"In every man's heart there is a devil, but we do not know the man as bad until the devil is roused."
― James Oliver Curwood, Back to God's Country
"Come to the Dark Side. We have cookies."
― Unknown
"Omm nom nom nomm! Delicious."
― Cookie Monster, on cookies
No Time for a Hero
"Ba-loo? Yo, Baloo! Where are you?"
All the shouting had made Kit's throat sore, and his voice was becoming raspy. He had traipsed high and low through the island's wilderness, following riverbeds with his ankles deep in silt, climbing and descending crumbling rocky cliffs, and pushing paths through thickets to reach one clearing after the other. Even under the everlasting shade of giant tropical trees, the sun was merciless, baking the breezeless and damp air into a soggy purgatory.
All along, he called out for Baloo, as loud as he could. After the tenth time, twentieth time, fiftieth time, there was no response.
After an uphill march that seemed at one point to be endless and left his legs aching for a rest, he emerged from the trees, sweaty and miserable, upon the grassy edge of a deep but narrow ravine, a place where the island looked to have cracked from shore to shore like the sea had broken it over its knee. Birds by the many hundreds squawked and nested on the jagged cliffs. From there, he had a high vantage point over his surroundings, and that seemed hopeful at first; but he soon felt his heart sink with dread. The island was huge, and the view looked upon mostly a vast rolling green canopy of treetops. The bottom of the ravine was thick with green brush and smaller trees. Endless ocean filled out the far reaches of the horizon.
He formed a cone around his mouth with his hands, inhaled deeply and hollered Baloo's name several times, until his voice cracked. There was never a reply, only the birds squawking.
At that point, he considered just staying put and letting Baloo come to him, and take a load off his feet. He had an idea that Baloo was scouring the island trying to find him, and they were probably searching circles around each other. That was probably it... unless, something happened to him. Tired or not, that singular 'what if' kept Kit searching.
Shielding his eyes against the sun with his hand, he scanned the skies around him with a grave sneer. There were pirates on the island, too. Somewhere. They were neither seen or heard, nor were their crashed CT-37s, but they were definitely somewhere around, and it became so that he could hardly shake the thought that Baloo needed his help. The thought was growing more haunting by the minute; Baloo had lungs like a foghorn when he wanted to bellow something out, but he heard not a trace of any shout from him.
Kit followed the ravine's edge to an area where its cliffs narrowed and a tree trunk, limbs and roots hewn away, was lain as a makeshift bridge between the two sides. He stopped there for a moment and pondered his next move, whether to cross or not. Weariness growing, the only thing he finally decided was that he needed to sit down for just a moment, and did so on the end of the tree. Sitting there, fanning his face with his ballcap, staring down the length of the ravine where, over the thick mesh of foliage the cliffs opened to a beach and the sea, he finally, by complete accident, spotted a thin trail of smoke and colors striking in contrast to the earthy greens and sandy browns: orange and yellow. The Sea Duck. It was beached upon the shore and the mouth of the ravine.
"Ah, finally. Baloo! Hey, Baloo!" He jumped up and down and waved his arms, then fished out his airfoil and fanned it out to use it as a signal reflecting the sunlight. In all his sudden excitement, he never realized anyone approached him from behind, not until one big, meaty hand wrenched his airfoil away, and another wrenched him off his feet by his collar. "What the...!" Suddenly he was face-to-face with Dumptruck's foul smirk.
"Why hello derr," the pirate said. "Heh, lookey here what I found, Mad Dog."
"He made us wreck our planes!" Mad Dog's snively voice was full of loathing. "Let's find the boss first, then we'll let the brat have it!"
"Yeah!" agreed Dumptruck; the rotten sauerkraut stench of his breath made Kit's nose curl. He squirmed, but Dumptruck's grasp gave no slack.
"I didn't wreck your planes," the kid snarled. "You did. You two losers couldn't fly your way out of a paper―" He paused, gasping when he glanced at Mad Dog, and even in the sweltering air he shuddered like his blood had turned to ice. Mad Dog had a dagger in hand, with Baloo's red pilot cap impaled on the blade. Kit's eyes flashed with horror, and Mad Dog, realizing this, flaunted the dagger and hat near his face.
"D'aw, whatsa matter? Can't find your friend? Haaa haaa!" His laugh was a long taunting noise that was entirely devoid of mirth and blustering instead with cruelty. He meant for it to sting.
Meanwhile, words were caught Kit's throat, leaving him stammering. "Wha'...? Wh-where is he? What'd you do to him?"
"Wouldn't you like to know," sneered Mad Dog. "Wouldn't he, Dumptruck?"
"Yeah, wouldn't he like to know!" the burly pirate chuckled. But then he looked at is counterpart with a confused grimace. "Er… know what?"
"All the horrible things we did to that hot shot pilot!" laughed Mad Dog, sliding off Baloo's cap from his dagger and then plunging it through again with a new slice.
"Oh!" blinked Dumptruck. He shook with a belly-laugh of ho ho hos, but he was no Santa Claus, and the kid in his grip was no fireplace stocking waiting its turn to get hung on the mantle; more like a firecracker that he let the fuse burn too long before realizing there was going to be an explosion. Kit suddenly grabbed the big laughing mastiff by his jolly jowls and slammed a knee into his chin. Dumptruck reeled back, squirting blood from a broken lip. Freed, Kit's feet hit the ground and sprang at Mad Dog with cat-like speed, surprising the pirate, who stumbled and tripped backwards.
Kit was only after the hat; much as he would have liked to have clobbered Mad Dog for it, he would've gotten clobbered himself by these two if he tried. Baloo's cap had been dropped and tumbled to the edge of the ravine. Mad Dog snagged Kit by his ankle when he realized what he was after.
"Oh no you don't! It's mine now!" The pirate tripped Kit and smushed his face in the ground, while getting up and lunging for the hat. Then he threw it at Dumptruck like a flying disc. "Catch, dummy! Don't let'm have it!"
Still holding onto Kit's airfoil, Dumptruck caught the hat in his free hand, but absently so, as most of his meager concentration was focused on the smarting of his lip. "Der little brat gave me an owie," he lamented. Then, as if realizing the sight of his own blood on his fingertip, he snorted like a mad bull. When Kit darted towards him, the pirate crumbled the hat in a fist put the bulk of his strength into a broad, heavy swing, strong enough to knock back a charging rhinoceros. In a quick leap, Kit was suddenly on top of his shoulders, and while Dumptruck teetered, tottered, and bucked to get the kid loose of him, Kit held on fiercely to his ears like the horn of a rodeo saddle, and when the moment was right and the pirate dizzy enough, Kit made a jump and almost snatched the hat, but the pirate's grip was too strong and he landed on his feet empty-handed.
"You slimy mutts! Gimme that hat!"
Dumptruck tossed the cap back to Mad Dog, and Kit ran after it. Mad Dog pushed his face away while holding the cap up high above his head, laughing at the futility of the squirt's efforts. Heavy footsteps ran from behind, Dumptruck seething into a running charge; he went to bash Kit with is own airfoil, got dodged, and kneecapped Mad Dog instead.
While Mad Dog wailed and hopped around on one foot, Kit snatched the cap from the ground. The pirates, however, were quick to get him cornered at the edge of the ravine. His only option was a jump onto the log bridging the gap, which he took by stepping quickly one foot in front of the other like walking a tightrope. Light-footed as he was, the old log creaked and rolled unstably under his feet. He lost his balance and stumbled, wrapping his arms and legs around the log while the depths of the ravine stared him in the face. He wasn't scared of the height, but the thought of a sudden stop at the bottom gave him pause.
That's when he heard a rustling behind the pirates, Don Karnage muttering accented curses as he tumbled from the slope of a cliff-side, dirty and dusty. He had landed between Dumptruck and Mad Dog, got up dizzied and angry. His usually pristine appearance was noticeably ruffled, showing that his on-foot navigation of the island's terrain was not without its share of rough patches, including, it might appear, bramble patches. His coat was torn in a vertical rend on the left side, as was his trouser on the right knee, and his right hand nursed a sore spot on his lower left rib. Of the three pirates, his landing had been the least happiest. His head and shoulders were matted with a mixture of dirt and bits of greasy food and smeared sauces, adding dashes of odd color here and there, like with green onions and red peppers.
"Hey! Capt'n!" Mad Dog, eager to present their catch, went to help him up, but got snapped at like he had tried to pat a rattle snake on the head. Karnage pushed him away with force, seething and spitting dirt from his mouth. "When I get my hands on those ―" Surprised, Don Karnage paused when he saw 'the boy,' ― the primary cause of his present discomfort ― stuck helplessly in a dire predicament. A fish on a hook, a fly in a web, a bear on a log, it was all the same. A crooked smile bared his pointed wolfish teeth. It spoke a silent language that uttered one word: payback.
"Well, well, well," said the pirate captain, hands behind his back with a great show of nonchalance has he dawdled toward the foot of the log. "What a small world after all, no? It seems like I was just shooting you and your fat fool of a friend out of the sky, and look! Here you are!"
Pretending to ignore the pirate, Kit tried inching his way across, but even his slight movements seemed to aggravate his peril; the soft topsoil on both sides of the ravine began to crumble under the log, and his makeshift bridge was losing its foundation. Karnage put his foot on the end and gave it a push, making it roll a quarter-turn and moving it closer to slipping away entirely. He chuckled with savage glee at the way Kit had to squirm to quickly to stay balanced.
"You know, boy," said the wolf, snatching Kit's airfoil out of Dumptruck's hand, "Watching you dangle over a harrowing height brings back memories! Remember that one time? I even took your little toy and I believe I did something like... this."
Kit cringed at the sound of his airfoil being snapped apart over the pirate's knee. "Yeah, then I hit you on the head with the pieces. Lemme have 'em back and we'll really remember the good ol' days."
Dumptruck and Mad Dog had to dodge when Karnage threw the two pieces of the airfoil away to either side. His malicious smirk had twisted upside-down, but when he gave the log another push under his boot, watching Kit make unsteady and panicked adjustments amused him. He relished the sight of Kit momentarily losing grip of Baloo's cap and making a perilous swipe downward with his arm to snatch it before it fell, at the cost of him nearly falling off entirely. It wasn't often he got to see the boy scared. Once upon a time he liked that about him, before he became Baloo's backstabbing brat.
"What was that?" Karnage leaned forward and cupped his ear dramatically. "Speak up, boy, not even my own sensational ear-senses can hear you talk over all that sniveling." Suddenly he recoiled with an expression like his feelings had been hurt. "Oh! You don't think I would let you fall, do you?" His eyes, reddened and still sorely stinging from the very stunt Kit pulled earlier to bring him down on this island, narrowed wickedly. "That might... hurt."
"Where's Baloo?" Kit blurted back, mirroring Karnage's expression back at him.
"Baloo?" The name make Karnage grimace like it had left the taste of bile in his mouth. "That blob of a bear, how should I―oof!" Mad Dog suddenly elbowed his boss in the ribs, not exactly realizing how close he had just come to getting a impromptu tonsillectomy when Karnage tore his cutlass free from its sheath. Before Karnage got in an 'how dare you,' Mad Dog was making desperate sidelong glances at Kit. Then Karnage glanced at the hat Kit was holding onto so dearly.
"Oh! How should I... put this," said Karnage, making a show of trying to sound compassionate. "What happened to his pal?" Mad Dog and Dumptruck snickered and huddled close to his side, eager to hear and watch the impending fun the boss was about to have. Meanwhile, Kit tried to hastily measure his options, how fast he could bolt to the other side of the ravine versus how quickly Karnage could react and roll the log from the edge with his foot. The odds weren't good.
"Tsk, but boy, we were having such a nice little chit-chat in this lovely dumpster of dirt you so thoughtfully thought of making my planes crash into. And you want to spoil it by talking about all the gruesome, gory, details of what I did to..." He inhaled deeply, in mock reverence, holding the hilt of his cutlass over his heart. "... poor, poor Baloo-ser."
"Where...?" Kit swallowed. "Where is he?"
Karnage adjusted his posture so that he was leaning on his cutlass like one leans on a cane, buffing his clawed fingernails on the dirtied breast of his coat. "If you really want to find him, I am sure if you look around, you might find him here and there. Try the water! Did you know?" His grin was giddily evil. "Fat floats."
Kit shuddered, drops of sweat shook from his brow. He eyed Karnage, trying to discern the truth in his gestures and tone. Much as he thought he knew Karnage, but he just couldn't tell; the possibility, however, was jarring. "No. Y-you're lying."
"Am I?" said the wolf. "Want to bet?"
"Not even you would..." Kit fell momentarily speechless, the horrid possibilities rampant in his imagination, and his next words came out in a croak that fought back his emotion. "If you did anything to him, I swear I'll... I'll..."
Karnage interrupted him: "You will what?"
The three pirates shushed each other and waited eagerly for an answer, waited to burst with laughter.
A tear among sweat the pirates couldn't see, but Kit was miserably aware they could see his bottom lip trembling. He bit down on it, and lowered his head until his brow touched the bark of the log, then closed his eyes. "Baloo," he whispered, "please be okay."
"Sorry, boy, what will you do?" asked Karnage, again cupping his ear. "Speak up!"
Kit raised his head, zeroed in on his former pirate mentor; if eyes could be said to be like daggers, his were white hot and venom coated. His reply wasn't loud, only grave. "I'll make you sorry."
An uproar of laughter came from pirates at the lame-sounding threat. They laughed like they had not done so in all their lives and were just catching up.
"Ah, boy," sighed Karnage, through tears of mirth, "always good for a few chips and giggles. No?"
At that, Mad Dog, with an expression of confusion, muttered something into the captain's ear, something that began with 'Um, boss, I think you meant...', and the rest of it made Karnage flinch and shove his lackey away. "That is the highest level of disgustivity! No no, I like chips better. Now, where was I? Ah yes, I was about to tell a story! This one is called the Bear and the Big Fall."
"Ooh, one of my favorites!" squealed Dumptruck, hands clasped together.
Karnage cleared his throat. "Once upon a time, there was an itty bitty bite-sized bear trapped between two cliffs over a doozy of a drop. Could he run to the other side before his captivating captors pushed away his little bridge?" He planted his boot on top of the tree trunk, poised to give it one final, powerful shove, one that would send it rolling off the ledge. "Let's see how the story ends," he growled, baring his sharp teeth.
Kit gasped, and with no precautions jumped to his feet and bolted toward the opposite ledge. Before two strides he was tripped up by the rolling of the trunk, mere yards from safety. He gave it one desperate leap, and came up short. There was nothing left underneath him except thin air and an eventual sudden stop.
Don Karnage's voice echoed between the cliffs of the ravine and rang in his ears: "And he did not live happily ever after!"
When Kit came to, the rotors of the Iron Vulture roared in the air ―and his head― with unceasing clapping thunder. He opened his eyes, found himself lying on his back in a bed of fern, looking up at tree boughs and a strip of shining blue sky between the ravine cliffs. He would never remember the only two things that came to his groggy mind right then, that he had lost Baloo's hat, and he had lost his own somewhere, too. The great iron airship passed low overhead, its eclipsing shadow turning the ravine dark, having winched the last crashed CT-37 through the bomb bay doors. Then it carried up and away, the sound of its thunder waning. When the sunlight touched Kit's eyes again, he jostled awake. Then he screamed.
He had only just tried to move, but intense pain from his left leg suddenly seized him. His sight went blurry with tears, and his hands instinctively reached for the wound, but they did not feel his leg, exactly; they felt what remained of it, to his horror, not only torn flesh, but the hard edge of bared, broken bone.
When he looked, his leg was sopping in warm blood, twisted into something of a wiggly line, bone protruding from his thigh. He screamed more. He cried out for help, cried out Baloo's name, and mostly just cried out. The only reply came in the echoes of his own agony.
He had to get to the Sea Duck; at length, that was the only cognizant thought among the pain that seized over his entire body and consumed his mind. He grasped at bunches of grass and pulled himself on the ground, going by his own intuition that he was moving the correct direction toward the shore. Every inch was a fight, forcing mind over agony, his left leg dragging as dead weight. He yelled, he forced himself, pushed himself, inch by inch, foot by foot, yard by painful yard, mustering resolve that he was going to make it. But his cries grew weaker, his crawl became slower, and the world before his eyes grew dimmer.
At last, emerging from the foliage where silty soil mixed with pebbly sand, he could see the Sea Duck bobbing in the surf. There was a moment of hope, a brief glimmer, where he cried out in what was only a shrill rasp: "Help! Papa Be―!" He gasped, short of breath. He realized that the plane's cockpit doors were open. The plane was empty. Left and right, so was the beach. Baloo wasn't there. No one was.
"Baloo?" His cheek fell upon the sand, further calls for help choked by his own sobs. The pain was unbearable, but the world was becoming dream-like. The heat of the blaring sun made the bright sand appear to shimmer with hot air, but he felt cold. Just cold. He closed his eyes, hearing the sound of the waves rolling over the shore overtaking his own whimpering. And then, at the pit of his despair, from out of nowhere he heard a stranger's voice.
"Hello? Oh! Oh my goodness." He heard the stranger huffing as if hurrying to his location, the rustling of foliage, and seconds later felt a hand on his shoulder. "It's okay, son. I'm a doctor. Sort of."
Kit stirred to face the stranger, yelping sharply, but his sight was too blurry, too dizzy; the sun was bright on his face and all he could make of him was a vague silhouette against the sky.
"Shh, easy now. Let me have a look at that leg." The stranger's voice was then muffled, as if putting his hand against his mouth to keep a gagging reflex in check. "Oh... oh, my."
"It hurts," wailed Kit weakly; it had taken all the strength than he could muster to say two words.
"I bet," huffed the stranger. "Er, I mean, just try to lay still. No no, head back. Don't try to look at it. It's going to be okay."
There was a whirring sound, mechanical beeps, and a female voice spoke. To Kit, she sounded like her voice was coming from a radio speaker, one with astounding clarity, but just a hint of electronic fidelity. "Is it wise to intervene?"
"We're way past that now, don't you think? Of course we're going to intervene."
"Doing so will directly alter his chronological ―"
"I know," the stranger asserted, "but he's just a kid. We have to help. Now give me an assessment."
There was more whirring noises, more beeping. The female voice announced, "Aside from the obvious compound fracture of his left femur, scans show severed tendon of the left knee, and three fractures of the left fibula. His body temperature and vitals indicate that he is in hypovolemic shock. He is losing consciousness ― he should already be unconscious. His current odds of survival are at eight per―"
"That's enough!" hissed the stranger, aside. Then, to Kit, he said, "It's going to be okay. Hey, listen to me. I'm going to get you help, okay? Okay. Ooookay. We'll just, uh... let me see... oh dear, we need to stop that bleeding."
"Yet we are without even basic first aid materials," said the female.
"We'll have to make do," said the stranger.
Kit heard ripping noises of fabric, clothes being torn by the seam. "No... hel... help Baloo," he managed to say. "He needs help. Please."
"Gaia, transmit an SOS on a long-range omni-frequency," said the stranger. "Simulate a ― heck, I don't know ― a pilot's voice on their radios, tell them there's a child in need of urgent care. Don't stop until you hear a response."
The female voice responded, "I've always wondered when my knowledge of early-twentieth century aviation jargon would be put to practical use. Contact! Pull chocks! Transmitting now. Stand by."
"Son? Listen to me, now. You need to hold still. We've got to put a compress on your leg. I'm sorry, but it's going to hurt."
"But Baloo... gotta find..."
"I'm also running a database check on the name Baloo," said the female voice. "The name shows several returns in periodicals from this decade, and a biography published posthumously. I surmise with ninety-eight percent likelihood that this child's name is Kit Cloudkicker, twelve years old. The airplane on the beach is the Sea Duck, from Cape Suzette."
"Update the SOS broadcast with their names," ordered the stranger. "There could be pilots out there who know them."
"Done," said the female voice.
The stranger grunted as he leaned over and reached for something on the ground, and there was a sound of wood being snapped apart. Kit felt the taste of bark pressed against his lip.
"Shh, listen. It's as rudimentary as it comes, but I want you to bite down on this stick. Bite down as hard as you can. It'll help take your mind off of ― well, it's going to help. Okay? Come on, there you go."
Kit complied, though uneasily, and clenched his teeth around the stick. The stranger's shadow left his sight, going somewhere near his feet; he squirmed and yelped when he felt something wrap around his sundered leg. He squirmed in pain, but the stranger coaxed him to stay still, stay still… Kit screamed when the wrapping around his leg was tightened, the pain intense as if his leg was being crushed. He bit through the stick and left it in splinters between his teeth.
"Easy! Easy!" said the stranger; through the maddening pain, Kit felt hands pin his arms to the ground. "It's okay, it's over! It's over. You're okay. You're doing fine." Kit repeated screams became faint with exhaustion, and he felt the stranger's fingers against his cheeks, wiping away the smear of tears and sand away from around his eyes. "You're a real trooper, son. You're going to be okay."
"A nearby aviator has responded to the SOS and is inbound to this location," announced the female voice. "ETA is fifteen minutes. You were correct, she reciprocated to the child's name, but is inquiring as to the identity of the voice issuing the distress call. How should I respond?"
"Pfft. Tell her we're stranded time travelers from the twenty-fifth century."
"Done."
"Done? Are you not programmed to detect sarcasm?"
"Yes, as well as being programmed to amuse myself with passive-aggressive responses. Additional information: an Uslandian naval convoy one hundred and twenty miles to the northwest has also just responded with an offer to assist. One of their vessels is fitted with medical facilities. I am coordinating with the inbound pilot to deliver the patient to them. If it comes together without delay, I calculate a significant increase to his chance of survival."
"Thank goodness," said the stranger. "Here that, son? Help's on the way. You'll get to a hospital soon."
"But Baloo, you gotta―" Kit's words faded into a long, pained groan. With a sharp gasp, he forced the words, "Find Baloo."
"There's... nobody else here," said the stranger, with hesitation. There was a bit more lingering in his tone than hesitation, like a touch of remorse. Or guilt. "I'm sorry."
"What are we going to do?" asked the female. "The pilot coming to assist will ask questions."
"I don't know. Hide? But this guy he's calling for, Baloo, he must have been the one. Tell me this kid didn't just get orphaned."
There were beeping and whirring noises. Kit tried to see them, but his overwhelming faintness and the sun in his eyes made it impossible. The world to him went dark, and he couldn't speak another word. But for a time, he could hear.
"Ancestry documents show no information for Kit Cloudkicker," said the female voice. "It's likely not his birth name. I've found Baloo, but there is no offspring mentioned, though peripheral data indicates the child is his ward. They were employed as pilot and navigator for Higher for Hire, a courier service running out of Cape Suzette. The child's name only shows in school records for one year, Cape Suzette Elementary, sixth grade. Ah, and there it is. I've found a document that confirms my earlier warning about directly altering the subject's chronological course."
"Oh?"
"It's a coroner's record for one Kit Cloudkicker. He died today."
Their day had begun innocuously enough, leaving in the morning to deliver a half ton of hankies to the good people of Schnozberg and their long-suffering plight against allergy season. On their way, they stopped at Pho Xi's Wokka Wokka Wok on the outskirts of Walla Walla Bing Bang to grab some eats for the road; or in their case, the sky.
"You gotta try it with the chopsticks," laughed Kit. He had one in each hand and was stabbing at carton of chow mein, and for his efforts was wearing more noodles than he was getting in his mouth. "Ha! Aw man, what a mess."
"I'll stick to good ol' spoons and forks, thanks," said Baloo, though for his own part he was using no utensils, just knocking back a carton of fried rice while steering the Sea Duck. "Besides, looks like way too much work if ya ask me. Whoa! An' here I thought ya were a lil' old to need a bib."
Kit made a face at him and began picking up the spilled morsels from his sweater bit by bit, eating them all with smacking lips. "Like you say, when in doubt, it's all finger food."
There were several more cartons spread on the cockpit floor between their seats. Kit glanced over the handwritten labels on each, picked one up and stabbed into it with the chopsticks, making unintended skewers. Each carton they opened proved to be its own little pleasant surprise, because when they ordered the food they really had no idea what they were in for; they just pointed at whatever made them smile on the menu, which was pretty much everything.
"Mmm, that's good! You wanna try a wonton?"
"Whatsa wonton?" Baloo asked.
"Itsa wonton you to eat it, that's what."
"Then who'm I to argue? Here, put 'er over home plate, ace."
Kit chucked the dumpling at Baloo's open mouth, and Baloo caught it like a trained dog catching a treat. "Mm-mm! Dee-licious."
"I'll say," said Kit, words muffled from full mouth. Then he traded that carton for another and scraped some of its contents into his mouth with a chopstick. "Wontons, moo goo gai pan, chow mein... you know, this is the only food I can think of that's as much fun to say as it is to eat. Ah! Ahh!" Eyes suddenly watery, he stopped chewing and began fanning his tongue with his hand. "Whoa! Watch out for the red peppers in this one, they're killers!"
Baloo laughed, and his right hand reached low for whatever his fingertips could fish from the take-out spread. He brought back up a small paper bag. "Lessee what's in here. Huh, a couple fortune cookies. Man, I haven't had one of these in ages." He tossed one to Kit. "All right, kiddo, you first. Let's hear."
"Ugh, gimme a minute. That was seriously hot." Kit wiped his nose on his sleeve, while sucking in cool air in his mouth. Then he bit an end off the fortune cookie and removed the small sliver of paper inside with his teeth. He read it out loud: "When one door closes, another door opens." He shrugged, unimpressed. "Bor-ring."
"Be nice if it said somethin' ya could use, like, 'Put down a fiver on Happy Hooves in the third.'"
"Well, let's see if Happy Hooves made your fortune."
"Comin' right up," said Baloo. He cracked his cookie open in his palm and sifted the pieces with thumb until he found the small print on the paper. "Says, 'Big winds come from empty caves.'" He blinked. "I don't get it."
"I do," snickered Kit. "You oughtta save it and show it to Miz Cunningham. She'll think it's funny."
Baloo shrugged and slipped the tiny piece of paper in his shirt pocket, then surveyed the cartons between him and Kit yet waiting to be opened. "All right, now what else we got―?"
He was interrupted by a voice suddenly speaking over a radio, one that was accented and instantly recognizable and made pilot and navigator cringe: 'Uh-oh! I spy with my pirate eye ― both of them, that is ― Baloo and his yellow sitting Sea Duck!'
"Aw, nuts," muttered Baloo. "So much for a beautiful day. Where're they― yikes!" A string of bullet holes suddenly appeared over the Sea Duck's nose, and three CT-37s flying in a triangle formation were speeding toward them from high on the right side. "Answers that question. Hold on to the chow, kid, I'm gonna lose these yahoos!"
"Wait, look!" Kit pointed out the window to Baloo's left. There, a mountainous island cloaked in a bright forest stood mighty and lonely in the open sea, rising cliffs, twisting valleys, and spire-like peaks. In the hands of a capable pilot, it was an amusement park. "Do a do-si-do around that island, Papa Bear. I'm gonna serve 'em some takeout."
Kit armed himself with his airfoil and a carton of the entree with the spicy red peppers; never mind the kid going surfing with bullets flying ― that was nothing new ― something else owned Baloo's dismay: "Aw, but who's gonna hold on to the chow?"
"Sor-ry," Kit sang as he headed into the back. "You could just take it easy on the turns."
"Yeah, that's gonna happen," said Baloo. "Now you be careful!"
"You first!"
"I hate when he says that," Baloo muttered. He adjusted his cap snug on his head, turned the plane speedily toward the island while lowering the nose, and hit the lever that released the cargo doors. Careful was a relative term for anyone who was accustomed to jumping out the back of an airplane at two hundred miles an hour and six thousand feet altitude, all without a parachute. The cargo doors were hardly half open when Kit burst into full sprint and leapt out into the open sky, snatching the handle of the plane's tow-rope at the last second.
The rope winched out twenty yards and Kit juggled the rope, airfoil, and special surprise until he got his footing, all the while weaving wide left and right. The pirates were now on the Sea Duck's tail, and Kit's, and moving in fast. Kit wrapped the rope around his left foot and waved at the lead plane, Karnage's tri-wing, and smirked when its nose started following him instead of the Duck. In a sense it was like fishing; Karange was the dumb trout rushing in mouth open and oblivious to anything but the next bite, and Kit was the shiny lure.
In seconds the pirates were only yards away, speeding in even closer, and Kit's smirk turned into a 'yikes!' when Karnage opened fire. The pirate jinked low and high in a semi-circle, trying to follow the brat on the board, and unleashed a spray of bullets that nicked the rope and buried several rounds into the Sea Duck's right engine. Smoke began to trail from it immediately.
"Hey!" Kit shouted at the pirate captain, who was suddenly nearly shoulder-to-shoulder with him. "Watch where you're pointing that thing!"
"Then hold still and stop buzzing around like the fuzzy fly!" Karnage shouted back, gritting his teeth. By that time, Baloo had reached the island, and all four planes were skimming above a rolling forest of tropic treetops.
"If you're not nice, I'm not gonna show you what's in my box!" said Kit, presenting the carton in his hand.
Karnage narrowed his eyes at him. "And what is that?"
Just when Kit thought he was never going to ask. "Kung Pao chicken! Extra heavy on the pow!" And POW it went, smashed into Karnage's face and exploding in an oily, spicy mess. The pirate shrieked and wiped at his eyes frantically, and, whilst his hands were off the stick, his plane rolled away into the trees and was swallowed whole.
One down. Kit laughed so hard he had to catch himself before he doubled over and lost his balance. "Hey, where ya goin'?" he shouted. "Don'tcha wanna try the sweet 'n' sour pork?"
Dumptruck had been right behind the captain, and sneered as he put Kit in his crosshairs, staring down the nose of his plane and the spinning propeller with one eye cocked. Kit just smirked at him. "Aw, this never gets old."
Baloo had taken the Sea Duck into a sharp left around one of the rocky spires that towered over the trees, then wove right around another. Kit followed his turns, feeling the air push hard against his board and hiss under his feet. Dumptruck tried to stay with them, but his turns were wobbly, and a glance back Kit saw that he was getting dizzy. It gave him an idea.
Kit zipped to the right, Dumptruck followed him. Kit zipped to the left, Dumptruck followed again, missing wide with a couple blasts from his plane's machine guns. Kit went up, went down, went diagonal-wise, all the while with the topper-wearing brute haplessly trying to square him away for a shot.
"C'mon, you even trying?" laughed Kit. He maneuvered just above the Dumptruck's plane, taunted the pirate with a shake of his rear and began to sway his board from side to side. He swore he could hear Dumptruck snort and curse even over the noise of engines and wind, and with renewed and seething vigor, Dumptruck wobbled his plane to line up a shot, swaying left and right as the kid did. Kit started swaying faster, first in semi-circle, then began rolling in a full circle. Dumptruck followed in suit, rolling his plane, lining up that shot, not quite realizing or caring how the world was spinning, even when Kit was doing rolls so tight and fast that he appeared to match the blur of the CT-37's propeller. Then Kit eased off and banked to the side to watch the show.
Dumptruck's plane was still rolling, veering aimlessly away from the Duck. "Ooh," the pirate groaned, "Dis merry-go-round is not fun." His plane rolled, rolled, and rolled until it plunged into the trees, sending a big plume of leaves into the air.
Two down. Kit raised a triumphant fist in the air and cheered 'Wa-hoo!' Baloo's arm stretched out of the cockpit window with an enthusiastic thumbs-up. That's when Kit noticed something Baloo perhaps had not, that the right engine was now heavily smoking. "Baloo! Check starboard! Check―!" A string of bullets whistled past his ear. Mad Dog must have learned a thing or two watching the others; he was keeping his distance and trying to snipe a good shot in.
Kit turned his head toward him and gave him a dirty look. "Oh yeah, wise-guy?"
Little did Mad Dog expect that the brat would let go of the rope. Kit flipped backwards in a long and high arc. Mad Dog squinted against the sun to track him, then yelped and ducked when it appeared the kid would land right on top of him. Instead he heard a thump from around the tail of his plane, and two hands suddenly wrapped around his eyes. "Guess who?"
"Hey!" protested the pirate. He tried to pry Kit's hands away. "Get off me!"
"No! Don't let go of the stick!" cried Kit. "You'll crash!"
At that, Mad Dog nervously felt for and grabbed onto the flight stick with both hands. "B-but I can't see!"
"I'll be your eyes! Go left! Now right, hurry! Nose up! No, down, down! Left! Right, right! The other right! Where you goin', I said up! Oh no, sea monster! It's gonna eat you! Aaaauuuughh!"
Mad Dog screamed, and by then had haplessly lobbed his plane in all sorts of directions.
"Love to stay, but I got another plane to catch," said Kit. He jumped off and took to his airfoil, uncovering Mad Dog's eyes and leaving him with the dreadful realization that his plane was in a steep nosedive. He yanked back hard on the stick to pull up, but the plane caught on the treetops, skipped and rolled in an explosion of leaves and finally sank beneath the boughs.
Three down. All in a day's work, thought Kit a he circled over the island on his airfoil. Baloo had swung the Sea Duck around and was coming back for him, while Kit waited expectantly. Theirs was like a circus trapeze act, in that nobody ended up with a broken neck (or worse) because the one knew what the other was doing, knew their timing, knew their maneuvers. The difference was, they never rehearsed any of this.
Moments before, Baloo had noticed the smoke from the right engine and was not unworried, but couldn't help but slap his knee and chuckle and the sight of a clear, pirate-less sky. He saw Kit give pointing at his right wing as he zipped past him, and kept the tow rope dragging along at just the right altitude, just the right speed. He glanced back and made sure Kit caught it, which he did, but unexpectedly the rope snapped as soon as it was taut. Kit went tumbling downward, wobbling to a steady glide into the heart of the island.
"Kit!" cried Baloo, out the window. "Hold on, I'll get ya!" The Sea Duck had just darted beyond the fringes of the island's coast, where Baloo swung the plane into a fast and tight right turn over the water, when a mechanical pop burst from the right engine, one that made his gut feel like it had sunk into the cushion of his seat, more so than the gravity of the turn. He rubbernecked to his right, seeing the flash of flames spewing from the shaft of the propeller.
Now Baloo didn't know a whole lot about the laws of physics. He couldn't tell you that objects in motion tend to stay in motion, or that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. What he could tell you ― Pilot Thermodynamics 101 ― is that airplanes on fire tend to explode. With that in mind, he brought the plane down in a hasty landing upon the surf of the shore, raced in the back for a bucket, jumped out and waded to the engine, and gave it a dousing of seawater until the smoke dissipated.
That finally done, he heaved a heavy sigh and turned to the island. Before him was plenty of sand, trees, and rising heights. Definitely no sidewalks or street trolleys. An elevator or two wouldn't have hurt this place.
"Well, Becky's always tellin' me to go take a hike," he muttered, and plodded onto the beach. Not far was where a great cliff rose, split in two by the end of a ravine that was crowded with giant, fanning plants. He began there, hollering Kit's name. No one replied.
After a time, it became apparent to him that following the bottom of the ravine was going to yield him no luck, and when he found where long, narrow ledges in the cliffside zig-zagged a means to the top, he opted to climb for higher ground, a decision he regretted about within about the first four feet up. Bears of his particular shape weren't meant for rock climbing. Nothing of his particular shape was meant for any climbing, except into a hammock. Every other minute, between balancing himself while side-stepping one ledge and pulling himself atop another, he bellowed Kit's name. Birds chirped and squawked, flying overhead, but Kit's voice was not to be heard.
Baloo kept climbing. He was certain he was going to be an old geezer before he ever reached the top, and at last when he did, he was out of breath. By then he could hardly wheeze Kit's name, and his hiking became more like crawling. The island seemed a lot bigger on foot than it did from the sky. He stood up, aching knees wobbly, and fanned his face with his cap.
"Kid, where are ya?" he muttered. "Ki-it! Kit! C'mon, Lil' Britches, answer me."
He stumbled down a grassy incline into the thick of the trees, not begrudging gravity to help him with a little bit of the legwork. It wasn't long before he felt he was just getting himself lost, another lousy time to have to navigate without his navigator. He couldn't even tell in which direction he had left the Duck. All he knew was he surrounded by trees, bushes, and gullies, all entangled in a rolling terrain with steep climbs and sudden drops, and Kit was still not answering him. All he could do was trudge forward, and he did, aimlessly, until a voice yelped nearby.
Baloo's hopes brightened, and he dashed in the direction he had heard the sound, cutting through thick ferns. "Kit? That you?"
"Capt'n? That you?" the other replied.
"It don't sound like der captain," another said.
"Uh-oh," frowned Baloo. Not Kit. Not good. He glimpsed Mad Dog and Dumptruck through the columns of trees, and caught the silver flash of sharp steel in Mad Dog's hand. He crouched down and did an about-face, but the pirates were approaching twice as fast than he could sneak away. In seconds they were close enough for him to smell the gunpowder of their muskets, only a few yards away.
"Boss?" called out Mad Dog. "You there?"
"Uh, nope, not here!" Baloo answered. "Try the other side of the island."
"Oh, okay. Thanks!"
"Don't mention it."
"Ugh, told you we shouda gone der other way," sulked Dumptruck.
Baloo crouched still and listened to the sounds of them bickering and the rustling through the foliage, both sounds growing distant. The pirates were going away. He exhaled a big windy phew. Even he was surprised he got away with that one. Until the sound of the rustling stopped, and the bickering silenced. He could practically hear a little bell that must have simultaneously rang inside of Mad Dog and Dumptruck's heads.
"Hey! It's fatso! Get'm!"
So much for stealth. Baloo ran, huffing and puffing and stumbling over fallen boughs and knots of thick roots growing from the bases of the trees, one of which he tripped over and landed on his belly. It was a hard and splashy landing into a muddy rut, which carried him downhill like a slide. He cried an 'oh no!' as he began picking up speed, seeing that the end of the ride was a precipice and a shaded gully. To slow down he grasped at anything he could, but only flung loose dirt, blades of grass and more mud. His cap flew off and he couldn't catch it. He went over the edge and yelped, tumbled in mid-air, and crashed...
...into a seat?
To be sure, it didn't help that he was upside down, but it felt like a seat. In fact, it felt like a cockpit, as he seemed to be squished between a seat and a console with levers, gauges, and buttons. When he tried to wriggle himself upright, his arm swung and hit one of the levers, cranking it downward.
Then he heard a hum, mechanical like an engine starting, but smoother than any engine he had never heard before. The seat began to shake smooth as a kitten's purr and levitate from the ground. He raised his head up to see bright lightning surround him like the shape of a fishbowl, and though he couldn't feel himself moving, the world before his eyes started spinning, faster, faster and faster, until everything was a blur, and faster yet until the blur became thousands of straight, horizontal lines of infinite colors. The humming grew in pitch until it was a squeal, and all the while the lightning raced around him in every direction, stronger and brighter, until everything was so bright that Baloo cried out and covered his eyes.
All that chaos, then, subdued as quickly as it began. The humming of the engine stopped, and the seat dropped abruptly on the ground. The bright light was gone. Baloo felt water on his head and opened his eyes. It was raining ― actually, it was storming.
The trees overhead bent in the wind, boughs flailing and leaves lashing about. The chill of the gale hit Baloo, suddenly blasting him with iciness, and took him by as much surprise as if he had been hit by a truck instead. Only twenty seconds ago, there was only sweltering mugginess, and a bright, hot sun pouring shafts of light through the thick of the trees from a clear blue sky.
He stumbled away from the strange contraption he fell upon, and when he looked it over, he was as confused over what it was as he was about how the weather had changed at a snap of a finger. It was like a cockpit, except it was missing a plane. It looked something more like a steel bathtub with a chair in the middle of it. Behind the seat was a spherical steel casing with a flawless, mirror-like polish to it, which made up about half the overall size of the entire thing. Plane, bathtub, or whatever else, it was a strange place for it to be, but it wasn't helping him find Kit any quicker. He had more pressing matters to concern about.
It was hard to tell if he was even in the same place. Trees were trees, and dirt was dirt, after all. He tried to look for the direction in which he fell, to see if the pirates were still on his tail, and maybe find his cap if he could. He really had no idea which way that may have been, though, and made a quick decision to just crawl out of the gully and keep his head low.
"Gotta find that kid," he muttered to himself, hands and feet splashing in mud. At the risk of the pirates finding him, he shouted for Kit several times. No one responded, friend or foe. It might be that the pirates no longer being around was a bit of good news, but no Kit, either. He was yelling loud enough, that he was sure. Something was off.
He paused and wrapped his hands around his confused head, trying to piece together some semblance of logic. "Okay, okay," he said, eyes up as if he was addressing his brain. "That whacky contraption was prob'ly part of an old plane that wrecked here a long time ago. An'... I must've hit my head on it, and it conked me out for awhile, an' I dreamed all that noise an' lightnin'." He had said that much while forcibly not acknowledging his own doubtfulness, for he knew he had no aches or bumps on his head. "An' Kit... aw, Kit prob'ly found the Duck and's sittin' there waitin' for me. Yeah! I just gotta go back to my plane, that's all. He'll be there." He chose a direction and stepped hurriedly, taking his best guess of where he had landed, his hands shielding his brow from the torrents of rain pouring through the treetops. "Lil' Britches, please be there."
He jerked to a halt when his path was blocked. Something suddenly met him, a round object floating in front of his face. "Hello! You must be Baloo," it said, with a woman's voice. "I have urgent need of your assist―"
"Aaaugh, mosquito!" screamed Baloo, and he swatted at the object with a powerful swing, knocking it far away and against a tree trunk, where it bounced harshly, fell into the bushes and did not come back up. "Big mosquito. Big... talkin' mosquito. That knew my name. An' looked like a baseball just floatin' in thin air. I'm... I'm goin' loopy! Ugh, I gotta go home an' lie down for awhile."
He double-timed his pace, onward to the Sea Duck, or so he hoped. He remembered he had landed on the shore, so as long as he found a beach, he figured at worst that he could do a lap around the island until he found his plane. Eventually, lashed by wind and rain, drenched and muddy, he found a beach, but not his plane; instead, to his his surprise, there was a small yacht anchored not far from the shore, rocking in the unruly crests with no lights on, and a white seaplane beached upon the shore that was getting ravaged by the incoming waves. It was a little larger than the Duck, two engines and a broad boat-like fuselage, though a particular model Baloo had never seen. A nervous pilot stuck his head and shoulders out the cockpit door and waved him down. "Over here!" he shouted, his voice barely audible to Baloo over the howling of the wind. "Let's go with the cargo! Where's it at?"
"What're ya talkin' about?" Baloo shouted back. His feet dug a string of craters in the wet sand as he approached the plane. "What're you doin' here?"
"What am I talkin' about?" The pilot nearly fell out of the cockpit when a wave crashed against his plane. He was a blue-eyed, mousy-brown rabbit, ears draped over the shoulders of a yellow rain coat, under which he wore a black, buttoned shirt. He wore a black cap, too, with silver wings embroidered over the visor. "You know what, forget this! You can keep your money, I'm bailin'!"
"Hey, wait a minute!" shouted Baloo, running towards him. "You seen my plane?"
"You mean that's not your boat? You're not one that called me to meet him here?"
"Not me," said Baloo. "I need to find my plane! We got hit by pirates, I had to bring 'er down!"
"Pirates? Here? This is a hurricane, there's no pirate stupid enough to be flyin' through it. Just a dummy like me!"
"No, really, they―!" Another wave rocked the plane, and the pilot stumbled out from cockpit and splashed in the murky foam, whilst a gust of wind knocked Baloo on his rump.
"Holy cow!" griped the pilot. A lot of good his rain coat had just done him. He got to his feet and staggered to keep himself upright in the fitful water. "I can't just hang here anymore, my plane's gonna get wrecked! You tellin' me you're stranded here?"
At that question, Baloo felt numb all over, more so than just the effects of the weather. He muttered but one all encompassing thought about his plane, about his whereabouts, about everything: "I don't know."
"Come on, get in!" the pilot told him, "Get in! I'm gettin' out of―oof!" A large wave suddenly smashed into his plane, and the side of the plane against his head. Baloo raced to catch him as he fell limply into the water and brought him up just as his head went under. Then, hoisting the rabbit over his shoulder, Baloo climbed into the cockpit, where he put the groggy pilot in the co-pilot's chair. He didn't have time to ask permission, he just started the plane and assumed control.
"Hey, whaddaya think you're doin'?" blinked the rabbit.
"Gettin' us in the air," said Baloo, revving the throttle. The plane jutted backwards, powering against the elements, bouncing like it had back legs on a trampoline.
"Are you crazy? What do you know about takin' off in a hurricane?"
Baloo showed him his answer instead of speaking it. In mere seconds he had whipped the plane around backwards so it was facing the open sea, cut the throttle, flipped cascading switches overhead that made the engines move forward again, then throttled up again. Despite the onslaught of the wind and waves, the plane sped ahead. Meanwhile, the rabbit watched on; Baloo was weaving the yoke with an ease and instinct comparable to what most may use for the act of walking. Baloo smirked as the plane took flight.
"Weather like this can get ya spooked," Baloo explained. "But just as long as ya know what yer plane can do, ya don't gotta sweat it."
"H-how did you know what my plane could do?"
"Well, I was kinda crossin' my fingers. How's yer head?"
"It's fine. Look, thanks for your help, but if it's all the same, I think I oughtta be the pilot around here."
Baloo shrugged, got up and switched seats with him. "No problem. Just do a circle around, huh? Kit and my plane are still down there somewhere."
"Kit?" The pilot made a face at the name. "Kit who?"
"Kit my navigator, that's who. He's only twelve. Ya gotta help me find 'im."
"But I circled the place when I got here. There's no other plane around here."
"Ya must'a just missed it, is all. I didn't swim here, ya know."
"Well then who's boat is that?" the pilot asked.
"Never seen it before. Wasn't there when I got here."
The rabbit scowled, frustrated. "There's no one on it. I skimmed by it before I landed. No one's answering the radio, either. When I say I circled the island, believe me, I looked! There's no planes down there. I was supposed to meet a guy who hired me to fly some sorta contraption outta here. Pretty sure I've been stiffed."
"Just look, please?" said Baloo. "I won't leave without him."
Shaking his head, the pilot obliged, following the coast of the island off the plane's right side so Baloo could see everything from the side window. And that Baloo did, with his nose pressed eagerly to the glass.
They went around once. Then twice. The beaches were empty. If Kit were deeper in the island, lost in the trees, he was smart and resourceful enough to signal the plane somehow. There was nothing. The third time around, done to Baloo's fervent insistence, yielded the same results.
"See? No planes down there. Twelve years old, huh? He doesn't know how to fly, does he?"
This fella had no idea what a complicated question that was, but it put to Baloo's mind an image. "He took off with the plane," he muttered, shocked. "Why would he do somethin' like that?"
"Maybe he saw this hurricane comin' and thought, 'boy, I should probably get the hell outta here.' Huh?"
Baloo gave him a look. "Kit wouldn't do that, not without me."
The pilot cringed. "Gah. You named your kid Kit?"
Baloo was awful confused by the question. "I didn't ― I mean, he's not my―" Suddenly he bristled. "Wait a minute, what's that supposed to mean? What's wrong with his name?"
"I'd just think he'd get teased a lot nowadays," shrugged the pilot.
With the knowing that he was at this pilot's mercy for help, Baloo choked down the argument he was about to get into and tried to focus on the issue at hand. "Okay," he muttered to himself, in concentration, "Kit's got the Sea Duck, but where did he go. Why did he go? Would'a only had one engine... he must'a got into some sorta trouble, some emergency, that's the only way he'd ―" Baloo paused when a dreadful thought crossed his mind, and he bit the top of his knuckle. "Unless the pirates took 'im. Or..." An even more dreadful thought came to mind, images of his plane blasted and sunk under the waves, images of Little Britches ― he felt his chest tighten as like to suffocate himself. "Oh me oh my, no. No! Buddy, you gotta land this plane! He might still be down there, needin' help!"
"Land? What're ya gonna do, turn over every rock yourself?"
"Yeah, just maybe," said Baloo. He already had his hand on the door handle as if ready to step out at a thousand feet. "Whatever it takes. C'mon, let's go!"
"Will you calm down? It'll take weeks to search an island like that. You can't do it yourself and I can't wait for ya."
Baloo was biting down on his knuckle, surveying the size of the island. "Yer right, but I can't just ― I mean, what if he needs me?" He fell against the back of the chair, stiffly. He ran both hands over his face and sighed heavily. "Nah, he's okay. He's gotta be okay. It's Kit, after all." With his eyes closed tight, he put all of his concentration into what to do next; an idea popped into his head, and he snapped his fingers. "Wait, Louie's is just a few hours from here. If Kit had to split with the plane, that's where he'd go. If not, I'll get all the help I need there to come back and find 'im."
"Louie's?" the pilot repeated, incredulously. "That old hermit? What help would he
be?"
"Ol' hermit?" Baloo took offense, but he saw that the pilot was being sincere, not flippant. "That's one of my best pal's yer talkin' about."
"That old hermit," the pilot repeated, insistently. "Your best pal?"
"What're you talkin' about, ol' hermit? He's got the swingin'-est place around."
"Maybe a long time ago, before the pirates did a number on his island."
"A long time ― wait, what? When did that happen?"
The rabbit shrugged. "Five, ten years? When's the last time you were there?"
"Just a couple days ago."
They both gave each other a look as to accuse the other of being bat-snot crazy.
"Listen, much as I'd like to help find your kid, I can't exactly fly all over the world here," said the pilot. "I'm headed back to Freeport. You're welcome to ride along. You can talk to the cops and I got a buddy there who rents planes. I can get you a deal."
"Can't ya just take me to Louie's?"
"It's a waste of time." The pilot sighed, knitting his eyebrows as he considered the plea. "If I do, it's the only stop I'm makin' out of the way. Fair enough?"
Baloo nodded. "I 'preciate it. I really do."
His name was Jim and he did what Baloo had done once upon a time, that running his own flying courier service. With that much in common they still found themselves with little to talk about. There was a lingering uneasiness, if not apprehension, between the two, because all small-talk eventually ended with each of them feeling like the other was living on a different planet. It began with their different opinion on the condition of Louie's island. They also couldn't seem to agree on who won last weekend's baseball game, the location of the Spruce Moose, or that Thembria had a High Marshall.
Thus, it was mostly a quiet, awkward flight. Baloo was thankful when he finally saw the familiar shape of Louie's island forming form the misty horizon. As they got closer, however, his thankfulness turned to despair.
"But that's not..." he stopped short of what he was going to say. Even if all the strangeness that had suddenly set upon him had left his mind feeling like it was swirling down the drain, he knew that island, its basic shape, the bends of the beach and the rocky rises towering from its heart. It was Louie's Place, but it wasn't. Gone was the big sign upon the rocky peak that once lit up in colorful light bulbs spelling out his good friend's name in humongous letters. Hundreds of times Baloo saw those flashing lights late at night in the distant horizon, a lighthouse in its own special way, one that may not have warned against shallow rocks but beckoned instead to one and all that they were only a few minutes from a safe place and a good time. The long dock that had parked dozens of planes any hour of the day, outfitted with a gas station and a full staff, was reduced to a stub of a pier where a small, single-seat bi-plane roped by its pontoon bobbed the choppy water. The main building itself, the thatch and bamboo clubhouse meshed from and old shipwrecked galleon and the biggest treehouse in the known hemisphere, the halls of which around the calendar held the biggest, loudest, and wildest parties on land, air, or sea ― Baloo had to rub his eyes at his own disbelief at what was plainly in sight ― it was all gone. There was just a shanty nested meagerly in the timber ruins of what should have been the clubhouse. The mighty tree it sat under was bare and broken, the ladders and balconies built into its thick branches were all but destroyed.
There were no customers, no staff, no livelihood. Just a ramshackle hovel in the middle of the wide ocean.
Upon landing just off the shore, the pilot, slowly and carefully taxiing to avoid a collision with the pier amid the rocking waves, only brought the plane close enough to the pier so that the edge of the right wing was over it. Baloo could hardly blame him; with that little plane already tied there, there was no room to dock, and he didn't need any instructions that he was meant to do: climb out onto the wing and jump off.
He thanked the pilot Jim, who wished him luck ― though in a sympathetic tone that implied that he knew better. They never saw one another again.
Lightning flashed in the horizon, and Baloo took light and uneasy steps toward the ruins of the club. A finger of smoke rose from a bent pipe chimney on the roof, getting dashed away by the wind. He didn't recognize the bi-plane tied to the dock, but it had long ago seen its best days; it was dented, creaking as if its bolts were about to burst any second, and covered in rust, its last coat of paint long gone.
Slowly, he pushed open the bamboo door. It was dark inside, save for a fire burning in a wood stove, flames reflecting on countless shiny objects on the walls. It's cozy warmth breathed hot on Baloo's face as he peered inside.
"Louie?"
"I'm closed! Go away!" shouted a reply in the shadows, and the next thing Baloo knew knew, a coconut was hurling toward him and struck him on the mouth.
"Ow!" he yelped, but he knew that voice, and for that matter, he knew that coconut toss. "Hey, stop that! It's only me. Are you okay? What the blazes is goin' on? What happened to yer digs?" A silence ensued on the other end. Baloo squinted to see in the dimness, uselessly feeling for a light switch around the doorframe. "Louie? Ya there?"
Breathlessly, after a long moment, Louie replied, "Baloo?" A match lit, then a lantern, and as it approached Baloo they each saw their old friend's visage in the meager glow. It was hard to say who was more surprised.
Baloo recoiled at first as if set upon by a ghoul. Louie looked awful, skin sagging from under his chin, hard wrinkles creasing his face, bald head splotchy with liver spots, and the fur around his head pale gray. Baloo always enjoyed some good natured ribbing between the two of them about who was looking older the fastest, but this was serious. Scary, even. Louie suddenly looked so frail and ill.
"L-Louie," he stammered, "What happened to ya?"
"It can't be," Louie only managed to whisper, after a hard swallow. He raised a wrinkled, shaky hand and ran it over his bald pate, yellowed eyes gaping at the sight as if witnessing a supernatural miracle. Then alarmed, he backpedaled, dropped the lantern, and clenched his chest. "This must mean I'm a goner," he bemoaned. "Baloo's come back from that great runway in the sky to pick me up!" He paused at that notion and gave Baloo a skeptical look. "Wait, we are goin' up, right? I've been good, I swear!"
"What're you talkin' about? I came back lookin' for Kit an' the Duck. Now what the heck happened here? Buddy, ya don't look so good, I think I gotta get ya to a doctor."
"Doctor?" After a moment spent standing there in what was awkward stillness to Baloo, Louie picked up the lantern and closed in for a good look. "You... you ain't a ghost?"
"Course not!"
To be sure, Louie thumped him on the chest with his finger, wondering if it would go through like putting his hand through mist. It didn't.
"Ow! Quittit!" scowled Baloo.
"Cuz..?" Louie's eyes flooded with tears, which took Baloo aback. "Where... where ya been?" Such a simple question as it was, yet hearing the emotion welling in his friend's voice, Baloo only barely grasped that there was something much, much more at its heart. His utterly confused expression clearly replied that he didn't understand the question. Louie continued, "You disappeared. So long ago... but... you ain't changed a bit."
"I... I haven't been anywhere," stammered Baloo, suddenly haunted by the question. Louie wobbled and was about to faint, and Baloo acted fast to catch him on his arms before he collapsed. "Whoa! Louie, c'mon, sit down a minute. Now please tell me what's goin' on."
Louie reached up to grab his friend's shoulder. A wheezy chuckle ensued. "It's... really... you," he said, between long breaths. "No ghost. It's Baloo. It's Baloo!" With a sudden spryness, he sprung up and wrapped his arms around Baloo, who was by then far more than confused. Taking this all in, the look of the island, the look of Louie, the things the rabbit pilot had said ― the talking mosquito ― he was terrified, knees going weak and shaky. He felt like a ghost, somehow out of place in the world.
"Ha! C'mon, this calls for a celebration! You better have yourself one golden nugget of a story, my dear bear mon frere. Hold on a jiff while I get the lights, then I'll put some dinner on. Make yerself comfy!" With a raspy, tired, but jovial a-whop-bob-ballooba under his breath, Louie danced around the shadows of the hut with a matchbook and began lighting more lanterns that were carelessly place on top of the random clutter that was becoming more visible in the light. Airplane parts, toasters, coffee mugs, brooches, pink flamingos, blue flamingos, tiki masks, bowling bags, sunglasses and so on, an indoor junk pile. In one sense, Baloo felt right at home in such a mess, but this wasn't right, not how it was supposed to be. His mind was swirling with questions, so many he did not know where to start. At length, as he watched Louie, he just picked one.
"Well what happened to yer lights? Y'know, the ones with bulbs?"
"Ain't been no juice in the wires for a long time," replied Louie, who had just disappeared behind a counter stacked high with junk. "Only the coconuts got juice 'round here anymore." Baloo only saw Louie's arm raise up with a cleaver, and it descended two times with quick, powerful strokes. Then his head popped up and he eyed Baloo with a sort of a crazed hunger that made the big bear start. "Say, you got any bananas on you?"
"Uh... fresh out," Baloo said uneasily.
"Shucks," sighed Louie, and he bent behind the counter again. "What I wouldn't give for a... well, here we go. Whatcha want for dinner, pal?" In one sweep of his forearm he cleared the counter, and set upon it four identical halved coconuts, and gestured to each in turn as he read off the day's menu: "Take yer pick. As you can see, I got coconut loaf, coconut patties, coconut wedges, and coconut dogs."
Baloo blinked, unsure he was seeing the same thing as Louie. "Tell ya the truth, I'm not really that hungry right now."
"Ah, perturbed are we?" said Louie. "If ya want, I can check the back. Pretty sure I got some coconut quiche, coconut spaghetti, coconut burritos, uh, lessee, what else...?"
"Louie, will ya just never mind the ―"
"Deviled coconut, scrambled coconut, hard boiled coconut, pickled coconut..."
"Louie, stop!" Baloo spread his arms wide, gesturing at their surroundings, the hut, the island, the whole world. "What happened?"
Louie had shrunk back at Baloo's tone. "Lots," he replied grimly. "Yeowza. You really ain't got an idea, do ya?" Baloo shook his head. Louie climbed on the counter, feet inadvertently kicking off the coconut halves. Leaning forward, he gave Baloo a studious look. "So tell me, then. What is the last thing you remember?"
"Kit 'n' me were gettin' dogged by the pirates, an'..."
"Kit and you?"
"Yeah," nodded Baloo, rather disturbed by the incredulous way Louie had ask that. "Why?"
"You mean when he went out on his sky-surfin' board, tried to shake 'em off? Then you two got separated?"
"How'd you know?"
"I know that story, Cuz. It's crossed my mind at least once a day since... well, since it happened." Louie gasped, face lit up with alarm. "Today. Oh, man. Today's the anniversary. Kit got rescued from that island, but you... no Baloo, no one's seen hide nor hair of you since. Think, Fuzzy. How'n the world did you just get here all the sudden?"
"B-but nothin' happened to me," Baloo said shakily. "I mean, I j-just blinked an' this storm was here, an' Kit, I couldn't find'm, I couldn't... oh..." Dizzied, Baloo's rump fell upon a wooden crate, crumpling it. "My head feels like it's in a tailspin. Look, let's start out with some details. Like, what happened to Louie's?"
"The last of Louie's was 'bout six, no, seven years ago. Business was already goin' down the chute with everything else goin' on. But then one day them sky pirates came along, made themselves at home. Pretty much did what they wanted with the place. It ain't never recovered."
"No. No, no no," mumbled Baloo, his fingers clasped around his cheeks and muzzle. "See, I thought ya said seven years ago. I gotta get a clue here. I think I hit my head, or I got sick, or somethin' happened where I just can't think straight. 'Cause I'm hearin' things all wrong. I'm seein' things all wrong."
Louie hopped from the counter, reached out and clasped his hand on the bear's shoulder. "You're seein' and hearin' things the way they are."
"Yer tellin' me that somehow I've missed out on seven years?"
"What? Oh, no, not seven years."
"Phew. I didn't think so."
Louie's hand tightened on Baloo's shoulder. "You've been out for twenty years."
Baloo could feel his own heartbeat throbbing in his throat. He and Louie had played a thousand jokes on each other, and a small part of Baloo still, desperately, hoped for Louie to wipe off that amazingly convincing makeup job, reveal the smoke and mirrors he used to make his nightclub seemingly disappear, smile and say 'Gotcha!' while Kit crept out of his hiding place, laughing. The best prank ever ― he hoped for it, wished for it, waited for it. It never came.
"Yer not kiddin'."
"I'm not," said Louie, solemnly. "Twenty years today, right on the polka dot."
"Twen... twent... oh..." Baloo's back fell against the rickety wall, making the whole hut shake. His eyes followed bits of straw that fell from the thatch ceiling, the realization sinking in of what a far cry this hovel was compared to what was there, to him, only yesterday. "Twenty years. Yer tellin' me I was gone an' Karnage wiped out yer club..."
"My business, my home, my whole world," said Louie, frowning deeply. "It was all one in the same." Baloo sensed something odd in his sad expression, something read that Louie's sadness was not for his business lost, rather it was for Baloo. Sympathy. It made the fur on his neck tingle. Louie cast his gaze upon the floor, his face cringing as he practically forced himself to volunteer further information, "I never thought I'd ever see ya again, never mind hafta be the one to tell ya, but... it wasn't Karnage that did it, Cuz."
"But ya said pirates...?"
Louie's mouth was open to tell Baloo, but the words didn't come, like he had forgotten how to use his voice. There was hesitation, and then there was this. His jaw trembled, jiggling the flap of skin under his chin. Then he swallowed, joints cracking as he composed himself with his back straight, shoulders back, then said, at the end of a long, deep breath,
"It was Kit."