CHAPTER III
JANUS FINDS HIS DESTINY
CHAPTER III
JANUS FINDS HIS DESTINY
SOUNDTRACK- Confusion
Janus kept running, with
his hands covering his face. Without either knowing or caring where he
was dashing to, he just had to get away!What had happened to me? he thought.
My mind...it seems like fire. Whatever did happen to him, it could not
be determined.
When he let his hands fall
from his face, he found himself in a hovertrain station. It was not used
for public transportation, but for resources instead. Truce Seaport was
quite a long way from Antilia’s village. Luckily, with the invention of
the anti-aquatic technology, the same technology could be brought to land.
The top of the tracks had pods water lined up next to each other for as
long as the tracks would stretch.
SOUNDTRACK- The Girl
From Long Ago
He turned around to see
Audrey racing up behind him. She stopped next to Janus, huffing and puffing.
“Janus, did you see what happened?” Janus remained silent, looking at the
steam-powered hovertrain. “I watched you up there on that stage. Are you
alright?” Janus said nothing. “Do you think that machine had anything
to do with the explosion?”
“Come,” he said waving his
hand. “I’ll explain at Truce Seaport.”
“Wait!” Audrey held out
her hand as Janus began walk towards the train.
Janus shook his head. “I
don’t have time for this! I have a mission, and...” the engines of the
hovertrain began to warm up, blasting clouds of pressurized steam from
the numerous holes of the train.
“And what?” she said, with
a dull face.
The train began chugging.
“And...and my life has once again been changed,” he spoke with such mystery,
intriguing Audrey. He ran up to a train and grabbed a hold of a ladder
of steel pipes. Climbed to the top of the hovertain as it began moving.
“Well? Coming or not?” Audrey looked back behind her, in the direction
of her home. She shook her head in anger, but oddly- it wasn’t towards
Janus... Audrey ran after the train as it began to pick up speed, and climbed
the ladder to the top.
SOUNDTRACK- The Strings
of Intarma
At the peak of the Intarma
building complex, the CEO of the corporation sat at his huge desk reading
a report. “I don’t believe it!” Castor swallowed hard, wiping away beads
of sweat on his forehead by a white cloth. There was a buzz, and Castor
sat down the papers on the glossy black table-top of the desk. He pressed
a button on a console, which was embedded into it. “Yes?”
A female voice replied from
a speaker also placed into the surface of the desk, “There is a transmission
from Antilia Kingdom, sir. King Atreides...”
Castor leaned back, his
heart pounding. “Open the connection.” He swallowed hard again
Before his desk was a large
and bulky disk on the floor. The top of this disk ignited in an odd yellow
glow. A robotic female voice sounded from the grand speakers of the disk,
“Transmission Opening.” A three-dimensional shimmering yellow image of
King Atreides VII materialized into the room. The image of him standing
there, with a very irate look on his face, terrified Castor even more.
“We demand our gold back,
Castor, and we are canceling the refueling shipments!” the king shouted.
“Not only do we want a refund, but we demand five more billion in gold!”
Atreides said in a viciously angered tone.
“Wha…” Castor choked on
his nervousness, and began wiping more sweat from his forehead. “There’s
nothing we can do,” he began. “The gold has already been inserted into
a certain account and half of it has been used for the DreamSeed technology.”
“I don’t care what your
excuses are, Castor, and I know the diplomacy of Antilia will not refrain
from harshness,” the king spewed back angered remarks at the CEO. “A fourth
of my kingdom is contaminated with the same type of mystic-radiation that
your very reactor was supposed to rid!”
“You must understand, King
Atreides,” Castor swallowed again. “There is nothing more we can_”
Castor was cut off, this
time by a threat. “Chancellor Maylin and I have devised a plan. Antilia’s
navy shall engage Mensan facilities. There will be no casualties, only
financial setback, as we will destroy the robotically-manned factories.
I will send an ultimatum to Kaiser Vincent XIII, demanding he force you
to give us what we want. Your age-old alliance with their empire will ultimately
be in jeopardy.”
“…” Castor’s eyes widened.
Atreides elaborated. “Mensa
did nothing, but their little brother did. If they refuse the ultimatum,
we’ll soon discover how well Kaiser Vincent likes taking abuse for something
he wasn’t responsible for. Intarma is nothing more than a group of deceiving
traitors to this planet!!!”
“The World Confederacy must
remain in tact,” Castor rubbed his forehead. “Despite how horrible you
believe we are, surely you can see how this will disrupt the peace...”
“We will see,” the glowing
yellow image of King Atreides shimmered out of Castor’s office.
SOUNDTRACK- DreamSeed Saga Main Title
The hovertrain rushed across the grasslands in between Antilia’s village
and Truce Seaport. The railing system was very complex. Columns of iron
on both sides of the track stuck up from the ground, holding the railing
in the sky. Attached to those columns were beams of the same metal that
would jet over the hovertrain to meet the column on the opposite side.
Hyrdromagnetic brass charger-spheres capped the tops of the columns, firing
a constant stream of aquafusion. Janus and Audrey were laying down on the
top of the hovertrain, several cars back from the front. The beams would
rush over them every minute.
The top hatch to the very
car that they were on flew open. Out came a strange looking man, dashing
past Janus. He appeared to be a cross between a crocodile and a human!
Both Audrey and Janus popped their heads up to see this odd man. Just as
he had ducked under a beam, the two realized the same beam was racing right
at them! Quickly, Janus and Audrey flattened out once more as the iron
beam rushed past.
Several Truce Police Officers
flooded out of the hatch, chasing down the strange man. “Stop that man!”
they called. The police officers also looked very different, almost like
animals. Their uniforms and their helmets were green with white stripes,
and a massive belt full of a variety of equipment. They looked like a human
and a bulldog put together! Some officers stopped and pointed at Janus
and Audrey. “Hey! Look! Two more of ‘em!” one officer called.
“Blast ‘em!” another commanded,
raising his sleek gun.
Both Audrey and Janus’s
eyes shot wide. “Now look what you’ve gotten me into! We’re gonna go to
jail!” Audrey slapped Janus on the chest.
Janus looked at her, his
mouth open. “Never mind that, you brat! They’re gonna kill us!” he shouted
back at her with an irate tone. Janus began to sit back up, only to duck
once again from a passing beam. He looked to make sure no more were coming
for a few minutes. “Come on! We’ve gotta go!” Janus took Audrey by the
hand and yanked her up, just as an superhot white ion beam came blasting
onto the rusted steel where she had laid.
Janus drew his massive black
sword from its holder, strapped to his back. The two fearless youngsters
began running to the front of the train, following the first strange man.
White beams of ion shot past them. Janus turned from behind to see a large
number of officers were chasing them down to the death! With impeccable
timing, Audrey and Janus ducked under another beam. Some officers would
get caught in its path, and be knocked off of the train to fall to their
death.
“This is dangerous!” Audrey
shouted.
Janus shouted back, “What did’ya expect! A pony ride?” Several more blasts
showered past them as they leaped to the next car. Janus turned around
and held his wide blade in front of him. The ion beams smacked onto the
charcoal colored blade, but bounced back in the direction of the officers.
The beams slugged the troops in their chest, bursting out from their backs
like a knife through butter.
After leaping to the first
car, Janus and Audrey watched the strange crocodile-man. He was waiting
for another hovertrain that was coming up beside them. Both trains belched
loud whistles, hurting everyone’s ears. The second train ran parallel.
Ion beams showered past Janus, Audrey and the crocodile-man. “We’ve got
to jump to the next train! Its ran only by robots!” the crocodile-man said.
“We’ll be safe there!”
Janus reflected some more
beams with his sword before the crocodile-man decided it was time to leap.
He successfully made it to the other train, waving them to follow. Audrey
tugged on Janus’s arm, as he noticed his blade was glowing a faint yellow
in its darkness. It disappeared when his attention turned to Audrey.
After a burst of confidence,
Janus and Audrey leapt from one hovertrain to the other. When their boots
slammed onto the rusty steel, the police officers became infuriated! Most
were so distracted by their anger that a single rushing iron beam smacked
into half of them, knocking the troops to their doom.
Thousands of shots from
the officer’s ion blasters hailed onto the surface of the train with the
three fugitives. When Janus turned around to find a hatch to the inside
of the train, he discovered that the crocodile-man was dead: an ion beam
right through the heart. Realizing how real and dangerous this was, he
quickly took Audrey and they went down in the hatch.
Inside the first train, a man dressed in a tan trench coat and hat lit
a cigarette and frowned. He waded through the cargo boxes as the hovertrain
tilted from side to side, speeding down its aqua-track. His thick black
brows narrowed, looking out of a small hovertrain porthole. He walked to
a red com-link on the wall of the car he was currently in. “Conductor of
hovertrain #27? This is Inspector Acano of the World Confederation Marshals
on hovertrain #13,” he said into the intercom to the new hovertrain.
“This is GC-115, robotic
conductor of hovertrain #27. How may I be of assistance?” replied a robotic
voice.
“I need you to drop all
of your cars! Repeat, drop all of your cars!”
“I need a clearance code,”
the voice said.
Inspector Acano reached
into his trench coat, pulling out a card from one of his pockets. He inserted
it into a slot beside the com-link. The robot voice returned, “Clearance
code accepted. Detaching cars one through fifty-six.”
Inspector Acano turned to
a sergeant of the Truce Police, standing beside him. “Take your men and
explore the second hovertrain, while our men will explore the cars left
behind,” he commanded.
“Right,” the officer saluted,
then departed the car.
Back at the new hovertrain,
Janus and Audrey stood in a small compartment where the top hatch had lead
them. The two were not in any car, but the furnace room where capsules
of water were being fed, by a robot, into the engine for processing. They
heard a clanking sound and a loud hiss of pressure being released. Janus
and Audrey felt the train speed up. “The train’s dropped weight,” Janus
determined.
He made his way into the
conductor room, where GC-115 was working the hovertrain. The metallic robot
turned its head completely around. “Who are you?” the robot asked in his
monotone voice. “I’m alerting the police of your presence!” The robot reached
for a button just as Janus chopped the mechanical wonder in half. CHING!
A ringing noise hummed throughout his blade. Janus smiled.
“How do we stop this thing?”
Audrey yelled, hearing the footsteps of the officers’ boots on the roof
of the train.
The Truce Police entered
the room, holding their blasters at the two. “Freeze!” They made
sure Janus wouldn’t pull any stunts by pointing six blasters at him; three
were at Audrey. “You two are under arrest under Truce District code 1-7-5a.”
There was a moment’s pause
until everyone in the room heard a strange noise; it was a low-pitched
humming. This humming was overlapped by a pulsating rhythm of the surge
of some strange energy that everyone could feel the presence of. The officers
looked around, wondering what was going on. It suddenly became very cold
in the small room. Everybody could see their own breath.
WHOOSH! Suddenly, an attack
came form nowhere! A blade identical to Janus’s sliced through several
soldiers with ease. However, it wasn’t a charcoal-like color. The blade
glowed bright white with a blue field around it. It was the source of the
noise, the cold, and the soldiers’ demise. All nine Truce Police Officers
laid dead on the metal floor, their wounds covered in thick ice. The hair
of their animal-like bodies was covered with a thin layer of snow flakes.
The owner of the glowing blade stood in the doorway, his breath steaming
from the cold air around his sword.
The blade deactivated, returning
to its normal grayish-black color. The pulsating noise ceased, and the
temperatures returned to normal. Janus and Audrey couldn’t believe their
eyes: The scruffy white fur that this creature had covering his body and
his green clothing made the perplexity standing in the doorway appear like
something from an old legend...
“Finally.” The old rabbit-man
smiled under a bushy mustache of white fur. “My name is Abant. I’m here
to bring you to your destiny.”
Janus immediately drew his
sword. Abant held up his hand, “But your destiny is not grim, and it will
not be forged by me.” Janus lowered his blade. “Ah...You hold in your hands
an Onyx-Blade- the weapon of a mage- a knight of magic. You also possess
a Skybolt Mage-Suit, right from the war. Vako was right; she was absolutely
right,” Abant smiled.
Behind huge furry brows,
this strange man’s hazel eyes focused beyond Janus, looking out past the
windshield. He could see Truce Seaport and the Hataric Ocean coming up
fast as the hovertrain glided on its tracks at hundreds of miles an hour.
“Search for an emergency brake.”
Audrey and Janus both looked
at each other in disbelief. A rabbit-man? No wait- a rabbit-man who is
a knight of magic? “Quickly, or we’ll fly past the train-station!” Abant
shouted. The two snapped out of it and began looking for the lever to force
the train to a halt. Their searches were futile. Abant stood up, holding
his Onyx-Blade in front of him. “I’ll make it stop.” He closed his eyes
as Janus and Audrey could only wait to see what was about to happen. His
blade ignited again in the cold blueness of the rabbit-man’s magic.
The water-pods on the track
began to freeze, forcing the hovertrain to loose its anti-gravity. Eventually,
the hovertrain sat down on the tracks, right in front of the station with
a small snow-storm around it. Abant deactivated his blade. “How did you…?”
Janus began to ask.
“Ice magic can be very useful,
because water is the most pure of elements.” Abant slid his Onyx-Blade
back into its holder, strapped to his back. “Come, we must move like the
shadows, or we’ll be caught,” the old rabbit-man said. He opened a floor
hatch and jumped down onto the icy track. Abant called back to them, “Let’s
move, now. The Truce Police are beginning to come to the station.” Audrey
and Janus again looked at each other. Knowing no other alternative, they
followed their new friend.
SOUNDTRACK- The Strings
of Intarma
Back in Castor’s office,
he awaited another transmission. By activating his hologram disk, a semi-transparent,
three-dimensional yellow image of Jonnan shimmered into the office on the
pad. “I come bearing interesting news. Kaiser Vincent is deploying the
navy through the Hataric Ocean.”
“He’s not going to Antilia’s
Palace?” Castor said, confused.
“The kaiser has just put
underway a blockade of trade at the Truce Seaport. They’re on their way
now,” Jonnan replied.
“That’s insane!” Castor
stood up, shouting. “Every place on this planet depends heavily on the
two seaports. If one is closed, so is the other!”
“I guess Vincent’s motives
in this are that the blockade will force King Atreides to leave Intarma
alone in the sake of the world depending on trade.”
“You haven’t heard?” Castor
said. “It’s too late, Atreides has already destroyed the robotic facilities!”
“There seems to be no logic
in the kaiser’s moves,” Jonnan said.
“I sure hope Kaiser Vincent
knows what he’s doing.” Castor slouched in his chair.
“So do I,” Jonnan said.
“There is one other thing. We’ve located the DreamClone.”
“Oh?” Castor leaned forward,
intrigued. “Where is he?”
“Well, I’m at Truce Seaport
now, about ready to board a hovercraft back to Intarma Island. A holographic
image of my son, or rather his DreamClone, the woman, and...Abant were
posted on projectors all over Truce. But no one pays attention to the projectors,
because most at Truce are criminals themselves. The local police, on the
other hand, are looking for them. Apparently they snuck onto a hovertrain
and rode to the Seaport from Antilia. Is there anything you want me to
do?”
Castor rubbed his chin.
“What we have feared for a long time has finally happened. Abant has located
your son. Of course, if you never would have left him in the first place,
you could have brought him here so many years ago. If you had, this all
might otherwise have been avoided.” Castor paused, gathering his thoughts.
“Return here, just in case. I don’t want you caught up in Kaiser Vincent’s
little war. I’ll have Mensan Troops there searching for the DreamClone.
Is your son loaded onto the hovercraft?”
“We have him and the DreamSeed
machine still intact and running while stored in a cargo deck of a hovercraft.
We’ll depart in two hours.”
“Excellent. A small band
of troops can get there faster than the entire Mensan navy. Don’t worry,
Jonnan,” Castor’s brows narrowed. “We will only kill the DreamClone.”
Jonnan looked down, “I’m...”
“Yes?”
“I’m just afraid it will
kill the real Janus as well.”
“How so?”
“Scientists have said...”
Jonnan began, “...that in a dream, if you’re falling from a building and
you don’t wake up before you hit the pavement, you’ll actually die.”
“Does Dr. Doan believe this?”
Castor asked in a knowingly tone.
Jonnan shook his head, “You’re
right, Castor. Thank you, sir.”
“Thank you,” Castor nodded.
The image of Jonnan dissipated out of the room as the yellow glow faded.