Artemis was roused from his fitful sleep by the sudden movement in the room above. Ugh. What now? The last few days had not been good for the mooncat. He had been minding his own business, trying to figure out how to get in touch with Venus, when some idiot grabbed him and put him in a bag with a bunch of his “normal” cousins, and then he’d been dumped into a pit that was dark even by feline standards with even more housecats. He didn’t know how long he’d been there, but the complete lack of food implied that someone was trying to starve the whole lot of them.
He didn’t bother talking to his fellow prisoners, since ordinary housecats weren’t the best conversationalists under normal circumstances, and right now all of their comments basically amounted to “Hungry, want food!” I am so alerting the SPCA about this when I get out of here. Why in Bast’s name would someone want so many starving cats in one place?
It wasn’t until a trapdoor above him opened and some tossed in a child wrapped in fish sausages that he realized what was going on. The Catfist!
Somehow, he’d managed to keep the kid alive and relatively sane. I can’t believe that someone would actually be dumb enough to try the Neko-ken! After all, shortly before the end of the Silver Millennium, the Mau had taken it upon themselves to make sure that all recorded descriptions of the technique contained a disclaimer that clearly said that one would have to be an “idiot” to teach it—in fact, he’d come up with the “idiot” part himself! Oh well... it has been several millennia... the disclaimer must have become obscured or forgotten over time. At least the kid’s teacher won’t be dumb enough to try it again.
An old Mau proverb says: “Second only to humanity’s capacity for greatness is their capacity for stupidity.”
By the third time that the child was wrapped in seafood and thrown into the pit of starving cats, Artemis was fully convinced that this truism, which he had always dismissed as overly cynical, was firmly grounded in reality. He was barely hanging on to sanity himself, and he had managed to survive decades of Silver Millennium politics! The kid was getting worse each time, and the housecats around him were, by now, mad with hunger, to the point where they were eating the remains of those that had died, and the mooncat couldn’t communicate with them at all anymore. Artemis knew that when the kid got thrown in here again—and by now he knew that “if” was totally out of the question—he most likely wouldn’t make it, unless he did something… but what?
Then again, he didn’t really have any responsibility for this kid—his duty was to find and assist the Venus; when the kid died, there was a good chance he’d be freed…. Artemis dismissed that idea immediately. If he let this boy die when there might have been something he could have done about it, he’d never be able to face Venus even if he did find her. He had to think of something. Unfortunately, his hunger-addled mind was drawing a blank. Suddenly, the trap door opened, and the child was tossed in again. Artemis had run out of time.
He darted toward the boy and prepared to defend him from the other felines. If he had to go, he was going to go down fighting. Of course, that was difficult with the tempting aroma of fish products overwhelming his nostrils. Still, Artemis somehow managed to keep control of himself as the first wave came. The mooncat focused on protecting the face and neck—he simply couldn’t afford to worry about the rest of the boy. To his credit, Artemis did do a reasonably good job, considering that he had no formal training in the fighting arts—but a reasonably good job wouldn’t be enough. While he may have given the kid a chance at survival, it was obvious he was losing his mind—
That was it. The Mind Meld. Artemis may not have been as skilled at it as his former colleague Luna, but all Mau were capable of forming telepathic and empathic links with humans. If he linked the two of them mentally, there was a chance that the kid would take on his characteristics, instead of that of an insane housecat. Of course, unauthorized melding was absolutely forbidden except in extreme circumstances, but if this wasn’t an “extreme circumstance,” Artemis didn’t know what was. True, one look at the chaos around him told him there was a chance that he wouldn’t survive himself if he tried this, but the mooncat’s gut was telling him that this was what he had to do.
Dear Bast, let this work! After that brief prayer, Artemis steeled himself and entered into the boy’s mind.
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(Posted Sat, 25 Feb 2006 08:01)
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