d[center][h3]Confession: Resentment[/h3]
[b]Setting:[/b] Moon Mountain, Wintry Thursday Afternoon
Blazermate, Roxas & Co.
[b]Word Count:[/b] 1680 (+3)[/center]

Before the climb could resume, the matter of all the dropped spirits needed to be resolved. What resulted was a selection of several loot items. And as the Seekers looked them over and talked about who should be taking what, Roxas curiously took a look at the items himself. Most of them were weapons that he unfortunately could not use due to his fusion with Ramza’s spirit. And while it might have been tempting to join Ramattra in using the Spirit Orb to redo his fusions, in the end Roxas decided not to. He was already so used to wielding his Keyblades and his Medabot parts that it was hard to imagine switching to anything else right now.

As such, most of the items were things he would not be able to capitalize on. But the collar and stickers did catch his eye. Those were items that could be used by pets, and he imagined Pokemon qualified as such. And so he decided to humbly take the two stickers.

[hider=For Roxas]
[b]Hardback Sticker[/b]
Sticker that can be slapped on a creature container to bestow the beast within the passive ability Hardback, reducing all damage except critical and fire-type damage

[b]New Leaf Sticker[/b]
Sticker that can be slapped on a creature container to bestow the beast within the move New Leaf, a plant-type status move that purges statuses
[/hider]

Given the way the stickers seemed to function, it wasn’t incredibly difficult to decide which Poke Balls to put them on. He put the Hardback Sticker on Turbo’s ball, knowing she was already quite able to take hits due to being a Steel-type as well as her Filter ability. The sticker would simply amplify that further. As for the New Leaf sticker, after some thought he put it on Shocker’s Poke Ball - deciding that the tricky ghost could do well with a support move that paired with its ability to vanish and zip around with Double Team.

But after that was all sorted out, it was time to continue the climb. Compared to most Seekers, the ascent was slightly less difficult for the Nobody between his Flow Motion and his ability to create safety platforms for himself using his Phantom Ruby constructs. But even that wasn’t a guarantee that he was always safe, as he did nearly slip once or twice. And because Scamp was following him outside of his Poke Ball, that meant Roxas had to be careful about using his constructs so that they wouldn’t accidentally harm his Pokemon. 

There weren’t a whole lot of items that interested Blazermate, and as she didn’t take a cat, she followed the group up the chilling mountain. While she did feel cold, it didn’t actually affect her negatively so she wasn’t going to make a big deal unless she started to freeze. As they got up the mountain, a deep fog seemed to roll in. A fog followed shortly by a blizzard…or perhaps a curtain of pure darkness. There was something strange about this blizzard, as Blazermate saw that her team mates seemed to disappear one by one. She and Roxas picked up the pace to catch up to the frontrunners, forging higher along the path, but encountered nobody before they caught sight of a dark, yawning cave entrance a little higher up. Maybe the others had taken shelter inside.

Keeping herself attached to Roxas, Blazermate made a dash for the cave, being forced to land due to the intense winds. Although on the ground she was a lot slower. Reaching the cave wasn’t a simple matter for Roxas either. Scamp being outside his Poke Ball meant he couldn’t just create platforms liberally. So as a necessary measure, he temporarily recalled the Boltund to his ball where it was safe. After that he could be a bit more liberal about placing a platform - or more importantly - a wall to help block the winds a bit, [color=gold]”Just be careful not to touch those.”[/color] Roxas quickly advised Blazermate, [color=gold]”They’ll harm anyone else besides me who does.”[/color] As long as Roxas was moving faster than blazermate or doing flowmotion, due to her medigun she basically mirrored his movement, although being smaller than him meant she got really close to, but didn’t touch the blocks if they were used for movement.

The pair’s quick, deft footwork allowed them to cover ground quickly, taking an alternative, more vertical path than the trail that Edward’s ironclad must have blazed. Once they reached the higher cliff, they quickly ducked inside the crevice, plunged into the dark. Between the Frozen Highland’s perennial night and the uncanny shroud that seemed to now curtain Moon Mountain, there was nothing but total blackness in every direction, with the entrance they’d just come through completely lost to sight.

[color=0072bc]”Is this another Master Hand trial thing or something? All that just…. Suddenly happened.”[/color] Blazermate said, pointing a thumb back at the cave entrance that, she soon found disappeared as the cave got super dark. [color=0072bc]”I hope the others are ok.”[/color]

[color=gold]”Me, too.”[/color] Roxas said softly. Rather than call Scamp back out, he instead released Shocker, hoping the Rotom’s glow could give them at least a small light to see with.

The light illuminated only a tiny portion of the space in which the few found themselves, but rather worryingly, that area did not include the cavern’s exit. Even the frigid wind that raged around the mountain’s snowy heights had faded into the distance, although as it evanesced, Blazermate and Roxas became gradually aware of another sound: breathing, shallow but enormous, and very close by.

Then, from the darkness, the monster appeared. Half-hidden in shadow and bizarre in shape, the Seekers couldn’t be sure just what they were looking at for a few moments. It seemed oddly draconic in aspect, although on closer inspection it more resembled a gigantic, floating set of organs, a pair of huge lungs in place of wings with a windpipe that craned forward like a reptilian neck, albeit with nothing but waving yellowish tubules where the head should be. An enormous, five-pointed iron crown encircled its neck like a collar, and its trunk dangled against the floor.

The [url=https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/908bfdbf997f.png]Seething Sigh[/url] stertorous avatar of ill-concealed rage, inhaled.

[color=0072bc]”And there it is. Get ready Roxas, I think we got a fight ahead of us.”[/color] Blazermate said, noting that they were a group of 2 against this monster.

[color=gold]”Why do they always have to look so creepy?”[/color] Roxas said as he quickly got to work casting his usual buffs: Tailwind for speed and Aeroga for defense - on himself, Blazermate, and even Shocker, [color=gold]”Shocker - use Double Team!”[/color] He commanded before vanishing into his usual opening StepSword attack from somewhere behind the monster.

“Ro-tototot~” Shocker chirped as it obeyed its Trainer’s command. The toaster-shaped Rotom started zipping around in the air so fast that it began leaving behind confusing afterimages to make itself harder to accurately hit with attacks.

As Roxas and his Pokemon cast their buffs, the Sigh made its move simultaneously. A sonic expulsion rippled outward from its many tubules as it unleashed Wrath and Rancor. Its red-hot rage dealt only a little damage as it slammed into Roxas, but it burned him, and more worryingly left his mind swimming from two points of Stress. The keyblade wielder was nothing if not collected however, and the next second his StepSword bit into the back of the Sigh’s unguarded core in an instant act of revenge.

Blazermate was a bit more defensive at least at the start of combat, but seeing as it was only her and Roxas, she’d probably need to be more aggressive than normal. First though she had to see how this thing generally attacked before she did things. Having only herself and Roxas to heal made her healing much more simple, but if Roxas wasn’t taking constant damage it’d take much longer to charge her projectile shield and uber, but the latter she could supplement with ubersaw hits. But she did have some offensive powers, and threw a Disseminate at the creature, making damage dealt to the main body also deal damage to the lungs at a 25% ratio and following it up with a divine star which did very little damage, but would help her healing.

A moment later, the Seething Sigh pumped all the air still collected in its lung out of its tubes in an uproarious Sundering Exhalation. A concussive wall of wind and sound slammed into everyone present, although Shocker managed to dodge it, to deal a serious chunk of damage and two points of Stress. Then the horror took another shallow breath, and its other lung inflated in turn.

[color=gold]”Ah!”[/color] Roxas cried out as the wall of wind slammed him back. Blazermate didn’t fare much better, getting thrown back into a wall with a [color=0072bc]”Kyu~”[/color]. This gave him the inkling that his usual tactics might not suffice here if the monster could just produce something like this capable of defending its flank or hitting him even while he was trying to be invisible with Poltergeist. What were they even dealing with? The mounting stress made it increasingly difficult to resist the urge to panic. For now he just instinctively reacted with an area attack of his own, [color=gold]”Thunder!”[/color] He called down a Thundaga to strike the area around him with a short series of lightning bolt strikes.

Blazermate meanwhile just healed up the damage dealt to both of them, Roxas having taken much less damage thanks to his overheal. [color=0072bc]”Hey Roxas, my abilities charge faster if you take damage. As weird as it sounds, try to manage taking a few hits so I can charge them faster. I got a feeling we’ll need to do a lot of damage to this guy so he stops oing that.”[/color]