Chapter I - Family Relics


<Islas de Sombres; off the southern coast of Hoenn Island...>

A tall, dark mountain peak stabbed upward into the overcast sky. The sun, which hovered nearby, was just a blurred spot behind a film of clouds. The mountain peak broadly announced its presence with all of the cold savagery that nature could give to a single mound of dirt, stone, and tropical wildlife. It was flanked by two slightly shorter peaks, and together, with some thick jungle wrapped around their bases and up their sides, they formed an ominous-looking island of three spikes. It was surrounded by other, equally dark islands. The cluster was perpetually concealed in a thin, omnipresent mantle of fog.

Below, in the churning sea, a large motorboat bounced over the waves in the three-spiked island’s direction. It carried two empty containers, emergency equipment, one loaded hunting rifle, and two men.

The dark island they were headed for was part of a scattered cluster of uninhabited pieces of land called the Islas de Sombres. They were located just south of a larger (and moderately industrialized) island chain called Kaibutsan. Very few in the Kaibutsan were eager to explore their southern waters, partly because there was nothing to discover there, but mostly because there was nothing there worth dying to discover. It retained a hefty history of deaths in the Kaibutsan, and had a none-too-sunny reputation.

Far back, another boat sailed after them. It was being guided by the first boat’s two children, a teenage girl and her younger brother.

* * *

Salty green water arced up out of the sea and splashed on Kiyo Sandrich’s back. He turned his head halfway around, putting his face into the wind, to look grumpily back at the island they were approaching. Then he turned back to his sister with his hands crossed. “I doubt Dad would like us following him over there.”

Neesha just grinned at him mischievously.

“He might not like it if we’ve left the house just to follow him.”

His sister leaned back on the sail to catch the wind. “Staying out of his affairs is the only thing he’s told us to do since he narrowed the likelihood of Blackhook’s privateer cache down to that island.” She motioned with her head toward the triple-spiked piece of land. “It’s not like we can trespass. He sure doesn’t own it.”

“Well, it’s dangerous, that should be reason enough. ... And he suggested there might be something there that used to belong to our ancestors. Shouldn’t we just let him find it?”

“And Captain Blackbeard’s ghost lives in a fucking ukelele,” she huffed, exerting her weight against the waves and wind.

“There’s a difference between Blackbeard and Blackhook,” Kiyo continued, gripping his seat as the sailboat tipped. “Captain Blackhook was real, and Dad really thinks that he stored some of his lost plunder over there. All that stuff he stole in the sixteenth century is famous. ... Well, infamous.”

“I don’t think he’s gonna find anything,” Neesha said. “But if he comes across any clues that point to any sort of treasure actually existing, at least we’ll be there. Besides, I just happened to feel like sailing today.” It had been her idea to follow their dad and his assistant to Spire Island. Kiyo knew she was a compulsive fan of adventure stories, so he should’ve guessed henceforth that following someone to the possibility of buried treasure was too extravagant an idea for Neesha. She wouldn’t resist adding herself to the scene. And naturally, she’d brought her somber little brother along on her spontaneous caper.

“Whoa! That was close.” She leaned into the wind and chuckled as two jagged, sinister rocks went flying by, narrowly missing the hull of their sailboat. Fog had marred their visibility less than a minute ago. The constant mixing of warm and cold currents against each other kept the entire Islas de Sombres swathed in a blanket of mist.

Well, thought Kiyo, at least the ride out to the island’s fun.

“You like the idea of finding some good ol’ fashioned missing treasure, too, right?” his sister, indifferent to the close encounter with the rocks, asked him.

“Of course I do. I just don’t think it’s very likely. And if it is, why would he just take one person? He has plenty of colleagues and friends at the university whom I know for a fact have wanted to do this sort of thing with him for years.”

“Take a look at that,” Neesha said, motioning for him to turn around to see the inlet. Spire Island finally rose above them. They were sliding through its crooked boundaries, between two pincer-shaped tips of land that opened into a lagoon.

But once they had drifted inside the lagoon, all sounds of the ocean were hushed. Kiyo remained sitting, looking over his shoulder. The two-man expedition’s outboard was moored to a cluster of jagged rocks across the pool, sitting very still, as if it were dead. There was a hollow opening in the trees that provided a strange-looking entrance.

He sat back down. “They must’ve gone into the island.”

“Good,” she responded cheerfully, belying the creepy atmosphere, “they may never even know we followed! Okay, we’re just gonna slide right up onto the bank and tie off there. Here it comes. Get ...”

The boat suddenly jolted from an underwater impact. Kiyo’s momentum, however light, flung him backwards and off the edge. He splashed in and came up sputtering.

Neesha peered down at him. “Oops. Forgot to pull up the daggerboard. Hehe, sorry.” She only pretended to be guilty, and her brother knew this from experience.

She hauled the fin-shaped board (which now bore a dent from the hidden rock) up from its slot in the middle of the boat, then jumped in up to her waist. A soaked and somewhat crabbier Kiyo grabbed the handle on its bow and pulled it up to shore. Once its nose was firmly settled in the sand and he was shaking his hair and shirt out to get them dry, he turned for a look around the waterfront ...

... and his blood froze.

Just beyond the lagoon’s thin white beach—a shade of white that reminded him of dead fish—the space in the foliage he’d seen earlier loomed open like a cave. The dark vegetation that formed it towered over the skinny waterfront as if ready to fall on it and drag it inside. It was shaped, he thought, like a tidal wave frozen in time.

This was the only clear passage into the jungle. The foliage around the island was so dense that it darkened the whole interior, making visibility equal to holding one’s eyes open underwater in dim sunlight. He could still see some depth into the woods, though: large dead-looking tree trunks and enormous, jutting rocks were visible, but it all seemed hollow and creepy. It occurred to him that it was more silent in there than out here in the lagoon. Almost as if everything inside was too frightened to move or make a sound, and there was something living in there that would emerge from the dark and kill anything that made a noise.

No way they could’ve gone in there, he thought. But there were footprints leading inside to prove him wrong. He finished tying the boat off.

* * *

John Sandrich and Diego Ricardo, his local assistant, cut away the last of a thick curtain of vines, and stared at the stone artifact that had been previously concealed by the jungle. It was a blocky monolith with facial features both human and pokemon, depicted so as to arouse intimidation. It couldn’t be anything other than a tribal sentry.

They stepped around the stone monolith and continued to force their way through the endless thicket of fronds and vines that pervaded the island. The existence of a sentry meant that there was something beyond it, probably a tomb or ceremonial grounds.

“These islands are so small, senor,” Diego said. “How could a civilization live here with nobody knowing? They had to be very good at hiding.”

“Yes, they had to be. Nobody even knows which islands these Azteps have inhabited, what artifacts they’ve left behind, or even their population density.” Sandrich slipped on a patch of slimy moss, but regained his balance and kept chopping. “That’s why everyone thinks they were too small to be a civilization.”

Diego slashed at some dangling vines that Sandrich had missed. “You seem to know much about the Azteps.”

Sandrich grunted with the effort of cutting away the foliage. “I’ve spent the last week researching them. Based on my resources, folklore and common knowledge of the locals in your district, I probably only know a little bit more than ...”

He left his sentence off there, as they emerged from the jungle to the edge of a wide, shallow streambed. The bed was about fifteen feet across, and it flowed from a smelly bog off to their right. However, there were still plenty of overhanging rocks, trees, and other plants surrounding them on all sides to block out every trace of sunlight. But what took the two mens’ interest was the stone wall across the stream. Moss was swathed over its sides, and it was overgrown with vegetation, small flora, and more of those omnipresent vines. But the two of them could make out some of the ancient carvings in it. They were similar in decoration to the monolith they’d left behind.

Sandrich was elated at this discovery. Only in weekend serials did people find hidden ruins this quickly. He started across the streambed with excitement and awe, but his foot suddenly jerked out from under him, and he fell back with a clumsy splash.

“You slip again?” Diego chuckled.

“No...” Sandrich grunted. “The rock ... moved.”

The object that was previously known to be a rock scuttled away from Sandrich’s boot on thick, yellowish crustacean legs. It had a smooth, brown, trilobite-shaped shell that covered its entire body. Diego stepped up next to Sandrich, lifting the rifle from his shoulder and leveling it at the moving rock. It scuttled toward the cover of the shadows in a wide cleft under the wall.

But before it reached those shadows, it stopped and turned around. The two men were faced with a set of large, round, red eyes underneath its shell that glowed like road reflectors.

“Es el Kabuto,” Diego said wryly. “No harm.”

Just after he said it, a second pair of burning red eyes lit up from across the creek. Then another, up in the canopy, opened its own glowing eyes and leered at them. Various more shadowy spots in the tree-and-rock-made cavern revealed themselves to be Kabuto hiding places. The carnivorous pokemon began waking up and squirming out into view toward the intruders.

“Just a Kabuto?” said Sandrich, rising from the water. “They’re supposed to be close to extinction.”

Just then, the one Sandrich had slipped on began to glow with a faint luminescence; a luminescence that spread across the pokemon’s shell and grew brighter until it was glowing white. The other creatures were following suit.

“Mas dinero for the discovery, eh?” said Diego, apparently ignorant of what was happening now.

Sandrich felt a prickle on the back of his neck. He knew what was happening: these Kabuto were evolving. This only happened when a pokemon felt threatened, aggressive, or strong enough to transform into its next, and more capable, physiological state. He also knew what Kabuto evolved into: a strong, agile pokemon with long, razor-sharp sickles for hands. Sickles that were used for gouging into prey.

The jungle was now illuminated by evolving carnivores. Sandrich slowly reached a sweaty hand out to his assistant and spoke calmly but tensely. “Diego ... give me the gun.”

* * *

Kiyo was surprised at how thin the island’s innards were. He’d expected the darkness and the silence, but the trees, rocks, and plants were actually spaced out. He’d thought it would be much more dense in here. It left him feeling vulnerable.

The floor was dry and hard, and dead-looking vines hung from black, twisted tree branches. There even seemed to be giant cobwebs draped about between plants and in the crooks of trees.

By now, Kiyo was afraid to turn back. The atmosphere of Spire Island was sinking fear into his stomach like an icicle. If he turned around, he felt, something would see him running and attack. It would run faster than him and probably just tear him down, and he’d be too terrified to yell for help. But the feeling of just getting the heck out of there was becoming irresistible.

Just as he was feeling ready to bolt, he saw a slightly wet patch of dirt at the bottom of an incline. It was a series of footprints, tracking up the incline and over to the other side. That’s where the others had gone.

Kiyo felt extremely relieved as he sped up, hoping the others weren’t too far ahead. But as he was calming himself with this thought, something flew out of the darkness at him and hit him in the chest. He was knocked backward, landing hard at the bottom of the slope.

Then, that something started tugging at his shirt. Kiyo looked up to see what it was: a wide, panicked set of eyes on a worried face, with a small purple body. She had his shirt collar clenched in her mouth, and she was hovering in the air above him

It was a ghost pokemon. A Misdreavus. She had a big head with wild, flowing hair, a tiny body that resembled a baby-sized nightgown, and a halo of small pearl-like orbs floating around her neck. Ghost pokemon were known to hang out in dark, isolated territories (just as fire pokemon lived mostly in warm, dry areas and grass pokemon lived in damp, green environments).

Some more of Kiyo’s fear seeped out of him as he pushed the little creature away. “What’s wrong with you? Get off.” Her teeth scraped along his collar until she ran out of fabric to clutch onto, and let go. She hovered for another second or two, staring at him, then took hold again and started pulling much harder.

Kiyo stood up, trying to keep his balance against her persistence. “What? Get the heck away from me!” he demanded, but the ghost kept tugging.

He finally pulled away from her and marched up the incline, his frustration and confusion overcoming his fear of the bleak jungle. The small pokemon whimpered behind him, as if pleading. He ignored her. Wild pokemon who were isolated from humans weren’t supposed to act this way.

A booming gunshot lanced abruptly through the dark and through the trees, frightening Kiyo to a halt.

He listened for a few seconds until he felt the Misdreavus drift up behind him. She felt calmer, but more insistent. The human stepped cautiously forward, and the pokemon grabbed him again by the collar. Kiyo yanked against her more gently, and didn’t make any vocalizations of resistance this time.

The sound of two more gunshots, these ones louder and much closer, blasted through the ferns and scared Kiyo into further stillness. His breath felt constricted. Then came a scream. A scream that sounded like his father’s field assistant, Diego. When the scream was violently choked off, it echoed into silence, and Kiyo stepped forward and yelled.

“Dad! Diego!”

Nothing.

Then he heard thrashing. First it was a distant thrashing among the plants on the jungle floor, then the foliage several dozen paces away in the dark, then the fronds right across the clearing from him accompanied by bestial hisses, and then the jungle on either side of him was thrashing.

Something was converging on him.

He ran. Back over the incline, back through the foggy forest setting. Adrenaline and terror carried his feet all the way down the twisting path to the beach. Neesha wasn’t there, but the little ghost pokemon was already chewing away at the rope that bound his dad’s outboard boat to the rocks.

Dad!

Despite overwhelming panic, he turned to look back into the jungle where he was apparently leaving everybody. A set of red, predatory eyes took this chance to lurch at him from the dark. In a split second, the Misdreavus had abandoned the mooring rope and launched herself at the unknown creature, knocking it back into the shadows. Kiyo didn’t waste time with the boat; he jumped into the water.

* * *

This incident took place five months ago. Kiyo swam for several minutes before Neesha, in almost as much of a panic as her brother, had driven by in the outboard, picking him up and piloting the two of them back to safety. Kiyo never specified to his sister what he had experienced on the island, and she never needed to ask.

Following some delay, a group of experienced Pokemon Trainers and behaviorists made a quick, impromptu search of the island. There were no bodies. No evidence of an attack. There was nothing.

But they were careful not to go in too deep.

A short while afterward, Mrs. Sandrich moved their remaining family to a house in the distant suburbs of Falcon City, Metropolan Island.