Insert Song / DOMINATION / DUSTCELL

Chapter warning | May cause some discomfort |

Is it likely that I have lost my sense of self to the shadows? I can't seem to control anything.   

Sage's thoughts were soon pierced by a rapier of words whose ink spilled into the crevices of his mind and stayed there, staining and tainting that magnum opus that took years to create. There was a homely feeling, a different warmth, monochrome unlike the blazing yellow he always knew.

Sage Shrike, welcome back to Healer Killer.

There, there. The shadows said it. Just like that, they revealed the many layers of the world that once was.

Sage let loose a rueful smile. So the past has successfully invaded the present.

And the future, the shadows added.

In the end, Sage Shrike wielded history and stabbed future's back. Nothing could be more delightful.

His grin burst into a cackle. Then silence, drawn-out as if to create some sort of suspense that wasn't there previously.

He frowned and spoke. "You all don't seem excited."

"Sh-Should we be?" Zayn took a step forward. "What's with you? What's going on?"

He touched Sage's shoulder, but the latter pushed him away with a glare.

"Moral conscience? Repentance? How dull," Sage said. "No one can stop me now. Humanity and the world will only end by falling deeper. The only way to change things is shadowy perfection."

"No..." Zayn's mouth grew dry. This wasn't supposed to happen. Everything was supposed to be well now, so why? Why didn't the story end there and then, with a happy ending? Or was this retribution for all the twist endings, all the angst, all the tears, all the pain and all the fears he crafted throughout the years, pinned down onto pages so forcefully? It couldn't have been. This was reality, not fiction. And Zayn never messed with metafiction either.

His eyes arced and reached Blade's. If it was like this, then surely, the next best option was a childhood friend.

Blade grunted as he approached his companion with a cautious glint in his eyes.

"You couldn't have returned." Blade raised his arms, steeling himself. "Why can't you leave us alone? Sage was happy and now—"

"Happy?" Sage sighed dramatically. "He never was. He always harboured a deep hatred for the world, for all things dead and alive."

"Enough!" Blade hardened his gaze. If this couldn't work, then action will be communication.

He released a pulsating orb of violet light, only to see it vacuumed by Sage's scar.

"Shadow Ball? Really?" Sage shook his head tsk-ed. "I thought you were smarter than this."

Blade roared and jabbed him in the gut. Sage receded his steps and presented a poker face.

"What? Everyone's merely watching?" He shaped the shadows into mirror images of the people and Pokémon around him. "Even Nick isn't fighting?" Sage snapped his fingers. "I forgot... My control must have slipped into your shadows."

The moment Sage unlocked his control over them, they hissed and sent barrages of their Singularities toward him. A pity their powers had shadows and could easily be deflected.

He glanced at his Pokémon. Shrike just spectated, Blade was huffing after failing to dodge the Ice Crystal Sage redirected toward him. Others managed to sidestep and remain somewhat unscathed.

"Healer Killer was always fitting. You should have gotten all the hints you needed, to fear me, no matter what my appearance may be." Sage raised a hand and the shadow clones of all his friends charged forth.

"What?" Zayn blinked. Clearly, the concept was Yvette's. That was established some time ago. Unless...

He gritted his teeth and smacked his clone with his hair. Yet his light failed to penetrate such ill darkness. Beside him, Mei tried to stick the clones to the ground and Jade tried to heal everyone's injuries, but those were exercises in futility. Nick's frustrations froze him, Emo-Senpai forgot all light-hearted humour, Ciara failed to sieve a lie out of Sage's speech and frowned, Yvette knelt under her clone's forceful grasp and slap. Oh, and Titan... This one was different, going to great lengths playing the hero in an attempt to protect the legendaries with his two Singularities out simultaneously. That would surely tire him out ere long, but he had no other choice. His Stygian Wrath could only add, but there was nothing great, to sum up.

"Every time you use the app, it fuels my desires, my powers. Now that all Healer cards are used up, it is time... to kill. Sages, after all, are the epitome of Healer Killer, encapsulating both sides in one mind and self."He turned to Yvette who gladly donated him a glare. "So we must erase all impurities."

She had no physical strength left, nor was she able to depend on trickery to slither out of her sticky situation. In a twist of fate, the controlled had been the one in full control all along. Imagine the horror and anguish that came along!

While Yvette suffered retribution for her past actions, Yveltal decided to take on an active role, unleashing an Oblivion Wing at Sage. If anything, it was being forgotten that must be the root of all human fears. To be even less than a memory, to be invisible, to have his presence be absent. These drove the fears of failure and tense relationships.

Thus, there was little effect to someone so integrated with the shadows. The shadows were, after all, neglected for too long, in the eyes of many. This surfeit of invisibility became the father of much fast. Like lightning, murky jaws ravened the Destruction Pokémon before anyone could react, too busy subduing their shadow clones to notice too late. A cry exploded into minuscule particles.

"I will return eventually, so don't worry," Yveltal's last words echoed with an overflow of anguish.

Sage could only frown. "In this new world, nothing should be destroyed. Life should be preserved. Bonds should be forged. Order should be contained. It will be the utopia. No violence, no discrimination, no hunger, no hate, no selfishness..."

Zayn slammed his shadow clone into the earth and watched it dissipate. "There is no such thing as perfection. Everything and everyone has flaws."

Sage knelt, the shadows moving in and out of him. He bled shadows. His head hurt. He retched shadows. They were there, and they were everywhere. How could it be? How could he have been just another pawn?

But a new world was constructed. Then, no one would have to be abandoned again. No one would have to suffer. No one would have to fear. No one would have to be no one.

So why was his heart a scarlet hollow? Why the void that leeched on his energy, the veins that sizzled, the eyes that quaked, the hands that seemed more like tools than a part of himself? Was pain the true price of perfection? What drivel was that? Or was it truth?

His mind raced back to the pill, to Sayo, to... salvation. The truth, was it? He just didn't want to admit it. It was improbable. Thus, he decided to toss it aside for the time being.

Meanwhile, his shadows still gushed out and prowled the perimeters of the island. A sense of dread, entangled with much indifference, blossomed within him.

Zayn sucked in a breath and faced Sage once more. "You need to let go."

"What's there to hold onto?" Sage's gaze penetrated him. "This world, that world, all are the same. We humans have tainted the original."

He felt a lump in his throat threatening to explode. No, it was diminishing. The air seemed to strangle him. No, not that either. What was going on? Who was choking him? Whose hand was that, wrapped diligently around his neck, hoping to snap it like a flower stalk?

Strings... no, strands of light expanded from the boy before him, slicing the shadows till they rotted and crumbled from the light, the heat. The golden Floette circled around him and touched his skin. At once his body glowed tremendously, giving him more power over the darkness.

Sage could only watch with bulging eyes, with his hands clasped to his head. What was he refusing to let go?

His head. His mind. His past. His pain. They were a part of him, Assimilated. Stitched together.

Can't abandon...

Or what would be left of him was oblivion...

Forgotten, but not forgiven.

"Forgive?" Sage whispered, eyes attached to the light swallowing his destructive shadows. "It's improbable to forgive myself or the past."

"Sage Shrike! Snap out of it!" A writhing Marshadow tended to by childhood companions glanced at him. What a fleeting voice. The head must hurt that way. Need to stop the pain.

Sage summoned more shadows out of his scar. More and more, more and more... Quantity was everything. Just replenish, stock up, like the sins he so wanted to erase from the earth.

Everything was confusing. No one knew what was going on. All they knew was that the world, in its process of restoration, was in harm's way.

"Sage Shrike," Marshadow's words flowed into his ears. Again, it was as if the two of them were the only ones in this world. Or was it the previous world? He couldn't tell.

Jkuisltlmenowahahahahahahah—

Wasn't this world just another sandbox for the shadows? Wasn't he just another puppet?

Light of Ruin was unleashed again and again. Darkness and light clashed against each other. Sage looked up and mouthed "Aidez-moi."

Two figures were falling from the cracks in the sky. Lysandre burst into flames all of a sudden when a shadow smacked him, leaving Tarocchi Gardner in shock.

She wanted to return. She needed to come to terms with the devil's incarnate she had poorly developed and educated since young. She needed to fix her mistake.

But what if that mistake refused to be corrected?

She touched down on Xerneas's soft fur. Life... It felt good, for the first time.

Then, a shadow twister came her way. Everyone else could only gawk as she exploded into cards from her Major Arcana, majority of them revealing the Fool falling countless times.

Zayn's light began to weaken. Sage's shadows receded a little. Shadows leaked out of his eyes.

In his mind, countless words were strewn over the place. Save no I will wish wash rest me world out—

Incoherence.

The one word summed it all up. This scene, incoherent with understanding, with the world that once was, with the Sage that once was.

"The Exitium Cult is forever." His lips weaved such disgusting phrases he never knew he was capable of saying. It didn't sound like his voice at all, yet he thought he might have said them. His eyes darted across the island, the smiling chaos, the spiteful gazes, the resentful silence, the beautiful destruction...

"The Exitium Cult doesn't exist," Yvette said. "It's disbanded."

"This is reality." Sage shook his head. "This is fabricated. This is fiction."

Sage vomited more shadows. Dusky rings emerged to engulf his body as more Light of Ruin and Strands of Light flooded the area, connecting threads to patch the world up. Sage watched the shadows shield him from the blistering glare that healed the buildings his shadows razed, the seas that were orange now blue. The tarot cards stopped falling.

In the end, there had to be some kind of an end.

You could do it, you know, he thought to himself. You know the truth. The reason why humans and Pokémon (all life) suffer is because of 'existence'. Sufferance will be gone when nothing exists. Wasn't that the deal we made years ago?

Wasn't that what we promised on? To kill this world and be the god of a new one, to improve that new one and oversee it to be free from all sins?

Wasn't that what we promised on? Or did you decide to break it?

Sage closed his eyes. If he chose to be blind, then he would be blissfully ignorant. Then, he would feel nothing.

"Too controlling, too overwhelming," he muttered.

But we're right. Sage Shrike, all you have to do is to ensure the extinction of Life and eradicate Order that might come between you and the Life you are about to cut.

Life and Order. Xerneas and Zygarde. Sage's lips curled as he opened his eyes and shut them almost immediately. He tossed and turned on the dull, bloodied earth swarming with fallen shadows. Or Mei and Titan? But I can't kill or I'll be falling right into the shadows' trap. But there is no trap; I am the trap. No, I am the bait, the puppet, the... human. Am I still human or must I be humane first? Then what am I? Nothing more than a monster. A monster is like a Pokémon though why can't you be one anyway you suck and vacuum the world of sins you lost count of everything you have done the bonds you have forged like signatures are fake brittle like bones of steel to be cut by diamond shadows wait what is going on I can't do this anymore please stop this someone please save me there is no salvation for you for me for us anymore or is there sage couldnt understand what was going on anymore it was too much for him to handle but why did sayo entrust such a truth to him only so he has to struggle like this he realised its because man is not one but truly two which is why hes a hypocrite are you a hypocrite too humans are twofaced because they are multifacetious or multitudes no punctuation eternal endlessness stop what no thing please kill metheworldispainfullishhumanfutiletmegonevermore

His phone's screen flickered.

Name「Sage Shrike」
Username「Sanguine Shitshit」
Status「Dominated」
Aura「Darkest」
『Crimson Oblivion』
"Every beginning has its end
just as every end has its beginning."

Sparks covered the device and a wave shadows crashed into it.

「Crimson Oblivion has been activated.」

Sage pried his eyes open, his left eye now crimson.

His right eye...

"Kekeke..."

... was empty. Those rings of shadows dissolved and slithered into that eye-shaped compartment, constantly overflowing right after, a cursed fountain.

His head jerked toward Mei first. Screaming, her goo-tears cascaded down her cheeks as she hugged Xerneas and shook her head constantly. She'd eye the others and saw them frozen, shadow vines locking their movements. Xerneas frowned and stomped the shadows, but what was a Fairy to do in the face of immense Darkness? Zygarde gravitated towards them against zir own will.

Sage cackled and ambled toward them. Were the shadows controlling him or was he controlling them he couldn't tell anymore he knew only it hurt to breathe as if he was underwater and sinking in an abyss of his own creation but it was truly so he wasn't sinking but drowning and because he was a liar he just had to tell himself otherwise because it must be the wisest decision ever, no?

He retrieved the Flame Boomerang from Titan with the help of the shadows and watched the flames consume him. No matter, soon the world will forget all sorts of fire, especially hellfire.

Karma was a boomerang.

He lost it.

No, he lost.

He lost when Marshadow emerged out of the shadows, freezing him with one gentle head pat and a whisper: "Stop acting freely as you wish. Your impulses are over."

"I was the one who created you, Marsh." Sage smacked zir away but zie held onto his arm. "Let go."

"It is you who should let go."

Shadow punches and kicks fell onto Sage, and each time they collided with his shadows he grew more lethargic. Hisses echoed throughout the chambers of his mind as he ran, and ran, and ran, his hand on his heart, a burst of sweat, a swivel of head, a dance with darkness, a pivot of heel, stepping in line... with the dark. What did those words, those actions mean anyway? Why did Marshadow have to interfere?

"You must be confused," zie said as he landed another punch. In total, there were 49 blows. They were fast, furious, and fearsome. "I am the master of the Umbrage Zone, and the shadows."

"No, it's—"

"Get out of Sage Shrike," Marshadow shouted, then turned to Blade and Shrike. "We have to restrain him."

The Gallade and the Gengar stepped forward and pinned the boy down. Blade's heart crumpled as he saw that right eye full of shadows. This wasn't his friend at all.

"Follow the order."

"I am the order," Marshadow said. "I should have kept you in check that day. If only—"

"If only I was never born?" Sage smirked, and craned his neck. "Then kill me. Kill this body and I promise to really let go."

"The darkness should never rise to power. We balance the light."

A seven-bladed shadow shuriken formed between zir fingertips and zie stabbed it into Sage's heart. An eldritch screech coiled around the universe and tightened, forcing every brick, every tree, every ear to listen to its discordance, a scream forced wide open.

"Don't underestimate me."

The scream never stopped. It seemed eternal. The Flame Boomerang fell out of Sage's grasp and streaks of fire branched out.

"Stop this crap, dammit!" Titan raised a fist and all the flames were sucked into it. His veins tinged and green turned orange turned blue. The shadow shackles fell off him. The same couldn't be said of the rest, though. He walked with a hardened gaze toward the source of commotion.

"It's dangerous. Don't come any closer."

"Is Soul-Stealing 7-Star Strike that dangerous?" Titan cocked his head sideways. "Or is his struggle far worse?"

They both turned to Sage whose hair faded to brown, left eye regaining a similar shade. But the right eye remained tainted with swirling shadows.

"AideZ-m0i..."

It was illogical. How corrupted was a human to be for shadows to control him? Sage was once forsaken and forgotten by the world. That was his first memory ever.

The memory of oblivion.

History wasn't quite a blade to stab future's back; history was an aegis, a wall of impossible communication between present and future. The past was always the in-between that disrupted the flow of life for him. Which was why...

「Stygian Wrath was successfully activated.」

"Please let this work."

Titan's vision blurred. Why did he care anyway? He wasn't Zygarde's chosen one. He was just a side character who happened to survive till now. He wasn't that close to Sage anyway.

His surroundings were altered, changed into a misty terrain.

"Why don't we talk about who to kill first?" The question from back then resurfaced in his mind. Why was he so interested in killing in order to survive?

Because, back then, Titan never knew the people around him were hurting, especially Sage. Titan never thought healing as an option. But wasn't it the right thing to do? After all, the app's name did prioritise the role of Healer, even if it was at the expense of killing a 'perfect prey'.

He was in the dark. In front of him, shadows slithered across a grey wall. He figured Sage must be behind it. Inhaling sharply, Titan stepped forward and pressed his hand against the wall. It was colder than Nick's Ice Crystal. But he refused to lift his hand away. What was iciness to heat, after all?

His palm turned into a fist to knock on the wall. He was met with silence.

No, a muffled response.

He released Ink of Cerberus, the three Houndoom heads slowly growing a shared body.

Somehow, just somehow, Titan felt he was the one to pull Sage out of his struggle.

With the keen hearing of his the Houndoom transferred to him, those words soon had a form.

kjiulsltmenohpleaasleeem

It was Sage's true voice, undiluted by the shadows. Titan frowned. He knocked again.

whoisit These words appeared on the wall.

"Titan."

The words faded. In the next moment, the same words cloned themselves and split and multiplied themselves across the grey area.

Titan grunted.

As his eyes turned to slits, he said, "Sage. Can you hear me?"

Nothing changed, the black words still blinking and plastering themselves continuously.

Titan crossed his arms. It could be possible if he could just write on the wall. Maybe it worked that way since Sage's response was on the wall. Maybe that was how communication worked here.

Titan raised his arm and the Houndoom heads merged into one before it stuck out its tongue. Its saliva was ink.

Titan. He wrote.

Immediately, a reply came. The same string of words as before.

What could they mean?

What could they mean what could they mean what could they mean...

The words formed a twister around him. This... It was the work of the shadows, for sure. Titan roared and stood his ground, flinging the letters and watching as the letters bent and curved inward as if to consume themselves, curling into balls, like 3D full-stops. No, ellipses.

"Damn you!" That eye switched to orange and he burnt the words. As they fell, something was constructed.

Would he mean what he told

'He'? Titan blinked, disgruntled. Was it him or Sage?

He whipped out his phone and searched for Healer Killer. It was gone. He typed it in the search bar, but nothing came up. His eyes paused and scanned the letters on the keyboard.

Below the 'g' was a 'v'. Beside the 'g' was an 'f'. For a while he was convinced that Sage would be saved and safe. If anything, Sage was the protagonist here. Every event seemed to revolve around him after all. Even now.

To save someone out of their struggle, one has to first overcome his struggle. So Titan grew determined to do just that. Of course, it would work if Sage wanted it.

He stared at the words. Then, it occured to him they might be more than mere letters. He recalled the word that the shadows had used, the word that echoed beyond the horizon.

Incoherence.

This entire game of Healer Killer, this entire journey till now had been rather incoherent. He opened and closed his hands. He blinked.

When did it begin? When did he regain his sense of self, being more than a puppet, a character in Sage's eyes? When did his shadow resist manipulation?

Rather, when did a character become more than that? Because, right now, Titan was the focal point, not Sage. Did that make him different from before?

At this point, the message became clear.

just kill me no heal me please

Sage wanted to be saved from the terror of the shadows and of himself. And Titan would be the one to do that.

Though, why not Zayn? Wouldn't that be great? Wouldn't that be perfect? Zayn was the one who understood Sage the most, right?

"There is no such thing as perfection. Everything and everyone has flaws." Those were Zayn's words. Perhaps...

I am here.

The wall gradated into a darker shade of grey, and darker, and darker.

Sage. Let me put you back in order.

With a renewed conviction, Titan broke the wall of impossible communication with ink. It melted gradually under the warmth of his Houndoom's ink.

This could only be done by adding trust and understanding to Sage. To Titan, Sage wasn't at all a monster. The reason why Zayn couldn't get to such depth was because he was too bright. But Titan could toggle between light and dark, between warmth and coldness. There was balance and order within him.

Framed by the hole in the melting wall was a boy in bandages, sullenly gazing at Titan whose hand stretched out to clutch someone he grew fond of. The comrade, Sage Shrike, took his hand with a small, smiling hesitance, and rose from the mural floor illustrating a blooming sage within thorns.

"Titan," the weak voice said.

Titan grinned and pulled him out of the hole. Behind them, the wall was but ashes.

"We need to get out of here," Titan told him while calling back his Singularity.

The duo rose out of the shadows, passing by the swiping claws and irate gazes of the shadows as they swam through the sparkling threshold of the murky and green waters of Lethe and into the world above where anxious faces came to greet them.

Titan frowned when Sage shook in his grip. A guttural noise rang in his ears before the shadows shot out of Sage's eye and into the sky, dissipating into multicoloured fireworks that soon turned to rain smoothing the rocks, the sand, the earth. He glanced at the eye that was now brown, and released his breath.

"Sage Shrike, you have almost destroyed the world." Marshadow said as zie walked toward them.

Sage looked up. "But I cured it all, didn't I? All that sin... Morals and sins are all mortal."

"Are you going to tell them about Sayo?"

At the mention of the name, Mei flinched.

"The world is actually the same as before. The people who died are in the refurbished Distortion World. They have a choice to stay there or return here where we will start from square one."

"Start... what?" Jade knitted her brows. "The world is restoring itself."

"Start a world without sin," Sage replied. "The world... will be fixed." He laid on the ground, staring into Titan's red eyes with a smile. Sage squinted through his fingers as his hand covered his face, watching the clouds pass, but the cracks were no longer hidden. "Ah... I fulfilled my destiny. I am both Healer and Killer now."

Zayn's fingers intertwined with his. Sage's mouth fell apart soundlessly. Titan got up and left the two alone. Around them, everyone simply watched.

"What... about Yveltal?" Mei asked.

"Zie will rest in his cocoon for a century," Sage said. "Legendaries can't die so easily."

"That means Darkrai..."

"Is still alive. But zie is likely to have better judgment now." Sage turned to Zayn and tightened his grip of Zayn's hand.

"Hey, are you still yourself?" Tears welled up in Zayn's eyes. "I don't understand. If this is the same world all along, then what's the point of all this?"

"To purge the sins in humanity," Sage said. "Every other person in the world that died because of the shadows is in the Distortion World, and they are all pure now. They will know nothing of sin."

But the ones who had been with us, those who died way before this, can't come back anymore.

Sage tilted his head and stared into the horizon. There, the landmarks of Kalos, like the sundial, like Geosenge, like the tower in Lumiose, were all restored to their original state. Did their history still hold, though? Sage didn't know how to answer that.

The streets were free of litter, and the orange-red leaves turned green and returned to the branches. His head made a 180 and watched the silhouettes of Noryuku dance endlessly.

"We need to leave," Sage muttered. "What's to be, will be. Some things can only exist in impermanence."

Many things, really.

"Everything's fine now. This is a harsh way of doing things, but, it's alright now." Marshadow said. "The shadows, I feel, are no longer vile. Everything is pure in this world now. All right, all good."

Zie patted Sage's head. "You did well. The contract has been fulfilled, the shadows said. They will learn to be good, to be kind."

Sage shook his head and gently pushed zir hand away.

I feel alive. He thought to himself as he got up. Give. Sympathise. Control. No... 'Empathise' might be better.

He felt Nick's glare weakening.

What a rotten life. But even so, I will continue wandering.

He let go of Zayn's hand and ran to Emo-Senpai, pulling them into an embrace.

From now on, everyone can choose what they truly want. I don't have to control anyone from within the shadows anymore.

Sage let go of them and walked to Jade and the two Legendaries. "In the end, Life and Order should be at the forefront. Healing, too."

He turned to Mei as she blinked and wept goo off her face. Then, he glanced at Ciara who stood beside her in silence. "I don't want to lie anymore."

Next, he went over to Nick who crossed his arms with a huff. "You did good."

Yvette was right after. To she who was a thrall, to she who suffered and knew not how to heal, but only to hurt, he said, "I am sorry. Words aren't enough so I will prove with my actions. At least, we reach a common goal."

But could this end truly justify such harsh means?

Sage sighed and trudged to his childhood friends. Perhaps, he truly owed them the most. Time, space, explanations, many other things. So, all he did was to hug them and weep.

He let go and headed toward Titan. "Thank you for everything."

He remembered their first encounter, when he was detected in Titan's Heatmor's shadow. Why did he choose Heatmor and not Durant back then? Because he refused to acknowledge he was a prey in his own way, and he craved warmth more than the coldness of steel.

To Zayn, he said the same and added, "I found light at the end of my tunnel."

It was a different light.

Sage gave the island a last, cursory glance. Too many Fools.

He picked up a Fool Card and stroked the borders. In that illustration, he saw the people he came to know along the way. He saw himself.

"We're back to the beginning."