As the fires of war rage, all she sees is magnificent brushstrokes upon a canvas of suffering. The Black Knight and the Skeleton clash, and their battle shows all of them what a battle of gods is like, a clash of titanic and overwhelming entities that they only have a chance against because they’re too preoccupied with one another to turn onto the ants hounding them with their own superweapons in animalistic form.[break][break]

The Queen of Fantasy- nay, the Mad Queen follows along as two clash in the skies, flashes of red and black blotting out of the stars and burning up the sky. Her brush follows them as they generate energy capable of tearing through the space they reside in, she traces their outlines as her memories come rushing back,[break][break]

Despite feeling her mind splitting in two, she never stops painting, never stops tracing and internalizing what happens there. Their attacks cause both beasts of calamity damage, but they aren’t focused. On each side allegiances are drawn in blood, priorities highlighted by what they value more than anything else on that battlefield. For the Mad Queen of Ballonlea, that is the Black Knight, for others, the Skeleton.[break][break]

She’s smiling and laughing all throughout the chaos, cackling like mad in a way she never had before. Fresh crimson stains her fingers from a love just lost, from her own flesh and blood that’s just lost their soulless life within her hands. She stains her cheek with it, infusing it into her skin as a reminder of just what this world gave her.[break][break]

She doesn’t care anymore- no, she didn’t give a damn at all! Not a single thought mattered but the completion of her masterpiece! The imminent extinction the Black Knight threatens them all with enthralls her more than any moth to any flame, it enraptures her, captures her soul and wraps it into a cage from which it can only gaze towards the light. She witnesses it like they all do, but unlike many others, she can only smile more genuinely in the face of a supreme calamity, a disaster so horrific that a baptism by light is the only way to represent it.[break][break]

Then, like all stories went, a shooting star carved through the light, and an invincible hero slayed a dark god… almost.[break][break]

This story wasn’t meant to end here. Rhydia only realizes it as their salvation arrives, a furious migraine ripping her mind in two once again. The world corrects itself before her eyes, just as it did throughout the battle, and the dream… the long dream begins to come to an end.[break][break]

She considers for a moment stopping to be with her people. The surviving citizens, the still warm body of her beloved son, her fellow royals jayden cross and luka chêne…[break][break]

— but in the end, the Mad Queen shows her true colors, and she departs in the arms of her Daemon, revealing its true form for the first time. She leaves behind everything without a second thought, rushing back to the palace for but a single possession, a single thing worth calling truly beautiful in the world she had a hand in bringing to ruin.[break][break]

Halfway there, she begins to feel the pull on her mind, that splitting migraine finally dulling to give way to a different feeling. Rather than give in, she draws more crimson, her hand scraping along the sharp edge of a peasant’s home. The pain shocks her awake, and she and the Daemon known as Clair burst into the palace.[break][break]

The rush is like a dream itself, a trance she can’t draw herself from no matter what. The attendants remaining are brushed aside, her royal need for them null and void.[break][break]

”Your Highness! What’s happening!? The battle is won, is it not!?!” A single maid cries out, seeing the end of the world approaching as the horizon collapses before them. Her Queen ignores all other pleas but hers, stopping at the top of a staircase, her wounded hand dripping royal blood down the staircase.[break][break]

She stops at the very peak, slamming her hand down on the railing to keep herself from fading as she spins around to address the castle staff.[break][break]

”The battle is won! Thus, we face the final hour! It’s magnificent, isn’t it!? This is your salvation! An end to the Fantasy you and I lived for so many years!”[break][break]

The mysterious mask of the Queen of Fantasy was burned before them, incinerated by the erupting stars within the eyes of the woman she once was. Twenty years later, Rhydia Ver finds her masterpiece, she finds a world truly beautiful, a world worth preserving for eternity.[break][break]

Her once dead eyes blaze with the light of a million stars, her insanity vindicated in the greatest way possible.[break][break]

She throws open the doors of her own chambers, marching towards her painting of the landscape from before the battle. Brush in hand, she raises her arm to begin adding new colors and shapes, new memories and events to it. The empty landscape is one she can paint over with the battle she just abandoned for this masterpiece.[break][break]

”…”[break][break]

That’s why she doesn’t see the sword pierce her torso until it’s too late. She never even suspects it’s coming, her senses suppressed by her own mental illness.[break][break]

Fresh, dark red paint splatters all over the canvas, and with it the piece is complete. Her eyes glaze unfocus before she can see it, denying her the right to see her own reason for living.[break][break]

When she turns her head as her consciousness fades, she sees not a mirror of herself, but the face of a malignant spirit with a satisfied smile on its face. There is no hatred in its eyes, no negativity, not even contempt.[break][break]

By denying her this, the Hisuian-Zoroark finds peace. It settles its grudge in a world that was never truly real in the first place.[break][break]

In the dying hour of a World of Dreams, ‘Clair’ achieves what it has always dreamed of.[break][break]

”N-No… not now! Not when I’m so clo-“[break][break]

Then, just as quickly as the moment settles, the world goes black.

---

[break][break]

There’s no need to dwell on her return. After all, the woman named ‘Rhydia Ver’ doesn’t remember anything that happened. All she remembers is a series of paintings, all culminating in the setup to a final piece. Yet… when she tries to remember that final piece…[break][break]

Red. All she sees is red. Spine tingling, hair raising red. Her back hurts, she’s cold, she’s in pain, she doesn’t feel anything, why can’t she see it, where do the brushstrokes start and end- breathing brings her back, but the experience is consistent.[break][break]

Given time, those memories will return, yes. Some will likely be back in hours, while others may take days.[break][break]

—but one will remain locked to her for a long time. After all, the brain’s simulations sometimes needed a repeat to properly remember some events…

[break][break]

Pokémon + Tagging/TLDR Here[break][break]

PokémonHere

TL;DR - The final post of Goodbye Galar that I fell fucking asleep and never got to post

’Seris, you’ve grown so much so soon… you’re making your mother feel like an old lady, you know?’ Rhydia uttered those words half heartedly at the dinner table that only they were allowed to use, speaking to the child whom she brought into the world 15 years before. Her very own flesh and blood, the only ‘human’ thing she felt like she ever produced.[break][break]

’That’s not true. You don’t feel a day older than 30, do you mother?’ Just like a parent knew their child, children tended to understand their parents rather well if they communicated with one another. For Seris Ver, Crown Prince of Ballonlea, understanding people was part of his duties as a member of the royal family. A king who did not understand the hearts of men was no king at all, or so he was taught.[break][break]

Seris’ Mother, Rhydia Ver, was an eccentric and truly bizarre woman. She was not born a noble, nor did she come any substantial wealth to gain that title. She became one of three royals through merits alone, standing beside the peasantry of Ballonlea twenty years ago at the dawn of the Fantasy Kingdom’s establishment.[break][break]

Without her aid, as well as the aid of King jayden cross and luka chêne , Ballonlea may have been destroyed in the battle that rallied the peasantry into establishing a monarchy in the first place.[break][break]

The tale of the King and Queens was one fit for heroes, yet… just a look in his Mother’s eyes was always enough to tell Seris that she could never be a hero. The stories she told, the art she created, the kingdom she established and even the simplest gaze into her eyes told him- her own flesh and blood- that that woman would never properly be human enough to be a hero.[break][break]

Her eyes that only saw people as backdrops on a canvas could never connect with the hearts the laid behind them. She’d merely observe and twist and bend and break and snap them however best fit her muse, professing that to be her love, exclaiming that they were more beautiful that way, when their insides were laid bare and their ugliness made the world more beautiful by contrast.[break][break]

He loved that part of her, because he was just as twisted- no, more. He loved the part of her that just couldn’t be part of this world- that couldn’t see it as a reality any other time but during a calamity. His own mother, his own birth giver looked at him like a thing to be used all the time and he could tell…[break][break]

—but when everything looked like it was falling apart, and a calamity loomed overhead, she always developed a beautiful and human smile that reached her eyes, as if her true self was hidden behind a deception that required the world to crumble before she would reveal it.[break][break]

”Hm~ Thirty-One, actually.”[break][break]

After all, she truly did feel as if the last change in her life was his birth.[break][break]

---

Charging through that battlefield with his sword drawn, Seris felt alive. He felt as if he was truly a person living in his world, fighting a calamity for the sake of the people he would one day rule. As the Black Knight and the Skeleton relentlessly clashed with one another, the people like Rhyd- like his Mother worked in tandem with their Pokémon to thin the herd and slay the beasts that led the Skeleton’s armies.[break][break]

At one point he turned to see if she was alright, a moment’s worry overtaking him somehow.[break][break]

She was focused, working hard for the sake of her people, all without a smile on her face. Despite the calamity present, it hadn’t stirred her heart, leaving her exterior just as alien and distant as it usually was in his eyes. The Queen of Fantasy scarcely had time for grim realities like this one, the battlefield was tragic, but it was the stars that burned brightly and disappeared that made those canvases in her mind worth painting.[break][break]

Just as he thought that, just as he understood the alien logic she operated off of, his heart is pierced by sludge. In an instant, the rising star Seris Ver was destroyed from the inside, and collapsed. A single second’s lapse in judgement proved fatal, as was normal for a battlefield.[break][break]

However… he was fine with this outcome. Even as his vision blurred and numerous medics cleared a path forwards towards him alongside his Mother, he wasn’t ashamed of how he went out.[break][break]

”Mother… I… I-”[break][break]

”Shh… don’t speak. I understand.” She whispered to him despite the roar of battle, speaking as if there was nothing but the two of them in the Wild Area.[break][break]

Her hand ruffled his hair and cupped his cheek, staying in place even as the crimson fluid leaking from his lips stained her skin red. ”Rest, Seris. We’ll start your painting lessons in the morning…”[break][break]

He couldn’t see her face as she spoke, as his vision was already fading.[break][break]

”Then… I’ll close my eyes for a while… see you when the… dreams… end…”[break][break]

He gained clarity in his last moments, his eyes giving him one last look of the woman who birthed him, of the inhuman Queen of Fantasy who could only smile at tragedies.[break][break]

He wondered before if she even truly loved him. Not as an art piece, but as a son. Even at his young age, he wondered if he alone was important enough to her to be more than part of a grander canvas.[break][break]

Looking up at her like that, it was him who was left smiling as he breathed his last.[break][break]

How couldn’t he smile? His last moments were spent looking up at his mother wearing a smile that reached her eyes.[break][break]

He was enough for her… even in this world, he was real to her.[break][break]

”Of course Seris… I’ll see you again when the dreams end…”[break][break]

---

She watches many unleash their frustrations upon the Skeleton when the opportunity arises. She sees her people unleash their negativity upon the soaring beast that took so much away from them, viewing it as a greater, supreme evil than the Black Knight.[break][break]

Waving her brush through the air, she paints a new reality into place atop the Black Knight, infinity energy coalescing in a single place to attempt to crush it with PSYCHIC.[break][break]

She doesn’t hate the Black Knight, honestly. Without it, she would’ve never realized she loved parts of her current world enough to fight to the death for. Violent as it was and lethal as it had been, it was a beautiful piece of extraterrestrial art, a wondrous splash of color upon a drab canvas.[break][break]

—but the Black Knight failed to meet her standards as a splash of color. It merely changed the piece, it didn’t dominate and overwrite it utterly like the Skeleton.[break][break]

Despite all it did, the Skeleton gave to Rhydia a gift unlike any other, it provided to her with perspective, a gaze at a wholly unique piece within another. Necrozma had given her a calamity, yes, but…[break][break]

Watching the life leave her own blood, her own son… holding him within her arms as he faded into his own endless dream was… it was just sublime! She couldn’t describe it as anything worse than a true disaster, a nightmare within a dream that she didn’t ever want to wake up from![break][break]

Nothing could compare to that profound loss! Not even her own mother’s color was so beautiful! She could only dream of delivering a Master Stroke so immaculate, so steeped in tragedy that it turned the entire hellscape around her into a fantasyland she could frolic within for another forty years if need be![break][break]

Ahh… she was shivering, her body was positively fucking trembling! It was like every nerve ending and pleasure receptor from her toes to the tip of her head had gone haywire all at once.[break][break]

”Max Darkness, Clair! Please! Add a final stroke and end this all!”She screamed out her order, mania finally bursting forth from the floodgates she’d so barely managed to keep locked ever since she last saw her own Mother. Why even bother conceal it? This high was something that simply couldn’t be topped… this fantasy truly had surpassed reality.

Pokémon + Tagging/TLDR Here[break][break]











TL;DR - Backstory about Rhydia’s Son[break]
-Rhydia attacks NECROZMA with her brush.[break]
- HISUIAN ZOROARK attacks NECROZMA as well.[break]
- Rhydia’s Son Seris dies, just so his Mother would smile genuinely for him again..[break][break]

[attr="class","credit"]milky

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She was in the midst of a piece when the next calamity arrived. The details of that work are lost to time, lost to the fantasy she had come to know as reality. The only record of it remains within the queen’s mind, forever swirling within the whirlpool of lines and colors that comprise her imagination.[break][break]

”Queen Rhydia.” A voice she’s grown quite familiar with speaks to her from the room that connects to the balcony, calling out to their Queen like any good Lady-in-Waiting should.[break][break]

A sky soaked in blood is her only hint as to what is truly happening, but she doesn’t stop her painting immediately, allowing the younger woman- ‘Caesi’, as she’s choosing to call herself now- to continue speaking.[break][break]

”The prophecy spoke of this moment… didn’t it?”[break][break] She speaks with the same uncertainty that all of the denizens of the Kingdom of Fantasy did, as if she was a bystander to a fate thrust upon her.[break][break]

Liar. Rhydia thinks, not showing the girl the smile she wears. It’s time for you to face the same past as all of us. You can’t outrun your past by denying it’s caught up to you, after all. She suddenly drags her brush across the canvas, leaving a crimson streak across the skies of the landscape she has spent hours on.[break][break]

A fantasy stained red… yes, that’s exactly what she wants this to be.[break][break]

”Go assist in the mobilization of the palace staff. I’ll be down to the square after I’ve spoken with Seris.” Rather than give a proper goodbye, she sends her servant off so that she can speak privately with her son, her final malignant mark on this world.[break][break]

”Understood, my Queen.” ‘Caesi’ leaves as ordered, walking right past a reflection of Rhydia two decades past. By now she knows the impostor to be the Queen’s Hisuian Zoroark, but they exchange no pleasantries. The pup that became a ‘daemon’ still only tolerates her existence, just like it only tolerates its trainer’s.[break][break]

The door closes, leaving the pair of them alone. Only then does Rhydia stand up from her seat and walk towards the center of her chambers, eyes meeting a reflection of herself from twenty years ago.[break][break]

”Before the next budding calamity blooms into a flower of crimson, allow me to offer you what you want, Clair.” She watches as the ‘Daemon’ reaches down and opens a cabinet, removing a sword it stole from the knights’ training ground.[break][break]

Before she can speak, she’s pinned to a wall and placed at the end of the blade, held still by superior force. Her mirror image snarls in a way human lungs cannot, betraying the illusion it wraps itself in temporarily.[break][break]

”Twenty-five years… that’s how long it took you to build your courage, hm?” The blade presses to her throat, drawing a small trail of blood down the edge. ”I wouldn’t blame you, Clair. Naming you after the self that I painted over, only to be killed by your bubbling hatred while you took my form would be quite beautiful…”[break][break]

”—but we both know this me isn’t the one your grudges dragged you out of the grave for.” The Queen reaches up and takes hold of the blade, pushing it away from her neck as if it doesn’t weigh anything at all.[break][break]

It cuts into her palm, but she smears that crimson along ‘her’ face, along Clair’s cheek.[break][break]

The ‘Daemon’ backs down, making a complicated expression with a face that didn’t belong to it.[break][break]

After all… the face that belonged to it belonged to ‘Clair Holden’, a sister that only Lucas Holden would ever know.

---

[break][break]

Their armies gather and unite with the forces of the other cities within the wild area, facing down a seemingly endless army of sludge commanded by three gargantuan Gigantamax pokémon. The Illusory Zamazenta answers only to the royals, though Rhydia simply joins in the request for its assistance. She has no interest in shields, even after all this time.[break][break]

Standing at the front, she regards those whom she knows from her home of twenty years. Her fellow King and Queen jayden cross and luka chêne , her Lady-in-Waiting Xenon Antheil , the young man who still saw through the mask of humanity she wore to that very day absalom steel , the chilly scientist whom she only ever saw in passing Violet Fairbanks , the man she always saw close by jayden cross ’s side mint frost , and… and even her own brother, distant yet close as ever, even after all these years, Lucas Holden .[break][break]

The faces that make up the canvas of Ballonlea are there upon that battlefield like every other city, and Rhydia feels a twinge within her chest she hasn’t felt in ten whole years.[break][break]

Once again, calamity makes this world real. This disaster assures her that this is not just a dream to be forgotten, but a life they’ve all lived together. From the frigid tundra the the sludge soaked slopes, they fought the march of time to arrive.[break][break]

”It’s time to complete our work, so allow me to add my stroke!” The doppelgänger at her side begins to shimmer and glow as the Queen of Fantasy joins the battle, dragging her personal brush through the air in the direction of the sludge army, aiming to capture a Galarian Slowking and a group of its sludge minions in an aura of blue and pink, PSYCHIC. With a flick of her wrist, she aims to send them up and into the path of the Max Geyser sent out by Shadow Lugia.[break][break]

Additionally, HISUIAN-ZOROARK DYNAMAXES, letting loose an aura of pure malice amplified by the Dynamax Particles in the air, attacking the Gigantamax CINDERACE with all the hatred it was prevented from releasing upon Rhydia.
[break][break]

Pokémon + Tagging/TLDR Here[break][break]

PokémonHere

TL;DR - Rhydia makes one last painting of BALLONLEA’s landscape, dying the skies red.[break]
- Hisuian-Zoroark tries to kill Rhydia, but can’t bring itself to do it still, even after all these years. The woman in front of it has changed, she isn’t truly the same evil human it swore to kill.[break]
- Rhydia rallies the armies that stand behind her and the other royals in her own way one last time, all while remaining unmoved by Zamazenta’s heroic figure.[break]
- Hisuian-Zoroark DYNAMAXES, then aims a MAX PHANTASM at Gigantamax Cinderace.[break]
- Finally, Rhydia uses her weapon to paint over the air, using PSYCHIC on the Cinderace’s Galarian Slowking and the sludge around it, hoping to throw it into Shadow Lugia’s MAX GEYSER.[break][break]

Z45wYCCL

Crowns have been given as indicators of royalty since ancient times. Kings and Queens, Emperors and Empresses... they all ruled with the power the people under them allowed them to have. No matter how mighty the man or woman who sat upon the throne, it was the peasantry and those beneath them that gave them their power.[break][break]

Even the most tyrannical of rulers could not exist in a kingdom with no laborers, and thus even they were forced to pretend that cared even a fraction of a percent for the middle and lower classes.[break][break]

In all kingdoms, the power ultimately fell to the people, whether they were smart or cunning enough to take it for themselves however... well, that was a different matter. [break][break]

Thus, what took Rhydia by surprise was that the people of Ballonlea, of that ancient Galar, would choose to make her one of their rulers. They would relinquish their power to her and two others, granting them the right to lead them, to direct their resources and laborers as royalty had the right to.[break][break]

In her eyes there could be no more comical joke. Rather than a proper hero with upstanding morals and a righteous heart, the people gave away their freedom to someone who only rallied them so that their deaths would be more beautiful. The crown of royalty was given to someone who fought a legend not for them, but because it ruined the euphoria she felt seeing them march towards that death.[break][break]

Truly, this transfer of power could be described as nothing but a tragedy. Of all the people to set upon a pedestal, they picked one that wasn't even seen as human by her own Pokemon.[break][break]

A detractor spoke up immediately, yet Rhydia hardly even reacted to them at first, merely turning her head to meet absalom steel's gaze. Those violet eyes she carried around in that head of hers dug into him, taking in every last detail of she could of him in the moment. The new Queen crystalized the memory of the young man in her mind, and then decided to play a little prank on him to begin her rule.[break][break]

"A royal pardon for that man... this time~"[break][break]

---

The First Month[break][break]

The peasantry made their decision a full year before it truly began to sink in that this dream they lived in was a new reality for Ballonlea’s Queen. [break][break]

The days were fast initially, a rush of preparation and expectations she’d never experienced before. The expectant and devoted citizens and the uncertain yet driven Hoennians were dumped into a pot together and stirred by the hands of time, expected to either figure it out or… well, perish.[break][break]

It wouldn’t be until the fourth week that Rhydia truly made up her mind about her place in the world she and many others now resided within, reminiscing on the sight of Xenon Antheil lying beneath her in a pool of crimson of her own making. She wanted her to be awake for the experience she promised to her, but the sight alone was enough.[break][break]

She came to understand in the recollection of that memory that even if the world they were in was not real, it was still their reality. This was a world where people could experience pain, suffering, joy, euphoria, ecstasy, and every other plus and vice available to humanity.[break][break]

She sat on a balcony overlooking the whole of her new kingdom- or rather, she sat atop the observatory- as that realization struck, and from that realization she derived purpose.[break][break]

This was a work of art as well. A grand, majestic piece upon which the canvas itself had given her the authority to paint as she liked.[break][break]

Thus began her rule, from that moment on. Thus began the Queen’s master stroke.[break][break]

---

Three Years Later[break][break]

’Did you hear? The Queen’s coming to the square to unveil a new piece!’[break][break]

’Seriously!? The last two started trend shifts when she did! Maybe I’ll be able to get rich selling something like it!’[break][break]

In those three years, what Rhydia gifted to her subjects was something the world she came from experienced as well. The people of Ballonlea were mere peasants without leaders before League and Rocket’s war granted them to them, but they also clearly had not been embroiled in such deep conflicts as they were also plunged into.[break][break]

The world grew darker with each attack, as lives were lost more and more with each more aggressive wave and dynamax ed Pokémon. They endured, as humans always did, but they wouldn’t endure completely on their own, and they couldn’t endure if war was all they knew.[break][break]

Thus, their Queen granted them purpose through artistic expression, pushing laws and policies that would instill an artistic spirit within the peasantry. Men, Women, and Children were urged to create, and their Queen only showered them in her own creations, some more esoteric than others.[break][break]

It was through art that they could create beauty in the midst of the terror of war. It was thanks to that ugliness that they could create a kingdom of fantasy where only poverty existed before.[break][break]

All the while, Rhydia continued her art in secret. Her masterpiece became one of a greater scale, yes, but her tendencies remained. The disappearance of one or two members of the peasantry every few months wouldn’t be too much of a shock given the presence of the attacks, yet the twisted, unpleasant artwork that only few in the new kingdom could see the beauty of would only stir their hearts further…[break][break]

She knew one of her allies suspected her of these ‘incidents’, but she never claimed responsibility. After all, she and jayden cross were not too dissimilar, they could maintain a fitting status quo so long as neither was willing to overstep their bounds.[break][break]

Of course, she’d long since overstepped those bounds anyways. Her place in the realm had been established ever since a Hisuian Zoroark “Daemon” freed Xenon Antheil from their incarceration in the dead of night years ago. A wraith composed of hatred and illusions could only disguise itself as an ancient spirit before Xenon, leaving her with a single message as she escaped.[break][break]

’Keep moving forward, this isn’t your final canvas.’ It was a repayment only another alien existence would understand, a thank you for a sight she’d needed to create her masterpiece….[break][break]

---

Ten Years Later[break][break]

[break][break]

Ballonlea’s Queen of Fantasy was a mysterious, yet enigmatic woman to her people.[break][break]

She was- by most metrics- a giving and passionate ruler, yet she was distant enough to not be ‘one’ of the people. After all, she’d given ten years of her life towards giving the people the same purpose as herself, nearly every waking moment since being gifted a crown she never should’ve been.[break][break]

The ideals she attempted to instill within the hearts of the citizens of Ballonlea were ones of freedom and expression. She wished for each of them to create their own masterpiece, to view the world as an individual canvas upon which their truth could be overlaid onto the soil and become reality.[break][break]

Even as the attacks came, the people would only be encouraged to create more. Their desperation for peace was made into fuel for passion and creativity, seeking to rapidly develop each and every one of them out of a peasant’s mindset.[break][break]

Rather than a golden age, she sought a renaissance. The kingdom Rhydia sought to create was one that emissaries and travelers from the other settlements would be forced to see as a fantastical kingdom, a shining star of humanity’s light in a barren and evil world.[break][break]

At least… that’s what she’d allowed them all to believe. No kingdom could ever truly be a Utopia, for every light casted a shadow.[break][break]

In the shadow of fantasy laid tales of countless ‘daemons’ and monsters, instigating factors for small scale uprisings and rebellions that only served to blacken the pristine kingdom enough that a utopia remained exactly what it was: a Fantasy.[break][break]

When the BLACK KNIGHT arrives, Ballonlea’s Queen confronts it at the front of the conflict, fighting alongside her ‘trusted partners’ every step of way, every grueling moment of the battle.[break][break]

Throughout the course of the battle foretold in the prophecy, a strange shift occurs, if only for a moment. Standing beside her people, Rhydia began to feel as if she belonged to them, as if she was ‘human’ like them.[break][break]

When NECROZMA finally relented and the survivors cheered, it was only then that Rhydia smiled in a way that reached her eyes for the first time in a long time. The first ‘human’ smile she’d worn in far more than a decade came only after a disaster unlike any other.[break][break]

If she fooled herself into believing she too was part of her masterpiece, then it’s beauty only became more magnificent.[break][break]

”Gather up the survivors, all who fought on the frontlines, and all the corpses. We’ll hold a celebration tonight… the observatory should work for a location.” Her first words were to the other two Royals of Ballonlea, luka chêne and jayden cross. Of all people, they especially would notice that the Queen’s usually dead eyes now carried a spark of life, however dim.[break][break]

After the ceremony, rumors spread of the weapon made for the Queen. Many expect it to be a sword or a shield, in honor of the battle fought on the front lines against the BLACK KNIGHT. Though a surprise to the people, Rhydia had only ever envisioned a single item being fitting for her once the discovery of the weapons imbued with Infinity Energy was made.[break][break]

She unveils it in court, removing an ornate paintbrush from a case prepared for her. In accordance with the Infinity Energy that runs through it, a single wave of the brush through the air envelopes a glass in. blue and pink hue. Using PSYCHIC, Rhydia brings the glass to herself, then takes a drink.[break][break]

Rather than a blade, it was a tool to impose the impossible upon the possible world. A brush that could- by some metrics- reshape the world itself.[break][break]
”Fitting… isn’t it?” She asks, reaching beside her to run her hands through the hair of her son, the young boy who would perhaps inherit her crown one day. ”I couldn’t imagine any other symbol for a Kingdom of Fantasy, fufu~”[break][break]

Her eyes and smile were unlike they were upon that battlefield. Her smile was convincing, but it too was a falsehood. She who had seen the true value of her rule would only want more of that high in the future.[break][break]

The Inhuman Queen of Fantasy could only pretend not to be desperately awaiting the next calamity.
[break][break]

Pokémon + Tagging/TLDR Here[break][break]










TL;DR - Thick asf post, please forgive my brain worms.[break]
- Rhydia pardons absalom steel immediately as a joke, just because.[break]
- In the first [MONTH], Rhydia basically follows the motions of a Queen without changing much. It's only when she remembers how she felt cutting of Xenon Antheil's arm that it really clicks to her that how 'real' the world they were all in was didn't matter. It was just as real a canvas as the rest. In this realization, she finds purpose.[break][break]
- In the first [THREE YEARS], Rhydia begins her push to towards making Ballonlea a kingdom of the arts. She takes the authority given to her by the peasantry and runs with it, looking to rapidly develop their culture in a renaissance-like fashion. She never stops her twisted art pieces, but uses the cultural development and rumors of 'Daemons' as covers for a few people going missing and coming back as 'art'.[break][break]
- In the same time period, she has Hisuian-Zoroark free Xenon Antheil out of their imprisonment while wrapped in the illusion of a spooky traditional shrine maiden, the most twisted version of Xenon Zoroark can create. She, of course, continues to push this off as the work of 'Daemons', just to scare the people.[break][break]
- After [TEN YEARS], Rhydia has herself established as Ballonlea's "Queen of Fantasy", as that was the kind of kingdom she tried to create. Using the 'Daemons' (Read: Hisuian-Zoroark and various other bad actors such as Xenon and other instigated forces), Rhydia secretly instigates small uprisings and conflicts, just to ensure that a healthy dosage of suffering exists in her kingdom, all while playing the role of Queen.[break][break]
- The weapon she has forged from NECROZMA is a Paintbrush that can utilize [PSYCHIC]![break][break

V2wmCgrH

Deny it all they wanted, her words being disturbing simply meant that they carried a modicum of truth that none present wanted to admit to. Regardless of what time period or world they were in, it was natural for humans to want to deny things that unnerved them. [break][break]

Evolution dictated that only the fittest would survive, and those tended to be whoever stayed the furthest away from that which they didn’t understand. It wasn’t a personal slight- that much she understood, it was merely their nature as scared, powerless humans that kept them in line. She’d just have to carry on without them…[break][break]

… or so Rhydia thought, only for the sounds of cheers to grace her ears, as her words carried across the crowd well enough to stir the hearts of enough of the peasantry, giving them a reason to fight… as well as something to die for.[break][break]

She smiled softly, holding her fingers up to form the shape of a camera over a group of rallied peasants, looking down on them from the elevated position she stood upon, relishing the expressions they made and the rallying cries they let out.[break][break]

This is what she considered beautiful- or rather, this was a prelude to that beauty. Life found in utter darkness, a light where there was once ruin, hope in a place where only despair remained once.[break][break]

She could’ve stayed there and took in that scene of humanity proving why it’s existence was beautiful forever, but the timelost trainers wouldn’t be given that courtesy.[break][break]

Her expression darkened, a cloud of malice casting a shadow over the pure euphoria she’d been experiencing mere moments earlier. ”Clair, return. Picasso-“ She dropped down from her elevated place and began to rush towards the barricades, news of the report causing her good mood to collapse in on itself.[break][break]

A crimson flash recalled one of her partners, only for another to send out another one of them. An unintelligible screech was all it said, meeting her malignant gaze for a moment before flying right off to confront the Galarian Articuno.[break][break]

”Vivisect it. I want to see what color it is.” On that single order, the Sigilyph released an viciously sharp gale, swinging its wings like blades though the air, whipping up new blades to slice into the legendary bird.

[break][break]

Pokémon + Tagging/TLDR Here[break][break]











TL;DR - Nearly cries over how amazing the peasantry rallying are, stands around taking it in for a bit.[break]
- Bad vibes.MP4 when the Articuno report comes in. It ruined her people watching.[break]
- Recalls Hisuian Zoroark and sends out Sigilyph.[break]
- Orders Sigilyph to [AIR SLASH] the Articuno, little bloodthirsty.[break]

BQT5Ye20+10

What Rhydia observed in that parallel Ballonlea was not a ruin, or a grove of despair and death, but a magnificent and lively landscape that truly was beautiful.[break][break]

The pouring sludge, the vicious and mysterious hands, the withering and wilting flora that contrasted the aging peasantry that refused to give up life even in the face of such utter hopelessness and grime…[break][break]

It brought tears to her eyes, genuinely. She thanked her creator for allowing her to live to see these people live in that defiled world, pushing on through what clearly had to have been horrible lives.[break][break]

If every breath she’d taken up until that point had been to witness this, then she’d happily die after it was over- why, she might even remove the eyeballs she saw with after she painted a picture of the sight, since there’d be no reason to even witness anything less![break][break]

At first, all she can do is simply go around doing nothing but observing the people as they are, taking in their expressions, struggles, highs and lows and etching them into her mind’s eye, studying them like one would background characters in a hand drawn painting.[break][break]

After all, she wasn’t sure they were real people.[break][break]

What the people lack is leadership, a unifying cause beyond survival. They’re no different than beasts, which means they could all be slaughtered like them for all she cared. That would simply be nature doing it’s job…[break][break]

That’s what she would’ve thought at least, until Clair shifted the illusions around it near her, becoming a terrifying, venomous creature to fool the woman who approached.[break][break]

”Ah… this place must be too ancient for you, hm?” Her voice was almost a whisper behind Xenon Antheil, but she was sure she’d hear her amongst the chaos. ”I’ll be happy to remove it for you after this… you wouldn’t need such a relic after all.”[break][break]

She slips away without awaiting a response, allowing the grudge given form that followed her around to carry her up to higher ground, where more of the peasantry could hear her.[break][break]

What they needed to truly shine like the stars in the ruined world they called home was not more grit or determination, but hate.[break][break]

”Everyone~ These hands just want to kill you, that’s all. Mindless monsters, and you’re just letting them do it too easy! Why shouldn’t they suffer more than you? This is your home isn’t it?” Hers was not a speech of inspiration, but an admonishment of the fools who failed to perform like they should have.[break][break]

Humans were not beautiful if they did not struggle.[break][break]

”So struggle! Fight tooth and nail, squirm for your life as long as you can! If you can’t struggle, you’ll never get your peace!”[break][break]

’Because you should at least die a beautiful failure instead of a worthless success.’ She didn’t speak the last lines out loud, they could hear those later…

[break][break]

Pokémon + Tagging/TLDR Here[break][break]











TL;DR - Gets transported to Ballonlea, thinks it looks beautiful as a hellscape.[break]
- Looks around a little bit with Hisuian Zoroark.[break]
- Offers to cut off (and probably keep) Xenon Antheil’s arm + Hisuian Zoroark disguises itself as Drapion.[break]
- Gives honestly really screwed up INSPIRATION to the peasantry.[break]

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A god’s avatar had no response for her, and Rhydia couldn’t say she was too surprised. It wasn’t worth the time of those in the heavens to fret about the opinions of ants, she supposed.[break][break]

She admired Eva Morales for that, honestly. Many people took the power they wielded and attempted to act humble, as if they were still human. Actors were far less appealing than the genuine, oh so real people that made up the spectrum of the powerful and the powerless.[break][break]

Witnessing someone so unashamedly throwing the weight of their power around was just as refreshing as a whole new set of colors to utilize. If fate permitted, she’d love to have the chance to sketch the other sides of the Head Professor into her mind’s eye.[break][break]

For now though, she’d simply lose sight of her in the snow, heading off in her own direction…[break][break]

Or she would have, had she not felt the weight of a gaze on her.[break][break]

”Oh… if you want to stare, take a picture-” She turned her head back to meet his eyes, allowing him a full glimpse of the woman who went out of her way to ruin his little hero act.[break][break]



”You won’t forget me that way~” Rhydia whispered the words with a devious smile on her face, but she was sure the boy would figure out what she meant by them.[break][break]

She heard voices over the communication between rockets indicating their desired locations to the fallen legendary pokémon, each giving their own messages and hints about the organization’s next move.[break][break]

After saving a mental image of the final state of the battlefield for later, the magenta haired rocket makes her exit, heading towards one of the beams of infinity energy that a few of the Ballonlea bound Rockets went to.[break][break]

”To Ballonlea it is… to think this would be my first time too~” She murmured, stopping for a moment as she overhead the question posed to mint frost by bryan delarosa. Since they were heading the same way, the painter decided to poke in, digging up a piece of trivia she heard years ago that may very well have been false anyways.[break][break]

”I’ve heard the flora in Ballonlea is quite bizarre… there’s a chance one of them might be a miracle drug, fufu~”

[break][break]

Pokémon + Tagging/TLDR Here[break][break]











TL;DR - Rhydia thinks about Eva Morales positively, somehow.[break]
- Torments Colton Boothroyd with a smile and some teasing words. Saves his visage to memory.[break]
- Jokes about dubiously edible plants to bryan delarosa and mint frost[break]
- Heads to Ballonlea[break]

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Trailing her Sigilyph towards the hailstorm of various attacks and defenses flying towards the king of a bygone era, Rhydia spotted a familiar face (Lucas Holden ) for only a fraction of a second before they were gone, vanishing in a blip.[break][break]

If she’d known they could’ve been reunited here, she would’ve brought along a portrait as a gift. Instead, all she had to give was a smile she was sure would go unseen.[break][break]

’If this keeps up, surely the king will fall…’ A smile spread across her face as she reached the outer ring of the conflict, recalling her airborne psychic type back into its pokeball, only to replace it with Zoroark Smeargle. [break][break]

She drew out her sketchbook briefly, taking in the sight of the battle from where she could see, picking out several standout figures on the canvas.[break][break]

MATIAS SILPH continued his destructive path, and attempted Regicide by his own hands. Elisabeth Fiorelli attempted the same, bringing out the same RUINATION that seemingly brought them all to this frigid tundra.[break][break]

They were warped souls, really. So willing to kill on a single request, a single plea to swipe the final stroke on the canvas of another’s life.[break][break]

Rhydia could only see such wills as beautiful, like a pair of impossible stars comprised of nothing but black fire, burning everyone and everything that even attempted to come close.[break][break]

While the pair of them as humans shined as stars, a looming god looked down upon them all and passed judgement while Eva Morales asked a silly question about preservation.[break][break]

”You’d preserve the memory in your own mind, of course. People die, but legends persevere.” She was merely a face in the crowd speaking to Eva Morales in passing, but that was the beauty of it all in her eyes.[break][break]

A stage set of gods, heroes, and villains. A beautiful piece of the full range of humanity, gathered all for a single dying king.[break][break]

”Make sure this scenery isn’t ruined, Smeargle~”[break][break]

The ZoroarkSmeargle rushed forwards with speed greater than normal and let out a snarling, distracting howl an impassioned cry towards Colton Boothroyd ‘s troublesome Iron Valiant.[break][break]

It was a TAUNT, and a clear challenge. She’d never allow such beautiful art to be prevented from developing any further.

[break][break]

Pokémon + Tagging/TLDR Here[break][break]











TL;DR - Rhydia smiles at Lucas Holden, her sister.[break]
- Swaps from Sigilyph to Hisuian Zoroark. Illusion disguises it as Smeargle[break]
- Pulls out her sketchbook and starts on a drawing of Elisabeth Fiorelli and MATIAS SILPH, but stops to respond to Eva Morales [break]
- Zoroark uses TAUNT on Colton Boothroyd ‘s Iron Valiant to stop the Wide Guard.[break][break]

MJuU3|Wc

She didn’t realize whose Pyro Ball used her opening at first, or that Michelangelo’s attack had even been used as the basis for an opening until it happened.[break][break] The Sword of Ruin took the attack directly, merely hissing in response. Despite not knowing much about the creature at all, Rhydia could tell it was of a different class, simply from that kind of reaction as well as the avalanche coming towards her still.[break][break]

It was a magnificent piece of scenery all on its own, even without acknowledging the descent of gods and monsters across the battlefield. A single wall of nature’s wrath was thrown towards all of them, callously threatening to bury each an every interloper in a conflict they’d only just arrived to try and control.[break][break]

Beauty like this was hard to come by naturally, as it was something only war could typically create.[break][break]

The Nidoking moved for its trainer, her eyes to fixated on the magnificence of the falling snow and ice around her to move to defend herself.[break][break]

Thus, it did it for her, gruffly wrapping her in a single magenta arm while it braced itself to take the falling avalanche to the back.[break][break]

When Chien-Pao’s Ruination falls upon the Rusted Shield, a single heartbeat is all Rhydia hears before the ice hits, and the world goes black…

---

[break]

It’s more snow that she awakens to, surprisingly. Snow and… well, almost a corpse. ”You’re too durable to die from something like that… aren’t you? Rest then, you’ll see another canvas.” She taps her pokeball onto the skull of the Nidoking buried in snow, whispering a quiet thank you to the pokémon for allowing her alone to witness the state it was left in.[break][break]

Rocket’s communications are in an uproar, likely do to the league’s handiwork and the absurdity of the situation. Shifting from Hoenn to Galar in such a short time was… well she wasn’t sure of the timeframe, honestly, she simply knew it occurred.[break][break]

”Let’s see where this goes…” She releases a gathering of esoteric shapes and wings into the air with a flick of another pokeball, and sends her Sigilyph off into the skies in the cover of the chaos, following behind it on the path towards a popular target. She spots a familiar face along the way, but can’t find the time to talk to Kouji Matsubara, as her vacuous gaze is settled only onto one person.[break][break]

The one behind the newly shining sun above them all, MATIAS SILPH.
[break][break]

Pokémon + Tagging/TLDR Here[break][break]

Mb6KezJH[break][break]











TL;DR - Nidoking Faints![break]
- Sigilyph is sent out, flying towards Matias and Groudon.[break]
- Rhydia’s jogging kinda, but she’s using the snow as a cover.

"If life isn't disgusting...?"[break][break]

Since she was young, Rhydia had seen art as something of beauty. The lights over Nimbasa's night sky were something that illuminated her line of sight, bathing her in the radiance of humanity in its pure, untainted form. Sitting atop the famed ferris wheel of Nimbasa city allowed her to take all that in at once.[break][break]

That sea of shimmering lights and colors she witnessed from search an early age...[break][break]

... grew dull. Color was meaningless if that's all there was to it.[break][break]

In her own warped mind, that was truly the most 'gross' thing there could be.[Break][break]

'Those lies are my finest work, Kouji.' She didn't voice it, and merely thought it, pulling herself forward so that her arms could wrap around the arm that pulled her along, and ensnare it with her.[break][break]

For now, she'd take his own advice, and draw her muse from his own 'grossness' from then, until the need to prepare for the void of space arose.
[break][break]

Pokémon + Tagging/TLDR Here[break][break]

[break][break]

TL;DR - You're gross, Kouji Matsubara...[break][break]

Kouji Matsubara

Rhydia didn't respond to Alvara's hypothesis with anything other than a soft smile in her direction, a smile that failed to even reach her eyes.[break][break]

She wore it like a mask- her whole face was the same, a single mask to conceal something that couldn't even properly act human even at times like that.[break][break]

"Hmm..." She hummed, pressing a finger into her cheek, those dead, vacuous eyes scanning the whole interior of the barn over the course of half a minute. She casually spun in place as she performed her examination, her gaze flowing from place to place cleanly like a brush.[break][break]

Rhydia turned away from everything she surveyed upon finding an answer, only to begin casually striding towards the exit. "Out in the open. It'd be easier to trap if it was alone in the barn, but I want the full picture here."[break][break]

She didn't explain the true breadth of her reasoning, but saying 'I want the full picture' was always better than 'I want to see the full scene as it happens'...
[break][break]

Pokémon + Tagging/TLDR Here[break][break]









[break][break]

Calliope Alvara

TL;DR - Back at the Barnyard

[attr="class","credit"]milky

The pain didn’t dissuade her grip- in fact, it only seemed as if her fingers curled around his more with each second, allowing him to explore the subtle texture of her skin as she was exploring his.[break][break]

Rhydia was fine losing herself in the golden orbs before her, because she could find so much value in that endless spiral before her.[break][break]

What had those eyes seen? What had they turned away from? What had they witnessed those hands of his do?[break][break]

”I couldn’t, since I don’t think it’s gross at all.” Just for a moment, a spark of life appeared in those dead eyes, fading away just as fast. ”Even the most disgusting paint has it’s place… life isn’t beautiful because it’s clean, after all.”[break][break]

The tightness of the grip made her fingers hurt, they’d surely be sure after they parted. She dug her nails into his hand too, hoping they could share just how beautiful the pain was-[break][break]

Suddenly, a PA resounds above them, a voice announcing their coming arrival to the lunar surface.[break][break]

Rhydia’s grip didn’t loosen.

[break][break]

Pokémon + Tagging/TLDR Here[break][break]
Kouji Matsubara[break][break]



TL;DR - beautiful

It was a colorful introduction on his part, a display of character she appreciated seeing whenever she could. No hello, nice to meet you, or anything similar, merely a statement about the expression she wore to blend in.[break][break]

”Shink sho?” Rhydia didn’t seem too bothered about it really, choosing to ask about it rather than get mad- not that she’d get mad about something like that anyways. She understood the desire to make things more beautiful even if it wasn’t socially ‘acceptable’.[break][break]

The smile that reached her eyes was more human, assuredly, but it didn’t suit her.[break][break]

Her right hand came up to hold one of his fingers that pushed up her smile, only to shift to the rest of his hand in a blink. ”It’s believably unbelievable, I think.” She shifted her hand some, taking a hold of his so she could hold it in front of her eyes.[break][break]

”Never finished school, but you’ve got hands like these… an athlete, maybe?”
[break][break]

Pokémon + Tagging/TLDR Here[break][break]
Kouji Matsubara [break][break]


[break][break][break]

TL;DR - Hands.