Ending Theme 2 / Dramaturgy / Eve

Back in the church, tension bubbled and overflowed from a cauldron below the cross.

With Jade and Mei's belongings remaining where they were, alongside Mei's Mimikyu, it was hard to believe that two grown girls could disappear without anyone able to do anything about it. How could that ever be possible anyway? It wasn't like the church was haunted—nothing supernatural seemed to occur at all, save for the occasional howling winds that sounded like ghouls.

"How did they disappear? Aren't all of you watching out for each other?" Zayn's brows knitted as he crossed his arms.

"They sank into their shadows and just disappeared before we can do anything!" Nick shrugged, then turned to Sage. "You did something to them!"

"What? I was in the gym," Sage muttered.

"That's an alibi you constructed so no one can suspect you! Where did you put them?" Nick snapped his fingers and rolled up his sleeves.

The world blurred around them both, as if placed in a blender, the colours swirling about with unrivalled vehemence. The flickering candlelights morphed into will-o-wisps. Chains of ice were discharged across the gospel side, only to be sliced by serrated shadows.

Sage winced as an ice crystal grazed his skin, feeling the extreme coolness from it. Nick, prowling about on the other side, was struck down by a dozen silhouettes. He leapt and shot icicles out of his untrimmed nails, each one scraping his foe. The favour was quickly reciprocated with a shadow chain.

"It's not me!" Sage tossed caliginous daggers from his feral brown eyes, feeling the shadows rubbing his irises as they escaped from the scar on his arm. "Why would I do something like that anyway?"

"Because you're an egoistic, sadistic prick!" Nick flung a circle of ice shards at the daggers, the collision nullifying the powers of these attacks as they dissipated.

Sage's head throbbed as he released a barrage of shadow balls. Yells rang through the area.

"You're remembering even more, Sage. Don't fight the pain, or you'll feel much worse."

Sage obeyed Shrike while dodging an ice blade, relaxing his muscles.

"You're right. But you can't stop me!" Sage charged at Nick with shadows rising from his eyes, his nails caked with a mysterious dark energy. He lunged. "I don't care if you're part of the Martial Arts Club! No one is better at me when it comes to mental, psychological battles!"

"Oh yeah?" Nick shoved Sage with a palm full of frost spikes.

"Yvette's the mastermind. She must have done it!" Sage proceeded to scream. Air rushed out of his lungs at the speed of light. The world spun ferociously around them.

His shadows exploded once more, almost like in the gym.

"Shrike, you—" Sage smacked his chest.

Nick had not attacked at all. Strange.

"You won, Sage, as expected."

Long claws as dark as midnight pierced through Nick's being. He hollered.

"N-No."

"Embrace the monster within. That's the true you."

"No! Why? Stop this, Shrike!" Sage clutched his head, kneeling onto the ground as tears of shadow trickled down his cheeks.

"Don't you know? Sages are both healers and killers. Just search it up, and you'll see that I'm right." Shrike manifested before his eyes, sorrows compounded in his guffaws. No, not sorrows, but an indecipherable emotion that struck an immense chord with Sage's heartstrings. "I'm just another part of you..."

"Sage Shrike..." A malicious grin formed on his lips, tugged heavily like one would, a corpse across a rough terrain. "That's right. You're the me in the past."

The world halted. Memories flowed into him, from the very beginning. Sage felt power surging in his veins.

Yes. This is it. Now, I'll just have to go on...

Nick floated in midair, smacking the frozen shadow claws into bits as he did, and glared at Sage. "Ha! With my newfound ability to levitate, you can't defeat me so easily now!"

We all have our abilities accompanying our Singularities, dimwit. Just that not many know this. Sage smirked.

"Stop this now." Titan unleashed blue fire from his hands, creating a whip that narrowly cut both Nick and Sage. Upon earning as much surprise from the others as Nick, in the form of speechless gaps, he muttered, "Flames of Cerberus isn't just about Houndoom heads."

Seeing as he was distracted, Nick let loose a volley of ice crystals at Sage, only to be bitten off by a Houndoom conjured with ink.

"Tch." Nick huffed at Titan.

"I said to stop." Titan frowned. "The all of you stay here, and stop whining. Sage, come with me."

Titan dragged him out of the church, ignoring Nick's bellows, till they reached a grey wall. Sage's eyes gleamed at the Healer Killer app. Titan noticed the oddity and said, "Look at this."

"A world map and a timer?" Sage blinked, pushing his memories away. He needed them to be gone for now. The past could come later; the present was more important.

"Counting down till a crime-free utopia," Titan added. "That's probably Yvette's goal."

"Doesn't her name remind you of... Yveltal?" Sage raised his head a little.

You got this. Expose her. Expose the cult, fragment by fragment.

Watching Titan nod with deliberation, Sage said, "Wait. According to my aura, I'm supposed to be related to Yveltal."

"There is an order to everything in the world. That's something my father usually tells me too, so in that sense, I'm related to Zygarde, the overseer of the ecosystem."

"Then the reason why Mei is used as a sacrifice..."

"... is because she's related to Xerneas, to Life?"

"Everything about the roles makes sense now. But, what did you do that night?" Sage cracked his neck. This was the moment he would fact-check his past, to see if it had been altered by Yvette. Hopefully, it was intact and true to his original experience. After all, how could he trust so quickly the memories that suddenly came to?

"I think I should be honest with you. I remembered this when we just entered the church. I was about to betray the Exitium Cult, but Yvette stopped me from leaving and telling the police about the cult. I lost the battle, and she had Tarocchi's Malamar use Destiny Bond on me and my Houndoom. That's why my eye changes colours."

"Oh." It was just as Sage remembered. She can't clear memories with her Singularity then... Wonder if Titan caught on.

"Cruel, isn't it?" Titan sighed. "We don't have much time. About a day and a half till the end of the world begins."

"Damn it, just where did Jade and Mei get taken to?"

「」

Mei held onto Jade's hands as they wandered off in the silent darkness. A huge timer hovering in the air grabbed their attention. It was counting down, the words "To a crime-free utopia" blinking below it giving off an entirely supernatural, ominous vibe.

"Use your Healer Card to restore the light here." Mei read the words off her phone and did as she was told. She just wanted to be out of this hellish place. They glanced at their brightening surroundings.

We're standing on a huge world map? Jade's eyes dilated.

"Choose any region." Jade read the words as she calmed herself down and wiped the sweat off her forehead. Turning to a whimpering Mei, she mumbled, "This place is giving me the creeps. Maybe we're going to be teleported to that region?"

"Which one should we go to? Should look up Yvette's history in Unova?" Mei wheezed.

Jade nodded and patted her head. Fingers interlocked, they selected the Unova region and smiled.

Instead, a glass blade materialised in between their fingers.

"Point at Unova." Jade did so as she mumbled the words. Mei glanced at her friend, seeing the dullness in her eyes.

She's controlled. Mei silenced the thought almost immediately.

Blood dripped from the tip of the blade and onto Unova.

"This is freaky!" Jade nearly dropped the blade.

Words faded in on the phone's screen: Do you know that Yveltal gave me the powers to create this game? We made a pact, that I could have my crime-free utopia, and Yveltal can obtain all the life energy of the worthless criminals, the liars and those harbouring ill intent. Any questions?

"Yvette, don't you know that every human has lied at least once? You're removing the human race from the world!" Mei squeezed Jade's hand.

"If that's so, it's because every human has done something that's not right! What will you do when someone wants to kill you?" Yvette's voice seemed to surround them like a fence.

"Run away," Jade answered, unfazed.

"As if that's realistic. You can't run away forever." Yvette emerged before them, out of thin air, snatched the glass blade and pointed it at all the other regions once, except Kalos. "Well?"

"You should just leave the innocent people alone and kill the criminals if you want a crime-free utopia," Mei said.

"That's what I'm doing. It's just that I have yet to find any innocents. If it pleases you, I could make criminals and those to-be criminals gone. Better?" Yvette lowered her head. "So, back to my question. If someone threatens you, would you be so kind as to not to do anything about it? Wouldn't you want to do something... like kill zie to protect yourself? It's immoral, but it's necessary if you want to survive."

"What're you getting at?" Jade raised a brow.

"Look at it another way. Predators like Araquanid don't care about the small Pokémon that serve as food. It's all for survival."

"That's different." Mei shook her head.

"Different? You do anything you can to survive, no? You have to do it even if it's immoral, no? Or perhaps you have such a good heart, you'd rather die than go against your conscience."

"Then... do you have a heart?" Mei clenched her fists.

"Yes. It's just that I use it less nowadays." Yvette pointed the blade at Kalos. A drop of blood fell. "I truly have a heart. I used it to mock the lack of representation of minorities in the fantasy genre as I create this fantasy hell you're living in. Like that Ciara, the black sheep among the white flock."

Blood splattered over Kalos, as with the rest of the world.

The only other thing sharper than the expanding pin-drop silence drifted in the space: gazes.