There was the hint of emotion in the former underboss's eyes. A reminder that the broken machinery worn down over years of abuse could, in fact, malfunction. It was a disconnect from the golems the admin often commanded and the antiques he coveted.

They had existed for centuries with minimal wear and minimal tear, yet flesh was far more fragile and far more prone to collapsing in on itself. Oaths written in steel or stone or ice could last forever, but flesh oftentimes betrayed any faith placed in it eventually. Yet that eventual betrayal meant that when it held its oath...

...it was special.

Chu-e Choi was special.

Once, he had dictated the world. He had ordered the beginning and end of everything with the wave of a sickly finger, his authority superseding his own limitations. That had disappeared. His rank had disappeared. His power had disappeared.

That was fine.

"Okay." He sat up, his vestigial warmth not yet leaving Chu-e. Howard regarded him thoughtfully, before leaning over to wrap artificial arms over a sickly and skeletal frame. There's a hint of flushing in his cheeks. "Come here."

His voice was a soft caress, distinct from the man who had ordered annihilation of a city. It was several moments before he spoke again to the doll held in his hands in an attempt to share what little warmth he had.

Softer still, his breath tickled Chu-e's ear.

"How's that?"

---

Chu-e Choi

"I see. You're so self-assured." His eye fluttered shut. "So in control."

It's a perspective that the admin cannot incorporate into his own understanding of the world, but he can admire the confidence that Chu-e held in himself. He had always wondered how this small thing had reached the pinnacle of Team Rocket, how he had attracted Necrozma to him and became an underboss.

It made sense. The ambition in his heart had curdled but not died.

"But we're all entitled to a smidge of selfishness. It's not fair to others or to my profession, but we should be allowed to dictate how we're perceived to some degree."

A hand reached up to cup Chu-e's cheek. Howard's eye opened by a fraction of an inch.

"You poor thing." A few days of being in a skin that wasn't his own, and the admin was already slipping. How Chu-e handled it, the admin didn't know. Perhaps he didn't want to know. "And such a smooth talker."

A heavy sigh. His eye opened further.

"You need a hug."

A request, not an order.

---

Chu-e Choi

"I wanted to look cool." He admitted. In spite of Chu-e's heckling, the confession was what caused his face to flush slightly with embarrassment. "I loved the aesthetic as I grew up, and I thought it was a novel image. The rogue archaeologist finding his way into tombs to fight curses and steal treasure."

In the background, the television continued playing. A man in a cowboy hat and lasso swung from the horn of the stampeding Pokémon in order to end up on its back. His hat was eerily similar to the admin's own.

"Attractiveness was never on the table. It never crossed my mind. When me and my fiancée got engaged, I always wondered why she had chosen me. There were smarter people, stronger people, richer people..." Those doubts had consumed him until the latter had done him in, and left him in this situation.

Resting on Chu-e's lap.

What a strange turn of events.

"Now I look in the mirror and I see myself, and I can't help but feel revulsion and disgust. How can I feel wanted when I don't even want myself." His eye peered at the crystalline nails that occasionally appeared in his peripheral vision. "That's narcissistic. It's selfish."

It felt like a crime to speak of his own issues when Necrozma's mother was stroking his hair.

"Do you feel that way about your nails? They're hardly yours, are they?"

---

Chu-e Choi

"if you try to save Jayden, you will die." There's no poetic prose behind the words, no greater meaning to justify madness and delusion. There is only the simple analysis of claims and facts, and the synthesis of logic. "Hitoshi, he would not ask you to die for him."

If he knew jayden cross in any meaningful way, the Rocket Admin would not risk the soldiers under his command for a meaningless cause. He was Rocket's sword, but a sword could be used to block as well as kill.

He had learned that in Galar.

"Save Yumi. Save people you care about, but don't reach for the upper echelons, lest your wings melt off and you fall to your death."

---

Hitoshi Inoue
CATCHA PYUKU

Gemstone. A stone of rare worth. A funny nickname that Chu-e insisted on using, even when the admin felt that he was worth nothing at all.

"You'd rather not spend your life in peace, going to work, lounging on my couch? You're so strange." Everyone in Rocket was. The organization was just the region's pile of rejects, each one abandoned by one thing or another. A nagging feeling pulled at his heart. "Although..."

He pursed his lips thoughtfully.

"It would be boring. There's hardly a dull day anymore." He blew a stand of hair towards Chu-e's face, where it stuck to his lips. "Though I wouldn't mind a break."

As Chu-e leaned in, the admin blearily blinked, almost too weary to grasp at the faint tones that struggled to reach his ears.

"You enjoyed it." Howard accused the younger man. "But you also needed it."

---

Chu-e Choi

"Because I fucked up. It was a mistake." The island flashed in his mind. Matchstick falling down to earth and crashing into the sand, her wing bent at impossible angles as bones shattered and cracked against the uncaring ground. "It's just a series of unfortunate circumstances that brought us to this point. Blame Rocket. Blame the League.

Blame me. Yet those words went unsaid. A mountain of apologies could not change what had happened, especially within the circumstances of the dream.

Ameena's meddling had, unbeknownst to him, made this far more difficult. Yet at the end of the day, he knew what to say. The dream scientist had essentially laid out the dialogue options ahead of time, and June had given him the road forward.

"But that doesn't matter. It's-" The admin trailed off again in confusion. "Wait, you forgot?"

That fucking dream.

He was going to kill ameena abadi.

And Regieleki.

And Annalise.

And himself.

"I hate this face. Fuck." He clenched it with annoyance, before taking a deep breath. It had been constructed specifically to infuriate him. It had been carved from stone and ice to deride him, and to overcomplicate an already complicated matter. "Okay, fine. Fine."

He took a deep breath. He opened his eye.

"It's Howard." He put a hand on his hip. "And you're the only person I know who has more debt than me."

---

june sleigh

"Hm." The forest rumbled slightly as a bear stood over the mighty ogre, so meek and tiny in her appearance. The faint smell of honey wafted from the bear, a lasting echo of his conquest in seizing a hive belonging to a colony of Combee. "A friend?"

The bear snorted, shaking his head as if distracted by a hundred buzzing Beedrill.

"I am not your enemy, however." His voice was ancient, belonging to an era that had long since passed the world by. Hisui was a distant memory, now. "But you must be the help I've been searching for. There is a great evil lurking within these woods, little ogre."

A low rumble emerged from deep within his belly.

"A thief."

---

Andrea Vaneau

Estimates. Another word for guesses. There's enough data to 'estimate' casualties. There are enough names on enough payrolls and lists that are not accounted for from the recent battle to deduce how many did not live to see Rocket or Kanto's flag flutter in the wind above the city.

So many lives lost for such a small strip of cloth, yet Howard knew the value of symbols. The red 'R' that flapped in the wind meant more than a mere letter of the alphabet.

"I see. If someone is missing in action, mark them as dead. Anyone who survived the Max Stonefall is likely buried in a pocket under a thousand metric tons of stone." His voice bled with tightness, a failure to wholly disconnect his emotions from the situation. "We can't save them."

It feels like a personal failing. It's a battle he helped orchestrate, a battle he helped end, and a battle that Monroe claimed as a great Kanto victory after Hoenn bled for it.

Now people like Shion pick up pieces, before being crushed by far greater pieces on the board. This poor paramedic.

"I've found a few caches of the antidote to Nihilego poisoning in our former underboss's quarters. Several dozen doses. Use them." He coughed into his fist. "Save as many lives as you can from your estimates. Is that clear?"

---

Shion Murasaki

If he does die, Tempest Quinn will hold nothing to this world but his memory. Nothing but those and the grudges he left behind would mark the world, lest the admin chronicle his demise before Cillian decides that this world is unjust and razes them all to the ground.

"Sure. Assuming I don't die first." Elisabeth's death is on his hands, after all. "Night."

The door creaked open fully as the admin slipped back inside. His contempt for Tempest Quinn had not yet vanished. A small part of him wished for the man to die, but Howard suspected that such rage would cool in time, as all emotions tended to do so.

Shirley blinks blearily, the beast's primal nature held only in check by her trainer's meekness. They improved upon each other in that way. He offered the soft word, and she carried the big stick. The Skitty received her skritches after a moment, and the admin attempted to worm back into bed.

Only to find his spot taken.

Annoying.

He paced slightly, before attempting to worm back into position.

---

Tempest Quinn

There's silence on the other side of the line. It's deafening. Heartbreaking. The fear of abandonment leaks through, threatening to gnaw at the Rocket Beast's soul.

"If I can stop him, I will." The words come slowly, haltingly. Even if he and Cillian are not close, they share a mutual hatred for a shared enemy. "But nothing will happen to you. We'll pluck death of its wings."

The door creaked slightly as the admin regarded the person curled into his bed.

"You will survive. Or I'll dive into the Border and piece you back together myself."

---

Tempest Quinn

The television switched on. Meaningless channels flip by, until Chu-e switches on one of the Brycen-Man movies. It's the western one, part of what inspired Howard's aesthetic. His cowboy hat is a remnant of this western era, a meme sent from Howard Slayte to Michael Navidson to whoever would next wear the hat that sparked a legacy.

"That's not the world I desire. People should be allowed to explore, they should be allowed to live. Yet war? Ceaseless conflict over resources and delusion?" He shook his head once and huffed. "There must be a fine line, a compromise that leaves everyone content."

The nature of a compromise was misunderstood. A real compromise was meant to leave everyone unhappy.

It explained the admin's current state. A halfhearted commitment to both the League and to Rocket. His life was miserable as a result. Yet that desperate hope was what kept him sane, even when wallowing in the misery of compromise.

"It's just a meaningless wish, though. I can't enforce my will over the world." With a weary sigh, the admin leaned across the couch to rest his head on Chu-e's lap. "But I can't help but pity you, occasionally."

His eye searched the younger man's. Brown and white hair meshed together as Howard looked up at Chu-e. There's a hint of a smile.

"Didn't you break into my hospital room, disguised as a nurse?" His tone was conversational. "Debauchery."

---

Chu-e Choi

Another deep sigh. It meshes with the static into a baritone burr.

"Sure. I'm not doing this for you. I'm doing this for Rocket, and to salvage what scrap of dignity I have left after turning Elisabeth into paste."

It's a partial lie, but the Rocket Beast need not know that.

"What?"

---

Tempest Quinn

Regirock had been offered the same choice, albeit unknowingly. It had joined the admin, not Rocket, in his crusade to scrub all uncleanliness from this world. When the contract had been struck, Elisabeth Fiorelli had attempted to undermine it.

Her struggles had gotten her a fist of stone and a shallow grave.

"Then you won't want me. I'm poor under pressure. Always have been." In spite of that, he was still Rocket's trump card at Petalburg. "But fine. I'll join your death march."

It's the refusal to use grunts as meat shields that swayed him. It's one of the few things that the two can agree upon, even now. The senseless slaughter of grunts offered little but blood and tears.

"Regirock needs a field test, anyway."

---

Tempest Quinn