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[attr="class","mittag"]

Isaac Merlo

[attr="class","mitmain"]

“I’m good.” Cyg rushed to assure Isaac that she was, indeed, fine. “I just stepped in some… uh… looks like eggs? Yuck.” She lifted one foot off the ground and pulled a spiderweb of clinging goop up on the sole of her boot.
[break][break]
“I, uh. It was deeper in, I think. Tell me when you see the dragon turned inside out or the dead Lucario. I’ll be able to point my way from there.” There’s a bone-deep sort of exhaustion that’s settled into her voice, a wry, raw sound that signifies how she’s dealing with her grief. (Not wel).
[break][break]
She slicks a hand through her greasy, blood-stained hair and walks out of the egg patch, heading off along an arch of land-ish material that curves like a spine.
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“He tried to radio for help and I essentially told him to blow himself and limped off. Like an idiot.”
[break][break]
If he wasn’t alright…
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…“But he wasn’t really in his right mind, either, Isaac. Neither of us were thinking straight. Maybe he did just, you know, bail.” She winces at her words. “Not that he would leave you but he did look a little rough.”
[break][break]
She drags her boot on the ground to clear more of the sticky stuff off of it, kicking the coagulated ball of goo over the edge and watching it sail off into space--
[break][break]
--space that a giant, opaque-domed jellyfish head reared up in.
[break][break]
“Ah, sewer cakes,” Cyg managed to get out before the Nihilego’s tentacles, their stinging barb tips pulled back and glimmering, shot towards her. [break][break]

[attr="class","mitpoke"]

[attr="class","skullhover"]

[attr="class","mittag"]

Isaac Merlo

[attr="class","mitmain"]
The needle-points don’t hit because something careens into her and whisks her out of the way; they crash off of something hard and metallic, bouncing back.
[break][break]
Cyg is cradled in the arms of something… tall and cold and silvery-white and she recognizes the figure that had stepped in to save her and El Sunderland from Sima… back when Sima was trying to murder them.
[break][break]
The Valiant stands and sets Cyg gently on the ground, before turning back to the Nihilego; the plates in its arm flex and expand and with a flick of its wrist it has a double-ended blade in its hands.
[break][break]
“Holy shit,” Cyg says, grinning like a schoolkid. And then, frowning, “Oh, shit.”
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This was not a good matchup. And if the Valiant got aced on her behalf? She started hobble-running forward, wincing as she went.
[break][break]
“Oh no oh no oh no oh no--,”
[break][break]
Sima 2.0 came up behind the Nihilego and crunched at it, getting a mouthful of tentacles that detached, spitting a strange pale ichor across the ground. The Valiant used that time to slice at the jellyfish’s bell with psycho cut, opening a seam through the doughy flesh.
[break][break]

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[attr="class","mittag"]

Isaac Merlo

[attr="class","mitmain"]
She was so tired of being saved. So tired— as the Nihilego spat poison that hissed and sizzled across the Iron Valiant’s chassis— of being protected.
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She was supposed to be the protector.
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Isaac’s brilliant, brilliant plan payed off as the psybeam hit the Nihilego right in the bell, blasting a hole straight through it. It shivered and lurched, spitting out a venoshock in Cyg and Isaac’s direction. Cyg stepped in front of him, and the Valiant stepped in front of her, taking it straight to the chest and stumbling back, dropping her weapon.
[break][break]
Cyg made a strangled noise as she surged forward, grabbing the two handed blade and heaving it up.
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“NO!”
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It took every ounce of energy in her body to raise the thing and bring it stabbing down into the deflated Nihilego, over and over again.
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“I’m— done— being— weak!”
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Slick, semi-translucent ichor splattered from the wounds, so much viscera that she eventually slipped in it and fell to her knees, throwing her head back in a primal, angry scream that ripped at her throat and echoed around the vast black around them.

[attr="class","mitpoke"]

[attr="class","skullhover"]

[attr="class","mittag"]

Isaac Merlo

[attr="class","mitmain"]
Sometimes you had to be wild to survive.
[break][break]
The world shouldn’t be this way, but it is.
[break][break]
The Valiant’s double-bladed weapon digs into the strange, pocketed terrain of the Rift Sea and Cyg leans on it, breathing heavily, eyes gone feral-wide, greasy, bloodied, ichor-damp strands of blonde hair splayed across her forehead.
[break][break]
Isaac’s voice sounds far away. Like he’s speaking to her from down a tunnel, at a volume not suited to such distances.
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She squeezes her eyes shut and swallows. Something inside of her is ripping her apart. It could almost be vitriol, and she thinks it's mostly for herself, for acting like a wild animal and a spoiled child all in one go. Jealousy, hatred, rage, powerlessness, weakness, insignificance, all of it battering her at once.
[break][break]
“Because none of that matters.”
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There was something awful inside of her, pulling her heart down through her lungs, her gut, the cavernous spaces of her body. It hurt too much to put into words.
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Isaac thought the world of her. Wasn’t that all that mattered?
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She loved him immensely. Loved him enough to kill for him. Loved him enough to die for him.
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But there’s no saving her, she doesn’t think, anymore.
[break][break]
“It’s not--,” and her voice breaks. Her eyes are still shut. She’s listing sideways, now, more than leaning. “--good enough. I’m not. Not good enough to stop you and Ash from getting hurt. Not enough to hop off of Elisa’s coattails. Not enough to keep my family alive. Not enough to matter.”

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Isaac Merlo Ashley Shepard

[attr="class","mitmain"]
Cyg makes a half-strangled noise of protest, nerves still rapid-firing, mind still trauma-foggy. She’s gross, she’s bloody, she’s sweaty, she’s greasy, she undeserving, she is foul, she’s besmirching the light of him in the places where they press together. But in the end, it’s Isaac, and holiness or not, this is all she really ever wants.
[break][break]
A conflicting ball of emotions tangles itself into a nest of snakes in her chest, serpentine heads choking her throat, tying her tongue. She feels pathetic. Every time she tries to climb out of this pit of despair she just keeps getting dragged back in. These are emotions that should’ve stayed buried, never seen the light of day. She just needs to get her feet back under herself, get her right, and she can go back to pretending like she’s fine-- but no matter how she tries the ground keep treadmilling faster and faster out from underneath her.
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Isaac’s self-disparaging makes her laugh, a small, croaked, broken sound, and she buries her face in his neck and tries to remember how to breathe.
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“But you are,” she says, voice hoarse and barely a whisper, “you are my sun.”
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Does he even know?
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She pulls back slightly to look up at him, and opens her mouth to speak--
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--and then Ash’s voice cuts through the moment and Cyg is jarred out of her fuzz-headed state. She is all at once brought back down to earth and her smile splits across her face like the draw of a knife, the sardonic, punched-out seal bark of a ha masking the tears still gathering in her eyes.
[break][break]
“Great. Awesome. Excellent.” She tries to run a hand through her hair, gets frustrated by the greasy tangles, and digs her fingertips into her scalp. “Glad to see you’re still in one piece.” And it’s genuine, she really is happy to see him, but her voice is still tight with unspoken emotion and she can’t decide if Ashley Shepard has the best or worst timing out of all the people in the world.

[attr="class","mitpoke"]

[attr="class","skullhover"]