Through the Looking Glass: Chapter Five

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"Oh man, you really did get them!" Ellie looked delighted. "Let's see this movie, guys!" She looked at the androids, "One of them threw a potato chip! I'm so proud!"

Asher handed Esk a container of pills. His pockets were always well stocked. He looked at the androids, amused.

James came over and slapped Asher on the shoulder. "Ready to try and sing Satare musicals? It's gonna be sooo impossible!"

Asher made a face.

"Oh yeah, my shapeshifter is totally hot." Matt grinned.

Esk rolled his eyes.

Kay looked sheepish. Yeah no... he'd never been a ginger cat... nope, that never happened. <_<
He glanced to Asher and tried to keep a straight face.

Luka glanced over at Quinn's parchment, curious.

Mourn was laughing to himself over the silliness of the subtitles.

Quinn paid no attention to Luka's nosiness, hardly noticing her as the Entropium's calligraphy practice had obviously paid off with the elegant curves and lines that thickened and thinned with the Quill's angle. It was written in the Entropium Language, however, and the words remained unknown to anyone not knowing otherwise. She dipped the quill into the ink bottle and continued writing.

Asher met Kay's eyes for a moment, then hastily looked away again, trying to not laugh.

Ethan looked disgusted.

Dawn and Rigel were enjoying the badly translated movie and the comments from the watchers as the movie wore on.

Esk scoffed. "they're gross right?" He looked to Ethan.

Luka couldn't make head or tails of the caligraphy. "Not watching the movie?" She asked Quinn.

"Clearly she's smart and realises this shit will rot all our brains!" Esk called.

The probably a cat guy had some weird habits, like a liking for fish and a tendency to get distracted by laser pointers.

"I'm telling you, he's the cat."

The woman's cat was indeed missing. She put up missing posters and sang a sad song about it.

Ethan shuddered. "So gross. More gross than the bestiality in this movie."

"Aww, be nice to my other brother," James said, elbowing Ethan gently.

Ethan rolled his eyes and took a step away from James.

"Is it bestiality if they're currently in humanoid form?" Matt asked.

Esk shot him a grossed out look.

"No seriously, if it's a shapeshifter then it's not beastiality it's uh.. xenophillia?"

"It's her cat..." Esk replied flatly.

"Oh not saying he's not seriously dodgy for pretending to be a cat all this time but... " Matt shrugged.

"I take it back, he shouldn't run from her, she should run from the creepy pervert. he's watched you sleep... probably naked. RUN"

Matt burst into laughter. "I love watching movies with you Esk."

"Let's not make a habit of this, I can already feel my will to live fading." Esk replied dully.

Kay shook his head [<<For once, i think i'm on Stellan's side about this. I think i'm losing brain cells watching this.>>] He smiled.

"Yeah, this just got dark," Ethan muttered. "This cat guy is a complete creep."

"It's okay to think a dragon or a cat or whatever is hot, if they're a sapient shifter!" Ellie agreed with Matt. "Also it's a movie, Ash-Ethan! Shrug off the weirdness and pretend it's romantic!"

"Yeah! It's fiction, so you can pretend it's all cool," James agreed. "Nothing wrong with people watching people sleep and be naked if it's not real life."

Asher laughed, reading Kay's tablet. <<It's certainly a very unusual story>>

Shane frowned and tilted his head at the teasing argument "Weird? I pretend to be human everyday. Don't watch anyone sleep naked, but still." He shrugged and looked a little more confused now.

Ellie shook her head. "Nah Shane, that's not what I meant. I meant pretending to be someone's pet so you can look at their boobs is weird."

"Suddenly i'm struck with a great deal of fear toward you guys." Esk told them all flatly.

Matt laughed. "Don't worry Esk, we won't watch you sleep... or... will we? " He cackled.

"Anyone sneaks up on me while i'm sleeping, i'm shooting them." Esk threatened.

"What if they're a cat?" Matt grinned.

"ESPECIALLY if they're a cat."

Kay looked amused.

"Shhhh, they're about to sing their getting together love song!" Luka called.

Sure enough... more singing.

"Why can't people in movies just speak their feelings? it's always some song. " Esk complained.

"Songs are more marketable." Matt nodded sagely. "You can sell the soundtrack too."
he smiled to Shane. "Pretending to be human isn't the same as pretending to be a cat. You do things around pets you wouldn't do around a person."

Kay nodded, it was true. [People always talk to animals as well. Matt used to chat to our goat.]

Matt looked flustered. "Yeah well she was a good listener!"

Esk snickered. "That poor goat. You talked her damn ear off."

"Now I have bots instead." Matt huffed.

Kay smiled softly.

Shane looked to Ellie then shrugged a little "I guess"

James smiled fondly at Matt. "I'm sure the goat appreciated your company. The bots probably do to in their tiny robot way." He listened to the song, "I think we should pirate this soundtrack before we go home. For the memories."

Ellie hugged Shane a bit. "You aren't any weirder than I am. It's okay!"

"Definitely! We can have Vestia play it through the sound system!" Matt agreed.

Esk looked pained.

Matt snickered to Ellie and shane. "I'm sure you'd make an adorable cat." He nodded.

Kay shook his head.

Luka giggled.

"This movie isn't much good for singing along with. We need to find an excuse to make the serious people sing next!" Ellie said, waving her hand at Dawn and Asher. Yeah, best to not put the spotlight on Esk right away, even if she totally wanted to see him sing.

Quinn looked up at Luka, smiling weakly and looking at the screen. "Sort of..." She looked down at the parchment. "The Anamcara loves writing and literature. I thought a good paper on the comparisons between the two Universes and culture differences would be a good start for when Vanessa and I pick back up on my training."

Dawn looked to Ellie then back at the screen "Um, it might be easier if it was a movie and songs we knew rather than a totally new one." She said then shrugged "I don't usually sing anyway."

"Don't worry, we got a whooole selection of movies. How about the little mermaid next?" Matt laughed.

"someone get me a spoon, I want to gouge my own eyeballs out with it." Esk said.

"I think this movie makes an excellent point about the Imperium." Matt nodded sagely.

"That they should never ever produce any sort of fiction?" Esk asked.

Matt laughed. "Yeah pretty much."

Cat guy and woman totally got together.
He disappeared come morning, but the cat came back.

"I want to find everyone involved in the making of this and hurt them." Esk remarked.

"now now, i'm sure a lot of them were only in it for the pay cheque." Matt chuckled.

"Hurt... them..."

"How much do you know about the Imperium in our universe?" Luka asked Quinn quietly.

"Oh, I don't know much." Quinn shook her head, "But according to Vanessa, the Guild knows loads. Since the Imperium is listed as a Hostile Empirical nation, and reigns sovereignty over a listed oppressed species, Vanessa says the Guild is bound to have many Scouts watching the goings on, and probably with a lot of Runners on standby in case the Hexenfolke are officially reclassified as a high priority species."

"The Lion King!" James said. "Caaaaan you feel the looooove tonight?"

"Maybe we should just do soundtracks and not a whole movie?" Asher suggested. Not that he was going to sing. That was so not his thing.

"Hakuna matata" Shane interjected and grinned

"Lady and the Tramp" Dawn said then giggled and looked down

"The Hexenfolke!??" Luka sounded incredulous.

Esk stared at her.

She looked embarrassed and lowered her voice again. "What business is it of theirs? They let planets explode but they're spying on the Imperium? The Hexenfolke aren't oppressed, they have lands, rights, they're respected medics and vital to the empire's functioning." She protested.

--

"Disney.. medley!" Matt declared. "YES!"

"or... we could ram sharp implements into our own faces!" Esk suggested.

"Oh Esk." Matt grinned.

Wacky hijinks ensued in the movie. There was a parade, the cat went missing again, the guy came back, then he disappeared and the cat was there blah blah blah. Long story short, turned out the guy wasn't the cat, but he could talk to the cat and was using it to get to know the woman so he could woo her.

"What the fuck? that makes no sense!" Esk protested.

"You're just mad because you were wrong."

"Hey, does that mean you owe me credits?" Luka asked.

"no." Esk snapped. "It makes no sense because SHE was the one chasing after him. If he wanted to know how to seduce her, why'd she have to make the first move!?"

Matt laughed. "because this movie is terrible and the writers probably forgot their own plot half way through!"

Shane laughed at the messed up plot then looked over to Luka, wondering what was getting her riled.

Rigel and Dawn looked over as well

"Well I did not see that coming," James said, looking at the screen in awe. "Wow."

Asher looked at Kay, smiling, <<This universe is strange>>

"The Guild takes no part in major battles or movements not their own. Vanessa said that Merith will be tried for the destruction of the planet since he is classified as a Keeper and should know better. Other Empires? They don't meddle in war. They meddle in the after efffects of wars, which is why the Imperium is so closely watched. They wish to preserve history in its purest form but at the same time want to liberate enslaved or oppressed species in order to preserve their culture. That's one reason why Hexenfolke aren't on the high priority list, since they're still allowed their own distinguished culture. However..."

She suddenly turned almost monotonic yet thoughtful, as if she were reciting something she had memorized, "Contrary to their Satare counterparts, the Hexenfolke are severely lagging behind in technological advances due to the Imperium's high priority on war. Staying within the stone to medieval ages of the spectrum of Species Evolution technology wise, a lot of concern is being placed for the well being of the Hexenfolke. Families are split apart due to the heavy reliance on war, and resistance against drafting, a practice looked down upon by the Guild, is highly punished. This lack of control and lack of shared resources throughout the Satare reign is of great concern the Guild's efforts to make sure each generalization of species is within the boundaries of the considered basic liberties of sapient races. For further insight, the fictional Terran novel, 'Speaker for the Dead,' written by the late Orson Scott Card, supplies a theoretical outcome and relationship between two species of this nature."

Kay nodded [<<extremely>>] He looked to Luka and Quinn, frowning. She was pretty upset about this, he felt a little bad eavesdropping but damn her surface thoughts were loud.
Eugh. He winced a little.

[Quinn, I don't think now is an appropriate time for a political debate regarding our homeworld.] He wrote.

Luka's eyes narrowed.

"you have absolutely no idea what the empire is like, and neither does this Vanessa. " She spoke coldly.

Esk watched her warily, hmm, this should be good.

Matt stood up. "Don't discuss politics, religion... or uh... there's one other one I always forget... but yeah, bad idea... " He sounded worried.

Luka looked to Matt. "tell her she's wrong."

Matt frowned, nodding slowly. "The uh.. the Empire doesn't just deny technology to the Hexenfolke. Melanoc is one of the inner colonies, mostly farming communities and a lot of woods. 98, maybe 99 percent of the population are Satare, my mother was born there, grew up there till she was drafted at 14. They're poor, they work hard, and their tech level is all over the place. We grew up poor even by poor standards, but what I remember of the nearest villages? they have renewable energy, electricity, plumbing and sanitation but they don't have trucks, or cars... The kids from the village were as terrified of the trucks and the space craft and my brothers and I were. They'd never seen them either. We used horses to get around, if you were especially lucky, you had two horses. The weather satalites were seldom maintained unless the storms their malfunctioning caused started to impact export. People don't matter to the empire, we're just fodder. "

Esk nodded. "I've been to the Hexenfolke homelands."

"What are they like?" Luka asked warily.

Esk shrugged. "Not that different to the poorer Satare colonies. They don't have much stone, so they build with wood instead. They fear the moons and the woods as much as Satare do. They were weird people, not too friendly but then, nobody's very friendly toward me. They're mostly left alone except when the recruiters come, they never join the military, they always go into medical. The recruiters don't even ask, they just assume. " He sounded dismissive.

"except you. You were a soldier." Luka told him.

Esk nodded. "Funnily enough, I got more shit in the infantry for being Hexenfolke than for being a half-breed. Hexenfolke are meant to be cowards, pacifists. I'm neither of those things. I screwed with them and their idea of what Hexenfolke should be like, and they hated it. Still, they didn't shoot me, even when I punched my commanding officer in the face." He smirked a little. "It was worth the prison time."

Matt smiled softly. "Definitely worth it."

Kay lowered his head.

"point is, we might get a lot of casual racism, but I don't think we're any more oppressed than the rest of the poor colonists. The military is all that matters, the ruling classes ARE the military high ups, they're one and the same. If you aren't military, you don't matter. So long as food keeps coming out of the farms and new little soldiers keep getting born, they couldn't care less how many suffer. "

Luka looked upset.

"Sorry Lieutenant, but you're both wrong." Esk shrugged. "The empire doesn't give a shit about their people, they only care about glory and conquest. You're just another casualty, they sacrificed you to whatever mission you aren't allowed to talk about, whatever brought you so far into terran space, and they're never going to come looking. You simply aren't worth enough to them."

Matt frowned.

Kay looked solemn.

"What's interesting is their attitude toward aliens. Oh they hate them, they think they're inferior scum, but if you're a half breed like us? and you manage to claw your way up through the ranks like our sister? the great Doctor Baeker, a hero of the Empire, she defied her disability, her filthy alien blood to become something useful, someone invaluable to the Reich. So long as she doesn't bring any more filthy hybrid children into the world, they're more than happy to ignore her alieness and she's more than happy to go along with it. " Esk sounded kinda bored. "I changed my mind Matt, this is more irritating than the movies."

Matt smiled softly and nodded. "Disney medley yeah?"

Luka huffed. "your stupid guild have no idea. Maybe they should focus on real threats rather than passing judgement on things that are none of their damn business."

"Ist en ordnung, lassen zie uns dieze in ordnung fallen lassen?" Matt told Luka in their native tongue.

She nodded, looking angry and uncomfortable.

Matt smiled softly. "Ist en ordnung... ya? Es vird alles gut."

"Ya... alles gut." Luka replied half heartedly.

"Animated singing makes everything better!" Matt clapped his hands together.

Quinn looked about ready to cry, standing. "I-I didn't mean to make anyone upset, I w-was just answering her questions a-and explaining w-why..." Quinn fell quiet. She looked down the the floor and began quietly putting her things away.