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[attr="class","star2tsu4"]Baki kneels down, lighting candle after candle. The incense begins to make her lightheaded, and it's only then she stops, sitting down on the cold, damp floor and taking off her shoes to dangle them in the water.[break][break]

"As if you could cleanse sins that run this deep..."[break][break]

She looks at her faint reflection in the pool with a sigh, hoping that the candles will at least burn off some of this regret. [break][break]

As she sits there, a ball at her side bounces erratically, attracted by the draconic energy coursing through the cave. It falls from her belt and rolls into the pool, and Baki lunges for it before her Slazzle's tail stops her from diving into the ice-cold lake.[break][break]

"F-- Damnit, Fuji! So fuckin' dark, I don't even know who--"[break][break]

The flash of light below gives her pause, and a gleam of gold in the candlelight answers her question. [break][break]

Then, a dopey flopping noise and a stupid-sounding gasp.[break][break]

"... Oh. [break][break]

"Just... just knock yerself out."[break][break]

She sighs, trying to relax. This was supposed to be meditative. [break][break]

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[attr="class","star2tsu4"]Breathe.[break][break]

Let the incense enter your lungs. [break][break]

Let all your emotions pass through you like a sieve. [break][break]

Let it all go.[break][break]

Baki looks down at the ball in her hand. [break][break]

Only at a time like this, when she's let go of everything, does she feel safe to do something like this.[break][break]

The ball falls in the water, and a horrendous screech like a Wailord's fills the cavern, geyser of springwater and mist filling the air. [break][break]

All the candles are extinguished, but they're no longer needed.[break][break]

Baki looks up at her Dragalge with a faint smile, reaching her hand out. [break][break]

The dragon brims with power enough to evaporate her to ash at any moment, to melt her down, to crush her to dust. All of that may be true, and yet...[break][break]

"We'll melt this world down together."[break][break]

The Dragalge stares with wicked red eyes. [break][break]

A snout moves closer, and she allows Tsubaki to touch her without a stir. [break][break]

"Soon, Shion. I promise, I'll do everything to change it. This world that hurt you - us - won't exist anymore. I pledge my heart, my soul... my memory."[break][break]

If the girl could wish for anything, then certainly it would be that as well, wouldn't it?[break][break]

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Rocks rumbled in her bag as she held onto the back of the banana tree pokemon, its slow steps crunching the muddy stones that led to the hollow sedimentary mass. Before her eyes was a shrine that held effigies and draconic blessings; a shrine that was said to bring luck upon the ringing of its ancient bell. But how could a bell be rung to bring luck in the future when some would say that the future events had already been spoken into existence, never to falter in the wretched cosmos? Kyurem spoke the words from its tongue, allowing pain to foster and weave through the cosmos as the words echoed through the snow. Desiree wished above all else that it whispered lies, the only truths being the power it held within its maw and husk.[break][break]

The hospital bed could not hold her for as long as those who treated her said would be necessary. She tried and tried to hold onto the hope that the world would foster love in the future rather than pain; that love would trump the evils spoken of, which she perceived to be the ending of the world she cherished above all. The only world. The world that spoke lies into her ears telling her she would never be good enough, that she would never be strong enough to succeed in. It led her to become angered and manic, drifting out of the hospital window on the back of her beloved Tropius where she would be able to let out all the anger that came with a lack of acceptance.[break][break]

Worlds like the one they lived in, absorbed by greed and kissed by mythological deities with power incomparable to anything else, could never be perfect. But if only she believed that love could still flourish somehow within the discordance and discrepancies- and if only she could take the burden of bearing injury for mistakes and turn them into a motivation to prove the cruel universe wrong rather than into resentments. But all the time she spent putting the mask on her face, especially in the hospital as a means to bring joy to those she loved just like they did for her.. it was beginning to make her feel as if she was falling once again into a downward mental spiral, that which needed a release.[break][break]

She craved that release. She craved telling the legendary dragons and all that were of similar likeness that she would never allow them to lay a finger on the ones that she loved. It was something that she would be unable to truly secure deep down, but the world had a twisted way of making fears a reality. So, in that case, why could the world be unable to answer pleas of protection as a means of preserving those she loved and the very aspect of love that seldom emerged from the stamen of the cosmos? Angered pleas. Selfish pleas. Pleas to continue to cherish.[break][break]

A slump off the side of the Tropius in the center of the shrine brought her to stand on her fractured foot, wobbling until her knees were coated in the dirt from the ground- and from her bag fell out a series of rocks that had been painted in pink acrylic. Desiree worked on them while Yuina Higashi was asleep in their shared hospital room, painting them under a dim-lit lamp while hanging off its side. Each of the constructs of the natural world held a different word upon them, scattering and sorting until they were all fully visible. Putting weight on the broken bones in her foot shot pain up the side of her body, lingering. Yet, she did not care- her anger outweighed the manifestations, it numbed them.[break][break]

WEAKNESS. CODEPENDENCE. FEAR. HATE. NAIVETY. SHAME. PAIN.

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She swore to slaughter the damsel just as she did the grim veil that lurked within her mind. A swift cut, just as she wished to exact on the rocks representing what she perceived to be her ultimate weaknesses. Her fatal flaws, those which would come between her ultimate wish to secure love for both the world and everyone that she held dear to her heart. Looking at them made her heart rate speed up even more than before, the anger bubbling over that had steeped toward Kyurem and all the other forces that some considered to fail the world.[break][break]

Clicking the button on a cassette player and slamming it into the ground before her, bringing it to crack as the music began to play from its speaker, the state of mania blossomed in her mind to the point where it spawned hallucinations. Banaynay, the Tropius that stood beside her, released a bubblegum pink baseball bat from its lips and let it roll toward its trainer- its best friend of nearly two decades, one that had always tried to calm down when she got like this. But now, it knew for better or for worse that nothing could wind her down other than what it could tell she was about to do.[break][break]

[player]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1089043449778548807/1200992153363550299/The_Great_Gig_In_the_Sky_Best-Best_Part_Version.mp3?ex=65c8321a&is=65b5bd1a&hm=5d56ed0081eadb8685d8dc7dfa54aad981d865336b7ea3aa0503feeaecd04396&[/player][break][break]

Discordant melodies poured out of her mouth as she buried her knees into the ground and swung the bat through the air, redness blooming upon her cheeks like wretched rose petals, tears welting in the cracks below her golden optics. "Kyurem," one of the rocks split into two, PAIN, that which she swore to refute, ".. your lies will never bring pain to those whom I love." She envisioned its eyes, the eyes that overlooked the snowscape that cloaked the bodies of the dead and the struggle of the living. The gaze that she had met within her initial descent, the root of the cosmic fear that took a painful root in her stomach.[break][break]

"You will never hurt Yuina Higashi." She heaved, slamming the metallic stick into the rock until it was reduced to pieces. Fragments, the pain in her foot became numb until all that was left was the swirling of that which had spanned before her.[break][break]

"Genevieve Cromwell will never fall victim to your lies." Sweat manifested on her forehead as she struck the rock of FEAR- losing those that had made indents upon her heart was her ultimate fear. She feared that more than she feared losing herself- but she swore that would never let that happen, as she would not let that fear be reciprocated.[break][break]

Not anymore. "Elise Calcifet and Andrea Vaneau will forever be protected in the cosmos." She shouted, reducing the rock she had continuously struck into pieces of soft sand. Mulch, that which she gaslit herself that would produce fruitful petals in resonance with her wish.[break][break]

"luka chêne and marilee beaufort will only find success!" The girls. The pain that she felt in imagining a world without any of the six of them was too much to bear- a feeling that she wished to ensure she would never have to feel in the future that was woven by the dragon's tongue.[break][break]

A rapid slamming of the bat spat the rock of WEAKNESS upward as if a wave was crushing shells into the sand. "Michael Navidson will live through the future you seek, as will us all! We will be the strong that prevails..!" She screamed the delicate hymns of the song, hands quivering as sediment splashed into her hair.[break][break]

"dylan sayer.. howard slayte.. Violet Fairbanks," she heaved in exhaustion, busting the rock representative of HATE after a resonant mass of the bat, ".. you will never take them..." Beautiful souls did not deserve to face the grief that poured out of the cracks of the world and consumed. She would not let it, not anymore.[break][break]

She wanted to spin her fates, believing that hers would desecrate the words translated by the genie of fists and death. ".. I will protect.. Josh Devlin and Shalin Nariya.. love will prosper beside them.." It needed to play out just like that- she would not let those she loved fall into the hands that wished to take. Never.[break][break]

"The universe will never bring pain to MATIAS SILPH.. I will not let it..!" SHAME fractured just as her tarsal bones did that day- a fate that she manifested none of those she loved would ever have to bear.[break][break]

CODEPENDENCE and NAIVETY remained in the pile of rubble, pink-stained protrusions from the mulch that had been born and partially returned to the depths of the earth. Desiree knew too much now to be naive- just as the night of the blood moon, preparation for what could be pushed out from the dark and dreary was ultimately necessary. She slammed into both with complete force, killing the two rocks with a single swing; they cracked and fumbled into the cracks of the shrine, splashing into the home of those who were acquainted with the whirlpools.[break][break]

"You will never take away Thomas Benoit from me.. Nothing will..!"

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A final scream, the apex of the song that had poured out from the soundscapes of the machine, was met with the throwing of her bat into the darkness that stretched to the edges of the cavern- the edge of the pool. She tried to pick herself up, but the hallucinations and delusions that lurked within her newfound mental hellscape led her to fumble just as she did on that snowy day. It was as if Kyurem had closed its eyes, the vision of the mountain that haunted her ever since the Iron Boulder crashed into her.[break][break]

She was covered in mud by the time she could finally pick herself up, collapsing on the back of the grass type once more. In her stumble, an eighth rock had fallen out of her bag- and it had cracked into two simply by falling onto the surface of the shrine's floor. A rock that represented PEACE- one that she wished to keep. But after all that had unfolded within the skies and the scapes of the icelands, peace was now gone. If it could truly return, she would let it in without hesitation. But in the end, how could it?[break][break]

It was lost far too long to ever truly return. Love, the essence of that which she sought to prosper in the world, needed to come first. She thought her previous efforts would be enough- but the world needed more. It needed sacrifice, real determination.. and now she would work toward that more than anything she'd ever worked to accomplish. Her choice was made, reinforced by all she wished to protect.[break][break]

And when her body would be restored, she would. She would never stand for having a thing taken from her ever again. She would work toward the love she sought. A better world.[break][break]

"Fuck you, Kyurem..," she shook, curling into a ball upon the tree pokemon's back, ".. and anything that will ever be like you."

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