When one Path Crosses Another......

First topic message reminder :

(I generally specify an age when these start, so Imma say this happened about a year ago; when Fox was 15.)

Kitsuné Fira, commonly known as "Fox" by practically all who met her, was making her way down some random road outside her hometown one sunny day. She wasn't looking for anything in particular as she walked, just something to do. She had noticed that things typically came along when she was just randomly out and about. Zepher was off flying somewhere, so Fox was totally on her own at that point in time.

By the time Pika had caught up, he had only been able to see the figure move away and disappear, yet another thing for him to add to his list of things that confused him about the whole venture out to the area.
"What the heck was that?" He asked Fox, trying to see if the figure was still around, until he heard the loud roaring of something close by.
"And what was that? Seriously, what the hell is all of this?" Pika continued to ask, as if voicing his own confused and slightly worried, although he would never admit that, thoughts. Without waiting for an answer, he walked over to the doorway and examined it quickly to see if there was anything special about it, and looked back at Fox.
"So, is this safe to go through? Or is some kind of magic trap door going to open and send us to our doom?" He questioned sarcastically, smirking and trying to lighten the situation.

"That........ Thing. That vibe it gave me leads me to suspect..." Fox began, as though she doubted her own words. ".....It was something from beyond the gate. Brought to earth by human hands. In other words, it was a homunculus of some classification. And the presence of a homunculus here leads me to only one conclusion. Something has been meddled with somewhere in this temple..... And we gotta correct it." Fox concluded grimly. "Correcting any darkness within this Temple is crucial, because if I'm right... It has a connection to Arceus himself. And the tarnishing of this space would allow the ill will and corruption of this world to seep directly into the Hall of Origin itself!" Fox grimaced. She began to suspect that the roars they were hearing we're coming from an agitated guardian of some sort.

"I suspect that doorway is going to lead us to some conflict." Fox told Pika as he turned to face her. "Which means...... LAST ONE IN'S A ROTTEN GRIMER EGG!!!" she hollered as she dashed past Pika towards the large opening in the wall.

"Wait, did you just say the Hall of Origin?" Pika asked, finally realizing what Fox had just said about the figure, energy and the melding. "Well crap, how are we supposed to correct it again?" He continued, and watched as Fox ran past him into the doorway.
"Hey, mind filling me in on whatever plan you have? Besides rushing in head-first?" Pika continued to question, catching up to Fox and running in with her. He was feeling slightly annoyed at the fact he was being led along so much, and didn't really know what was going on. Maybe I should look into some of this, read up on it when we get out of here. He thought to himself.

"Pffffft, plan? This IS the plan! Nothing wrong with good old-fashioned running into danger hea- HAAAOOOOOOOOOOLY" Fox called back to Pika as she ran under one final arch, but instead of entering a chamber with an angry Pokemon in it, she ended up falling from the sky and onto the main roof of the ruins. "Ow, jeezus..... Did I really just fall through a Spatial Rift?" Fox grumbled as she stood up and cracked her back.

Seeing Fox suddenly disappear, Pika skidded to a halt in front of the final arch and looked at it curiously, wondering what the heck had happened. "Fox, are, uh, you there? Can you hear me?" He called out, having absolutely no idea where she went. He stuck his arm through the arch way, checking to see if it led to anywhere and completely ignoring anything that was ahead of the final arch.

Through the rift, Pika could faintly be heard calling to Fox. Her sensitive ears picked up the faint sound easily and she immediately called back, "Yeah, I'm here. Arceus damn it all, I think I fractured something though. My chest feels like absolute hell." she groaned as she clutched at her ribs. She looked around and sighed. "Well, there's no way we're getting to the chamber the normal way. It looks like this place is riddled with spacial rifts."

Pika could barely hear Fox yell to him from the rift, but managed to pick up a few key phrases such as there being probably more then one of them. He sighed a bit, running a hand through his hair as he thought about what they could do.
"Well, what do you have in mind then to get there? I'm not really fond of following you through the rift, but I can't think of anything else either." He asked, and took a look around the area he was in, wondering if there were any more rifts in the hall he should be worried about. He also made the sudden realization that he was now alone until he regrouped with Fox, meaning if that guardian or homunculus found him he would most likely be screwed, without someone like her to inform him on what it was.

Fox inhaled sharply as she tried (and failed miserably) to sit up. She eased herself back down to the ground, deciding not to put too much effort into sitting up at the moment. She pondered over Pika's question. "Rifts work like doorways. They generally only go from one place to another; meaning if I were able to get up right now and jump back through that rift I just fell through, I'd end up in the room we were just in." Fox practically screamed, trying to make herself more audible. "However, a rift's destination can be changed. It would take a real expert to do that though. And this place is riddled with them, so there's a pretty awesome chance that whoever is making them isn't really paying too much attention to one little rift out of hundreds. So you'd probably be okay jumping through." She continued to holler, wincing in pain as her diaphragm expanded against her wound.

"Pika blinked, sheathing his sword he had been fiddling with for the time being as he considered Fox's suggestion. "Are you sure going through the rift is a good idea?" He yelled back, before stepping towards it and taking a breath out of nerves, and entering. What he found wasn't where Fox had ended up, but instead was...Space? You've got to be-OH CRAP, COLD AND SUFFOCATING Pika immediately thought as he started to freeze, staying barely warm enough to survive but feelings his lungs contract and squeeze closed. Kicking and flailing a bit, he managed to push himself back into the rift with the help of zero gravity and landed back on the ground he had come from, coughing and wheezing. "Bad idea, it was a bad idea!" He yelled again, coughing slightly before walking to the rift. "I'll try it again, hope for the best." He added and held his breath, jumping through and this time finding himself falling. He let out a slight yell as he hit the area Fox had initially landed on, knocking the wind out of him for a moment.

Fox only shook her head as she listened to Pika scream about jumping through the rift being a bad idea. "You obviously broke it; just jump through like a normal person and it'll work." She called out, and suddenly she was nearly crushed by a falling Pika. It took a very fast and very painful barrel roll to avoid being squashed by Pikabutt. "BRO. SERIOUSLY." Fox coughed not-so happily, laying on her side with her arms wrapped around her torso. "Let's break more of my bones, shall we? Not even going to give me some recovery time. Not that I haven't broken bones before and then just kept going without getting them treated or anything... But not the point!" she protested and grumbled.

"I just went to space." Pika deadpanned, lying on the ground for a few moments before getting to his feet, a few of his bones letting out a cracking sound. "Alright, let's not do that again anytime soon. But now what do we do?" He asked Fox, also coughing and still breathing a bit heavily, placing his hands on his sides. Of course, the fall had hurt quite a bit, and plus the weapons he had attached to his back that were conveniently there when he landed on it didn't help the fall either. Despite that, he felt he had taken worse hits, and didn't want to be outdone by Fox anyways in stamina.

Fox pulled herself off the ground in one quick motion, yet using as much caution as possible. Despite her efforts, however, as she stood a very loud and sickening "snap" was heard coming from her chest as well. "For the love of all things good..." she hissed. She untucked her shirt and pulled it up about an inch, revealing a small trickle of blood that was quickly increasing from a trickle to a small stream. The blossoming wet patch around seven inches up from her hip indicated the location of a fresh wound. "Oh come ON!!!" Fox groaned in frustration. "Those took me seven hours to finish and refine..."

Fox got some of the blood from her side from her fingertips and started to draw on the ground; her breath becoming shallow so to avoid expanding her chest too far. "Heh. We have no choice buddy. If we DON'T jump through these things and find their source, then instead of being mostly consentrated here at the Temple like I suspect they are, these things are gonna be riddled all over the world. Could you imagine? If they made it to the roads and highways, cars could drive right through them and end up causing all kinds of damage and get into all kinds of fatal accidents. Space Shuttles would blast off into them and end up nuking a region full of innocent people. You just got unlucky." Fox snorted at him as she worked on the circular symbol at her feet. "Anyway, it probably wasn't all THAT horrible. Somtimes people just need some Space." she said casually with a slight smirk on her face.

With the circlular pattern mostly finished, Fox started to pull her shirt up to the now much larger blood stain. There were a few thin, long needle-like item stuck into her side who-knows-how deep. She grimaced and the grabbed the other broken parts from the hidden inner pants pocket they had been in.

"Dammit. They must have gotten stuck in my side somehow when I rolled away. Probably got weakend by the impact of that fall, got stuck in when I rolled, and then snapped when I stood up..." she muttered. She looked at the things stuck in her side again and paused for a moment as yet another thought registered in her mind.

".......Shiiiiiit. Shit Shit Shi- oh BLOODY HELL!" she suddenly exclaimed in anger and a tinge of panic. She started racing to finish the formula; beads of sweat suddenly appearing in great numbers on her face. She coughed a little and spat blood. "Damn it all. These were laced with neurotoxin..."

[Ooc: Heh, you're not the only one who can make a Portal referance... but in all seriousness, it's more than just that XDD]

Pika crouched down and took a few deep breaths, trying to recover some stamina and not noticing Fox start to draw on the ground. "Quite the artist, but I don't think this is the time. Unless it's something magical, which honestly I wouldn't doubt at this point." He commented as he stood up and turned to see Fox drawing on the ground with blood, and listened to what she had to say. "So wait a minute. This stuff is end of the world material? That seems kind of dangerous and important, doesn't it? Maybe we should get some help, like didn't you say you had friends or-wait neurotoxin?" Pika asked as he processed everything. "...Why do you have needles laced with neurotoxin with you?"

Fox wheezed and spat more blood than the last time. The needles were all stuck in randomly like swords stabbed into a box in a magic act; but there was no way to know if Fox had been stabbed in anything vital. The fact that she was alive was promising, but there was still the neurotoxin to worry about. "This is actually an Alchahestry circle. It's a slightly different variety of alchemy, but it's different enough that it's considered to be its own art." She explained as she finished the odd-looking transmutation circle and trying her hardest to stay calm, which had to be pretty hard seeing as she was sitting around with a number of neurotoxin-laced needles that varied from being as long as he torso was wide to longer. Even though parts of them had broken off, the majority were now in he chest cavity. If she moved around too much she could literally feel them moving around inside her, making it even harder to stay calm. She wasn't just trying to look tough in front of Pika, however. It was urgently important to her survival that she remained in a relative state of calm.

"Well, I dont really have a weapon of my own like your swords, so I create them with alchemy. Humans arent always the only thing I rough up..." she joked and wheezed. "The neurotoxin shouldn't activate if I stay pretty calm... And even if it does it shouldn't do much if it's in my blood. I programmed it that way; so that if accidents happened my own chemicals wouldn't kill me." Fox explained through pitiful breaths. You could hear a light liquid gurgle as she spoke, and in response Fox coughed and spat more blood. She should have been screaming from all the massive amounts pain she was feeling as her body woke up from shock, but she kept still because of the neurotoxin. "Auugh... And I wouldn't say it's the end of the world material. It COULD end the world as we know it, but I'm sure you figured that. Humans are resiliant; we'd probably find a way to live with the changes. I have a feeling that this is just a defense mechanism of sorts, though. Once we find the source and solve the problem, they should go away and things will be fine....." Fox continued to gasp. It was a wonder that, despite being stabbed full of needles like a voodoo doll, she was still able, and WILLING even, to stop and explain things to Pika if for no other reason to put him at ease. Fox didn't often take this much of a shining to people straight off the bat.

"In any case... I think we need to work on finding another rift next. I actually have highly specialized senses, almost in the "sixth sense" sort of way... Well not really. But all that's really important for you to know now is that I can sense the rifts..." Fox told Pika with sort breaths, and she carefully reached for and then grabbed the end of one of the needles. Her arm trembled violently as she did this, presumably her body trying to fight her because of the state it was in. "And I think, if I really try, I can probably sense where they go. Can't guarantee my accuracy, but it's the best we got..."

She took a deep breath, and with a hard swallow and a tiny and reluctant whimper under her breath, she began to yank the needle out with all her strength.

She bit her lip to keep from screaming at the initial pain, and tears appeared at the corners of her eyes as the needle slid out in an agonizingly slow fashion. Despite this, however, she tried to maintain the conversation normally; as if it wasn't even happening. "I-it shhould be enough to ge-et us through... and hopefully we can find the source and make thingssss right....." she continued tenaciously through clenched teeth as she yanked. By some miracle, she was actually managing to speak in a relatively normal tone under all the pain and the tears she was fighting. No matter what she did, the needle refused to slide out any faster than it already was.

"S-sorry you... you have to see this, by the w-way... It's probably hard to get my 'point' through my clenched t-" she half-snorted with a tiny smile at her feeble yet genuine attempt at witty humor with a dark little pun, but it was short-lived as the smirk on her face was suddenly replaced with a look of wild pain. She threw her head back and finally screamed in a blood curdling fashion as the needle finally slid it's way out. She immediately lost her grip on the thing, which was just under a foot long, and it clattered onto the stone roof; rolling aways to the side before finally stopping. She exhaled heavily and immediately drew another sharp breath, and then with a few light sobs she fell onto her uninjured side. "I..... can't do it again...... I just..... You have to pull them out. I'm afraid they might be releasing the neurotoxin. I don't know for sure..." sha called to Pika pitifully, her eyes searching for him in vain as the blurry world around her was obscured more by the tears that would roll from her eyes every few minutes. She was still trying to hold back her emotions, trying to stall the neurotoxin as long as she possibly could. She quivered a little.

"Pull them out...... Hurry...."

Pika looked down at Fox as she talked to him, listening to what she had to say. As she spoke and started to push out a needle he already knew what she was going to ask. "Fox, there's fourteen needles in your side. If you go unconscious while I pull them out and you can't heal yourself you'll die." He commented, and then shook his head. She'll die of neurotoxin if you don't. We wouldn't want that, would we? Then again, maybe you do... What? No, now go away for a few minutes.
"Fine, make sure you're ready." He told Fox, and walked over to her. He grabbed onto one needle, getting ready to pull.
"I'll count to three, okay? One, two-" He started, and then pulled. The jerk was sudden, and Pika lost his footing, falling back. Once he got back up he saw that the needle was only partly out. Crap...No hesitation, no mercy. Just pull it out and ignore the blood splashes. Leave me alone. I'm not talking to you. Pika grabbed the needle again and pulled, this time getting it out. He tossed it aside and grabbed on to the second.
There's one...two...three...Come on, stop frowning. You're enjoying this. Not talking to you. Four...five...six...seven...But you are, and your acknowledgement is enough. If you can hear me you're already nearing the edge. Not talking. Eight...nine...ten...eleven...But you are, and you don't even know it. The deeper parts of you are whispering, like gleeful children. It's human nature to enjoy pain and misery. Twelve...thirteen...Your most primal instincts are dying to get out. How much pain have you put her in in the past minute alone and not felt remorse? ...You enjoy this, whether you know it or not. Now, you're weak, emotionally and physically. Just let me help you pull out the last needle and we can have some fun with her- Fourteen.
Pika stumbled back a few steps and fell down, landing on his back. He had pulled out the final needle and, as much as he didn't want to say, was exhausted. "There...better..." He mumbled, sitting up and holding his hand to his head as if in pain. There were some specks of blood on his pants and torso area, from the pulling out of the needles. He seemed to almost be chuckling in a low voice as he closed his eyes for a moment.