user key with account-key-request present in the store but no matching account-key

We have a case of a user that is trying to register a key but that fails, it turns out there's already an account-key-request for it, but not matching account-key, also the api doesn't list it as registered:

>curl -s -H "Accept: application/x.ubuntu.assertion" "https://assertions.ubuntu.com/v1/assertions/account-key-request/9rrxV3xRkNjih58E4_TVKIOZrZwX3VYySFzZx3qUveRf_7xkPSYpPQFTw6Y0JAaN"
type: account-key-request
public-key-sha3-384: 9rrxV3xRkNjih58E4_TVKIOZrZwX3VYySFzZx3qUveRf_7xkPSYpPQFTw6Y0JAaN
account-id: ipXkEKZQKS5Ud1RTA4341Nc2zwItPgc6
name: default
since: 2017-02-13T05:06:05Z
body-length: 717
sign-key-sha3-384: 9rrxV3xRkNjih58E4_TVKIOZrZwX3VYySFzZx3qUveRf_7xkPSYpPQFTw6Y0JAaN

...

but

>curl -s -H "Accept: application/x.ubuntu.assertion" "https://assertions.ubuntu.com/v1/assertions/account-key/9rrxV3xRkNjih58E4_TVKIOZrZwX3VYySFzZx3qUveRf_7xkPSYpPQFTw6Y0JAaN"
{"detail":"no assertion with type \"account-key\" and key {\"public-key-sha3-384\":\"9rrxV3xRkNjih58E4_TVKIOZrZwX3VYySFzZx3qUveRf_7xkPSYpPQFTw6Y0JAaN\"}","error_list":[{"code":"not-found","message":"not found: no assertion with type \"account-key\" and key {\"public-key-sha3-384\":\"9rrxV3xRkNjih58E4_TVKIOZrZwX3VYySFzZx3qUveRf_7xkPSYpPQFTw6Y0JAaN\"}"}],"status":404,"title":"not found","type":"assertions:v1:not-found"}

I don't know/remember enough details of the process to know how this can have transpired, or how to fix it