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5'9" / 175.26 cm height

Bury me in the roses and rot; I'll come back thorned.

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TAG WITH @elisabeth

POSTED ON May 15, 2023 5:10:37 GMT

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She scowled then, in an almost playful way. Hers was a mild distaste for his ideals, but nothing too terribly off-putting.[break][break]

"New me?" she echoed, disdain coating the word. "Ah. There's an old me, then." [break][break]

She walked forward, letting her hand lazily trace over several stalks that had stubbornly attempted to grow in her absence. Wild plants flourished in that way, always grasping and growing even where mankind sought to keep them quiet and tamed.[break][break]

At her touch, the plants shrank and quivered, drooping to the ground as if leaden with the sheer weight of existing.[break][break]

"Do trees cease to be trees when they lose their leaves in the winter? Or when they flower in spring, or yellow in autumn? All things cycle. That is the way of the world."[break][break]

Her carmine eyes held his stare, piercing and defiant.[break][break]

"I am who I have always been."

[break][break]

[attr="class","ooc"] Isaac Merlo[break][break]

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The Liberator

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April 10

Lavaridge Town

Figuring it Out

Penitent

Renegade

Short King height

Turned on my friends and brought them pain. I have no right to show I can change. But I gotta try!

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TAG WITH @isaacmerlo

POSTED ON May 15, 2023 14:47:11 GMT

[nospaces]

[attr="class","skullhover"]

[attr="class","skullimg"]

[attr="class","skulltitle"]導通抵抗

[attr="class","skulloverlap"]BUT HOLD YOUR BREATH, GUESS WHO'S RUNNING THE SHOW?

[attr="class","skullbody"]"You said it yourself. People change." There was an old Elisabeth. There was a current Elisabeth who rose from her ashes. There was a new Elisabeth, too, on this one's horizon. There was no other moment in time where this Elisabeth would exist than this one.[break][break]

At the same time, her analogy filled the other half of the equation. These Elisabeths were the same Elisabeth, just as winter and summer were two points on the same cycle. The Elisabeth facing Isaac would only exist in this current instant, while simultaneously having always existed and would continue to always exist.[break][break]

Confused? Take it up with Theseus.[break][break]

"Each cycle shows something new. Different. Something that may've always been there before, but may've not," he said. "You're right. The trees the same each year, but that doesn't make the leaves any less important."[break][break]

"What's that make me, in your books? A tree or a leaf?"[break][break]

Isaac made a mental bet that she was going to say "a weed." He didn't know why. He just had a hunch.

[break]

[break]

[attr="class","skullinfo"]MOBILE POST / Elisabeth Fiorelli

[attr="class","skullcredits"]TAIKO!

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Scarlet

Lisa Bortiforte

She/Her

August 30

Camphrier Town, Kalos

Bi/Heteroromantic

Bioterrorist

Underboss

5'9" / 175.26 cm height

Bury me in the roses and rot; I'll come back thorned.

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TAG WITH @elisabeth

POSTED ON May 15, 2023 16:26:56 GMT

Callan Young likes this

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"It makes you an amateur philosopher, that's all."[break][break]

In the shadow of her footsteps, the earth seemed to dry up, yearning for water and sunlight to nourish its cracked state.[break][break]

"But if we are to be honest, it's dangerous to ever think you know another person. No life, no matter how it appears, is ever truly a simple one. There's always a network of unseen roots intertwining underground to make up the single flower you see at the surface."[break][break]

And hadn't this part of her always been simmering beneath her skin, clamoring to claw its way into the sunlight? Stinging with resentment and hurt? Howling with the desire for someone to answer for the parts of her that were broken and refused to heal?[break][break]

"So I wouldn't pretend to say I know you at all, Mr. Merlo."

[attr="class","ooc"] Isaac Merlo[break][break]

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Wanderer

The Liberator

he/him/his

April 10

Lavaridge Town

Figuring it Out

Penitent

Renegade

Short King height

Turned on my friends and brought them pain. I have no right to show I can change. But I gotta try!

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TAG WITH @isaacmerlo

POSTED ON May 16, 2023 1:44:03 GMT

[nospaces]

[attr="class","skullhover"]

[attr="class","skullimg"]

[attr="class","skulltitle"]導通抵抗

[attr="class","skulloverlap"]BUT HOLD YOUR BREATH, GUESS WHO'S RUNNING THE SHOW?

[attr="class","skullbody"]"I'm at least an intermediate by now, thank you very much," Isaac deadpanned. He didn't spend a solid year living in his head and reconsidering his life choices just so he could still be an amateur![break][break]

That said, for all they sparred, he and Elisa were on the same page. It was comforting to act like you knew someone, but there were always dimensions to them you would never understand. The shoots that stretched to the sky were always mirrored by the roots that dwelled beneath. Perfect knowledge was simply impossible.[break][break]

The only difference between the two was that Isaac was happy to learn and just as happy to share. Lis, on the other hand, was a closed book even before her transformation. They were two sides of the same coin, but that made them polar opposites as much as it made them kin.[break][break]

"Dangerous, you say?" he repeated, curious about her thoughts. "Is it because the more you think you know someone, the more comfortable you become around them, the more you let your guard down, and then . . ."[break][break]

He let the apex predator finish that sentence for herself.

[break]

[break]

[attr="class","skullinfo"]MOBILE POST / Elisabeth Fiorelli

[attr="class","skullcredits"]TAIKO!

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Scarlet

Lisa Bortiforte

She/Her

August 30

Camphrier Town, Kalos

Bi/Heteroromantic

Bioterrorist

Underboss

5'9" / 175.26 cm height

Bury me in the roses and rot; I'll come back thorned.

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TAG WITH @elisabeth

POSTED ON May 16, 2023 5:07:11 GMT

John Sullivan and Callan Young like this

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[attr="class","minimal elisa"]

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"People exploit vulnerability," she finished for him, her statement brooking no argument. "That's a simple truth I think everyone can acknowledge."[break][break]

Her invisible armor had been formed out of shattered pieces of herself, rebuilt and shambled together out of necessity; scarred tissue rarely healed smoothly.[break][break]

"One day," she continued, in a voice that sounded almost like a low purr as she drifted closer to him, "you might regret saying the wrong thing, to the wrong person. Not everyone sees the admission of weakness as strength."[break][break]

Here, at this proximity, resentment seemed to reek from her like some sickly cloying perfume -- something that turned the stomach with its potency, though it possessed no scent.[break][break]

Perhaps it was more accurate to compare it to a pressure, instead: a barely contained energy that thrummed in the air between them.[break][break]

"But for your sake, Isaac, I hope that day doesn't come."

[break][break]

[attr="class","ooc"] Isaac Merlo[break][break]

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played by

Wanderer

The Liberator

he/him/his

April 10

Lavaridge Town

Figuring it Out

Penitent

Renegade

Short King height

Turned on my friends and brought them pain. I have no right to show I can change. But I gotta try!

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TAG WITH @isaacmerlo

POSTED ON May 16, 2023 14:17:46 GMT

Cillian Quinn and John Sullivan like this

[nospaces]

[attr="class","skullhover"]

[attr="class","skullimg"]

[attr="class","skulltitle"]導通抵抗

[attr="class","skulloverlap"]BUT HOLD YOUR BREATH, GUESS WHO'S RUNNING THE SHOW?

[attr="class","skullbody"]"Some do." There was a slight wistfulness behind Isaac's words as he spoke. "Others try and patch it up. Or maybe they pretend to ignore it, only to talk about it when you're not looking. But that's all still the same kinda impulse, isn't it?"[break][break]

"People look at the world and try to find what's wrong with it. It's just human nature."[break][break]

Cruelty, but also care. Predation, but also curiosity. Isaac's worldview was broader and softer than Elisa's cold, hard sharpness, even as he acknowledged that her true experiences lurked in the shadows. He knew some looked to a broken world to try and learn how to control it. He also knew others did so to try and fix it.[break][break]

Such openness and trust were his biggest strength, yet also his biggest weakness. Elisabeth warned him of the latter, something about her approach leaving his stomach turning. Perfume? No, no. Strangely enough, she didn't seem to be wearing her usual. Nothing floral held its spot in her life any longer. Smoke? That had lomg drifted away on the winds.[break][break]

Besides, it wasn't his nose that had caught her approach. It was his soul.[break][break]

She felt the way her once-beloved cottage looked. She felt like the sound of her high heels squelching through the mulch, leaving puncture scars along the landscape. She felt like a predator wearing the face of its prey, relishing in an attempt to finally show the face beneath its mask.

She felt like Cillian Quinn in his office; a cold, unyielding pressure. However, whereas his was pristine and clinical, hers was born of fresh rot.[break][break]

"No, really. You've changed. And I don't just mean as a person," he said, his soul quivering beneath that all too familiar death grip. "Where have you been?"[break][break]

"What have you done?"

[break]

[break]

[attr="class","skullinfo"]MOBILE POST / Elisabeth Fiorelli

[attr="class","skullcredits"]TAIKO!

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played by

Scarlet

Lisa Bortiforte

She/Her

August 30

Camphrier Town, Kalos

Bi/Heteroromantic

Bioterrorist

Underboss

5'9" / 175.26 cm height

Bury me in the roses and rot; I'll come back thorned.

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TAG WITH @elisabeth

POSTED ON May 16, 2023 17:17:00 GMT

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Her red lips split into a crescent moon of teeth that slashed a smile across her face. She seemed to relish in his discomfort, the way a Corviknight relished in the capture of a Wurmple in its talons.[break][break]

"Why, Isaac? Do we frighten you?"
[break]

The Kalosian accent that had marked her voice remained, but its lilting, feminine tenor possessed a strangeness to it that spoke of something else -- something otherworldly in its sinister menace.[break][break]

A dry gust of wind swept up the decaying leaves and wilted petals that remained on the ruined ground, swirling around her as they teased her silken hair to spin about her in jet-black curls. She laughed then, and the sound likewise seemed to carry its own current, the bitterness inherent in her tone leaking out.[break][break]

The damned woman faced him with wild carmine eyes, her black soul shamelessly bared to his.[break][break]

"We wonder if you'd believe us, if we told you."

[attr="class","ooc"] Isaac Merlo[break][break]

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played by

Wanderer

The Liberator

he/him/his

April 10

Lavaridge Town

Figuring it Out

Penitent

Renegade

Short King height

Turned on my friends and brought them pain. I have no right to show I can change. But I gotta try!

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part of

TAG WITH @isaacmerlo

POSTED ON May 16, 2023 17:35:17 GMT

[nospaces]

[attr="class","skullhover"]

[attr="class","skullimg"]

[attr="class","skulltitle"]導通抵抗

[attr="class","skulloverlap"]BUT HOLD YOUR BREATH, GUESS WHO'S RUNNING THE SHOW?

[attr="class","skullbody"]For a second, Isaac wondered if Elisa meant her and ana fell. Then he wondered if she meant her and Rocket as a whole. But neither of those seemed quite right. This was a different we. This was equal parts all-encompassing and uniquely singular, brought about through a dangerous change in vocal tone. Her accent shifted uncomfortably atop her words, like a mask that had grown a touch too loose.[break][break]

"I'd rather not regret saying the wrong thing," he retorted. A glib attempt at throwing Lis' words back at her? Or an admission of terror in all but name? The longer he lingered, the more her presence surrounded him, just as the wind and her hair surrounded her.[break][break]

Just as the veil of death surrounded this land.[break][break]

"Maybe I'll believe you. Maybe I won't." The truth sounded closer than ever. It felt realer than ever. Try as he might to be nonchalant about it, his ambivalence didn't come from base neutrality. It came from a blend of burning curiosity and mortal terror, the same mixture that drove those who beheld cosmic horrors mad.[break][break]

"But are you going to tell me? Or are you going go show me?"[break][break]

Even as he gazed into the abyss, Isaac dared. It was admirable as it was vexing.

[break]

[break]

[attr="class","skullinfo"]MOBILE POST / Elisabeth Fiorelli

[attr="class","skullcredits"]TAIKO!

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played by

Scarlet

Lisa Bortiforte

She/Her

August 30

Camphrier Town, Kalos

Bi/Heteroromantic

Bioterrorist

Underboss

5'9" / 175.26 cm height

Bury me in the roses and rot; I'll come back thorned.

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TAG WITH @elisabeth

POSTED ON May 16, 2023 18:09:02 GMT

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[attr="class","minimal elisa"]

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No sound betrayed her footsteps towards him. Each one was deliberate, poised as if stepping upon a razor-sharp wire.[break][break]

"Tell us, philosopher. Did Eve regret biting into the fruit of knowledge?"
[break]

An alabaster hand as pale as moonlight reached towards him then, with an almost maternal gentleness. No such tenderness shone in her eyes, however, nor hid itself in the cruel curve of her mouth.[break][break]

"We are already poisoned with the knowing. We can never unknow. We can never walk back to the Eden of our ignorance."
[break]

Spite spat out with her admission, her hand hovering near his face, a moment away from breaching the safe distance between them.[break][break]

"But perhaps you'd believe we could, if you didn't know better."
[break]

Her finger drew slowly and painfully over his cheek in a caress, feather-light and innocuous.[break][break]

But its impact was a flood.[break][break]

she can also touch others to instill her own resentment in others, or to draw out deep-seated grudges to fuel her own spite. this effect, however, is temporary. (REQ: RPER PERMISSION)
[break]

It is a deep-seated bitterness that spreads through you at her touch, blooming like wildfire to invade every inch of your psyche. It finds and claws open a raw, festering wound: a splitting open of pains that have never healed.[break][break]

It screams to be felt.[break][break]

The flash of images are strange, disjointed, seemingly unrelated to one another: Flowers. Children. A man. A horrible, terrible man, with eyes black as coal that seem to strip you of all your futile defenses.[break][break]

He's smiling. He's smiling and he's holding her close and he lies, he lies, he lies...[break][break]

You silence him. You silence all of them.
[break]

You reach into the darkness of this hell, and it answers your call with the glow of two ochre eyes, shadows stretching back to you with the tenderness of a lover.[break][break]

It drags you deeper into the depths of your own ruination.

[break][break]

[attr="class","ooc"] Isaac Merlo[break][break]

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played by

Wanderer

The Liberator

he/him/his

April 10

Lavaridge Town

Figuring it Out

Penitent

Renegade

Short King height

Turned on my friends and brought them pain. I have no right to show I can change. But I gotta try!

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TAG WITH @isaacmerlo

POSTED ON May 16, 2023 19:07:11 GMT

John Sullivan, jayden cross, and 3 more like this

[nospaces]

[attr="class","skullhover"]

[attr="class","skullimg"]

[attr="class","skulltitle"]導通抵抗

[attr="class","skulloverlap"]BUT HOLD YOUR BREATH, GUESS WHO'S RUNNING THE SHOW?

[attr="class","skullbody"]Miasma poured from Elisabeth's palm as she trailed her hand in front of his face. It flowed from her fingers into Isaac's breath, and with that he could finally see.[break][break]

Distorted images. A lovely life, viewed through the shattered remains of rose tinted glasses. In the center of it all, It stands. A man with pitch black eyes, the focal point of these myriad visions. He doesn't belong. He's all Isaac can see. The longer Isaac stared at him, the more fear and loathing he felt.[break][break]

He did it. What it was, Isaac didn't know. But he did it.[break][break]

He hated him for what he did to Lis. For becoming a scar, or perhaps a tumor, nestled into the depths of her brain. For taking an ambitious, brilliant, and kind woman and breaking her over his knee, until what emerged from the remains was the twisted wraith whose palm his cheek nestled into.[break][break]

He hated her, too, even as he surrendered himself to her touch. She was the god of his beloved's world, her sun, moon, and stars. She should have shown her the way to a better world, been the light he could never be. Instead, she dragged her right down to hell in her wake. Their yellows and blues decayed into blacks and reds before Isaac's eyes.[break][break]

Not that she was blameness. Even ana fell bore the weight of the miasma in his mind, its haze allowing him to see her in a new light. How could she just do something like this? How could she devote her life to poisons and plagues and "medicines" of ill repute? What else was going on beneath the basement of that Sootopolis shop? How could they have never even spoken about this before it happened? Did she think he was just some blind, happy go lucky idiot? Some reverse child of Omelas that she'd rot the world to keep happy?[break][break]

Of course she did. Because he was. He was an ant trying to challenge the sun. He was a cog in a machine that worked perfectly fine with or without him. Society was broken. History was broken. The world was created from hot, broken stone, and would die an ignoble death cold, inert, and broken. Who was he to think he, of all people, could change things? Who was he to think he deserved better?[break][break]

Decay's tallyman scrawled name after name onto tablets of rotten wood. The more he wrote, the easier it became. Each grudge begat the next, a trail that swirled into a mountain and stretched towards the heavens. There god sat atop his throne of lies, viewing the world down below and the lives he'd neglected with a cold disdain.[break][break]

Isaac was going to kill him.

[break]

[break]

[attr="class","skullinfo"]MOBILE POST / Elisabeth Fiorelli

[attr="class","skullcredits"]TAIKO!

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played by

Scarlet

Lisa Bortiforte

She/Her

August 30

Camphrier Town, Kalos

Bi/Heteroromantic

Bioterrorist

Underboss

5'9" / 175.26 cm height

Bury me in the roses and rot; I'll come back thorned.

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4,757 posts

DOLLARS

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TAG WITH @elisabeth

POSTED ON May 17, 2023 6:42:24 GMT

[nospaces]

[attr="class","minimal elisa"]

[attr="class","top"]

Raw pain radiated from him as he returned to the present, his glare hateful as his single eye met hers. He'd find their carmine glow had darkened, slightly.[break][break]

Her gaze was now tinged the ochre of autumnal leaves: a tarnished shade of rotted gold.[break][break]

"Do you see? Do you understand what it is that we are?"
[break]

She savored the taste of his resentment the way she'd once savored fine wine, eyes lidding in seeming rapture as a smile crept across her lips. How many years it'd taken her to find something that slaked her particular thirst in the same way.[break][break]

"You love so very deeply. You love with all your being, and it makes you resent all the more strongly. We are the same, in that way."
[break]

How he loathed her. No, how he loathed them.[break][break]

"Us."
[break]

It satisfied her, to be scorned. All of it confirmed the truth of the only world she was willing to believe in.[break][break]

This dilapidated testament of the life she'd once known stared up at her, crushed under the weight of expectations she'd never been able to live up to. What a childish attempt at rebuilding a life from the ruins of her mother's memory this had been. Such a misguided exercise in pretending that she wasn't the vengeful creature that her scorn had made her.[break][break]

What a pitiful excuse of a life she'd lived.[break][break]

Her hands retreated back to her sides, her face tilting upwards now at the full moon. Something in its visage sent a shiver thrilling through her body. The milky rays felt cold on her skin, like a reminder of other things left unfinished.[break][break]

"But that is because love is the foundation of suffering."
[break]

He bored her, suddenly. This way he openly disdained her. This insufferable way he acted as if he had any right to judge her for what she was.[break][break]

Beneath their feet, what little grass remained yellowed into an ashen grey tincture, shuddering beneath the wave of irritation that collected around her in a low thrum of warning.[break][break]

"Is your greed for knowledge satisfied?"

[attr="class","ooc"] Isaac Merlo[break][break]

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played by

Wanderer

The Liberator

he/him/his

April 10

Lavaridge Town

Figuring it Out

Penitent

Renegade

Short King height

Turned on my friends and brought them pain. I have no right to show I can change. But I gotta try!

awards

4,402 posts

DOLLARS

part of

TAG WITH @isaacmerlo

POSTED ON May 18, 2023 4:04:15 GMT

[nospaces]

[attr="class","skullhover"]

[attr="class","skullimg"]

[attr="class","skulltitle"]導通抵抗

[attr="class","skulloverlap"]BUT HOLD YOUR BREATH, GUESS WHO'S RUNNING THE SHOW?

[attr="class","skullbody"]"We're the ones they hurt. The ones they forgot about. The ones they used as stepping stones and threw aside without a care in the world."[break][break]

Isaac's voice was slow and hazy, less like he was speaking thoughts and more like he was speaking his dreams. His cheek continued to rest in Elisa's palm, a soft and supple pool of resentment that she could feast off of to her heart's content. She mentioned the love from which his resentment bloomed and he simply nodded along. When she had him in such a trance, her pressure completely overwhelming him, did he have any power to resist her words? Or was he left craving the sweet whispers of the grudges he had once refused to heed?[break][break]

Her hand pulled back, and for a moment Isaac leaned after it. His body swayed like a tower about to topple, desperately trying to reclaim the feeling that Elisa's touch had awakened him to. Gravity threatened to punish Isaac for his hubris, and with that he snapped out of his reverie. He stumbled back, the daze visibly bleeding out from his eye.[break][break]

Most of Elisa's words sunk into a quiet, locked away place in his brain. He'd only heard her last through a clear mind; "Love is the foundation of suffering."[break][break]

She wasn't wrong. So much of his suffering could be drawn back to the love and care her felt for others. His love drove him to worry when they were unsafe and empathize when they suffered. His love made him incapable of filling the role that Rocket demanded of him, forcing him into countless dilemmas. His love made him incapable of disconnecting himself from a war that threatened to tear him in half, too big for one man to influence no matter how hard he tried.[break][break]

At the same time, she was. It was the absence of love that had once left Isaac a grey, burned out mess, withering away year after year until nearly nothing was left. It was the presence of that love that spurred Isaac on to become more than he ever dreamed of being. Love was painful. Love was effort. Love was risky. But it was those challenges that gave life its texture. Isaac would rather live this rollercoaster of highs and lows than ever surrender his life to a coffin of numbness.[break][break]

The grudges that had settled into his brain wriggled and writhed. They demanded absolution. They spoke volumes, and for once Isaac found himself listening. All the while a second voice, once lost and smothered beneath Lis' presence, was starting to assert itself once more.[break][break]

It wasn't healthy to ignore these grudges as much as he had. But he couldn't let himself surrender to them either. The embrace that had comforted him moments ago now felt cold, slimy, almost suffocating. Just remembering it left him shuddering.[break][break]

Maybe it was up to him to figure out how to navigate all of this.[break][break]

Maybe it always was.[break][break]

"As much as it could ever be," Isaac admitted. That insatiable curiosity driving him onwards, deeper and deeper and deeper still, would never let itself be satisfied for good. It was as much a blessing as it was a curse. However, there were times where discretion may have been the better part of valor. The disdain dripping from Lis' voice made it clear that this was one of those times.[break][break]

"Can I at least finish reminiscing here before I leave you be? Or would you like to take your turn?"

[break]

[break]

[attr="class","skullinfo"]MOBILE POST / Elisabeth Fiorelli

[attr="class","skullcredits"]TAIKO!

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played by

Scarlet

Lisa Bortiforte

She/Her

August 30

Camphrier Town, Kalos

Bi/Heteroromantic

Bioterrorist

Underboss

5'9" / 175.26 cm height

Bury me in the roses and rot; I'll come back thorned.

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POSTED ON May 18, 2023 4:59:39 GMT

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[attr="class","minimal elisa"]

[attr="class","top"]

"That won't be necessary, no."[break][break]

A dwindling of power was breathed out in her exhale. Nothing had changed, and yet, she now appeared a smaller shadow set against the trees; the ravenous appetite for misery that had emanated from her had quieted, seemingly sated by this latest offering.[break][break]

There was a flatness in her red-eyed stare.[break][break]

The remains of her previous home captured her silent attention for a brief while longer, her lips pressed together in a thin line. It was difficult to imagine the countless flowers that had blossomed here, over so many seasons. It bewildered the mind, to remember the hours and hours spent laboring for their care, tenderly removing each and every weed lest it choke the flowers on the vine.[break][break]

All was ephemera lost to ruination, now.[break][break]

"I have no reason to remain here."[break][break]

Elisabeth seemed to fade into the night itself, her cascade of black curls catching the glint of starlight as she retreated into the blight of the Petalburg Woods. There was a regal bearing to her posture, suggestive of someone who never spared the past the dignity of her full attention.[break][break]

Someone who knew that when you dared to look behind you, the gods never let you escape your hell.

[attr="class","ooc"] Isaac Merlo[break][break]

[attr="class","pkmn"]

[attr="class","milkycredit"] [attr="class","fas fa-cookie-bite"]

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Wanderer

The Liberator

he/him/his

April 10

Lavaridge Town

Figuring it Out

Penitent

Renegade

Short King height

Turned on my friends and brought them pain. I have no right to show I can change. But I gotta try!

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