Chapter 2 – Clock
When I awoke from my unconsciousness, I found myself in a strange room with several humans wearing long, white lab coats. All of them inspecting and reading the Sage's Journals thoroughly. I was trapped in a cylindrical glass tube that was well ventilated and located on a strange counter top. Still groggy, I took a look at my surroundings. The room was large and white, within it were various instruments most of which I had no idea were for. The only devices I could identify were various computers and printing apparatuses. One of the female humans noticed me stirring and silently made her way to me and began to speak in a sweet, soft voice, "Sorry about this little one, I hope that one day you can forgive us for all of this." She looked like she was saddened by everything they have done. Suddenly a man's voice came from behind her saying, "Don't be sorry, Doctor Mira Lambeous. If these abominations have the gall to illegally set foot on our planet's soil, then we have nothing to be sorry for." The man stated.
"Doctor Ragnarok, you would feel the same way even they could legally live on our planet." The female retorted back. The man just smiled at her and said to the rest of her comrades, "Have you discovered anything about these aliens' source of power?" Another man within the group responded, "No sir, nothing yet but we have discovered that there are a select few of these aliens that are born with a higher potential than the rest. They call him, or her, 'The Sage'."
After my grogginess lifted, I was able to see more details of the humans. The female that was kind to me, had blondish-brown hair that extended down to the crown of her buttocks and, in human terms, stood at about 5 feet and 7 inches. Her face was beautiful (for a human). And she looked slender and trim. She had fair, white skin that beheld a slight tan, and it wasn't until she looked at me again to soundlessly apologize again that I noticed that she had hazel-green eyes.
The man known as Doctor Ragnarok, however, was kind of rugged. His skin was pale white and his face and hair was unkempt, his hair was a flaming-red, as were his bushy eyebrows, he also had dark gray eyes. However, he still did look like he could hold his own in a human fight, being of what humans call a medium build and standing at 5 feet 6 inches. While the female known as Mira had a gentle expression on her face even when she was frustrated and angry, Dr. Ragnarok always wore a sinister expression that said he was out to destroy all things he couldn't quite understand, angry and almost evil.
Listening to Dr. Ragnarok go on his rants was like hearing an insane country leader bent on genocide give his speeches in perfect human English, he would go on and on about how the earth was being invaded by dangerous aliens, and how the only way to eliminate them is to become as powerful as them. The other humans seemed to be somewhat distraught about some of the things that came out of his mouth, but if they said anything, he would simply go on another rant. It was hours before Dr. Ragnarok even remotely decided to leave the room. And when he did, I decided to try my luck at using my claws to cut the glass tube. However, there was no luck, the tube apparently was scratch resistant and I was just dulling the tips. A few more hours later, and the rest of the humans left the room yawning and stretching. I noticed a clock on the wall near the entrance and really wished that I had learned to tell human time. "Oh well, at least I have something to keep me from going insane." I thought to myself.
Then I began to watch the clock and noticed that the ring of numbers went around with the number 1 slightly to the right of the number 12 with 4 hash marks in between each number. The thin red stick moved regularly and pointed to each hash mark and even regularly pointed to each of the numbers during its round cycle. Counting the number of hash marks the stick pointed at on a complete trip, totaled 60 hash marks, including the larger hash marks near the numbers. Then I noticed two black sticks, one longer than the other. The longer stick would move every time the thin, red stick passed the hash mark with the number 12 below it. Seeing the pattern, I thought to myself, "I'm guessing the short black stick moves when the long black stick reaches the number 12, and if I remember correctly, human time works with seconds, minutes and hours. But there are only 24 hours in a day." Noticing that the clock divides the day in half, I finally figured out how to read these human clocks. "The long black stick displayed the minutes in the hour, and the short black stick displayed the hour of the day either in the light time or the dark time. And the thin red stick was probably the seconds. So if the long black stick pointed at the third hash mark in between the 6 and the 7 then the minutes were 33 in that particular hour. The short hand pointing in between the numbers 9 and 10 probably meant that the hour was 9." I thought to myself. "Since the day is in the dark hours, humans would say that it's 9:33 dark...or was it 'pm'?" I thought to myself which one it was for a while until I heard a small sliding noise and light footsteps heading toward me. Before it reached me, however, it turned toward where the other humans left the Sage's Journals, and I began to recognize the silhouette of the human sneaking around, it was Mira. She picked up one of the Sage's Journals and walked over to me, sat down next to me and began to read the journal to me.
"I don't know where I came from, or who I was. All I remember before was helping some fuzzy figures in need and waking up later. The first thing I saw I had assumed was one of my parents, since the figure was a female, she probably is my mother. Soon I learned that her name was Rita and my father was big, strong and named Runt. 'Are you alright there, Ace?' mom had said to me. Ace, was that my name?" Mira was reading to me Ace's journal. I couldn't figure out how Ace was able to write a journal when he has yet to even pick up a pen, until Mira turned to a page that was being written as she read. "My father and I came back to the home that we had found to go and look for mom. When we found that she wasn't there, we began to search for her, but there was no trace of her. I discovered that mom's new favorite books were even missing, and knew that something was terribly wrong. Soon, we could hear the feint voices of humans outside our home. And I knew we could have our opportunity to find out what happened to my mom."
"What is going on?" I thought to myself. "Is ace coming to rescue me or something?" knowing that I couldn't live with myself if Ace or Runt got seriously hurt, I began to repeatedly meow and scratch at the glass tube to get Mira's attention. "Huh? What is it kitty?" she said to me when she noticed my acting up. All I had to do was look as the book for a while and she immediately understood what I was making a fuss at. "Do you know who this 'Ace' guy is?" she asked. I just nodded. She looked back at the book and it seemed as if something clicked on. "You must be Rita." She gasped. I meowed and jumped up onto the glass, pressing my front paws against it, it looked like I was standing on my two back paws. Mira looked around for a little bit, stood up from her chair and turned to one of the computers near my little container. She typed on it for a short while and suddenly my prison shook slightly and I heard a small clicking noise and Mira came back and simply lifted the glass off of its base. I was free to escape this place, but I was not about to leave the Sage's Journals behind. I jumped down and ran to the journals. Mira got the hint, but was confused as to why they were important.
"You aren't going to leave without those are you?" she said to me. I just shook my head to signify that I wasn't. "Why are these books so important?" she asked. There wasn't much else I could do. I didn't want to startle her by attempting to speak to her (my words probably would sound like meows to her anyway), so I just stared at her. "Oh, fine!" she said after a while. She gathered up the books and headed to the door.