Tootles woke up to the sound of flapping, which at first he imagined to be part of his dream. It was only after he realized he was awake that he sat up and looked around. He flew up to one of the holes to the underground house and yelped when the bird flying about smacked him in the face.
It squawked in fear, shedding feathers at it went. Tootles grabbed it, trying to calm it down before it clawed his cherubic face. He found himself staring at none other than Short Tom.
"Short Tom? What are you doing here away from the Jolly Roger?"
"ALERT ALERT ALERT, ALL CLEAR, ABANDON SHIP! CAPTAIN OVERBOARD, CAPTAIN OVERBOARD!"
Tootles shook his head. He wasn't fluent in parrot. "I don't understand you."
The noise quickly roused the other children and Peter.
Peter groaned, rubbing the crust from his eyes. "Tootles, what's all that racket? Some of us are trying to sleep. Hey, what's that noisy old parrot doing here?" He flew over and had a closer look at the panicked parrot. "You should be aboard the Jolly Roger."
"Abandon ship, abandon ship, Captain overboard," Short Tom insisted.
Peter laughed. "Sounds like the pirates are having worse luck than I'd hoped for. Well, Short Tom?"
Short Tom screeched and bit Peter on the nose, causing him to cry out. He smacked the parrot away in self defense.
Peter rubbed his aching nose. "OW! What'd you do that for, you nasty old bird?" He lunged at Short Tom. "I'll pluck your remaining feathers!"
Tinkerbell fluttered down and stopped Peter from laying a further hand on Short Tom. "Stop! He's obviously terrified of something, Peter. Can't you understand that?"
She helped Short Tom rest on the table. His feathers were fluffed out. His single eye rolled around wildly with fear. The bird looked positively shaken and miserable.
"What's wrong, Short Tom?" she asked while she ran her hands along his wing. "You can tell me."
Short Tom let out another screeching wail. "Billy Jukes. Billy Jukes. Get help, Short Tom. Peter Pan. Get help!" he repeated to the best of his ability.
"Looks like your prank worked a little too well, Peter," said Nibs. "Sounds like the pirates are in trouble if they sent out Short Tom to ask for your help!"
"Ha," Peter barked. "Likely a trap. They're angry that I made them look foolish. I'd bet Hook's since discovered the legendary treasure of Neverland is just a dirty old skull with some measly jewels stuck to it." He glared at Short Tom as he flew into the air. "But I'll take the bait anyway because I'm such a good sport. I can't wait to see what Hook has in store for me." He winked.
He flew up and out of the house.
The rest of the Lost Boys looked uncertain. They remained where they were.
Michael ran to John and clung to his leg. "I'm scared, John. Why does Short Tom look like he's seen a ghost? Maybe even something worse than a ghost."
"Let's see what Peter's going to do," said Curly. He didn't get far before he saw Wendy's disapproving look and paused.
Wendy shook her head.
She went to Short Tom and patted him. His small heart was beating rapidly. "I'm not so sure that's a good idea. Something feels very wrong." She picked up the bird and stroked his back. "No amount of simple bad luck could scare poor Short Tom this much."
She turned and gazed at the hole Peter had gone up through.
"I hope Peter doesn't get into more trouble than he can handle."
-x-
Peter made his way to the Jolly Roger, snickering all the while. He slowed to a stop, taking note of the absence of anyone on deck as the sun rose in the horizon.
"Looks like the pirates are hiding today." He flew around to the window of Captain Hook's cabin. "I'll just see myself in. Maybe a few sour notes on Hook's precious harpsichord will bring him out of hiding."
Peter slipped in through the window, lifting the curtain that had been hung where none was hung before. Captain Hook was attempting to improve his decorating skills, no doubt. It didn't do anything for the place, in Peter's opinion. But Peter wasn't exactly fond of frills and fluff like Hook was.
Peter floated through the air as he looked around. The bed hadn't been slept in for very long. It hadn't been made, either. The blankets were strewn across the floor. One was missing. The pillow was resting against the wall. The books on the shelf above Hook's work desk had been knocked onto the floor.
He saw the skull broken in half. Chunks of bone were on the floor. One of the jewels had been pulled free of the eye socket. The rest were firmly in place. From the tools scattered around, Hook had been trying to pry them off the skull when he gave up and shattered it.
"A fine way to treat a treasure," Peter muttered.
He picked up the Cat's-Eye from off the desk. He noticed the dried blood along the wood grain.
"Hook must have cut himself. I bet that's why the skull is smashed. Leave it to Hook to take his anger out in such a way." Peter shrugged. He turned to face the harpsichord. He grinned. "Maybe I can get him to break his own harpsichord to pieces."
Peter slammed his palm down on the keys, creating a cacophony. He did it several more times after no immediate response from an enraged Captain Hook, or any of his mewling lackeys.
"Oh HOOOOOOK," he called, loudly. He tapped a key repeatedly with his pinky finger. "I find it hard to believe the infamous Captain Hook, man of such fabled bad temperament it's known far and wide throughout Neverland, would let that wily rogue Peter Pan molest his prized harpsichord without any repercussions."
Peter's laugh was cut short by an odd noise his keen ears picked up over the sour notes. He listened for a few seconds. It sounded like waves churning beneath the floorboards.
"Are my ears playing tricks or did the Jolly Roger spring a leak?"
Surely it would have started to sink long before that point.
He looked down. He gasped, lifting his feet from the floor.
Black worm-like creatures were slithering up from the floor. Dozens of them, making a sound like rippling water.
"What the," was all Peter could say as he looked down with both awe and revulsion.
"I find it hard to believe that the infamous Peter Pan, boy of such usual caution in the face of his deadest foe, would stumble so easily into a trap," said a voice that resembled Captain Hook's, if he had been dead for a week.
Peter cried out as he felt an iron-grip around his neck.
It quickly closed off his air supply and all he could do was struggle to prevent it from fully closing around his through, crushing his windpipe. His eyes widened as he came face to face with a nightmare.
"H-H-o-o-k?!" he choked out.
Captain Hook's face was chalk-white, eyes sunken into the sockets. The eyes glowed like small embers set deep inside the blackness. He smiled, revealing long fangs that bore traces of red on the tips. His hair had fallen free of the large curls, now hanging down ragged and unkempt along his back and shoulders. The hand that held him was tipped with grey claws where short finger nails had once been.
Peter pried the inhuman grip from his throat and frantically gasped in new air. He foolishly wasted some of it to speak. "Hook! What happened to you? You look like more of a monster than usual!"
The thing that was once Captain Hook leaned his head back and laughed. It was cold and dead sounding, empty, with no human emotion whatsoever. It chilled Peter to the bone.
"It truly was the greatest treasure in all of Neverland," he began, and Peter's eyes held a genuine fear within them. "It has given me something more than any weight of gold or amount of ruby and diamond. It has given me power. The power to easily destroy my foes. Especially my greatest foe, Peter Paaaaaan." He laughed the empty dead laugh again. "I suppose you're no longer my greatest foe any longer, Peter Pan. I can kill you as easily as one would crush a fly between one's palms."
To prove it, he held Peter in his death grip and violently shook him until he screamed for mercy. And to prove he had none to give, Captain Hook smashed him into the wall a few times. Not enough to end his life. But enough to hurt him very much. He smiled blankly as he watched blood trickle down the boy's forehead.
"Hook," Peter moaned in pain, struggling to remain awake.
My fault. This is my fault.
It was the only thought that frantically filled Peter's head.
"I didn't know," he whispered weakly.
"Your curious Lost Boys will come soon when you don't return in a timely manner," Captain Hook continued in an unfeeling monotone. "And the Darlings when they Lost Boys don't come back. Even dear little Tinkerbell." He smiled. "And finally that traitorous Short Tom."
"No," Peter gasped.
"Yessssssssssss."
"NO!" Peter shrieked while Captain Hook laughed his dead laugh. "I WON'T LET YOU HURT THEM!"
He freed the dagger from his boot strap and plunged it into the unfeeling hand around his leg. A black ink that could have once been blood poured from the wound. Captain Hook looked at it, hissing in more annoyance than pain. It was as if he no longer felt any. Peter sawed through the hand, intent on removing the last one from Hook's possession. He didn't get far before Captain Hook released him from the death grasp, dropping him to the floor.
The pirate captain opened his mouth and roared like a feral animal as he pounced on Peter Pan. His extended canine teeth aimed for Peter's neck.
Peter screamed, slicing the dagger at Hook's face. He felt it slice through flesh and nick bone before he scrambled away. The boy took to the air.
Captain Hook hissed again, staring up at Peter with his fiery red eyes deep in pools of black. He raised the hook and swung, but the motion was slow. Peter slipped away, out the window.
He found himself shedding tears of anger and guilt along the way. He flew high above the Jolly Roger.
"I'll set it on fire," he declared. "And then I'll sink it. To the bottom of the sea."
Peter took a deep breath and tried to calm himself.
"Easy, Peter. So I accidentally turned the pirates into a bunch of bloodthirsty monsters. No one will miss them. It's not like I knew the Atrocious Bone had that kind of power!"
He found himself biting his nails. Wendy told him it was a nasty habit, so he tried to stop. Every now and again he caught himself doing it when he was nervous. He let out a groan as he rubbed his bloody forehead. The pain in his head was nothing like the sting of that in his heart.
"Oh, who am I kidding," he confessed. "Yes I did. I should have known it was more than a bad luck charm when that troll Olook panicked the second I showed it to him. He called it the Curse of Eons. Something his grandmother had told him stories about since he was a ugly little troll baby. He said no one was supposed to remove it from the dead tree. Which is exactly what I did."
Peter didn't have any time to feel sorry for himself when a sudden rush of air nearly knocked him out of the sky. He mistook it for a passing bird, until he heard the laughter. His stomach dropped.
"WHAT?"
Peter looked at a dark shape flying toward him. The voice gave it away, as did the mustache. It was Robert Mullins. Only not.
"Peter PAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN," the former pirate roared, flying at Peter with outstretched bat wings and long grey claws tipped on the white fingers wrapped around his cutlass.
Peter yelped as he dodged the cut of Robert Mullins' airborne blade.
"Flying!" was the only thing Peter blurted out in shock. He found words again and repeated: "He's flying!"
In the sunlight, no less.
Peter felt trapped and lost. He felt extremely vulnerable, helpless. It was something he never wanted to feel again. He dropped down toward the Jolly Roger as the winged Robert Mullins circled around for another attack.
"This is madness," Peter Pan said. "I have to stop it, somehow."
There was a scream from below as a winged Billy Jukes, having the same pale skinned and feral appearance of his fellow pirates, along with a reptilian tail sprouting from his backbone, flew up to meet Peter with a knife in his grasp.
"Death to Peter Pan," he hissed, his mouth full of fangs. As with the others, two in particular stuck out, elongated.
Peter kicked him in the face, knocking him briefly out of the sky.
"Get away!"
Peter flew back to the deck of the Jolly Roger and came to a crash landing on it. He rolled to a stop at the feet of the former chef, Cookson.
Cookson grunted and drooled. He had the appearance of a gargoyle, with scaly rock-like skin where his human flesh had once been. His wings were small and useless, obviously too weak to get him into the air at his weight. He had a short, stubby tail with horns sticking out of the tip. He held a large ax.
"I chop you," he growled at the startled boy before bringing the ax down where his head had been.
"This nightmare keeps getting worse," Pan said as he escaped from the monster Cookson only to be confronted by an eerily inhuman Starkey prowling the fo'c's'le.
No longer a gentleman of any sort, he appeared more like a cross between a predatory feline, reptile, and bird of prey. His limbs and neck had been unnaturally lengthened, giving him a strange and frightening appearance. His wings were doubled, feathered instead of webbed. He looked like some kind of griffin of legend as he spread them to make himself appear even larger, letting out a shriek in the enemy's presence.
Peter dodged just as the long claws raked the clothes on his back, tearing through mostly air.
"You're no gentleman anymore," Peter said, flying up to the sails.
He sliced through them with his dagger, watching as they fell, trapping the Starkey-beast momentarily before he tore through them with his claws. The distraction allowed Peter to get far enough away from the Jolly Roger. The monsters saw fit to remain near their ship for the while.
Peter caught his breath.
"I need help," he said pitifully. "Lots of help."
He flew toward the Indian village.