Nephew of the Forgotten One, Chapter 18
Nephew of the Forgotten One, Chapter 18


Tracy
In my hand, the Crystal-shard glowed. Then the Gi-Mook began to glow. And then the black sphere that trapped us on the second floor glowed red.
What's happening? I wondered.
The Gi-Mook changed back into their human forms: the condiment vendor, the black-suited man, the burger vendor, the baker, and a military looking guy.
They seemed unconscious, so the kid and I put them where they were before they became the Gi-Mook. We put the condiments wagon back up.
The sphere disappeared, and we were once more back in the real world.
The kid went around, picking up his cards. "See you later, Tracy. I have to be getting home now." He jumped onto the escalator and rode down.
I looked at one of the cards, and tried to dust it off a bit. The charring wore off. "Il Dupo." I pulled out another and dusted it off, taking the charring with it. "Il Magus."
...was it? Could it be?
"Tracy!" Picky cried, running down the escalator. "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine," I said, slipping the cards into my pocket with the others.
"What happened in there?" he asked, clearly concerned.
"Giogas' lackey attacked me and a kid, trying to get the Crystal-shard of fire."
"Dusty?"
"He didn't try to get the Crystal-shard. He isn't Giogas' lackey, I tell you."
"Calm down! I believe you," he said. "But who was this kid you're talking about? You went to meet Dusty and got attacked by Giogas' lackey, who you said Dusty isn't. And some other kid was there; and you've said he wasn't the lackey. So who is he?"
Uh oh.
I leaned over to his ear. "That wasn't Dusty who met me. It was Giogas' lackey, disguised as Dusty."
"Disguised?" he asked.
"He's disguised himself as Dusty before. He was the one who attacked BJ."
We walked towards the escalator.
"I really don't like playing devil's advocate," he added, "but Giogas could have two lackeys: Dusty and this one kid who likes pretending to be Dusty."
"I'm telling you," I said in the highest whisper I could, "Dusty isn't evil. He isn't."
"OK!" he cried. "I believe you. But it's not good to believe one thing and not consider the other."
"I'll grant you that," I replied. "I guess."
We rode down and walked out, ignoring the spread of reporters up and in. Pushing away their requests for interviews and questions.
"Tracy!" BJ called out as we emerged into the city. "Are you okay?"
"Yes," I replied.
"What happened?" a girl with BJ and Paula asked.
"Tracy, Picky," BJ said, "this is my old friend Julia."
Friend?
"Hello, Tracy, Picky," Julia said. "BJ, are you going to tell them?"
"Tell them what?" Picky wondered.
"First let them tell us what happened to them, Julia," BJ murmured.
I took a deep breath. It would be up to me to tell them. "BJ, as you know, Dusty contacted me to meet him in the Fourside Department Store to talk. When I got there, the Dusty who contacted me wasn't the real Dusty. He was Giogas' flunky."
Julia opened her mouth to speak, but a shaken head from BJ silenced her.
"There was another kid there, one who revealed the false Dusty. The fake Dusty trapped us in the black ball you might have heard of, and changed everyone else on the floor into strange creatures called Gi-Mook.
"We, the kid and I, were able to defeat the Gi-Mook and healed them. And that's how I got to where I am now."
"I couldn't help," Picky admitted. "I was on another floor, unable to get down."
"OK, Julia," BJ said. "Go ahead, tell them."
"I jog every day," Julia explained. "Today, I was doing a short jog near the Department Store, and I saw Dusty heading into the Department store. I'm sure it was only a short time after you entered, Tracy, but I'm not sure... At that time, one of my shoelaces had come undone, so I bent down and retied it. When I stood back up, I saw another crossing the road to the Department store."
"Couldn't it have been the same one?" Picky asked. On a glance from me, he quickly added, "Just playing devil's advocate."
"You'd better have been," I muttered.
"No, it had to have been another Dusty. He was crossing the road, and I was down only for a few seconds; too few seconds for him to have come back out, run across, and then cross again. But I digress. Then he dodged behind one of the pillars, and when he dodged back out, he was dressed differently." She began to describe what the second Dusty had looked like. I stood in silence. "BJ, do you know Dusty's home address?"


BJ
We walked to Dusty's house.
I felt like I was a pawn in a chessgame. And I knew I was.
A pawn. We were all pawns. And I wasn't sure whether Dusty was a white or black pawn. But I knew his fake wasn't on our side.
But that led to another question: what was our colour? And did that mean we were on the side of good? Or were we on the side of evil?
Julia stopped. She waited for us to catch up to her.
"Go ahead, Julia," Paula said. "Just wait for us outside Dusty's house. We'll catch up there."
"I'd rather wait for you," she replied. "Anyway, it's good for my training regimen if I run in place."
That didn't seem right, somehow. It was like she was afraid of Dusty. ...and yet, no matter how wrong I thought it was, I could only understand why she would think like that.
I looked at the shred of paper I had scribbled Dusty's address on. "Two more blocks. Then maybe we'll get answers to our questions."
"That's odd," Julia noted. "I've run this street hundreds of times, but I've never seen these signs before."
"What signs?" Tracy asked.
"Those ones." Julia pointed. Paula gasped.
"Crazed Signs," she finally managed.
The signs turned toward us. They smiled. "Smiling signs?" I wondered.
They began to move towards us.
"Be careful, Julia!" I cried, running towards the signs. They turned more towards me, narrowing their 'eyes'. I pulled out the Darkness Crystal-shard and dodged to the right. A half-blue, half-orange cross beam shot out from the Signs' bodies, dissipating a short distance after where I was when they'd narrowed their eyes.
Their eyes returned to their normal size.
"PSI Thunder Beta!" Tracy cried. I saw the thunder fall from the sky and strike one, no, two of the four Signs.
I leapt into the air and punched the Crystal-shard towards a third sign. The Shard glowed black temporarily, then shot off an intense black beam.
Whoa! I thought. What was that?
The beam bent and unbent itself as it dove towards the Sign. Finally, after about ten seconds, it impacted the sign. The sign convulsed and collapsed, falling apart as it went.
"Was that BJ's Crystal-shard?" Picky demanded, flabbergasted.
I landed behind the Crazed Signs. Picky pulled his Crystal-shard out and looked at it.
I punched my Crystal-shard again, using the Darkness beam -- which I suppose was what the fake Dusty had been trying to get out of it -- to destroy another Crazed Sign.
"PSI Freeze Omega!" Paula yelled, sending another large glacier or iceberg towards one of the remaining Signs, completely destroying it, too.
The last Sign visibly shuddered.
Picky punched his Crystal-shard, but nothing happened.
"Why isn't it working?" he asked no one.
"PSI Thunder Beta!" Tracy cried. However, this PSI strike hit only once; the other was an abortive strike.
The Sign shuddered again, obviously relaying it was near destruction. Someone came running towards it.
Julia?
The Sign narrowed its eyes. Julia ran faster, leapt, and knocked it down, scrapping it.
"Julia!" I stammered. "Are you okay?"
She looked up at me. The naïveté, the gentleness, everything I'd loved about her then, it had all returned back. She looked like a child again.
"I'm all right," she said, in no way fazed. "Let's just keep going."
Picky, Tracy and Paula caught up with us. And we walked the remaining block to Dusty's house.
I walked up to the door, and it opened. "Good day," Dusty said.
"Dusty!" Julia cried.
"...Julia?" Dusty asked, non-believing.
"You always said your address was unlisted!"
He walked out of the house, closing the door.
"Sssh!" he hissed. "My mom is sleeping. I don't want to wake her, so let's walk while we talk."
We walked.
"Why don't you want to wake your mother?" Paula asked.
"She goes to bed at 10:00 each night and wakes at 6:00. But occasionally she gets really tired and has to sleep. But when she sleeps like this, it's not the strict eight hour rule she has set for herself. She wakes up whenever there's sufficient noise."
"Where are your tarot cards?" Tracy inquired.
"I've lost a few of my cards," Dusty answered.
"Which ones?" she pressed.
"You think I take the time to inventory my cards?" he asked back, feigning shock.
I pulled out the card I had. I saw the charring on it break apart, revealing an illustration.
"Il Torre," Tracy read. "And it looks like a tower with fire bursting out of its upper windows."
"Is this one of yours?" I asked, shoving 'Il Torre' in Dusty's face.
"Let me check," he said, pulling his deck out. "Empress, Lovers, Chariot, Strength, Hermit, Wheel of Fortune, Justice, Hangedman, Death, Temperance, Devil, Star, Moon, Sun, Judgment, World. It may be mine. I'm also missing the Fool, the Emperor, the Magician and the Hierophant."
Tracy looked at the cards she'd picked up. "Il Dupo, Il Magus, and two charred cards."
"Those are my Fool and Emperor." He shuffled through his deck, clucking his tongue every so often. "I'm also missing my Knight of Cups."
"Wait," I said, grasping his hand. "Shuffle a bit more."
"Why?"
"I think I just saw something."
"Oh, fine." He shuffled.
"Stop." I plucked a charred card out of his deck. "What's this?"
Dusty smiled. "I guess I could have only kept my charade for a little while. How many of my cards do you have?"
"I only have four," Tracy replied.
"I've got one," Julia said, handing it to him.
"And here's mine," I murmured, tossing Il Torre to him.
"You were the kid who helped me in the Department Store, Dusty?" Tracy wondered.
"Yeah, that was me. I managed to see him, masquerading as me, go into the Department Store. So I ran across, divined the Knight of Cups, and followed him in. I didn't want to go in as myself, because that wouldn't have been a very wise thing for me to have done."
"These must be the Shining Pattern and Hercules Gloves cards, then," Tracy said, pointing out two of the four last charred cards.
"Right."
The wind began to blow ominously.
"Not him again..." Dusty muttered.
"Who again?" Julia asked.
"The fake Dusty who's been causing all this trouble. Attacking BJ a few nights ago, attacking Tracy and I, and probably going after BJ again for his Crystal-shard."
"You thought I was defeated?" Giogas' flunky asked with a slight laugh. "I'm persistent, unlike the other servants of the invaders. I keep going."
"Isn't that the Duracell slogan?" Julia mused.
"I'm pretty sure it's Energizer," Tracy murmured.
"It doesn't matter whose slogan it is," the flunky muttered in a loud voice. "I do keep going."
"So, what are you going to do, flunky?" Picky shot. "We've defeated all your plots before."
He chanted for few minutes. I suddenly felt cold.
"This is a new one," he said, disappearing, laughing.
"Look!" Paula pointed. "We're being trapped in a fog."
"Not just any fog, Polestar!" the flunky said, still fading away. "A fog of liquid nitrogen."
"Liquid nitrogen?" Tracy asked.
"Something they use in hospitals to remove some moles and other growths. It's a liquid form of nitrogen, and is very cold."
"You mean..." Tracy continued.
"Yes," Julia confirmed. "We could freeze to death."