Part 7.75: The Lost Fict
Memory Phases 4 and 5
yes this is still a pokemon story lol
just a really contrived one
By the way, the idea here is that Secany is in the Lost Fict, but the place got broke as hell when Angel decided to shoot Nephi's clock. So now there's no concept of time there, and Secany's just spectating bits and pieces of events that have technically already passed. She can't perceive time in a linear manner because that's not how it do. Not here.
I don't own Pokémon.
Secany
Memory Phase – 4
Gentle chimes now. No more seconds ticking for the moment. Chimes and water droplets echoing, like we were within a cave, but I could only see as far as the white mist allowed. The headstone came into view. The human, legs over the stone's facade, was there.
"Rather effeminate," Nephi criticized, unimpressed and monotone. "Fell it once more. You've grown accustomed to the wand, yes?"
"I-I can't keep – I mean, Miss Nephi, please," Aza refused, vocabulary evading him. "I can't..."
"Mm? Are you fatigued?"
"Well, no," he said. "But I can't bring myself to do it anymore. This poor... strider – it's suffered because of us. And who's to say more won't come to help it?"
"More would be my own delight," Nephi mused. The two appeared to pop up out of nowhere, constituting through the mist as though they'd only just developed bodies for me to see. At Aza's feet, there was another espeon, laying at its side, its fur white as a blank canvas, only colored by the shade of that strange wand leaning into its stomach. "But nay, dear. I've told you myriad times now that striders do not feel. They are as 'nothing' as that bug Azabell without his bell. Need you evidence? I will make you fetch another. You could compare the Azabell and a strider for yourself in the Paradox."
"Oh, I-I wouldn't-..." Aza lamented. "Ugh... Please don't make me do that again. Or, if you do, please... let me take the Bell, so I can leave on my own time."
"If you leave on your time, then you are disobeying MY time," Nephi responded, a threatening sharpness accenting her lips, a hand over her clockwork charm. "And I would not like to see you responsible for emancipating a certain lot in there."
"You mean Celebi and Mars?" Aza asked.
"Correct," she confirmed. "Though, I am incumbent on studying their force of will; that they've remained this irksome without form."
"Celebi's always been stubborn – in all the cycles. It's no surprise she's still here, what with all that determination to keep the Pokémon world alive. Mars must have been the same way." presumed Aza.
"And they are, only because WE are. The roles they played in our lives were so profound that our perception does not afford a world without them. Well, a deduction, anyway. I would sooner test it..."
"I-I'm sure you would; your 'testing' is very... incorrigible?"
"Ah, woe," Nephi gasped, melodramatic, tossing a hand high, palm open, as if listening for a call. "Is that a dab of doubt upon your tongue?"
"It... comes from an honest place," Aza defended, careful of his words. "Any doubt I, um, shed, is only my way of worrying for our future."
"An erudite choice of words, dear boy," Nephi commended, laying her hand upon Aza's back. The action was so sudden that Aza withheld a compulsion to jump, instead sending the energy to his tail, which twitched madly, even if Nephi's touch was gentle. "Your future looks bleaker the longer you stall our research on this strider."
"My future? Bleak...?" Aza mouthed. Nephi didn't seem to react. She left Aza to his own, instead walking to the headstone, her head not poised toward the still Scion, but instead the golden bow leaned up against his legs. Aza still had more to say. "What's that Clock telling you about my future anyway?"
I watched Nephi stop at the headstone. That image was frozen onto me – my eyes. I couldn't take myself from it. Then, it washed away into a hundred thousand colors, specks of sand falling, sifting.
Memory Phase – 5
The sand fell into a new frame, recoloring the image as Scion, hooded, holding the golden, winged weapon in one hand, Edge's bell in the other, fingers clutched, caging it. He was standing in front of the headstone. Oddly enough, there was another strider with an entirely different shape from the one that Aza had dealt with time and time again. This strider was still of its blank, bipedal shape, but it had been felled by something, face down in the white sand, blending in were it not for the shadow of Scion over it, its limbs sprawled messily. This much promised intermittent change to its form.
Scion didn't appear concerned with the strider – clearly, he had been instructed to annihilate the thing in a manner similar to how Aza had done, be it with the golden weapon or his own abilities. Instead, he dropped his weapon, one of its wings catching the sand, standing tall, until it toppled over and struck the ground, a tiny puff of white thrown out from underneath its weight.
In that weapon's place, another came, the rattling of chains sounding, physically leaving a half-clenched hand's palm as gloomy, dark shapes. These phantasmal chains wrapped around his hand, then his arm, squeezing. From the center in his busy palm, heavy black mist leaking into the sand, infecting it, a shape began to emerge. The heavy fog, liquid in its consistency, began leaking as a shape rather than otherwise, a long snake of sorts flowing out of Scion's hand. Two points jutted out, creating a cross shape at its base, after which the thing began to crystalline and thicken, radiating some kind of foulness that touched me even here, sickening me, creating pain in my stomach. I remembered that saw-like Crossblade. Scion's Crossblade, having ripped me clean in half before. It made me its tramp.
Even fully formed, the blade's serrated edges still leaked with sappy black fluid, ghostly chains now as wholesome as the blades were deadly, squeezing Scion's arm as Nephi's own sword bore rose vines that squeezed hers. The hooded human-turned-monster, still far more pitiful than any of our encounters prior, showed curiosity, attention locked onto that horrible weapon in his hand. Then, he returned to the bell. His fingers opened up, hand tilted to the ground. The object rolled clumsily out of his palm, landed on the strider, then into the sand, rolling over its black strap, jingling away all the while it rolled. For a moment, it was peaceful, just a little golden ball shining under clouded sunlight somewhere beyond the fog. Then, Scion's chains took hold, choking the object, totally covering it in black linked shapes, all of which appeared to be manifesting from a 'hole' in his palm somewhere, the space so crowded that it should have been impossible for these chains to exist – they were everywhere, from his Cross to his arm, and now to the Bell. Pointing the foremost blade at the little object, he lurched it into the air with the chains. All was still. The rattling of chains settled. The ghastly humming of the Crossblade's energetic presence took its place. The intentions were as unclear as the horizon.
Then, they were lucid. Scion bent his blade-wielding arm one way, then, with alarming precision, swept through the bell with the weapon, shattering the chains holding the Bell, but not the object itself. It remained there, suspended, trembling, a gash of black having torn through the air and itself. The black rift, stapled to space itself, drooled like a hungry mouth.
The mouth was ripped open. Two grueling red hands, reached through the dripping rift, forcing the anomaly open. The hands were wild, flailing about, viscera-like arms going wild in a desperate attempt to escape whatever writhing prison they'd been left to decay in. As the rift was ripped open further, I could see what appeared as monitor static – animated black and white 'fuzz' filling in the otherwise empty space behind the void.
The arms didn't belong to one of Scion's machinations. This was something that struck so close to home that I shook. I felt cold. I watched the thing emerge, its red fluids mixing with Scion's black, pooling on and around the strider beneath the hovering bell. The monstrosity, once resembling a Pokémon, screeched, a banshee, convulsing and twitching. The amalgam of gore bore similarities to an espeon in its head shape, sans the flailing arms that protruded from its ears. The jewel in its head was missing, replaced by a bloodied hole that was not so much on its forehead as it was beneath its black eyes. While the head was a dark, ashy gray, the rest of the body was merely a lick of fiery shadow, both above and below the head – the segment of shadow beneath the head bore a mask with one large eye. Or was it three eyes, and the largest was a mouth turned over? It was a busy mess to behold, but it was as real as the hooded human standing idly before it, even as its slimy hands lunged onto the him, taking his weapon arm and the hood of his jacket in its clawed fingers and pulling, either in attempt to free itself or to drag Scion into the void with it.
Scion's footing was compromised. He was failing to keep himself upright through the tug of the other. The aberration – Pokémon, that was – lurched its gray head forward, screaming a deafening noise into Scion's covered face. The noise had nothing behind it; no emotion, no purpose – it was a scream for scream's sake, or perhaps it was something born out of pain. Needless to say, this Flux had to've felt pain in its lifespan to wind up at this point, appearing this way, caged in a void of static.
In spite of the horror spitting into his face, Scion didn't flinch. He didn't make a movement. To alleviate his troubles, the ticking of a clock silenced the Flux's scream. A barrage of rose vines flooded the space behind Scion, splaying out like wings, then thrusting for the abomination. They coated over Scion, protective, removing the Flux's hands and binding the rest of it. Some wrapped around the thing. Others pierced through its form. All of them intended to lock the Flux away again, and lock it away they did, pushing it away. It struggled, manic, tossing and flailing violently, until it was behind the the black maw Scion had cut open. Two rose vines pushed the 'lips' of the void together. Now a black line, still dripping, two more vines squeezed the line together, all vines coalescing at one point: the Bell, which fell to the sand, harmless and jingling, married to the sounds of the secondhand.
All vines that covered Scion retreated to their point of origin, sickly long thorns narrowly avoiding the hooded human. He stood, oblivious, with the Crossblade still in hand, that winged golden weapon at his feet beside the fallen strider. Now resting upon the headstone was a single tiny Pokémon, white as snow, with two pink flowers at its face, and a green, grassy back. Shaymin, with a ruby chain around her body – bound to it, a silver clock touching her chest. I saw the vines sink into the patch of white flowers surrounding the grave, disappearing into grass and petals.
"Oh, my fault," she spoke. "Poor foresight. I really shouldn't have left you alone with that."
Scion turned his head, but did not react beyond that. He didn't speak. He didn't face the Pokémon.
"Hello there, my precious Naphal," she greeted him. "Interested in the other side, are we?"
The shaymin shuffled in place, then left, a jarring motion from one spot to another. I'd've blinked and missed it. She'd either warped or threw herself through time. That tiny display of power, paired with the belittling, gentle voice, the clock, and the closed eyes, led me to believe that was Nephi. She was standing in the patch of flowers, noise pointed up at Scion.
"Ignominious," she scolded, a shift in her tone. She was frustrated. "After I'd set the stage, you would go and taint your body with that disgusting Red. Pray understand, Scion, that you are as vulnerable as myself," she paused, catching her breath with a long, melodious sigh. "But perchance this would do me well..."
Finally, Scion turned his whole body, passive, curious once more. He was a fiend, but his silent fascination with Nephi was somehow charming, almost cute. Then again, he had shown this level of fascination with the Flux only just prior.
"I will find another 'Body'," Nephi cooed. I shivered. "Someone who knew us better than everybody else. My, I'd loathe to think somebody like her was NOT watching us to this very timeless moment."
I was here. I hadn't known if she was ever looking my way because of those shut eyes.
"We will shift phases, then," she said. "When you would, my 'Red-touched' Scion, kindly dispose of the strider. Brandish that bow. Grow with it. Become attuned. It might be such that you will become suited with enough endurance to bear the weapon within you, even beyond the body you wield now.
When that time comes, I would like to think that we have won.
Such is hinged upon my dearest Aza."
Silence between the two. My head pulsed with pain. I looked away, wherever my body was – it'd finally come to my attention that these scenes were occurring so quickly that I should have been able to keep up. I could recognize that. The pacing was unnatural, like they were playing all at once. Somehow, I could still identify each individual scene. I could perceive all of these 'times' simultaneously. I made sense of them, because they flowed into each other with cinematic fluency. One by one, these 'episodes' played to me, and I watched them. I was weary. I couldn't get out of this. The clock Nephi wore haunted me. It made me watch time melt together in a place where time didn't belong.
But then, a clock face, or a shadow of that, plastered high above the headstone in the distant white sky. It wasn't there before, and now, icons aplenty, it was, armed with both hands, twelve pips, ornate even as a gigantic looming shadow over the serenity of this... 'beach' place. It ticked loudly, the hands working together in harmony as any clock would have done. It was natural.
