It was not the same earthbreaking titan that would soon split Petalburg, nor was its power as great as it had been in its ruin, back when the golem had been whole and not shattered into pieces.

Adrian might have improved as a trainer since then, but his help is no Cillian Quinn, priam conrad, or Katherine Fairburne. Howard was weaker, his hat was far less attractive than Cillian's shades, and he didn't lift as much as Priam. It didn't help that he was barely conscious, still shrugging off the fall from their recent scuffle.

"Fuuuuuck..." Fear kicked in quickly, forcing the admin to scuffle to a corner to ignore being seen.

The Waterfall strikes, and stones crumble slightly under the force of the attack, but Regirock has spent months wandering Area Zero, killing anything that gets within range of its mighty fists. The pattern on its face flashed in alien tones, before a heavy stone fist smashed into Furor, a perfectly commendable Hammer Arm.

⠋⠑⠁⠗

It turned to Adrian, as if smelling the stink of cowardice on his form. It was not the latent kind that spilled from Ting-Lu's vessel, but the distinction was not relevant.

It marched forward towards Adrian, winding up a Focus Punch.

---

Adrian Malcolm

"Better me than another. There are people in Team Rocket that exist to further their own ends. Most of them, to be fair. Regice is wasted on me. Another might use it better to kill people and level entire cities, but when I use it, it's a minor annoyance."

It was not fully true. Regice had annihilated Dewford on its own before two avatars had stopped it with Howard's help. Its raw power was second to none. It oozed strength, especially when Dynamaxed. Howard used it well, but he also used it sparingly.

That was the weakness.

"It beat Eternatus. Stopped it from destroying the region, at least. It and four others. I'd like to see them unified. Together, they'll give it a solid fight. The records make me suspect that if they all work together, it will fall."

It's a desperate hope, but it's one that he prays to like a desperate mantra. What person would create such a work of art if it could not fell a god? The chemist is more logical. Her answer was likely to be less romantic and more practical. It was an answer the admin didn't want to hear.

Instead, he crossed over to effigy. He hadn't checked on it for a hot minute, but it lay dormant. He touched it and closed his eye. Regice followed suit, acting in synchronization with its trainer.

"Absinthe." His voice was quiet as he felt a flicker in the statue. "You know that feeling of creeping affection, when you know you shouldn't like something, but you eventually realize that you can't live without it?"

---

Absinthe Blackwood

"There was an empty seat that needed filling, and I had rent due. I was offered a hand up, and spitting on it didn't seem to be a particularly wise decision. Didn't seem too odd to me. Made perfect sense."

His voice was bitter, but only just. It whispered of scorn and hate. Self-loathing and a realization that taking the devil's hand to make it to heaven had marred his future. It was the type of drama that Ceres feasted on. Knowledge she could sink her fangs into and shake until it curdled and died.

Not that the admin cared. They're colleagues, and Rocket's upper brass already distrusted him. Let them glare, let them stare, and let them gossip.

"Sit. Look natural, be happy." Howard's voice is casual, but an order is an order. The coffee shop is somewhat full, but the outer porch was vacant and the two would not be disturbed. A deep sigh followed as he plucked a pair of menus from a waitress. He slid one across the table. After a moment, he inspected her. "You're odd."

He mirrored her words. They almost reeked of mockery, if not for the wry smile.

"Why Rocket?"

---

ceres

People can change. The archaeologist does not disagree, so he murmurs an agreement. Certain people are afforded that luxury. Remiel Calcifet is one of them. He was afforded the luxury to choose, and he still elected to join Team Rocket out of ego.

Fuck him. Fuck him for leaving Howard behind to pick up the pieces of his tattered ideals.

"That's good." The admin silently seethed as he smiled, before forcefully tamping down the part of Rocket that wants to scream that Remiel Calcifet is being lauded. The archaeologist takes hold, and the smile remained genuine. "There have been very few people in history that I would deem as wholly good. It's easier to believe that records of evil deeds were lost or purged. History is written by the victor, after all."

When this war ended, the victors would defile the losers and piss on what remained. There would be no absolute truth. It would be lost, lest he preserve it.

This woman will make for an interesting piece.

Human nature is evil, but we are made better by our failures and by our successes. We made this place. This city. This region. It's ours. We are builders."

---

freya morningstar

Rocket was full of manipulators. Even if the admin was blind to much of puppeteering that the others did as they grasped for power while masquerading loyalty to the great cause that drove them. Each and every one chained the others to their own goal. Barnaby toyed with his colleagues, whispering gilded lies into their ears. Theo played with gods despite not being one himself.

Bryan was a beast. A cudgel that Rocket swung at their problems to make them go away. Xerneas had not enhanced him. It had lessened him. Now he could scheme and rise beyond his purpose in this world.

He could make Admin Fox dance, but Admin Fox would make him dance in turn.

"Oh?" His eye flickered in a mixture of pain and amusement. His tone mirrors Barnaby's. It's jovial. Mocking. The way Bryan turned away proved it. "You'll protect me, Bryan? I won't say no to your help, but know this:"

Silky tones turned to steel.

"I will give everything to this cause. Can you offer the same, Bryan? A frail hand reached out and turned the Rocket Beast's face back to Howard's with remarkable and frenzied might. "Are you a sword or a shield, I wonder?"

---

bryan delarosa

The Ancient Tomb was full of carvings and murals that depicted the end of the world.

An ironbound titan reaches for a malignant star descending on the world below, intent on stopping its advance as it attempts to crack the planet in two. People prayed to the titan, offering it steel and Dynite Ore and smaller stars as offerings. The archaeologist recognizes the offerings as required material to keep the steel titan functioning.

Registeel felt far less indestructible after the combined forces of Team Rocket and the League almost blew its arm off.

"Stay still. I can't believe you're still standing." The archaeologist muttered through a lit cigarette, the plume of smoke wafting towards the Alolan's mouth. "You're lucky I stock this place with meds and first aid."

They sit in a small alcove near the Power Spot. Drills and heavy mining equipment line the walls where Rocket normally rips Eternatus's corpse from the earth to power their engines of war. On a shelf is a pack of first aid kids. The admin popped one open and wrapped gauze around Hunu's first of many wounds.

"You fucked that up, right and proper."

---

Tangaroa Emzar

Thing. What a simple word. Vague. Everything was a thing. Everyone was a thing. There was little in this world that could not be quantified as a thing. Regice was, by all definitions, a thing.

Howard had thought as Absinthe had when he had been entrusted with this icebound construct. It was a tool. An artifact meant to be studied, a tool whose abilities were meant to further Team Rocket's aims and little more. It was a remnant of an era that had long since vanished from this world, and its creators along with it.

Yet it was so much more. It was a weapon that mankind would use to fell a god, something that would slip between Eternatus's ribs like a dagger and twist until the dragon fell to the ground, dead.

"Yeah. It won't be super elegant, but I lost Crumble's Pokeball behind the couch this morning. Couldn't get it out." It's hard to tell if the admin is joking. Those who know him better recognize him as a klutz. Those who know him differently recognize that the archaeologist often lies. This time, however, it is the truth. "So we'll improvise."

From the golem's raw power, 'improvise' translates to 'bringing a sledgehammer to bash in a carpentry nail'.

The water freezes immediately, the Dratini within swimming away to avoid the ensuing ice. A flash of the reddish-purple energy that Absinthe is now familiar with shatters the ice as it freezes, creating a path down to a strange effigy beneath the waves.

"You have no idea how this thing has vexed me over the past year." A deep sigh. He hops down into the lakebed and gestures for Absinthe to follow. "Come."

His face threatened to crust with ice as he gestured again. The cold didn't bother him. Not anymore.

It's like one of her memories. What harm can it cause if he hardly felt it?

---

Absinthe Blackwood

He had an Ursaluna that shat in the woods, but the admin didn't mention that. Hunu was almost as large as the massive bear, and Howard didn't like his Ursaluna's chances against the wall of flesh, meat, rage, and golden grills that the Alolan possessed.

"Yeah, my fun is smoking and drinking and watching basic cable. Yours is..." he gestured at the bloodstained field of corpses where the moans of the dying rang from the ground. They reminded Howard of the final moans that a dying old man offered up to the air before passing into dust. "...this."

Hunu was a bloodstained brute. Strong, though. Alolans really were something else.

"Lilycove is our port, somewhere over there." He gestured east. "I want to hustle before someone realizes you killed an entire platoon. Chop chop."

He started running towards the Ancient Tomb.

---

Tangaroa Emzar

Old stone. Old wood. All perfectly preserved by the mantle of mankind in the hope that next generation will do the same. Then the next, then the next, then the next in a paradox spiral that continues into infinity.

There was a comforting feeling, Howard thought, in knowing that if his work was relevant enough, people would preserve it long after he was gone. An echo into millennia, long after the flesh had curdled and died and bones had turned into dust. Yet despite that, memories remained.

It seemed unfair to think that, when the woman besides him held tattered records of her own past.

"You still can." He smiled at her, a sly expression hid under the rim of his hat. "We can sit here for a while once we finish here."

Once he and Absinthe finished the task here. It wasn't required, but the admin liked to check on the treasure that lay dormant beneath the tranquil waters.

"You wanted that story, right? Here's a piece of it. There's a statue down there, left here by people even older than the Draconids. I can access it. It's not as scary as your baseball bat, but..." His voice trailed off, thoughtful and musing as he regarded the chemist. He unclipped the Pokeball and tossed it up and down. "...you'll see.

The ball clicked open, and everything froze as a colossal titan rose up like a slumbering mountain. Seven dots flashed in alien patterns, cutting through the hailstorm like a knife. In its center, a large violet mass puled through the automaton's Clear Body.

"This, my lovely chemist..." The admin's voice carried well over the snowstorm. "...is Regice."

---

Absinthe Blackwood

Maki's logic is sound, as a detective's often is. He's reminded of the similarities between detective work and archaeology. The only difference is that one concerned far more recent events, before the trail got cold and one had to rip the evidence from the earth eons later.

"They're not gonna let him go because Megalopolans are war criminals. Nobody's keen to forget the Three Day's War. I'm certainly not." The admin took another bite of bread and nodded in agreement. Maki was right. They'd need to break him out, as annoying as it was. Kill him. Make an example of him. Grill him for intel.

He'd leave it to people like mint frost or BARNABY FINCH . Those who were far more willing to put Rocket's Megalopolan Dental Plan on full display.

"Grab our Pokemon. We'll have to break him out. If it gets ugly enough, we'll have to masquerade as Megalopolans." Even uglier still, and Rocket's cudgel would swing down with as much force as he and Maki could put behind it. "Your servants will need to ensure our innocence."

A deep exhale. A flicker of annoyance behind a cheery eye. This had turned into a massive clusterfuck.

At least the bread was good.

---

MAKI YUKIMURA

Of course it's fear. It has always been fear. It was the emotion that dictated Howard's every move. His loyalty to Rocket? Fear. His war against Eternatus? Fear. His hatred of the new God General? Fear.

That one emotion had dictated his past, present, and future. It was his everything.

"Honestly?" He peered into the underboss's eyes before continuing. His lip trembled as they parted to reveal the truth.

"I don't even remember." There had been a flash. A dead officer on the ground. An apathetic obelisk of a man that had dictated that because of an inconvenience, an innocent man had to die. It was the first true display of divinity that Howard had ever seen. "I just..."

Just...

Just...

"He looked at me, and he saw me. I studied gods in the margins of history books, but there was one right there." Howard made a trembling first with a hand scarred red. "Right. There. Something saw me, and it did not care."

Until it did.

Another meal. Another universe.

"We raised up a god, Theo Beckett. We dragged it up into the stars and it gorged itself on our reluctance to act. I saw what it left us, and hear me, Theo."

Always another universe.

"There are no stars left for us in the sky."

---

THEO BECKETT

"Outta berries. Fuck off." Howard flicked up his newspaper and sighed. Oh, shit. Melody Miro was releasing a new album? He'd need to get a signature on his copy if possible. Something nibbled on his sleeve. Howard sighed and looked down. "I told you-"

'Shuck?' A Shuckle looked at him with huge, dopy eyes. It pleased with the admin's conscience. It demanded his attention. The admin sighed, before turning back to his newspaper.

'Shuck?'

'Shuck?'

'Shuck?'

'Shuck?'

'Shuck?'

'Shuck?'

"What the FUUUUUUUUUUUU-" Howard screamed as he drowned in an increasingly large swarms of Shuckles. The last thing anyone could see of him was his hand and his newspaper, which soon disappeared into the increasing tide of Shuckles.

---

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