Focusing his mind on the slowly burning candle sitting in the middle of the
wooden table, the man calmly closed his eyes. His blond hair held behind
his head by a headband, he slowly let his spirit drift, the details,
sounds, smells of the waking world vanishing as a second one opened to him,
great gates slowly swinging open to reveal the waiting wonders.
There was no true "land" or "sky" or "sea" in this new world, only a great expense of light-filled void, were one could feel the nearby presence of a hundred thousand spirit, a void in the physical sense that there was no ground, no up nor down, but not a void to the senses.
Spirals of red, explosions of green, shimmering spheres of light, blue lines criss-crossing all around throughout the expanse of the spirit world. The smell of rose, of fresh-baked bread, all the greatest perfume in the universe could be sensed in turn by his nose, if he would but try to sense them. The feeling of the emptiness against his skin, for indeed there was one, was as that of delicate silk or soft velvet. To his ears sore from the sickening noise of modern life, the perfectly natural melody of a mountain spring slowly cascading down a slope accompanied by the soft chirping of a bird.
The spirit world was the most restful place one could imagine, one where all sense would be contented, one were there was no thought about tomorrow, or yesterday, no regret, no worries - only enjoyment of the present moment. Only a few could reach it, even among those who claimed to be mediums, but the young man was most skilled of them all at it.
Perhaps it was that eight years of closeness with his ghost had robbed him of part his humanity, making him part spirit himself. Some channelers pretended that their grandparents, or further removed ancestors, had become ghosts themselves from close association with the pokemon that served them.
Of course, as much as he believed in a certain transfer of properties, Moty always had and always would discount these tales as wild stories. He was human, and nothing short of death would succeed in making him anything else.
In this place, the prospect of death was not one he viewed with any difficulty. It would come, as it came for all human, and his spirit would go on, separated forever from his body - as it was right now. If with death came permanent presence in the realm of spirits, then he would welcome it with open arms.
After all, why should he be bound to the mortal flesh by the blood-red cord that seemed to come from where he was, always visible at the edge of his sight, linking his immortal soul with his mortal body? He had no need for the fragile envelope of flesh his parents had seen fit to grant him.
Tendrils of shadow snaked their way up the blood red-cord, and he smiled, watching the newest display of all take place. This was a first, normally all was color except when there was nothing, now for the first time there was a darkness that was not the absence of light.
The tendrils seemed to grip the cord, to hold it tightly, to struggle with it. Morty felt jerked around as the cord moved - again, new sensations, almost...pain? Pain, in this realm? How could it be? There was only pleasure and rest among the immortals, all channelers knew...
Yet somehow, he was meeting pain among those who never suffered it, in a place where he should never have suffered it. As the dark hand continued to shake the cord tightly, he felt as if a thousand searing knives were driven deep into his flesh. There was no understanding the change of fate ; such things had no room happening, made no sense...
With one last effort, the hands broke his cord, and the pain vanished - and with it all awareness of his physical body. And, without awareness of it, he could never hope to find it again, would remain forever trapped in the spirit realm.
He smiled softly. Perhaps whoever had just struck him had hoped to make him suffer in one way or another, but whatever it was they had been trying to do, they had failed. He had exactly what he had wanted, and left nothing of importance behind.
_________________________________
"Slept well?" A voice cheerful asked as Misty stepped out of her room. The sun had long since crossed the horizon, already nearing its highest station.
"Not really," she yawned, one hand before her mouth as she extended the other arm "but then again, that's no surprise isn't it?" She gave a weak smile. Ash, walking in the corridor toward her, smiled back, a somewhat stronger smile. He wore, she noticed, much the same clothes as the previous day, and bulges under his long suit on both sides, at the level of the belt, indicated that he certainly would get himself involved in the fighting if he saw any point to it.
"Thanks for giving us a place to stay." She whispered. The idea of how much they owed to him had not come to her until well into the night, when she had awakened from yet another endless nightmare, but she had certainly noted down in her somewhat sleepy mind to thank him as soon as she had an occasion. It was somewhat surprising that she had immediately remembered.
"You're welcome. Admittedly, I have my own reasons to do this. I want to find why someone wants the Gym Leaders dead and I'm afraid I won't agree with that reason, so I'd rather sae all those I can save right now.
"Makes sense to me." She had hoped that their old friendship had had to do something to do with me rather than cold calculations, but apparently, Ash had changed beyond such things...He was, even though he tried to act friendly, colder, more distant, if only slightly. She sighed, wondering for the briefest of moment if he was really on their side - but no, he was.
"What's wrong?" So, he had noticed her silence. She could not, of course, tell him she suspected him.
"Not much. Just thinking about those murders." She shivered. She shouldn't have used them to cover up her real source of worries, but somehow, it has been the first idea to come to her mind - perhaps not much of a surprise.
"Don't worry yourself about that. You're safe here, and we're covering everything up. I've got teams for whatever clues we can hope to find, working with each of the murders."
"I hope that's going to be enough."
They were silent for a while more, an uneasy silence brought about by the fact that there was not much else to say about the murders, that she did not want to bring up the past, and how they had so completely lost contact with each other at the noon of a promising friendship. She contented herself with following him through the base, her mind studiously blank to avoid thoughts of the attacks.
With a clash, the great doors of the hall opened up, revealing a series of table. Gary was at one toward the back, separated from the others by a great piece of glass, surelevated. "My person table." Ash explained, showing her the way, and soon they were sitting down.
"I think Gary's already ordered. He seemed to know what you like." Was it a hint of curiosity in his voice? She couldn't tell.
"We're friends. So yeah, he know what I like and what I don't." It was the complete truth, regardless of what the scandal-hunters of Indigo City thought, always branding their friendship as much more than it was. Doubtless Ash had heard of the articles, doubtless also he knew just how far these newspaper could be trusted.
"That's what I thought." Her old friend nodded absently as he sat down, earning a glance and no more from the rival of his traveling days.
The plates were served rapidly, and Misty found herself eating ravenously the food before her. She had not eaten much the day before, not after breakfast, and her stomach was more than happy to renew an old acquaintance with good and plentiful food.
A rocket clad in the usual black uniform walked up to Ash, handing him a piece of paper. His dark eyes quickly covered the writing, then he crumpled it, his face unreadable. Gary glanced at it a moment, his eyes opening a bit wider, his mouth as well, then returned to a mask of impassivity. Though she suspected something was afoot and what it could be, Misty purposefully shrugged off the events as she finished eating. It was only once they were done, leaving the table to head back through the hallways of the base that Gary spoke.
"Who?" The single word confirmed that he suspected the very same thing that she did, the worst thing she had feared.
"Morty." The answer was just as swift as the question. "They found him dead without the slighest sign of any form of violence or such.
"Really?" Gary started as Misty felt herself panicking once again. Yet another of them had fallen...one more, and no one had been able to do anything about it.
"We need to do something..." She breathed slowly, forgetting all of her earlier conversation with Ash. She did not need logic, she needed action. - clear action, now.
"Not much we can do right now." Gary was the first one to object. Obviously he had talked about things with Ash earlier, or else he would have been able to even pretend to be so informed as he was.
Slowly, she sagged down against the wall of the hallway. Taking her head between her two hands, she just cried, letting the nervous strain flow away, or at least trying to. Yet, whatever she managed to evacuate came back as soon.
"It's not fair..." She sobbed. "We're just going to die away, and there's nothing we can do about the assassin...we can only react, and that means he's halfway ahead of us every day." She saw it, understood it - there would be no stooping the wake of death by simply sending people to find clues that might or might not lead to understanding the identity of the murderer.
Before she had the time to explain further to the other twos, a shock rocked the base. Within moments, Ash had a sleek black handgun held tightly in his right fist and was throwing another to Gary.
"Make sure you two stay safe Gary. I'll go see what that was!" He was already halfway down the gray hallway on his black-clad legs when the last of the shout reached his friends.
________________________________
The communication center was filled with acrid gray smoke. It had not been a high-power or incendiary bomb, thankfully, but it had done enough damage as it was.
"What happened?" He yelled out, still ready to fire at any perceived threat. There was a certain sense of safety in having the loaded pistol were he could easily use it.
"A letter that we picked up at one of our cover-up address! It opened a bit after we checked it! No idea what kind of explosive it was!" The answer came from Jessie, yelling more, he suspected, from temporary deafness than for long-term
"Who opened the letter?" The next question was perhaps far more crucial and worrisome. After all, it might mean the Lotus were readying themselves for a new assault.
"Cassidy." There was not the slightest hint of satisfaction in Jessie's voice despite the bitter rivalry between the two. "We've found her already, she's dead."
"Damn." She had once been an enemy, but now, more important was a senior member of the Team - which made her a member of the family, to an extent. Someone not to be messed with while they were around
"There was also a message" The rocket officer handled the crap of paper diffidently, respectfully. There was no "twerp" traded from one to the other, not now, not with one of them lost. The piece of paper was simple, a simple trace of black on a darkened piece of paper, barely readable.
[i] This is only a warning, thief[/i]
"What do we do about it, boss?"
"Get everyone ready, I want us at our best backup base tonight. And find me Gary and Misty, and keep a detachment of my personal guard near time in permanence.
There was no true "land" or "sky" or "sea" in this new world, only a great expense of light-filled void, were one could feel the nearby presence of a hundred thousand spirit, a void in the physical sense that there was no ground, no up nor down, but not a void to the senses.
Spirals of red, explosions of green, shimmering spheres of light, blue lines criss-crossing all around throughout the expanse of the spirit world. The smell of rose, of fresh-baked bread, all the greatest perfume in the universe could be sensed in turn by his nose, if he would but try to sense them. The feeling of the emptiness against his skin, for indeed there was one, was as that of delicate silk or soft velvet. To his ears sore from the sickening noise of modern life, the perfectly natural melody of a mountain spring slowly cascading down a slope accompanied by the soft chirping of a bird.
The spirit world was the most restful place one could imagine, one where all sense would be contented, one were there was no thought about tomorrow, or yesterday, no regret, no worries - only enjoyment of the present moment. Only a few could reach it, even among those who claimed to be mediums, but the young man was most skilled of them all at it.
Perhaps it was that eight years of closeness with his ghost had robbed him of part his humanity, making him part spirit himself. Some channelers pretended that their grandparents, or further removed ancestors, had become ghosts themselves from close association with the pokemon that served them.
Of course, as much as he believed in a certain transfer of properties, Moty always had and always would discount these tales as wild stories. He was human, and nothing short of death would succeed in making him anything else.
In this place, the prospect of death was not one he viewed with any difficulty. It would come, as it came for all human, and his spirit would go on, separated forever from his body - as it was right now. If with death came permanent presence in the realm of spirits, then he would welcome it with open arms.
After all, why should he be bound to the mortal flesh by the blood-red cord that seemed to come from where he was, always visible at the edge of his sight, linking his immortal soul with his mortal body? He had no need for the fragile envelope of flesh his parents had seen fit to grant him.
Tendrils of shadow snaked their way up the blood red-cord, and he smiled, watching the newest display of all take place. This was a first, normally all was color except when there was nothing, now for the first time there was a darkness that was not the absence of light.
The tendrils seemed to grip the cord, to hold it tightly, to struggle with it. Morty felt jerked around as the cord moved - again, new sensations, almost...pain? Pain, in this realm? How could it be? There was only pleasure and rest among the immortals, all channelers knew...
Yet somehow, he was meeting pain among those who never suffered it, in a place where he should never have suffered it. As the dark hand continued to shake the cord tightly, he felt as if a thousand searing knives were driven deep into his flesh. There was no understanding the change of fate ; such things had no room happening, made no sense...
With one last effort, the hands broke his cord, and the pain vanished - and with it all awareness of his physical body. And, without awareness of it, he could never hope to find it again, would remain forever trapped in the spirit realm.
He smiled softly. Perhaps whoever had just struck him had hoped to make him suffer in one way or another, but whatever it was they had been trying to do, they had failed. He had exactly what he had wanted, and left nothing of importance behind.
_________________________________
"Slept well?" A voice cheerful asked as Misty stepped out of her room. The sun had long since crossed the horizon, already nearing its highest station.
"Not really," she yawned, one hand before her mouth as she extended the other arm "but then again, that's no surprise isn't it?" She gave a weak smile. Ash, walking in the corridor toward her, smiled back, a somewhat stronger smile. He wore, she noticed, much the same clothes as the previous day, and bulges under his long suit on both sides, at the level of the belt, indicated that he certainly would get himself involved in the fighting if he saw any point to it.
"Thanks for giving us a place to stay." She whispered. The idea of how much they owed to him had not come to her until well into the night, when she had awakened from yet another endless nightmare, but she had certainly noted down in her somewhat sleepy mind to thank him as soon as she had an occasion. It was somewhat surprising that she had immediately remembered.
"You're welcome. Admittedly, I have my own reasons to do this. I want to find why someone wants the Gym Leaders dead and I'm afraid I won't agree with that reason, so I'd rather sae all those I can save right now.
"Makes sense to me." She had hoped that their old friendship had had to do something to do with me rather than cold calculations, but apparently, Ash had changed beyond such things...He was, even though he tried to act friendly, colder, more distant, if only slightly. She sighed, wondering for the briefest of moment if he was really on their side - but no, he was.
"What's wrong?" So, he had noticed her silence. She could not, of course, tell him she suspected him.
"Not much. Just thinking about those murders." She shivered. She shouldn't have used them to cover up her real source of worries, but somehow, it has been the first idea to come to her mind - perhaps not much of a surprise.
"Don't worry yourself about that. You're safe here, and we're covering everything up. I've got teams for whatever clues we can hope to find, working with each of the murders."
"I hope that's going to be enough."
They were silent for a while more, an uneasy silence brought about by the fact that there was not much else to say about the murders, that she did not want to bring up the past, and how they had so completely lost contact with each other at the noon of a promising friendship. She contented herself with following him through the base, her mind studiously blank to avoid thoughts of the attacks.
With a clash, the great doors of the hall opened up, revealing a series of table. Gary was at one toward the back, separated from the others by a great piece of glass, surelevated. "My person table." Ash explained, showing her the way, and soon they were sitting down.
"I think Gary's already ordered. He seemed to know what you like." Was it a hint of curiosity in his voice? She couldn't tell.
"We're friends. So yeah, he know what I like and what I don't." It was the complete truth, regardless of what the scandal-hunters of Indigo City thought, always branding their friendship as much more than it was. Doubtless Ash had heard of the articles, doubtless also he knew just how far these newspaper could be trusted.
"That's what I thought." Her old friend nodded absently as he sat down, earning a glance and no more from the rival of his traveling days.
The plates were served rapidly, and Misty found herself eating ravenously the food before her. She had not eaten much the day before, not after breakfast, and her stomach was more than happy to renew an old acquaintance with good and plentiful food.
A rocket clad in the usual black uniform walked up to Ash, handing him a piece of paper. His dark eyes quickly covered the writing, then he crumpled it, his face unreadable. Gary glanced at it a moment, his eyes opening a bit wider, his mouth as well, then returned to a mask of impassivity. Though she suspected something was afoot and what it could be, Misty purposefully shrugged off the events as she finished eating. It was only once they were done, leaving the table to head back through the hallways of the base that Gary spoke.
"Who?" The single word confirmed that he suspected the very same thing that she did, the worst thing she had feared.
"Morty." The answer was just as swift as the question. "They found him dead without the slighest sign of any form of violence or such.
"Really?" Gary started as Misty felt herself panicking once again. Yet another of them had fallen...one more, and no one had been able to do anything about it.
"We need to do something..." She breathed slowly, forgetting all of her earlier conversation with Ash. She did not need logic, she needed action. - clear action, now.
"Not much we can do right now." Gary was the first one to object. Obviously he had talked about things with Ash earlier, or else he would have been able to even pretend to be so informed as he was.
Slowly, she sagged down against the wall of the hallway. Taking her head between her two hands, she just cried, letting the nervous strain flow away, or at least trying to. Yet, whatever she managed to evacuate came back as soon.
"It's not fair..." She sobbed. "We're just going to die away, and there's nothing we can do about the assassin...we can only react, and that means he's halfway ahead of us every day." She saw it, understood it - there would be no stooping the wake of death by simply sending people to find clues that might or might not lead to understanding the identity of the murderer.
Before she had the time to explain further to the other twos, a shock rocked the base. Within moments, Ash had a sleek black handgun held tightly in his right fist and was throwing another to Gary.
"Make sure you two stay safe Gary. I'll go see what that was!" He was already halfway down the gray hallway on his black-clad legs when the last of the shout reached his friends.
________________________________
The communication center was filled with acrid gray smoke. It had not been a high-power or incendiary bomb, thankfully, but it had done enough damage as it was.
"What happened?" He yelled out, still ready to fire at any perceived threat. There was a certain sense of safety in having the loaded pistol were he could easily use it.
"A letter that we picked up at one of our cover-up address! It opened a bit after we checked it! No idea what kind of explosive it was!" The answer came from Jessie, yelling more, he suspected, from temporary deafness than for long-term
"Who opened the letter?" The next question was perhaps far more crucial and worrisome. After all, it might mean the Lotus were readying themselves for a new assault.
"Cassidy." There was not the slightest hint of satisfaction in Jessie's voice despite the bitter rivalry between the two. "We've found her already, she's dead."
"Damn." She had once been an enemy, but now, more important was a senior member of the Team - which made her a member of the family, to an extent. Someone not to be messed with while they were around
"There was also a message" The rocket officer handled the crap of paper diffidently, respectfully. There was no "twerp" traded from one to the other, not now, not with one of them lost. The piece of paper was simple, a simple trace of black on a darkened piece of paper, barely readable.
[i] This is only a warning, thief[/i]
"What do we do about it, boss?"
"Get everyone ready, I want us at our best backup base tonight. And find me Gary and Misty, and keep a detachment of my personal guard near time in permanence.