The Freedom of Slavery

Okay, in this chapter we meet Alza's cat, and things get interesting. Most of the basic everyday details have been given, so it will start sounding less formulaic and more like a story. I love feedback, but if you have issues with how things are in the story, just bear with me, and I will see what I can do to fix it. Enjoy!

In the morning, around 10ish the brothers woke up to see a beautiful hybrid on the bed instead of the cat they had last seen. She was a perfect combination of Alza's human features and her cat's deadly grace.

She had a panther's jaw on her more human skull, but her cat had shifted her facial features so that she was able to keep a human brain, her skull had the jaws, snout, eyes, and ears of a jaguar panther, without the rosettes. Her scent had changed, she now smelled like a female cat with a slight hint of musk, and they noticed that she had kept her tail. Not all hybrids kept their tail, so the fact that Alza chose to keep hers was interesting. As they watched, she started to wake up and look around.

"Good morning Masters, I apologize for my cat, but when I told her she should not be so rude, she swatted me with her paw, not even bothering to sheath her claws, and told me it was her time to be free, and I could enjoy being caged for awhile. Masters, is that normally how cats act when they haven't been free in awhile?"

"Your cat may have been upset at being vulnerable as well as finally being free. Our cats like to run and hunt and be free from all restraints, but she couldn't do that. It doesn't excuse how she acted, but it is understandable," Jahar told her.

"I summoned up a big stick when she let me out and gave her a few good raps on the flanks for behaving that way when you have done nothing but care for me. I also told her that I can recommend tail clamps if she decides to act like that without talking with me first. Masters, she told me that we have to give you some options for punishments, but other than a couple that I don't know that I could handle, she didn't give me any ideas, so I will give one of hers and two of mine."

"From what she was showing me last night, we would have to get some toys from Ilan's private section of the shop, but you would have to be cleared for 'active duty' for her naughty ideas," Jahar said, smirking.

"Yes Master Jahar, you are precisely right, hence why I thought they were bad ideas."

"Jahar, do I want to know what I would have to grab?" Ilan asked, blushing slightly.

"One or two of everything, and we would even have to have a couple of things custom made, because apparently sex is a big business on Earth and they have literally millions of options of toys. Our Alza used to be VERY adventurous," Jahar said with a leer.

"Okay, back on topic, but since the rest of us are still curious, what was your cat's suggestion Alza?" Lezar asked, adjusting his pants to accommodate the slight bulge. "Masters, the one idea of her I agreed to present was that I had to walk home with a dildo in me, in human form, and have me bell ring less than five times or I would be spanked for each one after that. My first idea was that I had to get my tattoo without any pain meds and I could not make a sound or I would be spanked. My second idea was that I be left in a room by myself for an hour after I had been aroused, and tied so that I couldn't take care of the arousal."

"I like your cat's idea, but that would be too hard for you right now, so good thinking on that. I like your first idea, but I would add that you had to learn to read today, and finish one beginner's book as well," Lezar said.

"I think being kept indoors for most of today, getting a tattoo, and learning to read are going to be perfect punishments for a new emerged cat, as all of those will test her patience and your control," Kalba said.

The others agreed that Lezar and Kalba would stay with Alza while she got her tattoo, since they had her papers to prove her new status, and that the others would pick up groceries and check on their stores. When everyone got home, Gobin would spend the rest of the day teaching Alza to read, and control her cat.

"Alza, to help you until we get home, Helius will help Jahar walk your mind so they can talk with your cat. If she is rude, they will take care of it with no need for further punishment. They will try to convince her that it is in her best interest not to give you any trouble till we get home," Lezar explained.

Then, suddenly, Alza saw Helius and Jahar walking up to an image of herself in her mind.

"It is just us, you can come along while we find where you cat decided to hide for the moment," Helius told her.

"Masters, I can just lead you to her instead, though I have to warn you, she is very pissed at the moment, something about halting the processes of nature and other rude things she said about you all."

They found her cat in a jungle setting, but her cat was somewhat occupied fighting with a ghostly image of herself. She managed to tackle it and make it submit, before turning to her visitors.

"Alza, what do you want from me, I gave you control for now, leave me alone so I can stop the heat cycle from coming, that is enough of a problem without you bitching at me adding to it."

"I see what you mean by her being pissed Alza, but are you telling me you should be in heat now?" Jahar said, stunned.

"Yes, and what you saw me battling was Mother Nature, and I won for the moment. As you already know, I am Kali. I don't want to have to split my focus right now, and while I probably should apologize for being a complete bitch right now, I think I have good reason, since I am newly formed, haven't even had a chance to run and be free, and I am fighting to delay the greatest urge of them all to give Alza and the society we live in the time to realize I am here to stay.

Oh, and while I am at it, you were right thinking I am not a low-ranking cat; I could probably give you a run for your money once I had some training. You will have a week, by the way, before I can't fight it any longer. Were I a weaker cat, she would have jumped you when she woke up from the surgery, by the way."

"Okay, Kali, I can understand why you are acting like this, and I think your battle is enough of a punishment for your rudeness. It is also obvious there will be no disturbing you for integration training. We only have a week? And do we really need all those toys?" Jahar asked.

"Yes, Master," she said with a sneer and a contemptuous flick of her tail, "we only have a week to get Alza here ready for the fuck session of her life, the most intense feelings ever, and to lock her up away from every other male in the den-site, possibly even the next den-site. The toys are for when all of you are exhausted and limp, because that is the side effect of me fighting to give you a week. Our first heat will last 12-14 days at full strength."

The brothers looked at each other, with the mirrored expression of "Oh fuck" on their faces.

"Thank you Kali for the warning, but can you do us one last favor and show us your mark before we leave you to it?" Helius asked, waiting to see if she would swipe his head off.

She drew the equivalent of the yin-yang symbol, the differences being that instead of black and white, it was blood red and turquoise blue, with the symbol for life written in turquoise in the spot where the white dot would be and the symbol for death in red where the black dot would be.

"Halzan indeed brother, she could be on the same level as us with enough training," Helius whispered in awe.

With that, they left Kali to her battle and to tell their brothers that Alza was beginning to show a pattern of always keeping them on their toes.

@@@ "So, what did she say, is she going to be a good cat?" Lezar asked impatiently.

"Brother, we got a MAJOR problem, and to answer your question, yes, she will be a good cat, but she is occupied at the moment," Jahar said.

"It can't be that bad, so what is it?" Gobin asked, perplexed.

"It can be, and then some. Her cat, whose name is Kali by the way, is fighting Mother Nature to give us a week before her heat cycle comes with a vengeance. Kali said it is going to last 12-14 days, at full strength, with a scent perimeter of the entire den-site, maybe even going as far as Moonblade or SunSwallow. Oh, and her symbol is the eternal balance, which means she is a halzan at the very least." Helius informed them.

After a few moments of stunned silence, the brothers started cussing in their own creative ways, half of which were physically impossible or highly improbable. The gods were cursed, but luckily they chose not to smite them for such vulgar use of their names.

"Apparently the tsarzan does have a problem to deal with, even if it is not an ama-sarzan anomaly. No, he has to deal with an ama-halzan who will occupy his best defenders for two weeks, and who could cause a war by going into heat," Lezar lamented.

"At least it isn't a war on two fronts; Kali only mentioned the possibility of affecting another den-site. Do you remember when sarzan Sistenza went into heat for the first time?" Kalba replied

"How could I forget, we had to warn Moonblade and SunSwallow 4 days in advance, yet we still had to fight off half their warriors when she started giving off scent in the middle of the night," commented Ilan.

"Masters, what is going on, why do you all look like you are preparing for D-day?"

"If you are making a reference to an epic battle again, then that is exactly what we are preparing for. We need to get you cleared to return home quickly and get your tattoo done. We need to tell the tsarzan about what is going on and have him figure out how to speed up the proclamation ceremony, and get our shield room reinforced or use the tsarzan's level 9 containment room. At least we have a week, but that is still cutting it close. Is that all or is there something more we should know?" Lezar said, thinking.

"Kali mentioned that she is going to wear us all out and still be in full cycle, so we better bring toys to keep her occupied," Jahar commented dryly

"Dear Zorcon, as if we didn't have enough problems, we are going to have a nymphomaniac for 2 straight weeks! I am sure we will have to get toys so she doesn't fuck our dicks off," Gobin muttered.

"Alza, your cat has just told us that if she wasn't battling to give us the time to prepare, you would have been begging for us to fill you once-twice an hour, every hour, since you got out of surgery. That is what your cat is telling us is going to happen for not the usual one, but two weeks! Luckily, every a couple of days you will sleep for a few hours, but you will be humping something the entire time.

You will attract every male within your scent perimeter, and they will try to get to you to mate with you. Only with a scent-proof reinforcement chamber can we guarantee that we will have some peace, because we will have to leave to get food, and then others will get a whiff of your scent.

We will have to go through your proclamation ceremony within the week, and it may cause your cat to lose the battle, which would get all of us attacked by every male in the den-site, maybe even the tsarzan. You will have almost everything being put on hold again, but at least this time we can blame the tsarzan for part of the problem," Gobin explained.

"And here is the good Doctor to the rescue," exclaimed Helius.

"I heard quite a ruckus, and when I figured out it was coming from in here, I went to get the tsarzan, which is becoming quite the routine I might add."

"And we shall wait till he gets here to explain the potential cluster-fuck we have now," Lezar replied.

@@@ When the tsarzan arrived, the brothers told him and the Royal Physician what they knew. She was cleared for light activity, but any strenuous activities were to be saved for her heat cycle. It seemed that much would need to get done in that week, but the proclamation ceremony would be held in 2 days, the tsarzan's shield room would be prepared and the freezer would be fully-stocked to last 16 days, (to get everyone in the day before and to give the cycle an extra day), and the tsarzan would change the guardian rotation so that the brothers' shift was next month.

Ilan and Alza would pick out the "necessities" from his collection in the back room, and Ara would be watched by the neighbors. But, other than doing some training and getting their business affairs in order, the tsarzan would take care of everything.

For that day, Alza would get the agreed upon punishment, but she would have to learn to read quickly because the next day she was to learn some focus training with her healer's kit. So, after she got her calzan tattoo on her shoulder, she had her symbol tattooed on her back in a cat paw along side her Masters' tattoos.

When they got home, Alza was left in Gobin's hands for her book reading, while the others got their shops ready to be closed for two weeks and checked on the items they ordered. Alza was asked if she knew how to read hieroglyphs.

Apparently, the main alphabet and symbol language of Felanids was middle kingdom hieroglyphs and some Norse runes. Since she had seen hieroglyphs and runes before, but never learned to read them, she was given a codex with the basic symbols to learn.

"Master Gobin, may I ask a few questions before I dive into learning these symbols?"

"If it will help you concentrate better, then yes you may."

"Why does our species use hieroglyphs? I thought those were part of an Earth language, and there have been a lot of strange parallels to Earth, why is that?"

"Damn, you had to ask the questions that will take a while to explain, didn't you? Ok, the short version is, when the monotheistic religions started kicking out the old religions, the gods got tired of it and decided that since they made Earth, they could make a couple of new planets, with a creature of their choosing being the human counterpart.

So, the Egyptian gods who were part of the original pantheons became our gods, and we made new names for them. Many of the gods combined for strength, as some didn't have a strong following on Earth which made it hard for them to leave. The longer a god or goddess was worshiped, and the more worshipers they had, the stronger they were.

The ones that chose cats as their chosen creature made us as their human counterpart. A different set of gods chose dogs, and another chose bears, but all three sets of gods made this planet, so they all have their chosen ones here. Other planets have birds, reptiles, monkeys, fish, and all the other scientific families.

Because some people on Earth still believe in the old gods, we occasionally get bits of Earth knowledge, just as Earth occasionally gets bits of our knowledge, but we evolved differently as a society and people, and the gods are not as heavy-handed as they were on Earth, so we worship them, and as most of our chosen gods want nothing more than the balance of order and chaos, we worship them through upholding the side of order. The Canids and Ursids have one god that they share that makes them our mortal enemy, your Earth god Set."

"Why do I have Cyrillic and Arabic in my tattoos as well as hieroglyphs Master Gobin?"

"Those are the languages of the Canids and Ursids, so our neighboring trouble-makers would know who they stole you from."

"Master Gobin, where do the Norse runes come in, and how do you know about chakra healing?"

"Odin replaced his Valkyries with our royal caste of walzan, tsarzan, and sarzan, hence why they seem to have the wisdom of the ages sometimes. While the gods were deciding how to divide and make the new planets, some of the gods exchanged ideas. The Buddha noticed they were leaving and advised them to talk to the Hindu gods before they left about their sacred texts. The chakras were one of the ideas they took with them."

"Master Gobin, wasn't the jaguar a powerful symbol of some very war-like cultures? Did those gods leave as well?"

"Thank Zathera, no; the winged jaguar and those blood-crazed gods were left back on Earth. They weren't strong enough on their own, even combined, to leave, and none of the other war gods wanted anything to do with them. Zathera is the goddess of healing and the mind. Now enough questions, start reading these books on working with healing stones," Gobin told her.

And so, with the codex as a guide, she was able to read the basics of how to focus the mind into a meditative state so that a piece of the person's will could be focused upon a stone. The easiest to influence was the focantes, because without a person to focus it, it had no purpose.

Since her first self-working would be to confirm she was pregnant and the sex of the cubs after her heat cycle, she was told that it would be easier if she worked with her focantes and her fegentes if she wanted to apply anything she was reading, as those would be the most important stones for her to use on herself. So, when she had read the basic idea of what to do, she asked Gobin if she could practice with her focantes. So, Gobin brought in her healer's kit.

"If you can tell me which one is your focantes, you can work with it. You can work with your fegentes later, not today."

"Yes Master Gobin."

She picked up the clear flat rock that was glowing a milky white. As she had picked the right one, Gobin sat nearby with his own reading while she practiced focusing her will upon the focantes.

"For right now Alza, don't think about any one chakra; that makes it really difficult; just try to get it to change color. In its simplest use, it can tell the mood of a person and give you the corresponding color."

While she had read about that, she had wanted to try to focus it to give her a picture of her cat, but Gobin's idea seemed like a better start. As she was calm right now, according to what she had been reading the focantes should turn a sky blue if she focused correctly. A few minutes later, with a good deep breaths, she opened her eyes to feel a slight warm radiating form the stone, and it was glowing a light blue.

"Very good Alza, now come over to me, I will feel a different emotion, and you have to tell me what you find. If you get it right, when everyone gets back, we will try the full gambit of emotions with them."

"Yes Master Gobin, this is kinda fun."

It turned out, that it took her longer to focus her will to read someone else, as for the first few tries, she still had the same color blue, and Gobin assured her that the reading he was giving was a different color.

Within 20 minutes, she had successfully got it to change to a pulsating red, which when she looked meant anger if it was pulsing faster and frustrated if it was slower. Sexual frustration had streaks of pink shooting through it, but she saw none of those.

"You are giving off frustration, right Master Gobin?"

"Correct, now go read on the magentes and fegentes then you will be done with your punishment."

"Yes Master Gobin."

@@@ After dinner that night, in which everyone was eating their greens, though the brothers grimaced at having to eat vegetables; they decided to do some training to pass the time.

Because they all knew that next week they would be getting all the sex they could want and more, they instead taught Alza various different protocols and their meanings, and explained more about the proclamation ceremony; the various formal words and what she needed to say.

Once she had been training about how to act in various situations for a week or two, a protocol tester would give her various scenarios that she would have to tell him the correct answers for, as well as act some of them out.

Basically it was like getting your driver's license, but in this case she was getting the status of being trained, i.e. she could be trusted to behave. Then she would have the freedom to shop for herself, treat her own patients, and speak in public on her own behalf, as well as leave the den-site.