The Four Mirrors
Sequel to ‘Legacies’
By MMM/AJ
PART II: The Book of K’telle
Prologue – Guardian
It’s a common occurrence for Pokemon to return to Earth as spirits after death. Reasons can vary for their choice not to move on to the next plane, but those that stay usually end up following two different paths. Many of them, especially those of the low intelligence, take the forms of gaseous ghosts like Gastly or its ilk. While in this form it’s relatively easy for them to interact with and manipulate the world of the living, but they lose all traces of their previous identity when they do. On the other hand, they can choose to manifest as pure spirits independent of physical form. That pathway makes it nearly impossible to interact with the physical world, but the subject maintains their identity. Every once in awhile they can gather enough energy to do minor things like move an object or make a noise, perhaps even show themselves for a second or two, but nothing as major as those who choose the path of the ghost Pokemon.
Tanis’ death could be considered both untimely and violent, and he had many reasons to stay behind on Earth afterwards. When he chose to stay behind, he picked the form of a pure spirit, not wanting to be consumed in a ghost Pokémon’s childish needs to scare people and pull pranks.
Invisible to the living and unable to make his presence known, Tanis spent his days watching over his family as they grew and prospered. On the day his grandchildren were born from Opulous’ cloning tubes, he felt a pang of bittersweet sadness. Though it saddened him that he could never be a part of their lives, he was still overjoyed to have grandchildren. He never expected to have so many either; it came as a shock to him but not of the negative variety. He had always dreamed of their species expanding into a society to rival to humanity, but his sensible side had consigned it to the category of improbable fantasy. He had only mentioned it to Opulous once, and in an offhand way. He never imagined that Opulous would even remember it, let alone take it to heart and work to make it happen. He had known that Opulous’ brilliance would one day overshadow his own, but he had never expected Opulous to use it to overcome their species’ genetic diversity barrier.
Over the years, Tanis was content to simply watch from the shadows as his grandchildren grew and matured. He wanted to act as a spiritual guardian to them, but because their lives were so peaceful he hardly needed to intervene at all. One time a malicious Haunter wandered by and decided to torment them, but Tanis was able to reverse all of its tricks and drive it off with ease. He might not have been able to influence the physical world much any more, but he could damn well blast the crap out of ethereal type Pokemon if they crossed him. The Haunter had floated off weakly to regenerate itself, and if it had had any legs to walk with, it surely would have limped.
On the day his grandchildren finally came of age though, trouble began to stir in the 4 houses.
“What do you mean I can’t?” Emael Redclaw thundered. “I have just as much of a right to have my own house as you now that I’m 18!”
“I’m not disputing your rights,” Nolus retorted angrily, “I just don’t want you clearing out any of this forest to build it!”
“Oh, so it’s perfectly alright for you and your brothers to clear cut to build your own homes, but not if I do it?”
“We didn’t touch a single tree when we built these homes!” Nolus bellowed, obviously taken aback at the thought. “This clearing was here when we arrived, and trees have grown in closer and closer to the houses in the years since!”
“Oh how convenient. I bet you were the one to plant them!” Emael said with a sour tone.
“Only a few of them!” Nolus said, now flustered instead of angry.
Venius, who had previously been upstairs, heard the outburst of anger and teleported down to interrupt. Unbeknownst to all three of them, Tanis’s spirit was sitting in a nearby room watching them.
“What’s going on here?” Venius asked calmly, appearing out of the air between the two of them.
“Nolus here says that he won’t allow me to build my own house next door! He’d rather the trees have a better place to live than me!” Emael said indignantly.
A glimmer of anger appeared in Venius’ eyes like he had just been severely insulted. “So you think that the home I have provided for you for 18 years is unsatisfactory?”
“N-no…” Emael stammered, all of his indignation deflated.
“You say the trees out there have it better when my brothers and I built this home just so I could raise you and the rest of the family?”
“No, that’s not-”
“If this house is such a terrible place to live in, why don’t you try living in a cave, or out there with the humans!” Venius said, emphasizing ‘humans’ with a special disgust.
“Dad, listen to me! I’m just tired of being cramped up in the same house with 6 other people! I want to build my own home like you did!”
“Uh-huh. Where exactly are you going to get the materials for this new house? Are you going to mine, refine, and mold the steel yourself? Do you know a lot about electrical engineering? Plumbing? Wood crafting and carving? And as Nolus quite finely put it, where do you plan to build? Purity Canyon hasn’t exactly been thinning over the last few years, and I don’t think you’ll find that real estate is getting any cheaper out there in that big bad world!” Venius roared.
Venius’ tirade was cut short and his expression of rage melted into shock. Nolus and Emael turned to see what it was that had caused his raging to grind to a halt, but they saw nothing but an empty dining room.
“You look like your train of thought just got hit with a nuke!” Nolus said. “What’s wrong?”
Emael grinned a bit but didn’t say anything.
“I saw… I have an idea.” Venius said quietly. It seemed for a moment like he had decided not to say something.
“What kind of idea?”
“Emael, you’ll have your own home.” Venius said suddenly.
“What?!” Emael and Nolus both stammered in surprise.
“Nolus, let’s go get Opulous and Cygnus. I think it’s time we went to talk to the Governor of Johto.”
Tanis grinned to himself as his four sons left. He had gathered up enough energy over the last few days to make himself visible for a few seconds, and in the heat of the argument he had done so in the corner of Venius’ vision.
There was one thing about Venius that Tanis hadn’t known until after death: Venius was much more sensitive to spirits than any of his brothers. It meant that Tanis could actually relay information to Venius mentally in short spurts. It worked best when Venius was asleep or meditative, as evidenced by Tanis’ feat of delivering the mindgem to Venius so many years ago. But he could deliver some snippets of information to Venius even while he was awake, and he had done so at the same time as he appeared.
Tanis had been keeping an eye on current events and traveling around the world a bit, and he had noticed a recent debate over some polluted lands south of the Orre region of Japan. Ares had used these lands as a dumping ground for all the toxic waste his empire generated, rendering them uninhabitable to nearly all life. But no matter how toxic and swampy these lands were, he knew that if a few psychics of high caliber like his sons were to work together, they could clean it up telekinetically with Opulous’ precise mind at the lead. It’d be a manner of telekinetically isolating the pollutants and teleporting them far out into space. Humans are incapable of cleaning like this though, to do it technologically would be incredibly expensive and infeasible. The Governors of the different regions had been arguing about what to do with this useless land, and so far no solution had been found. Tanis knew that if given a chance to unload it onto some group of suckers, these men would practically give the place away. It took less than a second to transmit all of that information to Venius.
Tanis smiled to himself as he watched Emael walk off with a big grin on his face. He had managed to stop the fight and could have even found a new home for his grandchildren. It validated his choice to stay behind on Earth, even though he knew he was missing out on the chance to meet his father on the other side
