[center][h3]Confession: Resentment II[/h3]
[b]Setting:[/b] Moon Mountain, Wintry Thursday Afternoon
Blazermate, Roxas & Co.
[b]Word Count:[/b] 1867 (+3)

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9EfeBasfqk[/youtube][/center]

Within Moon Mountain, wind howled and lightning struck–not because of some inclement weather outside, but thanks to the uproarious Sundering Exhalation of the Seething Sigh, and the desperate Thundaga of the keyblade wielder the Exhalation nearly blew away. Blazermate began to patch him up right away, but Roxas knew that this little team -separated from the other Seekers by the mountain’s inexplicable darkness- couldn’t keep taking hits like that. His magic descended in a deluge of yellow bolts to electrocute both the Seething Sigh itself and the lung filled by its Shallow Breath. Each blast did respectable damage, though their random pattern left them scattered and inconsistent, not quite enough to deflate the lung. A few seconds remained before another Sundering Exhalation would strike the Seekers with withering force, strong enough to leave Blazermate -whose medibeam couldn’t be turned upon herself- in dire straits.

Of course, the monstrous, draconic Sigh would do its best to ensure that its Exhalation came to pass. It unleashed its infernal Blind Rage, granting itself a Block+ token to reduce its next instance of damage received by 75%, while afflicting Roxas with two Blind tokens, each of which would halve a single attack’s accuracy.

Blazermate could clean up those blind tokens with her cleanse ability, but giving damage to the creature would be a bit more difficult for her. She could heal herself a bit with her own passive regeneration and a thrown Divine Star which would remove the creature’s Block+ token, but real damage would be difficult until her projectile shield was charged. She did have a couple things she could do though, and one of them was an angry senator with a bit of an explosive temper. Summoning Armstrong, Blazermate sent him at the boss with him barreling through the creature before letting off a great ground explosion, damaging everything the creature had. It proved to be enough to pop the Sigh’s lung and prevent Sundering Exhalation for the time being, and the wound Armstrong left on the beast itself was nothing to scoff at, either.

[color=0072bc]”Hey Roxas, how well can you use flowmation here? If you can get me to the spots I tell you to go easily, I can help with more damage.”[/color] Blazermate said, knowing that Roxas couldn’t see the cracks in the ground she could that’d unleash exploding ghosts. She often didn’t attack with these unless it was convenient as they were often out of the way, but this room wasn’t super large and Roxas had snappier movement than she did.

[color=gold]”Okay, got it!”[/color] Roxas said, an idea forming. He used his Phantom Ruby to create a cluster of virtual cubes that he scattered about the area. These would hopefully provide a bit of hindered movement to the Sigh while giving Roxas some much needed launching points, [color=gold]”Hold tight!”[/color]

The pair had only a precious couple seconds to converse before the Seething Sigh inhaled again to inflate the lung closer to the team, beginning another round of combat. This time, it unleashed Hysteria, a deafening cacophony of trumpet blasts targeting Blazermate. It dealt some damage, not too much but enough to be somewhat scary given her state after the first Sundering Exhalation, but the side effects were much worse. It inflicted Weak to halve the damage of her next attack, a point of Stress, and caused a shuffle; the medabot got yanked forward as Roxas and his pets got shunted away.

[color=gold]”Blazermate?”[/color] Roxas called, hoping his medabot friend was okay as he staggered to his feet. Apparently that blast managed to catch Shocker as well, but the Rotom didn’t look seriously hurt just yet. [color=gold]”Use Double Team again, buddy.”[/color] Roxas said through heavy breaths, [color=gold]”And this time, pelt him with Swift as much as you can.”[/color] With that he went into movement to try and find and reconnect with Blazermate as quickly as possible.

Shocker, meanwhile, obeyed his commands. The Rotom chirped and quickly separated into multiple afterimages yet again. But this time he followed that up by shooting volleys of yellowish colored stars at the Sigh. They weren’t super strong in the damage department, but they were reliable - able to home in and ensure that no shot missed. And as a bonus, they could hit up to two targets at once at the cost of splitting the overall damage between them. It would take more than that to deal with the Seething Sigh’s lung, however.

While the debuff on Blazermate didn’t last long, being dispelled by her rain coat, being knocked away was a bigger problem. Roxas knew what this meant though, and reconnected with her as both sides, upon recovering, went back to join each other. Blazermate didn’t have anything else damage wise to help with the inflating lungs that looked like they were about to burst, so she prepared to get her and Roxas in her Holy Word Salvation dome to not only heal both of them, but also make them both immune to the damage of the oncoming super attack.

A moment later, the Sigh released its Sundering Exhalation. The concentrated force of a gale rammed into Blazermate’s Salvation dome, yet the miraculous barrier held firm for another moment until it disappeared in a shimmer. Still, while the dome negated the blast’s damage and restored some of that dealt by its predecessor, it did not prevent two points of Stress piling onto everyone present. By now, with six points of Stress, Roxas’ mind was under duress. His vision swam, menacing voices reached him from all directions, and filthy claws teased at the edge of his sanity. 

The Seething Sigh breathed in, inflating one lung.

[color=gold]”No, no, no…”[/color] Roxas said, his breathing getting heavier, [color=gold]”Not like this…”[/color] Voices in his head were trying to drag him down and convince him they were doomed, he could practically feel claws scraping at his mind. But he wasn’t exactly a stranger to attacks that had an effect on his mind. Fighting Xion had taken its toll on his mind back then, and his mind also remembered the Organization member Zexion, who wielded illusions to similarly play mind games with opponents.

[color=gold]”Not like this!”[/color] He snapped, seemingly forcing himself to refocus again, [color=gold]”Shocker, Fire Blast!”[/color] He hastily commanded, prompting the Rotom to spit a big powerful blast of fire at one of the lungs that took the shape of a big kanji for ‘fire’ on impact. Meanwhile Roxas went hard after the opposite lung, using his StepSword to close in and followed up with violent swinging and thrashing of his dual Keyblades. Some of his blows missed thanks to the tokens applied by the Sigh, but the sheer volume of his attacks gave Roxas the advantage.

At this point Blazermate had seen how this thing attacks and how… funnily rarely it attacks. This meant she could assist with much more than her divine stars and as Roxas went in with his StepSword, Blazermate went with him to tag team with him, but ubersawing the main body to fill up the rest of her charge before hitting Roxas with a Kritz, letting him really pile on the damage with Blazermate giving another Disseminate to mirror the damage at a lower rate along the creature and the other lung. 

Now on the offensive, the Seekers not only disarmed the Sigh’s filled lung but dealt unnecessary extra damage to both lungs, on top of wounding the central body. As part of its body burned and its enemies posed greater threat, the horror responded in kind. It took a loud, almost deafening deep breath that inflated both lungs at once. Then it let loose its Wrath and Rancor to burn and stress out Shocker, followed by Blind Rage against Blazermate, which dealt enough damage to make sure she couldn’t be too comfortable even after her dome’s healing, and dished out two Blind tokens to boot.

[color=gold]”Return!”[/color] Roxas said frantically, recalling Shocker to its Poke Ball before the Rotom could get too hurt, then quickly threw two other Poke Balls that released Titan and Turbo respectively. [color=gold]”Use Screech, and… and Curse!”[/color] He was unsure how well the latter would work considering what happened when he tried it against Two-Toed Tom. But in his stressed out state, Roxas wasn’t thinking 100% clearly. Both Pokemon obeyed their commands, Turbo employing her usual tactic of driving around the edge of the cavern room to keep her distance while screeching her engines to sharply decrease the Sigh’s defense on its central body and the left lung. Meanwhile Titan used Ghost-type energy to summon a needle that he temporarily impaled himself with to inflict the Curse status on the Sigh’s central body. Every tick of 6 seconds or so it would lose some health, though whether said health loss was based on its own max HP or Titan’s remained to be seen.

As for the Nobody himself, he took a moment to recast Aeroga on himself and Blazermate. He could benefit from the wind’s shielding effect, but also regenerate some of his MP through prolonged exposure to the spell by way of his Lucid Gain boon courtesy of Apollo. After that wind spell was recast, Roxas had to go back on the offensive, especially since he had been mostly spared from the Sigh’s most recent attacks. For now he focused his Keyblade strikes on the central body, making sure to use StepSword lock back onto it if or when the Sigh moved away or knocked the Keyblade Wielder back.

With Roxas and his pokemon taking damage, thanks to healing them Blazermate could finally deploy her projectile shield which would start to not only do a lot of damage to the Sigh and its lungs, but also vaguely defend her and Roxas from its attacks while it was up. It seemed the next ubercharge might be a medaforce beam at the rate the fight was going, but that’d be after the shield went down. For now she just used it for a lot of damage on this thing.

Due to Roxas’ focus on the Sigh’s central body, the projectile shield proved to be the damage the team sorely needed. Unfortunately, the sheer size of the monster meant that the shield could only touch the core plus one, which left the other intact long enough for the Seething Sigh to belt out its ultimate move once more. A Seething Exhalation every bit as bad as the very first cannoned out of the Sigh’s neck tubules -well away from the shield immersed in its main body- and into the Seekers’ party. The rip-roaring cyclone battered them bruised and bloody. Blazermate, seeing the inhalation coming, banished herself to dodge the attack and not take unnecessary damage but cutting her shield contact a bit short, and Roxas’ pokemon stayed conscious thanks to their sturdy defense states, but an atmospheric crush wasn’t all that their master suffered.

Two additional points of stress brought Roxas’ total to ten, which put him at the breaking point–the dividing line between breakthrough and meltdown, between resurgence and resignation. The keyblade wielder’s resolve was tested.