She knew that voice: Melody Miro, the newly appointed 'Champion of Hoenn.'[break][break]

The fame of the woman's singing voice would have been enough to make her instantly recognizable. Instead, it was the pleasant chatter of a gardening event that came to Elisabeth's mind, when the two women first met under far different circumstances.[break][break]

In the realm of plants and botany, Elisabeth knew herself to be the more skilled between them.[break][break]

She was enough of a pragmatist to know where Melody's strengths laid that hers did not, and she protected herself against a battle accordingly.[break][break]

Rolling waves of pink mist would plume in, the MISTY TERRAIN summoned by her unseen patron serving to obscure all of the other woman's surroundings from view. The laughter that answered rolled off the banks of cloud, tinged a rose-tinted hue that was a few shades paler than that of the Champion's hair.[break][break]

"You speak of me like I'm a myth, Champion, and not another woman like yourself."[break][break]

Various shelves of rock had cropped up here, some summoned by MATIAS SILPH during his last ventures to this place. Treading that familiar maze was not so difficult as she'd thought it might be, though ripples in the mist and the acoustics of her voice could give faint indications of where to find her.[break][break]

"Come to finish what the Volatile started, hm? Or seeking to see if your predecessor yet wanders these volcanic halls?"

[attr="class","ooc"] Melody Miro

[attr="class","pkmn"]

"And you'd be one of those prattling damsels singing songs to the woodland creatures, no doubt," she sneered, feeling her way through rubble and stone, "lured to the hag's cottage to be baked in her oven."[break][break]

She couldn't see the Meloetta from her vantage point, but its arrival pushed back against the roseate walls: a subtle psychic energy that exuded its own power and will.[break][break]

In the darkness, she saw Wo-chien emerge from the shadows and maneuver its way into the fog. Its twin ochre eyes glimmered like lanterns searching through the murk for prey.[break][break]

"Why you came here matters little. It is what you plan to do now that concerns me."[break][break]

One Champion had died here due to her choices. Why not another?[break][break]

She watched as RUINATION cleaved through the MISTY TERRAIN to threaten the Meloetta within its radius of jet-black destruction.

[attr="class","ooc"] Melody Miro

[attr="class","pkmn"]

Another click of a Pokeball announced Cobalion's arrival onto the field, and in return, Elisabeth released her Nihilego -- floating into the MISTY TERRAIN as if it were a rose-hued sea.[break][break]

Elisabeth pursed her lips, attempting to mark out the exit from her current position. Further off than she'd like, she thought with a scowl.[break][break]

"I wouldn't dream of underestimating Hoenn's current reigning Champion," she called back, the faintest hint of mockery ringing in that title. "Imagine toppling the greatest and highest rank in our esteemed region. What a feat that would have to be."[break][break]

A ROCK TOMB attempted to corner Melody and her Pokemon as her Nihilego glowed in the shadows, while Wo-chien curled in a SPIKY SHIELD to defend against the flash of a SACRED BLADE.

[attr="class","ooc"] Melody Miro

[attr="class","pkmn"]

"MATIAS SILPH doomed himself," she said, and her laughter rippled through the cavernous heart of the volcano. "I just escalated things."[break][break]

Put on the defensive, the combined efforts of SMART ATTACK and PSYCHIC fend off the worst of the bounders. The obscuring mist seemed to provide a cover for their enemy, until strangely, it began to fade.[break][break]

Then all at once, the MISTY TERRAIN vanished as the ground beneath their feet turned black as soot. A BARREN TERRAIN replaced it, stripping the volcanic land of whatever few nutrients it possessed as Wo-chien pulsed with vitality and power. Behind it, the figure of Elisabeth stood in plain sight, no longer hiding and cowering behind stone.[break][break]

"Not all parasites are leeches, Champion. Some simply discard their host when they are done."[break][break]

Melody Miro would feel her own strength began to fade, as would Cobalion and Meloetta, dragged down by the GRUDGES made to bear down on them like the rocks of this place.[break][break]

The Nihilego drifted closer to the pink-haired trainer, a GRASS KNOT seeking to tangle the woman underfoot and drag her into the sickly terrain's hold.[break][break]

"You could keep the time-honored tradition of Champions dying in battle. Poetic, don't you think?"

[attr="class","ooc"] Melody Miro

[attr="class","pkmn"]

"Is that any way for a Champion to talk?" she chided her, the grass knots tightening their hold as she raised a hand. Thorns sprouted from their stem, prickly and sharp. "What would Kyle say, hm?"[break][break]

Her last encounter here had gone differently. The thought of it stirred a bitter resentment that churned in her -- boiling with the simmering heat of the volcano. Wo-chien TERASTALLIZED to a lava-red, glowing with rubescent fury.[break][break]

She could remember the insufferably pitying look on kyle lopez's face, standing there with Solgaleo to impede her path.[break][break]

The helplessness of that moment enraged her. Though this Champion wasn't the same, Melody Miro represented the source of that anger.[break][break]

Adrenaline soared through her, energy spiking as the BARREN TERRAIN sustained her spite. A hand casually wiped away the spit on her cheek.[break][break]

"Although I suppose he wouldn't say anything, considering he's dead."[break][break]

Wo-chien's form blurred in a flaming SHADOW SNEAK, surging towards Cobalion; the Nihilego drifted closer to its trainer, tentacles glowing with PSYCHIC energy at the approach.

[attr="class","ooc"] Melody Miro

[attr="class","pkmn"]

Sound crashed all around them, echoes resounding and reverberating as an invisible barrier of music pushed against Elisabeth, Wo-chien, and her Nihilego alike.[break][break]

A brief memory flashed unbidden through Elisabeth's mind of the ground shifting underfoot in battle against MATIAS SILPH, and she flinched despite herself, half-expecting a sudden boulder to joint this tremor in the earth.[break][break]

No such boulder came, but her reaction was enough to render the vines that had been cut from Melody Miro limp and unmoving on the ground.[break][break]

"I wonder if you even can kill," she taunted, recovering her footing. "Have you ever managed it, I wonder? Ending another person's existence? Or are you too soft-hearted to do as you claim?"[break][break]

Held at a distance, Wo-chien hissed and summoned a SPRINGTIDE STORM to cut towards the Champion and her Pokemon in a flurry of withered flowers. The petal-strewn storm converged around her Nihilego's THUNDER, crackling and glowing with monstrous anger, before aggressively hurling itself like a thunderbolt at the Champion.[break][break]

All of it intended to be a fatal strike.

[attr="class","ooc"] Melody Miro

[attr="class","pkmn"]

"You evaded my question, Champion."[break][break]

A smug and self-satisfied look followed that observation, though it faded into annoyance as the STEEL-TERASTALLIZED Meloetta weathered the incoming blows intended for its trainer. Coupled with a DRAIN PUNCH, the songstress Pokemon was soon back in fighting-form despite the gnawing demands of the BARREN TERRAIN all around it.[break][break]

It was a hunger that Wo-chien exacerbated with a GIGA DRAIN, mouth slobbering open wide as it eager sought to devour the Meloetta's newly gained vitality.[break][break]

Meanwhile Cobalion's glaring gaze met the thunder-wreathed Nihilego, only for the two Electric-type attacks to collide in a burst of static shock. They negated one another, the pressure between them forcing distance as each Pokemon prepared its next attack -- this time another ROCK TOMB from the Nihilego, one that hoped to end the Sword of Justice's thirst for righteousness.[break][break]

"You've never killed anyone, have you?"[break][break]

Whatever words the underboss might have said next were drowned by the Primarina's SPARKLING ARIA, its musical striking friend and foe alike. Elisabeth's hands clamped over her ears, vines surging up from the earth in a protective barrier that sought to ward off the reverberating echoes as the cavern trembled like a deadly amphitheater.

[attr="class","ooc"] Melody Miro

[attr="class","pkmn"]