//------------------------------// // 419. Naga May Die, Finale. // Story: Baa-Ram-Ewe! // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// -Moon Cell realm, Midgar, mysterious facility, central room- It was quiet for a moment as Pom’s completed transformation had halted the three naga from doing anything. Outside the room three of the Behemoths had tracked down Pom’s scent and were working on busting into the place through the two doors and a wall, they were powerful monsters… but they paled in comparison with the one the three naga were currently trapped in a room with. Pom was quite tired of being unable to fight back against big threats and she was about to show how much of one she was personally out of frustration. One would think she couldn’t improve much physically in a week, they’d be absolutely correct! Pom really couldn’t surpass a peak level of fitness she already has going and her lithe frame wasn’t meant for enacting raw brute force. However Pom could increase her mental capabilities and capacity to hold focus under intense situations, thus the time she spent refining her abilities between Mare Melum and Midgar led to this moment. Any increase to her mental prowess affected her wool shaping, her ability to enter beast mode while retaining more mental stability for a little bit longer, it also made her more capable of using wool manipulation while in Sheep’s Clothing and there’s getting the most out of her more magic using abilities. It was really hard to use any wool manipulation while her wool was shifted into her wooly wolf mode, considering any manipulation would mess up the boosting effects from using her wool acting as an augmenting exoskeleton in the sections of wool she manipulates. Pom was sacrificing a lot of her strength on this one gamble and the drawbacks of stacking so many abilities together would be seen after everything was said and done, it’d still be more survivable than using Shock Ram. A single heart beat sounded and could be heard throughout the room as a wild eyed Pom started to vibrate in place as the misty wolves stalking the shadows started to move towards the naga who were all wielding knives defensively. Pom calmly sat down and closed her eyes and then inhaled and exhaled slowly as the wolf pack began the hunt. -Hallway, Dolly- “Huh, yeah bro, she’s doing what you think she is…” I stated before I slammed my board into a Crawler at full speed to send it tumbling when I imparted force onto it and Flosser Cog shot down several drones before they could ram into me with their spiraling blades. “Pom will be fine and we’re on our way little bro, just hold on!” -Trap room, Naga Triple Threat of Elise, Cruel and Crazy vs. The Gentle Monster. (Music: Master of Shadow, Persona 3 OST)- The naga would eventually learn that they weren’t going to be able to leave this room before Pom was done with them. They could hear the thumping of Pom’s heart and it was setting a strange rhythm. A misty wolf lunged for Cruel and she lashed out with her left arm, the knife in her claw slid through the ephemeral thing and she just shook her head as if faded out of existence. “Just an illu—AGH?!” Cruel was proven wrong immediately when her left shoulder was crippled by one of the wolves in a single joint crushing bite. She swung out with the knife in her right claw and the wolf visible disappeared as soon as the knife made contact. “They’re real?! Everyone attack the sheep now!” Cruel, Crazy and Elise all started throwing knives and Search Snakes at Pom, she didn’t move an inch from where she sat. Pom just calmly exhaled and every knife that flew at her suddenly burst into smoke when it got within five feet of hitting her. None of the naga saw how she managed to deal with so much being thrown at her all at once, they certainly didn’t see the slight shimmer in the air as Pom stayed perfectly still. Seeing that their attacks were in vain, the three naga started attacking the glowing eyes that came charging at them. Even Crazy was focused on surviving and not just blindly running into whatever it was that Pom had done to defend herself with a wild enthusiasm to learn what it was… and to experience a new form of pain. Cruel threw two knives with her right hand and then summoned a third to slash away another charging wolf. She didn’t know how they were physical, but it was terrifying to know they could attack and not be attacked. Pom just continued to sit calmly in place with her eyes closed and her body entirely immobile as she just inhaled and exhaled slowly. The three naga frantically slashed and hacked away at the air as the wolves leapt forth to attack them, only to disappear on contact with the knives. The eyes of the wolves would be seen fly away as if they were fireflies after being struck and the naga actually started using Search Snakes defensively, even if they sent a Search Snake to try and sneak up on Pom they still couldn’t get within five feet of her without popping in a puff of smoke. It wasn’t long before the first death happened among the naga as the sound of growling wolves filled their ears. After the crippling blow to her left shoulder left her defending herself with one arm, even if she meticulously great at said defense, Cruel suddenly found her organs being clawed out of her stomach and a set of teeth closing down on her throat. “ResURexIonN!” Crazy called as she frantically defended herself and Cruel reappeared next to her to help her after a second to regain her senses from being so volatilely killed, however it was after being resurrected that Cruel notice she still had teeth marks in her left shoulder and could even feel the ones on her throat. Terror had been inflicted upon Cruel that some of the injuries dealt by the strange wolves had carried over through the resurrection and she looked at Pom’s quiet form as she continued to sit in place and not move an inch. As such Cruel found her left arm a little bit harder to utilize and her damaged throat made it a little harder to breathe. They could resurrect endlessly as long as one of the three of them was up and in fighting condition, somehow the damage dealt by the wolves had managed to carry over through the resurrection. “Careful, there’s something very unnatural about these wolves!” The slightly distorted voice of Cruel stated as she fended off the shadowy growling formless masses and thought she saw a three tailed wolf and a three headed one in the shifting the pack of shadows. Even with the warning from Cruel, Elise took a cut across the top of her tail which she quickly lashed out and fended off a wolf. They didn’t seem to be attacking her as much as they were Cruel or Crazy, but that didn’t mean the bleeding scratch she just acquired was nothing to worry about. A loud cracking noise draws the attention of the defending naga, Pom calmly opened her right eye to look at the wall high up on the back of the room cracked. She went back to closing her right eye and concentrating. Using the Search Snakes as a defensive measure helped the three naga somewhat, but Crazy still took a nasty bite to the spine in the middle of her back and nearly had her back clawed up by the same wolf that jumped onto her to sink it’s teeth into her before a Search Snake managed to discorporate it. “Crazy don’t…!” Elise tried, but Crazy turned and charged towards Pom who hadn’t moved since she sat down. “Die-die-die-die-diagGH-?!” Crazy froze within five feet of Pom as something shimmered in the air. Crazy’s right arm disconnected at the elbow, her left arm the shoulder and her head, hood and all, slid from where it sat on her shoulders and splattered on the floor as her headless body flopped over. It was as if a sword had carved its way through Crazy with no resistance before she could even closed in on Pom. Pom gave out a slightly shuddering breath, but slowly kept breathing evenly with a steady pace of in and out a few moments later. “Come back to life, resurrection!” Elise brought Crazy back to life well away from Pom, while Cruel narrowed her eyes at Crazy. The damage done by however Pom just defended herself oddly didn’t stick around. Cruel was trying to make a connection between the injuries dealt to both of them and why her own seemed more permanent than the ones dealt to Crazy, all the while she kept fending off leaping wolves and pairs of bright colorful eyes erupting from the shadows. One wolf even erupted quite literally in the form of a pillar of energy as it tried to claw Cruel’s face off, only for her to dodge it. “Poles and bars now, get off the floor!” It seemed Cruel realized how close some of the shadows sliding along the darkened room lit in red emergency lights were getting, it was alos giving the strange wolf things an advantage to stay near the floor. Extending an arm Cruel slung herself onto a horizontal bar and looked about as Crazy slithered up a pole while fending off a misty looking wolf that clawed and snapped at her with its jaws. Elise had a few cuts and scrapes, she was mostly getting pummeled with bruises as the fighting spirit wolves seemed to be taking it much easier on her, slithered up a pole and stared at the roiling mass of wolves now surrounding Pom. The three naga filled their claws full of knives charged them up so they were glowing brightly and tossed them at Pom, the knives never got more than within five feet of her as the roiling sea of wolves swirled around her defensively. A Behemoth burst into the room and charge right for Pom dragging its horns along the ground. Pom’s eyes snapped open, she just looked at the beast coming at her with a flat disdain. The Behemoth slashed its horns upwards to the right and Pom idly just stood up, took several steps back and stared up at the beast it tried to bring its head back to the left to stab at her and then it froze. It was missing its horns, as Pom right paw was extended upwards and to the left with golden claws extending from it. The Behemeoth was blasted up onto its hind legs by a misty wolf erupted at its chin, stomach and belly in pillars of bright energy. It brought back its right paw and tried to strike downwards in clear confusion of what was going on. Pom leapt up at it her left paw rising with several golden blades extended and the Behemoth’s right leg tore entirely off its body entirely in a single slash of golden energy. The claws on Pom’s hind paws dug into the behemoth’s chest as she extended her neck and head towards its throat, her teethed clamped down as a golden glow started building her throat. When Pom bit down on the Behemoth with her sharp canine teeth, a short beam of golden energy tore out of the far side of the large lion like beasts thick and powerful neck that could take hundreds of axe, sword and spear blows. With a jerk of her head, the much smaller wild eyed Pom ripped the Behemoth’s head clear off of its body in a violent display. As the monster started toppling backwards the small wolf like sheep kicked off digging a gouge out of the beasts chest and belly with a flash of golden energy from her rear legs tearing it’s torso open in a grisly fashion as she destroyed it’s heart to make sure it was dead and evaporating into a pile of dissolving digital chunks. Landing on the floor, Pom grit her teeth and her right paw started gripping at her left leg as the golden color of her wool started attempting to climb up her left leg. The golden colored wool started to rapidly shift up her leg, after a few inches it was quickly pressured back down to taking up a little more than a quarter of her front left leg when she let loose a vicious roar from her lips as she fought back with the pure force of will she could bring to bear against her heritage. Pom mostly succeeded in suppressing her Chrysomallus side for the moment, though she was still losing ground to it even now. “Heh, so fighting the behemoths would cause you some trouble eh? We need a pawn, resurrection… I said resurrection… what the hell, why isn’t it working? Ressur-ghkh!” Despite having tried twice and started trying for a third time, Cruel had to dodge a volatile blast of blue energy that was barked out by Pom that tore a chunk out of the pole she was hanging onto as she deftly leapt to another one. Cruel looked at the red and gold eyes Pom sported as she stared at her. The Behemoth, despite Cruel’s attempts, simply couldn’t be resurrected after what Pom just did to it and now both Crazy and Elise gained a heightened sense of terror for their situation. Pom calmly looked up at them with her wild eyes and simply sat back down. She closed her eyes and continued her slow breathing again as some of the misty wolves swirling around her became more active. Amazingly enough, Pom was managing to preserve her mystical strength as long as her flesh and blood body stayed physically still and she simply breathed. She was letting her fighting spirit take most of the action as she mentally led the wolves as the leader of the pack, otherwise the wolves would either stay close to Pom or attack a target that was actively threatening her. The misty wolves forged from Pom’s fighting spirit started leaping at the poles and bars and kicked off of them several times to gain height and climb up in an attempt to get close enough to attack the three naga. The naga weren’t safe even high up in the jungle gym of randomly poles and bars of metal crisscrossing through the room. Crazy slithered along a bar and hopped off before several wolves could claw her up, she grabbed onto a pole which she wrapped around and quickly slithered up only for a wolf to tear into her tail. The removed chunk of tail was enough to make it impossible for her to hold onto the pole, this send her falling to the floor. When the naga slapped against the floor multiple wolves bore down on her from all sides to started tearing into her flesh with their teeth and claws shredding her violently. Crazy wasn’t having fun anymore. “Resurrection?” It was almost a question by Elise, but Crazy still managed to be revived and looked entirely shaken up as her body was now marred heavily by scars of claw and teeth marks when she came back. Crazy was whimpering and shivering and was hugging herself in fear as the spiritual wolves started coming after them again. “Keep moving, don’t let them knock you to the floor!” Cruel launched a charged knife glowing bright purple at Pom, the knife even seemed to have broken the sound barrier and still stopped within five feet of Pom as a shimmer appeared again. Cruel didn’t know what that shimmer was, but it was why the knife she just threw didn’t even touch the beast hiding in the previous form of a sheep. They couldn’t get within five feet of her, they couldn’t throw things at her and she was capable of wearing down their overall strength even with their resurrection abilities. The most terrifying thing to the naga… was Pom’s ability to absolutely deny their resurrection ability at any time. This left the three naga wondering why Pom hadn’t done so yet. Pom quietly continued breathing, anything coming at her wouldn’t so much as touch her as she quietly concentrated on obtaining her overall objective here. Even with her wild side being let loose, Pom was still in tight control of and was also straining against her very nature as a lambkin to actually bring up enough courage to outright kill Elise after dealing with both Cruel and Crazy. Trying to keep her increasingly bad bloodlust under control was wearing away at her sanity and tearing the head off a Behemoth with her teeth and an anti-magic bark blast had only made that worse. Pom simply couldn’t do to the naga what she did to the Behemoth, she still wanted Elise to be whole after all this was over so she couldn’t actually use any of the golden anti-magic energy to kill Crazy or Cruel. As much as Pom would love to tear them to shreds, and that unnatural urge was increasing by the second, they were still a part of Elise’s overall soul. If any of her friends were here to see Pom right now, they’d be surprised to know how dangerous she actually was and how well she was maintaining her composure with all the stress constantly piling up on her. At least Dolly and Dormarch would know, but they were currently dealing with a Behemoth problem at the entrance of the facility. Pom still hoped for her one chance to achieve something of a good outcome would succeed. She couldn’t let her mind slip into the bloodlust threatening to overtake her increasingly powerful mental fortitude and she had to keep who she was as a lambkin intact while doing something she was inherently against at the same time. It was fairly frustrating for Pom to keep the multiple internal conflicts contained on top of her keeping a constant pressure on the Chrysomallus problem, her heart thudded and ached in her chest. Pom could very easily permanently kill Elise here by accident at the wrong moment and all it would take is a single flex of her will loosening, she was trying not to let the power roiling through her from the Dancing Flame go to her head either. The Lambkin Chrysomallus could already hear the two Behemoths about to bust in as the doors entrances to the room suddenly buckled under the weight of powerful impacts. In Pom’s slight distraction, Elise suddenly tried to flee through the entrance the first Behemoth made by busting through the wall higher up in the room. Pom was aware those things in particular would be trouble, sure it might upset Elise to keep her trapped in here, but she couldn’t let a single naga escape or else this would have all been for naught. Pom couldn’t let this situation get out of her ability to control and the other behemoths would inevitably create two more entrances to attempt an escape from and use up even more of her limited mental strength. Pom’s mind was being pulled in so many directions at once. Her body was already sweating and burning from the inside out, radiating heat as the Dancing Flame burned brightly within her as she has yet to utilize that energy. Elise swirled her body around a horizontal bar and launched from it heading towards the opening the Behemoth had made, only to get blasted back when several eyes appeared out of the shadows in the ceiling and erupted downwards into her clawing her back and away from the exit that previously looked safe. Cruel quickly extended her right arm to grapple and pull Elise back to safety as the wolves falling at her threatened to bite and claw her up even worse. The wolves disappeared when they impacted the floor and soon reappeared at the hole in the wall, they were actively guarding it. “No… you don’t get to escape that easily.” Pom said softly and menacingly. She did so without looking at where Elise was hanging from now, thanks to Cruel actively going out of her way to save Elise. For a personality called Cruel, she just courageously risked injury from Pom’s wolves to rescue Elise. A curious act of kindness or was it because Cruel was pragmatic enough to realize she can’t survive on her own. Getting the naga all at once is going to take some doing and it would be difficult as Pom was trying to plan ahead for how to gather them close enough to take out in quick succession. Either that or she would have to push her body’s limits to move so fast that they couldn’t possibly be resurrected in time. The naga had a hard limit of having to wait at least five seconds to get off a resurrection and could possibly do it in half the time if pressed. Pom has been silently gathering information on them this entire time as she hunted them and tracked their movements. “Can we stone stare?!” Shrieked Crazy as she fled from the wolves leaping among the bars and poles by slithering and hopping away while tossing knives and Search Snakes at them. She was showing more creativity in her throws in how she dealt with the chasing wolves, not that it stopped the wolves from chasing after a swinging Cruel or a terrified Elise as she swirled up a pole. “Her eyes are currently closed you idiot and besides Moon Cell has put a ban on all classifications using any magic around her or directly on her at all, even if they can use second hand effects to hit her indirectly!” Cruel stated back with venom in her voice, their ability of resurrection was now quite uncertain to see them through this battle. What went unsaid was that Elise could still use Gorgon Gaze on Pom, but it wouldn’t work so Cruel wasn’t about to bring it up. The three naga kept leaping and grappling between poles and bars to avoid the shadowy forms of wolves leaping at them, they were keeping well away from each other in case they needed to revive and clumping up obviously wasn’t going to help them as much as spreading out was while using knives and Search Snakes to fend off the attacks. Pom was continuing to concentrate on controlling all the wolves and was waiting for an idea or an opportunity as her wolves hunted the two armed slippery serpents. While they had good capabilities, the naga weren’t even a close match for Pom individually or even altogether in a direct confrontation and this wasn’t a direct confrontation. Sure the nigh unstoppable almost perfect immortality was all well and good and would normally be a bigger problem to deal with, likely why Moon Cell summoned Elise in the first place for looking promising, but they couldn’t actually do anything with it in their grab bag of tricks. Even Pom recently found out she had the capability to stop the resurrection ability cold quite easily made this a sadly easy to win battle. All Pom had to do was apply anti-magic attacks while killing them to prevent them from reviving each other. Winning wasn’t her goal… at the moment, urge to outright kill was slowly rising. A knife charged with purple energy was tossed out and it sharply changed angles in midair to try and hit the side of Pom’s face, another shimmer occurred as the knife disappeared in a puff of smoke. The naga simply weren’t a big enough threat to Pom and she already knew it was going to be much harder to just keep the naga contained when the two behemoths break into the room. Looking at the bars and poles crisscrossing throughout the room… a lightbulb went off in Pom’s head. Instead of giving chase to the naga, the wolves all suddenly split up to achieve two different jobs. Half the wolves started climbing as high as they could and damaging the poles or bar connected to the walls and ceiling, the other half started destroying the base of the poles on the floor. “What are they doing?” Elise asked worriedly from her perch, thankful that the wolves stopped throwing themselves at her in a ferocious manner. “A funded bridge is falling down my fair Coward~!” Sang Crazy weakly with a manic grin, thus making both Cruel and Elise stare at her for a moment. It quick clicked for all the naga what Pom was currently doing. “Keeheehee, ashes and falling down, need some aconitum to keep her away!” “Ah crap.” Cruel stated succinctly while trying to come up with a way to stop this tactic from working, she in fact had nothing and Pom just one upped them. Pom was cutting off any access to evading her by dropping the bars from the wall and collapsing all the poles their bodies hugged so close that they were practically pole dancers, both had helped keep the naga away from Pom’s wolves and safely above the floor. A number of the bars started falling onto the floor and a few poles started to topple over with nothing holding them up except other poles and bars that got in the way. “Stop them while I figure something out!” Cruel stated as she three knives and directed them at the wolves attacking the support structures of their jungle gym. Crazy and Elise didn’t say a word against it and joined her in helping try and slow the wolves down. “Maybe one Behemoth wasn’t enough and two will take care of her?” It was only a matter of time before Pom could corral them all, not that the mentioned behemoths about to shatter the nearby sealed metal doors were going to make this any easier. Pom’s eyes opened slightly with a feral fanged smile growing on her face as she gleaned another bit of information, they couldn’t revive each other outside of a certain range from themselves. When the naga resurrected they had to revive the target within a visible available area, but in a short enough range that they could bypass her wolves if she place them at an exit like the ones guarding the hole in the wall. Crazy took a crushing blow to the head as a bar crashed down on her from above before she could evade it. “Get back up Crazy, resurrection!” Cruel actually sounded absolutely worried and loving now. Thus far Pom knew the naga resurrection capabilites was limited in range of where the target of said resurrection can appear, the resurrected doesn’t return a target to full strength and the amount of injury permanence Pom can cause makes the resurrections even weaker than they would already be, then there’s the fact that the naga couldn’t be moving to effectively use there resurrection ability. The naga were quite done for as Pom had a completed hunting plan for them, however when she was about to enact it. The metal doors behind Pom on the left side of the room blew off their hinges and flew at the lambkin, a shimmer happened before the door impacted with her body and the doors pivoted to actively avoid her as she turned to look at the beast. The doors that had blasted off their hinges collided with the other also blasted by the other behemoth coming into the room from the right side, if you were viewing things from the command center to Pom’s right and the destroyed doors basically welded themselves into the pile of bars and poles. This also helped the shadowy wolves with wrecking the naga’s places to hide. The two behemoths roared and Pom stood up, one silent command to the wolves born from her fighting spirit to contain the naga and watch her back. She turned around and faced the Behemoth, a part of Pom was afraid… another part was telling her that a pair of wild idiots had entered what was currently her territory and didn’t know they were picking the wrong fight. The Behemoth roared and loped towards Pom who calmly walked forward with her red and gold eyes flaring with light, the beasts left paw came down and Pom simply jumped high enough to drop down on its left knee which she jammed a golden claw of energy into. Pom wasn’t holding back on the anti-magic energy with these things. The crippling blow to its left leg, made Behemoth dart its mouth forward. As the magical claw was anti-magic it didn’t set off the behemoths highly explosive magic ability. The teeth of the behemoth snapped at Pom’s rear paws as she tagged its neck with a length of braided of wool and clambered up the left side of the Behemoth’s neck to launch out another length of braided of wool that connected with the first. Standing on the back of the Behemoth’s neck as she pulled on her wool, the Behemoth reared up and then the wool started rotating into its thick neck. “Rope saw.” Pom intoned and with a heave the braided completed rope of wool rapidly rotating and vibrating against the Behemoth’s neck to start painfully tearing through its thick hide in a quick manner. The behemoth thrashed beneath Pom and struggled for a few seconds until half its neck was shredded and then the loop of braided wool swiftly pulled inward when the resistance ceased entirely after the wool finally went through its spine and promptly cut the Behemoth’s head off entirely. The wool receded back into being the wolf like exoskeleton of Sheep’s Clothing covering Pom’s canine form. “Aren’t behemoths capable of taking hundreds of tank shells without being affected because their skin is so thick and tough?” Elise asked with wide eyed terror as she slithered backwards around a bar with her tail loosely wrapped around her it. “Let’s get by the other Behemoth before she can get us!” Cruel had loss all sense of planning, as had Crazy as they immediately started attacking the other Behemoth as Pom calmly walked toward the other end of the room that Cruel and Crazy were trying to bypass the Behemoth watching the other entrance. Wolves rose up to guard the second exit to this room and some were already making way for the third exit before either Cruel or Crazy could escape being stuck in a room with Pom. “Her eyes are open now, please work!” Elise, being a living flesh and blood being, wasn’t under Moon Cell’s control. She wouldn’t know or understand the reason for the ban from using magic on Pom directly as Crazy had summoned her completely free of Moon Cell’s influence and completely alive. A conical beam of light struck Pom and she stared into it and kept walking as a powerful golden glow of her wools protective effect reflected the magic entirely back onto poor Elise, in an unfortunate moment Elise’s tail loosened and she started falling towards the floor encased in stone. Pom immediately burst forward with an exhaled without inhaling first, the stockpiled Dancing Flame was finally being put to use as she surged forward to being underneath a falling Elise and her limbs burned to move so fast. If she hadn’t been pacing herself, then such movements would have immediately exhausted Pom. The stone encased Elise stopped five feet before she hit the floor and several shimmers in the air could be seen around her body and she slowly seemingly floated down to the floor. As soon as she was laying on the floor, the shimmering around her disappeared. Pom had three wolves keep Elise pinned to prevent her from killing herself if she got free of the stone and made sure she had a hole around her mouth to breathe freely, Pom then set her sights on Cruel and Crazy. Elise just gave Pom an opportunity all on her own volition, warped sheep wasn’t going to waste it now. Stalking towards the two remaining naga, Pom watched as Crazy was blasted back and she hastily avoided the stomping paw of the behemoth. Once the naga and behemoth were in range, Pom quietly called out her next attack… she needed to be fast about this. “Full 'Fluffy' Feral Flurry.” A shimmering started building up and surrounded Pom distorting the air as she stalked forward and with a flicker she disappeared, she blew through every ounce of Dancing Flame she had until an imaginary candle was worn down to the barest of embers. A second later Pom was turned around and limping back towards Elise, while breathing roughly at expending so much energy in one go and that had been one of the most powerful burst attacks she’d ever performed. Pom now had five seconds to achieve her goals... Looking over Elise who just managed to break her upper torso free of her stone encasement, but quickly found herself pinned down by the shadowy wolf’s teeth biting into her wrists and one pressing its paws into her lower belly. The two naga and the behemoth froze, then they finally started falling apart covered in claw marks and thin lines of precisely cut flesh. “Come back…” A wide eyed Elise tried, but Pom wasn’t going to give her the time to actually recover. “I’m sorry…” Pom’s terrifying eyes soon descended on Elise, this was going to be the end of the hunt and she couldn’t hold back. The wild transformed canine’s teeth dug into Elise’s neck and with a ripping sound Elise felt her life barely hanging on by a thread as her throat was tore out and she watched Pom actively chewed it twice before swallow it, scales and all. “To life…” Could still be heard coming from the gurgling bloodied throat of Elise and Pom quickly stopped her with her next move. With a hint of frustration at Pom’s bloodied mouth opened wide and she bit down deeply into shattering Elise’s ribcage and, with a powerful yank, she pulled out Elise’s heart free from her chest. It even managed to beat once before Pom bit down and quickly chunked it with her fangs before swallowing. “Res…” Elise couldn’t get any further as Pom continued on to eat her lungs and then started to violently tear into the organs in her belly with reckless abandon and a wild fury, this was her one shot and she was not wasting it because Elise couldn’t control herself when it came to resurrecting Cruel and Crazy. The fighting spirit wolves backed away from their queen and the world grew cold and dark for Elise. A rabid Pom’s gold and red eyes widened as she realized how far she was going and she swallowed what was in her mouth as she realized what was happening to her, she quickly back away shaking her head in horror at how good Elise tasted and that she had actually enjoyed consuming flesh and ingesting a large quantity of the naga's blood. This moment was going to haunt Pom for the rest of her fairly short life, given her left leg now was three quarters covered in golden wool. What a successful hunt it was, unfortunately Pom wasn’t a wolf or even a true full on canine and didn’t want to take any more joy in what she had to do. Brining her paws up to her head Pom started crying and curled up while becoming a whimpering mess on the floor, she had managed to stop the resurrection before it could go off… even without her heart in her chest Elise was still going to pull it off until Pom ravaged and savaged her beyond recognition. Pom was mentally asking Elise for forgiveness after tearing her open like she had and kept praying that the reviver seed would do what she hoped it would. It had to work… it just had to, after all of that! Slowly Pom came down from her beast mode and started returning to normal with a blood covered face and chest, a bright white light shined out from Elise starting around the right side of her hood. The lambkin was far too upset with herself for losing control like that to even glance at the revival process the Reviver Seed finally decided to start. -Pom- ... Life was a yawning void at the moment and staring into the abyss, I could only hope that what I did here was worth the suffering that comes with it. As the void was now staring back into me with judgement. … I sacrificed a lot for this victory and my left leg was almost completely covered, I wasn’t even trying to suppress it at the moment as my left leg filled out and a small bit of golden wool came up to surrounding my right hind ankle and then it stopped. … Just one step closer to a grave conclusion. Was it worth it? … -Elise- Wha… Cruel? Crazy? What happened to me? What did Pom do? Why did she do all that only for me to still be alive afterwards? How am I even alive afterwards?! I sat up and heard a whimpering and looked over at a curled blood covered Pom, she sounded almost like a puppy. Something fell from my hood… the seed? What was going on? Why did everything seem so quiet all of the sudden. … It took me a moment to realize, but my soul… it hadn’t felt like this since before… since before Merak captured me at my home when I was just trying to play an online game and keep to myself, before I was tortured, before even the existence of Cruel and Crazy. I could kind of feel them, they were both… just part of me again I want to say? Was… was I whole… that… how… this shouldn’t be possible?! The Sumeragi group had separated those chunks of my soul permanently if still connected by the barest of tethers or at least that’s what I thought they had done to me. They had damaged me so badly that I thought something like this... this is a miracle! “Why…” I croaked out hesitantly, my throat felt perfectly fine now. My chest was perfectly fine as was the beating heart in it and it was like Pom had never tore me open in the first place. I picked up the seed and then looked at Pom and then at the seed. I calmly stowed the seed back in my hood… a reminder, a keepsake and something to think on as many unanswered questions flooded my mind. How can someone so powerful, so incredible and so devastating be so… weak, meek and look so defeated and so forlorn. Like I had been at one point… Did she… did she just actively mentally destroy herself for me?! I… but I wasn’t worth that kind of effort! So who would be so stupid enough to… she would, because she in fact did. Her actions spoke louder than any words could, even the words ‘I’m sorry’ didn’t quite match up to the entirety of all the actions she took for my sake. A bunch of crawlers came into the room moving around the slowly disappearing corpse of the shredded behemoth and drew my attention. One of the crawlers red eyes focused on Pom and it started building up electricity to fire on the sheep, she wasn’t getting up to defend herself and… was she just going to take that attack?! She wasn’t moving, she wasn’t dead, I could hear her heart beating and she could obviously hear them coming to attack her, was she just that tired? Was my thought of her mentally destroying herself true? A blast of electricity flashed out for Pom only to be intercepted by a Search Snake with a jewel in its head and it took me a moment to realize that I had reflexively thrown it. Said Search Snake writhed in pleasure and gave off a happy demented grin that should not be present on a snakes face as it hissed cheerfully. Crazy? The snake grinned wildly at me while wiggling her tongue jovially while making a bunch of discordant humming noises in good humor. I summoned a second Search Snake in my left claw with a gem in its forehead, it gave me a calculating look before leaping off and moving forward to sit at the crazy grinning snake’s side. Cruel? The snake gave me a slight look of disdain for not recognizing her immediately, but she forgave me while smiling like a snake really shouldn’t be capable of. It was as if it was a sure thing that I could actively be dumb enough to not immediately recognize a part of myself. I moved, slithering my way to be in front of Pom and glared at the robots as a full blown lance formed itself to sit neatly in my right claw and I glared at them. The tip of the spear had a very familiar glaive shape to it, I grinned as that shape was no longer something to fear and could no longer contain me. Here I had thought I could only create knives and snakes, I could probably make it more like a staff like my video game character before Merak took me… I’ll worry about aesthetics of the spear later, now I had to return an impossible favor several times over! I really couldn’t cower in fear anymore! I could feel the two Search Snakes mirroring my attitude and there was no disagreements, no belittling of who I was, no self-deprecation, no pain, no suffering and the two large snakes made me feel safer than I have ever felt in a long time. In fact the two were being a little overly positive and egging me forward to get out of my shell, they now just wanted me to be strong and to live! I had a bucket list now and Merak topped that list a thousand times over since I knew he was here! As my claws tightened their grip on the spear, there was no doubt in my heart that I was free and... WE… WERE… ONE! I surged forth, aiming my spear forward with Cruel and Crazy loyally at my side! -Origin Space, Bahamut- “A hero is willing to sacrifice for every little chance to achieve something greater than themselves.” I held out my left claw. “Yes, but how much more can she sacrifice and how much more is she willing to do so?” My sister might be somewhat evil, but Tiamat had a point. Pom lost a lot of ground this day to her Chrysomallus heritage by pushing herself too far. “King Evan is making headway into Yaksha and befriending the dark types, only the northeastern side of Ransei is imperiled… but then again they are the types that are my most stubborn children in battle.” Arceus was rather proud of the civilization of beings he created and he should be, they were quite fascinating to watch in action. “I can see Amaterasu is making moves in the digital realms.” Tiamat commented idly. “She alone is almost pushing back the entirety of Moon Cell’s forces. Also I note that she and Solgaleo certainly have an odd friendship.” “I will not question my children’s methods, Solgaleo has the ability to cross dimensions and thus somehow convinced Amaterasu to aid our worlds by sending her forth to glorious battle in the digital realms.” Arceus was a sucker for friendship, then again so was I whenever I ran into a group of four people fighting the world with everything they had whether they be heroes for light or darkness.