hide and seek [r]

[king]

tick. tock. tick. tock.

alex stood in the ascension, looking around. his body was cold, everything--even the air--felt hot to touch. sonata lurked in his shadow, an ever comforting presence.

a grandfather clock chimed.

with that, the faint ticking continued. alex waited, there would be someone to come soon. all he had to do now was see who it was.

nette

[nette]

well, this is new. ahuda has never been here before, although she's heard of it. the land of nightmares, ruled by giratina and home to scourge. there are whispers about it among eos, and about those who dared enter it in real life to challenge the legendary itself.

but this is not real life, for this is but a dream.

at least, that is what she tells herself. the ticking of a clock is always-present in her ears, ringing in her head, even as the floor leads up, up, ever-upwards. it is unnatural, and the air is cool to her, a slight draft shifting her hair as she has no choice to continue moving forward.

at the end of this bend stands he. blue-haired, with the black-eyed gengar at his back.

"...you."

king

[king]

alex turns to ahuda with a smile. he remembered the voice. how could he not? he was her nightmare.

he vanished from sight. all that was left was his voice booming through the hall.

"ahuda, is it? tell me, ranger. have you remembered me?"

the sound of breaking bone and ripping flesh sounds in the hall.

"have you forgotten me?"

nette

[nette]

he is gone, in that split second between one moment and the next, and she tenses. she reaches to her side on instinct, before remembering. this is not real life. this is not even dream world.

she does not have her styler, and amid the sound of something being ripped to shreds that scares her more than the agent.

"no." keeping it simple helps her focus. fall into that tunnel vision headspace.

ahuda straightens, and walks forward.

king

[king]

alex walks across her path before disappearing into shadow again.

"no you haven't forgotten me? well then i should be so glad."

his voice this time is a soft whisper, warm against her ear.

sonata's laugh echoes through the ascension.

"i don't believe you've ever been here." alex fades into sight before ahuda, several feet in front of her. "this is the ascension. in the land of nightmares."

he disappears again, appearing behind her this time with a hand on her shoulder. "in here, everything can smell your fear. it smells delicious."

alex glides his fingers across ahuda's back, before becoming smoke once more.

nette

[nette]

he keeps shifting, solid to shadow to solid again, before melting back into the darkness and the shadows that the pillars that surround them cast. the voice in her ear makes her stiffen, but she does not break her stride, nor does she outwardly react when the gengar cackles and the sound reverbates through the walls.

"no. i haven't." the name of the place, she takes, stores away in her mind with that clinical detachedness that she's learned since ceres.

(it's been a long time since ceres, yet she still remembers it, in clear-cut crystal clarity.)

normally she is reckless. today, here and now, she is not, and as the agent touches her she stops completely, turning her head to look at him before he disappears yet again. "i'm glad," she says, before walking on.

there is nowhere else to go in this never-ending hallway, anyway.

(there is nowhere to hide)

king

[king]

"you try to look so calm." alex feels strength pumping through his veins. this is his home front now, he has the home field advantage.

ahead, she would find the corpse of her precious politoed. mangled, melted, scourge-ified. he croaks.

<help me.>

more nightmare apparitions appear, corpses. they litter the ground, groaning and reaching for ahuda. they plea for help, they reach for life. any life.

life they could steal.

"this is a place of nightmares. we bleed fear."

nette

[nette]

"is that a bad thing?" a retort, word against word, even as she plows straight on. the mosaic floor is enchanting as light plays on it, and it is on the mosaic floor that she finds her politoed friend.

ahuda stops. crouches, almost touches it before drawing her hand back as if it had burned it. maybe it had, in a way it hadn't meant; and she straightens, clenches her fists against her sides in an attempt to keep them there.

"you're not real."

< help me. >

"you're not fucking real."

she steps over the illusion, ignores the other corpses littered on the ground, keep away from their hands and paws. keep a straight path, straight as possible.

"i don't care. what the fuck am i doing here?"

king

[king]

the apparitions disappear, while alex appears again. "i don't know, ahuda. you must be having a bad dream." he smiles, turning to face her. "are you going to tell your mother in the morning? mom, i had a nightmare." his face hardens. "is your mother alive? are either of your parents? or are you another orphan, drafted into eos for revenge."

alex looks contemplative for a moment. "i wonder what it would take then, ahuda, to make you scream in fear. horror. break down and cry on your knees. beg me to stop." his arm turns incoporeal, and stabs right through ahuda's chest, all while maintaining eye contact.

"your heart?"

nette

[nette]

she stops and sneers. "they're fine, thank you very much. although by the sound of things, most of eos aren't as lucky. i'd say that you aren't, either."

there is a moment of silence before he speaks again, and ahuda grins. "more than you think."

and then there is pain in her chest, his eyes on her own, and she is fairly sure that hers are glittering with a madness not her own. because after batin, after that realization in the dream world, she is not the same ahuda that left ceres.

"it's going to take more than that. i hope you're prepared to wait."

she steps back, feels the presence leave her chest although it still twinges with phantom pain.

king

[king]

his grin isn't apparent on his face. instead, it is spread in the shadows, horrifyingly large. all that's visible in front of ahuda is the mouth, lips stained with blood.

"tell me, ahuda." persuasion melts off his mouth, coiling around ahuda like a warm embrace. "tell me your fears. tell me what you're scared of."

he injects pure fear into her, warping the dream to horrify her. instead of apparitions now, he forces the emotion into her.

it would be up to ahuda to shake it off again and again.

nette

[nette]

his voice oozes, curls around herself and her mind like a particularly aggressive seviper. ahuda stills her breathing, striving to keep it steady and metronomic.

then there's fear in her heart, striking like a spear straight into it. it forces its way, caring not for what damage it wreaks; ahuda gasps, loudly, even as she tries to push the cry down from where it's lodged in her throat.

shaking it off once is easy. twice, thrice, three times, four times, again and again - that is the difficult part.

she glares at the agent even as she draws in haggard breaths and clenches her hands by her sides, refusing to let them fly to her throat where it feels like something is chocking her.

"...stop it."

king

[king]

the lips smirk. "stop? my dear ahuda... this is a nightmare. the night is young. i do hope for you to spend some... quality time with me."

the lips suddenly rush forward, teeth morphing into jagged points. they open wide, reaching to devour ahuda whole. if they reach and pierce through her, the pain is a phantom feeling and the mouth disappears.

his voice then carries from the ceiling again.

"ahuda... you're in my realm now."

nette

[nette]

she stumbles back, hands pinwheeling and flying at her sides to try and keep her balance as she moves away from those fangs. even with the open mouth, he speaks, and the voice echoes in this hall.

if this was normal, she would not run. she would stand her ground and fight.

but this is not normal.

ahuda turns and runs, upwards. if he catches her, she will surely fall, and she won't let that happen. not here, not now.

king

[king]

laughter filled the hall as she ran desperately. there was nowhere to go in the ascension. the grandfather clock chimes again. the ticking seems to count down ahuda's end.

tick. tick. tick. tick. tick.

"run, ahuda. but there is nowhere to go. not in my world."

"not here."

he appears right in front of ahuda, arms open to hug. with her momentum, it was unlikely she would be able to stop.

nette