Title;; When One Door Closes
Characters;; Brief mentions of N and Ghetsis in the beginning. All other characters are original characters.
Pairings;; None.
Summary;; After the fall of Team Plasma, society makes quick work of trying to ensure another criminal organization does not rise up in its wake. Never before has a plan backfired so horrible.
Words;; 6792 words.
Disclaimer;; I do not own Pokemon, it's characters, or anything else that does not belong to me in the following story. Nymah belonging to a friend Stern, Hataro to Shizuka, Felix to Night, and a briefly mentioned Josh to Cheddartot. Any unmentioned character is a creation of my own. The plot is a creation of our combined effort through roleplaying, though many ideas spawned from myself. Thank you for your time.
Note;; The following is an AU based on the trials and tribulations of my first successful (and, sadly, dead) roleplaying site called From Sweet Beginning, the span of the story starting years before the start of the RP and ending somewhere between the site's death and the five years of peace implied in the plot of it's predecessor, To Bitter Endings. Hopefully, I've done a well enough job for this to not be anymore confusing than I willed it to. Also, let me warn you: there will be mentions of many, many deaths throughout the story including the hanging of many to things such as bombings of buildings and the dumping of acid on entire cities. If these sort of things do not tickle your fancy, I do not advise you read this unless you are daring to make a leap of faith. Again, thank you for your time.
It begins with a dream.
A dream of a place where the line between slave and master is so fuzzy that is hardly even a gradient spread across the social ladder and man and animal are as equal as two right angles. A dream where lands are not stripped of their trees and grasses are not torn up from the ground to be replaced by cement and gravel and the human footprint. A dream where every second spent outside for the "lesser beings" is not spent in fear or agony, a constant thought of "what will happen to me outside again?" running through their innocent minds. A dream of a small green-haired child in a room full of colors and toys who's known nothing more than the affection of the Pocket Monsters under his wing, the distant care of two young woman tasked with his raising, and the harsh eye of a father slowly rotting his brain into something moldable.
(Of course, with that sort of dream, hasn't his mind already been set on the ideal path?)
It begins with a dream and a faction.
A faction of that small subset of society that has paused in the presence of a Pokemon battle and wondered, really wondered, "what do the Pokemon think?". A faction of people who have witnessed the withering of an animal-like beast at the hands of human society and tried to wonder if that was really alright in the grand scheme of things. A faction of people who shared that dream of a world where their friends and partners would be seen as just that in the eyes of all of humanity, where they would all be equals rather than one leader with a handful of underlings forced to do the "higher being's" will and being forced to do battle with their own kind. A faction who, when banded together, could step up and create a completely unique voice before the masses of Pokemon-hating people around them and could preach of a new world – a better world – that, only with their help, everyone could achieve. A faction with the means to "steal" and free the beasts from their enslavement, the means to broadcast their speeches worldwide to people who might sympathize and let their Pokemon go and onward to freedom, and the means to ultimately take the planet on a one hundred eighty degree turn for the good of all mankid and Pokemon alike.
(The people who'd lost precious friends and workers to these criminals would someday learn the beauty of a trainer-free world.)
It begins with a dream, a faction, and a corrupt man.
A corrupt man who sees his own offspring as nothing more than another step on the step ladder of life that he thinks whispers promises of his rule over not just Unova, but the Pokemon world as a whole. A corrupt man who knows how to play a crowd and knows how to lie flawlessly even to the people who know him best, who can smother deceit and dictatorship behind candy-coated worlds and promise of a brighter future. A corrupt man who plays the world like a harp, working through the naïve and the loyal to rally the Pocket Monsters of the world and round them up into his own arsenal for complete domination. A corrupt man knows when he's hit the final legs of the race, but can't recognize when the underdog's finally caught up and hits the finish line first. A corrupt man who is so infatuated by his own ideals and slander, he grows careless and lets the truth out when someone able to put a halt to all his heinous crimes comes along with the intent to do just that.
(And that day, a young child rose above evil and freed the region from the terror known as Plasma.)
It begins with a dream.
And it ends with a slammed door.
…
And in those days when the weather was warm and the food supply was low in their crumbling little house, she is occasionally sent outside to buy as much supplies as she could with so few funds. If she is especially lucky, the man running the flower shop will forget to switch off the little old television sitting near the glass windows near the front door. More so than that, however, if fortune truly chooses to grace her, she'll be able to press her face flush against the transparent planes and watch as images flash through the supposed magic box before her very eyes before someone catches her staring and runs after her with a broom.
She remembers seeing a green-haired man one time, as well as the name of the fourth form of matter plastered on the bottom of the news channel, but her blue eyes were particularly attracted to the pretty blonde woman standing in the background.
Some nights, she dreams of being pretty just like her.
…
In the days to come after the fall of Team Plasma (weeks, months, a handful of years at most), the world finally comes to their senses and plots ways to stop the spring of criminal organizations springing up world wide. In the wake of the five dangerous establishments that had flourished in secrecy, only to wither upon reaching sunlight after leaving ugly scars on the land and the people, the only question, whispered in hushed, terrified tones amongst the people, was who was next? What sort of goals will this new group have in store for humanity to torment them in ways that are far from legal? Many like to tell themselves that there will be no more "teams", no more groups bent on throwing the entire region and perhaps the world around it into utter anarchy; however, these are the idealists and the daydreamers and any rational thinker knows, just knows that it's only a matter of time before they're faced with an entirely new danger far more terrifying than the one preceding it. That is, they will be should they not do something about it. And so they think, set their thinking caps on their heads, jut their tongues out in concentration, and really think.
And then they come to a conclusion.
"What if we're not punishing them enough?"
The Pokemon League is rather lenient in their punishments, minds as light and open as the young children they encourage to run into the perilous wilds outside of their homes with the hope of reaching the title of a Pokemon Master. Many criminals hailing from Rocket, Aqua, Magma, and Galactic have been simply... let loose, only the major members that they can find being locked up and thrown into the prison cell they most rightfully deserve. Some people may take this as a light warning (incredibly light, you're almost encouraging them, aren't you?), but what if they were to turn it all around, trying a new method no one was cruel enough to attempt before? It would be an example, a story to look back to should someone try to gather a faction of people for a malicious cause; "if you do this and get caught, this is what will happen".
It ends with a game of hide and seek where every member of Plasma must hide their face and live their lives in solitude in fear of the league finding their location and promptly leave them to be pushing up daisies. It ends in a game of hide and seek where few hiders make it before the seekers give up, thousands being hung before the masses or tortured before the Unovan government for their crimes against humanity regardless of the fact that only a year was spent tracking down stragglers following under the word of the mysterious man N. The elderly turn their head in shame. Mothers shield their childrens' eyes to keep them from seeing these monstrosities. But all the while, a single thought travels through the minds of many Unovan citizens:
They got what they deserved.
…
She stands outside the tiny building, hands shielding icy blue eyes and cheeks scrunched up against the cool glass on that autumn afternoon, straining to see the images paired with the sounds that she can hear through the thin walls. Obviously, it is interesting enough that the man has turned the gray box away from its usual spot and it staring at it so intently, he hasn't even noticed his little "guest". Normally, she would have given up on it by now, but she was lucky enough to have heard the name "Plasma" through the static of the television and was instantly flooded with thoughts of the blonde-haired woman. Desperate to know more, she chose to put herself at risk if only to better understand the situation. According to what she can hear and the few things she catches with her sharp eyes, she predicts that the organization has fallen at the hands of a valiant hero in Unova (so, so far away from her home in Blackthorn, is it not?) and that the League has chosen to break its passive streak if only to set an example for those who make the mistake of challenging the regions world wide so violently.
She wonders if they caught the pretty woman that has plagued her mind for so long.
She turns tail and flees for home, tears threatening to fill her eyes as she tears herself away from horrible news from the man's evil box.
That night, when she sits at the table with her parents and sister, she asks about Team Plasma and is promptly whipped until she can't feel her rear end for "bringing up a sour topic".
…
A popular cliché whispered by the many hopeless people of society is that "when one door closes, another one opens". It is generally used in reference to imply that, should one good thing in a person's life fall apart, there is always hope for vast improvement in something different, whether it be a different branch of the same thing or something completely different. They were words of hope to the trivial, those who dream of a happily ever after and will come up with strong words to help them get through the day. However, while many do not get that happy ending and sometimes when one door closes, someone's already gone through and locked all of the other doors so they can't open, it is true in some cases. However, what it's talking about isn't always as pleasant as a love life or a certain career.
One could claim that, when the door to Team Plasma was slammed so brutally shut, another was flown open in the tremor created by the initial crash. However, though, if one were to look closely enough, they would be able to see that the second door was open just a smidgen all along.
The only reason why it was opened so widely was to avenge the fallen in the horrendous trials preceding the fall of the corrupt organization in the newest region.
…
There are glass shards everywhere – littering the floorboards, embedded in the carpet – and if they had neighbors, she is sure one of them would have called the police due to noise pollution from the vicious screaming coming from both mother and father. At this point, she is not entirely sure of what they are shouting about. Honestly, it sounds more like animalistic noise than honest human language, but this is probably due to the fact that she is so scared, her pants are beyond soiled and she's been trying so, so, so hard to shut everything up that every noise around her is nothing more than a loud blur of every conceivable noise all at once. If her ear drums survive to see another day, she will get down on her knees and pray to every deity she has ever heard of but never allowed herself to believe in. She would run (should run, should run, she got cut on the head and she's pretty sure she'd bleeding out and -) but there's one factor that keeps her within the confines of the house.
If only she could find her.
It has taken her a total of approximately fifteen minutes of walking, running, crawling, and finally dragging herself across the floor before she finally finds herself face to face with a familiar russet haired girl, even younger than she herself, shaking in the corner with her head buried in the space between her knees and her chest. She is dizzy, but the need to keep her sister safe at all costs beats out the monochrome fog threatening to take over her brain. She drags herself over to the young girl, wrapping her arms and body around the smaller frame and whispering, "Sh, Frieda, sh... it's... it's gonna be o-okay..." in her ear before exhaustion takes over and the world crashes into a tidal wave of darkness.
When she wakes up, her head is bandaged and her father is gone.
…
The underdog raises to the challenge and takes the ranks in the few known survivors of Plasma by storm, banding them all together faster than the person who'd brought them all into one spot in the first place and promptly doing everything in her power to get them out of there and away from Unova and anywhere members or supporters may have been all over the world. The world is harsh and its inhabitants crueler, but lady luck decides to shed a sliver of fortune on the sea sick humans and, after days and nights of nothing but ocean and illness, they are rewarded with a land further and fresher than the land they'd left.
And in those days, a particular woman would prove her spot as the superiority in the remains of Ghetsis' distorted army. The people would come – and come they did – but no one who wasn't supposed to hear of the group of rouges hiding themselves away in the crevices of this strange new land mass and no new sympathizer to the old Plasma cause would show any more worth than the blonde at large.
With the new recruits, they dreamed of creating Neo Plasma. However, "Plasma" was nothing more than an outdated name used to title the lies of a man using the freedom of Pokemon as an excuse for worldwide domination. No, that simply would not do.
When the land was named Lyeant, Nymah named her own land Imum.
…
She is only fifteen years old when she watches the light fade from Frieda's eyes and she knows, knows that there is nothing left. Her sister, her friend, her everything has been ripped away from her by a demon known as illness, having only taken her mother in the passed year as well, and she is certain now more than ever that the Ackermann name is to wither and die before she is to reach the age of sixteen. Her immune system is not that of a beast, after all, and no ordinary woman of her age would be able to carry the weight of a crumbling house and her own survival on her fragile little shoulders. She plans to run, she imagines, run as far from Blackthorn City as she can and die so far from the place everything went to the Underworld that maybe, just maybe, when she dies, she won't even be able to remember any of it.
She spends one last night under the leaky roof, however, her younger sister's cold, unmoving body clutched tightly in her hands as she dreams of blonde-haired women, of the freedom of Pokemon, and a chance to be anywhere that wasn't there.
In the morning, she covers the little girl's head in the only blanket to spare and kisses her last shreds of insanity (and herself) goodbye.
(And when she runs, she meets a very stern lady with pretty blonde hair who knows her as "Oberan's daughter" and offers her a chance to live.
As much as her heart says no because Oberan, her father, the one whose lap she'd sit on while he read them bedtime stories when she was little was a bad, bad man, she accepts because she's dreamed of this woman for so long and she'd give her heart and soul just to be able to reach out and touch her if only to make sure she wasn't dreaming once more.)
…
They hide their faces in an underground headquarters outside the city of darkness and become more allusive than the creatures of legends that skeptics believe hide in the wild, appearing only before those that soon join their ranks or are soon killed for their crimes against the Pocket Monsters of the world. If a human is able to beat, torment, and off a Pokemon, it is only fair that all of their sins be brought upon them eventually, correct? The rich, the ruthless, anyone noticeable enough for the public to wonder by never really know are slowly crossed off the list of demons to slay in the Imum base. And from these murders came suspicion; who were committing these silent crimes? No one knows for sure. Not that anyone has much of a reason to look into it – many of the victims would be better off dead, anyway. If one is to truly think about it, in these days, everyone is on the same side, the oblivious population almost routing for the enigmatic organization to leave another heartless human pushing up daisies for the sake of humanity.
Time passes, though, and with it times of carelessness and a false mask of heroism. Whispers flutter across the streets, hushed words being passed about the civilians of the city of darkness as a single name plagues the minds of many. Imum. Who are they? Where are they hiding? What do they want? So many questions and too few answers. The only woman in the world who has any idea of what's to come for the newly flourishing land sits at her desk and moves her pawns across a chess board, bright eyes bearing witness to the phyiscal model of an all out war that is to come. So she orders her men and her women and her children and her Pokemon alike to kill the problematic and recruit the useful, all whilst the observant observe and ponder what is to become of them with the slaughter of people growing more innocent as the days pass.
Months kiss them goodbye as tension escalates quickly, the police and their dogs sniffing out the trail of a ghost they do not know and could never hope to know. And when they find a door leading underground outside of their city of darkness, they do not hesitate to shove their way in guns blazing, tearing down fluorescent corridor after fluorescent corridor until – until -
Nothing.
So the clock ticks and a full three hundred sixty-five days bests them all in a race to the finish line without a word of a group of people they were foolish enough to think could ever pose a threat.
(A full three hundred sixty-five days bests them all in a race to the finish line before a young man finds himself surrounded by the rotting corpses of humans and Pokemon hung from trees, innocents, criminals, and Imums alike.
They find him three hours later and let him join his fellow snoopers in the trees.)
…
She calls Nymah master because she looks up to her in ways that she has never looked up to anyone ever before. She is more of a mother figure than her sickly old mother. She is more of a father figure than her traitorous old man. To label her as either of those typical titles would almost be degrading to her majesty and the impact she has held on so many, especially the brown-haired prodigy scrambling up the ranks she has discovered were once scrambled up by her wicked father. As a slave is forced to do for its master, she obeys every single command given to her, albeit with the enthusiasm as a puppy has doing a new trick for its owner. She would do anything to please her. She would even end her own life on the spot if it were to better the cause of the person who saved her life years back. To slip up on any conceivable level would be utter chaos for her and the dependency to please she's built up in her mind.
But no person is perfect and she is no exception.
Her mission is to capture the heir of the Sylph Company, the young man – even younger than herself – who is visiting the new region in hopes of putting up branches of the massive company onto a new frontier. He is to be brought alive, held for ransom, and returned without a hair plucked from his head should the required sum of money be met. She is careless, however, lets him slip out of her sight for only a few moments. When she turns, she sees him, the pistol she must have left laying out in plain sight grasped limply in his head and blood pouring out of the bullet wound in his head. She pinches herself multiple times – sixteen, exactly, but who is to be counting? - in a frivolous attempt to awake herself from this nightmare, slaps herself, hits her head on the wall so hard and in such repetition that, when she carries his limp frame back to base bridal style, she is swift to passing out before Nymah's door.
She sobs uncontrollably to her master, not in fear of death, but because she has failed. She cries until her eyes no longer have anymore salty liquids to produce, and continues to weep dryly until her throat is sore and her hair is pulled to snap her out of her trance. One of the admins tells her she is to be tested if she is to prove her utmost loyalty, to which she bobs her head like an imbecile and begs forgiveness through a rough voice. Anything to prove herself, anything to make her master pleased again, anything.
(That night, they fasten the noose around her neck and pull the box out from under her feet.
The next morning, a straggler finds three dead bodies tossed lazily across the ground and an empty noose tied up in a tree overhead.)
When she returns to headquarters the next morning, tired, but otherwise unscathed, the admin blinks at her in shock, dipping his head in respect to her as she cuts her way through to Nymah's office to ask if all has been forgiven.
(They toss the head admin's corpse into a ditch and leave him to rot, the object that impaled him still lodged in his chest as he tumbles down the step slope.)
But of course she is.
(And she goes to bed with burns across her wrist and arms that sting for months to come, swiftly replaced by identical red marks when the initial pain and color begins to fade before she has re-payed her crimes to Imum. She gladly accepts her punishment; anything to have her name in the clear once more.)
She always was Nymah's favorite.
…
They don't hear of Imum for days. Months. Years. What the public were beginning to suspect were another criminal organization has all but vanished off the face of the planet, the few murders all far apart and spread out between.
(They murder more of their own men and women instead, leaving examples for any member who may have the idea to commit crimes to Imum's glorious name. Those who come out alive will only be the strongest and the most loyal, and if that is how Nymah wills it, there is little a soul can do to protest.)
As children are tucked into the contours of their beds and adults lay their own heads down onto their night-time pillows and welcome slumber into their arms, the slight paranoia begins to vanish as gradually as it had crept up on them until no one even knows what an "Imum" is, anyway.
…
When she was called down to the leader's office that morning, she wasn't entirely sure of what to expect; certainly not the tomfoolery she received. The blonde who sits before her claims that she has done so well for so many years, gushing that the organization needs more people like her to help it keep going. However, she continues. However. The twenty-year-old nearly chokes right then, thinking that she has messed up, that she has made her master displeased, that she is to hang once more and doesn't think she can slip out of that noose so easily this time and – However, she is young. She is young and there is one thing left for her to do should she ever become an admin of the organization. What the older woman's words imply send a wonderful flood of relief washing through her and she nearly weeps in joy right there, bowing so low on the floor her head touches the hard, gray stone below them and thanks her until she can't hear herself saying those two words anymore.
But then she hears her mission and she nearly chokes on her own words.
(Needless to say, they cease tumbling out of her mouth.)
Not a week has passed before she finds herself in a small, single story home in the swiftly growing Irisia Town, pale hands rat-tat-tating against the wooden plane that makes the door. Only a few moments of absolute silence before the door is being swung open from the inside, a short female nearly ten or twenty years older than herself looking up at her in slight confusion and a slight sense of deja vu.
(Mother always told her she looked like her father.)
She hates this woman immediately.
(Mother also told her to not trust men.)
She wastes no time shoving her way in, slamming the door shut, and making use of the knife hidden in her pocket.
(Mother told her that they lie.)
Deeper into the house she goes, swinging open the door to their child's room, the boy not even three years of age if she had to assume, but she hates him, too. Hates him, hates him, hates him.
As she digs the blade into the back of his head, she thinks angrily that he would never have been a real Ackermann, anyway.
(Mother told her that they steal.)
She searches the entire home, finding it entirely empty, but she is not quick to give up the hunt for her real target. She sits in his living room, pondering if he is out of the house at that moment and when he will come back if he is. If he had made some sort of daring escape – more plausible, especially concidering that would involve him leaving his wife and son in the hands of a murderer – she could always find him after a few hour's wait and a cup of tea.
(But most of all -)
When he opens the door and hangs his spring jacket up on one of the hooks at the front door, he is surprised at how quiet and clean it is. Needless to say, he is even more surprised when he sees his daughter, standing in his living room, icy blue eyes seemingly staring into his soul and the dead bodies of his only other family clutched by the hair in her hands. They stand still for a moment, him staring in horror and she sipping on vanilla chai before he starts to move in the opposite direction.
(Mother told her they cheat.)
Fifteen minutes later, the woman and child are hung from the blades of a ceiling fan within the home, the husband and father hung between them, body unrecognizable due to the abundance of knife wounds litering his chest, limbs, and face.
…
They are foolish enough to think that their punishments of Team Plasma have worked due to the lack of criminal activity over the span of so, so many years.
(Soon, they will learn how wrong they are.)
…
She is woken at an ungodly time of the night in the midst of a light slumber one evening when one of the more recent grunts comes tumbling into her room, dark hair ruffled, hands shoved deep into his pockets, and eyes giving away his nervousness. He tells her quietly that Nymah wishes to speak with her and slinks into the darkness from which he came, almost shameful as though he has done something wrong. She only ponders whatever could be the matter for a moment, though. (He was always a shifty little boy, almost as though he wasn't quite sure if he wanted to be there.) When Nymah calls, there is nothing to do but clean your schedule and prepare for the best and worst all at the same time.
When she knocks on the door and no one answers, she shoves her way inside and receives both the best and the worst at the same time.
Nymah is gone. For good, actually. The dark room is as organized and tidy as it always is, always had been, and always would be, but the lack of the blonde-haired woman usually sat at the chair behind the mahogany desk is unnerving at best. She stands in the middle of her room for an hour, pondering if she is out as her father had been almost three years prior, but as the early hours fade into the average morning times, she starts to wonder how long it will be before the woman returns. It is then that a note on the dark, wooden desk catches her eye and – she would never snoop, she swears – but she can see her name written in something between chicken scratch and beautiful cursive handwriting and her hand snatches the envelope off the desk so fast, she nearly hurts her hand when recoiling. Icy blue eyes flutter over the lined paper's message once. Twice. Three times. She can't believe the nonsense that is being spew from such simple words; thinking she is tired and this must be a dream, she stumbles back into her own separate admin suite and lays down on her sheets, letter clutched firmly in her hands as she tries to fathom what is going on.
Hataro (cold, strong, almost as loyal as herself and the first person she could ever even remotely call a friend) pokes his head into her room after twelve o'clock has slipped them by, worried for her safety and shrugs the slumbering lady awake. She reads over the letter again and groans; it has not changed.
"Where is Nymah?" she growls almost too bitterly.
"I heard that she went out this morning for supplies; I would have figured she'd be back by now, though. Why?"
She hands him the letter, covering her eyes with an arm draped over them limply as he scans it over himself.
"You don't honestly think she's left, do you?"
"I hope to Arceus she hasn't."
"And if she has -"
"If she has, then I suppose there's going to be quite the battle for power going on around head quarters."
"But she specifically said you were heir to the Imum name right here. They'd never challenge Nymah's words."
"No, but they would challenge mine. It would be easy to forge her handwriting, kill her off, and try and take her place."
They sit in silence for a moment because they both know she's right; even if they broadcasted the contents of the note left on the blonde's desk to the entirety of the organization, only a fraction would believe it. And, even then, only a subset of those who did would be able to accept it. Few would be able to hold her as accountable to the word of their now-former leader, save for the only two members who spoke with her aside from when it was necessary, so even if she was the rightful successor, there was only a small chance she'd ever be able to claim the title.
"I would fight for you." The male's deep voice in the midst of a long stretch of silence was nearly enough to make her jump – though she rarely elicited outward reactions to anything, these days – when he repeated, "I would fight for you. Felix would, too."
A breath of hopelessness fell from her lips as she responded," And I thank you both for that. Sadly, I don't believe there will be any need for that; if it comes down to battle, I'd rather not get involved."
"Of course." After a brief pause, the dark-haired man changes topics. "I have some lunch waiting for you If you wanted it. I figured you would be hungry, spending all morning in here."
"My gratitude, Hataro."
(Three months later, brown locks drenched in blood and flailing wildly in the violent breeze that bite at their flesh, she stands above the limp body of the only person left fighting for the title. In her hands, she grips the flag pole tightly that had impaled him through the diaphragm and she relishes in watching him struggle for a few moments longer before falling still at her hands.
When she returns to the base, she drags his limp corpse across the polished tiles below her, not even caring as his blood scribbles a line all the way across the building as she calls the organization for a meeting in the spot that her predecessor had held so many before her. When they gather, standing below her in a confused mass of people, wondering what could possibly be the meaning of this, she tosses her collection of bodies down on their heads and watch as they scream, trying not to touch the blood stained, rotted flesh, and exposed bones.
With a voice not her own, she speaks.
And when she speaks, they finally listen.)
…
As the population soon learned, the Pokemon League set up in the Lyeant Region had a knack for throwing extravagant events for the simple things in life, ball after ball thrown in the honor of one thing or another. However, in the time spanning from the region's official "birth" and the final ball they were the throw, never a party as grand and widely attended is the one in honor of the fifty thousandth immigrant moving into the distant region. They hold this particular celebration in the massive dance hall in the sprawling Irisia City, the ocean view a pleasant backdrop for an event nearly all of the population is invited to. There is a large number of people who stay home or work, failing to attend, but a number just as large makes an effort to spend some time in the dance that the league has provided for them.
In these days, no one worries about war or blood shed.
No one worries until someone cuts into the cake and the hall is demolished in a tremendous explosion.
(They should have never forgotten Imum's name.)
…
Sometime between the bombing on Veherna City and the dumping of nuclear waste on Ishya Town, she sniffs out a disloyal scumbag lurking in her ranks. For weeks, she does not know who, does not know if she's even right or not, but time proves to be her ally – if only for a moment – and she trains her ice cold stare on a young man of an elite position in the murderous organization. For nearly three years, now, he has been working as a solo double agent, trying to learn the secrets of the team and use them against them from the inside. She thinks, bemused, that the most crucial secret he failed to learn was that nothing escapes her eyes; nothing at all. She watches him for a month outside of anyone's knowledge, filming his missions and work around the base and scowling at his blatant lack of loyalty to the cause. To Nymah's cause. She dodges two assassination attempts and returns for round two on a massive acid trip for Ishya (relishes in the way everything burns and grows giddy when her scientists tell her it will be uninhabitable for generations to come) when she finally makes her move, sneaking into the room that he stays in at night and knocking him out cold with a crow bar.
The faction is called to gather in the main room and curious eyes turn to watch as her admins – Hataro, Felix – march the fool down each and every hall. His golden hair has been shaved, his skin torn and freshly bleeding with the knife wounds from words she has carved into the canvas of his chest and back, clothes in tatters, but olive eyes still burning with a passion she could never hope to quench. It does not matter, though. He will soon be just another limp body hanging from the trees outside of their seemingly invisible base. She grins maliciously, once blank features having taken on the facial expressions more akin to a maddened beast in the horror novels she sometimes takes inspiration from as she stares down at her latest piece of fresh meat. They lead him to a halt on the raised platform in the middle of the rooms. All eyes are on him as they stand him above the retreating floor, fresh noose brushing against the back of his neck.
"Garett Heinrich," she practically sings, voice louder than if she had just been addressing him. Of course, she has to put on a show for the spectators. "You have been accused of treason against the power of Team Imum. All evidence points to these claims being true. It would be quite a shame to put you down without giving you a fighting chance, though, and I am not completely heartless. Well? Do you have anything to say for yourself before we have you kicking the bucket?"
He raises his head, leaf eyes meeting ice ones and the fire of hope and heroism flickers out to be replaced by a desolate smoke of utter hatred. She licks her lips, finding the falter of his ambition absolutely wonderful. "... Go to the Distortion World," he growls angrily and she laughs, Mightyena cackle echoing off the walls of the room until she's out of breath and leaning over the balcony on which she stands.
Gasping for breath and still suppressing giggles, she counters, "That's what I'm aiming for. Well? What are you waiting for? Get on with it, you two! If he's not going to stand up for himself, I suppose that is simply his loss. We don't have time for scum like him here." He doesn't struggle as Felix takes the rope and slips it carefully over the traitor's head, each move practiced and calculated. The crowd erupts into chants of what she assumes are the words "hang him" before she has not choice but to feed their hungry desires for blood lust and gives the signal, watching the last chance for rebellion within their walls die has his body is jerked downward toward the floor by gravity.
The chanting does not cease, however, as she would have expected when the spectacle is all over. Instead, her own pleasure at a job well done is reflected in the men and woman under her and, before she knows what is happening, it is her name that is rippling through the mass of people, raising until the volume is deafening. They never cheered this way for Nymah, she thinks. Only for her. Something tingles in her toes, claws up her legs and sits heavy in her heart; but it is far from an uncomfortable feeling. In fact, she welcomes it with open arms.
Lorelei wonders if this is what power truly feels like.
(When the brunette watches the men and women who dedicated their lives to her cause executed and imprisoned, however, while she herself has remained unharmed as she has for decades, she thinks that she has been strong all along. And, even as Imum collapses in on itself at the hands of the rebellion that sprung up because of it, no soul will ever be able to quell the splendor that is Lorelei Ackermann.
She turns on her heel, back turned to the land she once had wrapped around her finger, and disappears into the uncharted woods beyond.
In her mind, she already knows she'll return.)
…
When this door slams, all the others are well mannered enough to know to stay closed.
Now that you've finished trekking through that pile of garbage and grammatical mistakes, welcome to a more light-hearted portion of the story: the author's note I always include! For starters, I dedicate this to all of the wonderful people I have met through my roleplaying sites, Stern, Shizu, Night, and Cheddar especially, guessing as their characters were important enough to be included in this messed up little story of mine. For any of you who KNOW the story of Imum, Nymah, Lorelei, and such, you're probably looking at this monstrosity and pointing out every flaw in it plot-wise. Get ready for one heck of a ride; there are many. Here, let me help you: for one thing, Lorelei is about ten years older than Nymah, not the other way around. Sadly, due to inconsistencies of my own personal head canon and things such as both Nymah and Lorelei's applications (heck, I stinking wrote Lorelei's for Pete's sake) and other site canon things, I ended up going with one over the other and the story became a tale more focused on how my mind twisted things. Regardless, I hope you can all enjoy this for what it is, whether you be one of my fellow roleplayers who experienced some of these things first hand or just a wanderer on who stumbled onto this by chance.
For those of you curious on my updating habits for other stories, I kind of ditched all update plans for any multi-chaptered fics or one-shot collections and, at this point, and simply humoring plot ideas in my mind instead of writing them out and posting them for the public eye. I'd promise you a story in this same universe, post-Imum's bloody reign, but we all know that's probably never going to happen. (Even if it is, I need to get a solid grip on how the mafia works for story reference. ... Aha...) So... I dunno. Be patient, I guess, if you're interested in new stories or one-shots? They'll come periodically; at least that I can guarantee.