Author's Notes: Just like the last part Koppi Eris is going to use some more 'colourful' language. It's nothing too major but I feel like I should mention it.

Pokota's Plight

Chapter Twenty-one, Acceptance and Denial

By Relm

The room seemed to be spinning around Pokota. He couldn't breathe; the air had turned into mud. All he could do was stand there staring at the koppi of Eris with her stinging words reverberating through his head. "What...?" His voice was but a mere whisper as he stared at her with wide eyes.

Koppi Eris let out a dark laugh. "Oh come now what did you think was going to happen? You can't have been that stupid. You're dying. And nothing is going to change that."

Amelia's lips quivered as the tears threatened to spill from her eyes. "No... that can't be true! There has to be a way... Pokota can't die!"

Koppi Eris shook her head. "Once a koppi starts to degrade there is nothing you can do to stop it. Believe me I've tried." She stepped away from the stasis tube and limped her way over to one of the tables littered with strange objects.

"You're dying." Pokota clarified more for himself than for her.

Koppi Eris nodded. "Rezo went through many steps perfecting his koppi making process. Many failures were made. He must have made dozens of koppis that all died horribly. As I said the eyes are always the tell if there's something wrong. But if you're copying a person with defective eyes you can't tell if the koppi is wrong."

"Which is why Miss Eris made you." Sylphiel surmised.

"That's right." Koppi Eris declared bitterly. She snatched a bottle from the table, uncorked it and took a swig. She made a grimace was refused to spit out the dark liquid. Swallowing it Koppi Eris let out a satisfied shudder. "She tried something a little different with me. Still ended up wrong but I fared better than some of the other failures. I was dying but I wasn't as sick or weak as the other Koppi Rezos. So I got the joy and privilege of seeing what was going to end up happening to me."

"Did Miss Eris try to help you?"

Once again Koppi Eris let out a dark chuckle. "At first. I suppose she felt guilty. But her master beaconed her and she left me to do his bidding. It seems that Rezo wasn't too concerned with failures so he forgot about those in favor of trying to get the process right. He did eventually, not that it helped in the end." She took another swig of the bottle.

"So there's really nothing I can do?" Pokota asked in a small voice.

Koppi Eris shot him a sidewise glance. "If there was a way to fix a defective koppi's body then I would know it. I've tried just about everything to fix me. I've been through all of my original's notes as well the ones I have of Rezo's but it didn't help. I built the stasis chamber as a last resort. To keep me alive just in case my original did come to her senses and come back to fix me. However since the bitch is dead that doesn't matter."

"What things did you try? Maybe we can find something you did and see-" Amelia started to say.

"Look through the books yourself if you don't believe me." Koppi Eris interrupted Amelia. "You won't find anything that will help. And I'm not in the mood to go into a lengthily conversation about something that can't be changed." She turned to face Pokota. "I'm going to die. And so will you. The sooner you accept that the sooner you can let go of this awful pain of hope making you suffer."

Pokota's eyes shied away from Koppi Eris' darkly lit ones. He had invested so much hope into this plan that he felt like he wanted to cry. Koppi Eris harsh cold reality hit him like a ton of bricks. "I'm going to die..." He mumbled ready to fall on the ground and break into a million pieces.

Koppi Eris was going to let out another laugh until she spied another look at the slumbering stuffed animal creature. "How did you end up switching places with your koppi?"

"Rezo's Hellmaster jars." Pokota responded quietly.

"As in Hellmaster Phibrizzo?" Koppi Eris prompted him.

Pokota nodded. "Similar to the monster lord's power, they can transfer the soul of one body into another. And also a soul could be trapped in one once the body of the user dies. Rezo had left a few of them behind in Tarforashia."

Koppi Eris pressed her lips together in thought. "Well perhaps you can save yourself after all."

Pokota's eyes lit up as he looked up to meet Koppi Eris' once more. "How?"

"Find a fool and switch bodies with them." She said with a sinister glint to her eyes.

"I could never do that!" Pokota exclaimed in horror. To do such a thing would mean condemning a life to death. Pokota would end up committing murder.

"You already did. Isn't that how you got into this mess in the first place?" Koppi Eris was quick to point out smirking the whole time the words danced off her lips.

"That was an accident!" Pokota insisted.

"So you just happen to have some of those soul jars laying around to add to the decor?" She verbally poked at him.

"Alright, I had thought about it. But that was before the koppi was finished. And even then I was wrestling with the notion. Once Kopo came to be I never intended to switch our bodies!" He screamed at her.

"Kopo?" This notion made Koppi Eris laugh. "You named your little beast? So he's your pet then. How adorable. You made him though; you are his 'god'. And because you are god you could take his life as surely as you made it. Switch bodies with him. Take back that body he took from you."

"I couldn't! He'd die! I couldn't knowingly take another's life!" Pokota protested.

"You said he had diminished mental capacity, yes? He wouldn't know any better. You'd probably be doing him a favour, a mercy killing. What sort of life would he have anyway? Just a dumb beast." Koppi Eris concluded.

"I don't care! I will not kill him! It's wrong!" Pokota growled feeling more than just a little irritated with her.

"Very well then, you have two options. Live out your remaining time suffering or sleep in stasis like me." Koppi Eris mused as she turned back to her stasis tube. She re-powered up the machine and got ready to step back into it.

"Why bother? You're just delaying your death." Amelia wondered.

"Ah yes but dreams are far much kinder than reality. Take whatever books you want, but they won't help you. And don't wake me again unless you can fix me." And with that Koppi Eris went back to her slumber.

Pokota let out a heavy sigh. He had vested so much hope in finding Eris' lab that now he wasn't sure what do anymore. Was there really any point in hoping anymore?

"Pokota cheer up." Amelia pleaded with the Tarforashian prince. "We'll take the books back to Sylphiel's and look them over. I'm sure we'll find something Koppi Eris missed. There are three of us after all and just one of her."

"Yes that's right." Sylphiel agreed. "Just because she gave up doesn't mean you have to too."

Pokota smiled weakly at them. "I guess you're right." He mumbled. It was a nice thought but he just couldn't will his mind or heart to entertain it. But even though he might have given up he knew that he couldn't tell Amelia or Sylphiel that.

...

With all the books they could find in tow Amelia, Sylphiel, Pokota and the slumbering Kopo made their way out of the lab and back towards Sylphiel's. Given that they didn't want to waste much time Sylphiel opted to fly them all back to her house.

Once back at Sylphiel's house the threesome (and the sleeping stuffed animal creature) sat around Sylphiel's dining room table as they went through the books they acquired.

From time to time Sylphiel went into the kitchen to work on their dinner, stirring a pot or checking the oven but otherwise she as at it reading just like Amelia and Pokota.

As dinnertime came however it was getting clearer and clearer that Koppi Eris was correct. The books had nothing useful. Sure they gave a person the proper instructions on how to make a koppi but there was nothing about fixing a defective one. Another thing that Koppi Eris said was true; Rezo hadn't cared about the failures. Clearly had no interest in fixing them.

"Let's take a break and eat dinner. We can pick up where we leave off when we're finished." Sylphiel suggested while putting a book mark in the book she was reading and closed it.

"I don't think it matters. These books have nothing." Pokota grumbled unable to hide his disappointment any longer.

Both Amelia and Sylphiel frowned. They wanted to say something to help the dying prince but there wasn't anything more they could think of to say that hadn't already been said.

...

By the time it came to going to bed the trio had already finished reading all the books. Some of them were even read twice if not three times. It mattered little as they shed very little light onto the solution to their problem. Pokota was dying and there just didn't seem to be any way to stop it.

Sylphiel had provided Amelia and Pokota rooms to sleep in but Pokota didn't seem to be all the interested in sleeping. In those quiet dark hours of the night Pokota sat staring out one of Sylphiel's windows in the living room at the sky. There wasn't a vast array of twinkling lights to look at but a blanket of clouds. It wasn't a particularly interesting sight but Pokota wasn't really looking at any one specific part of the sky. He just let his vision blur as he look out and up. Staring at the brightness of a moon might have been to blame for the wateriness of his eyes but that was hardly the case given it was hidden amongst the clouds. Sitting alone in that dark room Pokota was trying to will himself not to cry. He was going to die. All he had wanted was a normal life. A chance to love and be loved.

Pokota thought about all his many regrets. Things he hadn't done in his life, things he had meant to do next. But there was no longer a next time, all there was now.

"Pokota?" A soft voice broke Pokota from his thoughts causing him to look in the direction of the sound.

Amelia timidly approached Pokota and sat down across from him.

Pokota let out a sigh before going back to looking outside.

"What are you doing still up?" Amelia wondered.

"I couldn't sleep." He admitted his voice very far away.

"You should try a little harder. You really need to get as much sleep as possible." Amelia chided in a motherly fashion.

"I doesn't matter does it? Nothing matters anymore..."

"Pokota please don't talk that way! We'll find a way to-"

"No." Pokota cut her off. "No Amelia I've got nothing left. I'm going to die and there's nothing you or I can do to stop it."

"Please don't think that way! I know Koppi Eris said that it was hopeless-"

"It is hopeless Amelia." Pokota corrected her. "You know I have so many regrets... So many things I wanted to do..."

"You can still do them. Because you're not going to die!" Amelia insisted fighting back the tears that were threatening to spill.

Pokota looked at Amelia's face and smiled a sad smile. "You know what my biggest regret is?" He asked her ignoring her previous outburst.

Amelia shook her head. She couldn't answer because she was afraid her voice would betray her and the tears would surely fall.

"I've never kissed a girl." Pokota admitted too depressed to even muster up a blush. Regular non-dying Pokota would have been too embarrassed to announce such a thing but this dying one cared little about silly trivialities. "Amelia... could I make a dying request? Could you... kiss me?"

This broke Amelia and she choked on one of her sobs. "Pokota you aren't going to die! Please stop saying that!" She pleaded with him desperately.

"It's hard to believe you when you have tears in your eyes." Pokota said sadly. "Amelia may I have my request?"

Amelia violently shook her head. "No. No, no, no, no! You are not going to die! You can kiss me when you're healed." She insisted while angrily trying to wipe away her tears.

"I'd love to, but you and I know that won't happen... Please Amelia...?" He pleaded with the saddest desperate stare a boy could give a girl.

Amelia's bottom lip trembled. "Fine, but only if you go to your room and try to sleep afterwards." She insisted.

Pokota nodded and closed his eyes. Though the situation was a gloomy one Pokota couldn't help but feel his heart beat just that much faster at the thought of not only kissing by a girl but a pretty princess to boot.

Amelia tried to silence and halt her tears as she leaned forward to press her lips to Pokota's but the tears still freely fell. His lips were soft and warm against hers and just as shy. The kiss was tender but chaste and bathed with their combined tears. Such a bittersweet moment so full of pain and longing. Longing to cling to hope and to forget that this kiss wasn't a dying man's wish but an innocent first.

Pokota tenderly touched Amelia's face when she broke the kiss. He wiped those tears from her face and kissed her again on the forehead. "Goodnight Amelia." He said softly.

"Goodnight Pokota." Amelia whispered. She held onto his hand for a moment not wanting to let it go. But as Pokota rose to leave she let his hand slip away from her grasp and watched him leave. Once Pokota was completely out of sight Amelia broke down into gut wrenching sobs. What good was it to be a champion of justice when you couldn't even help the people you cared about? Never before had Amelia felt like such a failure. It broke her heart in so many ways but what could she do? How do you save a dying man?

(Author's Notes: When I had started this fic I had visions of the kiss scene in my head. Though when I originally pictured it the kiss was going to happen in Sailune and it sounded much better in my head. Am I happy with how this part turned out? Yes and no. I don't know if I conveyed enough of the angst and pain Pokota and Amelia are going through. But still I love the bittersweet tragic unfluffy Pokota/Amelia romance.)