She hadn't failed? It felt true, and yet like a lie at the same time.[break][break]

Was it treacherous, to be relieved somewhat? That she hadn't succeeded?[break][break]

The man's soft reassurances abruptly vanished as he stated his desired intentions, and panic clawed frantic fingers through her skin, causing her to bolt upright. Vertigo made the world spin, all the colors blurring together into a nauseous kaleidoscope of tropical blues and golds.[break][break]

"No, don't... don't take me back there," she protested feebly, attempting to find footing on legs that had forgotten how to stand. Sheer willpower made her screaming muscles lock in place, an ancient survival instinct ringing in the back of her mind.[break][break]

What if he took her to the likes of FERNANDO SILPH or freya morningstar? She'd barely escaped that encounter alive, and the mist's effects were likely to be dying at this point. She didn't know how long kyle lopez's reign of terror had continued; her usual experience was that a few hours was enough time for Tapu Fini's BERSERK FOG to fade out.[break][break]

"S'fine," she mumbled, stars bursting in her eyes as she rubbed them raw. "I... I'm fine."[break][break]

She stumbled in front of the Flygon, leaning on it for support despite herself.

[attr="class","ooc"] Michael Navidson[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

"I'm good at gardening," she started to say, before amending, "or, I used to be." She took the seeds uncertainly, but when she knelt on the ground, a funny thing happened.[break][break]

Each blade of grass seemed to possess a smiley face, beaming up at her as they started to chatter with speech bubbles as she drew near.[break][break]

[attr="class","rbynote"]

"No, not here! There! Yes, yes, plant them there! Good job!!"

[newclass=.rbynote]border-width: 9px 9px 9px 9px;border-style:solid;border-image: url('https://i.imgur.com/UUqNs3l.png') 9 9 9 9 repeat repeat;padding:6px 8px;color:#232323;text-align:justify;font:11px Calibri;letter-spacing:1px; margin-top:20px;background:#aaa;background-clip: padding-box;[/newclass]

[break][break]Little exclamation points popped up indicating the desired plots for planting, the blades of grass shaking vigorously in disagreement if she got near the wrong spot.[break][break]

When they were planted, inexplicably, all the seeds bloomed at once in a cute semicircle of bright daisies around the tree, chiming out in chorus at it:[break][break]

[attr="class","rbynote"]

"Hello, new best friend!"

[newclass=.rbynote]border-width: 9px 9px 9px 9px;border-style:solid;border-image: url('https://i.imgur.com/UUqNs3l.png') 9 9 9 9 repeat repeat;padding:6px 8px;color:#232323;text-align:justify;font:11px Calibri;letter-spacing:1px; margin-top:20px;background:#aaa;background-clip: padding-box;[/newclass][break][break]

Sap began to weep from the joyful tree. Was it... was it crying?! Alarmed, Elisabeth moved to comfort it, before realizing she had no idea whatsoever how to comfort a tree.[break][break]

"Is this normal?" she whispered to Kyle, concerned.

[attr="class","ooc"] kyle lopez[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

"Why am I here?" she repeated dumbly, and the question had the lost echo of someone relearning how to speak.[break][break]

Because I wanted to kill a man who's already dead.

[break]

Because that Beast lied to me.

[break]

Those ochre eyes still bored into her mind, haunting her with their hollow displeasure, and a shiver of repulsion quaked through her as she covered her crumpling face in her hands. Tears threatened at the corners of her eyes as her body convulsed with silent sobs.[break][break]

Cunning and pride had both washed away with the watershed of catharsis, leaving only a frightened shell of a woman behind.[break][break]

The Flygon's WISH soothed and calmed nerves frayed by the wounds two gods had left on her fragile psyche, enough for the sobs to eventually subside. Shaky breaths centered her, each one bringing with it a dull reminder of the arrow embedded in her chest.[break][break]

"It doesn't matter," she whispered, each word costing her another shallow exhale of precious air. "I failed."

[attr="class","ooc"] Michael Navidson[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

Well, it seemed like as good advice as anything else.[break][break]

Cautiously she began to walk away from the tree, following the other individual who exuded a confidence she didn't feel. One second passed. Two. Three. And then...[break][break]

[attr="class","rbynote"]

"W-wait! Don't leave me! I can help you... Look, um, if you want to go into the forest you should consider this... Just stay longer, okay?"

[newclass=.rbynote]border-width: 9px 9px 9px 9px;border-style:solid;border-image: url('https://i.imgur.com/UUqNs3l.png') 9 9 9 9 repeat repeat;padding:6px 8px;color:#232323;text-align:justify;font:11px Calibri;letter-spacing:1px; margin-top:20px;background:#aaa;background-clip: padding-box;[/newclass]

[break][break]Against all odds, the tree appeared to be capable of offering useful advice.[break][break]

Though perhaps it made more sense to someone with game savvy like kyle lopez. To Elisabeth, it sounded like nonsense.

[attr="class","ooc"] kyle lopez[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

The midnight hour had come and gone, and yet the woman at the dock remained standing there, awaiting a boat that she half-wondered if she wanted to arrive at all.[break][break]

Her blonde hair had been tucked away in her hood as she waited, doing her best to blend into the shadows with her all-black ensemble. The last thing she wanted was to be seen here by anyone, no matter their allegiance.[break][break]

Precious few Rockets were aware of these treasonous affairs. As for the League, there was no need to fan the flames of their suspicion any more than they already had.[break][break]

When the boat finally came into view, watery ripples stretching across the pitch black sea, Elisabeth frowned at the man who'd come to meet her here.[break][break]

"You're late," she said tersely, boarding the vessel with brisk steps that conveyed her impatience. "I hope you didn't encounter any trouble?"

[attr="class","ooc"] MATIAS SILPH[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

MATIAS SILPH

Of course there had been another way.[break][break]

She'd spent ten fucking years living that other way, and it'd slowly killed her.[break][break]

Seaweed ensnared PENELOPE LIVY in her entirety, punishing her ignorance with its suffocating intent. It drowned her in slime-riddled vines, and Elisabeth felt a sick satisfaction build inside of herself at the sight of the proud councilwoman cocooned in forces beyond her own control.[break][break]

"You aren't strong enough to survive," Elisabeth scoffed, moving to turn away. "For all your talk, you're still so disapp--"[break][break]

Lava bubbled up and surging upwards as the feminine silhouette lost to flames was engulfed in a fiery volcano. The rotted flora collapsed limply to the sands, ash returned to ashes, dust to dust.[break][break]

This was a purging. A rebirth by sacred pyre.[break][break]

Before Elisabeth could react to this change in circumstances, Wo-chien did so for her. Sapphirine light crystallized around the Ruinous Beast's shell, TERASTALLIZING into a Water-type as it moved to deflect oncoming flames with its hulking shell.[break][break]

When ochre eyes met jade, a conspiratorial secret passed between them: an approval, for some unspoken criteria met in this vessel its infernal sibling had chosen.

[attr="class","ooc"] PENELOPE LIVY[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

SPOILER: Click to show

- 10 MP per IC post in a RT Battle/Mission.) (x5)[break]
- 50 MP for participation in a RT Battle/Mission.

She tilted her head at him, listening intently. There was a measured aspect to how he regarded her question, one that admittedly surprised her. When her Ariados returned to her side, she suppressed yet another smile, finding it uncomfortable to feel her face stretch in that way.[break][break]

It felt foreign, somehow. Like she'd forgotten how to use those muscles over time, and they'd atrophied from disuse.[break][break]

"I see now why you were appointed a Beast," she said, apropos of nothing. "You are a tactician, Frost. And a thoughtful one at that."[break][break]

What use was the most powerful army in the world, if mismanaged and misused? Worse than useless. Might alone meant nothing; strategy dictated all victory. She'd learned enough of war to know that much.[break][break]

"I think my ambitions to be smaller in scale than your own," she added, unprompted. Her vendetta didn't belong to Rocket; it was wholly nursed by her own grudges, dark with its own festering rot of resentment. "I'm glad I work alongside you."

[attr="class","ooc"] mint frost

[attr="class","pkmn"]

Arceus, this woman just kept talking, didn't she?[break][break]

Elisabeth stared at her as if she was an insect that had sprouted three heads, and all of them were babbling about something she couldn't care less about. Annoyance furrowed and knitted her brow together as she waved a hand, stepping forward as she said tartly, "I can only imagine how you got such a lurid picture of my reputation."[break][break]

Journalists like PENELOPE LIVY had painted her this way ever since her marriage. It irked her, that everyone thought she seduced men to get what she wanted. She wondered sometimes if she had simply been cursed with her gender from birth.[break][break]

"But it's not so difficult to convince men of two things," she admitted then, turning to look at the pink-haired woman beside her. Two fingers rose to indicate these truths, which she recited with a wry smile: "That they're smarter than you, and that you want to sleep with them."[break][break]

Any woman could understand that.

[attr="class","ooc"] Naomi Sato[break][break]

"No?" she said distantly, watching the Tapus as she considered them in silence. It was strange to see them interact, true siblings or no. "I wonder what happened to the Tapu Koko of this world, then. This is the Tapu Fini Hoenn has always had."[break][break]

The one that had belonged to FERNANDO SILPH -- something she didn't have to say aloud for fern delaney to know to be true.[break][break]

"They are such strange beings, aren't they?" she continued, wrapping her arms around herself as she exhaled a quiet sigh. "Miserly in how they grant their power, but always for their own reasons."[break][break]

Revenge was a reason she understood, at least. It was a reason that kept her from revealing her cards, as Admin Delaney had so aptly put it. She couldn't help but feel a tiny begrudging respect for them, and sense a twinge of familiarity in the way they spoke.[break][break]

She'd always valued cleverness and wit. Before being chosen, and after.[break][break]

"We are like them, in that way," she said then, turning to the dark-haired admin beside her. "We have our own secrets and ambitions. Tapu Fini is part of mine, as doubtlessly, Tapu Koko is part of yours."[break][break]

A hand extended in silent peace offering.[break][break]

"I can be relied upon for my discretion," she promised them.

[attr="class","ooc"] fern delaney FERNANDO SILPH[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

She didn't pay attention to what the other Rockets in the faction were doing. She, frankly, didn't care.[break][break]

"Gods die like anything else," she said with full confidence, her Seviper uncoiling to leap across the field towards this glacial titan of ice and winter. "Strike it down."[break][break]

As if shedding its skin, the Seviper's dark scales glittered before turning a spectral white. Like smoke, the TERASTALLIZED Pokemon drifted towards the legendary creature with its new GHOST-TYPE affinity, hurling a TERA BLAST towards it that howled with supernatural power.[break][break]

Elisabeth kept her eye on the POWER SPOT, waiting to see if this shift in energy would create any change in their circumstances.

[attr="class","ooc"] SPIRAL[break][break]

TLDR: SEVIPER uses GHOST TERASTALLIZATION and uses TERA BLAST on REGICE.

[attr="class","pkmn"]

She cast him an irritable look, rolling her eyes. Taking on a snippier tone, she continued, "Ah, yes, why didn't I think of that? Silly me. Taking every interaction at face value is a far less stressful way to live, so why don't we just do that, hm?"[break][break]

She huffily stomped ahead of him, losing sight of the light as she did so, but not seeming to care. The Stakatakas began to move, their shadows writhing in her peripheral vision, and she clicked her tongue as her Nihilego shifted in answer, tentacles possessing a gelatinous, liquid-like quality as it TERASTALLIZED into a WATER-TYPE.[break][break]

She smirked then, mockery dripping from her words as they fled, "Oh, right. Because charging ahead blindly doesn't work."[break][break]

The TERA BLAST cut through the swarming horde, pushing them back.

[attr="class","ooc"] THEO BECKETT[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

🗺️ utilize terastallization in an advantageous way.

12 flee from stakatakas that have been set up as security at various points in the world.