maybe isaac needed something stronger than a lock. a bunker? a black hole? anything to keep shit like creepy mccreepster away. a straightjacket might work actually. well, maybe not, considering the way his body might just be made up of paper mâché and dog shit water. 

amulius is ripping into his body. they're already up to three and parker is calling the shots, watching with harrowing satisfaction as flames spark and whirr around the blaziken's shifting torso. when the puppet rears a hand back, amulius tilts to the side, but no retribution comes. 

instead metal screeches. parker swears and winces, watching in abject horror as puppet isaac rips his metagross' arm clean off. if it weren't so vile, she might be impressed. 

"you seriously tryna reason with crazy right now?" parker hollers at isaac, sparing a glance. 

the metagross putters and amulius gets in number four. ichor sprays and viscous fluid slicks his feathers. fire makes it bubble and hiss. the fighting bird screeches and goes for an uppercut to the solar plexus as parker hits five. 

the light distracts her. "holy fuck - eldin!" the tyranitar is already on the move. he stomps forward. each heavy footfall raises a column of stone edge. the glowing metal body is hidden on the other side of the sudden outcropping of rock, but the hastily sprung defense explodes all the same, launching boulders their way. 

"y'know, i fuckin' hate that phrase," parker says as she dodges to the side. "'for the glory of rocket.' rocket's a godsdamned glory hole for crazies is what it is. case in point."

she waves her arms towards the puppet and parker whistles. amulius disengages, sweating hard, only to tuck his knees in and leap with a superheated blaze kick at the swinging chains dangling from the sky.

"and that's six, fucker!" she shouts. 

Isaac Merlo

☉

okay, now parker's mad. there goes her superhero moment. amulius scuffs the final blow - and what a doozy it would have been too - and lands on his talons with a huff. sticky ichor makes him straighten and shake out fluffed up legs. parker's lips curl in disgust. 

"his legs are on the ground, isaac," parker says while staring at the still-bleeding (???? is it blood????) midsection, devoid of chest and shoulder and head and y'know, the other half of a person that makes them a person. "his legs are on the ground and he's still talking, isaac."

and then, suddenly the chains yank and he yeets into the air. parker squints up at him, looks down at the legs, and turns to give isaac a thumbs up. 

"so 's 'at mean we wo - OH FUCK." she nearly jumps out of her skin when the loud crack of thunder is followed by puppet isaac's meaty arm slinging over her shoulder. that almost peeled apart face is dangerously close. it smells rank and now that he's so close, parker notices that his skin doesn't quite fit. like latex stretched poorly over a wire frame. 

with something icky crawling underneath it. 

you step in line, or you get stepped on.

but it's not puppet isaac's misshapen mouth forming those words. it's a cracked, blistered mouth, puckered around a damp cigarette. smoke curls lazily above a pug nose, ringing steel blue eyes. he's laughing a smoker's laugh and parker is looking up at him, feeling impossibly small. 

and she hears it again, whispered through her own split lip, the rest of her body a million miles away, save for that thud, thud, squelch. 

she comes back down to earth with a shuddering, shaking fury. not scared. not annoyed. not even just 'angry.' but fucking furious. 

"i'm gettin' real fuckin' tired of this and," she snarls just as they're wheeled around and held up like some bloody offering for - "TECHNO LEGS?" 

amulius barrels into the genesect monstrosity with a good shove of his flaming shoulder. more flames sputter from his angry, clicking beak. whipping tendrils snap around his arms and at the creature at the same time parker ducks her head down and slams it back against their captor, hoping to split him open like an egg. 

"fuck off."

Isaac Merlo

☉

splatter. gore spreads down her head, her neck, her back, and she swallows the urge to vomit. the brackish ichor is sticky and cold and is definitely not something she's keen on touching her skin. what if it gives her a rash?

eldin and amulius don't have their own doppelgangers so parker orders them into the fray. isaac's pokemon are able to handle themselves well, but they provide support when needed, though amulius never strays far. he eyes the limp chains, wavering over the ground, with distrust. 

earthquakes and stone edges erupt into the crowd of faceless humanoid shapes. a scarlet pathway starts to form and in the distance, parker can see the rippling shape of the border's portal. she throws out another pokeball to help eldin; the ceruledge cuts into the wall of flesh with a violent grace.

relief sweeps through her and is promptly yanked away in the same breath. 

her fingers fumble for isaac, pulling uselessly on his jacket. she screams as he's pulled upward. the cruel laughter of rattling chains only adds insult to injury as parker's forced to stare uselessly at her friend's struggling form.

"you bring him back here right now, you piece of shit!" she yells. wait no NOT LIKE THAT, FUCK!

she trips forward as isaac is smashed back into the ground, but stutters to a stop, hand flung to the side to stop amulius too. the cannon slides off of her and makes its way tauntingly towards isaac's other pokemon. 

the implication, quite frankly, goes over parker's head. die is not what comes to mind. instead, steel eyes flicker to the portal in the distance and then over to the ceruledge. 

it can't follow us out of here. 

"isaac, we're getting the fuck outta this nightmare. switch him out, bud." the ceruledge's blue flames flare and then suddenly he's underneath puppet isaac instead, bitter blades swinging up into puppet's midsection. 

parker, knowing isaac's probably disoriented from the ally switch, yanks on his arm and starts running. 

"we gotta go, go, go!"

Isaac Merlo

☉

"i'm a lesbian, you prick," parker yells over her shoulder and digs her fingers in deeper. she's afraid if she lets isaac go he's going to end up getting lifted back up into the air or shoved into this sea of flesh or maybe a cavity will open up in the earth or or or or. 

all she knows is she can't let go. she can't fucking let go of him. 

and it seems the rockets can't either. what was a clear path converges on them. the parted black sea comes upon them and there are fingers hooking in her cheek, pulling at her teeth, twining in her hair, tugging at her heels, calves, back. spitting one word, over and over and over again.

a recurring nightmare made worse by Cillian Quinn's MIASMA. the burrowing promise that if she steps a toe out of line, looks in the wrong direction, that will spell her end. 

to want out is to be a traitor. 

but how could she ever want to be part of this?

she's straggling, nearly sinking, when she thinks of her reason, and with a grunt she shoves forward. shoves isaac too, yelling and tasting salt and not realizing that she's crying. 

behind them, ceruledge holds as best as it can, but it's not amulius. it's not eldin. its ties to parker are thin. at first chance, it disengages and sprints towards freedom. 

Isaac Merlo

☉

parker isn't really hearing isaac anymore. her fear has finally gotten the better of her. granted, being swallowed by a writhing mass of malformed human bodies with gnashing teeth on elbows and unblinking eyes slipping over calves will do that to a person. but she hears his sentiment, his attempt at buoying her. 

she's taking breaths, trying to stay as calm as she can and just think about nomi's face. 

and then she slips. on some torn and bleeding scrap of a rocket's uniform. it whispers traitor, traitor, traitor, as she falls, pinwheels, looking back and seeing isaac's lips move, somehow understanding, but not quite hearing him through all of this, and knowing, knowing, he's going to get them out of this. 

then his wrist slackens and the rest of him crumples. parker, out of reflex, jerks back and grabs him before the clawing hands can get at him. she grunts, fighting a tide, and glares daggers at puppet isaac...

she'll never forget what that thing looks like crawling towards them like it is. 

"wakey wakey, eggs and fuckin' bakey, isaac," she says, voice rising a few octaves as she gives him a rough shake. his head lolls and she wants to scream. out of frustration. anger. fear. grief?

everything around them freezes. the shadows stop crawling along her arms and she does not think about it. in typical parker fashion, she reacts. 

her left arm sweeps isaac's legs out from under him and she hoists him, bridal style, into her arms. and then she runs. a glance is spared down at his face. fuck, she can't even check his pulse. but that doesn't matter, right? even if he's dead, she's gonna haul him over the portal anyway. 

fucking hell. 

mist leaks out of him and she moves a little faster, cheeks huffing with exertion. eldin and amulius manage to struggle free from their own fleshy prisons and flank her. the ceruledge, up ahead, swings its bladed arms toward the portal as though to say hurry the fuck up. 

but she stops. there's only a little distance left, but...

"isaac, you're in there, right?" she pleads. "i can't leave ya behind, buddy. you gotta let me know you're in your body and i'm not carrying some fucked up version of you out there."

Isaac Merlo

☉

being out of her depth is something parker's slowly getting used to. she's an oxymoron at her core. had her life shook up like lives get shaken up when your parents don't follow through on their end of the bargain with a crime organization. walking up the steps, holding avery close like she did, staring down with cold blue eyes at the unmoving shapes of her mother and father - that should have rocked her to the core. 

and it did, in a way. but she still went on doing the same shit she always had - scrapped her way through it all to survive. did what she had to in order to put food on the table for avery, give them both a roof over their heads. 

but she was always complacent. rocket took her in for real and she signed it all away because 'all' wasn't much and besides, avery had already made her choice. was she always destined to follow those she loves deeper and deeper into hell? 

how is it only ever being going at throwing a good right hook, and getting up when she shouldn't be able to, has landed her in the middle of all this supernatural bullshit? is she just the main character in some terrible campy horror movie? or did she really just draw that shit a hand when it came to the fates? 

whatever it is, being with Naomi Sato for so long and getting flung headfirst into Weird City is certainly helping. either that, or she's finally cracked. 

because isaac starts talking with the voice of fucking arceus and she's thinking to herself, oh, he's the green mist stuff and is calmly accepting that as fact. on the plus side, isaac doesn't seem too bothered by it. 

she's a silent observer. for once, parker jones has nothing to say. but she gets the feeling she's witnessing something monumental. she's witnessing something important. said between two cloud versions of her friend. 

did i die? am i dead? if this is death, the afterlife fuckin' sucks. 

ghostly shapes pass by overhead, drifting across rivers and through mountain passes. she does not see them. instead, she coughs as smoke plumes and more shapes emerge from the mist. barely held together isaacs. she looks down at the one in her hands. 

stop multiplying, she wants to say, but she's so, so tired. they keep their fighting and parker gently lays isaac's body down on the ground, turns her head to the side to look at him proper. and then she walks up to the chain, wraps calloused fingers around it. it's cool to the couch and flakes rust down her side as she hefts it back. 

"isaac," she calls to her fraying friend and with one spin, a grunt, a trickle of blood on her palm, she throws the chain and says, "you got this. hook, line, and sinker."

Isaac Merlo

☉

"you literally have no room to talk," parker says. not after isaac's alter self had said some of the most bonkers shit to ever come out of a person's mouth. maybe it doesn't count though, since she's pretty sure puppet isaac isn't really a person. people don't get bisected and then shove their still-bleeding bottom half into a pokemon to become a walking cannon.

people shouldn't be able to command shadow tendrils into someone's wounded leg either. arceus, she's over this. she's so, so over this. 

isaac does something with the hook though. it's hard to see through the mist. and then it's impossible to see through the mist. the next thing she knows, she's on her back staring up at the sky.

she sits up and scratches the back of her head. amulius stands over her, looking concerned. eldin and ceruledge are off to the side, staring into the portal. 

she starts, but isaac's words make her falter. his shadow shifts and she'd think it were a trick of the light, but she knows better than that. finger to its lips, telling her to be quiet? so did the hook not work? did her incredible one-liner throw him off his game? or is this what isaac wanted to happen?

amulius helps her up and then she sticks a hand out to isaac. 

what's up? 

"the sky," she says with a grin, her own hand extended down to him. she'll tell him. later. eventually. but in the meantime, she'll keep an eye on him. she'll keep him safe. 

"you step out that portal, and you're gonna get what's coming to you."

yeah, she'll keep him safe.

Isaac Merlo
CmrUcTnH

☉