Chapter 11: "An Unexpected Visitor"
A few days after Dakota's battle, we find the twins chillin' at their crib, a phrase
which here means "nothing exciting had happened since the battle, and it seemed like
nothing would."
Dakota and Kaia were washing their father's Hummer when they heard a rumble
coming down the road. As it came down the road, they saw it was 3 black motorcycles
They couldn't see who was driving, but they did see a glint of red on the head of one
biker. They slowed down when they reached their drive way, and then turned up into it.
When they reached the end of the drive way where the twins were, they stopped and put
the kick-stands down on the motorcycles. They turned off the motors on all three, and
got off one by one. They saw that the third biker was two times taller than his
companions. None of them were wearing helmets.
The one with red hair walked up to them. He looked from Kaia to Dakota and
spoke to him. "Are you Dakota?" When he nodded, he smiled. "I doubt I needed to ask,
you look so much like him." He looked from Dakota to his sister. "And you must be
Kaia?" She nodded. "Is Kai home?"
"Wait, who are you?" Dakota asked him suspiciously.
"Introductions later. Just take us up there, it's important," the other biker who was
not as tall as the one beside him said.
"Bryan, don't be rude. We would like to go up there, if you don't mind." His tone
was somewhat commanding, as if he was used to doing it.
"Um…okay," Kaia said, and she led them up the path. "Is Father expecting you?"
"He might, he might not." The biker with the red hair spoke. "He'll know us
though."
"You don't think Gala will shoot us, do you?" The man named Bryan spoke this
time.
"Accidently? No. On purpose? Maybe. The only reason I can think of that Gala
would shoot us is if we were to do something bad, but we ain't, so no she wouldn't."
"How do our parents know yall?" Dakota asked them.
"We're old friends," is all he said.
When they reached the house, they opened the back door and went inside.
"Mom! Dad! Yall have visitors!" Kaia yelled through the house.
"I knew Kai had a lot of money," the tall man said.
"Yep, sure does," the red-haired man said. "I thought he would spend it on getting
Brooklyn or Johnny murdered, but I guess he changed his mind…Gala!"
Gala had walked into the room, and said, "I knew he called yall here."
"Actually Gala, he came here on our own, to help with the situation." He winked
at her.
Gala looked exasperatedly at him. "Well, Tala, you and Bryan and Spencer came
here for nothin', we don't need yall's help. So yall best get back on them hogs you call
motorcycles."
"Be that as it may, Mrs. Gala, we feel like we have to help," Spencer said.
"Spencer, don't call me that. Gala is fine. Well," she looked tiredly at the time. "I
guess if yall are so stubborn you won't leave, I guess you can stay. But when Kai gets
back from the shop, yall can have yall's talk and then you get your lazy selves back on
them bikes, you hear?"
"Yes, ma'am. May we have a look around?" Tala asked her.
"Sure go ahead." She left the kitchen.
"See? He always said he didn't have a lot of money!" Spencer said.
"Yes, we know," Tala said. "I think he always had it. He just didn't want to share
it."
"What's this?" Bryan asked nobody in particular. He was looking a trophy that
was positioned up on the mantle above the stone fireplace in the living room. It depicted
a person pulling back a bow and shooting at some unknown target. Beside it was another
one, only it was girl instead of a boy. Kaia answered his question.
"That was from the 4-H Archery Tournament Dakota and I participated in. See?"
She pointed at the gold-plated fronts of the trophies. Each one had a different name for
each twin. "We won the whole competition in the compound division."
"What does that mean?" Bryan asked her.
"It means that we won the area where you don't use the recurve bows. You know,
the bows without the cam wheels." She said this as if everybody knew what all the parts
to a bow were.
"Oh…I knew that." Bryan left the mantle to look at what else was in the room.
"Whoa…" Spencer sounded awestruck. "Tala, come look at this fish tank."
Tala walked over to the wall between the kitchen and the dining room where
Spencer was at. When he stopped, he found himself looking at 1000-gallon fish tank.
Inside were all varieties and diversities of fishes, a phrase which here means "a huge tank
filled with fish from all over the globe."
"How far did Kai have to go to get the fish?" Tala asked.
"Kai didn't go anywhere," Gala said, returning to the kitchen. "He had them
imported from everywhere. Some of the bass he caught himself. You see that white one?"
She pointed to the white bass that was just swimming around a coral rock. "He hooked
that one when we went fishing on the Chattahoochee River in Georgia. The place was
crawling—no, sorry—swimming with those little white fish."
"Yall have any deer hangin' up?" Bryan asked.
"Yes, actually we—Kai's on his way home."
Tala looked at her, amazed. "How do you know?"
"It says right there." She nodded to the clock on the wall. On it were 4 hands.
Three were pointing to "home". Kai's, who's had just been on "work", was now pointing
to "traveling".
"Where did you get a clock like that?" Spencer asked her.
"Some red-headed lady didn't want it anymore. She sold it to me at a flea market.
I had to adjust it a bit, because it originally had 9 hands instead of 4. Kai's home. Dakota,
see if your father has that head you wanted hung." As Dakota left through the back door
again, she said to the former Blitzkrieg Boyz, "Feel free to come sit down wherever. Just
don't sit in the lazy boy. That's Kai's."
"I thought Dakota and Kaia couldn't have Harleys?" Kai said from the door. "I
always wanted one—ah…" He noticed that Tala and his gang were sitting in his sitting
room. "Here's the problem. Tala, Bryan and Spencer are here. No wonder."
"Nice seeing you again too, Kai," Tala said to him.
"Why are yall here?" he asked them.
"Um…let's just say it's really top secret information. Not for—what is the
word?—child ears, for lack of a better term."
"I believe that the twins are old enough to hear this," Kai said nodding to Kaia
and the just coming in Dakota, who held a deer head mounted a plaque in his hands.
"They are almost 16, after all."
"Hear what?" both of the twins asked.
"Why doesn't everybody get a drink before we start telling stories? What do yall
want?" Gala asked Tala, Bryan, and Spencer.
"Doesn't matter," Bryan said.
"Sorry, Bryan, we don't have any 'doesn't matter'," Gala said, going to the
wine cabinet.
"Huh, huh. Just wine then. Red, please."
"Hey, Dakota," Kai said. "Look alive." He tossed his son a Sprite, and his
daughter a 7 Up from the fridge.
"Alright," Gala said when she had finished pouring wine for all the adults. She sat
down on the sofa next to Kai. "I guess you can tell us what you found out, Tala."
Tala sipped his wine for a moment, and then spoke in a careworn voice. "We
traveled to Siberia, the last place we knew he had been before returning to Japan. We
went and spoke to the people in the town where he had supposedly," he put great
emphasis on the word. "Changed."
"We found out that he had really been there, but he didn't go there for the reasons
he said he did," Bryan said angrily. "He had actually been recruiting people in different
countries all over the world. Siberia was just one of the many places he had been." He
looked over at Spencer. "Show them the map."
Spencer reached into his pocket, and pulled out a heavily folded piece of paper. It
looked like it had been to a great many places over a great many years. He unfolded it
carefully and laid it on the coffee table in front of him. On it were what looked like
arrows, circles, and words that had been written far too fast to read properly. As he laid it
out, he brought out a wooden pointer from the same pocket the map had come.
"We know he has been to these 3 countries," Spencer pointed to Japan, Russia,
and America with the stick. "We think he has been to these 4." He indicated France,
Britain, Italy, and Spain. "And finally we know he has not been to these countries."
Australia, Egypt, and China were pointed out to them. "We asked Robert and his crew if
they had any idea of Boris' presence in their respective countries. They know of none of
his plans or if he has been in their countries."
"Bryan has also contacted the White Tigers and told them to be on the look out,"
Tala said. "Miguel and Mathilda we couldn't reach, but Claude has promised to find them
and warn them. They probably want to get rid of Boris, too, seeing as he used them as
well as us."
"Do we know if Barthez or Gideon or any of them are working for him?" Kai
asked gravely.
"That was one of the reasons we tried to get in contact with Miguel," Tala said.
"He was the one who ran Barthez off."
"Who is Barthez?" Kaia asked.
"We have also been in touch with Kane and Salima," Tala continued as if there
had been no interruption. "They know for a fact that Gideon is in jail, no parole. They
made it adamant that they are willing to help in anyway, as have Claude and Aaron."
"It would be good to have them on our side," Gala said providently, a word which
here means "thought long about how good it would be to have people who knew what
these evil men could do on their end of the fight."
"There is one more piece of the puzzle we found," Bryan said. "We found your
dad, Kai."
Everyone was silent, including the twins. After a moment, Kai broke the silence. "You did?"
"Well, we think we found him," Bryan said sorrowfully. "In one of the hotels we
checked into on our travels, we found his name on the check-out list. Here." He handed
Kai a torn and slightly burnt piece of parchment. He read the writing on the small piece
of paper:
Check out: Susumu Hiwatari Time: 7:53 pm
Kai held it for a while, not noticing that his children were staring at him. He
handed the piece of paper back to Bryan, who pocketed it. "We thought you would be
interested," Bryan said to him. "In case you wanted to know how your father was doing
or where he was. We also know that Voltaire is still in jail."
Kai seemed to come out of his silence somewhat abruptly, a word which here
means "jolted at the sound of his treacherous grandfather's name." "That was the next
thing I was going to ask," he said, a statement which was not entirely true. "That would
only make the situation worse."
Kaia took her chance. "Who in the world is Voltaire, or Boris, or whoever yall are
talking about!"
"That would be nice to know," Dakota cut in.
Tala turned to Kai and Gala. "You haven't told them yet?" he asked.
"Nope," Gala said. "Kai wouldn't let me."
"Well, we can tell them now," Kai said. "Well, where should I start?..." Kai said,
more to himself than anyone else. "Voltaire is you guy's great-grandfather, my
grandfather, and he was once president of the abhorrent Biovolt." Kai had used a word
which means "extremely cruel, hated, annoying, and any other word used to describe the
horrible company of which he had been a part of." "It was company used to train kids to
be the best bladers in the world."
"Doesn't sound so bad to me," Kaia said innocently.
"But it was," Tala said. "In that place, kids died trying to get to the top, to be the
best. We know." He nodded to his companions. "It was run by Boris and Voltaire, but
Voltaire was put in jail when your father was 14. Boris came back 2 years later, trying to
recruit bladers again, only in a company called 'BEGA," trying to make blading a
professional sport. It didn't work, thanks to Kai and Tyson."
"And everybody else," Kai pointed out. "If it wasn't for them, we wouldn't have
won."
"But what did Voltaire do to get in jail?" Dakota asked.
Spencer counted on his fingers. "Several counts of theft, 2 of child endangerment,
4 on fraud, and 1 on kidnapping. That it?" He looked up at Kai.
"I guess," he said. "I lost count after 3. He did to some pretty horrible stuff though,
some the court doesn't even know about."
"That last one," Dakota said thoughtfully. "Who did he kidnap?"
Kai hesitated a moment, wondering whether to answer his son's question, or if to
just blow it off. Whatever he was thinking, Dakota found his father's look unfathomable.
Finally, Kai spoke in a disconsolate voice, a word which here means "he was very sad to
have to relive the memory, or to have to tell his son." "He kidnapped…me."
Dakota and Kaia gasped, shocked at this piece of information they had never been
told. Why had there father never told them this? "Why?" Kaia asked Kai.
"Because he was very angry at my father," he said, trying to remember, for the
memory had been expunged long ago. "He wouldn't work for my grandfather's company,
so he got fired. When he left, he left me. My grandfather didn't really sign anything to be
my legal guardian, so technically he was kidnapping me. My mom didn't want me for
some reason. I believe her exact words were, 'He looks too much like his father to keep
him.' I was only 6 or 7, I don't remember."
"So that's why we don't ever see our grandparents?" Kaia asked curiously.
"Well, that and the fact that I cannot find them. Besides, even if I did find them, I
have no intention of talking to them." He changed subject. "Is that all you have?" he
asked the forgotten Blitzkrieg Boys.
"No, just one more thing," Tala said. "We know that Boris is definitely going
after young recruits. More specifically, yours and the other Bladebreakers' children."
It was Gala's turn to gasp. This was what she had been afraid of…So Kai had
been right…
"Are you serious?" She asked him, looking at him as though if asking this
question would make the fact untrue.
"I'm afraid I have never been more serious than I am right now," Tala said
darkly. "He will not stop until he has gotten every single one."
"Kaia, Dakota," Kai said. "I want you to go finish washing the Hummer. When
you get done, Dakota, I want you to drive it back into the garage, understand?" His look
told the twins that he meant serious business.
"Yes sir," they said, and they went outside.
When they left, Kai sat back onto the chair he had just left, and he ran his fingers
through his hair tiredly. "What is the best plan of action?" he inquired. "What do we do
to keep them safe?"
Tala, Bryan, and Spencer looked at each other, and then looked back at Kai and
Gala. Finally, Bryan said, "Their best bet is to go into hiding. Boris will use any means to
get what he wants. That means he will kill if necessary. They must live with someone that
Boris would never suspect. This is one of the reasons we have been traveling. To find all
7 of them a place to stay. We think we found one for the twins." Bryan pointed to the
map, indicating a spot where a green star had been placed. "Right there."
"Where is that?" Gala asked.
"With me," said a deep voice.
Kai looked up. In the door way was a man, a man who looked extremely like
Kai…
"It's been a while hasn't it, Kai?" the man asked.
Kai hesitated, then said scornfully, "It has, and I wanted it to stay that way…
Father."