Chapter II - Captain Blackhook

<Five months later... >
<Metropolan Island; Falcon City; Hoenn Legacy Museum... >

Black exhaust from a taxicab dissipated behind the two characters ascending the steps of the Hoenn Legacy Museum as their cab’s engine rumbled and it pulled away. The streets of Falcon City, on the Kaibutsan’s largest and most heavily urbanized island, Metropolan, were black and slick from the rain previous. Though most if its buildings measured four to eight stories in height, the Hoenn Legacy Museum was a two-story. It was a mansion of unique architecture, built in Falcon City’s earliest years to manage firms and secure trade routes. When newer facilities became available, the base for such projects moved deeper into the city.

Noises from Falcon’s metropolitan environment breached the museum’s semi-lavish confines and echoed into the small lobby, stopping short of the building’s few other chambers. Said lobby was hexagonal in shape, with paneled walls and a polished marble floor. Exemplary artifacts were placed against each available side of the hexagon; masks and statues of the land’s native inhabitants. In the center of the room, a wooden alter supported the Hoenn Settlement Statement beneath a glass cover.

One of the museum’s large wooden doors was pushed noiselessly open, and the two men from the taxi that had just pulled away stepped inside. One of these men, in his early thirties, was tall, well-muscled, and dressed completely in black. A short beard covered most of his face, and he wore glasses.

The other visitor, Takahiro DeFrain, was ten years younger, just as tall, and much slimmer. Takahiro was the stranger of the two, looking as though he belonged in one of the museum’s display cases. Silky, earth-colored robes hung from his willowy shoulders in the same way his hair draped over them, and a featureless mahogany mask concealed his face. The mask’s elegant, undecorated wood vaguely mirrored the contours of his face, but was absent of eye holes.

Normally, the older man would take steps to make sure they were seen as little as possible; but this museum, isolated on the Kaibutsan island chain as it was, wasn’t occupied often.

Takahiro had timed their visit to meet the museum curator when she passed through the lobby. She came now, a buxom and formally dressed dark-skinned woman, her hair in small, gentle curls. The older man stepped forward and presented them verbally. “Excuse me, Miss ...”

She immediately changed course to greet him with an extended hand. “Melissa Jackson,” she said. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

Takahiro let his chaperone speak. “Montgomery,” he said in a North Alerican voice. “I believe this museum is the possessor of a written log, like a journal I think, that we’d like to research a little. Possibly in your Local Artifacts section. Could you show us where it is?”

“No problem, hon’,” she smiled. “Tell me about what you’re looking for, and I’ll lead you there.”

He smiled back. “Lead the way, please.”

Melissa Jackson strode toward Local Artifacts room. She noted curiously that, with his eyes concealed and his willowy hair falling over his ears, the robed man seemed to be having no trouble keeping in step with them. Half to make conversation and half know what they were looking for, she suggested, “So tell me about the item.”

“It’s actually a pair of journals,” said Montgomery. “The first one is about sixty or seventy years old, and the second one is ... about ... three hundred. In the 1890's, the archeologist Alexander Haggard exposed a finding that was regarded as a hoax. The stuff he wrote about was related to a supposedly fantasized incident that inspired the writing of the ancient journal he found, the one that gave him his clues. ... The one that’s three centuries old.”

“Oh, well that wouldn’t be in Local Artifacts,” she answered, turning. “It’s in our storeroom.”

Passing under the cavernous room in the center of the building, Takahiro’s head inclined to what was displayed in here, almost as if he could see it. It was what the Hoenn Legacy Museum was most well-known for: erected on three individual platforms for dramatic display was a trio of twenty-five-foot-tall skeletons. Each skeleton had come from the living flesh of the three largest species of pokemon ever to exist in the Kaibutsan.

On the left side of the far wall, there was a Feraligator, its jaws open wide and its gorilla-like arms ready to lunge forward; a Nidoking, the solid-bone plates on its back bristling with spikes, stood opposite; and in the very center of the room was an Arbok, indifferent to the ferocity of the two dinosaur-like predators, glaring carefully at something only its hollow eye sockets could see.

Takahiro was glad when they left this room. He didn’t like seeing such fantastic, once-living creatures on display.

The museum was small, so it wasn’t a long walk to an office in the rear of the building, around an information desk, and through the door in the back. Melissa, Montgomery, and Takahiro entered a concrete room (not much bigger than the office) lined with isles of steel drawers and cabinets. The room was entirely grey, lit by flourescent lights, and smelled of raw cement and musty papers. Melissa strode to the far side of the storage room and down an isle. She about-faced, pulling out two drawers adjacent to each other. One drawer contained a small leather research log. The other was a slotted filing cabinet holding a few dozen ancient-within-reason pages of papyrus sealed in individual plastic panels.

“The Captain Blackhook fable?” she said for confirmation.

“That’s it,” said Montgomery.

Behind him, the masked man appeared to be staring at the contents of the drawers, and even seemed capable of seeing them through his mask. Melissa glanced back down at the drawers.

“Haggard’s Log and Manuscript, 1896. Alexander’s journal was burnt in a fire,” she pointed out, for the journal’s cover was half-scorched, and most of its pages were black or disintegrated by the decades-gone combustion it had suffered. The encased parchments in the other drawer were crinkly brown sheets of ancient, corroded paper. They were worse off than the journal, some of them burnt down to just scraps. What writing was visible was heavy, unsteady scrawl in a dead Aztepian language.

Melissa continued, tapping the scorched pages encased within panels, “Like you said, these ones are three centuries old. They were, at least according to Professor Haggard, written by someone who watched Captain Blackhook slaughter the inhabitants of one of the Islas de Sombres. From what little’s readable, the Captain and his crew killed all the children and any women who were pregnant, then enslaved all the survivors. He used their architectural skills to renovate a temple or something that they had already built on their own island.

“Most of the people who’ve heard it think he used that temple as a place to hide the treasure he’d collected, which was so big that it took three of the four ships in his fleet to carry it. That part, the sum of his treasure at least, is more-or-less fact. But what’s unusual about the account, and partly what convinced people that Professor Haggard was just telling a story, is that ...”

“... There is no evidence of that tribe ever existing, or of people inhabiting any of the Islas de Sombres,” interrupted Takahiro, speaking finally in a low, smooth, Euroquean voice. “And no one’s ever explored it thoroughly enough to find ruins there.” Montgomery tried to conceal a piqued glare that he sent at the masked face.

Melissa, almost missing the elder man’s reaction, continued. “If there had been any tribes in the Islas de Sombres—and they only could have been there briefly—they would have been an offshoot of the Aztep civilization. During the Azteps’ migration for new land and search for new gods, they separated a lot and mixed with other tribes and civilizations, and made temporary homes in random locations. Plus the log Haggard recovered is written in Aztepian, so ... that’s a big giveaway right there.” She grinned.

Montgomery was nodding now, but Takahiro no longer seemed to be paying attention. Instead he was just staring (if he could stare) at the inside of his wooden guise. He was probably waiting for her to explain more, but there was a cryptic energy in the air that seemed to emanate from just behind that mask of his.

“I’ll take it from here,” Montgomery said finally. “Thank-you, Ms. Jackson.”

“Alright, then. I’ll be back in later,” Melissa said.

Once they were alone with the artifacts, Montgomery stalked over to the door to make sure the office outside was empty. He glanced back at Takahiro to make sure the kid was busy.

Takahiro was leaning over the drawers with interest. He had his back to his chaperone, and had pushed his mask up away from his face on top of his head. He didn’t have to see Haggard’s journal with his eyes in order to reconstruct images of the past, but he wanted to.

He reached in and removed Haggard’s leather-bound notebook. He opened the book, taking in its age and deterioration. And as he concentrated, releasing his body from physical feeling, his psychic-endowed mind carefully began weaving through time’s fabric, tracing the history of the journal. As he flipped through its pages, he began mentally reconstructing the paper and ink into images of the book more than sixty years ago and beyond (or was it “behind”?), all the way back to before pen had been put to its once-fresh paper.

Everything the book had been through swiftly etched itself out into his mind until he had compiled its entire history ... every scratch of Haggard’s pen, every dent to the cover, every disgusting sneeze onto the pages ... and had the whole thing memorized.

He retracted his hand and moved on to the three hundred-year-old pages of the Aztepian author’s firsthand account. As he ran his delicate fingers over their plastic cases and explored their past, something of interest occurred to him: if this deceased author’s sanity was to be trusted, Takahiro was just now discovering the truth behind the late Captain Blackhook’s influence over the natives he had enslaved (who really had existed and were indeed Azteps).

One overwhelming mystery solved with nothing more than the touch of a psychic.

If there were enough psychics around to do things like this, Takahiro thought, the world would have fewer mysteries with which to vex people.

Once finished with his own method of translating the logs, he slid his mask back down. The pair exited the storage room and silently left the Hoenn Legacy Museum with the information they’d come for. Now they had other places to be.

* * *

<Hoenn Island; Southwestern coast... >

The sky to the north was overcast with soft, shadowy grey clouds that withheld rain like giant sponges. Thunder resounded through them, and was echoed by the thudding clamor of hooves from a small herd of Ponyta and Rapidash (fire-horse pokemon) as they stampeded short distances over a meadow far below. Their bodies were a tanned, heated eggshell color. Thick, dark flames replaced the hair on their manes, tails, and their leg and ankle joints. The only difference between the two species was that the Rapidash were larger and more elegantly-formed, and had clearly-defined eye components, as opposed to the Ponytas’ shiny black ovals.

Zigzagging between the patient horses whenever they stopped was an earth-colored blur of brown and sand-yellow: a Sandslash. In the curled-up position being demonstrated here, claws sticking out from its flanks, a rolling Sandslash (a spike-backed mouse pokemon) could quickly reach speeds of forty miles-per-hour or faster. A few of the fire-horses stomped their hooves and snorted, but they weren’t overmuch disturbed by it.

The Sandrich residence was just in front of the meadow. Kiyo was standing in the beach house’s warmly garnished living room. He was dressed entirely in black except for a white overcoat. His hair was a thick mop of brick red, spiking out in the back like porcupine quills, and arching forward in the front. He held a telephone receiver to his ear, but the connection, as he soon found out, wasn’t going to come today.

He sighed and hung up when he heard his sister’s banged-up, rusted-down mode of transportation swinging around the corner of the house and pulling up front with a creak. It was a Volkswagen, or something like it. It shed more dust than exhaust, rattled its windows, and threatened to drop its bumper with the very next rock or pothole. She refused to buy a new car simply because her bug could still move forward and stop, which was all she deemed necessary. The fact that it violated almost half the BMV’s safety regulations was of no concern to her. Living dangerously, as usual.

She pulled her lithe, slender frame up through the window and yelled a greeting over the blaring Swing music at Kiyo. Behind her, Kiyo could see the green waterfront spill lazily downward and drop off in a sharp brink into gently lapping waves and the bright, sparkling blue ocean. Sunlight illuminated the scene behind her, but was ruined by the dark shapes of the Islas de Sombres sitting the distance.

Neesha had a telegenic appearance and a high, delicate voice. Her face was wide and slender, with a small, turned-up nose and bright eyes. Her mahogany hair fanned out in the back stylistically. Today she wore khaki pants, a sleeveless blue blouse, and a cowboy hat mottled black-and-white like a cow’s hide.

“What took you so long to get out here?” she asked when he came down from the porch.

“I was trying to contact Hermit Island,” Kiyo answered. He issued a sharp whistle toward the fire-horse herd, and waited as Armadillo (his Sandslash, who was still zooming among the herd like Sonic the Hedgehog) relinquished his playful antagonizing. The Sandslash swerved and barreled away from them.

“It’s big estate, so the operator wouldn’t let me through,” he explained, turning back to the car and folding his arms on the roof to stare across at her. “And what was it you said about not being able to train him this fast?”

“He just came because he saw me,” she said friskily. “Shaddup and get in.”

He stepped back. “There’s no door handle over here.”

“Oh, yeah! That door’s busted ...” Neesha swung herself back into the car and sharply kicked the passenger door open. “Okay, hop in!”

As Armadillo approached he, uncurled himself and landed on all fours in a scamper. He dug his mandible-like claws into the dirt to move faster, his opaque eyes gleaming with interest.

“Now I know why it’s falling apart.” Kiyo let Armadillo into the back seat, which was compromised by a truck tire and empty beer bottles, then climbed in himself. His Sandslash was greeted by Neesha with head-scratching and a kiss planted on his snout. Armadillo sneezed and licked her back excitedly.

Once all were in, Neesha released the brake and they were off with a skidding a U-turn, lurching back up the dirt-gravel road. Kiyo watched Armadillo curl up on the truck tire, then focused his gaze on the rear-view mirror where the Islas de Sombres were jittering around. Neesha finally reached the end of the service road, turned onto the dirt-and-gravel highway, and the islands swung out of sight.



To Be Continued in Chapter Three . . . “Welcome to the Safari Zone”