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a thrill of excitement runs up absinthe's spine. she steps forward, black boots crunching in the grass—if there's something out there, affected by the toxic chain, they need to have it. it could also be dangerous, of course, but the chance of discovery? the possibility of getting their hands on it, of prying it apart and figuring out how it ticks?[break][break]

absinthe doesn't think she's ever wanted anything more.[break][break]

at absinthe's side, the form of a frosmoth appears in a flash of white. asbestos blinks. the powder on her wings shakes loose, glittering in the pale morning light like dandruff. without turning her head, absinthe can see the moth's wings flit, and from them emanate tiny spectacles of poison.[break][break]

"let's find it," the chemist says with nonchalance, voice cool as the toxic chain around ruza's neck. in a couple of quick strides, the chemist has caught up to yuina's side, her hands tucked loosely in her pockets. her breath comes in a snarl, filtered through the respirator at the front of her gas mask, the only sound cutting through the silence other than the crunching grass. on her shoulder, asbestos and his wings, toxic scales fluttering to the ground around them.[break][break]

she pauses, eyes narrowing. up ahead, something silhouettes through the fog. beautiful, deadly, adorned with feathers and wings.[break][break]

absinthe's eyes spark with latent electricity. "is that...?"[break][break]

she's heard the tales. she's also been told she should try to kill the thing on sight.[break][break]

she doesn't want to.

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absinthe moves to step forward, reaching out towards the bird—a rising, vicious hunger curling in her stomach. oh, how she yearns to study it, to cut it open and find out what makes it tick. her fingers stretch almost reflexively, claws opening up at her sides. she wants to hold it down. she wants to kill it.[break][break]

but—no. that's not the practical option. they'd be throwing away a perfect opportunity to study a rare creature swathed in the effects of the never rot. they'd be idiots if they didn't try to take it in, to figure out its physiology. it is clear that absinthe has not faced the brunt of this creature's power.[break][break]

the grass crunches beneath her boots as she wrenches herself to a rude stop. through the fog, she turns, and her gaze flares as she stares at yuina with an expression bordering on anger. a tense silence stretches between them, and absinthe's breath comes out in a low, threatening snarl.[break][break]

"are you out of your goddamn mind?" she hisses, voice low and dangerous. "why would we kill it when we could take it back with us? don't you see the opportunity we have right in front of us?"[break][break]

her head snaps back to look at the bird, wings extended out into the sky. her fingers flex at her side. the thought of its blood on her hands sends a shiver down her spine and a flare of hunger through her stomach, and she's reminded horribly of the first time she has ever killed something. she can still remember the animal pinned down on a black wax tray, can still remember the tear of its flesh between her claws.[break][break]

her breath comes out in a low snarl. "you really want to throw that away?"[break][break]

she pauses. her eyes narrow and find purchase on the figure through the fog—a fog that is now turning a noxious purple.

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life is chaotic. the nature of the world is to begin perfect and descend further into madness. threads, once seared into submission, begin to fray at the ends with every eon that passes. seams come undone, stars explode into supernovae. many people, throughout the course of absinthe's life, have told her to destroy that which is wrong, as if that act of menace will prevent the wrongness from seeping back into every facet of life once more. howard slayte tells her to destroy the monkey when she sees it, her husband told her to destroy the parts of herself that were unsightly to gaze upon.[break][break]

once, she did what they told her to. she cut away the rotten pieces of her body with the exacting knife of a surgeon, seeking the perfection of a form loved by the only person she has ever cared about. she changed everything steeped in the darkness of her birth. she was brought into the world broken—she believed cole could make her whole.[break][break]

but, as the porcelain grew over her body, the cracks festered beneath. the darkness grew inside of her, fed by an umbilical cord connected to the hatred that yet clung to her heart. she nurtured the darkness, she prepared for its coming.[break][break]

and then it never came. it died inside of her, and the rot that once defined it seeped back into absinthe's body. the porcelain blackened and cracked. all at once, she wasn't perfect anymore—she never had been. she had only acted like she was.[break][break]

it was the tangled threads of life, slinking around her throat, the throat of a child she never had, and pulled.[break][break]

the child's destruction did not save her. it made her worse.[break][break]

absinthe’s gaze hardens, her breath rattling through the respirator, thick with memory and regret. destruction has always left her empty. she knows that now. entropy had left her battered, bruised, filled to the brim with scars. she tried to destroy the chaos, she tried to avoid it—the only time absinthe has come into contact with entropy and made it to the other side unscathed is when she has instead come to terms with it. when she has tried to guide it. destroying the fezandipiti will only bring ruin. yuina can’t see that, but absinthe does, and she won’t let the chance slip through her fingers.[break][break]

her hand rises slowly, a deliberate motion, her heart thrumming with determination and fury. at her side, asbestos—the frosmoth bound in toxic chains—flares her wings with a soft hiss.pale powder wafts through the air like a warning shot, shimmering with faint poison. absinthe’s voice is low, commanding, and edged with that same menace she keeps hidden beneath her mask.[break][break]

“enough.”[break][break]

asbestos obeys without hesitation. her wings beat once—twice—and the world is swallowed in a swirling gale. the fog thickens, turning into a torrent of snow, ice, and toxins. the battlefield is engulfed in a brutal blizzard, whiteout conditions that swallow yuina, her pokémon, and the fezandipiti in a freezing vortex. flakes whip through the air, tearing at skin and fur alike, as the temperature drops rapidly, the landscape buried beneath a sheet of cold.[break][break]

the intent is not just to freeze. it’s to halt, to overwhelm, to remind. remind yuina what it feels like to be powerless—just as absinthe has been powerless so many times before. a storm born of control, yet driven by chaos, a reflection of the world yuina wants to fight and the world absinthe longs to understand.[break][break]

“stop this,” absinthe snarls over the howl of the blizzard, her mask vibrating with the force of her words. “you think destroying it will set you free? it won’t. you’ll cut it down, and the rot will find its way into something else. you can’t fight it this way.”[break][break]

her boots crunch through the snow as she steps closer to yuina, unbothered by the frigid air slicing across her skin, no worse for wear as her mask filters out the toxins in asbesto's snow. the frosmoth flits above her, toxic chains dragging through the snow with an eerie hum. i’s scales continue to flutter down, lacing the wind with poison that’s subtle, but ever-present—a reminder that this storm is absinthe’s to command.[break][break]

"i don't give a shit about your freedom,” her voice is sharp, a scalpel cutting through the storm. “if you want to kill it, you will need to get through me.”

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there's a sudden pounding in absinthe's ears. it sounds like waves crashing on the beach—the tide coming in, sweeping away the sand she stands on. she feels the soft, sick feeling of vertigo, her head spinning as if the world is lurching beneath her feet. she can hear cole's voice, feel the press of his lips against the side of her head, urging her forward as the first time he ever took her out on his boat.[break][break]

'keep your eye on the horizon, abby,' he had said, so steady and sure, as if guiding her back to land even when her grip on the rigging was lax and lazy. 'i've got you.'[break][break]

absinthe, even now, feels the phantom sensation of his hand on the small of her back, keeping her steady as the waves pitched her from side to side. her heart flutters like a bird caught against the inside of a glass window.[break][break]

her gas mask ruffles as her breath quickens. with the fezandipiti's alluring gaze upon her, she can almost feel its eyes piercing into her skin, as if seeing all her darkest secrets and desires and fears. it spreads before her a cloud of pheromones, beckoning her closer, deeper into the mists and the chaos of battle. and without knowing why, she takes a step, her boots crunching through the ice and snow. her fingers outstretch for the shining shard of fezandipiti that breaks away from its body and drifts towards her, its feathers shimmering with color and mystery.[break][break]

yuina calls out from behind her, a voice cutting through the haze in her mind like a knife. but it sounds so very, very far away, as if underwater, drowned beneath the waves of the past. her voice sounds thick and drugged, as if every word she says is swimming upstream through honey. absinthe can barely make out that she's speaking at all, and even then, she can't seem to put together what she's trying to say.[break][break]

but then, it doesn't really matter what yuina has to say, does it? absinthe can hardly remember why she's even here, except for the warm fluttering sensation in her chest that draws her ever closer to the fezandipiti. her hand reaches up towards the feather, and her breath hitches, anticipation sharp as cut glass in her chest.[break][break]

her fingers brush against it, and it's as if something in her chest rips open. she can suddenly feel it all—her past, present, and maybe even her future—blending together into a hot, messy tangle of emotion and memory. the phantom of cole's hand against her back is replaced by a new hand, one she doesn't recognize, but one that she clings to as she's dragged deeper and deeper into the black waves of oblivion.[break][break]

then, the real bird is gone, and an imposter rises in its place, sunken-eyed and empty. its is hers, standing firm and tall, but with nothing more than power to offer.[break][break]

it is only now that absinthe tosses her head over her shoulder, towards yuina. her eyes are dark. she is different.[break][break]

"yes," she says finally. "the world is my enemy. i would have it no other way."[break][break]

absinthe turns to face the woman fully now. her body is tense and coiled, like a sword held back by a sheathe.[break][break]

"do you count among my enemies, yuina?"[break][break]

the question is quiet and low. the idea is clear, as she is flanked by her frozen moth, by her new omen. do you provoke me, and all the consequences that come with that?

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the chemist breathes through her mask, filters out the poison in her lungs and exhales evenly. she's not familiar with the sensation of the pheromones, the memories it inspires. after all, she had never been imprisoned as yuina had.[break][break]

but a life is more than just memories, isn't it? cole is no less dead just because absinthe can taste his ghost at the end of a spoon.[break][break]

the fezandipiti echo standing besides absinthe gives the chemist an almost motherly look, as if trying to impart some small fragment of information known only to it. it doesn't need to say anything. there is only a sound of a feather rustling.[break][break]

yuina stares back at the pair. marked for more than you'll ever be prepared for.[break][break]

it is such a familiar look, absinthe has seen it countless times before in the mirror, the reflection warped and twisted.[break][break]

i do not have the strength left to spare, she wants to say, but there's a small spark at the bottom of her chest, a soft glow, which whispers in the back of absinthe's brain, maybe you do. it has never been wrong. she owes herself that much, doesn't she? she owes herself the knowledge that she can conquer anything that stands in her way, like the poison she brews. maybe it will kill her, but death is easier than living. and the consequences of success are immaterial when one never expects to fail.[break][break]

absinthe blinks and finds herself back on the battlefield, surrounded by ice and fire and poisonous sludge, face-to-face with yuina's shaking hands and houndoom snarling by her side. she can feel the shivers rolling down her back, down her spine. the fezandipiti is there, and it gives her a false sense of stability.[break][break]

absinthe tightens her fingers around the feather, staring yuina down with coal black eyes, glowing with reflected flame.[break][break]

"thank you for the warning," she replies evenly. "it is an honor to be an enemy of this world."[break][break]

she pauses, takes in an even breath, and steels herself.[break][break]

"i will leave you. our deal is done, effective immediately." she turns and begins to walk, but pauses to stare at yuina over her shoulder. "will you be the first to try and spill my blood, yuina? or the last?"

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