[attr="class","illeana"]

[attr="class","illeana b"]

[attr="class","illeana i"]her stomach lurches into her throat as electricity surges up around them. her gyarados snarls and thrashes in an attempt to escape but the movement comes a moment too late - volt switch renders both pokemon and scientist hissing in pain.

and as her eyes dart to the depths, she finds a singular eye staring back up at her.

a shiver follows and scar tissue along her spine comes alive. she feels it move, hears it sing... for hymns of danger are closing in around her.

"draw them out."

her eyes narrow, sharpened against whetstone until they're daggers. her gyarados snarls and begins to swirl its tail around to whip up a whirlpool.

and as waves churn and coil, she looks for the monsters creeping beneath. if she blinks, she can almost make out their faces - watery and marked of primal origins, weapons conjured from the depths around them. shadows become sea limbs and they look to drown her.

she will not let them. she will end what she has started with simmering madness unhinging what little remains of an already fractured mind.

Cillian Quinn

participation +50
2 ic posts +20

[attr="class","illeana"]

[attr="class","illeana b"]

[attr="class","illeana i"]her gyarados's whirlpool meets resistance and she stares down at the stalemate, at the way waves struggle against each other. it brings memories of a ruined temple, of a people with sacrificial blood on their hands, of a hell coming from her own making.

and yet, she doesn't look to stop it yet...

for her eyes catch on bone-white flashes deep in the depths and it instills familiar sensations into her bones: fear and dread and searing rage.

she sees red in the shadows of spread fins - primordial markings conjured up from nightmares that haunt her in the waking hours of daylight. they're etched into her eyes, burned into retinas even when eyelids flutter shut. the face of a sea queen and the behemoth she calls patron... they swirl in the whirlpool beneath her and each wave sounds more and more like laughter if she truly focuses.

"face me yourself."

her eyes narrow. a grudge spanning the multiverse makes her impulsive, makes her weak. she gives into it as all cornered animals do, with bared teeth and sharpened claws.

her gyarados cranes its neck back as if winding up... and she taps three fingers against the scales of its neck to signal the attack's release. hyper beam shoots down through the center of the whirlpool, ignoring struggling waves and briny air to strike the deep.

"the water won't save you."

he can see a smile if he looks up - glinting and deadly and proud against waves.

"it certainly didn't save your soldiers from me."

Cillian Quinn

participation +50
3 ic posts +30

[attr="class","illeana"]

[attr="class","illeana b"]

[attr="class","illeana i"]the beast that bursts from the deep comes as a startling surprise for it is not the titan that haunts her - it is something entirely different...

and a sharp gasp rushes from her throat into an early death at the sight.

"you -"

no.

it cannot be possible...

can it?

her expression cannot decide between rage and shock - it exists in an odd in-between state, flipping through the emotions as a child would a trick book.

"where did you get this pokemon?"

the sharpness of her voice almost startles herself, as if it sounds foreign and strange. could it be her alternate self bursting through the multiversal veil?

briefly, images flash through the mind's eye like a sickening movie reel: black toxins splattered across a see through floor, a sea king speaking of promises about a lugia, and his head rolling across the ground with a scarlet trail spreading out like a cape.

"how did sea hoenn get it back? what did they do to it?"

the last question is spoken more to herself than him or his patron, but the waves seem to still in that moment and the words echo louder than they should. she pales at the concept, at the mere thought of the lengths they must have gone to retrieve what Olivia Abbiati had promised...

Cillian Quinn

participation +50
4 ic posts +40

[attr="class","illeana"]

[attr="class","illeana b"]

[attr="class","illeana i"]"as far as you know."

the evidence is damning - toxins of the same inky purple hue splattered across a glass floor tell a different story than the one he speaks of. she can still see the trail, can still feel the sensation of the toxin against her fingertips. with the adamant demanding of being given a lugia for the one they lost...

"it's no coincidence that you all had been looking for this pokemon, that its color is the same as that room."

she's certain.

and yet, there's confusion settling into spaces left behind by spreading tension. it feels like dread, like the cornering of a wounded animal.

"why do you speak of them as if you're not with them? had the vessel not been seeking reunion with their patron?"

the pieces are jagged - they do not fit together. something is wrong.

she does not get the chance to figure it out just yet. instead, thunder strikes and she yelps, tossed from her gyarados's back as the serpent faints beneath the sheer force of electricity.

and there, in the water, fear paralyzes her. the world begins to close in on her and she feels phantom limbs made of water grabbing at her body - they seek to yank her beneath the surface, to drown her in the rising tide of revenge. in her squirming panic, she manages to release a salamence. it tries to lift her out of the water with its tail, hovering just above the surface.

Cillian Quinn

participation +50
5 ic posts +50
your pokemon gets knocked out +50

[attr="class","illeana"]

[attr="class","illeana b"]

[attr="class","illeana i"]as springtide storm rocks through the air, her salamence snarls through turbulence. it struggles, but manages to hold steady enough to fully pluck the scientist from the sea.

she shivers as open air hits her drenched body, as his patron's voice booms through the mind.

"i - it was glass, designed like a clock, and it had this dark, toxic substance splattered on the floor."

a moment of silence passes, swallowed only by hungry waves falling over each other.

"that's all i know."

all she remembers, at least. the rest does not haunt her through daily life, not in the way other elements of the experience do.

her salamence snarls once more, as if in warning. for her or their opponents, she isn't quite sure.

"are you their lugia, or ours?"

she speaks in terms of dimensions, of spatial borders between their hoenn and sea hoenn - if it lands, she does not know.

Cillian Quinn

participation +50
6 ic posts +60
your pokemon gets knocked out +50

[attr="class","illeana"]

[attr="class","illeana b"]

[attr="class","illeana i"]their lugia - this world's.

a prized possession in sea hoenn's eyes. she knows this, understands this... and yet, she feels a sadness creep in. it settles in her bones and festers, growing like ivy over paranoia and hatred for anything associated with the people of the sea's depths.

"good."

her tone is soft as it continues.

"they'll come for you - it might not be soon, but they will come for what was promised to them."

and his question, while sound and logical, finds no complete answer for she does not know the true inner workings behind their hunt. she knows of empty promises by a false queen of hoenn, of the ruins they shared, but the loss they experienced is their own trauma.

"to replace what they had lost, i believe."

she falls into silence for a moment, slightly hazy eyes falling onto his patron instead. there, they rest. there, they study.

"their world's lugia is gone and so, they seek ours. i do not know what their reasoning is beyond that, but there is a connection between their world and the silver spire ruins. perhaps the answers lie there."

it's a kindness, she realizes, to divulge in this information with the enemy. whether it is a mistake, she could not say, but the lugia before her produces a certain melancholy she cannot shake. it drives her words, her actions, her paranoia.

Cillian Quinn

participation +50
7 ic posts +70
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