[Yandere Meowscarada x Reader] I'll Make Them All Disappear!

85 | A Bell Tolls, A Clock Ticks

Zoroark falls to one knee. Her body is bleeding profusely, bruises and gashes running up and down her arms and legs. She gives another attempt at standing only for her legs to give out. Cinnamon wipes a streak of blood from her nose. Fires whip around her heels, but they have grown inexplicably weak, hardly bright enough to paint the ground with firelight. Eventually they are snuffed out altogether.

Penny's Sylveon has fallen faint for longer than anyone can remember. Kieran's Hydrapple still stands, but none of its attacks can even start to faze Terapagos in its fully fleshed-out form, and it's exhausted, finding it incredibly hard to lift its long neck. Kieran groans, looking down at his splintered hands and the pools of blood swelling beneath them. Beside him, Briar gazes breathlessly at the crystal beast overlooking everyone in their poor conditions.

"Fought as hard as we could, I guess," Kieran says, wincing. "We might've been doomed from the start."

Penny takes a long, sharp breath in. She has been dodging crystal spikes in the ground for the past five or so minutes, and given she doesn't normally exercise, she's had a hard enough time maneuvering around certain death. She pushes her glasses back up onto her nose. Her lenses shimmer suddenly in the light of Terapagos' shell as it swirls and swells with energy. It seems to be charging something.

"We're dead, aren't we?" Penny says, dropping to her butt and gazing up into the Pokémon's glittery eyes.

"I'm sorry," Briar says, "for putting the lives of my students at risk like this. Out of an ambition for... for history, I lost sight of what was really important. Keeping you safe. I failed you." She doesn't sound like she'll cry, but her voice is laden with despair—just as anyone's would be if they had let everyone down. Led everyone to their deaths.

"This isn't your fault," Penny says wistfully. "I guess I should be grateful for coming along. You know. Experience."

"First-hand experience at dying," Kieran says with a chuckle. "Real nice."

"Real, real nice."

Terapagos' shell expands and splits at its crown, exploding with a flash of blinding white light. Everyone shields their eyes. Each person in the cavern collectively hopes it will be quick, that once the light vanishes from their vision, there will be no pain and it will have already happened. That they will be dead and won't feel a thing. Penny hangs her head, shutting her eyes tight. Kieran leans his head against the wall, patiently waiting. Briar settles down beside him, pulling her knees into her chest and ducking her face from the light.

Zoroark snarls like the wild thing she is, but in her condition, she has no fight left in her. She curses herself to no end for allowing things to end up like this—allowing Terapagos to once again seize the upper hand and string everyone along like it had been for so, so long.

The cloudy-furred fox doesn't have much to reflect on. She has mostly pushed the memories of her and her first trainer out of reach, and only recently has she sided with Y/N and the others, so she can't think back on anything particularly good. Life has been cruel. Life has been very cruel. She's been mocked and betrayed and abandoned, and now she thinks she'll die with every regret she has had yet to come face to face with.

Cinnamon decides, maybe, death here isn't so bad. For her, life has been a blast, even if it's been scary at times. Going back and forth with Meowscarada when they first met wasn't the most thrilling thing in the world, and Cinnamon frequently feared for her life, but she survived regardless. Survived so that, one day, she may die a natural death and find her mother somewhere in the afterlife. If the afterlife even exists, or if it welcomes her.

She thinks of you, too. The trainer who has done so much for her. It could never amount to what Granny Eve did, but you were still a special human. A very special, precious human. As Cinnamon stares between her fingers into the growing orb of light radiating off of Terapagos, she catches a glimpse of something emerging from the crystal sculpture. The one Florian and you disappeared into. Something's coming out, and Cinnamon eagerly looks toward whatever that may be.