DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN ANY OF THE CHARACTERS FROM The Secret Saturdays (If I did I would be named Jay Stephens but I'm not)HOWEVER I DO OWN THE OTHER CHARACTERS.
Children are born everyday, every minute, children are born. And many days ago, years ago, a certain child was born. In a land that was of sweltering heat and humidity, lively in every minute and action, there was a small clinic in the thick jungles of this land. This clinic was little more than a shack of bamboo that scaled a couple of stories with about four rooms on each floor the two rooms divided by a hallway with one or two chairs outside each room's door. The clinic offered no shelter from the heat and humidity, but one person didn't mind it.
That person was a little girl, about six years of age, her skin was lightly tanned, covered in filth and gleamed of sweat. Her hair was blond and often confused with being white, tied up in a small ponytail and sweat cooled bangs hung before her forehead. Her face was that of an intelligent child. She was kicking her feet to entertain herself.
Her name is Drew.
Drew was only sitting in the hot, humid hall because of her mother. Her mother was pregnant, Drew didn't know what that meant when she first heard it but she found a book and learned the meaning. Her mother was having another child. Maybe a baby sister or a baby brother, she didn't know but her mother seemed sure that the baby would be a boy. Now her mother was waiting in a hospital bed waiting for her water to break or something like that, Drew wasn't entirely sure. And, as Drew waited, thinking of the birth of babies and what her baby sibling would look like she failed to notice footsteps coming closer.
The footsteps belonged to a man. A big man with unkempt red hair and stubble on a square jaw, an air of confidence exuded from him asserted by his face which brimmed with enthusiasm that everyone seem to get after meeting him, despite the fact that he was filthy and covered in sweat. This man was Drew's father. He looked down at his daughter who was swinging her feet over the chair's edge, her head obviously lost in her thoughts. The man knelt down on one knee to put himself on the same level as his daughter.
"Drew?" his daughter looked up in response to her name, her face lit up as soon as she saw that her name came from her father. "Drew, why are you sitting out here? You should be in there with Mom." Drew struggled some to find the right words but her father's voice made the words melt in her mouth as he spoke again. "She needs us to be with her to help her through your sibling's birth. Do you understand, kiddo?"
Drew simply nodded. Her father stood up to his full height and opened the door. Drew followed in and saw her mother. Like her she had blond hair that was confused with being white and lightly tanned skin, but it wasn't filthy, just sweaty. Her hair was straight and the ends rested just bellow her collar. She wore an expression that seemed bored and with everything being written in the native script except for two magazines, she had reason to be. As the father and daughter pair entered the room her expression lit up.
"Hey, honey," Drew's father greeted with a wave of his hand
"Bonjour, yourself," she answered with a faux French accent, "and thank you for coming into my room with the warmest of welcomes." Her tone was light and joking. Drew had taken that time to climb onto the side of the bed.
"Oh, hey Drew, and how are you," her voice became softer and she started stroking her daughter's hair.
" I'm good. I was sitting outside."
"Oh were you?" she paused and gestured toward her husband and whispered loud enough for him to hear, "He didn't make you sit there until he came did he?"
Drew shook her head as her father spoke up, "Hey, don't make me sound like a bad guy. You know I'm not like that."
"And I love you for that, darling," She paused and collected her thoughts as Drew jumped from the bed's edge to look at a bird perched on a branch outside the window.
"Anything new at the site?" she asked as Drew opened the window.
"Well we've made some headway, but nothing concrete to prove what were aiming for," Drew had reached out as her father reported the days findings at the campsite, she had managed to rest her shins on the window seal to get closer to the bird.
"Drew, honey, please don't do that," Drew's mother called, "So the finds are looking like they were in India, Egypt and Mexico? If so, then we should follow up on other leads, maybe destinations like Iraq or Afghanistan. Those locations are closer to another site I'd like to study, but-" "No," Drew's father interrupted, "I think we should stay where we are now, at least until our benefactor decides otherwise and then go and assist the others at that site." He had moved over to the side of his wife's bed and established eye contact. He was sure that the site they were working at had something to offer, something that could prove that their theories weren't dreams of over enthusiastic youth.
"And have Drew and the baby grow up in an environment that could potentially kill them?" Drew's mother probed, "At least the hospitals in Afghanistan aren't two islands over. I'm not going to take that chance, so stop going at this and-" a high pitched scream filled the room, Drew's parents snapped their heads around to the window and watched a small booted foot fall out of the window's view. Drew's father leaped out to the window seal and threw his arm out grabbing a small, socked ankle. Drew dangled from her ankle, swinging from side to side as her father let out a grunt of pain. She felt her father pull her up slowly and when her tiny form filled the window her father took her and cradled her in his arms before setting her down on the floor.
Drew felt dizzy as the blood that collected in her head returned to its normal flow. Her mother had sat up straight and turned in the bed, one leg dangling her foot resting on the floor while her father had kneeled down, his hands on his daughter's shoulders.
"Drew, are you okay?" Her father asked, she nodded then her father looked over his shoulder at his wife, "What about you and the baby, did that cause anything to happen at all?"
"No, nothing happened, just a wave of terror," she said assuaging her husband's fears. He turned his attention back at his daughter, "What were you thinking?" Drew didn't respond.
"You could've hurt yourself or worse," he continued his tone was panicked and hard, at that Drew's eyes began to water up. Seeing this he turned to his wife who had walked over to her family, she crouched down and took her daughter in her arms. Drew was beginning to sob as her mother spoke gently.
"Ssh, my darling, your father didn't mean to make you cry. He was just scared for your safety, that's all. Don't cry." As she said this Drew's crying began to subside and her father wrapped his arms around his daughter.
" I'm sorry, Drew, I'm very sorry." His wife could tell that he was being sincere and she held her family close. Drew felt warm in her parents embrace, and she could feel her mother's stomach with the baby inside. She loved that moment. However she also felt her warm tears running down her face and a sting in her nose as snot ran out her nostrils. Drew had stopped and was wiping her face off with her arm as she snorted back some of the snot that had began to run. The moment seemed to last for hours and none of the three wanted it to stop.
However, everything has to end. Three sharp knocks came from the door and Drew's father got up to see whom it was. As he approached the door his wife stood up and returned to her bed taking Drew's hand in her own and pulled the little girl on to the edge of the bed. As Drew's father opened the door Drew turned her head and saw three men outside. They didn't come in and Drew could tell that her parents didn't want those three to be anywhere near here.
Drew's mother spoke up, her tone serious and cautious, "Who is it, dear?" She already knew who was at the door.
"Uh, just some men from the dig site, honey," he lied, Drew could tell, she knew everyone who worked at the site. What she didn't know was why. Why would her father lie?
"I'm going to discuss the findings they uncovered," he paused, "Outside, alright?" He pushed the men out of the door way and into the hallway. Drew looked at the door that her father had slammed in a hurry, then to her mother. Drew saw deep concern in her mother's eyes. Her mother looked at her daughter and put on a false smile as she stroked her hair.
Drew's father was normally a lighthearted fellow, joking, making people feel good. His strength in both body and spirit inspired people to work as best they could, knowing that they wouldn't be seen as failures in his eyes if a days work didn't produce results, just men who had a bad stroke of luck that day. This spirit was often enough to keep his research going and what allowed him to journey to lands on just the slightest bit of evidence that something of value would be there.
In front of these three men that spirit was gone, replaced with uncertainty, fear and just a bit of anger. The three men were part of Bilog, the leading crime organization in this country; all three were dressed in black trench coats, leather gloves, heavy boots, and fedoras. Two of the men were giants, muscles straining the seams of their clothes and wore their fedoras low hiding their eyes; the one who had knocked at the door was shorter, wore small sunglasses, his face was very pale for a man of this country, his nose seemed to have been broken at some point in the past and not healed properly. He wore a sneer as he pointed his gun at Drew's father.
"So, how goes the dig, sir?" the short man asked. Drew's father didn't say anything; he didn't even make eye contact with the short man.
"The silent treatment, eh? Well no matter we know that you haven't made any progress of late, so sad," the short man continued, his accent was that of a man who had learned English outside the country, studied the tongue for several years, in England. He had a small revolver that was carefully aimed at his targets stomach.
"My men haven't made any progress because you've been picking them off. You've had your own country men, who agreed to work with us, run away with myths and rumors that some monster will be uncovered if they work any further." Drew's father had made eye contact and stepped closer to the short man. The two would've kept up this staring contest if one of the big men didn't produce a knife at the scientist's throat causing him to step back.
"Thank you, Mr. Kutsilyo, the good doctor was violating my personal space," the short man said to the man with the knife as he waved him down.
"Now where was I? Oh, yes, that's what I was going to say next. We have been doing this for the world's good, not just ourselves. If you do not cease this scientific dig before the next new moon, then we will force you out."
Drew's father gritted his teeth doing a quick calculation. His eyes widened at his conclusion.
"The next new moon is tomorrow!" His heart rate was rising as the next few thoughts ran his head. "You expect me to clean up the excavation site, pay the few men who're still working on the dig, and get my daughter and pregnant wife out of this country by tomorrow night?!" The short man said nothing, but the two large men behind him stirred. The short man raised his hand, a signal not to do anything, and the two men settled down, muttering something.
"Please, doctor, don't raise your voice. Mr. Kutsilyo and Mr. Kamandag get so thirsty for dugo, for blood, when people who should follow orders speak out of term. Now, we have already dealt with your men, and cleaning up your dig site. As for your pregnant wife, well, Mr. Kutsilyo could get rid of that problem." The man, Mr. Kutsilyo, raised his knife and let its metal reflect Drew's fathers face. His face was filled with anger, anger that couldn't be unleashed and it was poisoning him.
"What did you do to my men?" He said through gritted teeth.
"Well, what we did with the remaining foreigners was we simply threatened most of them out. We had to kill a couple of them to get our point across, of course, and the ones of our land were simply escorted back to their homes, threatened to never go back or die. Quite simple, if I do say so myself." The little man chuckled some as he turned towards the stairs. His two goons soon followed, Mr. Kutsilyo left last, his knife held out as if offering his services one last time and when the red haired man didn't agree he took his leave.
Drew's father leaned against the door to his wife's room. His work here was forced to a halt, work that his wife didn't want to continue, he should've listened but what could he do? He had one day to get his family out of this country or they may die. No, not may, would. He looked up and thought. He got so caught up in his thoughts of what to do, that when the door to his wife's room opened just a bit, he fell back and struck his head on the floor. Hard.
Drew had opened the door to see if her father was still out there, and to her surprise when she had opened the door her father fell back into the room. She looked at her father's face, his face was expressionless, his eyes filled with surprise and looking up at his daughter in bewilderment. He didn't expect the door to open and when his head struck the floor he didn't know what to do.
Drew's mother looked over the end of her bed. With the two women in his life looking at him he now knew what he had to do. He stood up flashed a smile filled with all the enthusiasm in the world. His wife knew that something had gotten into him and let him run out of the room, his voice boomed that he'd be back. Drew looked at her mother and saw reassurance that his father was doing something for the best.
Drew's father had absolutely no idea if it was a good idea to go to the site with the sun setting and the thick jungle hiding a number of threats, but that's what he was doing as he left the clinic's doors. He trudged over to his black, mud stained jeep and started up in an instant before he had even settled into his seat or closed the door. The vehicle roared to life and a plume of black smoke erupted from the exhaust pipes, with a combination of pedal pressing and gear shifting on the redhead's part the vehicle lurched forward and speed down a dried dirt path away from the clinic and toward the site. Nighttime through the jungle from the clinic wasn't exactly dangerous, but more like reckless as there were several dips and large numbers of nocturnal animals passed over the roads creating several road hazards, but the man was confident that he could drive there whilst the sunlight was still enough to navigate a dirt road.
He was lucky as he managed to steer his way to the site with minimal amounts of hazards and swift driving. Now he stood outside of his jeep a small pouch and flashlight in hand. Any other day for the last two months the dig site had been lit and worked as much as they could without all his decision to call it a night. But those two months had passed and Bilog had done what they had said they would, there wasn't a soul around except for him and the wildlife that lived in the forest around the site. He carefully made his way over to the main structure of the clearing.
The structure was that of a temple, weathered and worn over the centuries since being abandoned, moss growing up sides and vines draped through the broken corners of the temple. The temple was once the sacred land of monks who worshipped Malaki Hayop, some ancient beast spirit, some time ago. They worshipped Malaki Hayop because they believed that it controlled all beasts, especially beasts of great power or those of myth. The red-haired man didn't put much faith in that sort of thing, but there was evidence of some lost artifacts of other cultures that worshipped a similar entity had some how moved over this country. If he could prove this, then he would prove that some culture had somehow managed to influence humanity at one of its most crucial points of development, more than Christianity or the Chinese or Romans or anything recorded in human history. But the temple was not what he was investigating; it was something that was to the North of the temple, the men had found it sometime earlier that day, while he was still there and before Bilog came and cleared everything out.
The man checked the fading light of the sun and worked his way to his right as the light was behind him. Minutes later he found it, a small stairwell of eroded stone wrapped in various vegetation that thrived in low light. Natural light was now next to non-existent and he needed to use his flashlight. The bright sudden light illuminated the stairwell, causing the man to blink until his eyes adjusted. As he walked in he noted that it was thick with weeds, vines and moss, small metal rings barely held onto the stonewalls for the sake of anyone using a torch. The air was deathly cold now, and the man could feel the moisture that hung in the air. One step at a time he moved down the ancient passage, he didn't know what was down along the way, and no one did.
Soon down the passage his light illuminated a room, it was more spacious than the path he had just taken and in the middle there was a statue of a beast that he had never seen before and, to him, it was beyond description. After some time studying the statue, the man with red hair removed his flashlight to observe the details of the walls that were all covered with glyphs of fantastic beasts, beasts that defied modern science. There were werewolf like glyphs, frogs that had horns, a human like figure with cat like details, serpents with wings, absurd hogs, a large beast with fins and a horn and many more that he couldn't even conceive. Similar images had appeared at sites that his colleagues worked and in other locales that had been excavated for various other reasons. Many symbols were identical to those he had seen in textbooks and in museums and at sites that he and his wife had worked. With all this evidence, there could be no denying that these fantastic animals had once existed or maybe still did. But there were details that bothered him, such as why there was a statue of only one fantastic beast and only paintings of others. He wished he had his camera or just a Polaroid to document these findings.
As he walked around the room he began to hear something, he closed his eyes and listened. The sound grew louder, more pronounced until the red haired scientist recognized the sound. Footsteps. Three sets. He listened harder as he clicked his flashlight off, someone was talking and it sounded like the voice was criticizing whoever was with him. The scientist recognized the voice as the man who had threatened him to get out of the country. The scientist ran a series of scenarios of what would happen if that short man found him here and none of them were good.
Desperately he searched for a place to hide. There was none. None except the statue of the beast. He moved over to the carving, careful to keep any sound he may make to a minimum. Next was climbing it, something that was potentially dangerous, but less dangerous than that little man and his goons. The footsteps became louder and light began to creep out from the hall that led to where the statue resided. The scientist moved further up the statue until he was atop the carved creature's head, luckily he did so before the three came in.
All three bore torches, and they were the same men who had been at the clinic; Mr. Kamandag and Mr. Kutsilyo along with their short leader. None said a word as they moved over to the statue, and just as they were at the base they bowed. The scientist didn't know what to say if he could without dying. Then the small man began to mutter something, it was unlike anything spoken in this country but the scientist recognized it. Barely. The tongue was Sumerian, but that made no sense, Sumerian was a nearly extinct language in speech and barely understood in word. And when Sumerian was used, it was used a third of the world away.
So why? The red-haired scientist asked. The chanting became louder as he thought of plausible reasons. This culture that we were studying here were monks who worshiped some great beast. He thought. This chamber holds a statue of a great beast that is unidentified by science. The chamber is covered in symbols of fantastic beasts, also unidentified by science. And those three are speaking Sumerian, so what does that tell me? Come on man, THINK! What do these things- any of them- have in common? Well, Sumerian script tells of a great beast, like the monks here also worshipped, and this chamber has a great beast statue that------ He finally pieced it together. Those weren't fantastic beasts painted on the walls. They were cryptids, fantastic beasts not yet proven to exist by any scientific means. DAMN!! How could I have not realized this, this statue is of that cryptid foretold in the Sumeric texts, the one that would grant who ever controlled it great power, life eternal; Kur.
Hey everyone, hope you enjoyed the first part of a hopefully long term story. Well, let's clear up some details shall we.
First, yes this story is about Doyle, the badass character, uncle of Zak Saturday, long-lost brother of Drew, former apprentice to Van Rook. Yeah this is my story about his history from birth to the time he joined up with the Saturdays and all the little adventures that happened after he left. So yes this is about Doyle... later on.
This story is going to cover more than just Doyle, though, its going to hit on events in the Saturday universe. You will see Doyle as his mercenary self but you'll also see him more as a character. Unfortunately this is going to require a metric ton of OCs but well burn that bridge when we come to it. Of course the series allows my story to be very liberal right now, so I just might get away with it
Secondly, yes, I did leave the name of Doyle's mom and dad out. I don't plan on screwing the actual show's continuity, so until they reveal the names of Doyle and Drew's parents they will remain without names until they are released or revealed. That or if the series ends before the names are released I will use names of my choosing.
You don't know how much of a mess you make until you have to clean it up.
