Canadian Pacific 5-5

Chapter 4: The Mirrored

I walked toward them and asked if they were OK. Fortunately they too were fine except for the fact that they too had headaches. As I helped Brody to his feet the strange man appeared before us.

“Who are you?” I demanded, “And why do you keep bringing us here?”

“All in due time,” he replied, “But for now you may call me ‘The Writer’.”

“Ok, mister ‘The Writer’.” John said, his voice dripping with sarcasm, “Why have you brought us here this time?”

“Simple,” the Writer said, “I have brought you here to show you the new faces of evil that will plague your city. You have just finished grade twelve so I will have to make them quite challenging. The new faces of evil will have to be…you four.”

“What?!” we all exclaimed.

“I have deemed that the most powerful villains you could ever face are yourselves from grade nine. Your younger reflections given the powers you wield today should pose an adequate threat.”

And with that the air shimmered next to him in four different places. The shimmers solidified and we saw our reflections from three years previous.

“The time we can spend in this ‘Void’ is limited and I must send you back however we will meet again,” the Writer said.

A moment later I awoke at home lying on my bed, almost as if it had been an elaborate dream. However when I saw my Automail arm and leg all doubt that it was real was erased from my mind. Then an idea popped into my head, what if the Writer did this to indicate that we need to rest for what is to come? Figuring sleep would be a good idea either way I rolled over and drifted off.

The next two weeks were relatively normal. We saved some citizens and put several criminals behind bars. By Thursday of the second week we were being called ‘The Elemental Four’. It was late the next Wednesday night when our first issues with our Niner selves arose. I was channel flipping and found myself looking at a destroyed supermarket. From what I could make out from the footage the ground beneath it had risen up and turned over completely. Adding insult to injury it had then been sunk into the ground and flooded with water. I quickly called up John and asked if he had seen the news.

“Yeah, I did,” he replied, “And I just got off the phone with Brent and Brody, they say that they saw the footage too.”

The TV camera panned across the street. The TV now displayed a small office building with people running out of it. The escaping office workers were covering their noses and clutching their stomachs. Suddenly the entire building exploded and burst into flames.

“Methane,” I muttered, “Niner-John filled the place with methane and Niner-Brody set it on fire.”

“We are so getting blamed for this,” John said. I had forgotten for a moment that he was still on the line.

“Call up Brody and Brent. We need to meet at the park and deal with our Niner selves,” I told John, “11:00 should do it. In the mean time I’m going to try and contact the Niners.”

I paced back and forth in my room as I wracked my brain trying to figure out how I could contact my younger self.

“Can’t call them, don’t know where they’re staying, the only way to contact them is though the Internet. But, how? I never used Facebook, I only discovered Writing.com in grade eleven, didn’t have a DeviantArt account then either…wait, that’s IT!” I exclaimed.

I realized that I could just email myself; I checked my email all the time back then. I dashed to my computer and quickly wrote up an email that I promptly mailed to my own account knowing that I’d wind up checking it sometime within the next hour. I told ‘myself’ to meet me at 12:00 at the park and a message that said ‘I’ should check my email every night at 10:00, just to ensure that any future messages would get through.

Brody, Brent, John and I met at the park at precisely 11:00. The unfortunate thing was that my Niner self had gotten the same brilliant idea as I had. So as we stepped into the park from the south end the Niners entered from the north end. Creating a stone sword and shield I stepped forward to confront myself. That was probably my biggest mistake. I charged into battle as John, Brent, and Brody all prepared to face themselves. I swung my sword and caused huge chunks of stone to shatter off of my rival’s shield. He took three leaping steps backward, repaired his shield and lunged. His sword caught mine with such force that I was knocked to the ground. I glanced around before getting up only to find that my friends were doing no better.

Moments later the entire park was a devastated wasteland. Fires had begun to burn uncontrolled on some of trees while hurricane winds from both directions ripped up the smaller saplings. Huge craters pockmarked the ground, many filled with water from the ruptured sewer pipes. As I stepped back to attack my Niner self, he too stepped back. However he was not preparing to attack. The other Niners stepped back with him. The wind picked up and large droplets of rain mixed with it cutting our visibility to almost zero. I felt the ground shake as a large section of it tore itself lose. As quickly as the whirlwind had started it stopped and we were left to watch our Niner selves float off into the distance. I went to give chase but we were pelted by several large rocks and knocked out.

I awoke not too long after and picked myself up. I then noticed that my friends had been knocked out as well. Shaking each one awake, I told them we had to get out of there as someone was bound to arrive and try to arrest us. I helped support Brent home seeing as his Automail leg had become damaged in the fight. The rest of us weren’t any better off. John’s arm had lost much of its protective plating and a few wires were severed. Brody had suffered a severe concussion and my left hand had been all but smashed beyond repair. Fortunately we made it back to my house without too much trouble considering the state we were in.

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“Well?” I said.

“The Niner’s exit was pretty awesome,” Rainbow Dash said.

“Let me guess,” I said, “Could have been 20% cooler?”

Rainbow Dash just glared at me.

“Alright then,” I said, “I’ll just take that as my cue to leave. Good night!”

I walked out the door and closed it behind me. I then stuck my head into my team’s room and said, “John, Brody, come with me. Andrew, Brent, keep an eye on the ladies. Something’s off but I’m not sure what. I’m pretty sure it’s outside though.”

I then stepped back from the door and let John take the lead. When we got outside we saw that there was absolutely no-one there. I still had that feeling though. I scanned the area and, though it was hard to see in the dim light of the moon, I saw two box shaped objects strapped to the underbelly of our truck. One under the cab, the other under the trailer’s centre.

Nothing good can come of those, I thought to myself, “Hey! John! Tell me I’m not seeing what I think I’m seeing.”

“I’m seeing two boxes strapped under Ol’ Blue-Eyes that we didn’t install,” he said.

“Same here,” Brody said.

“What are the odds, that they’re bombs?” I asked.

“Pretty good I’d say,” John replied.