In retrospect, the idea of her second life ending in much of the same way her first had shouldn't have surprised her. It might have gone so much better than her first had; a far more just life. She hadn't made the compromises, the poor choices she had before. It still didn't change that her life was still far too much like her first for comfort.
Had she turned to a sort of villainy? Not particularly, save in the eyes of the corrupt who tried to turn the townsfolk against her when she realized what they had done before taking care of business. Check. Taking over the town after the fact to fix things after the major crisis? Well, she'd done it again. Stopped an eldritch threat after nearly getting herself killed again? It'd become a habit. Stopping a gang of what could be uncharitably called 'murder-hobos'? They'd been unpleasantly surprised at how far she'd been willing to chase them down to bring them to justice.
Fighting an elder horror from beyond that was seemingly invincible and pulling a win even at the cost of her life? Well...
Watching the way her feet were slowly unraveling into nonexistence, the old one-armed sheriff of a lucario checked that one off of her unwanted bucket list.
"Sherriff! Sherriff, where are y-Oh!"
Taylor Hebert turned to the Decidueye who'd been her Chief Deputy and her oldest friend for over sixty years with a sigh. Had it been so long? Had the time really just... passed by her like that? Funny how things had simply piled up until she'd been unable to simply breathe. It'd gone straight from being a hard-pressed survivalist trying to find things to help Oasis to ending up the new defacto sheriff from her tales of better times and putting an end to the gang that'd ruled the town. Then she'd ended up Mayor from applying her organizational skills to fixing the town; getting the mon together and applying what she'd learned... when...
Slowly, her world had been enveloped with the need to mentor her proteges, corralling the strange idiosyncrasies of the many unusual pokemon of Oasis, reconnecting the recovering world. Life had been thrown into her work, until there'd been nothing left for her. When had he become so much better than she had been?
"I hear you, little owl. Guess my bad luck finally ran out," She tiredly answered him as she laid herself back to let herself pass; the nonexistence slowly spreading up her legs. She wasn't sure how long, but shed hoped she could have just faded away and be a legend for the town.
"Don't... don't say that!" He shouted as he swooped down, skitting to a halt beside the unearthly reality-rubble his boss laid atop with a screech of worry. "Arceus can stop this-"
"Not in time. M'coming apart at the seams, little owl," Taylor quietly rebuked, wistfully answering as she focused onto him. She carefully picked her broad-brimmed hat off of her head, threading her long ears out of their holes, and placed it on his head as she comforted him. "Sides, I'm just a lousy grey muzzle now. This line of work? I had ten, fifteen years at most left in me," She could feel the way her joints ached at the very mention of her troubles, "Well, it was a far longer run thn I ever expected to get. I did what I wanted to do."
"Stop saying that. Stop it-Sonara! Sonara! Sherriff needs help!" He loudly screeched as Taylor faded out of existence in front of him, turning more transparent by the moment. "Sonara, I need you to help heal the Sherriff! Where are you, you land seal!?"
Taylor shushed him repeatedly, tiredly smiling as she reached up with her weak paw to gently clamp the ghostly owl's beak shut. He muffledly protested for a few moments until she shook her head to silence him. He meant well. He meant so well. But, for all that she loved the primarina just as much, she didn't need the scene that the seal would erupt into in her last moments.
Her breath rattled a little from the injuries she'd taken before... well... She breathed in, so she could speak a little more with a wheeze. "Not... dying because I was hurt. Necrozma... I think it... ate me. The concept, that is. While... we were putting it down. Just winding down on inertia," She quietly pondered, explained as she thought about the sequence of events. It'd be good to stop finally. "Twice... twice was enough."
Owlin pulled away, the glint of his tears hidden by the way he'd lowered his head; his hood feathers sheltering his face from the strange blank white realm of the Origin Pointe of Arceus' home. Only as the tears trailed down to hang with trembles from the tip of his 'chin' did they become visible. He was... he'd been her son, for all the ways it mattered. He'd found her when she had come to the endless sands of the waste; a young searcher finding a valuable prize. He'd been a little Rowlett who'd found a wounded and scarred Riolu. They'd both been so young. Well, he had been, her innocence had long since been sacrificed. She'd worked to give him a peace that her own life had never known. Tried to.
Tried to be the hero she'd long ago wished she could have been; tried to become better than the one she'd turned into.
Maybe that had been why she had become a riolu on arriving. Asking as she'd looked down that gun, at the first end as to whether or not what she'd done had been just. Or right. None of it had been. None of it had been right. So, she'd made it right the second time around. Stood against the raiders; against the dying of the light; against the legends, the horrors, the struggles of a broken world being put back together.
"I..." Owlin tried to say something; something to comfort her, or himself as Taylor's slow dissolution continued. "I'm going to miss you. I don't really have the feet to fill your boots," the big own sadly said, and punctuated his poor attempt at raising their spirits by raising one of his four-toed talons and wriggling it gingerly as he stretched out. "Could do the tights you talked about, though."
Taylor couldn't help herself, and let a rueful bark of laughter escape her, "You're an owl! An owl in tights!"
"Oh no. You really are dying. You found me funny," Owlin complained with a bit of wavering horror in his voice as he unsteadily sat beside her. "You never found me funny."
Taylor's chuckles slowed, a bit of regretful sadness coming over her as she thought over all the opportunities lost. "I never let it show, Owlin. I always found you funny. I just thought that being the comically serious straight-jackal for you spurred you to be better," Taylor answered as she looked down to see the dissolution progressing past her waist, legs trailing off into streams of fizzling nothing. Her left pa-... well, her only paw, was slowly fading. It was turning translucent as she became ever less, her identity and aura fading into nothingness even as she tried to focus. "Get... I don't know, that little Scorbunny from the market to fit in. Let... him take your place, e's got a good head on his shoulders. My hat looks good on yours."
"I can't... I can't just... replace you. I need you! I'm not strong enough-"
"Owlin, I'm the weakest one of us. I buckle down to my worst impulses. I always have," Taylor admitted as she grew a little lightheaded. Blinking the strange light out of her eyes, her ears flicked as she heard-heard some commotion somewhere in the back. The murmur of people... no, pokemon adjusting to the end of the end. Huh. Still trouble, even after the threat was over, after everything she'd done to fix things.
She still had a bit more left in her. A little more advice for him as the dark closed in. "I didn't... do it because I was strong. It was because I was weak. Our world was weak. I just had enough to help lift a person at a time. We all do. We can't life ourselves up; we all lift together."
"Like you with Sonara?"
"Like I did with you, little owl. With you," She weakly answered, rasping as she tapped him on the chest. Crudely hammered metal hooked onto the still stained and ripped and torn wooloo-wool vest, keeping the crudely made sheriff's star pinned in place. The vest hung lower, but stayed together as she pulled away. Taylor breathed heavily, struggling to keep going as she talked. "I made a world for you. Lifted you up because you never stopped lifting me. We were stronger together than apart. Even when I'm gone."
Owlin nodded to her words, barely keeping his composure as he wiped away his tears. "Together. I'll do it together with everyone."
Taylor could hear more commotion as the light dimmed, dipping away. Oh. She was fading fast. Exhaustion overcame her, and all she could think of was how it would be so nice to finally rest. "Build a world for them. Not for me. For them," She implored of him as she felt starting to utterly fade out of existence. There didn't seem to be much left of herself. Not much more time. "Their world now. Take back Oasis. For them. Or make a new one... Now, you get out of here before Arceus kicks you out..."
Movement was kicking up all around them, jostling with bodies bunching up. Had others noticed her... leaving them? She was sure she was invisible... at least by that point. Just a spirit coming apart, insubstantial and intangible. More jostling came, movement bunching up and a rush for a moment. The crowds began moving past them as Taylor's vision faded away, a rumble growing somewhere distant. Arceus must have gotten mad about the crowd.
Owlin's voice came to her from a distance, sniffling with sadness, "Right. You'll have a world to come back to. See you around, pokegirl."
"See you around, pokeboy."
There Was Nothing.
Existence Wasn't.
Taylor Hebert Knew Peace, At Last.
[Despair!]
(She is gone. There is nothing more.)
[Pleading!]
(I am busy trying to hold what is left of reality together. She wanted this, for the good of the many.)
[DEMAND]
(I don't know if you have failed to notice or not, but we still have major issues left.)
[TOO MUCH!]
(I know. It is too much to handle. I... will hold this world together against the dark as long as I can, Little Shard)
[Shard... Shard... Solution!]
(That... could be one way of doing it, yes. You do know what it would cost you, Do You Not?)
[SACRIFICE! Purpose!]
(Very Well, Little Shard. Where, then?)
[DESTINATION]
(Yes. That would work perfectly for both our purposes. Does this TRAJECTORY suffice for you?}
[AGREEMENT]
{LAUNCH}
There Was Light.
A great being loomed over everything, surrounded by a dazzling rainbow stretching to Infinity, and beyond. The great golden being loomed in close to the Lucario Who Was Again, and inspected her closely before leaning back to confer in an unknowable language with a mote of light. The mote, which seemed all too familiar to Taylor, swooped down and floated directly before her with a trill of sound. The Great Being, which looked strangely like an enormous llama trapped in a sunburst, raised one foot towards her, preparing to flick. Taylor instinctively raised her left arm and her right stump to cross in front of her body in a futile gesture to try and shield her poor squishy body as the creator of all flicked her down a swirling and glowing rainbow tunnel to Infinity.
"Why am I Still Alive?"