Chapter Forty: Mantras

The Next Step

The water rolled up over my feet. I dug my toes into the muddy, wet sand. The waves came up again. I sighed contently.

"I thought I'd find you here." I heard Volkner behind me. I looked over my shoulder, he came to my side. "Hey."

"Hi." I hadn't seen him since the gym earlier today.

"So…What are you going to do next?" He asked, cutting right to the point.

Ah, that question. I had gotten it so much since I left the gym. Just from random commoners out in town. The answer was simple, although I had some second thoughts. Only somewhat, but still, they were there. Lots of trainers stop right here. Beat the last gym and then stop. Maybe move on to another region and start fresh there. Maybe strive to become a gym leader, maybe pick a town, move there and get a job and start your life. All those options didn't seem any good. I couldn't leave my region, I couldn't do that to Sinnoh…Or Grandmother. Becoming a gym leader didn't seem, well, good enough. When you have strong thoughts on being the champion, gym leader seemed like a step down. I guess I knew what Annie meant when she said becoming the gym leader would be a step down. On picking a new town, the only tow that seemed 'worthy' was this town. And living so far away from Grandmother, and in practically a Golden City, wasn't appealing.

So I settled with my original answer. "Get ready to beat Lea." I answered. My voice showed no hesitation, even though I felt some clogging my heart.

"Then I guess there's no stopping it, huh?"

I looked at him, assuming to see that he was joking, but he wasn't. "What?"

"You're going to challenge him one way or another. And I can't stop it." He sighed and messed up his hair.

I was dumbfounded. "Why would you want to stop it? Don't you want Lea out of business?"

"Yeah, I do, but I don't want you in danger." Sincerity filled his voice. I looked out towards the water and sighed. This time out of frustration. He was right to some extent, I was in danger. "You really think you're going to put Lea out of business?"

I looked back at him and frowned. "Why couldn't I? I did to you."

"Ouch," he pretended to wince, "that hurt." He smirked, then returned to his somber took. "Lea isn't going to go down. Not now, not ever. Why do you think you were my first challenger, Miss Cynthia?"

I bit my lip. "Maybe because I'm actually strong enough to have made it here. When others, like Maxina, weren't."

"Just think about it for a second, Maxina made it through a few gyms, she was a pretty good trainer, and then out of the blue she stopped. And now she's a contest champion, on the news all the time, doing everything. Other trainers ended up the same way. They just…Stopped." That was true, but I didn't see how that applied to me. Volkner continued, "You just randomly stopped, remember?" Yes, I did quit, but I still wasn't following. "If you didn't come back, you still would be in Celestic. Why do you think everyone stopped?"

"I don't know. I stopped because I kind of got intimidated by the whole idea, I'm sure I wasn't the only one to have those thoughts."

"Probably not. But don't you see what I see?"

"…No." I muttered.

"You're the only one to have made it to the point your next step is Lea. Don't you think Lea doesn't like that? He didn't like it when Maxina, and everyone else, made it as far as they did, so he stopped them." He talked quickly, like he had just come up with a huge conspiracy.

"Maybe he did, but he didn't do that to me."

"Didn't he?" He gave me a look. "You were intimidated by him. That's why you quit. He did stop you, by not even doing anything but breathing."

"Yes…I guess that's right, but he surely didn't do anything further to disrupt me."

"Didn't he?" His eyes widened. "The war, that was something wasn't it?"

"He doesn't know I'm a rebel." I know I should have said was a rebel…But that wasn't what spilled out of my mouth.

"You don't know that."

"He would have attacked Celestic. He would have killed me. He would have ratted me out to the news. He doesn't." I shook my head. There's no way he would have let me live this long.

"Think about it. Floaroma and Eterna are on sacred grounds, they're neutral. Celestic is on sacred grounds, too."

"What? No it's not." It actually wasn't.

"Well then, it must be something else."

"Can't you just believe that with hard work I've made it here?!" I scoffed. "It just has to be because I'm 'untouchable' by Lea, right?" I turned towards him.

He frowned. "That's not what I said. Hear me out."

I crossed my arms over my chest. "Fine."

"We all can guess that Lea isn't just sitting up there doing nothing, right?" I nodded. "And with the attacks, Lea has hardly done anything to cover them up. Now that they're over, he needs something to get everyone's attention away from something. That's where you come in. I mean, a trainer making it this far, that's a big deal. Everyone's all pumped up cheering for you or cheering against you, right?"

I thought for a moment. "Maybe. But that doesn't make much sense. Why are you trying to talk me out of beating Lea?"

"I'm not. Just trying to get you to see why this is dangerous."

"You're trying to talk me out of it." I said.

He sighed. "You're right."

"Yeah I am. So save your breath and stop. It's happening. I'm going." I held my ground.

"Okay, I'll stop. Just know I don't want you to leave."

"Volkner, I don't care." I didn't mean that to be hurtful, and Volkner didn't seem hurt. But I felt bad for saying it that way.

"Yeah I guessed that." He said. "When are you going to leave to the League?"

I thought for a second. "I don't know. I have to do intense training." But before I started training, I had business to take care of.

Four days later, I sat on my Center bed with my psychics book in my hands. The past few days have been training, and reading that book. My presence had obviously returned and gave me that nightmare, and I was trying to call my little fiend back.

I had found a chant I was supposed to say, to call any sprits to you to make contact. It felt childish doing it, but I wanted to know why this presence was here, but not here. Like it was spying on me, but I couldn't feel it to know I was being spied on.

I sighed. Here goes nothing. "Spirits, spirits, blue and white, I call you out to come out of fright, you come and go, seek and hide, I'm willing to be by your side. Spirits, spirits, come to me, contact, contact, I am willing. Spirits, spirits, here me out, come see me, right now." I felt something around me. Fear shot through me. Unbearable fear. The hair on my neck stood up, and a black shadow appeared in front of me. This wasn't my presence. I peered at the book; there was the reverse chant under the one I just read. "Won thgir, em ees emoc, tuo em ereh, stirips, stirips. Gnilliw, ma I, tcatnoc, tcatnoc, em ot emoc, stirips, stirips. Edis ruoy yb eb ot gnilliw, mi, edih dna kees, og dna emoc uoy, thgirf fo tuo emoc ot tuo uoy llac I, etihw dna eulb, stirips, stirips!" That was pretty hard to read, much less say. But once I said it the shadow went away.

"Well that worked on the wrong ghost." My heart rate went down a lot. Why didn't my presence show up? Was my spirit not blue and white? Was mine not in fright? I looked for another chant. I had ventured into the market to find this book, and I was actually surprised to learn the marketplace wasn't as bad as Volkner said. Although, the fact that there was a table devoted to psychosomatics, it wasn't the safest place I'd presume.

There was another one that looked helpful. The description said Rhyme of Spirits, to contact you with the Spirit World. Caution: The Rhyme of Spirits is not to be taken for granted; keep out of reach of Wrong Doers. I would definitely keep it out of Wrong Doers hands. "Ghostly hands crawl up the spine, they have the power to stop time. Black shadows appear and disappear, even when you think they're not around, they're here. Connections to The World is slim, but take me there, or be cursed by Them. Boney fingers curl and uncurl, take me, take me, to the Spirit World." I took a deep breath when I was done. I felt the room start to spin, and freaked out. I looked back at the chants. No reverse chant. Then I remembered at the beginning of the book, the chant to reverse the chants that don't have their own Reverses. "Reverse the curse! Reverse the curse! Reverse the curse!" I yelled, and then the room stopped, and I fell to the floor. "Visiting the ghost world…Bad idea." I rolled on my back and brought the book back to my face. I scanned the next few pages. "Rhyme of The Worlds, nope. Song For The Dead, nope. The Black Fire Poem, nope. Song of Love, nope. Song of Hate, nope." All seemed unhelpful. I've tried quite a few chants the last few days, and nothing helped. They either set a small fire in my room, made me fall on the floor, brought a spirit (That wasn't mine) into my room, or made my room smell like something died in it.

But nonetheless, I was learning things just by reading the chants. Most of them had something helpful in them. Like the Rhyme of Spirits said 'They have the power to stop time.' A lot of others said things like that, too. Like the Song of Suns, said that spirits could only haunt you in the moonlight, but then its sister song, Song of Moons, said that spirits could burst into flames at the sight of the sun.

Of course that wasn't helpful to my situation, it was just neat. And the Song of Hate said that all who loved would drown in the pool of sorrows and misery…And the Song of Love said that all who hate will be swallowed by the lowly, loveless souls of their ancestors…So how trustworthy was the writing in this book, anyway? Probably not very. Except for the ones that talked about Death, and talked like Death was a person, waiting for the right moment to strike and throw you into the Lake of Fire. Yeah, that was freaky.

I closed the book and threw it on the floor. The front cover was brown pokther, smooth Pokémon skin, and had the words Mantras of Hex: A Psychosomatics Chant, Written By The Sung Brothers etched on it. I had no idea what any of that meant, but considering it only cost one coin, it was worth the buy. Even though it did nothing good…Oh well. I sat on my bed. "Thumper, you can come out now." Togekiss crawled out from under the bed and up next to me. Having spirits around scared the poor guy. I patted his head. "It's okay now." He nuzzled my leg. I closed my eyes. Presence, if you're listening, either come now and explain yourself, or leave and stop causing trouble. That means no nightmares, visions, or anything else. I thought. I tried to be loud, but, that was hard, considering it was in my head.

I felt Thumper relax as he laid his head on my leg, and I couldn't feel a thing around. I waited for a few minutes, and then lay down and relaxed, myself. Well, I guess you chose your fate. I flipped to page thirteen, I memorized that page. It had three random chants, I read the last one aloud.

"Listening and hearing, speaking and talking, I am done with your haunting, I am closing my ears. Blocking you out and not shedding my tears." The room felt just a little bit emptier. I closed the book and put it in one of the drawers to my side. Goodbye, Presence. This time for real.

Three days later, I stood at Grandmothers door in Celestic Town. I decided that I needed to start my intense training, and going to the beach everyday wasn't helping me focus. Volkner had told me that relaxing was good, which it was, but a week of relaxing was enough. So I went home to train. Volkner wanted to come with me, but I told him no. I wasn't sure what he thought would happen once I became champion, but he wasn't liking the idea of us no longer spending so much time together. I needed to start enforcing what Jamie said sooner or later. And now seemed like a good enough time. I didn't tell him to never talk to me again or something like that, I just said no. That was a start, right?

I took a deep breath and reached for the knob. It was about dinnertime, Grandmother should have been home. I opened the door, the sweet smell of cookies filled my nose. I grinned. It had been a while since I had Grandmothers cookies. I closed the wooden door behind me.

"Cyn-Cyn!" Clarice was in the kitchen with Grandmother, munching on a sugar cookie. She darted over to me and flung herself in my arms. I picked her up and held her close.

"Hey, Clare-Clare." I laughed. Grandmother came over and smiled as she finished eating a cookie.

"If I would have known fixing cookies will bring you home, I would have made them a long time ago." She smiled and hugged the two of us. A three-person hug.

Clarice squirmed out of my arms and jumped up and down. "Yeah, Grema just pulled them out. You're here just in time!" She smiled, revealing dough-covered teeth. Grandmother and I laughed at her. She laughed and ran back to grab another cookie. Grandmother grinned and embraced me again.

"How are you, dear? I saw your battle the other day." She said as she pulled away.

"I'm doing well. I'm here to train up before challenging the League." I said. Clarice returned and handed me a cookie. It was warm in my hand, I took a bite. It was delicious. I grinned.

Grandmother nodded. "I assumed as much. Training starts tomorrow, right? After cookies and Moo Moo Milk?" She smiled gently.

I nodded. "Yeah, after that." I said with a mouthful. I sat down with Clarice and Grandmother. She must have gone to Solaceon today, because she had fresh Moo Moo Milk. I chowed down and listened to Clarice tell a story about the fishy pond, and soon Jamie came over to take Clarice home. But when she saw me, she sat at the table and joined us until Bianca came to see why her kids never returned. Well, they didn't return because they had cookies and milk, who would leave that?!

Sitting with my family was awesome. I relaxed in my chair and ate another sugar cookie. Life was close to perfection, and I was ready for the next step.

Authors Note: This was a fun chapter to write! I loved it. Although, I need to try and break my bad habit of writing clichés at the end of every chapter. Goodness. As for the delay for my chapter...I'm sorry. The next few chapter are all Elites and the Champion battle, and since I despise writing battles, it's intimidating me. (Spoiler alert? Ah, too late.) Even now the next chapter, that has a battle, isn't complete. Very close, though! And I have a new way of writing them, I write in the commands first, and go back and add the description. Believe it or not, the commands is the hard part. You have to think through all the moves. It's a PAIN. I'm HURTING just thinking about it. Oh well. I hurt because it works. Hah, rhyme.

So, DeathGoblin, that being said...Any tips for those battles? You seem to know what you're talking about.

How am I doing? This chapter was fun...I felt it lacked some things in some places...But otherwise, it was good. You know, I'm not reading any Fanfictions these days (Well, I'm not reading them because they're not being updated...Cough, cough, to those writers who need to update) so, does anyone have any good ones (And not too long) FF's to recommend? Something original, that's updated frequently Sheesh, I'm asking for a lot. Well...That's your mission!

New subtitle...Opinions? The Next Step. Not very exciting. She ain't runnin' from herself nomore, and she ain't fightin' fo everythin'. Just stepping to the next step. ...That was incredibly annoying. What if I really spoke that way? Yall would never know.

Wish me luck on writing those battles...THE PAIN I GO THROUGH FOR YOU PEOPLE. SHEESH.

Thanks for reading.