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Getting dressed again also meant becoming trapped once more, the masks returning to their faces as they were to leave the chamber. Yuina wanted to fight it, she couldn't bear the thought of having to be shrouded again within the dimness of the mask's eyes. She managed one last look at Doug, longing behind the distant, far away stare of her dull eyes.[break]
And then she was trapped again, her only tie was holding his hand, her fingers intertwined with his as her mind raced, her heart pulsed in time with the toxins of the chain that bore itself around her neck.[break][break]
Yuina didn't pay much mind to anything as they moved through the hallways, her head cast down, hair dripping around her in brown ribbons. She couldn't think far beyond the vision The Mask showed her, how real it all felt, how jarring it was to know that those feelings were out there... And she could have them.[break][break]
She tried desperately as they were lead along by their chains to hold onto how much comfort she felt, how much stability there was surrounding her. There were no uncertainties, no threats, it was incredible to think that she could ever live a life like that...[break]
She wanted to remember the faces, those that surrounded her in the vision, that family... Her family. There was nothing that she could grasp onto to know their names, to know what they were like... But she knew that they were hers, they were her family... She had a family before... And she could have that family again... Couldn't she? The thought alone was nearly enough to bring a fresh bout of tears to her eyes, her chest swelling with so much need and so much want...[break][break]
No sooner were the group of them brought back down to the level of their ward than were they ensnared by their chains and drug back towards their cells, easily reminded of how debased they all were. Back behind bars, more mochi served... Sleep? Truly they were trapped here, given the bare minimum in order to survive, but stripped of just enough to breed complacency...[break]
Right... She wasn't alone... Yuina had begun to become so consumed and enamored by the family within The Mask that remembering Doug was there with her... It felt like her desires were being split down the middle, for as she and Doug moved to settle on the cot, existing in each other’s space as they had both grown so fond of, so used to… She wondered… Which desire, which of her lives, was truly the strongest?[break][break]

---

[break]
She had already spent a time within the neon city streets, leaving John Sullivan behind and hoping that it wouldn't be the last time she would see him... Finding DESIREE BLOOMS much to her despair... Yuina hated more than anything that the two souls that she could imagine she cared for more than anything else in this life were trapped here... And she couldn't even do anything to keep Desiree safe, not when they were separated.[break]
If it were up to her, she would have clung to Desiree like a vice, she was seething, knowing that this place was keeping them apart from each other, that because she couldn't stop that feeling ticking in the back of her mind that she had to depart from her beloved angel...[break][break]
Yuina was angry, fuming, at everything that had happened so far and everything that she couldn't imagine happening to anyone else that was here. She was livid at the mask for showing her a future that she couldn't decide for herself between her two lives. She was seething at the death of Doug the Ursaluna. She was furious at being held against her will... Her own will, she did have a will of her own that wasn't tied to her past life, and she was realizing how sorely she had been neglecting that...[break][break]
And she wanted to scream in white hot rage at the TICKING feeling in the back of her mind that just wouldn't stop![break][break]
Standing in the midst of a city center, Yuina glared out into the sidewalks of Megalopolans that went about this false life. Her anger was perhaps misguided, she had a feeling that they weren't here of their own volition given that they too were marred by toxic chains within the prison. But they were the only other ones here, she had no where else to place her rage.[break]
She also hadn't forgotten, and would never forget their transgression against the Hisuians that came from the distortion on Route 119.[break][break]
She searched their faces, they all looked the same... But surely at least one of them must have been there on route 119, and she wanted to find one of them. The ticking feeling in the back of her mind, the longer she spent in this place... But... Had any time passed at all? There was no way to tell... Even in the prison, there was no indication of time passing at all... Was that for a reason?[break]
And why was it that neither Doug nor Desiree could understand what it was she felt, why she felt her hair standing on end if she focused too hard on the ticking feeling in the back of her mind... She needed information, anything that she could gather... And at what she felt like could be a familiar megalopolan face from the night beneath the swamps, Yuina approached them unabashedly, looking to stop them for her questions.[break][break]
At first they seemed uneasy, speaking quickly as if to get the interaction out of the way, that they did not want to be bound by the toxic chains just like those from Hoenn, or how they got there. Yuina could have fathomed that, they likely had similar circumstances, but were being made out to be their enemy in line with the 'wardens'. She shook her head, stopping them. That wasn't what she wanted to know.[break][break]
"I don't care. I don't need to know how you got here. I want to know how long you've been here," she started, firm, stern, nearly angry...[break]
"Were you in the swamps of our region, when the toxic chains appeared the first time? There was a time-space distortion, and humans taken from the swamps, others that emerged from the distortion...," she stopped herself, fists clenching. She hated so much that their history died when the megalopolans attacked them, but, that had to wait...[break][break]
Either they were or weren't there in the swamps, but Yuina had another question if they weren't there. She wanted to know exactly how long the megalopolan had been here, to see if the feeling she couldn't shake, the ticking that wouldn't stop... It felt like... nothing was moving.[break][break]
"What is the last thing you remember before being brought here? How long has it been since you've been brought here?"

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