Nephew of the Forgotten One, Chapter 16

Nephew of the Forgotten One, Chapter 16

Tracy
I stepped into Fourside's department store. It was gigantic, immense; it was one of the tallest buildings in Fourside. Dusty's note said he wanted to meet me here.
Picky had been worried. He tried to convince me not to go, but I had to. I owed it to Dusty as I had to prove he didn't serve Giogas. Although Picky finally did relent, he insisted on going there ahead of me. To make sure I stayed out of trouble.
He was on the second floor. Dusty and I would be meeting on the first floor, in the food court.
I sat myself down at a table, and waited. The Fire Crystal-shard lay in my shorts pocket.
Then Dusty came up the escalator.
"Hello again," he said, walking over to the table where I was sitting. Right after him came another kid, one I didn't recognise. Dusty turned around.
He raised an eyebrow at the new kid, who just shrugged his shoulders as he walked over to the burger stand. Dusty sat down.
"What'd you want to talk to me about?" I asked, my heart starting to pound.
"Nothing much. Let's eat, first." He went over to the bakery stand and came back with fruit juice and sandwiches.
I bit into my Skip sandwich. The bread was really, really thick. But the prune jelly smothered lavishly on the bread counteracted that somewhat.
Dusty looked at me over the tip of his can of fruit juice, as if looking me over or something.
"What?" I asked, suddenly worried. He wasn't acting the way he had been acting at the Euphronic Tarocchi Society. There, he had been cool; nothing seemed to phase him.
But here... he was different. His face was harsher now. It seemed to have lost the kindness it had then.
"Oh, nothing," he replied. He quietly went back to sipping his fruit juice. But his gaze remained fixed on something. "Have you heard about the sudden spike in kidnappings and strange UFO sightings, Tracy?" he asked in a low voice.
"Kidnappings? UFO sightings?" I shot back, completely unaware of what he was getting at.
"You know, five kids, about six years older than us, disappeared some time yesterday."
"Five?" I echoed. Lomond, Jeff, Paula and Ness... That's four. Who would the fifth be?
"Ness Lee and Lomond Fyne from Onett; Paula Polestar from Twoson; Jeff Andonuts from Winters; and Prince Poo from Dalaam. They disappeared, and have not yet been found."
The kid who had come up behind Dusty appeared behind him again. He brought two fingers to his mouth as if telling me to be quiet. I took his advice, but something puzzled me. I didn't recognise him; but he looked so familiar.
"Tracy?" Dusty asked. He turned around. The boy was gone.
"Oh. Sorry, Dusty. I was just thinking about what you said."
"Do you have any information about those disappearances?" he pressed. "I'd like to help find them. After all, they saved the world -- except Lomond -- a few years ago."
"I'd love to help you find them, Dusty," I said with the utmost honesty. I felt like I was in a drama where failure meant death.
"Good. Then you can give me the Fire Crystal-shard. And stop trying to save the world, because Giogas isn't going to be defeated." My heart stopped beating.
I tried to force the words out of my mouth, but they continued to sink into my stomach.
"You... can't... mean... that..." I said, halfway to crying.
"Of course I can." His eyes narrowed again. "You!"
I felt a nudging at my shoulder. I looked up. There was that boy again. He had a plate in his hand, and he was aiming it so Dusty was reflected in it.
"You're not Dusty!" I exclaimed, pushing myself away from him.
'Dusty' stood up. "You're right. I'm not Dusty."
He flickered for a second, and shrank to about my size, with a robe on.
On the upper floor, I don't know if Picky noticed.
"Your friend's going to try to help you, Tracy, but it won't work," the false Dusty. He clapped his hands, and the floor was enveloped in a black globe. "And now, for the next act. Dramatis personae: you two, and a few Gi Mooks. Farewell! Not that you'll survive."
He disappeared, laughing as he went.
"Do you know what's talking about?" I asked the other boy.
"No, Tracy," he replied. "Or... maybe I do." He pointed.
I turned around.
The girl at the burger counter, the baker at the bakery stand, the condiments vendor, and the black-suited man who loitered around the condiments vendor were all walking towards us. And as they neared us, their skin began to tear. And they turned into yellow one-eyed monsters with arms like an octopus.
"This isn't good," I said, backing towards where the escalator down was with the mysterious boy beside me. Behind the monsters I was now sure were "Gi Mooks" -- as the false Dusty had called them -- a door I hadn't noticed before opened. And another Gi Mook appeared.
It was five on two.

BJ
[Author's note: Yes, I know he's been getting a lot of narration in recent chapters. Deal with it.]
Paula and I entered the Enrich Flavor Building. Picky and Tracy were in the Department store, a short walk away; Tony and 'Roots had called Sebastian to go searching for Ness, Lomond, Jeff and Poo; and Paula and I were going to talk to Enrich Flavor to see if he would help us in our mission.
I had put the Darkness Crystal-shard in my backpack before we left, hoping I would not have to use it at all.
"Tell me again how Enrich Flavor could help us," I said as Paula and I walked past the receptionist, who called me 'babyface'.
"He's the richest man in Eagleland, BJ. So he would be able to finance anything we need, right?"
I nodded. "True. But that relies on two things: one, that he actually wants to help us; and two, that he'll finance whatever we need. You saved the world a while ago without much financial aid, didn't you?"
"Perhaps you're right. But we should still try anyways." We walked to the elevator. The receptionist stared, almost comatose, at a TV installed in a corner of the roof near the wall the elevator was on. I looked at the TV.
"Hello, I'm Geldegarde Monotoli, for WFRS," the reporter on screen said, his signal weakened with snow. "I'm here at the ground floor of the local department store, where a strange happening has paralysed the store. The entire second floor has been blocked off from entry by any means by some strange black globe. No news has been given as to the state of those on the third and fourth floors; and we can only hope that those on the second floor have had nothing bad befall them.
"All possible manners of obtaining information have been disabled. The surveillance cameras have been forced off-line by some unknown force; but for some reason, defying all known logic, monitoring of the power grid has revealed that power is still being supplied to the floor."
I turned to Paula. She turned to me.
"Are you thinking that Dusty's behind this?" I asked.
"I'm thinking Giogas or his flunky is behind this. There's no proof it is Dusty, remember? And don't run off and try to save Tracy. She can take care of herself. I'll try to contact her."
She closed her eyes and brought her fingers to her temples. She focused for a few seconds, but reopened her eyes.
"I got Picky, but not Tracy. I asked him if he could contact Tracy, and he said he couldn't."
"Light can't make it through; darkness can't make it true," I chanted, trying to make sense of everything. "The only thing that is making it through seems to be electricity."
Paula closed her eyes and began her psychic communications again.
"Who are you trying to contact? You can't get through to Tracy."
She opened her eyes again. "I needed to ask Picky if there was an element associated with electricity you have to find. He said there was. Thunder."
"We have to get Ņrutas and Tony," I said. "It could be one of their elements. But which Energy Point is it?"
"I have no idea. But I'll contact Ņrutas now." She closed her eyes and brought her fingers to her temples again.
"I'm going to try and find some old names for the area Fourside was built on," I said to Paula as I ran out of the Enrich Flavor Building.

I opened a book on Fourside's history and began to read it. Its title: For Our Fourside, Through The Ages. I skipped a few chapters, jumping to the chapter on the name.

The Book
Since colonial times, the area around which Fourside was built has been given many different names.

The indigenous Ouga-ey people called the island med' kieva -- Butterfly's Polder. Upon arrival, the settlers from Winters were amazed to see that the indigenous people had the technological savvy to reclaim land from the sea.
Perhaps the fact that the Ouga-ey COULD reclaim land from the sea led to their eventual decimation by the Printon settlers who later displaced the Winters settlers. Printon itself was reclaimed, bit by bit, from the sea; and the people of Printon then were steadfastly jealous of any other culture with poldering capabilities.

The Winters settlers did not stay long, and as a result their name for the land Fourside was built on has been basically lost through the generations. However, we do know that the name resembled FIVAIIA.
The Printon settlers who replaced them gave it the name Papenpolder, a general translation of the original name. But when the royal family of Printon was forced to yield up all its colonial holdings, the holdings in Eagleland were rendered to the Summers Royal Family, who in turn passed it to the government in Winters. Having by that time established settlements named after the number of sides that were guarded by a moat: Oneside, Twoside, and Threeside, it seemed only logical that the name given to this settlement be called Fourside.
Oddly enough, of all the colonial settlements of Winters, Fourside is the only side settlement that has survived to this day; Oneside, Twoside and Threeside were all abandoned due to wars with Summers.

"Odd," I said quietly, closing the book. "Fivaiia?"
I put it back in the shelf I found it, and headed outside.

"BJ?" a voice I recognised said.
I turned around. "Julia?"
"It is you!" Julia cried, running up to me.
"You never forgot me?" I asked.
"Of course I never forgot you! You were my first crush; and I was your first. You don't forget things like that."
"It was second grade," I reminded her. "And your father kept getting transferred, you said."
Her eyes dropped. "Yeah..."
"Is there something you're not telling me, Julia?" I pressed.
"My father was fired from his job two years ago. We settled in Fourside. ...and I found someone who looks a lot like you."
"Dusty Takeuchi, right?" I wondered.
"How'd you know?"
"We've met. And I've been mistaken for him before." I didn't need to tell her just what Dusty stood for. Our relationship might have just been a crush. But their relationship was more than that.
"I have to tell you something, BJ. About Dusty. I don't even know if it's relevant to you, but..."
"Don't worry, Julia," I said reassuringly. "Just tell me. I'll believe you."
"OK." She took a deep breath, and began to explain. "I was jogging earlier today. I try to get some exercise each day, even when I'm out of school. Any way, I was running by the Topolla, in the direction of the Department Store when I saw Dusty go in. Then I realised my shoelace was untied, so I knelt down to tie it. When I stood back up..."
She quieted herself, then suddenly screamed.
"The Darkness Crystal-shard, now, Nichols," Dusty demanded.