DREAM GIRL EVIL

walk on water just to kiss me

there's a sense of rightfulness here in these hallowed rooms - as if all is just as it's supposed to be and all of the bad in the world has seemingly evaporated.

and it happens on a random tuesday... the shift that changes everything.

she feels it in the way ALEXANDER STONE seems distracted, in the way his focus is somewhere else entirely. at first, she comes up with a million and one terrible reasons as to why his attention is elsewhere - each one worse than the last.

by the time she's on the fifteenth explanation conjured up from her deepest fears, he's springing the concept of going out for dinner on her and confusion quickly replaces anxiety.

"dinner?"

his smile has returned. it almost seems nervous in the right light but why would he possibly be nervous?

she brightens when he mentions already having reservations at the first restaurant he ever took her to - a quaint restaurant on a hill with a bright sign that reads mary's in loopy cursive. she still remembers its owner and the face she made when they ordered nothing but cake. clear as day, even, as if it happened yesterday and she's just now coming down from the sugar high.

"okay, dinner it is."

he leads the way, his warm hand in hers, and their bubble holds up strong against the busy streets of rustboro. in a way, it has only strengthened since the war, since moving in together. the first of it all, they had said.

and she's unsuspecting of the next first - the next step planned out for months and finally put into action after making it through all the trials and tribulations that keep knocking at their doorstep.

it's over cake, her favorite, that he starts the conversation. well, she should really say speech because there is no interjection on her part once realization dawns. sure, it takes him pulling the small black box from his pocket and standing from his chair before she's rendered silent - a first, he'd say with a laugh - and he's kneeling on the ground as mary looks on with misty eyes.

he gets through saying her name, followed by will you, before she's happily cutting him off with a wobbly "yes" and reaching for his hand. a laugh escapes him and she's beaming like the sun through tear streaked cheeks as the ring - yes, that one - is gently slid onto her finger.

and while the night comes to an end with dessert to go, enjoyed more thoroughly at home in peaceful privacy, the giddy high never quite wears off. in a way, she suspects it never will.

love.

DREAM GIRL EVIL

oh, come and get me

this had been theory once, she supposes, when the world had not had war knocking on its door. now, in a ravaged world with dimensional instability slowly bleeding through cracks in universal seams, she finds it necessary that the summons lands on her desk one fateful morning.

the aqua assembly - it has a nice ring to it, perhaps. easy, rolls right off the tongue.

she gives ALEXANDER STONE a quick peck that morning before departing to league headquarters, tapu lele snickering behind their backs and even the entire way there. only when the double doors open wide and the chamber is laid out before them does the island deity truly settle down. even then, it's short lived but the urgent pays it no mind - she's used to this sort of behavior by now.

the meeting goes relatively quickly. they sign contracts, FERNANDO SILPH picks apart the entire document (shocker), Katherine Fairburne and cait alfric dissolve into a spat, and the primal crystal placed on display garners her full attention.

something about it worms its way into her mind and festers, as if it's familiar yet entirely unknown to her. the dimensional instability of it all draws her in, sinking claws and teeth in until she's certain of a single concept: the mythos of palkia is of use here.

and before the meeting concludes, the primal crystal reacts to something unknown - something unseen. it strikes her with a kaleidoscope beam and for a while after, she never quite understood the change... until sea hoenn, of course.

the second aqua assembly, as summoned by dahlia goode and left to fend for themselves in an entirely different dimension, turns out to be a catalyst of change - not entirely unlike the primal crystal itself, she surmises.

it comes down to blows against alternate selves, different facets of the same soul spread across the multiverse. she wonders, albeit briefly, if this will have consequences. (it always will.)

and as she stares down her sea hoennian counterpart, a tapu lele on each side to truly level the playing field, a sense of disgust worms its way into her being. she has never been one to indulge in too much disdain but this feels wrong. this is wrong.

"you have the land spirit... but you lack the spatial conversion?"

she doesn't quite understand, not entirely anyway. there's an inkling blooming somewhere between disgust and rage, simmering beneath the surface in a vague pink state. over time this conversation will replay again and again but by then, fated courses will have already taken their toll for fate is a tricky thing.

even across the span of multiverses, it will always come to the same end. the paths taken do not dictate what has already been written within the stars.

this path, however, comes with victory.

the loaned aegislash from FERNANDO SILPH proves vital in this matchup. without it, perhaps she would have lost...

and despite not being its actual trainer, the borrowed sword and shield mold themselves to her will. the two tapu lele clash in a spectacle of pink mist and hers seems to have the upper hand for the moment. the urgent takes this opportunity to advance on her counterpart, sword raised. they meet, blow for blow, until she feels her body beginning to waver.

the primal crystal from the first aqua assembly had always eluded her - existing as a mysterious enigma she could never quite crack.

now, in this battle of alternates, it comes in with enlightening clarity. as if it's some lost hymn finally remembered again, she conjures pink scales a moment before the sea hoennian illeana's water saw meets her skin. a beat passes and the scales wrap themselves around her body, forging a makeshift armor.

here, the water saw is unable to cut through and the skin of her back - from shoulder to hip - is protected against her counterpart.

here, she swings her borrowed sword and watches with icy eyes as sea!illeana's back splits open - from shoulder to hip, right down to the bone. a moment later, sea!illeana falls... killed by her own hands.

conquest.

DREAM GIRL EVIL

drag me out, destroy me

perhaps this is inevitable, this end.

the bond had seemed so strong - invincible, able to survive wars and ultra beasts and FERNANDO SILPH . that was then, however.

this is now and each passing day solidifies her decision.

her sea hoennian counterpart's words became a festering parasite in the mind until she could not process anything else besides spatial terms. it had been slow, like a wound newly re-opened and left to ooze.

and then, the space-time distortions that popped up seemed to hold all of the answers she sought. she faithfully begged ALEXANDER STONE to go investigate with her - no matter how many they had already been in, she kept chasing like a dog with a bone and he could never quite turn down the excited look in her eyes. sometimes, she wonders if it would have been better if he did.

she wouldn't be in this position, then.

she wouldn't be tearfully sending tapu lele away. she wouldn't be severing her current bond in hopes of another.

they outgrew each other, she reasons to ALEXANDER STONE one night just before giving in to sleep with their limbs still tangled up together. she no longer fits tapu lele.

perhaps, deep down, she hopes to fit another of spatial essence and cosmic proportions.

and after a while, the pain of leaving tapu lele and their bond behind lessens until it fades all together. her parting gift, a sliver of healing mist left to protect her against what's to come, is used with a small, wistful smile.

it had been inevitable, she confirms later in the aftermath of mt pyre and a pink slash cutting through reality before her very eyes. it had been for her - regardless of her actions up until this point, it had found kinship in her soul and what motives lay hidden underneath skin and bone.

and the reveal is shocking: sea hoenn surviving the meteor, their forces mining the meteor, and a sea hoennian version of FERNANDO SILPH sending his thanks to his counterpart as the sole reason behind their survival.

she is not the villain in this version, but she will be the savior regardless... for FERNANDO SILPH will reap what he has sowed in aiding a foreign universe through defying fate. she feels it down to the essence of her soul, long after the pink slash has faded and the sensation of self-righteousness has evaded her body like a parasite.

she is not the fuck up and god, it feels good.

power.

DREAM GIRL EVIL

i've been expecting you, i'm ready

she wonders, briefly, if this has always been a destined end.

would it have happened differently if one little thing had been changed? if ALEXANDER STONE had died in the war. if she had lost to her counterpart in sea hoenn. if FERNANDO SILPH hadn't been the sole perpetrator of sea hoenn's survival.

would she still end up here?

the voice in her head says yes - you have always been meant for this.

a distortion looms overhead, the first after palkia and dialga's freedom during the meteor event, with chaotic walls swirling through shades of purple. lightning strikes somewhere up ahead and she feels the thunder reverberate in her bones. the sensation feels like a calling, like a summons... like destiny coming to fruition.

she steps forward, white hair billowing behind like a makeshift cape.

three unown and a golurk follow suit for they, too, feel the shift - the beckoning of what lies hidden.

"begin."

shadows spread first, the beginning stages of her golurk's z-move. a voice calls from the safety behind her. ALEXANDER STONE , a willing bystander in her search for answers - why the pink slash? why her?

"are you sure about this?"

"no, but i have to know."

by the time the unown begin to glow with their own odd power, it's too late to turn back. she doesn't have to glance back to know ALEXANDER STONE is nodding in acceptance, a look of concern etching itself onto his expression. the ring on her finger reflects the collision of three hidden powers and the z-move: never-ending nightmare against the distortion's wall for a brief moment...

until everything is tinged in pink.

the same pink slash from mt. pyre stares back at them - only, this time, it seems different. sea hoenn's survival is not on the other side.

no, it's something else entirely.

she finds herself staring back at a pair of sharp red eyes. faintly, she notes, a sense of longing surges up through the body the longer their eyes stay connected.

wings stretch in the pink void - they glow, too, softly at the shoulders. pink, too, for the color is not a coincidence. none of this is.

she takes a step forward and ALEXANDER STONE reaches a hand out to stop her but nothing can prevent this from occurring. it has been written. the path does not matter for fated meetings such as this.

another step forward brings her walking into the pink slash. and before it closes upon her...

she glances back, red eyes finding ALEXANDER STONE 's, and she smirks.

the pink slash mends itself until there's nothing but the smooth chaotic walls of the distortion staring back.

illeana reyes is gone - for now.

a few days later... her return is marked with another pink slash, another set of wings, and a newfound bond slowly fracturing her susceptible mind.

avatarship.

DREAM GIRL EVIL

deliver me that bad news, baby

she wakes with a sense of oddity, limbs once again heavy in their virtual form. her duskull is gone... replaced by foreign faces and foreign beasts. is it somewhere in this mess?

is she?

a hand rakes itself down her face in an attempt to clear grogginess from the body. in the end, it's only half effective.

"ugh."

what time is it?

she slowly rises from her curled up position on the ground to find beasts snarling. it startles her right out of whatever slumber had still clung to her body.

and as the world rights itself, she has to stumble forward to keep from falling over. the movement sends a rush to the brain and her vision blurs through a serious of fuzzy, blurred edges. she tries to stay upright - really, she does - but the ground rushes up to meet her and she snags her body on the roots of a nearby tree. there, a small patch of sap meets her cheek.

slurp slurp - illeana reyes
nickname: sap_sipper

sipping sap grants temporary powers, though you won't know what it'll be until you sip it.

swiping the sap away from her mouth with her tongue causes... well, she doesn't really know what it causes. not at first, anyway. it takes a few moments to understand the sap's effects, to really grasp what this newfound ability even is.

by the time she finds her duskull, she's coming into acute understanding for her hearing is sharper. it's almost skull shattering, really, the way the forest comes alive so suddenly and without any prior signs. she has to stop, has to hold her hands over her ears with the dream ball containing her duskull still in one hand, and wait for her eardrums to normalize the newfound sounds.

and when her hands fall, time slows until it stops. a choice is laid out before her... the first of them instills a sense of fear, as if she cannot handle the concept of being unable to protect those closest to her. for this reason, she selects...

KEEP YOUR POKEMON'S STRENGTH

Warning! Doing so will keep you from reaching their true potential in lieu of brute force.

Continue?

the continue button is pressed and the world comes stumbling back into motion once more. as it does, her virtual form begins to shift to take on a more skeleton-adorned appearance to mirror that of her duskull's.

birth by sleep.

DREAM GIRL EVIL

am i your dream girl?

he's here and they're no longer plagued by the terribleness of childhood. they're fully grown with shadows that don't look like their fathers. it's freeing, even as a sea hoennian dungeon lies before them.

so far... they have had little trouble.

it's almost relaxing, in a way, to be beside him again in such a way - like coming home, sort of. does he feel the same way?

her head turns for a moment and she simply observes jayden cross as he moves through the crumbling bodies of lesser enemies.

and then whatever thought she had passes, quickly replaced by her duskull coming into line of sight. when it's further away, her avatar feels... odd? half alive, as if her duskull is her lifeline in this world.

the remainder of their party is all a blur of familiar faces. she can sort of pick out mint frost if she squints, but he's not as close as jayden. in the end, it doesn't matter...

for the final boss is before them and it looks just like her. the water saw is familiar enough to fill in the necessary blanks.

"move."

she steps forward, red eyes staring into their sea hoennian mirror.

"or will you die here again?"

her sea hoennian counterpart morphs, then, from herself into a monster. it's familiar, the way gauntlets rise and the body begins to glow a sickly red. a dynamaxed golurk towers above them and something in her lurches at the sight. anxiety, she realizes.

cards show up in her arms after a moment, revealing items:

the mental asylum escapee // illeana reyes
escape rope | odd keystone | lustrous orb

and despite the call for violence from the final boss, she grabs jayden cross's hand and lunges for the door positioned - luckily - between the dynamaxed golurk's legs. the items help them fully escape without engaging, the escape rope most of all, but the voices drifting up from the odd keystone and the lustrous orb cause a falter in her step. by the time the dungeon's door slams shut behind them, she's trembling.

birth by sleep.

DREAM GIRL EVIL

make me evil

time ebbs and flows in the way a river would - steady, never-ending, peaceful...

and while it has been a while since she's dipped her toes back in this world, it feels like nothing has quite changed. well, with the exception of a key in her hand.

there is no lock that calls for the key to come home. there's only empty spaces and flaws in the code. she touches the corrupted spaces with a tentative hand, expecting a fuzzy feeling beneath her fingertips. it never comes.

the key in her hand hums, then, and she reaches forward to shove the end of the key into the corrupted data.

all around her, the world shifts. it becomes distorted - a shell of its former self.

and here, she's able to lay waste to what has become of the dream world.

she starts off small: ripping paintings from the wall and tossing furniture around. by the end of it all, she's hurling a chair at the wall and there's an uneasy air to her... as if she's come undone with the power of destruction thrumming through her body. a prophecy, perhaps, if she were to ever stop and truly think about it.

for now, however, she simply continues to destroy and destroy and destroy beside her shadow duskull until her pocket of dreams is practically gone.

they're exhausted by the time the world catches fire. her chest heaves through catching her breath. flames paint hues of orange and red and yellow against her pale hair.

she has become a nightmare in this world. she will become a nightmare in the next one, too...

for it has always been foretold among the fragile gold threads of fate.

birth by sleep.

DREAM GIRL EVIL

then i'm an angel instead

in this instance, she's given a gift.

and when she opens it, the world around her shifts... into a memory.

she recognizes the clutches of childhood, of a family home colder than the winterscape outside. she shivers despite herself and the warmth radiating from a lit fireplace in the living room.

somehow - she should thank her lucky stars, really - her parents are not present.

it's only her and a pokemon.

one look unlocks a memory she had buried beneath years of trying to forget trauma.

the hydrapple stares back at her. one by one, each of its heads poke out of its body to stare at her until there's twelve pairs of eyes fixated on her.

and when she thinks it'll snap its teeth as her father's pokemon always do, it instead coos and slinks forward to nuzzle each head into her hands.

it's a symbol, she realizes.

she's safe here.

they cannot hurt her.

safe. secure. warm.

her parents will come home later to find her curled up by the fire with the hydrapple, each of its heads coiled up to shield her from harm. they will take the hydrapple away and leave her there, forgotten and neglected, but for a few hours...

she was loved and protected.

birth by sleep.