing too, otherwise he'd use her crazy powers to read Parker's mind and subsequently kill himself.

"You're a fucker, Parker. Eat my ass." The Unown broadcasted the exchange back to the Visionary, all while the Regicouch flashed the Unown in its alien form of braille that only the Unown could hope to understand. "Son of a bitch..."

⠉⠓⠑⠁⠞⠑⠗ ⠉⠓⠑⠁⠞⠑⠗ The pattern flashed again. ⠏⠥⠍⠏⠅⠊⠝ ⠑⠁⠞⠑⠗

The smoke curled up towards the ceiling. She's right, it would kill him, but he was already a dead man anyway. Might as well see if he can expedite the process by turning his lungs into popcorn. It's not like anything will care anyway.

Unless he can steal back the lead from this debt-collecting nutcase.

"Kinda sucks that they never made a third one. Or like, a remaster." One without the pointy boobies for Parker to go insane over, ideally. "Wonder why we never got one."

---

parker jones

The Alolan's speech met only silence, followed by one word.

"No." There was no explanation that Howard could offer to this man that he would reasonably expect. There was no way for him to change his mind in a way that made Hunu worthless to Team Rocket. They had hired a beast, and they had gotten one that craved the battlefield.

"Every person in Team Rocket follows their own dream. They all contradict. This organization is merely a means to an end. We stay loyal to it until our purpose is reached, and we can finally grasp for something that the world has denied us since we were born."

If Hunu's dream were close to realization, it would conflict Howard's own. Then, it would come to a feat of arms. That was not now, though.

Instead, he focused on the question of Eris and Isaac. Howard sighed and looked out the porthole window.

"I love them dearly."

---

Tangaroa Emzar

"More than necessary." They're the only words he can offer in this moment of brevity. There is no ceremony to death, no grand eulogy to offer. The dead, Howard suspected, would not mind. They had been buried under a thousand tons of stone and crushed within the blink of an eye. That, or they struggled in pockets of air before suffocating.

Regirock had done this. Rocket had done this. This was the legacy that Howard allowed to circulate, and it was his curse to bear. He could not place this on Absinthe's shoulders.

So he didn't.

"This did not need to happen. What was a simple battle has been turned into a mockery. Both by Team Rocket and by that fucking rock's appearance. It will atone by labor, and it will prove that a hammer can both build a house and crack a skull."

Regirock is somewhere. Nearby. It works at moving mountains in the name of Team Rocket.

"This is our purpose. We rebuild what others destroy."

---

Absinthe Blackwood

Its speed slackened to a methodical crawl. A good decision on Aisling's part, because Crumble's slump did not immediately end. Hyper Beam was strong, but the flaw in machinery meant that there was no extra reserve of power to call upon, nor was there any will to push beyond the boundaries of ancient programming.

When Claydols were spent, they were spent, and there was no way to call upon from them besides demanding their detonation in the face of failure.

It was a depressing prospect.

"Nice work! Crumble should recharge in..." The admin checked his watch as the doll twitched back to life. "Now."

Its eyes glowed red as it followed them quickly. They quickly left the range of the slowed Bronzong's Imprison. They teleported away with a pop, safe in the fact that the move was no longer sealed. The duo reappeared in a corner alley on the other side of the city.

"Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck me. Never doing that shit again." Howard coughed into his fist, before turning to Aisling. "Nice work. You did good."

---

AISLING O'CONNOR

There's a simple, albeit humbling understanding that comes with knowing that anything built by humanity is ultimately at the whims of the land beneath their feet.

Petalburg's bank had been an ornate structure, carved from a mixture of marble while imitating trees and leaves and other natural symbols engraved into the stone. Ivy had once coated the walls partially, though it had often curdled and died during colder months. Howard had never known that. He had never been rich enough to bank here.

Yet the building had disappeared under Regirock's Max Stonefall, leaving ruins behind.

While the building had been destroyed, the contents within had survived, such as a safe with enough PD to pay the Petalburg contingent of Rocket's salary. Such was a testament to the human desire to ensure the survival of their own possessions over the legacy of the things they had built.

"Here's the plan, Nina." Howard walked alongside the thief past ruined marble tiles and piles of granite. The sound of upturned earth was thick in the air. "There's a safe here that we can't crack with typical means, and we've had four grunts attempt to blow it off with dynamite."

An explosion racked the lower floor. Howard sighed again.

"Five times. Get it open, and you get a sizeable share. Sound good?""

---

nina larson

The man stood at the memorial alone, a piece of stone erected by Navy to honor those who had died in Dewford's defense when Eternatus had stirred beneath her sandy shores and tranquil waters. It had been placed in a corner of the small town, where it would not dour the mood of its surviving inhabitants.

It was taller, now.

More names were on it.

Names he had added.

There was no need to count, he knew how many were there.

Nineteen. That was how many people Howard Slayte had killed in his deluded folly when he had attempted to inject a mechanical deity with the heart of true divinity. Regice had acclimated, but not before claiming nineteen lives. It seemed so few, in exchange for absolute power. Yet they had not needed to die.

It was the meaningless nature of it.

"Pardon." Howard walked past a young woman, content that his new face and body would hide him from all but the sheriff. "Excuse me."

She seemed familiar as he left a bouquet of flowers that Chu-e Choi had picked out at the foot of the monument.

---

Roze Falkner

"You're Wright, right?" As the words left his lips, the admin considered killing himself for almost fumbling the grunt's name. Rocket had thousands of nameless gears, all working in unison to ensure that the organization functioned properly, instead of as some solemn clockwork monstrosity.

The two overlook the destroyed Petalburg General, as much of its debris is hauled off by colossal Rock-type Pokémon, led by the admin's Regirock. It had destroyed this city, and it would work in penance to fix what it had wrought.

"I wanted to tell you thanks." The admin lit a cigarette and blew smoke into the air. "You did good work during the battle. Without you, Regice would have fallen."

Without Regice, Regirock would not be theirs.

"How goes reconstruction?"

---

Yuan Wright

Flowers die on Elisabeth Fiorelli's grave. What remained of it, anyway. In its place was a gaping wound of rot and corruption, a reminder that in this world, not even the dead can stay down.

The admin comes to this place to think. Without Elisabeth, he is the highest ranking authority in this piece of territory. He claimed it with bleeding fingers and cracked nails, and his reward for doing so is anxiety, obligations, and a mountain of stress.

And a body that is not his own.

Thus, he comes to the place where Elisabeth died to think. The two golems do not patrol this small corner of Petalburg, surrounded by rubble and greenery and decay.

"Underboss Beckett." Howard turns from the grave a different man, an unrecognizable form. A red eye regards Kanto's cudgel. "Here to pay your respects?"

---

THEO BECKETT