//------------------------------//
// Chapter 10- Boundless 
// Story: inFAMOUS: Second Storm 
// by FrostTheWolf 
//------------------------------//


Chapter 10- Boundless




Kingston Residence (1:00pm)

        The ride back to his house lasted about half an hour due to some accidents on the freeway that blocked up the fast lane on the Interstate 5 freeway; but as soon as he came back, Shawn called for an emergency meeting with all the equestrian conduits and the chief. The events that occurred in Kimball park was something that couldn’t be ignored. Especially after the close encounter with their Mirror Mistress kidnapper.

        The first moments in the door, Soarin and Lyra had a small friendly reunion before Luna spoke to the Snow Conduit. “I didn’t think you would be back so soon.”

        “Me neither. But for a good reason. Can everypony come into the living room? There’s something that we need to talk about.”

        Rainbow, Soarin and the two sisters looked at each other with puzzled looks before looking back at Shawn’s father. “Hey, don’t look at me. I don’t know what’s going on either.”

        “What’s going on is that Lyra and I encountered another conduit while in Kimball Park earlier.” Shawn replied to his father. He then sighed for a moment. “That Conduit was the same one that Kidnapped Soarin, Rainbow and Lyra.”

        Shock was the next thing to set in. “Y-you mean you got attacked by the hooded lady!?!”

        “Not attacked. I don’t even think she was even trying to attack us. More like test us and intimidate us if you ask me.” Shawn told them as he took out the small mirror shard that he found. “I saw this on the ground and upon further inspection, the edges of this piece are dull and blunt. Even if it was launched at me, it wouldn’t cut or slice anything.”

        The shard was passed around for everypony to look at. Low and behold, the Snow conduit was right. Despite it looking like a sharp broken piece, nothing about it had an edge that could cut anypony. Then, Celestia asked another question. “Why do you think she went after you?”

        “My best guess is that she’s been watching the moves I’ve been making. In two days alone; I found you, your sister, Soarin, Rainbow Dash, and Lyra. Something like that so quickly would be bound to attract her attention.”

        “And you said she was there to…… test you?” Nicholas now asked his son.

        “Yes. Not on combat, but more on problem solving. She was dropping hints through her choice of words in order to see if I could pick up on them and figure out how to get her to talk. She referred to herself as ‘The Mirror that knows all’, which is a reference based off of a fairy tale called Snow White; where one of the characters is an all knowing mirror that would only answer your questions if you speak in a rhyme.”

        “Sounds like something Zecora would be interested in hearing about.” Rainbow snickered a little before paying attention again. “So what did you find out about Ms. Mirror Maniac?”

        “Well, first off, she called herself Janus and did not say her actual name.”

        “Jan-what?”

        Shawn sighed for a minute, excusing himself from the room so he could grab his laptop and access google through the home's internet connection. He soon brought up a picture of what he was talking about after accessing the site of the online game; SMITE.





        “According to History, Janus is the Roman God of Portals and Transitions and is also known as the God of beginnings. They say that he governs change, physically and emotionally, and that one that goes through a portal transitions into a new life. He is in touch with both the past and present, but controls neither and is said to only be seen with the interchanging of the seasons. The first month of the year, January, is named based off of him and is named so because it is the end of one year and the birth of the next.”

        “Well, given what was said with her doorways, it makes sense.” The boy’s father said. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not agreeing with this psycho. I just understand the logic behind the alias she decided to choose.”

        “Is there anything else that you were able to acquire from her?” Luna asked this time. In response, Lyra was the one who spoke, forming images to go along with the words that she said.

        “We tried asking her who did she bring, where were they, if she would bring anypony else from Equestria and how did her powers work.” Her powers formed a face with a question mark, a map, a collection of numbers, and a miniature model of the human conduit before all dismissing them with the swipe of a hand.

        “Wow!! Those are some amazing powers!! What are they?” Rainbow asked, personally excited by what she had seen from the fellow conduit.

        “I was told that these powers were based off of my Materialization magic back home. I think it was called… “ESP”?”

        “Janus referred to it as Energy Creation. Anything she thinks of inside her head, she can create a form of it with her powers.” Shawn explained in order to help out Lyra. His father, just from thinking this, thought of Green Lantern.

        “Back to the subject at hand, what did you find out from her?” Nicholas asked, the police Chief taking mental notes inside his mind to refer to. 

        “Well, the good news is that she told us that she won’t be bringing anypony else here.” Lyra replied to the question. “However, the bad news was that she didn’t say who exactly she brought here. Leaving us in order to find out for ourselves. But one thing that we did find out was a number.”

        “A number? Number of what?”

        “Number of Equestrians brought here.” Shawn added on. “And that is also where she slipped up.”

        Taking out his phone, the chief of police realized what exactly he meant by that. “Did you… record her?”

        “Briefly, but the part I did get was important. Listen.” 

        PLAY

        “Lets see… You three there… another three there… another two over there… The grand total is twelve. This however, does not include the royal sisters since they came on their own; but it does include the three you found and the two that Delsin Rowe boy found.”

        END

        Expressions of shock, surprise and confusion were throughout the room as everypony looked at each other. The one who was the first to speak was Rainbow. “and just HOW THE HAY IS THAT SUPPOSE TO HELP?!!”

        “Remember when she mentioned the grand total? That, is the number that we mean. When she says “You three there…”, Janus means Soarin, you, and Lyra. Additionally, the name she mentioned also gives us a clue.”

        “Yeah, but just who is this “Delsin Rowe” that she speaks of?” Luna then asked. Shawn turned towards his father and then sighed.

        “Should I explain or-.”

        “No, you go on ahead. You probably know more than I do.” 

        The teen nodded. Another quick search on the internet and the teen was able to get another picture off of Google Images. This time from a news article of an interview with a certain small town delinquent.





        “This, Ladies and Gentlemen, is Delsin Rowe. He’s the conduit that took down the head of the DUP three months ago in the city of Seattle.”

        “Wow… He looks awesome…… Well, not as awesome as me of course, but on a similar level probably. It’s not like he can drop down from thousands of feet in the air on top of bad guys.” 

        “Actually…… He can.”

        Before Rainbow could protest, Shawn showed her a youtube link of a cell phone video that caught the conduit performing a “Orbital Drop” on a platoon of DUP thugs in the Lantern District. All it did, was make her jealous. “OH COME ON!!! REALLY!!?!”

        “Well, looks like Rainbow is jealous.”

        “AM NOT!!!”

        “I’m curious on one thing though…” Celestia said, ignoring Rainbow’s outburst. “How was he able to take down the head of the DUP? What would make him so special to where this “Janus” would have to keep an eye on him?”

        “When it comes to powers, Delsin is a very special case. His main power is actually power absorption, where by grabbing a conduits hand, he obtains the same powers as the conduit he encountered. Through this, he has acquired Smoke Manipulation, Neon Manipulation, Video Manipulation and lastly, Concrete Manipulation.”

        “Hmm… I wonder what he could do with Video…”

        “Primarily, that’s not the focus. Right now, we know that he has two equestrian conduits with him and he’s in Seattle. A city far north of here.” With a few more clicks, Shawn pulled up a few pictures of Downtown Seattle and also pulled up a map of the United States to show a visual reference of how far apart the two cities were. It was indeed helpful, to a certain extent.

        “Well, what are we waiting for!?! Let’s go-!”

        “Not so fast, Rainbow.” Soarin told his friend. “We can’t just show up and expect to find him. Plus, we still have the DUP issue locally to deal with.”

        “Soarin’s right,” Lyra added on. “We have a number of how many, a location, and a name. But we still don’t know who. We need to play our cards right if we don’t want to get ourselves caught or locked up in a cell.”

        “Then how do you suppose we do that!?”

        That… was a good question. Out of all of them in the room, there were only six conduits. Bringing everyone to Seattle would certainly cause a lot of unnecessary attention. But bringing no one would not help anypony that was there. What could they do?

        Everyone was still in deep thought for about a few minutes, but soon, Nicholas thought of something and decided to speak up and say it. “Two of you should go while four of you should stay behind.”

        All eyes were upon the chief the moment he said the idea. By observation, Nicholas could tell the confusion reeking their faces and saw that he needed to explain. “The two people who should go needs to be one person who is familiar with the country you’re in and another person who knows the people that you are looking for, but can also be recognized by the other person. Plus, two people can cover more ground.”

        “What about three?”

        “Seattle’s split up into two main districts. Plus, there is a possibility that the DUP is still there. Rather not risk one of you getting captured.”

        “Nice idea, dad. But who do you think should go?”

        “Well first, I think you should go, Shawn.”

        The response honestly caught him by surprise. He had no idea that he would be his father’s first choice in this plan. “You’re smart, son. You’re like a walking Sherlock holmes who can figure things out in a snap. You are vitally important to helping Luna, Tia, and everyone else. You’re what's holding everything together and for that, I am very proud of you, son.”

        A surge of positivity was felt through the snow conduit. Hearing this gave him a moral boost of confidence and made him feel like he could take on anything. 

        “As for the second individual, I believe either Luna or Celestia would be qualified for a few reasons.”

        “Okay, what are they?” Luna asked

        “Well, with you two being the rulers of Equestria that you are, everyone that is from your home are bound to recognize you one way or another. As for another reason, Shawn told me that you two were both capable of Teleportation. That will be how you will get to Seattle since the DUP will have security checkpoints at the airports and along the state and city borders.”

        “Okay, the only thing that leaves us to figure out now is when to leave. Any ideas?”

        “I would think tomorrow at the latest.” Shawn interjected. “That way, we would be able to use the rest of the day to prepare ourselves and head out first thing in the morning.”

        “I agree. Plus, it’ll allow time for my sister and I to think on the matter.” Luna agreed with Shawn’s comment. 

        “I guess it’s settled for now. We’ll revisit the topic tomorrow.” 

        “I’ll be in the basement.” The snow conduit told his father before putting away his laptop and walking through a door that Luna and others thought was a pantry closet. 

        “I didn’t know you had a basement.” Soarin said, looking at Nicholas.

        “Well, that’s the thing. When Shawn decided that he wanted to control his powers, he needed a place to practice.” Nicholas told everypony in the room as he readjusted the location of where he was. “So, I configured the basement to have blastproof and soundproof walls so that anytime he wants to take things a step further, he could go down and practice.”

        “Well, that tempts me to go get some practice myself-.”

        “Hold on Rainbow. There is something I want to talk to you about. All of you about.”



Next morning (5:30am)

        By the time it was a little after five in the morning, Shawn couldn’t sleep anymore. He was awake, but he was also careful not to wake anypony else. From what he knew, Luna and the others were sleeping in the basement on the training rooms floor mats and using blankets that his mother bought during a family vacation in Seattle (Which was a better alternative than sleeping on the couch). It was where he also got a totem from the tribal leader of the… Akomish, he thought. Shawn couldn’t think straight right now, but decided to just focus on getting dressed and prepared. 

        The thought of waking anypony up though was interrupted by the sounds of a few voices talking in the living room. He could distinguish four of them. One was his dad, two of them were Celestia and Luna, but who was the last one? That’s when he saw who the fourth one was out of the corner of his eye, which caught him off guard. 

        His mother.

        They were catching her up to speed on the present situation since she had returned from Hawaii early. Shawn heard them continue to conversate for another ten to twenty minutes on a numerous series of topics from the events of Shawn’s heroics at Target to finding Soarin, Rainbow Dash and Lyra and lastly; the encounter with Janus. Even though it seemed like a lot to take in, she seemed to manage. One moment though, when the conversation changed to Seattle and about some of the people that his father knew, a phone call just lead to some shock. Shawn couldn’t tell what was going on, but rather not have that affect him right now.

        At one point though, Shawn decided that he had spent too much time waiting and decided to come out of his room. Gathering all of things, he went into the living room.

        “Shawn? I didn’t expect you to be up right now.”

        “Couldn’t sleep so I decided to come out for breakfast, only to find you guys.” Turning towards his mom, the Conduit gave her a warm hug. “Welcome home, mom.”

        “Thank you honey. Oh, that reminds me, I have something for you.” His mother told him, going into her small suitcase to take out a silverish grey box that was square shaped and like 3-4 inches apart. She set it on the table and pushed it towards Shawn. When he opened it, he was surprised to see a necklace that was a charm that the cutie mark of Twilight Sparkle.

        “T-thank you so much! I love it!!”

        “You’re welcome, honey. I’m sorry for missing your birthday, so I wanted to make it up to you. I’m very proud of you. You’re using your gifts to help others…… Just like your aunt.”

        “Wait… my Aunt?”

        “Your Aunt Lucy. You probably don’t remember her much, but she died when you were only nine.” She sighed a little, looking at her son. “Do you remember the Empire Event? and The New Marais Catastrophe?”

        Shawn nodded. Both of those events were practically the reasons why the DUP was set up in the first place. That way, an incident like that wouldn’t happen again. That’s when his mom told him that his Aunt was in New Marais during the time that the New Marais Catastrophe was going on. She was on an operation with assisting Cole McGrath, Empire City’s Electric man along with a friend named Zeke. But it was also where Shawn was told how Lucy Kuo had sacrificed herself along with Cole to make sure that the world could not be destroyed by a creature named The Beast. 

        “I tell you this because everytime I look at you, Shawn. I see her. Not just because of your powers. But also because of how you want to help people and I see that through helping Luna and Celestia and I am very proud of you for that.”

        “Thank you… Thank you for telling me. I miss her, but she did the right thing. The same thing I’m going to make sure to do.”

        With that, the Teen had a small light breakfast before going outside his home with Celestia, who was going to accompany him on his trip to Seattle. After saying their final goodbyes, Celestia and Shawn disappeared in a bright flash. But for Stacey; Shawn’s mother, she sighed deeply.

        “Honey, are you sure it was a good idea not to tell him.”

        “It’s too soon, dear. You can’t tell him that a good friend of yours died shortly after explaining Lucy’s passing.”

        “I hope you're right… But something tells me he’ll find out about Reggie one way or another.”

End Chapter 10