Melia

Their names were Keola and Kimia. I didn’t have to read their minds for that one; they shouted their names at each other when we attacked them. 

As best I could tell, they didn’t know they were radiating their knowledge. This ignorance could have been because they were still only semi-conscious, but from what I could gather from their recent memories, they knew of that alchemical ability, but weren’t able to use it.

Ignacio and Turin were making annoying noises with their mouths, the latest of their weird experiments with their new bodies. The two had taken the names of their exotemporal counterparts when they crossed. Like Jague - presumably - they had liked the way the names sounded, so why not? It had seemed natural to them: new bodies, new planet, new names.

The other Rigelians had been on edge since the confrontation, which was to be expected. None of us had expected Jague to interrupt. Apparently, my warning to him hadn’t been forceful enough.

I grimaced as another puff of air brushed my exposed cheek when Damien walked by. None of us had managed to “condense ourselves into solidity,” as Miriam had put it. The constant dissolution of outer layers of our skins caused reactions with the air, producing little electric shocks a layer beneath our clouds of haze. It felt like being poked with millions of needles just underneath the skin’s surface. I’d had to stop several in our ranks from scratching themselves all over to try to get at the maddening sensation.

“We really should go after him,” Damien said quietly, as if the thought had just occurred to him. A familiar frustration surged in my gut.

“I told you, no. We don’t know what he’ll do,” I said, blowing out a breath. I’d given up explaining any further. They understood that Jague had gone insane, but after so many years following the man, they craved his presence, even after he’d nearly killed them in the process of transferring them here.

Gray snapped his fingers in front of our two captives. I motioned for him to knock it off.

“Let them wake up on their own. We’re safe here,” I said. Kimia began to wake up anyhow, so I tried to change my face to something less threatening. I’d been told I wasn’t very good at it.

"Sorry, Kimia. Gray's used to doing things Jague's way. We're working on changing that," I gave Gray a look of disapproval, and he gave me an embarrassed shrug. Kimia groaned, doing a double take at her wrists before making eye contact.

"Oh, no need for those," I said, referring to the handcuffs, zip-tie or rope she had been expecting. She had lived a traumatic life, to expect waking to such things without panicking. 

Her small size and reserved expression understated everything about her. She really was remarkable. I had played a part in more kidnappings and ambushes than I cared to remember, and in almost all of them, the victim was either hysterical or shell-shocked. As Kimia regained consciousness, however, she looked straight at me, neither terror nor anger in her piercing brown eyes.

“I’m Melia,” I said, nodding to her with what I hoped was a respectful, non-threatening gesture. She merely gave me a curt nod. Her thoughts hardly needed reading: she was nervous, but in the absence of any sure thing to say, she assumed it better to remain silent unless she was asked a direct question.

“Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you,” I added.

“Given what’s already happened, I’m not sure how to reply to that,” Kimia said, her words clear and her tone even.

“Understandable. It’s OK to ask questions. Nothing to hide,” I said, spreading my hands in what I hoped looked like a friendly gesture. It must not have been, because she instinctively inched backward, almost knocking over Keola, who groaned as the movement roused him from unconsciousness.

“Wheahhh,” Keola said, his waking panic unrestrained and undignified. Kimia turned to catch him; I moved to assist, but when Keola saw me, he scrambled back.

“Ah ff-shh-” Keola seemed to lose his ability to form words. I started to hold up my hands again, catching myself when I recalled how much it had scared Kimia, who now seemed to be the less jumpy of the two.

I turned and paced the room while she calmed him, trying my best to reset my posture, look less intimidating. It had been a struggle my whole life to get people to not look up at me with some kind of apprehension. Apparently, I had that effect on Earth as well, except now, I was half a foot taller than I was on Rigel.

It occurred to me that I was thinking with different units of measurement now that I was on Earth. Except that there weren’t feet or meters on Rigel, either–

No, stop that, I chided myself. Trying to determine what was of Earth and what was of Rigel was a surefire way to lose my mind. There was only one thing I needed to do here, and I needed to focus on that.

“We got off on the wrong foot. I wish our introduction had been more peaceful,” I said, joining the two in sitting on the floor. The rug I sat on, I noticed with some surprise, was far softer and more luxurious than what should have been in a log cabin, and especially so near the front door. I suppose alchemists could clean their boots perfectly before setting foot indoors.

“I’m–sorry?” Keola said, still too nervous to say the thoughts he was clearly, loudly radiating, whether he knew it or not. He was terrified at the absence of someone he cared about, and his blaring thoughts were an accusation.

“How about I just explain myself?” I said.

“Yeah. Yeah, that’d–that’d be good,” Keola replied.

I took a deep, nervous breath. I had no expertise in the art of persuasive speech; that was always Jague’s gift.

Jaguar

I hadn’t known what to expect when I finally met Earth’s alchemists and the schoolmaster, but it felt underwhelming, like a promise of something spectacular that had been revealed as only unusual.

The schoolmaster coughed and wheezed as he awakened. There was confusion and agony in his trembling eyes as he took in his surroundings. Not that there was much to see; it was just him, myself, and an endless expanse of ocean two kilometers below the invisible platform we rested upon.

“I’ll bet that when you got here, you just started breathing the Earth air like it was your own. Never mind that your lungs were expecting oxygen that wasn’t as – let’s say, corrosive as this planet’s air is,” I said to him. He crawled across the invisible platform of dense air shakily, sinking a few centimeters into the not-quite solid surface with every clutching movement.

“Where’s–” He coughed, like the man he had sent to die on our world, “Where are my students?”

“So you admit it. You can teach alchemy,” I growled. Images of starved and asphyxiated Rigelians flooded my mind, and I began to see red.

I probably would have been infuriated with whatever the schoolmaster said, but his confusion at my words filled me with more rage than I expected or even understood. He didn’t know who I was, or why I was doing this. 

My enemy should at least know he is my enemy. To have to tell him how and why he had wronged me was another intolerable wrong on the part of all alchemists.

“Imagine, for a moment, that this is what you wake up to,” I said, crouching down beside the schoolmaster as he reached for my boot, “That this is what you feel at every hour of every day.”

With an alchemic hand, I reached into his brain and pressed the buttons inside. He was about to have a lot of new, unpleasant experiences.

“Imagine this hunger–”

He clenched his teeth as his stomach growled angrily.

“This sickness–” Tears filled his eyes as his whole body filled with the ache of inflammation.

“This absolute terror of not knowing if your next breath will kill you,” He screamed aloud as he suffered the first panic attack of his life, but I spoke over him, “Every. Single. Day.”

My heart was racing in pure thrill. I had dreamed of having the opportunity to throw one of these stone-hearted elites into the gutter where we lived, to let them have a taste of the torturous lives they ignored out of convenience. It felt good. It felt right. I didn’t even have to lay a hand on him; I just had to strip him of the divine gifts he had taken for granted since he was in his mother’s womb.

“And then, from the grave where you’re already being buried, you look up and see–” I made a sweeping gesture with my hand, as though the towers of his Rigelian town were there, “Waste. Monuments to excess. Places built so high, that for the people who live there, you and your kind are too small to see.”

I squatted down to stare into the schoolmaster’s eyes as he took shallow, trembling breaths, craning his head up to look at me. As he writhed on the ground, his eyes begged me for relief.

Something. Anything. It’s everywhere, and I can’t stop it. Just make it a little better.

He’d seen the look thousands of times before.

“Then, you’ll know a little of what we’ve felt. You’ll need a few thousand generations of it, and you’ll have to watch 3 out of every 4 children you have die before they can speak a single word, but it’d be a start.”

The schoolmaster wouldn’t really get the greater meaning of the words. It was hard to think of anything but survival when you were dying.

I knew I was enjoying it for far longer than I should have, and that I should have been focusing on how I was going to help my kind, but I allowed myself the indulgence. I’d been fighting these types my whole life, but only now did I feel like I had actually won something.

Melia

On Rigel C, there had been a pattern to our abductions. With the help of two others - usually Gerald and Pillar, who hadn’t yet made the crossing - I captured our target and subdued them. There was usually panic or anger from our mark when we made the grab, and I had to quell this instinct. My job had been to make them accept their captivity. I hadn’t needed to convince them of anything or coerce them into doing something. The only thing I did was impress upon them that they were under our control. From there, Jague would take over. If he wanted the target to do something for us, then I became the “second option” in the throffer, with the first and more kind option being to cooperate. If they needed to be shaken, he became a creative, terrifying nightmare of pain and psychological torture, while I functioned as the preferable devil they knew. He was far more creative in the ways he broke people.

So while it annoyed me that I hadn’t made any progress with Kimia and Keola after an hour, it didn’t surprise me. My job was never to change minds, but to be a solid, inevitable outcome.

“Water?” Keola asked. The scratchiness in his throat was impossible to ignore. I handed him my canteen, and he greedily gulped it down. With an embarrassed look, he offered it - nearly empty - to Kimia, who refused.

“It’s not poisoned, I promise,” I said.

“I’m not taking anything from you,” Kimia said, tension in her dry voice.

“Why not? You sound as thirsty as him.”

“Because people who kidnap you and give you things always have something they expect from you. You haven’t told us what.”

Kimia gave Keola a glare. Her words had been as much a warning to him as a rejection of me.

“Please. Just tell us what you want,” Kimia said calmly.

"I–don't actually know what I want," I said, blowing out a frustrated breath. Kimia raised an eyebrow.

“Where’s–” Keola began, but grew so silent that he seemed to shrink.

“Ask,” I said, the words half command and invitation.

“What happened to Gianna?” He asked. The fear and anger still felt like an accusation, but I knew he’d never say it aloud.

“She–” I began.

I had to be careful here. Explaining what had happened to their dark-skinned friend would undoubtedly set them off. I could feel their attachment to her; it felt like fragility, not the bond itself, but the people on either end. She had been an anchor for them, and now that she was gone, these two threatened to collapse. If that happened, things would get even more unpredictable.

“She got back up, after the three of you went down,” I explained, looking down to the floor for a moment as I regained my nerve, “Jaguar caught up to us. She fought him.”

Surprisingly, Keola snorted with laughter. “Who names themselves Jaguar?”

“A madman,” I said, smiling to let him know I found the name ridiculous as well, “But–a powerful madman.”

Kimia was not amused. Perhaps she detected my concern.

“I–don’t have words to describe what he can do. He has some crazy power he never had on our world, and I don’t know what he plans to do,” I said, trailing off before regaining the nerve to continue, “But I think you can help me stop it. For that, I need to know what you know.”

“You mean–about alchemy? The science?” Kimia asked.

“All of it,” I said, waving my hand in circles, as if to indicate not just the room around us, but the whole world.

“I don’t think I can–” Kimia began.

She paused as I stood back up, rising to my full height. For this part, friendliness wouldn’t work. I needed to make them feel small right now; they needed to take my next words as more than a request.

“You wouldn’t be the first person to tell me they couldn’t share what they know,” I said, my tone flattening as I glared at both of them, “I won’t respond any better to you than I did to them, if that’s what you’re about to tell me.”

They were both silent. Kimia took a deep breath, suppressing the quick flash of shock she instinctively felt. Keola froze, mouth agape, taking shallow, trembling breaths.

“Coming here–” I corrected myself, “Being brought here was dangerous. I have no idea what Jaguar did when he dragged us across universes, but I’ll do whatever it takes to protect my people,” I said, gesturing to the rest of the room.

“OK, but what does that have to do with us?” Keola said.

“You know this world better than I do. You have science to explain what’s happening across spacetime and–” I paused to remember the word Jague had used, “The exotemporal.”

“And if we can’t?” Kimia asked, quietly defiant. She didn’t seem to be offering a challenge, but simply finding out what would happen in the likely failure scenario. It wasn’t an unreasonable question.

“Then I’ll do everything I can to put things back the way they were,” I lowered my voice, forcing them to listen closely. Keola shuddered as the last words rolled off my tongue.

I’d let them wonder if I meant that I would kill them. Truth be told, I wasn’t sure myself what I would do. What I could do.

Rigel

“What do you plan to do?” The schoolmaster said. His voice was still raspy, but now that I had given him a minimum of Rigelian oxygen, he could speak again, with some difficulty.

"The question you should be asking–is what will you do?" I said. The schoolmaster stopped his gasping struggle to get to his feet, giving me a look that was equal parts horror and confusion.

"Ah, schoolmaster. The pinnacle of the knowledge of alchemy, pioneer of the understanding of the critical force of our lives. Your mind is among the stars, isn't it?" I said, a mocking smile on my face.

"Or," I crouched in front of him, staring him in the eyes, "It was." I took a deep, satisfied breath, exhaling in his face.

“Now, hopefully, your thoughts are as they should be,” I said. We both knew I could tell he wasn’t thinking about the outcasts, that he was still lingering on whether I’d let him live. 

“With any luck, I’ve brought you to a place where you ask yourself why you left your brothers and sisters to starve. Maybe now, instead of dreaming of cities on the tiny moons of your former world, you’re wondering why that big brain of yours,” I poked the schoolmaster in the forehead, “Never considered sharing what you’ve known for so long.”

“I couldn’t,” The schoolmaster croaked, “I didn’t–we couldn’t–”

“Couldn’t what!?” I threw the schoolmaster back with a wall of wind, following him as he tumbled.

“We couldn’t change you. Too dangerous-”

I blew him back again and let him drop two meters. He cried out in fear and pain as he hit the invisible ground I created beneath him.

“Too dangerous!?”

He squeaked out a cry as I Moved an alchemic hand, slamming it onto his back.

“You didn’t have to change us. You could have changed our world; you’ve been playing with it like clay for thousands of years,” I yelled, louder than before.

“We–” He gasped. I waited, eyes wide, breathing furiously through my nostrils. What would the ignorant, pampered, entitled “master” say next? What excuse would he make for ten thousand years of neglect, for hoarding their infinite knowledge?

Wisely, he remained silent. I closed my eyes and smiled, feeling strangely more at peace. It was interesting, the sensation of pouring out decades of rage in the span of a few hours. Now I could move on, be productive.

“The only thing that you and your kind can’t change, is yourselves,” I said quietly, returning to calm as I turned away from him. When I allowed him more oxygen, he rose to standing, clearly sore from having been battered. I wouldn’t allow him the pleasure of the abilities to dissolve pain signals or reconstruct his damaged body. He could suffer those as we always had.

“What are you–” He stopped, taking a quick, nervous breath, “What will you make me do?”

Finally, he was asking the right question. I grinned widely, hoping it was a terrifying sight.

“What you should have been doing all along. You’re going to teach me everything you know about alchemy, so I can pass it on,” I said. His eyes widened, and he began to shake.

“Others? You mean–the ones who crossed with you?”

“Crossed with-ah, no. Well, them too, but I’m thinking about the ones who aren’t here yet.”

“You’re bringing more? But–”

I watched the questions run through his mind, prepared to guide them in the right direction, should they stray off the path.

“They’re not–they may not have alchemy. If you–if they come here. The air on this world will-” His creeping horror dripped from his next whispered words, “Kill them.”

So he did understand. That was deeply satisfying.

“You can’t–you’ll kill everyone on the planet if you–”

Just by looking in his eyes, I could tell that he saw the same thing I was envisioning: an entire world, perfectly suited to Rigelians - alchemists and non-alchemists alike - with plenty of room to finally expand.

Vaguely, I could recall a version of myself that would have recoiled at the prospect of slaughtering billions of people with air they couldn’t breathe. That version would have shuddered at the thought of a whole species disappearing.

That man apparently hadn’t made the crossing to Earth.

“I can’t. I won’t help you kill these people,” The schoolmaster said. He collapsed to the “ground” as I cut off his air completely.

“I have a theory, schoolmaster,” I said, looking into his eyes as he gasped, “I think–you’re a coward. I think this, because you’ve never had to be brave.”

Tears began to mist from his pleading eyes.

“I may be wrong. I don’t think I’m wrong, but I don’t know you all that well,” I said, shrugging. When I finally gave him back his breath, he coughed and groaned. He was nearly in hysterics.

“Eh. You’ll do what I say. One way or the other,” I said, glaring into his eyes as I crouched beside him again.

I couldn’t read his mind, but his eyes seemed to tell me that he knew that, too.