When you are Champion people expect for you to make public appearances, encourage children, mind your manners, support the authority of your nation, and set a good example for all trainers all over the world. You are in the spotlight which was what really caused Champions to throw battles intentionally, it got tiring to have such intrusive people bothering you every waking moment of every day. When you were the Champion and your girlfriend couldn't be trusted with your extracurricular activity's code of secrecy so that she most likely isn't where she is supposed to be you are expected to do something about it.
So, Cynthia did what was only natural for someone in such a compromising position, she changed into a well-worn and well-loved pair of jean short shorts, slipped on some sandals and pulled on her work shirt and sat on the porch. In full Alexandria regalia she looked like another young woman employed with the company and sat on the wide porch swing with a copy of the lasted Spring and Winter travels. They were journal entries clipped together by time of year and duration of stay; she had completely bypassed her own section written about her time in the Pokémon Range Nation, which was a sovereign state despite what some people so ignorantly thought.
Instead she went to the ten page recount of Winter in "Winter Country", it might have sounded like a pun of some kind but the foothills and summit of Mt. Coronet was what most people thought of if they could see the beauty of the season. She was enthralled by the breath taking pictures that had been put into the report this was a reason that you were required to take professional photography classes if you wanted to write for them. You could almost forget how dangerous and unpredictable the landscape was. It was a moment of lucidity that had allowed Winter to do this, between the pictures and the vivid text she could close her eyes and see exactly what the enigmatic woman was describing with a clarity that most people could only imagine. A gift had been given to Winter of the Void.
She presence had gathered an audience of small children and relenting she had read out loud for their benefit, showing them all pictures as she told them about similar experiences she had heard about or had herself in different locations all around the world. Their eyes glowed with excitement as she moved on to the recounting of Erin Lynch Kirkland Braddock, a name that brought stunned silence to the assembled group of ten or fifteen children, as she took Caitlin D'Arbanville into the very heart of Forina for the rainy season.
The two part article was written by the Dragon Master and the Psychic respectively, each contained different images that seemed to capture the essence of what each was seeing in such a manner that it was evident who had taken what picture. She turned the page and gasped at the perfect image of "him" and Erin, it had to have been taken without Erin knowing because she would never have allowed such a thing likening it to taking a picture of two people in a city. It was a strange experience seeing it, waiting for it to move, she felt like the children before her on the ground. Most had likely never seen a creature of such beauty, of such strength moving with an evident ease through the air as He.
He was a breed of Salamence like no other that she had seen or was likely to see again, he was utterly graceful in the lithe way that no other of his species could manage if they spent centuries practicing. She had seen him and Erin do maneuvers that would have broken the back of any other that tried and sent them plummeting from the sky to crash into the earth where they would never rise again.
His form was caught in backdrop of brilliant green pillars, the rock mostly hidden by the growing veins and bushes woken from their dreaming with the returning heavy rains that made the season unattractive to most tourists. He was in a half roll with one wing that defied logic in its length and angle fully extended and the other tucked in tight to his body, he was leveling out once again but she only knew that because she had seen his particular way of flying first hand. Erin hung at an impossible angle, almost dangling from his neck and almost thrown away completely though she knew from first-hand experience that she was in absolutely no danger from falling when she was like this.
As she read she became more and more entranced by the stories and how the seemed to fill in the gaps made by the other. According to Caitlin the land was beautiful in its utter vitality and according to Erin, who had grown up just on the western most border of Forina in the steppe before Meteor Falls, each year the land woke and grew far more awe-inspiring, ""-every year is greeted with a new bouquet of flowers the filled in every spectrum of the rainbows that arch between each and every last one of the three thousand two hundred and seventy nine pillars that jut from the ground here.""
The exactness of that count as well as a picture of most of the land taken from the near the summit of Mt. Chimney further down then the exact height so the smoke that the volcano billowed was not caught in the picture and the land in early spring was caught in its waking moment. The green valley spread out like the open palm of some glorious titan, the half-grown flora the quickening blood of the titan beating harder and harder against the heart of the land as it woke slowly like those with low blood pressure.
""Though there was concern about the last eruption of Mt. Chimney which sent flaming balls of molten rock high into the air and catching the area around it on fire this place has recovered. It is actually because of the volcano and its activity that Forina exists in any case. The pillars were formed originally by the lava which lowered the land that a far more ancient earthquake had partially depressed. The fires that rage here every decade or so are vital to the continued survival of Forina for the future generations, when fires burn that hot and that long it leaves nutrients in the soil which turns the earth black, black earth is rich earth from which the plants here are reborn. That's what Forina means in the language of the civilization that was once housed here "land of rebirth"."
The magic of the moment was ruined, "What the hell do you mean that people are trying to kill you!" the indignant shout that came from the truck lumbering up into the driveway made her wince and put down the magazine on the swing next to her eying the unfortunate woman who learned Devyn's not so understandable secret. She wasn't sure that she understood it some days but there were people who were really trying to kill them both for reasons they weren't exactly clear on, it seemed as if whoever it was hadn't found out about the crisis yet.
The children scattered to the wind and she stood up slowly, "Okay, okay that makes sense, you can't tell me. My next question needs an answer though, you said that your parents decided for you-" there was a pause and a loud clicking sound, Devyn must've undid her seat belt in that screaming metal death trap that he called a truck. "Well," a brown head appeared on the other side of the truck at the passenger's side rear door, "Are… are… are you-. I mean can you… how can you have kids? "She hesitated to ask and Cynthia smiled at the second most frequently asked question when someone found out that Devyn was born a hermaphrodite.
"Not really, I got the measles really bad just as puberty was starting so I can't conceive children though if I hadn't I suppose I would be fertile." She watched her friend slide out of the driver's side and look up pointedly at her, no longer speaking to the teenager. "Now are you just going to stand there or are you going to help me? Little Miss over there dislocated some fingers."
The blonde smiled fondly at the exasperated tone and made her way off of the porch, not questioning the situation as it was as she made her way around the pickup to meet the eyes of someone she wasn't sure she would ever meet up close again. The words of the story that both Erin and Caitlin had weaved still captured her conscious attention and her name escaped Cynthia but she was sure that she knew what it was, she didn't have the same problem with names as Devyn or even, Arceus bless him, Sundown. At one of Dawn's competitions she had met the bubbly brunette and apparently the innocent girl crush the poor teenager had developed still hadn't worn off because the look she gave her had yet to change in the slightest.
The name clicked with the hazy smile the brunette gave her, still flushed from the answer to the question that she had gotten from Devyn, "It's a pleasure to see you again, May." She gestured with her hand to the one the girl had cradled against her stomach, "If I can see it please."
"You know this guy," reluctantly the younger girl yielded the wounded fist, she wanted to guard it with her very life if necessary when the probing fingers moved with a slow patience around the thickly swollen area. Her eyes followed Devyn as he all but carried her friend up onto the porch and into the house, it broke her concentration and she cried out painfully almost jerking her hand free as the Champion of Sinnoh probed the area gently.
"I am sorry. Yes, I know Devyn, he is like a sibling that I never had. Come inside so I can get a better look at this, I may not be able to put it back for you, Momma might have to do it." She followed the blonde's guidance into the house frowning at the open display room as they passed through strangely deserted for this time of day before she was ushered into a pleasant kitchen area with its own dining room and breakfast nook settled in cozily.
A woman was standing at the base of a flight of stairs against the far right hand wall looking worriedly up after a set of footsteps that echoed on wood, May took her in from across the room and instantly liked her. She estimated that the woman stood shoulder to shoulder with her which was a far cry from the almost six foot height of the blonde behind her and the man that was obviously her child that stood over six feet tall but just enough to top Cynthia and not much more.
It was nice to be around people that were normal sized and as she examined the woman's face she had to reassess her concepts of gauging ages, she couldn't have been too terribly old with the lack of wrinkles but not to terribly young either the presence of lines. Not the deep lines that came with age or the evidence of years working in the sun like some of the fishermen she had seen here and farmers elsewhere in Hoenn. The lines were smile and laugh lines and the open expression on the older woman's face showed that there was a wealth of emotion in her face that showed to the fullest, this woman would have a horrible poker face because she wore her heart on her sleeve.
Her hair was the same combination of browns and reds and touches of copper and blonde that had graced Devyn's head except the few streaks of grey that were showing at the temples. Eyes a queer pale but icily clear green shone in the brightly lit kitchen area done in shades of Saffron and yellow which brought out the buttercup tones within them. Dressed in a simple white t-shirt and blue jeans she was the image that she imagined for a kind woman or grandmother, Devyn's mother could be anywhere between forty and sixty.
"Momma." Cynthia's soft respectful tone brought both of their heads around, "This girl went and dislocated her fingers punching your Valentyne in the face." She older woman smiled softly at the two of them and gestured to a chair at the table. She sat down at the chair and delicately yielded her fingers for the older woman, her knuckles were enormous and she could clearly see where her middle finger was sitting closer to her pointer than she could remember it being.
"Now then, let's have a look." Soft, warm, small hands took hers as the older woman took a closer look.
-ooo-
There was a strange kind of niggle in the back of her mind as she sat next to her bed waiting for the woman to return to the world of the waking and for the inevitable stream of questions that would possibly ruin whatever strange emotion that linked them together. If this was anything like what Winter felt on a daily basis being separated from her soul mate then Devyn had a new found respect for the older girl and couldn't really blame her for being certifiably batshit on a scale of one to three twenty. She reached up and stroked her chin absently pondering the only thing that separated her physically from most males; she had never been able to grow a beard. It seemed like a strange thing to point out but when she had spare time she pondered the differences and decided that everyone was like her in some way or another and that she was just more honest with herself.
Usually pondering such things were depressing but Solidad hadn't been close to consciousness when she'd taken her upstairs, it seemed as if Devyn had gotten there just in time. The sea had sunk icy fingers into the red head and wasn't going to let go easily, it would be a hard won battle with the fever and delusions that would come with her being touched as she was but she was in the best place for it.
Devyn looked around her room and smiled at the bareness of it, the room showed that she travelled a lot with its strange bareness. The bed was a queen size and sat in the furthest corner from the door just underneath the enormous window that provided an excellent view of the bay and port. There was a rough unfinished wood desk next to the bed and beside that a bookcase filled with all the novels that she had read as a child and the multitude of magazines that she had subscriptions to as well as the ones she wrote articles for.
A door lead to the closet on the other side of the room and a rug sat in the middle of the floor on which the little Nipper sat staring at her with a concerned expression that was quickly fading into the half lidded look of someone who could barely keep their eyes open any longer. He had a basket waiting for him on the nightstand he would crawl into soon and she would tuck him in.
Leaning back she stared up at the ceiling fan with its slow revolutions and fell into the trancelike haze it could induce on someone with a clear mind, in the years since her childhood she had used the fan to fall asleep and without realizing what she was doing her eyelids fell and sleep washed over her.
-ooo-
He was sweating like a whore in church within moments of stepping off of the plane; his eyes had taken in everything that they could as his brain backlogged them for future use in case something that he had seen would prove important in the coming days. Anything and everything could be some important bit of information that could be used in his attempt to cast down the "Champion of Sinnoh" from her position of almost absolute power with the League. It was disgraceful that the title of 'Champion' could be given to someone who was from and lived actively in a different region. It was unheard of until the blonde had arrived and taken his place from him as easily as he could strip away someone's mental defenses. It was an insult to his intelligence and he wouldn't stand for it any longer.
All he had to do was find some evidence that he could use to incriminate her before the League, something that he didn't think that he would have too much of a hard time finding when he caught the glimpse in her mind three years ago about an assassination attempt on her younger brother in Hoenn. While the blood status didn't mean much, a least not to the national government of Hoenn, it had disturbed her enough that she had let her considerable control slip long enough for him to catch the whole conversation as it flashed through her mind and the clear impression of her being screwed into unconsciousness by the Dragon Master.
He wasn't stupid enough to make an attempt on Erin Lynch Kirkland Braddock, the entirety of the three clans would be gunning for his head and not even the League could protect him from the undeniable power of dragons, he did have the power to make a move on the group she worked with. He knew from the common reports as well as through the grape vine that her younger brother was a major player in the archeology group that she worked with frequently, he also knew that every sample they had was taken to Lenora of Nacrene City in southeastern Unova. Lenora was protected by the League and the academy of science so breaking into the Museum and taking a peak into what she had been analyzing for the group she was also a member of was completely beyond reason and could possibly prove to be the last mistake he would ever make. Lenora was a big woman who knew how to handle herself and while Hawes might seem to be a timid person with a gentle nature he was a cold blooded bastard who would kill anyone who tried to make a move on his wife or the Museum.
All other such leads were busts: tracking Valentyne Alexandria had proved to be too difficult and if the man had really thrown another out of a second story window then he doubted that he could stand toe to toe with him in a battle of physical prowess and keep his head on his shoulders, Caitlin D'Arbanville was a powerful psychic in her own right and he would get nothing from her that she wouldn't allow him access to with any efforts met with the calm patience of an adult explaining something difficult to a child, Charlie Lyhnnmann lived with that brute Theodore Mattis and he wouldn't subject himself to being in the same room with any of the Void which made prying Aihi NLN or Rachel Schulyer Sullivan for answers far too dangerous, and then there was Aramis Argumn…
His only chance at getting a good look at what was going on with them, a secret that would make them targets for assassination, was the youngest member of the group an upstart seventeen year old Aramis Argumn who they had met while in the Ryouhi Colony doing only Arceus knows what that may have landed in the heap of trouble they were in.
Ryouhi was a continent and country in one far removed from the rest of the established 'League controlled territories rumored to have originally been a settlement for prisoners like Orre had. Like Orre the land had yielded many interesting surprises and the equator continent as it was called became the source of ranching and livestock for most of the known world. Apparently Ryouhi had its own League but very few trainers ever left to seek fame and fortune beyond the borders of their land, something about how the lifestyle there makes it so that people don't want to ever leave and just live their lives as ranchers.
He couldn't understand it but then he was a city boy and if he ever had to earn his way in the world he would find it difficult to do even a day's work of manual labor even with his considerable, if you asked him, ability as a psychic.
Lucian was in luck, finding Aramis wouldn't prove to be a difficult task because the man was the 'Sheriff' of Argumn Bolt Station. At first he had thought the title low praise before the sixteen hour flight to Ryouhi, he had had time to go over what he knew so far and to look into this Aramis person and the colony itself. Argumn Bolt Station was one of the five largest ranches on the entire continent, the Argumn family seeing mostly to the rearing, slaughtering, packaging, and shipping of Mareep all over the world. The man he was looking for was actually Aramis Adleson Argumn Jr. his father Aramis Adleson Argumn Sr. had passed away five years ago in an accident leaving his oldest son to take care of his mother and the ranch as Sheriff.
The picture of him on the internet had been of a young man with broad incredibly muscular shoulders working bare chested in a barn, hammering away at horse shoes with single minded focus and intensity. For a young man he had a commanding appearance but how he fit in with Blue Archeology's skill. After all, Blue Archeology had a black budget with technology that came out of the Lyhnnmann laboratory far before it even was so much as hinted at with the general populace.
Could he be their mule?
Or their handyman?
It was debatable but all in all he wasn't someone to mess around with guessing by the enormous muscles budging and shifting in his forearms and what little he had been able to garner from his reports.
Lucian found the young man as he was leaving the barn and had to bit his lip to keep from making an appreciative sound, the pictures of the Aramis did not do him justice. Darkly tanned from his work black, black hair fell in unruly curls down to his shoulders, tied in a ponytail. Strong, proud, aristocratic features graced his face making him look like the bold creature that he was, refined, beautiful. His entire body seemed to follow the theme of strong cut muscle all the way down to his cowboy boots, it was enjoyable to watch him move.
"Can I help you?" the Sherriff looked him up and down with a look of disgust. "We don't like your kind around here so make it quick, you League people always want something." The venom in his pale brown eyes was enough to make him want to take a step back but he refused to give ground.
"I'm here to ask you about your connection to Blue Archeology." The activity in the young man's brain stopped instantly, his lip curled in disgust and Lucian sighed… this was going to be a lot harder to do than he originally thought that it would be. Caitlin must've taught the boy well.
-ooo-
She giggled at the look on the man's face and pulled herself back from her young friend and progeny, her student was unique in that he had been born with no ability and still he had managed to block someone trained by rigorous, demanding tutors out and call for her help without him noticing. She had been correct when she had thought that Aramis Adleson Argumn Jr. had a very special mind, his progress astounding her more and more as the days grew long and her mind idled on the same trails they always did when she considered Lucian.
The hand in hers tightened and was pulled upwards, a gentle kiss on the back of it drew her attention back to this place on the planet. The Thirdling had the ability to grab her attention without trying. Blinking, associating herself with this landscape and the person before her, Caitlin found herself pressed against the mate of her soul intimately. Without looking physically or mentally she knew exactly what was happening, Winter had found it strange that Dawn had moved past them on the street without seeing them.
"Interesting." She whispered softly against her lover's lips, "Should we follow?" the answer was obvious, no. There was no time and neither really wanted to… crude in the extreme but if Winter was not worried by it then Caitlin had no reason to be.
-ooo-
Charlie Lyhnnmann frowned at the read out on the screen; the data had been conclusive until just yesterday when the newest sample had been put into the archive. She ran fingers through her hair frustrated mentally recalling what she knew about ancient pokemon and the similar strand of data in the DNA of every living creature, human and pokemon alike, trying to find the connection. Helix, Dome, Old Amber, Root, Claw, Skill, Armor, Cover and Plume; Omantye, Kabuto, Aerodactyle, Lileep, Anorith, Cranidos, Shieldon, Tirtouga, and Archen. And then of course there was Relicanth…
Her head ached as she thought of the connection between them and Volcarona the evidence pointed back in one single direction, there was something there first that became everything else, something that warped and twisted itself to suit its environment so well that it forever changed. But how did one creature, a common ancestor, that had been more than a bacteria or similar being, become the singular basis for all of the world's animals. Plant life was more or less completely unaffected by whatever phenomena had caused the crack in the black earth in the Ryouhi plate.
An event that had been so catastrophic that it had wiped most of the advanced life off of the planet, destroying all but an estimated 1% of living creatures. But what done it, what could have possibly done so much damage that Arceus had to step into the world again to fix-
She cut that train of thought in half before she could entertain it further, there was no way that the divine deity, the Original One, had bothered to come back to solve the problems of one of his previous inventions. The existence of the three parallel worlds and the realms connected to it: including the world of the Unown, the four realms of Dialga, Palkia, Giratina, and of course the home of the Original One. And then there was the evidences against several species of pokemon that belonged to other worlds until they crash landed on the hurtling ball of dirt that they called home.
Vaguely she toyed with the idea of alien species coming and taking over but quickly dismissed that assumption, if that were true than there would be a lot more of them. Logically even if there was an army of Deoxi there would be some sort of resistance that would be evident in the history of the colonies that had formed and yet there was none. When one looked at the fact that Clefairy were used in construction, the workers using their natural tendency to construct aircraft and runways, and their unusual instinct to dance in a ring on nights of the full moon and nights when meteor showers occur as well as the discovery of them around every meteor it was safe to assume that they wanted to get home. The peaceful and sweet creatures were only dangerous when threatened.
Then there was the possibility, in the mind of the conspiracy theorists that the large population of Staryu and Starmie belonged to another planet where they fought with Lunatone and Solrock explaining the distaste of the four creatures for the other party. And then for people who had gotten frustrated and just gave up the whole problem in the easiest way possible: some idiot had waited for the Millennium Comet, found Jirachi and wished for most of the world to die, possibly to exert control over one of the many kingdoms that had existed at the time though many disappeared around the time of the event.
She groaned and leaned back in her chair, this was just a little too much but there had to be a connection somewhere. Somewhere but she didn't know where, the connection just had to exist. It had to exist because if not then Entei wouldn't be so determined to destroy whoever so reached the heart of the mysteries in Ryouhi. The clues that they had gathered as a group, Blue Archeology, had led her to Orre and Ryouhi and then to Hoenn, then to Johto and Kanto from there, Orre again… Unova.
Somewhere.
Sitting forward the young woman's fingers flew over the key and brought up the three dimensional image of her Volcarona, its wings decorated with elegant symbols. She made the choice consciously to ignore her greatest problem for just a little longer, not much but a little. With the help of Cynthia and Caitlin she would be able to put together some interesting things and this time Erin.
The normally stoic dragon master yielded very little to the group besides security and heavy lifting, climbing and taking pictures and the like, mostly doing it because of Cynthia. With her eyes closed she remembered the images that Erin Lynch Kirkland Braddock had yielded earlier that spring, the high resolution images had been of a cave that very few people knew existed in Forina, deep underground it showed a crystalline structure. The carvings in the structure depicted a very clear image of a woman and a dragon, the woman and the dragon that was solely responsible for the creation of the three clans and the founding of a powerful nation.
The Legend dated during the Event that left the mark on the plate, one that they had all overlooked mainly because the truth of how the dragon split into three separate entities was the single most guarded secret of the clans Lynch, Kirkland and Braddock. Whatever had caused it had completely destroyed the woman, the soul deep bond between herself and her dragon flinging her into the Void, physically, the loss of its soulmate had split one creature into three. That significant number was there once again, in her mind she rationalized that it was the sun and moon and stars, the earth and sea and sky, Reshiram and Zekrom and Kyurem, birth and life and death, childhood and adulthood and seniority.
Charlie closed her eyes as she remembered the Dragon Spear Pillar, the interior a holy place for the clan Braddock with the history of the son Braddock written clearly on the inside. Comparatively the single most violent of the clans the, the power of fire and the life that was possible because of the sun, the clan had become the wardens of the part of the dragon that sat within the sun. A peaceful, logically, honorable creature that called itself Reshiram. She had wondered, wondered what would happen if the youngest brother Lynch didn't rule over the vicious creature Kyurem.
Kyurem, the Lord of Ice, the soulless and wild predator that took over whatever it wanted and seized in its hands whatever it wanted. They did say that the heart of hell was ice but whatever had happened to Evermillion had been fire, a fire great enough to erupt over the entire world.
She pushed herself back from the desk and scowled at the ground between her feet, Cynthia should know but the whole story had to be spoken from Erin's lips. The Dragon Master was the truest Master, born of all clans, and therefore the keeper of the clan's memory.
Charlie's eyes flicked to the watch on her arm and stood up slowly, it was roughly two hour before they had scheduled the meeting and it would give her time to indulge in her domestic influences. Baking had been a secret joy of hers, it blanked the mind and made her able to contemplate fully contemplate the restless questions in her mind. Any bit of information would help her solve the problem and what was this but a complex field equation?