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[attr="class","textbox"]Smoke, casting an all-consuming and suffocating blanket across the land.[break][break]

Cinders, searing the eyes and throat of anyone who dared struggle against its spread.[break][break]

The feeling of being trapped, the light snuffed out and the walls closing in as timber falls around you like the thuds of a monster's footprints.[break][break]

A familiar feeling, an urgency, twisted knots in Isaac's guts.[break][break]

For once, Isaac hadn't run alone. As the winds took him, a second gust rushed to reinforce him. Suicune, spurred on by that same sickening feeling, now raced by his side. It was as unnerving of a presence as it was a comforting one. Suicune was a free spirit, one who rarely opted to remain shackled to their charge. For them to be so in sync was a baleful omen.[break][break]

So, too, was the sheer power emanating from the heart of the Giant's Chasm. To be an Avatar was to be more in tune with Infinity Energy than your average denizen of Hoenn, for it always pulsed through your veins. That meant being sensitive to deviations from the norm, and what an incredible deviation this was. Whatever had laid waste to this land was power overflowing.[break][break]

Yet it wasn't just a question of power. To be Isaac was to be more in tune with Zev than your average denizen of Hoenn.[break][break]

Isaac didn't want to believe it. Surely, this mindless devastation was more like bryan delarosa? No, no. Xerneas had been firm on where they stood. Perhaps one of the Ruinous ones? Couldn't be. Neither of the ones that stood against Hoenn dealt in flame. Maybe even Silph? From what Navy said about him, Isaac would've believed it, and yet Groudon did not tower over this blighted land.[break][break]

This was nothing like the Zev he knew. There was no fucked-up, sadistic artistry, painstakingly arranged by the deft hands of a professional. There was no greater goal, nothing lost for the League or gained for Rocket. There was only devastation, a raging inferno spotlighting a single point of pure darkness.[break][break]

In some ways, it was tragic. In some ways, it was a new opportunity. But for all Zev had changed, for all he'd degenerated, Isaac knew it would be a mistake to underestimate him. To act like he had the advantage would be presenting his throat to a man who would rip it out without a second thought.[break][break]

Zev would know he was here. There was no use hiding. As he approached the event horizon, the winds released his form.

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[attr="class","textbox"]There he was. The man who made a point of teaching Isaac to handle their work like a professional stood square in the middle of his own carnage. Of course he did. He had nothing to fear from the consequences. As they lapped at his heels, he simply supped from them like a king from his goblet.[break][break]

They were kings, once. To Isaac it had been his passion, twenty years of life given to enrich a world he was unworthy of leading yet entrusted to safeguard all the same. To Zev, it was a means to an end. Nowadays it was something lesser still. What need did he have of kingship now that he was a god?[break][break]

He was already in his new body, of course. Isaac wondered how long it had been since his real body had felt the sun. He'd thrown it away, just as easily as he'd thrown away every lesson he'd ever taught Isaac. In a strange sense, it offended Isaac. For all their differences, Zev's tutelage had done wonders for Isaac. Every time he tapped into those darker arts, he found himself bitterly thankful for the monster he owed everything to.[break][break]

All of that was worthless to Zev now. So, too, was Isaac, and he damn well knew it.[break][break]

"I am." There was no urgency in Zev's voice. There was no hatred, not even disdain. To Zev, Isaac was beneath even that. In one sense, it was calming. Unlike his inexorable pursuit in the Megalopolis, on the resurfaced isle, Isaac was in no danger. For once, he could breathe in Zev's presence.[break][break]

In another sense, it was terrifying. Zev, a man who decisively cut down any obstscle in his path, didn't even deem him a threat. It was as if they were on two different planes of existence. Yet Isaac knew he had to try, even if the end of this story had been written long before it began.[break][break]

"One I should've put out a long time ago."

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[attr="class","textbox"]The Zev Isaac knew would have never sent an asset back into the shadows. At best, such a move would be a feint, leaving the Golurk free to careen into Isaac from the shadows when he least expected it. At worst, such a concession wouldn't even be teased, the Golurk surging forward to reduce Isaac to a pancake without a shred of pity or remorse.[break][break]

Instead, the Golurk disappeared, and with it any recognition Isaac had for Zev.[break][break]

This wasn't just a personal credo. This was a play from Rocket's handbook, one of the first techniques he'd been taught when learning the ropes from the organization. Yet now Zev flouted it. This wasn't born from rejection from the self. This wasn't born from rejection of his "superiors." This was born from a rejection of everything, all the things Zev was and all of the things he wasn't.[break][break]

How fitting. The man who yearned to carry everything, facing off against the man who held onto nothing.[break][break]

Couched within that rejection, that "we" nestled in "I" 's rightful place, came recognition. Just as Isaac thought Zev had forgotten everything, he mentioned the last connection they'd shared. A tense stare-off over the corpse of bryan delarosa's godhood. A sacrifice to the machine in the bowels of the RKS Simulator. A knife broken facets of dark crystal, a million words exchanged in a single action.[break][break]

Their hatred.[break][break]

"I won't disappoint you." And for once, he meant it, because for once, that was all that mattered. There was no win or lose here. The result was already written in the stars. He'd retreat from this encounter with Suicune's borrowed tail tucked beneath his legs, knowing how futile it was to stand against the world's strongest creature. There was only a show of force, their unfinished business spoken in the only language Zev understood.[break][break]

One step. Zev knew his only obvious weakpoint.[break][break]

Two steps. He knew Isaac knew it; he'd tried it in the Megalopolis.[break][break]

Three steps. Isaac knew Zev knew, that his attempt would be futile. Yet as part of their promises, spoken and unspoken, he had to try.[break][break]

The winds took Isaac. And when they released him, he stood right before Zev, a knife of ice thrust right towards his eye.

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[attr="class","textbox"]Zev Harcourt was no longer human, and he made damn sure that Isaac knew it.[break][break]

No longer was Zev a shell of a man in the metaphorical sense. Now, he had become the truest embodiment of the phrase. "Wha-" Isaac started, but his fear and confusion quickly bled into alarm. Zev had allowed the contact just long enough to put a point on his new existence. In the facets of fading firelight, it was his turn to make a move.[break][break]

One step. Two step. Three. Blood drifted along the wind as Isaac's body faded. It was the damndest thing. He no longer had a physical form, and yet he could still feel the essence of the pain that lingered behind. Had he not moved more quickly, Zev would have dug clean through Isaac's throat. Instead, all he'd managed was a graze, for even one as mighty as Zev Harcourt could not take hold of the wind.[break][break]

The man who could never be harmed faced off against the man who could never be caught. It was an impossible fight between impossible people. Despite this, Isaac had managed to make the first strike, and Zev had managed to take first blood. He could stay like this, shy away from further harm, dance around his opponent in an ineffectual farce. Yet to do so would accomplish nothing but saving his own hide.[break][break]

Worse still, with each second he delayed, the darkness feasted upon the forest. The fires shed no light, leaving only cold ash behind. The sun no longer peeked through branches, even those reduced to indistinguishable blobs of darkness. Isaac's vision tried to adapt to the darkness, but how could it? There wasn't even a glimpse of light to depend on.[break][break]

Something told him Zev would have no such issue.[break][break]

Isaac needed to gather his bearings. The winds released him and he hit the ground running. As he did, he pressed his hands together, reaching not for the waters but instead for his heart. As he slowly spread his hands, ripples began to form. Calming blue. Compassionate green. Courageous gold. In the face of Zev's unending darkness, all that was left of Isaac's aurora was what he could cup between his hands.[break][break]

These were his three lifelines. They shook like candlelight in a hurricane, the light they shed barely enough for Isaac to see his own feet. As an apex predator lurked in the shadows, ready to consume him, he knew it would have to be enough.

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[attr="class","textbox"]The roar of the flame had been smothered out. Whatever animals hadn't fled from the inferno now fled from the unnatural darkness that suffocated their homes. Isaac couldn't see damn thing, but in the perfect silence that had settled over them he could hear a pin drop.[break][break]

Zev's voice slithered after him, and he knew he was all out of time.[break][break]

The rush of stale, soot-stained air was his cue to move. As he did, tendrils of crystal smashed into the space where he once stood. Each pierced through the flame-baked earth as if it were paper, the sound of the earth itself rending sending a shiver down Isaac's spine. Dust kicked at his ankles and heels. How soon would it take before it was blood that started to spray instead?[break][break]

He couldn't stop running. There was no navigating these conditions. Not against a foe that was always in his shadow, looming behind him like the specter of death itself. If he was to make his stand, he'd have to outrun the darkness itself. He deepened his runner's stance, glared defiantly into the void beyond, and made peace with the fact that the void would have to break before he would.[break][break]

A sudden warmth on his face let Isaac know that he was free. For the first time since he'd started running, he chanced a peek over his shoulder. There was nothing; not because Zev had given up the chase, but because there was literally nothing but vantablack behind him. It was as if Arceus had ran out of time to finish designing the world. Zev could have been inside. He could have taken a different direction to ambush Isaac. He could have simply lost interest and stalked away. From here, Isaac would never know.[break][break]

Two could play at that game.[break][break]

The flames at this point of the forest were less intense than the ones Zev had once stood within, but that didn't mean Isaac couldn't make use of them. He willed water from the space between his hands, then handed it over to the mercy of its ancestral enemy. As the flames consumed it, it spread out into a veil of Isaac's own creation.[break][break]

Just as darkness and light bent the knee to Zev, water in all of its forms heeded Isaac's call. Where Zev would need to trudge through the cloud of steam by his own senses, Isaac could part the veil whenever he damn well pleased. He may not have had the perfect predatory instincts of his once and former mentor, but that didn't mean he couldn't keep picking up his tricks of the trade.[break][break]

It was time for the hunter to become the hunted.

TEAL DEER;[break]
Shit shit shit run run run.[break]
As suggested in your post, Isaac outruns the darkness. He then counteracts with a veil of his own, using flames that had spread deeper into the forest to turn water into a cloud of steam.

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[attr="class","textbox"]For a few precious moments, steam displaced with each writhe of Zev's tendrils. Then, stillness. Silence. He'd figured out Isaac's game, and he'd thrown down the gauntlet for an endurance match. Who could be the more patient and canny hunter?[break][break]

Only his control over the waters stopped his own shelter from lifting. This, in its own right, would eventually prove suspicious. It didn't take a rocket scientist (or a Rocket Beast, for that matter) to know steam was supposed to rise. Once Zev narrowed his location down, a tendril to the jugular would surely come next. Why'd steam have to be so hot?[break][break]

Hot. Of course. That was it![break][break]

Making his way over to a nearby flame, Isaac held the steam closer, closer, closer still. They tried to rise. He denied them. He cupped them between his hands to stifle their whistles of protest. They grew warmer, then hotter, then downright scalding. Isaac bit his tongue, holding in the urge to scream. He could cure himself later. He couldn't "later" his one chance at ambushing Zev Harcourt.[break][break]

He stalked towards Zev's last-known position, steam clutched close. Then, once he was just close enough to trust in his powers, he sent them roiling forward. If he couldn't put a dent in the crystals surrounding Zev, he could at least see what a little thermal shock to the system was capable of.[break][break]

TEAL DEER;[break]
Isaac decides to renounce his icy ways and try a new trick: heat![break]
After using up the remaining fire to heat some of the steam to downright scalding levels, he tries to sneak over to Zev and unleash it.[break]
Will treating him like a lobster in its shell do the trick? Probably not!

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[attr="class","textbox"]For the first time tonight, Isaac actually got a reaction out of Zev.[break][break]

The man raised a hand to his face, sensing danger. Actual danger! Isaac could already hear the hiss of steam, see the crystals glow a bright red, imagine the biggest threat to the Hoenn region being scalded from the inside. If it had been anyone else, he'd pity them. If it had been Zev, he was ready to savor it.[break][break]

And yet, bar that instinctual cover, nothing happened. Not so much as a grunt of pain.[break][break]

Isaac took a step back, eyes wide with disbelief. Had he tried that on anyone else, they would have needed a trip to the infirmary. Zev didn't so much as waver. Just like with a stab directly to the eyeball, he seemed unharmed. No, unphased. It wasn't that his body had pushed through the pain. It was almost as if . . .[break][break]

No. No, that was impossible. Despite everything, Avatars were mortal. Zev was mortal. He had to be![break][break]

The implications if he wasn't made Isaac nauseous.[break][break]

There was no time to process. There was never any time to process. Not when Zev's tendrils bore down on him. Isaac threw his body from side to side, knowing any hesitation would spell his end. It was a deadly dance mirrored on the fringes of the battlefield, Suicune slicing across the treeline at galeforce speeds. In its wake, great waves seemed to form, Surfs crashing down toward Necrozma with each hit and run pass.[break][break]

What Isaac wouldn't give to have such power. He was still but a pupil formed in the shadow of divinity. Yet the Pressure he felt from that glimpse of Suicune, that warmth and firmness settling over him like a weighted blanket, stoked a different reminder in his heart. No matter how it felt, he wasn't alone here. He never was.[break][break]

It was his greatest strength.[break][break]

The second there was an opening in Zev's offense, Isaac took his chance. With one step, two steps, three, he'd once more rocketed towards his former mentor along the winds. However, this time, it wouldn't be an icicle heading for Zev's eye. Instead, it would be a Pokeball unhooked from Isaac's belt, pushed right towards Zev's chest. He may have been invincible, but Isaac had no idea how heavy he was.[break][break]

Perhaps, with any luck, he would prove light enough to be knocked down by the weight of an Aggron atop his chest. Yet whether he was bowled over or remained standing, Isaac's plan remained the same. Neo would throw her full weight into center mass strikes, seeking to crush whatever dwelled within Zev's crystals with the force of an Earthquake.[break][break]

If even this failed to harm him, perhaps Isaac would finally understand the reality of this situation.