smash_logs | [Time Eater] I know why you're here. I can sense it in you.

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[Time Eater] I know why you're here. I can sense it in you.

Who: Cyrus and whoever else
What: Time Eater
Where: Reliving the time from the creation of the Red Chain to his defeat on Mt Coronet
When: Two and a half years ago

When Cyrus opened his eyes, the dark void was gone. Thankfully, since the last time he'd been sucked into a void had been when that shadowy pokémon had abducted him.

But now he was faced with a place that seemed to be the antithesis of that void. An empty white chasm, spreading out everywhere, with no boarders and nothing dividing the land and sky.

He took a step, and another, to ensure that the ground was relatively level, but even so, he walked with a shuffling pace so as not to encounter any sudden pits.

There were things in view, as he drew closer. Golden doors, each with a symbol upon them, and a void of its own.

Passing a door that bore the likeness of a distant region, he was greeted by a floating musical note that immediately fled. Perhaps it was sentient; he had certainly seen stranger things. "Crobat, retrieve."

The bat burst forth and soared at the note, but rather than be caught, the note burst into a message.

Cyrus had obtained "Song--Ride On Lapras", a title he remembered had been popular in the years before his birth. He wasn't entirely sure *how* he obtained this piece, but the message vanished after a moment.

The doors continued, and the two went along the row in silence until one symbol stood out.

A door emblazoned with the unmistakable Red Chain.

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It had been too long since he had seen this place. Even when he had returned to Sinnoh to fend off an attempted takeover by one of his officers, Cyrus had kept his time in Veilstone short. He couldn't risk arrest.

But this was before then. This...he had lived this before, and he knew what was to happen.

That trainer was about to burst in, using a stolen card key to gain entrance to his office. It wasn't as if he cared about security at this stage. The headquarters was to be discarded in a matter of hours.

Perhaps he had time to change some things.

His defeat had come because the spirits had been freed. This time he would not be so sentimental.

Just as Chili suspected he would be freed from the clutches of that odd previous world with Sophie and some others, he found himself...

...in an unfamiliar hallway. He wasn't sure if he was getting any progress here, trying to get back to the Academy... And he sure wasn't getting any answers, either! Chili huffed, pulling himself together and taking a good look around him, frustrated as he was. Where was he?

Without his Pokémon at his side, he knew he had to proceed with caution. However, he just couldn't keep himself from that tempting door! What if someone was in there? Without too much further hesitation, Striaton City's Fire-type gym leader approached the door and, to his surprise, it opened! How strange--

Wait. He knew that guy. The guy who battled him and, to be quite frank, mopped the floor with him and Pansear. Chili made a face of displeasure. "Hey! What are you doing here?!"

That...was not the child he was expecting. Though they were both brash and driven by emotion, Dawn at least was a respectible foe, one with courage and devotion to her own cause (faulty though it was).

Cyrus inwardly sighed. He would have prefered Dawn to this boy?

"I work here," he told the interloper. "One may question what your business is here in my office."

He worked there. Chili felt embarrassment creep up his neck, wondering the very same thing: how had he gotten here? He didn't know, and didn't have an honest response otherwise. But he didn't want to look so lost in front of this guy... It couldn't be helped. He didn't want to be here anyway.

"How should I know?! I just woke up here," he grumbled, his eyes darting about the room with a hint of curiosity. He looked back to his company, questions boiling up in his mind: about this place, about where he was just before, and why he appeared here right afterwards. What were the connections? Why was it happening? ...Then again, he wondered if Cyrus would even have answers to the current state of affairs. "I just want to go back to the academy!"

Of course the boy wasn't interested, and Cyrus doubted that Chili would be even with full knowledge of what was going on. People like that rarely had the sort of thought outside themselves. How commonplace.

Dawn's interest in the Lake Spirits had puzzled Cyrus. It was so utterly rare to concern onesself with others that she may as well have been some alien, and even a rare creature on her home planet. It was certainly nothing he had observed with any regularity in humans, or any other species. To put herself on the line for beings who were utter strangers had struck a nerve with him. To work for the safety of others was one of his ideals, something he was rebuilding the world for, but yet she was still utterly, utterly wrong in it. She didn't act out of duty or logic or anything that made sense. Instead, she had been overtaken by the poison that had twisted the world, the toxin of emotion, and allowed that to rule her actions. She had been so very close to what he was looking for and yet utterly defined everything that he had to get rid of.

It had been...disappointing.

But Chili...he contained no illusions. He was simple and transparent, and utterly discardable.

"And why is that?" he asked calmly. "What awaits you there?"

A hand trailed up to his temple as he squeezed his eyes shut, wishing he could just appear back at the academy, where he was before...

"My Pokémon are there, for starters!" he declared, opening his eyes once again. "I can't leave them there like that!"

"Hm, perhaps you ought to contain them on you at all times." He had already made certain that his were not lost in whatever bizarre portal had brought them there. "Do you believe that you cannot find your way back?"

"Just because they're not with me doesn't mean I don't have their Pokéballs!" he explained, pulling one out to display it. "I don't know what's going on, but I let them out for a bit and that's what I was doing last! I just woke up here!"

The foreboding feeling that someone might have stolen them while he was away like this... it made him feel sick. "And I don't even know where this place is, so how could I know how to get back?"

Hahaha like he knows it's the Galactic HQ. He could probably figure it out, but Team Galactic isn't much of a familiar name to him as much as Plasma is.

Interesting. This had struck at such a moment that this boy had been caught in the middle of an action.

"We are in the Sinnoh region, Veilstone City, to be exact."

Despite his attempts, the spirits had been loosed anyway. No matter. He would be prepared for them. This time he knew when they would appear and would set a trap.

As he left his office, Cyrus began gathering agents following behind him like the tail of a comet. This was commonplace; they often followed him in awe. Only this time was to be the last they would see the headquarters, or Veilstone, or Sinnoh. The world was to end, and he was to bring about a new one, and nothing would stand in his way.

It would take nearly a day to walk from Veilstone to that legendary summit, but it was a walk Cyrus had taken many times. One final time felt almost ritualistic, but it was too soon for rituals. Those would be established in the new world.

This time he could do it. This time he would do it. This time he had to do it.

Even with those behind him, Cyrus didn't slow his pace.

The summit was above the clouds and near a freezing temperature, a far cry from the warmth he had left in Final Destination City. But even with the frigid chill, there was a power beyond all else there, and it swelled in his core with the greatness of the universe.

This third time would work. It had to.

He raised the chain to the sky, biting back the images of Voile and Rhys. He would grant them new life, something beyond anything this broken world could provide. He was saving them. He was saving everything.

Navarre hadn't the slightest idea where he'd ended up. There had been a big void, like an empty dream, and then there was that door. For a moment, he believed this was a dream as he opened the door. A rush of people in uniform pushed past him. War? No, he didn't recognize the land at all. What he did recognize, however, was the glimpse he caught of a familiar bastard with a superiority complex known as Cyrus.

Oh this was interesting. He followed the group, though not exactly discretely. He stuck out like a sore thumb, being 6' tall and wearing blood red foreign clothing.

The summit. This was something else, something unlike he'd ever seen on any of the mountains in Akaneia. And gods be damned it was freezing. Yet even still, he watched Cyrus and his odd movements. Silently staring, observing, his arms folded across his chest for warmth.

The people around Navarre stared at him, but did nothing. They had been told to watch for a child, possibly two of them, but a strange adult who clearly wasn't from Sinnoh at all hadn't been listed on the alert list.

Of course, they stood out as well, not that Navarre would know what constituted ordinary clothing and manner in this new land, but they would stick out anywhere, with their identical teal bowlcuts and nearly identical silver-and-black bodysuits.

Cyrus stood near the only two to wear something else, two women of around his age, one tall with purple hair and a form-fitting single-legged outfit, the other shorter and redheaded with her skirt jutting away from her body. And he paid no mind to anyone, intoning the words he'd said those years ago the first time this had happened.

His plan to change the past hadn't worked. Though minor details had changed, anything important had remained identical.

But this had to happen.

"... Now, all will end. And everything will begin. With this Red Chain I will pry open the portal to another dimension. I command that you unleash your power for me..."

The chain glowed and spun in the air, an odd distortion waving through the air, swirling in the center of the ring. A deep darkness shimmered over the sky, and reality itself seemed for a moment to tear apart. Something was coming.

Navarre didn't care if they looked at him or not. They were of no interest to him at all. They made no move against him so he hadn't killed them yet. He stuck out (in fact, Navarre usually did), but it was their outfits and hair that he found weird. They all looked the same. No signs of individuality and their choice in colors was horrendous.

But that wasn't what kept Navarre's often short attention span. Aside from the bitter cold, Navarre's attention was fixed on Cyrus and his rather odd companions. His movements were odd and suspicious. And be it far from Navarre to not take advantage of the opportunity to see what made this bastard tick.

Cyrus had done nothing but piss off Navarre since they first spoke. Cyrus always had that pompous attitude, acting like he thought he was the only person who knew what was right. Now Navarre had met people like that but only one actually knew what was right and he sure wasn't a pompous ass. He was kind, almost to a point of being sickening.

Navarre, however, didn't much care for what was right. He cared about money. He was a mercenary through and through. But it was Cyrus's words that struck him oddly. All will end, hm. Navarre was missing the reference, so he curiously watched, his right hand poised at his side, given the moment's need to draw a sword.

Those agents stood their ground despite their visibly growing fright. The ground was shaking, not enough to be serious in itself, but along with everything else it added to the terror of the event as a giant beast emerged from the hole in reality and roared to the jet black sky.

Cyrus had gotten this far. The god was ahead of him, and his pokemon were at his side, ready to prevent anything from stopping their master's plan.

It was a rush, as it had been the first time, and the second. But this felt off, though it was the same. It didn't seem real, as if he was simply going through the motions in a memory or a reinactment.

No, he concluded, it had to be real, even if he had to force it into reality!

"This world cannot be molded into the ultimate world I seek! It's far easier to create an entirely new world than to change this one! A new world in which I am the ruler of all things! I shall become a deity!"

His words hadn't changed either. This was his true self, casting away everything that had happened in the past two and half years.

So why did it feel so off?

This world was a mess. The ground shaking yet Navarre hadn't moved from where he stood. He'd seen some crazy stuff in his time, including a shadow dragon created by the gods of chaos. Navarre was hardly the hero type and didn't show much intention of stopping him.

However, those words. This man was more of a crazy douchebag with a superiority complex than Navarre had first reasoned. "A god? Really?" he scoffed, folding his arms again. This guy was a joke. Yes, he could make the ground shake, but that was an old trick. He'd seen mages do better.

The power was there again, flowing into the chain. The gods were to surrender their mastery and step aside for a new ruler of the cosmos. A new cosmos, of course.

The deity advanced towards him with lumbering steps that shook the ground before stopping as if its reason for doing so had blinked out of its very mind. Which, of course, was exactly what had happened. The chain, forged from the very bodies of the lake spirits, was beginning to wear at its spirit.

That, of course, was when everything had fallen apart before. The trainer had arrived to do battle with his remaining commanders, but that had not disrupted his plan. They would have been quickly rendered powerless if those same lake spirits had not shown up. And this was where Cyrus glanced away for a moment, examining the air for those creatures that had damned all creation.

Okay, that got Navarre's attention. With the sight of the deity, Navarre drew his long sword, preparing for battle. There was no way he was going to let that damn shadow dragon back in the world. Not that he could do anything. Killing the shadow dragon required the sword of light, and that was something he didn't have. No, Marth had that.

He wasn't entirely sure one sword would be enough for this. Then again, he wasn't sure what this was exactly. He was certain however that Cyrus was somehow in the middle of this. Dream or not, it would be very enjoyable to tear him limb from limb (on Navarre had been itching for a real fight lately).

But the problem was that god-like thing. Navarre never was fond of anything that looked like a dragon. He flanked the thing as much as the summit would let him, trying to size up the thing better. And besides, the giant creature seemed to be paying attention to Cyrus instead. Letting him get eaten wasn't out of the question, but it sure would take the fun out of it.

One. Two. Three. Four.

That was all Cyrus was willing to wait. If they weren't going to show up, alls the better. If they were late, that was their own undoing.

He approached the deity, arms outstretched to recieve its divinity. "Now, give me the power I seek! The power to create a new world on this spot!"

The being's eyes glowed, a mirror of the swirling chain that seemed to have gotten far longer than its mass would allow. The two officers clasped hands, both in fear and excitement. Their lord was to triumph! He would put the world to rights and build all anew! Their devotion was coming to fruition at long last.

Off to the side, and the other side, and behind the deity, three lights seemed to form from nothing, and three calls resonated through the air.

The Lake Spirits had come.

Okay, that was it. While Navarre wasn't the heroic type, he did prefer to live and destroying and recreating the world could threaten his very existence. And he still was itching for a fight, and Cyrus was a perfect target. Cyrus ticked off Navarre on a fairly regular basis. Cutting him to pieces would be really really enjoyable.

"Alright, this stops here---" Navarre declared but was cut off by the Lake Spirits' sounds. Annoying little creatures. What the hell were they? How could such tiny things make such a huge racket.

[ I apologize for the lateness. I couldn't think of what to write. D: ]

The rising noise sent a shiver through Cyrus's body. They were there after all, and so was someone else. A lower voice, an adult man--neither Dawn nor Chili--but no voice that he knew.

Any human encroachment was the least of his concerns. The three spirits approached, quickly facing the retaliation of his pokémon. Before he had been dumbstruck, but now he was waiting for them.

The deity would not remain bound for long, and it had to be drained of its power immediately. But during that time, there was nothing he could do to aid the process along. He could only turn to face his interlopers. "Do you intend to shatter the one hope in all creation? The source of this power...you know it to be the sole salvation yet you rebel against it. How fitting that you will be destroyed by it. As, after all, it was you who brought this world to this point. It was you who forced my hand."

Navarre frowned. What was this guy smoking? Navarre was a pretty forceful guy, but he was pretty sure he hadn't pushed Cyrus to do something other than go away (which never really worked anyway).

Navarre didn't even know what this source of power was, so how can he rebel against it?

"You're so full of crap, Cyrus," Navarre said. "You spout all this stuff about stopping war and blah blah blah, and here you are, trying to destroy the world to remake it. Full. Of. Crap."

"There is no other way to stop war. All negative influences must be destroyed. All must be recreated." But he still barely noticed Navarre. Surely he saw the man standing there, but he seemed to address his words more towards the tiny pixie-like creatures that his pokemon were attacking. "Do you believe that you can stop justice in its purest form? No one may interfere! I will not permit it!"

"Full of crap," Navarre rolled his eyes. Well at least the guy was consistent. persistent too. But he was still incredibly deluded.

Purest form of justice? No, Navarre had seen that. It was called Marth and the Sword of Light.

"Well I can interfere by lobbing off that crazy head of yours." Always an option.

An option if the large bipedial weasel at Cyrus's side didn't leap forward and meet Navarre's blade with its equally sharp claws.

Even with a human threat, Cyrus disregarded Navarre for the divine beings that swirled around, trying to gain purchase on the glowing chain and being denied access at every turn.

Navarre didn't care what attacked him. He'd cut it down. He was a bloodthirsty mercenary, or so they called him. He knew how to fight and had no problem killing (well unless they were women and children, but that wasn't generally known).

Navarre swung at the large weasel with his long blade, and if that didn't connect, there was always the follow-up with the short close-ranged blade. He wasn't about to let that thing bite him.

Weavile's swiftness permitted it to mostly dodge, though it lost a bit of its red crest in the process. The featherlike fur blew in the arc of the sword, and the creature came in over it, hoping to connect with Navarre's face in the short amount of recovery time.

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[Time Eater] I know why you're here. I can sense it in you.

Red Chain (office battle to freeing the Lake Spirits)

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Pilgrimage (leaving HQ through Mt Coronet)

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