Carter
Carter, along with Lilith and Erik, was among seven of the Falling Stars to be inducted to the Void Talkers. Following the exam, their faces were photographed, and they were each outfitted with their own matching cloaks and masks for their ceremony. It was a creepy, corny little midnight ritual involving scores of black-cloaks peculiar candles with strange flames that seemed to burn black, the rest either dead or rounded up to be shipped west to the Navajo region. Eve would have made eight, but she was caught trying to escape. Apparently, she had not been expecting the invaders to station guards overnight. As an example to potential deserters, she was brought forth before them in hysterics, bound by handcuffs. The white-sashed officer, Caius, asked if she had any departing words.
"Please don't hurt my pokémon," she pleaded, weeping like a child.
"You have my assurance, they will not be harmed. They are of no fault." With that, he called out a charizard from a regular poké ball. "Flamethrower!"
There were a few gasps as Carter squinted from the harsh light, and Eve wailed in agony under a sustained stream of fire for longer than he could bear to look. Her voice faded, the blaze dispersed, and Eve was ash and bone. There was only silence among the initiates – this was no shock compared to what they had seen.
"From this day forward, you are Void Talkers," he continued, "Repeat after me: 'For the greater glory of man, I pledge myself to the void.'"
"For the greater glory of man, I pledge myself to the void."
Carter blinked and asked himself how he had gone from scavenging for a community of survivors to joining a cult of lunatics. He was not sure whether he hated the motto more than the uniform. A simple black cloak, with not but sleeves and a hood. It covered everything, and it was nonsensically cumbersome. He could easily see himself tripping on it in a battle.
Caius went on, "Since you have demonstrated proficiency in the field of battle, you will each have a role to play moving forward. We will unite worlds, and you will be our collective hand."
Carter may have found it all funny if it were not so grim. The power vacuum created by The Collapse had been filled by cultist fanatics. They talked of voids and planes, but it all may as well have been another language. He wondered just how far these lunatics had spread – how many factions and communities already swallowed. There must have been other rational people tied up with them, only in obedience for their own safety. He had to find them.
The ceremony dispersed, and Carter was relieved to learn that he would be allowed to sleep in his own bed. They were allowed to go anywhere within the log cabin village that had once been called Pinehaven. He invited Lilith to stay at his cabin for the night, and they guzzled wine as though they thought their lives would end with the morning sun. They drank side by side at the foot of his king-sized bed, and they laughed, and then they had at it like it like wild, primal things without another care in the world. He lay awake, staring at the ceiling with her in his arm, silky black hair spilled over his bare chest and shoulder.
"I hope Jaden and Penny are alright," said Carter.
"They're probably dead," she replied, as if it meant nothing.
"Jaden's car wasn't at his cabin. I think they might've escaped."
"It makes no difference. They won't last one week on their own."
Lilith was snoring while Carter still struggled get to sleep. She had been rattled by their deadly entrance exam, but afterwards she seemed to feel a sense of accomplishment. He wanted to ask her what she thought of the whole ceremony. The Collapse obviously had a much stronger effect on some people's mental states than he had imagined, and Lilith had always been ambitious, but never entirely stable. She had always disdained the monotony of scavenging, and often expressed to Carter an indescribable desire to be part of something better, something stronger. He could only hope that she saw that ritual for the nonsense that it was.
He woke up to a cloudless blue sky, groggy, hungover, and alone. Lilith was nowhere to be found. He dragged himself to his kitchen sink and cupped his hands under the running water for a drink. He brushed his teeth, washed himself, and dressed himself in a white tee shirt and black jeans, wondering how long he would have before he was made to take on some inexplicable task wearing that ridiculous cloak-and-mask combo. He filled a glass with tap water and poured it down his parched throat in a few long gulps.
More Void Talkers appeared to have arrived overnight. Most of them at this point were disrobed, unfamiliar faces in regular clothes strutting about their new annexation. Carter liked them better with faces. From his hilltop cabin, he could see trainers with their pokémon where the limits of the town brushed against the forest's edge. He noticed an arcanine, a dodrio, a swampert, a zebstrika, a talonflame, and a chesnaught, among others too small and too far away to identify. They were much less intimidating without their disguises, and without ultra beasts at their command. He equipped his poké balls to his belt and stepped outside. The late morning light made him squint as he made his way through the village towards the training grounds. He knew no better way to learn more about the Void Talkers than to gain their trust, and battling was classically the best practice for gaining a fellow pokémon trainer's trust.
The village outskirts were alive with the cacophony of about two dozen trainers with their pokémon. Some battled against each other, while others practiced attacks on their own, all under the cloudless blue sky. He would have preferred to train alone, but if he would learn more, he would have to mingle. He reminded himself that not all of them were fanatics. The Void Talkers ruled by fear – there simply must have been rational people trapped among their ranks, parroting propaganda so as to not be dragged before a crowd and burned like a witch in times of old.
Carter heard a familiar shout, and turned to see Lilith commanding her swampert in a three way battle against Erik's zebstrika and someone else's arcanine. The three pokemon brawled in the dirt, loosing water and fire and lightning here and there, while the dodrio and talonflame pecked and thrashed at each other wildly to the shouts and orders of their trainers. A short distance from the others, the chesnaught threw relentless punches against a pine trunk, shaking the whole tree and loosing needles and cones to the rhythm of its trainer's commands. The owner was probably in her twenties, yellow hair falling to her waist, and dressed modestly in a red and black plaid flannel and blue jeans.
"Hey," Carter called out. He had to shout to be heard over the cacophony of commands and attacks.
She turned and looked at him, with big, puzzled blue eyes, her pokémon still slugging away at the tree. She looked like no cultist.
"Do you want to battle me?" he asked.
"Battle?" she replied, shyly. "You mean, right now?"
"If you want to. I'm just looking for an opponent, and I noticed you by yourself."
"Sure," she said, after some hesitation. "Jugger!"
Her chesnaught stopped and turned away from the tree. Carter pulled a poké ball from his belt and called out his bronzong, Dong.
"I'm ready when you are." The iron pokémon agreed with an inorganic buzz.
"Steel-type!" she exclaimed. "Jugger, hammer arm!"
The grass titan charged forth, right arm raised in the air.
"Protect!" replied Carter.
As the chesnaught brought down its arm with such force that could hammer a man into the earth like a nail into a board, Dong psychicked together a wall of solid light to stop the blow, and fist rang against the barrier.
"He's going defensive! Use focus punch!"
Her chesnaught took a deep breath and exhaled as it cleared its mind in preparation for the perfect punch, right in the face of its opponent – a tactical disaster.
"Psychic!"
Eyes glowing purple-pink, Dong buzzed and extended his arms the air rippled as he reached with a wave of energy, enveloping his opponent and stifling its mental preparation. Carter's bronzong lifted the chesnaught into the air, and began to crush its body with cruel psychokinetic twists. The grass-type pokémon moaned as it fought with all of its strength to regain control of its own body.
"Jugger!" she cried out. "You can do it!"
It fought, and curled, and made its body into a ball. Then, with a roar and a jerk of four limbs, the chesnaught broke the psychic hold and freed itself, planting its feet back to the ground with a thud.
"Gravity!"
Dong lowered itself and began to exert psychic force on the surrounding area. Carter felt gravity increase, and his opponent's pokémon was struggling to stand. Its own bulk would be its defeat.
"Hammer arm!"
With bowed legs, the green giant strained to raise its arm again. Dong continued to strengthen the pull of gravity, but it could not weigh the opponent down enough. The chesnaught lifted its arm higher, preparing to strike. It was too late to do anything when Carter finally realized what his foe meant to do – they were using the pull to their advantage. In a swipe faster than the eye, it brought down a hammer arm, slamming into Dong with a low ring and stopping the gravitational exertion.
The weight of the area returned to normal, and the chesnaught began to thrash, hurling limbs without mind to its trainer's commands. Dong raised another psychic barrier to protect itself, and the grass titan punched it until it was broken. She shouted commands, and projectiles were loosed from its shell. Most of them burst on the ground, but a lucky few found their target, spraying woody shrapnel. Carter's bronzong was floating backwards under enemy pursuit, taking blows and fighting back with hunks of psychic material. For a moment, the chesnaught was caught once again in a midair energy trap, only to break free with its own power.
"Don't let up!" she exclaimed. She seemed less shy now that her pokémon was winning.
Carter chuckled. He had long forgotten the joy of a battle for battling's sake. In the old world, he had fought for glory, and dreamed of dethroning Damon as champion of the Alachia region. They were days gone by, in a world long lost. He snapped back to reality as his bronzong finally fell, metal body slamming into the dirt and kicking up a cloud of dust. The chesnaught stood above, catching its breath.
"That's right!" the girl taunted, "Jugger never loses to steel-types!"
"I used to say Dong never lost to fighting-types," Carter joked as he returned his pokémon to its capsule, "I might still say that, when you're not around."
"Your pokémon was tough – I'll give you that. You really made Jugger tire himself out."
"Thanks," Carter replied as he walked closer to her. "Your guy is pretty strong. I'm Carter, by the way. I guess you could say I'm recently conquered."
She laughed, "I'm Steph."
"If you don't mind me asking, why did you join the Void Talkers?"
Her blue eyes sank away in discomfort. "Well," she replied, her voice growing solemn. "I was part of a community of farmers. We called ourselves the Kings of the Crop. And, well... you were one of the Falling Stars, right?"
"Yeah," he replied, grimly. He had known the Kings of the Crop, he had known their strength, and he knew where her story was going.
"The black-cloaks showed up at our farms a few weeks ago, and they rounded us up out of our homes and said 'join, or die.' Some of us fought, and some of us ran. Anyone who didn't get away was either killed, or made to join them, so here I am."
"That sounds familiar," he said dryly, "Did they lock you in a room and make you fight ultra beasts?"
"We've all gone through that," she replied. "You ask anyone here, they've all passed some kind of test. You shouldn't ask too many questions, though. If you say the wrong thing to the wrong person, they'll rat you out. They'll kill you if they think they can't trust you."
"So how do you tell the difference between the right person and the wrong person?"
"Anyone wearing a mask is someone you don't want to talk to. The originals, the ones who came from Navajo, they never show their faces. They're the only ones who are allowed to use the ultra beasts. Everyone else was probably threatened into joining."
Carter puzzled at the thought. In all directions, he only saw normal people, wearing normal clothes, sparring and training as men and women had done with their pokémon since the dawn of time. They were normal people, all roped into insanity with an axe aimed at their neck. Just how strong could the Void Talkers really be, if so many among its ranks only followed orders in the interest of their own safety? It reminded him of the mounted warriors in ancient times. Under direction of their iron-fisted khan, they swept across continents, swallowing whole nations, and disappearing entire cultures. It was not until their dilapidated forces began to break against the stone walls and castles at the known world's westernmost ends that their grip on the conquered started to weaken. They had won countless battles, but they were spread out and decentralized, and so they lacked the staying power to impose their control rule on the peoples they defeated. In the end, the mounted warriors of the east could not hold what they had taken, and their sphere of power receded back to their homelands. People cannot be ruled by fear alone, and that will be the Void Talkers' eventual downfall.
"But why?" he asked. "What's the end to all of this?"
"Power," Steph replied. "And control."
He chewed his lip without an answer. The silence grew to awkward lengths, and she and her chesnaught went back to their rhythmic tree-beating.
Carter turned back to the three-way battle behind him, finding Lilith smirking beside her swampert, hands at her hips, standing proudly in her low-cut black shirt and white pants that may as well have been painted on her, standing proudly over a defeated arcanine and zebstrika. She nodded at him, and he made himself nod back, observing that she seemed much too comfortable.