Static Reflections: Book 1 of The M... - Chapter 24: Chapter 24

The physical basics weren't tough. Richard taught Nick breathing exercises, stretches, and basic hand-to-hand combat along with handling the knife that the members of the Guard used.
He also explained how missions were given, telling Nick that usually there were multiple different level cases, and each higher level held a higher reward at greater danger. Higher-level cases also could take longer, weeks even. The riskiest cases were Investigations, which meant Truth Sect had only gathered a little info on a case, and the creature hunters were responsible for figuring out the rest.
At the beginning of training, the hyena was worried that their large jackets would get in the way, but found that he was able to get punches and kicks out rather easily. Additionally, he got to discover how skilled Richard was, which was quite.
They did similar routines for multiple days and Nick was his same, energetic self the entire time, while Richard remained focused on the job. He did provide praise whenever the hyena earned it, though. Nick was woken up by Victor each day and escorted to the training room where the stoic raccoon was waiting. From there, they'd greet each other and begin the work. Always by the end of each session, Nick's muscles were on fire.
When he returned to his room, he was to order a meal along with a drink, which he would take a small green pill with that would get rid of his muscle ache over a short time. By the time he woke up, he was refreshed and ready to go.
In order to wash the outfit, a female Siberian tiger would visit every other day and cast a spell that cleaned it. She wasn't as social as Victor, so Nick didn't really become friends with her.
It was a cycle Nick started getting used to.
Today, when he entered the training room, the same Hephaestus Bot that handed him the clothes was there, holding a black case.
"Good day, Nicholas," Richard lifted his hand in a wave.
"Hey, Dick. What's this?" the hyena asked, eyes focused on the black container.
"We're going to begin the next part of training today," Richard explained. "Go ahead and open the case."
Nick flipped up each of the latches. With each satisfying click, his curiosity grew as to what could be inside. Opening the lid revealed a translucent gun-shaped object and a small tablet.
From his courses, Nick recognized each as a Prism Pistol and Retrieval Tablet, respectively. Each was surrounded by a black foam that they were nestled into. Along the side of the Prism Pistol, it read "N. Flynn." There was nothing of the sort on the Retrieval Tablet.
Nick smiled. "Oh shit, we're finally moving on to phase two, huh?!"
"Go ahead and take each item," Richard ordered, stepping forward. "These items are trained in tandem with each other because you need to use the Retrieval Tablet to get bullets for the Prism Pistol. Today, I will teach you—"
"Lemme guess, the basics?" Nick looked back, raising his brow with a goofy smile.
The raccoon nodded. "Yes."
Nick took each item and held them, making sure not to put his finger on the gun's trigger. The robot closed the box and stepped back.
The hyena turned around. "Alright, now I got 'em."
Richard uncrossed his arms and walked to a panel next to the entrance. "This room can transform depending on what I'm teaching." He tapped his digits on the device, and suddenly, parts of the ground sunk away and into the floor, while the same happened on the ceiling and walls.
The raccoon pulled Nick back by his tail. "If you ever wondered why there's a white line spanning the ground on this side, this is why."
"Oh, yeah. Definitely wouldn't want to fall into any of the holes," Nick nodded, pulling his tail back and brushing it with his hand while almost every space that the room had created changed, pillars pushing out into the open, now with targets attached to the end of each.
Richard crossed the white line. "This is the most basic room. First, I'm going to show you how the Prism Pistol works and then show you the failsafe that every gun has."
Nick waited until the room finished shifting, then followed behind, still holding the items he had retrieved from the box. "What should I do with . . . ?" He held up the tablet.
Richard unbuttoned and opened his jacket, showing a pocket on the inside that held a tablet that looked just like the one Nick had.
The hyena repeated his actions and placed the tablet inside.
The raccoon slipped the jacket off his shoulders and pulled his arms out from the sleeves, walking over and tossing it over the white line, then coming back. "Since we're not doing any hand-to-hand, I'll go for a more casual look."
Nick followed suit, his smaller jacket landing on top of Richard's. He came back, grinning. His eyes studied the dark green tie around his neck.
In the Creature Hunting Sect, the colors of the ties were always significant. Red meant that you were still training, yellow meant that you were on your first real mission to be licensed, green meant that you were licensed, and black meant that you were the Sect Leader. Of course, he hadn't seen Iwai in a suit yet because there was no reason for the Sect Leader to wear it here.
"Dick?" Nick asked. He had also adopted this nickname for the raccoon, knowing it was another name for Richard, but also because the work he did in Truth Sect fit the meaning as well. The hyena found the nickname in no way comical but called the raccoon that affectionately.
"Yes?" The raccoon asked, raising a brow.
"Your tie's green, so . . . when did you graduate?" Nick queried, gesturing.
Richard looked down at the object around his neck, letting it drape over the palm of his hand. "I wasn't always part of the Truth Sect. I started in the Timeline Travel Sect. That was two years ago."
Nick stared, listening as close as possible.
"I can't go into details, Nick, but I do want to tell you that I was only thirteen when I went into my alternate timeline. That was two years ago, too."
"Alternate timeline . . ." Nick let the words roll on his tongue. "W-wait!" He exclaimed. "How can you be twenty-eight but only thirteen two years ago?!"
Richard held up a finger. "Rule 1 of timeline travel. Once you travel to the alternate timeline, you must live out the remainder of the years you have traveled back. I was thirteen when I entered, so I had to stay for thirteen years. When I got out, I was twenty-six in body and mind. Now it's two years later, and I'm twenty-eight."
Nick felt like his eyes were spiraling. "Wuh . . . that's so confusing . . . but I think I get it. Wow."
Richard nodded, then looked to the side. "That's all I can tell you. I apologize."
Nick shook his head. "It's alright." He stepped closer, holding up the gun carefully. "Why don't you show me how to use this? And can we sit down?"
"Sure," Richard nodded, and the two lowered onto the hard foam ground, the raccoon taking the gun from the younger hyena. "So this is a Prism Pistol, as you know. Do you know why it's called that?"
"Easy. This one was one of the questions on the Last Test. It's because it's one color but shoots a bunch of different colored bullets."
"That's right," Richard said, holding it up and turning it in his hand, pointing to a switch that was on the side. "This, here, is the safety of the gun. Right now, it's on so that the gun won't fire, and you can't cock it. But if you turn it off, which I won't, the gun can be cocked and fired."
"Mhm." Nick nodded. He had already learned all this, but he could tell that Richard enjoyed his time teaching, so he let him go wild.
"You know the parts of a gun, don't you?"
"Yes," Nick nodded, actually having not known much about guns before his courses.
"Okay, good." Richard turned the gun over, pointing to a wheel on the other side that had many trim lines on it. It reminded Nick of the spark wheel on a lighter. This thought made him think about how he hadn't smoked in a while, probably why he felt anxious some days more than others.
Richard continued. "This is the failsafe. Once you flick it, it activates a tiny rune within the gun."
Nick, knowing what it did, grinned. "You should show me."
"In time," Richard answered. He pressed a button on the side of the gun toward the back, and the magazine popped out from the grip, which he caught. "Because the Mortal Guard's tools use technology and magic, the magazine has a spring to bring each cartridge up into the firing chamber, like most guns."
Richard pointed at the grip and then moved his finger along the weapon until he got to the side of the muzzle. "The weapon is designed only to shoot one shape of a bullet, but each color cartridge that you get from the Retrieval Tablet do different things."
The raccoon slid his claw along a curved line on the muzzle. "As you can see, the muzzle is threaded so that way you can attach a silencer or suppressor for stealth missions."
He placed his hand on the top of the weapon. "The slide is here, which moves when you fire the gun. After the magazine is loaded and you pull it back, the cartridge is loaded into the firing chamber. The slide will automatically go back and load the next shot as you shoot, just like a standard gun.
"Unlike a normal gun, though, the cartridges aren't ejected from the extractor." He gestured to the top of the slide and showed that there was no space there.
"Instead, because the Prism Pistol uses magic, the gun dissolves the cartridge into nothing inside the gun, and the weapon itself is fired using a kind of small explosion rune. And that rune is activated with the hammer, here in the back." He placed his thumb on the device and pressed down. It fought against him.
"Since the safety is on, I can't cock the gun right now, but if the safety was off and I did, the hammer would stay back until I pulled the trigger, where it would snap back into place and ignite the small explosion rune inside."
Nick was taking in all the information that his Mentor was throwing at him. It didn't seem that hard to remember, but this was more detailed than the courses went over.
"There are many different types of cartridges that hold special bullets." Richard set the gun and magazine down carefully, then got up and walked over to his jacket, taking out the Retrieval Tablet and coming back over, sitting again. "This'll be easier to explain since it has a lot fewer parts."
Nick nodded. "Great, cause I'm forgetting everything you said as we speak."
"Really?"
The hyena giggled. "No, no. It's all being retained. Don't worry."
"Come on. Sit next to me," the raccoon said, patting the spot beside him.
Nick looked up and used his hands to pull himself over. Richard held the tablet between them.
"The device is very simple and has a sort of two-layer 'screen.'" He held it up. "See how the screen is sort of sunk into the device?"
Nick moved his head up and down, noticing that the screen had been embedded deeper into the hard material of the thing. Surrounding the screen was a thin outline of bronze metal.
"I thought it was just to prevent the screen from getting shattered," Nick stated honestly.
"See these tiny nodes in each of the four corners of the metal?" Richard pointed a claw to each.
Nick nodded. "Yeah."
"Watch."
Nick observed as Richard held his finger on the screen, and it came to life. The device was by no means thick, and the hyena wondered how they had figured all of this out.
"I'm just going to grab a simple bullet, which we call 'Normals,'" Richard explained, then the tablet changed, a bright blue light replacing the screen entirely. "Look, Nicholas." The raccoon tilted the device, and Nick could see that below the blue light, the screen was still active. There were black words on it he couldn't quite read.
"Two layers . . ." the hyena muttered. "So the top layer is . . . ."
"A portal, right," Richard nodded. "And it leads to the Supply Sub-Sect, which is under Prostasia. But, look." He pressed the entire length of his hand on the blue light, and Nick noticed that it couldn't go through.
"A one-way portal?" the surprised trainee blinked. "How?"
"Hephaestus truly is incredible," Richard answered. "I'm not sure how it all works, myself. Anyway, you'll need to master the art of catching."
"Catching?"
"Catching is what it sounds like. Because we can't reach into the portal, we have to turn the device, so the cartridges fall out." He did so, and a golden bullet fell into his dark hand. "If we were on the ceiling, we'd have to hold our hand above the portal so we could catch it in the gravity that's reversed to ours."
Richard rotated the device, showing the top edge toward Nick and revealing a button there. "You'd think this would be the power button, but it actually deactivates the portal from our side. And to activate the screen, you need to hold your finger against it."
He set the device on his lap and pointed around. "Recognize the UI? It's the same as the Hephaestus Bots use; only this is for supplies. You also can press this magnifying glass button down here to search for something manually."
Nick leaned over, looking at all the options Richard swiped through. "There are grappling hooks?!"
The raccoon tapped the icon. "It's not like a video game or anything. It takes a lot of work to make a grappling hook actually function. You can fiddle around with all the options later. Right now, let's load this cartridge into the magazine."
He picked up the cartridge and inserted it into the magazine, then pushed the object up into the magazine well. "Alright, now it's in the weapon. But I want to show you the failsafe before anything."
Nick nodded, his tail curled on the floor and his ear twitching. "Sweet."
Richard removed the safety, making sure he held the gun away from Nick. "So on missions, any manner of things can happen where you won't want to fire the gun after cocking it." He pulled back the hammer, and there was a click. "Now that the cartridge is loaded, I could pull the trigger and fire the gun right now. For the sake of this demonstration, I'll activate the failsafe rune."
He used his other hand to flick the wheel on the side of the gun. "You won't be able to tell the difference after, but you will see a small blue glow when you turn it. The cartridge is now changed to a failsafe one."
Nick anticipated what came next, having read about it before but not quite believing it was real.
"3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . . ." Richard pulled the trigger, and with a loud pop, the gun expended colorful confetti from the muzzle, which drifted down to the floor like rainbow snow.
The other animal couldn't help but burst out laughing. It was like something out of a cartoon. He did see how someone could use it, practically, but still.
"Don't forget," Richard went on, "The slide has a forward and rear sight to help you aim at your target." He held the gun out to Nick, and the hyena took it. "Alright, now that you know how they work, let's start shooting some targets."