I Decided To Live Forever Just In Case She Ever Woke Up [PKMN X THE LOCKED TOMB]

Climactic Battle Prelude! - Part 1

Originally published as *kills seven people* sinnoh forbid women do anything on 22/8/2024.

Based on the climax of Gideon the Ninth. Specifically the Cytherea reveal, so uh, spoilers for that if you want to read the book (you should.)
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Six people were dead. Ethan. Palmer. Ingo. The professors. The cremains in the incinerator, which remained unidentified. Lyra the Second was in critical condition. Cyrus the Fourth was nowhere to be found. Akari was caught in the middle of everything, with her necromancer the number one suspect, half the League Guests believing her an accomplice to murder, and no way to defend herself against untrue accusations.

In short: it sucked.

The storeroom she found herself in was tiny. Akari could stand, but barely; she hardly had room to do anything with her elbows when she was sitting on the upended crate. She folded them across her chest and swallowed over the lump in her throat. It didn't matter how much she protested, who protested for her; the evidence was stacked against her favour. She was the only person unharmed in the east tower study attack. It was established that Palmer, at least, had been dead and puppeted around for weeks and nobody had realised it, so the idea that the Fourth's other cavalier was in the same situation was a valid option. Cyrus was suspicious as hell and vanished for days at a time. And her stupid memory issues only made her more suspicious.

You could have killed Ethan without even knowing about it . She recounted stupid Hilda's stupid necro's words and how quickly the idea caught on and how she couldn't argue against it and it made her so angry she wanted to explode. She kicked at the dust on the floor and coughed. Gross. In that moment she really hoped everyone would just explode. It would have served them right.

Then she felt bad, because she didn't actually want anyone to die. Enough people had died already.

Her captors had the good sense to confiscate her rapier. Irida had it, which at least made Akari feel some measure of relief. She wasn't fool enough to think Irida couldn't hold her own - she was, actually, the greatest bone adept the Ninth House had seen in a generation - but it made her feel better to know that she had a martial weapon to fall back on if things got bad.

What had hurt worst of all was that Irida was in agreement with the 'locking her up' plan. Oh, she looked ashamed when she did it, but she still caved to everyone else's pressure. It's for the best, she said, as if she hadn't spilled her deepest darkest secrets and kissed her on the mouth only hours earlier. It didn't even make Akari angry. It just made her want to cry.

She did cry, as soon as the storeroom's door slammed shut. She cried until her eyes dried up, and then she curled in on herself and stared at the cleaning products that she shared a space with. There were a lot of brooms, mops, and brushes, all rotted and decayed, and heaps of bottles shoved into drawers, their labels long faded away. Ironically enough, the storeroom smelled musty. One place the skeletons hadn't bothered to clean.

When the door swung open, Akari immediately jumped to her feet, brandishing the sharp end of the closest mop. Then she realised that it could have been one of the guests and aggression would only further cement her guilt, so she switched the mop handle into a defensive position across her body and crouched.

And it was one of the League's guests, just not one who had elected to lock her in this stupid storage closet. Cyrus stood with his hands behind his back and stared down at her in a way that seemed almost confused, and addressed her in a way that sounded like a question. "Akari."

Akari lowered the mop. At first she felt relieved, because her necromancer was not dead and he had come to get her out of the storeroom.

And then she thought about all the times Cyrus the Fourth had left her in the metaphorical rain. Treated her like chewing gum under his heel. Left her alone in their suite with no explanation. Acted so suspicious he dragged her down with him and abandoned her in her hour of need.