[attr="class","star1tsu4"]

[attr="class","star2tsu4"]"Cromwell. Welcome. Come on in."[break][break]

The woman greets her tersely, her voice sharp enough to cut through the dark like the crack of a whip. Though commanding, it is not altogether unfriendly. Merely strict, in the ways of a military officer, unbecoming of her age.[break][break]

Lights flicker on overhead, one by one. The arena flares to life beneath, revealing the previous occupant's decorations, worse for wear. Battle-scarred, the turf is worse for wear compared to how Navy left it, but the woman neither seems to notice or care. More important things have occupied her time.[break][break]

She takes an appraising glance of Genevieve, and then... [break][break]

"Here for a challenge, right? You're late. Heard about you from Navy, all your battle exploits. He's got a lot of good to say about you. But I was expecting you'd challenge me sooner...[break][break]

"Why now, all of a sudden?"[break][break]

[attr="class","star3tsu4"][attr="class","rouxcredittsu4"]♠

[attr="class","star1tsu4"]

[attr="class","star2tsu4"]No angel? [break][break]

The woman may not be The Messenger, borne again and again in agony amidst fire, ash, and blood, no. He belongs to another world, a personal hell not unlike this one. A doomed world, closed with the twilight of the gods. [break][break]

But she is alike unto something else, beholden to a torture far more subtle, the work of something greater.[break][break]

A gradual blackening that begins at the center, at the very core; a network of web-cracked scars over her heart that shine obsidian in the light but glow ethereal and radiant in the gloom. Proof that she is kissed by the abyss, the desperation of the deep to keep her. It longs to ensnare her very soul and drag her down. [break][break]

She is as a glass statuette. Cracked, broken. See-though. And into the cracks ichor seeps in crude imitation of kintsugi. It makes her whole again. She will never be overtaken, never be overrun by it, because she knows--[break][break]

The darkness loves her far too much. [break][break]

It needs her now, as she needs it. [break][break]

The parasite cannot kill its host, nor let her die, else it dies with her. [break][break]

"An--"[break][break]

Before she even forms the words the wraith slips her skin as a snake, erupting from within and shedding the last vestiges of Freya Morningstar once and for all. It happens faster than she can react-- the bars of her cage grow sharp as blades, sharper than anything manmade -- contorting, twisting, narrowing -- closing on the thing's neck in an instant.[break][break]

And then it is over. [break][break]

A mercy, she tells herself as blood rolls freely down her. A sight she will not soon forget. The very thing she might become if she continues down this path.[break][break]

"... you'd been hoping for this all along, hadn't you? How long, exactly?"[break][break]

She'd been chasing that same conclusion for far too long herself, all without realizing... [break][break]

To the end, the drake had denied her.[break][break]

'No angel', it had said. [break][break]

Surely she was a devil, it meant. [break][break]

She lets the head of what was once her mentor slip onto the ground, and wonders, silently, if a devil would extend mercy to the most damned in his presence. [break][break]

"No angel," she says simply. [break][break]

She looks up at the pale shadow that hangs overhead. [break][break]

"But she is."[break][break]

An angel, perhaps, but no messenger. She comes only to deliver death. [break][break]

... The sound of bells toll in the woman's bones, and the world begins to fade.[break][break]

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[attr="class","star1tsu4"]

[attr="class","star2tsu4"]The wolf stands over her, and Tsubaki marvels up at her. She is a hero made flesh, a legend come to life. She remembers the reverence she held for the hero long ago, along with everyone else in that alternate Galar. A reverence she denied at first, but had come to know intimately in their time of need. [break][break]

She feels the weight of the wolf's head as it rests against hers. The cold of her nose, the heat of her breath. She reaches out tentatively, and strokes her mane. [break][break]

But something troubles her all the same.[break][break]

"Do you... know me, girl?"[break][break]

That look in her eyes was as familiar as the look in Sumire's when the giant snake gazed at her master in adoration. It even lacked the dangerous possessiveness of her treasured arbok, exchanging it for a more tender, gentle expression as if she had waited a lifetime to see her.[break][break]

Tsubaki frowns. [break][break]

"'Heroes must return to slay giants', was it?" [break][break]

She repeats the words the drake had uttered when it split the earth, and she realizes.[break][break]

This is not a family get-together, Navy bringing home Tsubaki's new younger sister. They're in this to fight. Together. They're meeting for the sake of whatever battle is yet to come.[break][break]

She turns her head to face Navy, the warmth of the reunion turned cold once again. Snow begins to fall around them, a reminder of the battle, of Tsubaki's failure to protect Dewford as its Gym Leader.[break][break]

"We've seen one today, haven't we?"[break][break]

[attr="class","star3tsu4"][attr="class","rouxcredittsu4"]♠

[attr="class","star1tsu4"]

[attr="class","star2tsu4"]Her Nidoqueen balks under the explosive energy, all her armor unable to shake off the damage that came from the little duck's head. She raises to her feet, bellowing an angry roar at the pair. [break][break]

Before she can act, Tsubaki whistles. She'd noticed the fae aura surrounding the duck before, but now she makes an overt command to her companion, a veteran of many battles. [break][break]

"Wait, Kiki! Know you're pissed, but go after the pink one! It's protectin' the duck!"[break][break]

In all her rage, the Nidoqueen seems to understand. She bristles in anger, pins on her armor standing on end as she shoots out a massive deluge of black sludge that stains the beach a deep violet, a poison especially corrosive to the pink fairy.[break][break]

[attr="class","star3tsu4"][attr="class","rouxcredittsu4"]♠

[attr="class","star1tsu4"]

[attr="class","star2tsu4"]It asks her the only question that matters.[break][break]

Who is she?[break][break]

A question that may have had a different answer a year ago, twenty-one years ago, a question that's followed her all this time with a thousand different answers, but never one she'd been satisfied with enough to give voice to, to settle on. It's a question that seems so trivial now, with an answer she'd been denying for some time now... [break][break]

She backs away as the revenant approaches, clutching a fist to her chest. She feels the deep thrum of something underneath, proof that her heart -- black, corroded, shattered as it was -- still remained. [break][break]

Her eyes dart for the hole in what once was Freya, and she smiles quite suddenly.[break][break]

"You can hear it too?"[break][break]

The angel hangs above her head, tendrils fallen down like pillars, raking the floor as they extend like bars to a cage. To protect her, to keep her safe. She feels emboldened in their embrace, despite being face-to-face with a god. [break][break]

"It's the burning. A mercy the first thing the toxin does is numb you... but I can sense it, even if it doesn't hurt, the sizzling inside. Thought it was just me, though. Tinnitus, I said at first. Then, a hallucination. Thought I was goin' crazy. [break][break]

"But no. Eventually I realized, it's the toxins themselves. They're singing to it."[break][break]

The angel above pulses, knowing.[break][break]

"It's a relief, actually. Taste, then touch, then smell. Thought maybe hearing was next. And what if it had been? Would it be such a price to pay, to help save the world?"[break][break]

Eyes dart out at the barren landscape, an ashen ruin. Smoke choked everything. It was impossible to gauge what, if anything, it had actually saved in the attempt.[break][break]

She realizes now the folly of it.[break][break]

"I bet she once thought that, too."[break][break]

The ragged thing is in worse shape up close, the twisted reflection of everything a human shouldn't be. Pallid skin stretched over inhuman bones, eyes that seem like burnt pits still molten-hot from the fire within. [break][break]

She had almost expected to smell the coffee breath of Freya as she approached, but there was a strange sadness as she realized she would never smell it again. It was probably only brimstone now, even if her senses did return to her. [break][break]

Above her, Manjushage shines a blistering white, white as her namesake, singing in tandem with the ichor that runs through her veins. She locks eyes with the god, with the ruins of the woman who was probably the closest she may have had to a mother. The sight pains her more than anything.[break][break]

"... That's them. The bells, tolling. [break][break]

"For you or for me, I wonder?"[break][break]

[attr="class","star3tsu4"][attr="class","rouxcredittsu4"]♠

[attr="class","star1tsu4"]

[attr="class","star2tsu4"]His heart couldn't have been set on a worse subject. Rotted and black, fallen to the void... the admission pains her, something she wishes was never said. Her failures are more than just her own now. Resentment surges in her heart, and black venom fills her veins anew. [break][break]

"They'll keep coming, then, like they always have! That doesn't change a thing, just the motivation!"[break][break]

This double-life had given her a reprieve since she had joined Navy, but it had always been that way. Since the day she'd entered Rocket, there had always been someone after her. Whether it was a League officer hunting her down for her crimes, or a Rocket admin rooting out rats, she'd always lived with a target on her back, ever since she'd turned twelve years old.[break][break]

"Better to stand for something! To fight, and make enemies, than live on the sidelines forever!" [break][break]

She'd almost forgotten what it meant to fight for more than her own survival. The very thought that she'd been forced to fight solely for herself for so long in order to survive hit her all at once. How selfish it was, even if that was the only possible way to survive that nest of vipers an ocean away... her heart beats, and blackness pours forth.[break][break]

Manju raises both of her primary tendrils as Roland wreathes himself in Stellar energy. Light shimmers from his blade, a thousand parallel worlds of dream and fantasy echoing forth, and Manju responds in kind. She glows an ethereal black, venom converted to a blade of light as she begins to sing, refracting his own possibilities back at him and severing them, one by one-- [break][break]

"Manju!!"[break][break]

The angel complies to the woman's call, and the blackened thorny halo that shimmers overhead threatens to swallow Roland whole, a black sea surging forth from all angles.[break][break]

[attr="class","star3tsu4"][attr="class","rouxcredittsu4"]♠

[attr="class","star1tsu4"]

[attr="class","star2tsu4"]Another hole... [break][break]

"Nothing'll happen. You're talkin' about me, remember?"[break][break]

She gives him a smile, absolutely sure that's not the answer he wants. But it's the only one she can give.[break][break]

When he looks over her shoulder out the window, Tsubaki turns and parts the curtain, glimpsing the shape in the fog. She looks different now than she did on the battlefield, her silhouette slightly more lithe now that she'd doffed the armor she had worn in the fight, but Tsubaki can still tell without a doubt that this is the same warrior that saved them in their moment of need. [break][break]

"She wants to meet me? Why?"[break][break]

She glimpses VoyVoy in the yard, pouring all his affection into the wolf. Tsubaki's just glad it's not her this time. [break][break]

She sets her tea on the counter and gives Hattori a short bow of thanks as she makes her way to the door. The outside air makes her shiver as she approaches the shadow, but she doesn't care. [break][break]

She knows it's just some vestigial physiological response. Some memory ingrained into her body, a reminder that she's meant to be a human being. But the truth is, she hasn't felt hot or cold since the attack earlier today when she doused herself in black. [break][break]

Her tongue briefly tingles, the trace of a burn. It, too, is set aside as she walks into the mist.[break][break]

[attr="class","star3tsu4"][attr="class","rouxcredittsu4"]♠

[attr="class","star1tsu4"]

[attr="class","star2tsu4"]The woman pinches the bridge of her nose and groans, as if afflicted by a sudden-onset headache. She looks at Gwendolyn with a mixture of pity and annoyance. [break][break]

"... Right, right... 'future professor' doesn't mean detective... gotta remember that."[break][break]

She stands up and paces the room for a second, looking at the bland, sterile environs for something, anything to distract herself. She settles for the flowers she'd brought, picking them up and surveying the petals rather than look at the bed-ridden woman. [break][break]

Tulips, signifying well wishes for a speedy recovery. The medicinal colors of orange and yellow. Not red, that meant blood. Not white, that meant a funeral. [break][break]

"Yeah, yeah. I'll mentor you, if that's what you want. First things first, focus on your recovery. And think -- really, think! -- why was I able to find you so easily? Why would Freya's previous assistant have your credentials, your contact info, and access to your location? Hm?"[break][break]

She tries smelling the tulips and frowns. Bathing in the ichor so often had stolen her taste, but also her sense of smell, so it seemed. It may recover yet, if she'd abstain -- if current events allowed her that luxury.[break][break]

She takes a glass and runs cool water into it, setting her bouquet into it and putting it on the bedside table. The flowers looked happier for it. [break][break]

"I don't wanna say you didn't do your due diligence. I'm sure you did perfectly well. All that was expected of you, really. But Freya needs more than expected. Someone that'll go above and beyond. You've got a lot to live up to, and that ain't just me inflating my ego.[break][break]

"I wanted to see how long it'd take for anyone to notice, but with everything going on, the war, it slipped under the radar. Imagine if I was loyal to Rocket, or something... "[break][break]

[attr="class","star3tsu4"][attr="class","rouxcredittsu4"]♠

[attr="class","star1tsu4"]

[attr="class","star2tsu4"]She clicks her tongue, smirk flitting across her face for the briefest moment as he cops to it himself. She doesn't even gotta connect the dots for him. This man knew what he was, at the very least. Someone like that was someone she could count on, to be exactly what he was -- no more, and no less. [break][break]

He was Navy's disciple, after all.[break][break]

"That's probably why you and Navy get along so well. I hear you're one of the regulars at his dojo. You've got one of his bears now an' everything. He's puttin' you through the wringer, ain't he?"[break][break]

She scratches the giant snake at her side under her chin, and Sumire coils her body tighter against her legs, letting out a small hiss of affection. At any moment the snake could coil tight and break her bones. The woman seems to take solace in that fact.[break][break]

"I don't take it for granted. You're the just type, after all. The kind that'll keep fighting for a fair world, no matter what. Even if there's nothing you can do, you'll go straight up to an iceberg and try and punch it, knowing it won't stop it -- because that's the right thing to do."[break][break]

Even within her sea of black, through the unseeing eyes of her glass parasite, she'd glimpsed his efforts. Likely he hadn't expected a single person to notice, but she had. The angel watching over her saw everything, and she had as well, through it.[break][break]

"A sword's only as just as the one who wields it. Remember that. Whatever power you've got, it don't mean a thing if you're fighting for the wrong reasons. [break][break]

"Which is why, if you're to hone it..."[break][break]

Red, dull eyes fall on Terrakion again.[break][break]

"Dewford specializes in taking down dynamaxed threats. You've seen how tough that is first-hand. Come and train there with me, and I promise you, the next time we meet Fox things'll go differently."[break][break]

[attr="class","star3tsu4"][attr="class","rouxcredittsu4"]♠

[attr="class","star1tsu4"]

[attr="class","star2tsu4"]Tsubaki takes a step back.[break][break]

The blackened fingertips of her left hand begin to ache, pulsing with the sensation of a thousand needles pricking her skin. She hides them from sight. A phantom pain, lost sensation reminding her of fingers that should be there - that are there, but forgotten - and she hisses under her breath as she slips them inside a jacket pocket.[break][break]

"Surprised you can smell anything beyond your own rot."[break][break]

Tsubaki wrinkles her nose at the festering hole. [break][break]

The result of some wound sustained in battle? Or could she simply not suffer the grief of loss when the world had come to an end, and ripped out her own heart?[break][break]

"'My turn' ain't comin'. I'm... not human, haven't been fer a long time. Since the day I sold Saffron to Rocket, at the very least."[break][break]

She lies.[break][break]

The dull ache in her chest, a pang of sorrow in her black heart, calls her a liar. She ignores it. [break][break]

How she'd longed to dull that ache day after day, slipping into the black void again and again only for that pain to grow. She wondered if, like her blackened fingers, it was just some lingering phantom pain, some remnant of her humanity asserting itself. Perhaps it was her body refusing to forget it was human.[break][break]

It was times like these she longed for her second self, her white body, the angel that hovered over her even now like a halo. She would slip into her like a second skin, and the numb ache would disappear. She'd be perfectly transparent, and everything, pain, anger, hatred, would pass straight through her... [break][break]

She was tempted now. But with the dragon's molten eyes watching, words that cut like a knife, she refused to reach out to Manju. Refused to prove the dragon right.[break][break]

"... Think this place let me forget, for a little while. Hoenn, I mean. You. Navy, too. Everything, really. Just let me forget I was never really there, that's all. I'm not human, not anything. Just nothing. Can't make a god from nothing, can ya?"[break][break]

The parasite above her twitches suddenly, as if becoming conscious of their surroundings for the very first time. In that same moment, Tsubaki smirks, as if realizing to punchline to some sly joke. [break][break]

"... Ex Nihilo."[break][break]

An admission as anything -- it's right.

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[attr="class","star1tsu4"]

[attr="class","star2tsu4"]She wonders quietly if it had hurt when the sky she'd held on her shoulders came crashing down all around her. Just when had everything she'd sacrificed for gone up in flames, exactly? Only she was left. Her. The very first thing fed to the fire, the fuel for what would become the inferno they both gazed at from on high.[break][break]

If not the cause, the catalyst. [break][break]

"So she failed. No one pillar, not even her, could hope to hold up the sky alone."[break][break]

A thought suddenly occurred to her. Tsubaki thought it so cruel she wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. She wanted to scream. But the moment it entered her head, she couldn't look away til she dared ask it, though she dreaded its response. [break][break]

"How long has it been since then?"[break][break]

Dragons were said to live much longer lives than human beings.[break][break]

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