Grass Continent ~ Amp Plains

[Flyg0n]

Koa's determined grin flashed, then faded. Her words reminded him of the uncomfortable truth that had been hanging over his head for some days now. The thunder rumbled, filling the silence between them, and Koa distracted his gaze with the light show overhead.

He was worried. Brisa seemed just a little off somehow. And this might be one of his last chances to talk to her before...
"How uh..." the words felt dry on his tongue. "How are you feeling about... Leaving soon." The question felt halfway to a statement. He could guess an answer already, that like most of the team, she could hardly be excited about it.

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

"Betcha can fuckin' guess how I feel, kid," she replied, with a sardonic jauntiness. "Give up all the healthy relationships I've ever had an' a shinin' career doin' what I love, t'go back to livin' on my own workin' a thankless job fer people what distrust me on sight? Don't take much genius to figure that one."

Brisa's sigh had a hard, growling edge to it. "Like I said. Every hour counts. But it's hard t'spend any time with the folks I love without feelin' like I gotta be in the trainin' grounds instead. An' believe me, the Colo secretary is givin' me funny looks again with how much time I'm bookin' up. Gotta be my best, like fuckin' always."

 

[Flyg0n]

Koa's fur bristled and he felt a growl rumble deep in his chest. He dugs his paws into the ashen ground. It wasn't fair. Brisa, of all the mons deserved to stay here, where she could be happy and appreciated. Not return to a wretched world where she was alone.

"It sucks." The venom in his tone shocked him, yet... felt good too. He was angry. Angry on her behalf, and he could only imagine she felt angrier than he did. A few sparks crackled across his fur. "I want you to stay."

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Brisa looked at Koa with mixed feelings. He had the look of someone who was about to go petition gods on her behalf. Kinda felt good to have a friend so firmly in her corner like that.

"I 'ppreciate that, Koa. Nothin' much t'be done about it, though."

Damn, but the stormclouds were a good fit for the emotional mood, as it turned out.

 

[Flyg0n]

For a moment, Koa felt briefly like howling in frustration. There really was nothing to be done about it, but it was still terrible. Brisa was still leaving. "I actually asked you to come for another reason," he began. A few more sparks gathered in his fur, flitting eagerly around him. The storm clouds overhead rumbled and flashed.

"You don't have to be okay with it. You're allowed to be angry."

He hated that most of all, having to suck things up, to put on a brave face and be okay with something. It was all well and good sometimes but it wasn't always that easy. Just thinking about it made his fur tingle. He was glad he'd come here, and not the training rooms or anywhere else. Here was empty, barren, and offered privacy and solitude. No one need see what they were going to do, or what he said.

"I mean I know you don't have a choice and you want to be responsible but-" Brisa was leaving Starr, Astrid, and everything she'd gained here. Thunder crashed overhead. Eyes blazing, Koa threw back his head and let out a feral cry halfway between a howl and a roar. His fur lit up, and electricity wreathed him briefly, the air around him and Brisa tingling. He let loose a bolt of lightning at a nearby blackened scrub brush, obliterating it. "To hell with being okay with stuff!" He shot Brisa a grin, though his eyes smoldered with pent up frustration. "To hell with putting on a brave face! Let's just be angry."

With a howl, he sprang forward, drawing more electricity into his body. It exploded outwards, destroying another bit of scrub brush, and he laughed a little, bitterly. That'd felt good. "Come on! We can't hurt anything out here!"

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Just be . . . angry? Well, she already had anger enough, and it wasn't like it would help... And yet.

"Y'know what?" said Brisa, a grin inching onto her face, "fuck it, why not?"

She drew a sharp breath, and when thunder next struck, she threw her head back as Koa had done, and made that same sound – a roar and a howl – daring the heavens to strike her as they may. She'd tough out anything, goddamnit. She'd do her duty, but by skyfire, she'd protest the cruelties of fate before the end.

Her mane blazed as mixed energies catalysed a lightning bolt, not from heaven to earth, but from Brisa Escarpa to all Creation, in a thunderclap that swept the goddamn plains.

 

[Flyg0n]

Koa's fur and body crackled with energy in a way unlike anything he'd ever felt before. Every muscle in his body felt alive, ringing with power and energy. The deafening thunderclap rang him to his bones, almost echoing through him. He could hear her anger, he protest, in that feral cry. Her anger resonated within him. Why. Why him, why Brisa, why all this pain and suffering? To those who deserved it least. He answered with another of his own, a long, drawn out, wild howl. Strangled emotions, knotted in his chest, burst out. Torment, frustration, bitterness.

Son of a monster, always fighting to prove himself.
Always needing to be better, to do better.
Struggling endlessly to make up for the things his father had done.

Losing one of the best friends he'd ever made.

As his howl faded, the pain struck him, sharp and quick, like lightning. Electricity poured from him, power that could hurt a regular pokemon, but meant nothing to Brisa.

"I don't want to forget!" He burst out, his voice rolling across the empty plains, crackling with the power of blacklight. A shadowy shape flickered to existence next to him, a near exact copy of him, except dripping in shadows and bound in red chains. He ignored it and began firing off rapid lightning bolts, leaving craters in the ashen ground. Words tumbled from his mouth, things stewing inside him he'd tucked so deep they felt as alien as the landscape around him. "I don't want to go back to the person I was before. I don't want to forget everything I learned here. I don't want you to have to go back. I don't want-"

"I don't want to leave you!" he screamed out. Panting slightly, he fell silent. A dull ache filled his chest, but he felt strangely... free. For the first time, he noticed the chains around his Shadow had faded.

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Despite her breath catching, and her golden bands gleaming softly in the gloom in anticipation of making a connection, of soothing Koa, Brisa let it happen, let her friend have this moment of catharsis. His Shadow changed, much as hers had, its chains dissipating rather than fragmenting. She heard Koa's confession to the skies – let things be other than they are.

"Hey," she growled, softly, her eyes prickling a little, "same here, partner."

She put a paw out to Koa's shoulder and her head across the other, and hugged him as she would a well-loved brother.

 

[Flyg0n]

Koa buried his face into her mane, taking comfort in the gesture before letting out a long, weighty sigh. The last remnants of his anger faded, like ash blown by the wind, and he drew back for a moment, giving her a tired smile. A pain still remained, but this pain felt manageable. Liveable.

Words drifted through his mind, things he wanted to tell her -
I'll miss you.
You're my best friend.
Even when I forget you, you'll always be important to me.

Thank you.

He shifted, leaning forward, then let his forehead rest against her own. Perhaps in this moment, there was no need for words. The wind and storm could speak for them instead.

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Brisa remained with Koa a little while longer. Not much passed in the way of conversation. They shared a long moment in the storm, allowing themselves respite from their daily duties to grieve their imminent parting. It helped. Or at least, Brisa felt that it did. Either way, they deserved it.

Eventually, the storm shifted, and Brisa nodded farewell to her friend and student. Koa would return home. She would venture further on across the plains, seeking a demigod. Zeraora of Cibus, the only child of Cibus to wield Blacklight.

And yet, the most important meeting with an electric 'mon that day had already come and gone.

"Catch ya later, kid."

<><><><><>​

 

[Namohysip]

Thunder boomed distantly in the far reaches of the Thunder Plains as the denizen that perhaps gave the storm life made her usual rounds, invisible except to the currents that flowed through the soil.

Brisa would have the distinct feeling that she was being watched. Lightning strikes crackled distantly, and sometimes much closer than expected. It wasn't random. It felt like someone was controlling it, walking through the storm as if they had command over the very realm.

"You're related to that other one, aren't you?"

The voice boomed and snapped. Filled with the corruption that Brisa knew all too well. But there was something different about it. Controlled, measured. She was using it intentionally, with purpose.

"The one they called Luz. She came from your memories. I can feel it."

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Luz' description of Zeraora had been accurate, but it hadn't explained everything that Brisa now felt about her. There was power, judgement, independence in that voice. There must be a spartan personality beneath that reverberation, to control the Blacklight while remaining lucid. Brisa had the oddest feeling that Sierra would approve.

"This is true," called Brisa, changing from a lope to more of a prowl, ears flicking up, luxray vision strobing her surroundings. "I am Brisa Escarpa, an outworlder, and the shade called Luz was created from my history."

At another time, Brisa might have expected combat, but not now. She did not ignite her plasma. If her resolve was being tested, she'd show resolve.

Keep a cool head, ranger.

 

[Namohysip]

"I see."

No matter how Brisa looked, she couldn't see this demigod of thunder. When she wanted to be seen, she would be.

"And what brought you here to visit after the story that one told you?"

Another blast of lightning struck nearby, splitting an innocent boulder into fragmented, large pieces.

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Huh. A random strike, or a show of force? Well, Brisa had fought gods before. She'd keep her shit together.

"I want to better understand what is is to be a zeraora, and to better understand myself," answered Brisa. "The Blacklight has shown me that there's still a call inside me that draws me to be a peacekeeper, a guardian."

With this said, she inhaled, and in a swirl of silver plasma, she once again rose to stand on two limbs. A zeraora, yet not quite one. She knew what to say, and would have the courage not to falter in saying it. She'd been through enough already.

"I'm a fighter born," Brisa declared. "I've spent my life fightin' to protect others. We may not be children of the same world, but if your destiny is what that call is drawin' me towards, I'd care to know what that really means. I've come to see fer myself what kind of person dedicates themself to that."

 

[Namohysip]

"What kind of person..."

The clouds swirled again, rainless despite all the thunder, dust in the fields, like water dare not tread where it would be vaporized in an instant. A dry lightning, the sort that would cause fires, had there been anything left in this blackened field to burn.

"Then you want to talk to me. All right."

The wind picked up. It felt like a Dungeon's shifting distortions, like she had harnessed that very power for herself, though the Dungeon of Amp Plains had faded.

A spark of electricity rose from the ground and descended from the sky all at once, accented by white and black streaks of energy. Shining eyes even brighter than the flash pierced through Brisa, and then she was there, standing where the bolt had been.

Her fur had changed. She was tinged at the edges with those Blacklight colors. But in her eyes was a controlled calm that meant she had completely harnessed that volatile power. Part of her left arm was devoid of all color, instead a jagged swirl of black and white that stopped near her elbow.

"Then here I am," she said as one last boom of thunder echoed distantly.

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Brisa bowed her head a moment. Cibus was not ruled by its Legends, but respect wouldn't go amiss. Given Zeraora's apparent personality, perhaps brevity would also be best. She had that same terseness common in the Escarpa. Like Ma.

"No other 'mon of Cibus, not even a Legend, has touched the Blacklight without losin' their mind," said Brisa, eyeing the corrupted fist at Zeraora's side. "How did you manage it?"

 

[Namohysip]

Zeraora looked at the one paw that had lost its color, flexing it. Blacklight swirled around it in two perfect orbital circles intersecting one another in a curved X, and then disappeared back into her claws.

"Defiance, and then calm," she said. "I refused to let it control me and manipulate my mind. I refused to succumb to some primal force. Not on its terms. Then, I observed it. Watched how it operated. Made it my own." She studied Brisa. "Not unlike what I heard your team did. Or, some of them. Others, I suspect your patron eased their burdens forcibly, without them realizing."

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Diyem, sapping corruption from the more psychologically vulnerable member of the party? Brisa nodded, and gave a tiny, dry huff of amusement. "I suspect you're right. There's a disparity between our clearer-headed fighters and the more troubled, yet they somehow get by."

Zeraora truly was fully lucid. Astonishing. Some part of Brisa had feared that she'd have to fight her on sight, but no. Not yet, anyway.

"Defiance and calm," echoed Brisa. "Is there scarce anythin' dark in yer heart fer the Blacklight to exploit, or are y'just stronger of will than even the Creation Dragons?"

 

[Namohysip]

Zeraora chuckled at that. "Maybe I am," she said, looking skyward. "No. That isn't it. I was lucky to only take a small, small dose of Blacklight power to control. The Creations were flooded with it, completely overwhelmed and subjugated. I only took a touch and absorbed it. And from it, I became more powerful, more resistant."

And once again, she studied Brisa. "If you want to know more about me, then perhaps that is the start. I was lucky, but it was a combination of luck and skill that I have this power. I don't think I'll ever need to part from it."

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

An explanation so simple, Brisa had overlooked it. Not so great a mystery after all.

"I hope that's true," she said, honestly. "As dangerous as the Blacklight is, it's all that's preserved this world of late."

Luck and skill, huh?

"How did you come by yer ascension, Zeraora?" asked Brisa. "And... Why?"