There was a novelty to this that she enjoyed and hated all at once, the terrible year she had spent with nothing but time on her hands had been ended a month in where she took on an intensive training regimen that had made both her and her partners more successful in life. Since then the pleasure of lying around all day was a rare event to the point where the prospect of lounging around the house with nothing in particular scheduled eventually lead to more training. She had to be busy or her mind would wander inexorably to the more embarrassing times in her life.
She remembered concluding their conversation and curling deep against Devyn's side, her head had rested into the hollow just beneath his collar bone and her arm wrapped around his waist she'd fallen asleep with a good portion of her body draped across his stomach and chest. It had been comfortable but she wasn't surprised that she'd woken alone the man was a member of the Slateport Guard and he rose with the sun everyday no matter what time he had gotten in bed. It even worked in other regions where the sun rose at different times; it was one seriously affective alarm clock that most likely had a lot to do with being on a ship for extended periods of time out at sea. When it was hard to tell what time it was, when you were out in international waters and not on a ferry, it was a general rule of thumb that whenever the sun rose was dawn so it was roughly seven thirty in the summer and six thirty in the winter. From there on out it was a complex guesstimation.
Cynthia sat up and stretched, there was a deep pulling of muscles up and down her arms and back that was delicious in its fullness. The vertebra in her spine popped and she shuddered as the feeling worked its way slowly downwards to her lower back where it pulled. The twanging pain tensed every muscle in her body reflexively, the pain wasn't anything like how it had been before but that didn't stop her body from reacting to it like she had slipped the disc before.
Unable to relax the taunt muscles pulled harder against the pain and it released in a loud popping, jarring sound that brought a moan of pleasure to her lips before she could stop it. "Oh fuck yes." Shudders ran up and down her body even as she rolled to stand beside the hammock absently noting that the afghan was gone.
She could see outlines of people through the smoked plate glass sliding door and pushed it open, the scents of breakfast combined to smack her in the face hard. She salivated at the rich odor of coffee, the sweet scent of pancakes, the meaty greasy odor of bacon, and the delicate almost non-existent fragrance of eggs. What was left of her hangover from the night before was aggravated by the unsympathetic loud noises that Momma Alexandria was making.
The older Alexandria was by the shortest person in the kitchen and would stand shoulder to shoulder with Caitlin who only just managed 5'1" in boots although unlike the psychic who let off a vibe of delicacy the older Alexandria bled the essence of the Mother Hen that she really was. She was slight and slender of build like her only child but lacked the muscle tone that anyone would attribute to Devyn's highly active life style, both mother and child had the same strange colored hair that was a subtle mixture of different shades of browns accented highlights of sandy blonde and low lights of a rich coppery color and black. Unlike her child the Valerie's hair was gaining grey at the roots and she had made no move to conceal that fact from people who still had trouble believing that she was as old as she claimed, despite the sea and sun Valerie Alexandria had aged gracefully.
Pleasantly surprised she found Dawn helping cut tomatoes for the omelets and watching the bacon in the pan, focused intently on the cooking lesson she was receiving. There was a happy cooing over the sound of sizzling bacon and her eyes focused on the source, Devyn's "Nipper" must've been in ecstasy. His little Chimchar had been discovered completely by accident and had hatched what could only be described as the very next day landing the young man with a very young Pokémon that was utterly dependent on him for survival, it had bonded with him in a way that only children can with parents and would refuse to go with anyone else, he had thrown a fit yesterday when he'd been told that he couldn't go to the bar with them. He was getting a reward for his patience thought.
David was home and pressing into the tiny creature with large fingers, apparently hitting all the hotspots as he pet the tiny thing if the wriggling and cooing were any indication of his emotion.
She guessed that he must've gotten home sometime early this morning because he still looked rugged from the road and she would've seen him come in if it had been anytime when the sky was dark… so last night and this morning.
David Alexandria sat at the table with his morning paper spread out before him and a cup of coffee at his elbow and one hand working the little monkey's belly with expert care. The patron of the household looked to be all of sixty years old although he was not much older than forty-five or forty-six, his life as a fisherman showed on every visible surface of his body and skin from the wrinkles that mixed in with the laugh lines on his face to the pits and shiny white scars on his arms and hands from innumerable injuries since his boyhood that occurred on ships every day whether it be because of a hook sticking in the skin or the tangling of a net around an arm. His hair had probably at some point in time matched his eyebrows but his head and beard seemed to have at some point deviated from the dark color that they had originally been to an almost orange blonde that happened to men who had been out on the salty seas off of Slateport's Coast for their entire lives, his hair had most likely gone from platinum blonde to brunette and would go right back to the platinum color if things turned out like she suspected that they would.
"Good morning, Cynthia. Head upstairs and get all cleaned up, we'll all sit down for a meal when you're done." which was a polite way of saying, you smell like alcohol go and take a shower and a jab at her from Momma Alexandria.
Papa Alexandria spared her a smile over the top of the coffee mug, a dual which was his way of saying hello and a signal that a Jubilife Coffee was waiting for her when she got down stairs. The shot of liquor whiskey in the cut would wake her up and beat away what was left of her headache after her aspirin dosage. Cynthia headed upstairs.
Cynthia passed the opened door to Devyn's room and draped herself against the door frame watching the twenty-two year old pulling a leather belt through a pair of shorts, her eyes watching the line of thin dark hair that trailed down her would be sibling's lower belly to disappear into an elastic waistband; Devyn had pulled up a shirt that would be called, in some circles, a wife beater up over the majority of the impressively muscled abdomen revealing washboard abs that were maintained meticulous rituals. Some people believed in a strong upper body or lower, the rest of the body was useless unless you had a strong core that was the philosophy that worked for that awkward boy. "I don't really like waking up by myself, you know that."
"Sorry but I've got to go to the contest grounds you know..." Devyn's hands moved up to work the thin hair tie into place, the hair still dark and damp from the shower. "Deliver some important things." Like she didn't know exactly what he was leaving to do at the Contest Grounds but exercising secrecy was crucial and he didn't get confused when he just was vague with everyone.
"It's okay, have a good time." She continued down the hall as he grinned after her returning it as she turned into the bathroom and shut the door with a click. She smelled like alcohol and outdoors, she really needed a shower.
-ooo-
She had been wandering the festival grounds for the last hour and a half and she was liking what she was seeing, what little of it that she could take in at a time that was. The grounds were a flurry of activity outside and the interior of the dome was in just as much, if not more, chaos as individually commissioned artisans worked their craft showing their very best work and advertising to the architects that had come from the other halls across the region and from others. The metal workers and their partners busied making silver and gold ornaments to place in plaques against the walls or hooks for curtains that had yet to be moved into the hall, each piece sanded and honed to perfection with each detail refined to the master's eye. The city had gone all out in their first Bicentennial Contest and the individually owned and run companies all across Slateport had made it a point to compete viciously for the opportunity to decorate the dome.
All sorts of crews in all sorts of garb appeared from places all across the world to fit into place everything from molding to tile to the paint that made up the edges of the rings outside. The festival grounds had been moved to the superdome that had previously been used for sporting events in light of the month long contest where everyone who had what it took to be a Coordinator came to show their stuff. The flurry of activity had begun each day for the last week at dawn's first light and worked well into the evening with the enormous stadium lighting on well past midnight. The sheer amount of work that had gone into this event was, even now before the qualifying rounds, something to be seen and the sight and sound of the men and women here spurred the people competing for the last few slots to work just that much harder.
There was a certain prestige Bicentennial Coordinator Tournament that made everyone do their best and it was good for everyone involved, it showed everyone that there were more options and more combinations that allow for innumerable appeals possible for each and every situation. The problem was that none of the competitors was allowed to see the color scheme for each day, it had to change, and each day something new was added to test the wills and minds of the one hundred and twenty-nine men and women that would be showing what they had each and every day in multiple arenas with the main event held in the Superdome. The rumor buzzing around was that Hoenn's own Grand Master Rank Trainer would be overseeing the Battle Round during which there would be new and more complex rules for each of the selected fields.
She was excited to see Erin Lynch Kirkland Braddock, when she had fought against Wallace in the winter it had been televised and she wanted to experience the "class room" first hand even if she wasn't battling. She hoped the rumors weren't false.
It was agonizing and nothing had begun yet.
She let her eyes survey the grandstands going up on the far side of the brown dust that was the first of the Arenas, the sheer amount of sparks that the welding teams were throwing off was awe-inspiring which was exactly why she had come here every day to watch the crews work and appreciate the beauty that they brought to bear. She'd watched the tide come in and go out each day she had been in the city too, watched the sun rise and set on the ocean and was pleasantly surprised. She had all sorts of possible combinations running through her head and she had a total of six different appeals she could make in her group's week to show what they had and what would make them stand out enough to stay.
In her mind she saw herself making it to round two which would be the Battle Round in the final week if she made it past each day's cuts, out of forty three people she had to be the last man standing and as long as she wasn't in the same group as Dawn she had a shot. She, Dawn, and May had signed up at the same time and her chances of succeeding would be greatly increased if she didn't have to worry about the ruthless blue haired girl poisoning her drink or something. She had the drive to win and she would do anything to insure that she was the victor, there was something poisonous in Dawn and only since she had started going with Cynthia that it had come to light.
There was something just off about her, something that was fundamentally wrong and she would bet anything that she wasn't wrong. Yes, if she got the chance to make it to the Battle Round and maybe she could win against Dawn by sheer technical knockout, according to useful sources that final round wouldn't be about beauty it would be about power and power was what she had, what she controlled and she liked that she stood at least some of a chance. She had done well the last time that the League was taking challengers and had held her own until she had run across Drake, the dragons were something else to say the very least.
Powerful creatures that succumbed to Ice only if you got in a lucky shot, one she hadn't been able to make. Four battles back to back with some of the more powerful trainers in a region was challenging to say the very least. But she had been training her mind and body for the last five years for this moment, training with her companions and saving her beast appeals for this moment and her chance at the ultimate Coordinator Glory. The Grand Festival Bicentennial Tournament.
The sun overhead was sticking her shirt to her back and she turned to go back inside and found herself staring into excited blue eyes, the brunette in front of her was bouncing up and down in sheer joy. "Oh. Arceus. You. Should. See. This. Guy!" she squealed the last word so high it was a pitch that human ears couldn't even register. "He's so hot! I mean like body of a god gorgeous!" she gushed pulling her friend by the arm outside, dimly she registered that she should've followed the brunette's example and worn bicycle shorts against the heat but sometimes you just have to learn something by yourself.
Her young friend was still simpering over this guy as she pulled her reluctant companion outside the enormous arches that marked the entrance of the festival grounds, "I saw him and was like-" she brought her free hand up and grasped a lock of pale pink hair between her fingers, the sun had done some serious damage on it the summer before and it was looking like the color that the sun had bleached from it wouldn't return any time soon if she kept up her training regimen. The question came a lot, if she had dyed her hair, some people just couldn't believe that the sun had done it but they were people who did not train as she trained with a heart like she had. The natural red tones wouldn't return without her slowing the pace and if she did she would lose momentum and the self-confidence.
The younger woman stopped and pointed a finger enthusiastically over her shoulder, her body set behind her to point her in the right direction; it took her a moment to see the crew unloading the back of a trailer. The muscular back flexed with the movement of a box bigger around than the younger girl. "Solidad you have to admit that he is something beautiful to see."
He had his back to her and it wasn't a loss in the least, he stood there in khaki cargo shorts held in black by a black leather belt wound around narrow hips. The man was long and lean standing head and shoulders over her, or it looked like it from a distance, with slim but strong shoulders and arms, beneath the A-shirt that had been stained in a few places with brilliantly crisp dye. From his hip dangled a carbineer that jangled with more keys than one could count beside the tucked in black t-shirt that he had probably taken off in the heat of the sun. From beneath a black baseball style cap a thick braid of browns fell to the middle of his shoulder blades. "He is good looking."
Solidad's eyes followed the miles of pale bronze skin that covered the toned plains of his body, hands on his hips he leaned down to shout a command to the men unloading the rest of the boxes which looked like pallets of colored silk. As the two women watched a small cinnamon colored monkey scramble up the young man's shorts to dangle from his belt and play with his keys, the Chimchar went unnoticed or ignored by the young man. He turned then, as if drawn by their attentions, and froze every muscle in that body going absolutely still paralyzed in sharp contraction. At first she didn't understand why anyone would do such a thing and was about to turn around and stare at what was obviously some incredibly beautiful woman or ridiculous sight directly behind them when she met his eyes.
It was Valentyne.
She remembered the last time that she had seen him, he had thrown a man out of a window and beaten him senseless in the front yard but then it had been justified. The man had broken into her house while they had been out and were a threat to both her mother and her daughters, he had done what he felt was absolutely necessary to insure that she would be safe from harm. She had seen him bodily throw another man out of a second story window and watched him chase that man into the night but he had come back and apologized profusely.
He offered a wave of a hand and motioned to his crew before moving across the courtyard towards her the motions were similar to how they had always been a predatory but confident gait that made people assume that he thought that he was Arceus' gift to women. He wasn't and he didn't pretend to be either but he was comfortable in his own skin. Apparently May didn't know that if her tense body was any indication and he did look like a barbarian striding confidently to his conquests and she had only seen the very public break up that had occurred.
"Do you know him?" the whisper was soft in her ear and she smiled at that, oh yes she knew Valentyne in just about every sense of the word. She could still feel him there, caught beneath her in awe.
She was sure that he had wanted to close his eyes, to shut out the world and just feel what she was invoking inside of him but she was also sure that he wanted to watch. His hands were mobile as if he was afraid to sit them still but he knew what to do with them, strong fingers traced nonsense patterns over her play of muscles in her stomach as he watched her. They moved further down to catch her hips and she purred as he sat up just a little too fast and shifted just a little too much, damn the boy felt good.
"You could say that, don't you remember he's the one who you saw in Verdanturf." She offered weakly.
"The one with the problems with windows?" May hissed back, she flinched at the sound of her friend's voice and the venom in it and she would have offered up some kind of warning but Devyn was just there and she didn't have time to think let alone offer a warning to duck before a fist smashed into his jaw.
"You violent two timing bastard!" his head moved with the force of her fist but in her heart she knew that he was far more amused with the fact that someone had been stupid enough to lay hands on him than offended or even injured, more bored than outraged.
May thought that maybe it was a bad idea attacking a man like this but it was too late to go back now and even then backing down wasn't in her nature. She brought her fist back to hit him again, throwing her entire body weight into it like her father taught her and the connection rang true but a sharp agonizing pain ripped through her hand the moment she touched his jaw. Yes, she decided that hitting him was a really bad idea.
-ooo-
The Third Kingdom sat quietly in a stark contrast to the previous hours of the day, the attempt had been a crazy one and despite the suicide mission that the men knew that they had been sent on they fought admirably, more admirably then some of her men could boast but you could only ask so much of the people around you. The would be assassins had fought against her even as the shadows began swallowing them whole and the darkness around them came to life, brave men even in the face of absolute failure they struggled to remain alive and that was why she had shooed the beasts away and ordered piers to be lit for them. Despite their vicious attempt to end her life and despite the fact that they were dying they tried all that harder to remain attached to the spark of life and that was the living analogy for the Void. To continue to exist, to fight to exist even when you know nothing could possibly exist in such a place. The undeniable urge to continue existing no matter what had to be sacrificed, that most basic of instincts that people had and the one that could only be circumvented by the will to continue the existence of your offspring.
Survival.
The beautiful nature of all creatures, that inborn thing that no matter how much "civilized" society moved away from the baser nature would continue to remain the same. It was as a part of man as the heart in his chest and the blood running through his veins.
She relaxed into the stone throne on the basement floor of the Third Kingdom beneath the catacombs and necropolis, in which her people dwelled safe from the harshness of the outside world, in a moment of rare lucidity. There were times when the madness swallowed her for months at a time and they seemed to be getting worse and worse though she was learning to control the emptiness inside of her belly. Low and deep the thrumming center of fire that was the spark, the essence, of someone's life there was that place where the Void lived just behind her naval and the pulsations there were changing again for the third time in her life.
It horrified her and called to that damnable curiosity that had evolved with man into that thing that had people investigating strange noises in movies against the better judgment of the reptile brain. The reptile brain did not lie to you and when it told you that being fascinated with a change in your spark was not a good idea from past experience, it was just not a good idea. The first time the spark in her belly had ignited it had brought on the power that had defied what was previously thought possible and made her the Conquest Icon, the hope of the outlying colonies that ruled themselves as independent nations.
The second the spark in her belly had ignited it had sunk deep into a place inside of her that she had not known existed and did not want to be connected to again, it had done more damage than anyone could have previously imagined as it moved through her and made her one of the Holy Half Dead. With it came the madness and with that madness everything changed drastically for the worse and she had sealed herself inside of the Necropolis when she realized that her control was gone, with the onset of her incurable insanity she was declared a true "Alice" and the one that had come closest to becoming the true Alice. With that power she had lost the innocence of love in her life and she would give anything to get that back but the spark still burned like a white hot coal in her belly and demanded things of her, bestial things that left marks on her beloved in the morning, marks that upon every meeting she felt the drive to retouch.
Because she was Alice, or as close as anyone had come to being Alice except the original Alice, she could never go home unless she intended to kill her father for the right to just live within The Under and dwell in The Deep. She could however continue to rule the Third Kingdom as she saw fit and never seize her birth right no matter how much the peoples seemed to adore her. It astounded her how people could still adore her and despite the madness that crept up her limbs and threatened to steal her sanity away for good, she had the suspicion that this was only so because the madness had not been her fault not entirely.
Hot blooded emotion ruled what the body and soul of those who dwelled beneath and in a moment she had done what any other may have hesitated in doing. In the grip of desperate fear and overwhelming adoration and fear she had thrown herself at the mercy of the void in the name of the most powerful emotion and not just the feeling. Love was a strange thing without lust but what were feelings without emotion?
In her desperation to save love of her life she'd willingly and knowingly threw herself into the Void and whether or not she existed there for months or years or just a few seconds was unknown. It was a place where nothing mattered and nothing existed, you would scream if you had a mouth and you would cry if you had eyes, you would panic if you had a mind to comprehend such a thing and the absolute nothing of it was mind breaking and at the same peaceful. If all you wanted was a moment for everything to stop, just a moment where there was blackness and peace to get your head right and your life back into order from the chaos then accessing the Void was your only escape.
If you went searching for a consciousness lost within it and tied that consciousness back to the awareness of a body you would subject yourself to the horrors of nonexistence, unknowing, non-sentience, the damnation of both your spark and soul and the curse of continuing to exist.
The absolution of it had been the unhinging of many minds and it had set a spider web of cracks down the barrier that separated her mind from the others. It was likely that the affect that it had on the mind was spawned in the vast emptiness of the Void. It was sometimes referred to as the primordial ooze for a reason, the more skeptical would liken the Void to something called Human Instrumentality, an idea that was begun with a television series and had extended into reality by the fools that called Holon home. The men and women that called Holon home were scientists that had originally utilized the unique magnetic properties of the area to produce waves of electromagnetic energy via a large tower to center to tract the location of Mew. Some claimed that they changed their purpose was changed.
She didn't know about the validity of that statement but it seemed as if the Void was the ultimate goal of Instrumentality, no one was existed singularly in the Void and were merely part of the whole. The whole idea was that Instrumentality the flaws of one would be masked by the strength of others, the creation of a whole different kind of existence. Or that was the idea… the people who claimed this knew next to nothing about her people and so the accusations that were thrown their way were laughed at and disregarded.
Nothing could exist in the Void and though the experimentation with her madness she had found that she could tap the vastness of the Void's power as long as she did not forget that she existed or despaired in the nothingness. Her mistake was that after retrieving the soul and placing it back within the body of her beloved she forgot herself just for a moment, she forgot that which made her and her spark had flickered leaving her with just the portion of her entity that was soul and not spark.
She had been alive but she was not conscious that she was herself and that way that is fundamental to all humans, as a fetus we have this level of awareness without consciousness and therefore have a soul. When the chap realizes that it is not a part of its mother and that in fact mother and self are two separate things then something strange happens.
When you realize that you are "self" and that "self" is different from others you no longer have a soul which is not to say that sentient creatures are soulless you just have another component added to it making your soul into a "spark" which contains the only evidence that you existed. All sentient creatures had a spark that when brought together and accounted for created a whole other level of consciousness that you are not aware of until death which in itself is an expiration date for the spark which doesn't disappear so much as it becomes something else entirely that is still fundamentally the same. When you died you were prepared on some level to exist just as your spark, a consciousness and a force without a physical body that is necessary for a spark to mature within.
However a mature spark could not exist in that place, the soul would be removed and consumed.
That was the concept of the Void.
If anyone could think that such a thing was anything but the truest death one could have then they deserved to fall into that which they worshipped.
The Void, no matter what the slander claimed, was not the deity that those of the Void worshipped but the vision of the exact opposite of what humanity should be.
Though somehow she became the Conquest Icon of the Void, she, Rachel Schulyer Sullivan, had done the impossible and forced the maturity of the spark and remained within flesh connected into a soul and did not die. Finding the fragments of another's soul and gluing them together to place them back into the body of one who fell accidently into the grips of the Boogieman. It was not supposed to be possible and yet it did happen.
"The third ALICE was a little green one, very cute and dear in the wonderland. She charmed people to her every beck and call, she had made a strange green country. This new ALICE was the country's queen, taken over by a distorted dream. She was afraid of losing to death, she would forever rule her country."
How fitting Rachel thought that the song and the story people told was the truth of the Void, she sighed as she felt Winter creeping up inside of her, it seemed as if her lucidity would not last long this time.