The Four Mirrors
Sequel to ‘Legacies’
By MMM/AJ
Chapter XIII – CIV
Six months of Cygnus’ life were gone. Most of Spring and all of Summer had slipped by, leaving him behind in that dismal little plastic cell. For the majority of the time Cygnus spent in prison, he wasn’t even given the mercy of a window to stare wistfully out of. Solid metal, plastic, and concrete boxed him in, and beyond that were boundless cityscapes and wildernesses separating him from his beloved family. It was only on the eve of his final month that they moved him into a cell that had a window, and he found that it ended up only intensified his yearning to be free even more.
His human keepers were oftentimes abusive to him, but not on any regular basis. Most of the time they kept away from him, avoiding contact altogether. They had built in a sliding drawer system to give him his meals, and only let him out to move once or twice a week. They controlled his cell’s lights and temperature from the outside, and only spoke with him over the PA when it was necessary. Cygnus could sense the fear and hostility hidden behind their eyes whenever they did make contact, and on several occasions they expressed it via their brutal nightsticks.
The worst part of all however, was that insufferable cramped, claustrophobic feeling that hounded Cygnus during many of his waking hours. Normally, he didn’t have real claustrophobia, his room at home was only marginally bigger than the cell in fact. What triggered it was his inability to go outside and move. He wanted to jog, to flex, to climb, to get all the pent up energy out of his system and just enjoy the great open spaces of the outdoors. All he could do was to pace around the inside of his cell like a tiger in an exceptionally small Zoo exhibit. There wasn’t enough room in there to run, and if he tried the humans would probably yell at him over the PA anyway.
The humans had only allowed Cygnus’ family to visit him once, two months into his incarceration, but that one day had been so wonderful that he used his memories of it to sustain hope during the rest of his imprisonment. The image of the warm, smiles of his father and brothers stuck in his mind as he endured the solitude. The best part of that whole day though, had been Aunt Shakara hugging him and apologizing for how vile she had been during that first day when they had all been imprisoned together. He had felt a warmth and sincerity in her that was rarely witnessed, and it went a long way towards healing Cygnus’ guilt for getting the family into this whole mess. Shakara had always been a mother figure for him, despite her somewhat distant attitude, and he always looked up to her for her emotional strength. Whenever the cold nights alone in that cell made him feel sorrowful, he imagined her embrace again and he could feel her carrying him just like when he was a small child.
Finally, the relentless march of time dragged Cygnus to the end of his sentence. Every day it drew closer, he counted it down in his head. He thought about carving hash marks in the wall of his cell just like in the old movies, but he didn’t have anything remotely sharp enough to scratch the walls with, and the humans would probably see it and beat him again anyway. He just kept repeating the words ‘only a few more days left!’ to himself in his mind, over and over again as the date grew closer. By his final day it was almost an unhealthy mental tick.
Cygnus was too excited to sleep the night before his scheduled release. He kept mentally going over the list of things he wanted to do when he got home, and the first thing on his list was to give big bear hugs to everyone in his family. By the time 6AM arrived and the lights came on in his cell, Cygnus was only beginning to feel tired. He leapt out of bed and walked over to lay his head against the door to listen for signs of activity.
A few minutes later, a voice came over the PA, “Step away from the door and assume search position.”
Cygnus followed the standard protocol he had been taught and walked across the room to place his hands on the blue circles. He wondered why another search was necessary if they were going to release him, but by this point it was an ingrained reaction. He would do whatever was necessary to avoid another beating from the guards.
Four of them, all wearing their usual armor, entered the room to begin searching. Cygnus stood leaning against the wall on his arms, allowing them to pat him down from head to toe. He frowned as they routinely shuffled through the longer fur on his tail and shoulders, searching for concealed weapons or contraband. It seemed silly to Cygnus, it’s not like he ever had access to anything remotely similar to weapons, but if the humans wanted to be paranoid about it, there wasn’t really anything Cygnus could do about it. Eventually the guards finished their search and escorted Cygnus out of his cell.
This was the first time Cygnus had ever walked these high security halls without some kind of blindfold on. He had seen the lower security areas when he and his family had been locked up here the first time, but the guards had always blindfolded him whenever he was brought through a high security area. It wasn’t really that different from the lower security areas, there were polished plastic and steel with sector numbers painted at hallway junctions. He noticed that there was always at least one camera watching any given area constantly, and he could tell that each and every junction had sliding steel doors that could slam shut instantly should the alarms be tripped. All the other cells were solitary as well, with little video monitoring screens on the outside of the doors instead of viewports. Cygnus caught a glimpse of one as they passed, it displayed a bald human man in a straight jacket sitting in the corner of his cell, rocking back and forth like a mental patient. He didn’t get a chance to look closely and therefore couldn’t make out any of his facial features. He simply felt grateful that he hadn’t been forced to wear something similar during his own imprisonment.
The guards escorting Cygnus seemed to walk agonizingly slowly. He just wanted to sprint out of there as fast as physically possible, but he knew that doing that would end up getting him a rear end full of tranquilizer darts, so he just fidgeted with his hands to keep himself busy. When they passed out of the high security zone, Cygnus felt a strange feeling wash over him. It was almost like the feeling one gets right after an intense episode of physical pain had just ended: a wave of icy cool relief and pleasantness. It washed over him , sending exquisite little ripples of shivering up and down his spine. He even felt some of his fur stand up for a few seconds.
These waves of relief hit twice more as they neared the exit of the prison complex. His sense seemed to sharpen a bit as they walked as well, almost like switching from a low-definition solid screen TV to an ultra-high def holo TV. Opening up the outer door to the grounds, Cygnus drew a deep breath of open air for the first time since he had been put in that miserable cell. He could smell the odors of smoke and pollution, as well as the body odor of all the humans around him, but it hardly dampened the experience. He enjoyed the open air and sunlight even more than the day he had been released from quarantine after having that hemorrhagic virus. He enjoyed every minute of it as the guards led him past the other inmates towards the main gates in the fence.
Many of the inmates stopped what they were doing to turn and stare at Cygnus as he passed. One of them turned and ran away in apparent terror, yelling ‘It’s one of them!’ A couple of the others even tried to move towards Cygnus threateningly, but the guards put them down quietly with a few airy pops from their tranq dart guns. The men staggered and fell flat on their faces as the drug worked its magic.
“Get out of our city!” a man’s voice shouted.
Cygnus instinctively turned towards the source of the voice, and a fist-sized stone sailed through the air and struck him on the left side of the face. He was taken completely by surprise and toppled to the ground, his vision blurred from the force of the blow. He climbed to a sitting position and looked to see what was happening, rubbing the huge new bruise that had been painted across his cheek.
Cygnus saw that his escort of guards had ran over to attack the man who had thrown the stone. They produced those same brutal black nightsticks and began beating the man into submission. He couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for this man, despite how much the bruise hurt. He had been on the receiving end of those nightsticks before, and he knew that they were much, much worse than getting a rock to the face.
This incident had lit the fuse on a long dormant bomb of inmate anger, and a huge group of them converged on the four guards. Seeing the brawl erupt, Cygnus decided that it would be wise to leave. He stood and bolted towards the main gate as alarms began howling and canisters of tear gas were fired from the guard towers. Critical mass had already been reached though, and the masses of rioting inmates were growing. A large group of them managed to get in front of Cygnus, right between him and the gates. Cygnus switched course, heading toward another gate, and ran straight into another group of prisoners. One of them in particular was especially muscular looking, and had several intimidating-looking tattoos all over his body. One of them caught Cygnus’ attention, a little purple eye with a sword stabbing it in the pupil and weeping a tear of blood. The man cracked his knuckles threateningly before lunging at Cygnus.
Cygnus leapt to the side to dodge the man’s attack, and before anything else could happen, a gas canister landed in the middle of them and released a cloud of sickly yellow smoke. The gas burned Cygnus’ eyes like chili powder, and in the confusion he tripped and fell. He heard the inmates spewing profanities and scattering as the gas billowed forth. One of the men took the opportunity to kick Cygnus in the ribs before running off, and another stepped directly on his arm as he ran. Both times Cygnus felt a terrible snapping of bones and sharp stabbing lightning bolts of pain. Still without the use of his powers, Cygnus couldn’t do anything except lie there and yell out, hoping to attract guards over to help him. He tried to sit up, but the broken rib sent screeching bolts of pain up his torso, so he was force to lie back down and hope that more prisoners wouldn’t come. The gas continued to burn his eyes until a gust of wind came up and blew it away.
Cygnus heard yelling and the deadly hum of energy rifles firing, as well as footsteps coming up behind him rapidly. Hands gripped his shoulders and lifted him off of the ground. He saw that they belonged not to human guards or prisoners, but to his father and Aunt Shakara! His broken rib roared in protest as they lifted him, but eventually quieted down since they were lifting him by his shoulders.
“Hold on Cygnus, we just need to make it outside the range of their disruptor fields and you’ll be ok!” Tanis panted.
Together they ran as fast as they could towards the other gate. A few more rocks sailed toward them as they ran, but all missed. One inmate hurled a homemade knife at them with lethal accuracy, but Shakara blocked it with her tail blade. It clanged loudly and tumbled to the side harmlessly.
When they arrived at the second gate it was in the process of sliding open to admit a horde of armored riot police. Several ambulances were hovering outside the gate as well, already taking on the victims of the violence. The three of them managed to push their way through the gate, past the dozens of riot police pouring in. They kept running even after clearing the gates, heading down the nearest city street. One of the paramedics yelled after them, offering assistance, but they continued running and ignored him completely.
Once they had put a few city blocks between themselves and the prison gates, the disruptor fields fell away behind them. Tanis and Shakara both used their Recover power abilities on Cygnus simultaneously, Tanis healing his arm and Shakara healing his rib.
“Thanks guys, I’ll take it from here.” Cygnus said.
Cygnus recovered the bruise on his face, along with all the scrapes and abrasions he had gotten in the scuffles. It also had the pleasant side-effect of clearing up the chemical burns in his eyes that were caused by the gas bomb. He felt better in that moment than he had felt in his entire 6 month stay in the prison.
“Any other injuries? Maybe I should make sure.” Tanis said, wanting to use recover on him again.
“I’m fine dad, really!” Cygnus insisted, grinning.
Tanis hugged him crushingly. “I missed you so much!”
Cygnus returned the hug, filled with joy and relief from being able to hug his father again. They could have stood like that for several more moments, but Shakara interrupted. She set her hand on Cygnus’ shoulder and he released his hug to face her.
“Glad to have you back kiddo.” Shakara said with a slight smile.
“How’ve you been blades?” Cygnus asked, chuckling a bit.
“Oh, busy as usual. Shall we go meet up with the others? Don’t want to keep them waiting, do we?”
“Where are they?” Cygnus asked.
“We were all waiting at the main gate for you to arrive. When the riot broke out we told them to wait for us there while we ran in to rescue you. Hopefully they’re somewhere safe by now.” Tanis said.
“Let’s go then!” Cygnus said enthusiastically.
The three of them walked through the streets back towards the prison and took a slight turn to find the main gate. Re-entering the radius of the prison’s disruptor fields, Cygnus felt that sickly feeling return again. Pedestrians stopped on the sidewalks stopped to stare, and Cygnus began to feel uncomfortable with all those eyes on him again. He could even see a few faces peering through windows to stare, pale and curious amongst the numerous neon lit signs that covered the faces of the buildings. Their eyes were a lot more intimidating than the flashing slogans plastered everywhere, trying desperately to draw attention.
“Look mommy, they’re like really big kitties!” a little girl’s voice said from behind them.
Cygnus turned and saw a human girl, no older than five years walking close behind them. She was wearing a little yellow dress with stripes like a Pikachu on it, and her eyes sparkled with a curious delight. Her mother was climbing out of a parked hover car, wearing a business suit and carrying a suitcase. When she saw what her daughter was doing she dropped her suitcase, sprinted over, and picked her up.
“Stay away from them, they’re dangerous!” the mother scolded quietly, carrying her away.
“Bye dangerous kitties!” the girl shouted to them, waving and smiling.
Cygnus chuckled and turned back to face the road before them. He could see a slight grin on his father’s face as they walked.
They reached the main gate to the prison grounds relatively swiftly and found several swat vans and ambulances parked there, but no sign of the others. Several guards and inmates were being carted out on stretchers and loaded onto the ambulances. A few of the men were carrying black plastic body bags out of the grounds as well, sending shivers of horror down Cygnus’ spine.
“Did you see where the rest of my family went?” Tanis asked one of the swat members as they approached.
“Clive said that they went down 113th street looking for you.” A woman’s voice replied from behind the swat visor.
They turned and jogged down 113th after thanking the woman. They passed more curious onlookers and two more ambulances sailing past to get to the main gate. Eventually they came across the local Pokemon Hospital, a glass building seven stories tall with the standard lit up Pokéball sign above the entrance. Cygnus could see through the glass easily and spied the rest of the family standing at the reception counter. Venius appeared to be a little less than happy with Nurse Joy as well, he was gesturing angrily at her while the others just stood back and watched. Cygnus pushed the door open, triggering a cheerful electronic chime, and Joy frowned and pointed at him.
“There! See?” she growled at Venius.
Venius turned to look, a dumbfounded expression upon his face.
“Cygnus!” Melicia called joyously, running over to give him a crushing hug.
“See, what did I tell you?” Opulous said calmly.
“Yeah fine. Sorry Joy.” Venius said grudgingly.
Melicia’s bear hug had enough force to push some of the air out of Cygnus’ lungs, and he had to ask her nicely to let go so he could go and properly greet his brothers properly.
“Geez Cygnus, you reek!” were the first words out of Venius’ mouth. “Have you been cuddling up with your smelly human cellmate?”
“Actually, I was in solitary the whole time. They just only let me out to bathe once a week.” Cygnus replied.
“I guess that explains why you’ve let your fur grow so long!” Opulous said, gesturing toward Cygnus’ shoulders.
“You two are terrible! Greeting your brother like this after four months!” tanis scolded.
“Oh dad, you know we’re just fooling.” Venius said defensively.
Cygnus slugged Venius on the shoulder lightly and grinned. “You’re such an asshole!”
Chapter XIV – VIV
The next morning when Venius awoke, a pit of unease was festering in his mind. Last night’s little episode of eavesdropping on Tanis and Shakara had haunted him all night, and it was still tormenting him now. He tried to rub the sleep out of his eyes, but the amount of sleep had had lost to nightmares last night was too great to brush off. He walked over to his window to get a face full or morning sunlight in an attempt to force himself awake.
The sunlight was strong already, the pinks and oranges were already fading away to the blue of full day. A set of five vaporous contrails traced across the sky above, left by a group of human ships traveling in a loose V formation. A slight breeze rustled the gold and red autumn leaves of the trees that clustered around the yard. Venius caught a glimpse of Cygnus returning from his morning jog. The rattling he caused in the branches dislodged a flock of leaves which sailed to the ground in a cascade of warm golds, reds, yellows and browns.
Venius was too distracted by his own internal machinations to enjoy the beauty of this scene. He scowled at the human ships as they crawled overhead, wondering what business they had flying here. Father always scolded him and told him that he was just being paranoid whenever he complained outwardly. So far, father had been correct as well, none of the ships that ever passed overhead ever showed any interest in their little abode. But Venius just couldn’t brush off their presence, especially as their fly-byes increased in frequency.
Venius eventually wandered downstairs and found Melicia and Tanis cleaning the dishes left dirty after breakfast. The others had apparently gone to the study already to prepare for the day’s lesson. Melicia greeted him cheerfully as she picked up the dishes from the dining table.
“Morning snoozy! We were about ready to grab a stick and poke you with it!” She said with a grin. “Forget to set your alarm?”
“Must have.” Venius grunted. “What was for breakfast?”
“The pears in the back of the third greenhouse dome finished ripening, so we had them sliced on our cereal this morning.”
Venius followed Melicia into the kitchen as she carried the dishes to the sink where Tanis was scrubbing them. It waskind of funny for Venius to see his dad elbow deep in suds, the only thing that could have completed the image was if he had worn a pink apron and rubber gloves. He stifled a momentary chuckle before speaking.
“Hey dad, can I talk to you alone for a minute?” Venius asked.
“Can it wait until later? I’m a bit occupied here.”
“No, not really, I don’t want to wait until after today’s lesson, and you can have Melicia finish that.”
“Oh, thanks!” Melicia said in an annoyed tone.
Tanis sighed and rinsed the suds off of his hands and arms in the other side of the sink. The two of them walked out of the kitchen together, and Venius saw Melicia lifting and rinsing the dishes with her mind to get the job done faster. Once had they had found a quiet corner in the back hall where they could be alone, Venius spoke.
“Father, I overheard your conversation with Aunt Shakara last night. I know that the guards were beating Cygnus during his time in prison.”
Tanis frowned and hid his face in his hand for a moment. He didn’t say anything, so Venius continued.
“What are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing.” Tanis said, his voice implying shame.
“What do you mean, ‘nothing’?! These apes beat your son into submission with sticks, and you’re going to do nothing?!”
“Keep your voice down!” Tanis admonished.
“Just look at Cygnus now, he’s like a completely different person after what he went through! I heard about what happened last night when you knocked on his door. He was leaning with his arms against the wall, reflexively waiting for a pat down search! Tell me dad, if some group of humans were to gong up on me and beat me senseless, would you just let them?”
“Listen to me!” Tanis snapped, anger now contorting his face. “First of all, lower your accursed voice! Melicia and the others don’t need to hear this!”
Tanis paused a moment to get a grip over his emotions. His look of rage faded, but Venius could see a look of profound sadness hidden behind his eyes. He suddenly felt a pang of regret for hurting his father like this.
“I know that you don’t watch any of the humans’ holo-TV, so you don’t know about this yet. A series of wars has erupted between the humans all across eastern Europe and the Middle East.”
“So what? Let the humans kill each other, it’s fine by me! What does it have to do with the abuse Cygnus endured in that hellhole of a prison?”
“It has to do with the fact that the authority of the Protectorate has degraded so badly that it can no longer serve its original purpose: to prevent war. If your Aunt can’t keep the peace between the humans, then what makes you think that she will be able to punish a few abusive prison guards? You remember what happened at Cygnus’ trial, you know that the humans have less and less respect for us with every passing week. If we tried, the only thing we’d accomplish would be to irritate them even more.” Tanis lectured.
Venius knew his father was right, but it felt sick and wrong to let those humans get away with what they did to his brother. He mentally stumbled while trying to think up something to say.
“Now if you’re satisfied, I have a lesson to teach and you need to get your type-pad and get to the study, alright?” Tanis said calmly.
“Alright.” Venius said in resignation.
A few minutes later, Venius joined the others in the study with his digital pad and took his usual seat between Cygnus and Nolus. The desks felt smaller and smaller every time he sat in them, and this year it was even worse. Cygnus was staring out of the window in boredom, Nolus was fidgeting with his pencil, Opulous was studying diligently, and Melicia was chatting with her sisters endlessly. Tanis walked over to the display console and activated it, and it showed an idle screen with a file list on it.
“Alright everyone, I know it’s hard to make it up on your third day of classes so far this fall, but let’s concentrate. Today we’re going to start a new subject, and-”
“Excuse me Uncle Tanis, but where’s mom?” Tamista interrupted.
“Well, she had to leave early this morning for an emergency Protectorate meeting. Since most of you don’t watch holo-TV, you probably haven’t heard about the wars that have broke out recently. 8 different European nations and several Middle Eastern nations have become entangled in a huge conflict, and the Protectorate has been unable to negotiate peace. Shakara had to leave last night about 4AM when the fighting began, and she’s been out since.”
There was a nervous silence for a moment as the news sank in.
“I personally don’t know a lot about this war yet, Shakara has only contacted me once and she has told me that the humans are trying to keep the proceedings secret for some reason. Until we know more though, I’d like to go about our lesson today like normal. Any more questions?”
Nobody spoke up.
“Good. Now, as I said before on your first day of classes, we’re ready to move into college level material. Today, I’m going to introduce you guys to a college level subject: ‘Theories of Dimensional Mechanics’.”
“Ohhh jeez.” Cygnus moaned. “We’re in for it now.”
“Hey, don’t worry about it. Right now, we’re just doing theories. No calculations yet. So please, just stop whining.” Tanis said, stress evident in his voice.
“Now this is an introductory class, so we’re going to cover some basic things today. There are 2 basic bedrock theories that this class rest on. The first and most important of these theories is the Multiple Universe Theory, which is pretty self explanatory. There are infinite amounts of dimensions in the Multiverse, and each one is different in some way. Though, the term ‘dimension’ is a misnomer, since in the literal sense it refers to width, depth, distance, time, etc. So in this class, we will refer to these separate dimensions as ‘planes’. And between every one of the infinite planes, there is an anomalous region that has been named ‘The Interplanar Space.’ This is the basic composition of existence.
Tanis mentally interfaced with his computer for a moment and called up the file he wanted. The big holographic screen flickered for a moment and displayed what appeared to be a large sphere diagram with only one entry, ‘everything’
“The second theory states that everything in the universe can be broken down into 2 major categories: Energy and Nothingness.”
The sphere chart on the screen split into 2 spheres just like a bacteria undergoing binary fission. The sphere labeled ‘Nothingness’ was at least 75 larger than the sphere labeled ‘Energy’.
“Excuse me, but what about matter?” Opulous interjected.
“Good question, I was about to get to that. Now you all know what nothingness is, so we have the energy subset. Energy can also be divided into two subsets: Ambient energy, and matter. It was Einstein’s famous equation that established that relationship, and it’s provable whenever you run nuclear reactions where matter is destroyed.”
Next, the sphere labeled ‘Energy’ split, making 2 smaller spheres labeled ‘Ambient Energy’ and ‘Matter’.
“Finally, matter can be split into 2 of its own subsets: Normal Matter and Antimatter. Both of which you’re hopefully familiar with.”
The ‘Matter’ sphere split as well, completing the subset graph. The ‘Nothingness’ sphere dominated the entire chart as the largest, followed by ambient energy, then normal matter, then antimatter.
“Matter and antimatter also have their own subsets as well, which we know as the periodic tables of elements, but we’re not studying those in this class.” Tanis said.
After a brief pause to change the display, Tanis continued.
“Every plane we’ve seen contains these same basic 4 elements of existence, and every plane we’ve seen has followed basic laws of physics including linear forward flow of time and consistency of space. But the Interplanar space is different, it doesn’t follow many of the normal laws of physics. Time isn’t linear, space isn’t constant. Things are in a constant state of flux in there. This is why Interplanar travel allows our ships to travel across such enormous distances in such a short time, because space in the Interplanar space doesn’t necessarily correlate to space in our plane.”
“Question! If that’s true, then how is it possible for ships to travel through it without being torn to shreds?” Opulous asked.
“Good question. The answer was actually first discovered by Ares when he began experimenting with dimensional travel before his rise to conquest. He was studying the various differences between planar and Interplanar space when he found one key difference: the presence of a structural grid underneath space called ‘subspace’. He discovered that, like the four elements of existence, subspace is a constant presence in all planes. But the big difference is that it is absent in the Interplanar space, allowing the forces of entropy and chaos morph space and time willy-nilly. One of Ares’ greatest technological achievements was discovering a way to carry a bubble of subspace around a ship like an energy field, shielding it from fluctuations during its trip. He derived this field after studying the energy fields that our minds emit when we use our powers to teleport. Since our teleport power is basically a short jump through the Interplanar space, all it took was a direct analysis of how Psychic Pokémon have naturally evolve the ability to control subspace in order to teleport.”
A strange expression crossed Tanis’ face and he stopped talking for a few moments. He looked up into the air as if telekinetically talking to someone and frowned.
“Guys, I hate to cut the lesson short, but Shakara is calling me over to help her. She says that it’s an emergency, and that I need to go now. I want you guys to all stay here, and please, for my sake and yours, study until I get back.” Tanis said
Tanis jogged out of the study, and Venius watched through the window as he Psychically flew off to meet Shakara, wherever she was. The seven of them remained silent, they knew that things could only be getting worse at this point, and they didn’t need words to communicate the universal sentiment of worry.
