Relics: Liahona pt.1

Alessio vs Cynthia becomes a battle with even more at stake, then the team goes on to search for Liahona where

Serenity gasped and grappled for her cape once it was ripped right off of her body. Alessio held it out of her reach then balled it up, throwing it into the air. Ash shot at it and Jamie smacked it into the dungeon wall with his hammer. Serenity balled up her fists and began pounding at Alessio's chest.

"Anyhow, now that situation is over. I should really start monitoring the packages that get sent to her. Did you know it's a rule that as a dominant partner I could have all my submissive partners move into a large dorm with me? Though, having to deal with you all on my free time would interfere with my fanfiction." Alessio pushed up his glasses in a self important manner.

"Your what." Serenity stopped hitting him, completely deadpanning. 

"Hm. Anyways, I just thought of something in regards to Kassum." Alessio completely ignored the fact he'd just admitted to writing fanfiction and moved on as if that was a completely normal thing to say.

What a weirdo, fanfiction? It's probably all Kingdom Hearts fanfiction, for such a serious guy he really has some weird hobbies.

"Do you all remember that he showing The Creator an I.D? Specifically one certifying he'd gone to a God's Chosen college?" Alessio asked, receiving a blank stare from Jamie but nods from everyone else. "So none of you have come to this conclusion yet? I expected as much from Jamie but the rest of you? I suppose I'll simply come out with it now, I've been holding onto it for long enough." Alessio walked in front of the group and turned around to face them- this made the entire situation feel very official. "This challenges the entire conception of what it is to be a demon or human. We've known from the beginning an angel could turn into a demon, but- a human? Is it possible for a human to turn into a demon? It had to be if you take into account he'd gone to a God's Chosen highschool and college; and as you all know God's Chosen students are recognized from birth. They must sign up at their own will but from birth the heads know whether or not a person is eligible."

"Where are you going with this?" Sarah asked quietly, it caught Serenity a little of guard becase she'd almost forgotten what Sarah's voice sounded like.

"Where I'm going with this? You all really don't get it do you? After his graduation, his heart became so filled with evil he became a demon- he wasn't born one." Alessio stated.

"Or he could of forged it?" Ash asked, Alessio lifting an eyebrow in response. "There's this magical thing where people can forge things. Your theory sort of wrecks your entire concept of that one ghost guy that sits in the sky and-"

Ash had to stop because Serenity's scythe had appeared in her hand. She assumed that was permission from Alessio to hit him in the back of his head with the blunt side of her weapon. "How can you even deny His existence when God told us that message that day. Everyone everywhere heard it. Are you an atheist or are you plain stupid? How can you recognize the existence of demons without recognizing the existence of God? Are you on crystal meth?" Serenity asked, letting a bit of her cynical side show with the outburst.

"We label them demons but they're really just a species that have yet to be scientifically explained that can use the same abilities we can and happen to be black and white. They could be a sect of extremely pale satanists who have been specially bred to all have black hair and black eyes." Ash crossed his arms stubbornly.

"Fine. We can go with your forging idea. That still doesn't explain how Cynthia didn't know he was monochrome." Alessio remarked.

"There are tons of pale people with black hair and black eyes. In fact Alessio, if you died your hair black, put contacts in and dressed in all black you would look monochrome too. Besides, his profession gave him excuse to never wear clothes of color." Ash countered easily, Alessio being clearly bothered by the fact he'd gotten something completely wrong for once.

"You we're totally wrong Alessio." Serenity snickered at him, then she bent back to whisper to Jamie. "We should totally stage a coup d'etat."

"You know I can hear you right? I was wrong once, I could still start an Alessio is Always Right Foundation based on the number of times I'm right. Alessio is Always Right Foundation. I like the sound of that." Alessio reached his hand to his chin and cupped it. His brown eyes drifted up towards the dungeon ceiling in thought. It made Serenity giggle, Alessio was always so serious but even he had a silly side. It made him remember when she first contracted with him.

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Serenity sat down on a window sill overlooking the school's entrance in ll it's grandeur. It was undeniably beautiful, the lush green garden that lay ahead of her. All enclosed by a magnificently glowing silver gate. Students walked back and forth on the campus, smiling and giggling as if the world were a candystore. 

This made Serenity wanted to vomit.

Those a******s, all of them. How dare they walk around smiling? They're all idiots. Idiots, all of them. 

Her thoughts were interrupted by a calling of her name. It was Danial Thompson. He was with three other people but Dan was the only one Serenity noticed.

"Serenity I-" Dan started.

"You know it must of hurt when you jumped off of your ego and fell on your IQ score. I feel bad for you." Serenity said, looking at the reflection of him through the window.

"Look, I just wanted to tell you that-" Dan started again.

"I wanted to tell you that you should apologize to every single tree producing oxygen so that you can breathe." Serenity cut him off once again.

"My name's Alessio." A man stepped forward, speaking in English as opposed to the latin that Serenity and Dan had been using.

"Serenity Starr, am I correct? Let me start by giving you a tip, just use English. If you haven't noticed yet, nobody actually speaks Latin here other than freshman. It makes you all stick out like a sore thumb. Especially when Latin doesn't have the words you need so you have to add in English words." Alessio walked next to Serenity, looking at the same vista she was looking at.

"I saw you and Dan in your fighting tactics class. He's a terrible partner, you're much stronger than he has a capacity to wield so he simply slows you down. You should really be thankful he ended your partnership, you need someone who can match your level of skill." Alessio said to her, pushing up his glasses.

"Capacity?" Serenity asked in a sort of low snarl. As suggested, she used English rather than Latin.

"You'll learn what that is in Fundamentals of Ability Wielders. Basically though, it's like you're water and he's a cup. He can only hold a quart of water but you're a gallon of water. When you pour than gallon of water in a cup that can hold a quart, inevitable most of it spills to the floor and is wasted." Alessio explained to her, Serenity never even knew a function like that existed.

"Now that you understand that principle, lets say you are a gallon of water still. I, unlike Dan, am a cup that can hold three gallons of water. That means you can be poured into that cup and still have room to grow and improve." The man finally made eye contact with her when they both slowly turned their heads to look at each other simultaneously.

"Are you asking me to contract with you? I don't even know you. Besides, I'm still contracted to Dan.... we just haven't finished all the ceremonies and paperwork yet." Serenity said firmly.

"Details, details. Just listen, I'm not asking you to contract with me right now. What I'm asking is for you to not accept any other contracts for a month. Eventually when freshmen rankings come out then people will be begging you to contract with them. Besides, I think you'll find we'll get along." Alessio gave a small smile.

"How?" Serenity rolled her grey eyes, just thinking Alessio was a creep.

"Are you a genderless alien from Mars who defeated the king at chess so then therefore became king but then descended to earth in search of Kingdom Heart fanfiction?" Alessio asked, never once blinking.

"........No." Serenity said slowly.

"........Yeah. Me neither. See, we already have things in common." Alessio said with a small grin. He made Serenity laugh loudly, a high pitched bell chime that rang pleasantly through the halls of the school. 

A month later Serenity had been sitting with Alessio at lunch for a while where she met other people like Jamie who insisted of being recognized as a panda and William who refused to date anyone other than short freshman girls even though he was a senior. Through them she met many other people and completely broke away from her old group. Dan and her had finally managed the complicated process of breaking a contract. As Alessio had guaranteed her, she'd ranked 12th among freshman. Considering there were probably a 150 freshman that was a nice score. She decided she'd contract with Alessio shortly after.

Forming a contract with Alessio was amazing, but forming contracts was always amazing. She slowly pressed her palm to Alessio's and recited a bible verse. Any bible verse worked as long as it came from your heart, she chose John 13:34. "A new commandment I give to you: love one another. As I have loved you, you must love one another." I white light washed over them, filling them both with a sense of euphoria: it was God's love filling them both. Alessio chose Alma 36:3 "Whosoever shall put their trust in God shall be supported in their trials, and their troubles, and their afflictions, and shall be lifted up at the last day." When the light faded they were both smiling giddily, intoxicated by the overwhelming feel of God's glory.

Later on she complained he'd completely made up a bible verse and Alma wasn't even a book in the bible. That was the first time she learned Alessio was a Mormon. Months later he contracted with Ash, Serenity was curious to find out how an atheist could contract when they couldn't choose a bible verse from their heart. Ash told her he used Revelation 21:8 because it was all about him. He also explained he didn't actually know the verse by heart before that point, he just said it somehow. Alessio used a different verse but refused to tell her. He insisted that it had to remain a secret or else it would ruin the sanctity of contracting. He later explained it was sort of a Mormon thing.

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"What's so funny? I was being serious." Alessio said, the side of his mouth lifting up slightly which revealed that he was only being half serious.

"Nothing, come on lets go." Serenity said, they went farther into the dungeon by her request, the dungeons being a cave underneath the school where low leveled demons often spawned. They were used for training and research purposes. Anything that a demon left when they died was supposed to be given to the school but people rarely did that.

They walked through the dungeons and it was quiet, it was way too quiet. It should have been swarmed with lower leveled demons. Also there should have been more people, typically there were always a ton of teams down in the dungeons. Serenity could clearly see the danger in this situation but Alessio had a small smile on his face as he walked down the corridors.

They were met with a large group of people huddled in a dead end. Alessio called out to them, saying: "Do any of you know why the dungeons are empty?" 

The group separated to look at them, Cynthia was in the epicenter of the group along with The Creator and Arai. "Because we just swept it, try again in thirty minutes." Cynthia said nonchalantly, seemingly wanting Alessio to be jealous of the fact she had the power to do so. Serenity guessed this based on the fact she kept looking at Alessio, inspecting his expression.

"That's easy when you have that many partners." Alessio responded, looking away from her. 

"Why don't you put Serenity where your mouth is." Cynthia said in her usual aggressive and confrontational manner, The Creator's lips moving slightly before he burst out into flames. 

"Fighting without an administrator present is prohibited." Alessio crossed his arms. He would get suspended for two weeks. Serenity wouldn't because Alessio was for all intents and purposes in charge of her. As far as the school was concerned, she was his weapon. Actually, Alessio was different than most people in not treating his 'weapons' like weapons. He treated them like human beings. Cynthia tended to treat hers (aside from The Creator whom she had a very personal relationship with) like weapons. She even, to an extent, treated other people with abilities with weapons.

"Punk. Heh. Look, why don't we make the stakes higher then. I'm a betting woman. When I win, I want Serenity. I wanted her originally, if you remember. Then you contracted with her and took her from right under me. You're not even using her correctly, she's agile is but the way you use her subtracts from her overall agility." Cynthia said, her eyes drawing together in frustration but her mouth smiling.

Cynthia wanted me? I'm not even very strong really. She shouldn't talk about Alessio like that either. Besides, she's talking about me right in front of me like I'm an object.

"She's not an object to be traded. Cynthia." Alessio put a large emphasis on her name, now glaring at her outright.

"You don't need to worry about it if you're sure you'll win." Cynthia taunted him mercilessly. She glared right back at Alessio without a trace of fear or doubt in her eyes. 

"Fine, give me..... give me Arai when I win." Alessio said, taking the bait Cynthia had set for him.

"What happened to the fact I'm not an object to be traded?" Serenity asked, him her voice unusually raised. Though, because she was who she was her voice was only raised to a small extent. Even so, Alessio and Jamie looked at her- a bit surprised by the outburst. Sarah looked up from her book at Serenity, raising a light brown eyebrow at her questioningly. 

"Edgy." Ash commented.

"Yeah, whats happen'in 'rinity?" Jamie asked, walking towards her with his arms extended for a hug.

"Check your privileges." Serenity quickly extended her foot up into Jamie's jaw in one swift motion. Jamie let out a guttural cry as he was launched up then onto the ground. He quickly stood up, brushing his chin off. As always he was unaffected by Serenity's attacks- which was part of the reason why Serenity was so fine with attacking him. 

"Sorry, I forgot you don't like to be touched." Jamie said, while reaching out to touch her once more. Serenity knew he just didn't realize he was doing it. She still drew her combat boot across his face, knocking him into the wall of the cave. When he stood up he began apologizing again. "You know I'm not doing it on purpose! It was an accident, I'm just naturally tha'kin'a guy ya know?" He asked rhetorically.

"It's literally always hilarious to watch this." Ash grinned, enjoying the interaction.

"Tha'kin'a is not a word." Serenity crossed her arms, and turned away from them. Though, it was obvious she wasn't mad at him anymore just by the small smile on her face that she was trying to suppress in order to remain looking angry.

Only shortly after did she remember she wasn't alone and her stunt attracted attention from Cynthia's team. Her face turned a dark red and she looked down at the floor. Cynthia simply chuckled and her entire team turned their backs so they wouldn't be facing Serenity. No doubt Cynthia had simply controlled them all to make them do that. Serenity wordlessly thanked her then stepped back behind Jamie and clutched onto the back of his jacket. Jamie spread his legs and crossed his arms in a protective stance. 

That day, no training got done. The demons took over three hours to fully re-spawn. By that time everyone had left for their own reasons. The next day was Sunday and everyone went to church. Serenity took her usual routine and went to get dressed for church then went to go get Ash up and force him to go to church. As usual Ash went kicking and screaming. Right in front of the doors to her church Alessio was standing- this was extremely odd considering he was a Mormon. They went to separate churches.

"I'd like you to come to church with me. Ash you don't really care about what church you go to do you?" Alessio stuck his hands in his pockets. He was wearing a suit, he looked weirdly formal. Serenity was only used to seeing him dressed in his uniform. When he wasn't in uniform, he usually dressed in a graphic tee and and jeans. She knew Alessio thought she looked awfully different as well by the way he was staring at her. Serenity usually wore her uniform but tended to differentiate herself with, bowties, hairbows and capes- though capes tended to only last seconds on her.

"Nah. Unless the satanic church is an option?" Ash said, "It's so boring to perform satanic rituals alone!" He exclaimed then let out a huge sigh. Serenity lifted her hand over her mouth to emit a small laugh at Ash's remark. Despite his objection to religion Serenity would definitely place him as one of her favorite people.

"I'm not exactly a Mormon you know." Serenity said softly.

"Irrelevant, now, there's this interesting passage in the book of Mormon about these two thousand soldiers......." Alessio began, not allowing Serenity to dispute coming. Serenity skipped to catch up with Alessio to listen to his story. She loved hearing it, even though she'd heard it hundreds of times before.

When they arrived, the service begun with a singing of hymns, they were actually quite pretty in her opinion. Alessio seemed rather bored of it already. Serenity looked around excitedly, observing the church even though she was a little upset to be missing her own church service. She looked at all the teachers, some of who she didn't even realize were Mormons. 

Prayers were then offered by church members. Alessio prayed over Allen, the sharp reminder wracking Serenity's thin body. She wiped at her eyes during the prayer so when it was over the two males on either side of her wouldn't know she had been crying. Though, the knowing look Alessio gave her when it was over easily let Serenity know she'd been seen through. Thankfully, Alessio didn't mention the topic.

Next was something Alessio explained to be Sacrament. Bread and water was passed around, Serenity accepting hers with a thank you. "Why isn't it wine? It's supposed to be wine." Serenity commented in a soft voice, looking up at Alessio. Their height difference was probably 3 or 4 inches with Serenity at 5'7".

"Consumption of alcohol is a sin." Alessio answered easily.

"Free snacks are free snacks." Ash quickly consumed the food and water he was given. Alessio brought his palm sharply to his face and sighed.

Someone began to speak after the sacrament and Serenity quickly began to rifle through her purse. She pulled out a twenty dollar bill and stared at it. She could more than afford it, she sometimes went on missions offered by the administration which always payed in cash. Then other missions sometimes payed in cash too when demons dropped various items, if she mailed it to the administrative building they'd sell it and return her a portion of the profit. Her only issue was, she didn't know how much other people usually offered in tithes.

"What are you doing?" Alessio asked her flatly.

"I just want to be ready when the offering baskets come around." Serenity replied proudly. 

"What? There are no offering baskets." Alessio raised a singular eyebrow at her, causing Serenity's face to flush dark red at the assumption. She quickly put the money back in her purse, crossed her arms and looked off in the other direction. How could she of made such a glaring error?

There were a few speakers, and all of them talked about things regarding Liahona. Serenity quickly realized why she was here. The research team she was on was excavating the Liahona. It was a relic that had been hidden long ago to keep it our of harms grasp. Though, nobody was entirely sure if it actually worked (other than Mormons) because there were no solid school records of anyone successfully using it. Last year the freshman class had to right an essay over it where Dan heavily implied the Mormon religion being a cult rather than an actual religion and called Joseph Smith a false prophet on more than a single occasion. He failed that essay, not because it wasn't good but because the freshman English teacher happened to be a Mormon priest.

As they left Serenity asked, "Do you ever miss your parents?" the question being open for either of them to answer.

"No, she lives on campus as a hairdresser. I wish I got to miss my parent. Instead she dyes my hair a different color every week to test out new hair dyes." Ash complained. Ash's mother lived on campus because God's Chosen was highly insulated. The administrators tried their best to give the students little reason to need to leave the campus other than for missions. Last year the senior girls petitioned for a restaurant on campus because they missed them and it made them want to leave campus to go to one. Beginning of Serenity's sophomore year two McDonald's and an IHOP were installed in campus. They were worked by students and paid the average amount that they would be paid if they worked in a McDonald's or IHOP outside of GC.

"Irrelevant. What is relevant is that you should go get packed. The research team and the guard team are leaving in a few hours for New Mexico." Alessio shooed her off.

When she arrived at her dorm she jumped on her bed and brought a teddy bear close into her chest. Her room was sort of her happy place. She shared it with a senior named Kayla last year but then she graduated. The freshman turnout was smaller this year than the year before so Serenity got to keep a room to herself and therefore decorate it herself. The room was a perfect square, it was decorated in different shades of grey. The only things that weren't shades of grey were her uniforms, school supplies, accessories, dresser, stuffed animals and the mahogany frame of her bed. Her bed was covered with stuffed animals so much than she couldn't sleep with all of them. At least half of them fell off the bed anytime she went to sleep.

Her least favorite part about her dorm building was that it was co-ed. So there were noisy guys running around being, well, noisy. Dan actually lived in the fifth floor of her dorm building, she and Arissa lived on the second. So she never spent time in her actual building other than in her room with the door locked. It was custom to keep your door slightly open to show you were fine with people coming in but Serenity had a strict policy of hating everyone so she kept hers closed and locked. Jamie's door was always wide open and had at least five people in it other than him and his roommate at all times. Alessio's was propped an inch or two open but people usually didn't enter other than for help on homework, and nobody would be his roommate. Ash left his door open but he painted a pentagram on his wall so nobody would want to be his roommate or enter his room at all and it was entirely successful. Sarah's door was kept closed but never locked, as long as you knocked she'd let you enter.

Serenity woke up by a loud knock on her door, she looked at the time and groggily realized it was ten minutes until time to go and she hadn't packed anything. The person at her door obviously hadn't realized she was asleep or else they wouldn't of dared knock. Serenity unlocked her door, opened it and without actually looking at who it was she grabbed the lamp near her door and swung it at the person. A barely awake Serenity was a needlessly violent one.

A couple seconds later when she could actually see and process images she realized it was Alessio and he'd stopped her from hitting him. The rest of her teammates were behind him. Alessio took the lamp out of her hand, handed her a coffee (Starbucks due to a petition that got a Starbucks on campus) and invited himself in. "Your room is a mess." Alessio remarked as he stepped over stuffed animals, drawings and open notebooks.

"Your life is a mess." The pre-coffee Serenity remarked, she quickly chugged the coffee handed to her and was soon considerably more docile. Her team waited in her room for her to pack up. Jamie took the liberty of going through all her things and commenting on them. When he got to her unmentionables and decided to comment on the size of her chest Serenity literally kicked him out. She had a suitcase packed soon and made Jamie cart it around as punishment. She then changed into her uniform, going with a polo covered by a navy blue blazer, a plaid skirt with tights under it tucked into combat boots. She wasn't going to be fighting so it seemed to be the perfect opportunity to wear a skirt. Skirts were a cool thing to wear for boarding school students and it was very important to Serenity to look cool while doing things.

Serenity separated from her team to get on a plane while the guard team rode a bus. She hadn't realized that the research team was a mission directly from the school which meant a plane ride rather than a bus that bumped one too many times. The plane ride was terrible, she had to ride next to someone who insisted on talking on the phone to their girlfriend the entire time.

When they arrived Serenity had to also share a hotel room, to top it all off with a male. God's Chosen, being a religious academy, didn't mind co-ed dorms or even booking hotel rooms for a boy and a girl to share because they were sure their students wouldn't be doing anything to be ashamed of. Serenity wanted to scream that at least a quarter of their school were atheists.

"My name is Peter, I'm the other chemist." The man extended his hand towards Serenity. He then drew it back after Serenity stared at the hand for a couple of seconds. "I'm friends with Arai, he warned me about.... so you don't have to worry about me- ooh free towels!" Peter was quickly distracted and rushed into the bathroom.

Peter exited the bathroom with a towel and stood in front of Serenity. "I'm a dominant partner and I have a partner. She's a black girl. That means that she's a girl and she's black. Look at this tv!" Peter dropped the towel and ran to the tv, picking up the remote and flipping through the channels. 

Peter quickly dashed back to Serenity and said, "I'm not racist. She's just black. Her skin isn't black though it's brown. I think we're dating. How do you know if you're dating someone. We kiss sometimes, does that mean we're dating? Seriously! The tv has Big Bang theory! My partner's name is Sicily Leach. I call her Sic. That doesn't mean we're sisters.... because I'm a guy."

Great, the other chemist is a stereotypical dumb blonde with ADHD. Yep, this is definitely going to be fun. If your definition of fun includes pulling all of your hair out.

It was only a short while later Serenity was informed Peter was actually top in their grade as far as academics went.

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[Pensmoke Poems]

No matter how many times he gets kicked in the head Jamie will never learn will he?