The Beginning
part 1
By Staci "Windsurfer" Faulkenberry
Page 4
"Really?" Kit's eyes were suddenly hopeful. Then, he eyed the pilot suspiciously, "Wait a minute. What exactly are we hauling?"
Baloo shifted uncomfortably. This kid was quick! "Well, it's for the zoo�" he began. Kit put his hands on his hips and stared at him. "Birds," Baloo finally said.
"What kind of birds," Kit asked slowly.
"Well, they're�uh�kind of big�and mean�and smelly," he finished.
Kit's eyes closed briefly. "Not gorilla birds!"
So that was why Baloo wanted him to stay around and help! Gorilla birds were notoriously obnoxious and no one in their right mind would want to be alone with them. Put that together with the fact that gorilla birds didn't like to be caged and you had a recipe for disaster.
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After meeting with the contact mentioned on the job sheet, Baloo and Kit found themselves flying to New Fedora, where they were to pick up half a dozen gorilla birds to bring back to the Cape Suzette Zoo. While enroute, Baloo found Kit to be a more than competent navigator; the boy could read maps and chart courses nearly three times faster than Baloo.
The bear also tried to get more out of Kit about his past, something Kit was not forthcoming about. Baloo couldn't put his finger on exactly what it was, but he felt an instant kinship towards this boy. Besides, it did get a little lonely sometimes, flying milk runs. He was glad to have someone to talk to. Even if that someone got evasive and almost surly when Baloo tried to find out a little bit about his past.
Baloo, himself, was an open book. He'd grown up in Cape Suzette, dropped out of school in the sixth grade, and had spent all his time around the local pilots, learning all he could about flying and airplanes. He freely told Kit anything the boy asked and even gave him a chance to fly the Sea Duck part of the way to New Fedora, which was something he didn't even let Louie, his best friend, do. Baloo sensed, however, that his baby would be safe under Kit's control. The boy seemed to have a natural knack for flying as well as navigating and Baloo was sitting right beside him. What could go wrong?
They made it to New Fedora without incident and picked up their cargo. Baloo shut the six noisy birds in the cargo hold and took his place in the cockpit. The takeoff went smoothly enough.
It was when they were up in the air and halfway back to Cape Suzette that their cargo learned how to open the door that separated the cockpit from the cargo hold. Soon, pilot and navigator were fighting for their lives against the half dozen gorilla birds.
"Arghh! Get 'em outta here!" Baloo screamed. "They're eatin' my plane!"
Kit winced as one of the birds took a few strands of fur off his face.
"Shoo! Go away, you lousy buncha�" Baloo reined in his tongue, remembering he had a set of young ears listening. "Kit, lock these things up in the back, will ya?"
"Why me?" Kit grunted, wrestling with a couple of birds who had decided that his hat made a great toy. "Give me that, you mangy sack of feathers! You're the one who said this was going to be�ouch!�a piece of cake!"
Suddenly, machine gun fire pierced the hull of the plane just over Baloo's head.
"Pirates again?" he muttered. "Man, this day just keeps getting better and better!"
Another round of machinegun fire made Baloo go into a dive.
"What in blue blazes do they want?" he cried. Kit shrugged uncomfortably, swatting at a bird who was trying to eat his chair.
"Well, whatever it is, I've had enough!" Baloo declared. Swatting at a bird and jamming his hat firmly onto his head, he leaned forward, admonishing, "Hang on, Li'l Britches!"
Baloo pushed forward on the stick, sending the Sea Duck into the jungle below them.
Up above them, Karnage snarled his frustrations to his men, "You missed them, you ninnypoops!"
What was that pilot doing? Karnage knew that no one could fly through the Niherian jungle and survive. Was he trying to kill both himself and the boy? He cursed to himself and ordered his men to spread out.
"I want that boy!" he screamed, veering his plane to the left to find a landing spot so that he could go into the jungle on foot and find that boy.
Meanwhile, Kit's thoughts were mainly focussed on survival. Baloo was zooming dangerously low to the ground and narrowly missing trees that were as big around as the Sea Duck. Tightening his seat belt, he gripped the arms of his chair, the gorilla birds and Don Karnage forgotten for the moment.
"Baloo!" he yelled as they dodged around a tree. He was glad he hadn't eaten anything in hours, because he had a feeling that it would be making a reappearance right about now.
Baloo peeled off in a stomach churning turn around a massive root system of one of the trees and Kit felt prompted to say, "I know you're an ace pilot, ok! You don't have to impress me!"
"I'm just saving our skins, kid," Baloo retorted, sweating profusely and leaning over so that his nose was practically touching the windshield.
The plane emerged from the jungle at a breakneck speed and took an immediate nosedive over the cliff. Baloo didn't have time to pull up as the old yellow seaplane bounced off a hummock that jutted out of the small lake and hydroplaned across the water. Baloo cut the engines and managed to bring the plane to a standstill on a sandbar.
He and Kit were silent for a moment as they caught their breaths.
"Your flying is A-plus," Kit said finally, sitting up and looking at Baloo. "But your landings are C-minus!"
Baloo didn't answer. Unbuckling his seatbelt, he bolted out the door, patting the side of the Sea Duck while checking her for damage.
"My poor baby!" he moaned.
Kit looked around for signs of Karnage and his band of air pirates. "I think we lost them," he said finally, breathing a sigh of relief.
"Yeah," Baloo sighed, leaning his head back into the cockpit. "But it don't figure! They've never come after me before, but�"
He stopped. Suddenly, it all came together. The boy! They were after him!
"All right, kid. Talk to me," he said, his voice taking on a little bit of a hard edge. "What's with you and the pirates?"
"What do you care?" snarled Kit, leaping to his feet and jumping out of the plane.
"They're shooting up my plane, son," Baloo informed him
"Your plane, your plane!" Kit exploded. "That's all you care about!"
Turning on his heel, the boy stalked across the sandbar.
"Where do you think you're going?" Baloo shouted after him. "Aw, he'll be back.
"After all, didn't Baloo own the only plane on the island? Muttering to himself, the bear moved back to the cargo hold to get his tools. He wanted to check over the Duck to make sure there were no serious injuries. He stopped short when he saw the empty cargo hold and the dented door, however.
Oh, no! The gorilla birds had escaped! How was he going to pay for the Duck now? Grabbing a length of rope from a hook on the wall, he started off through the jungle, determined to capture those birds.
Kit pushed his way through the underbrush, swinging viciously at it with a stick. He couldn't believe that he'd started to trust that pilot! He was no different from the others; he only cared about one thing, and if Kit didn't have anything to do with that one thing, he might as well have not existed. Well, Kit was better off without him. He didn't need Baloo's plane or his sympathy. He'd survived for years by himself. Kit ducked under a leafy branch, anger making him oblivious to his surroundings.
Don Karnage appeared in front of him unexpectedly, but Kit didn't see him right away. He was too wrapped up in his own thoughts of how yet another person had betrayed him.
"Hello, my mutinous marauder," Karnage's voice broke into his reverie and he looked up to see his former captain standing in front of him, hands on hips and a bloodthirsty leer on his face. "Long time no see, si?"
Kit gasped and turned to make a run for it, but Karnage's longer legs enabled him to easily catch up with Kit
and grab him by the collar.
"You would run away from your beloved captain?" Karnage acted as if he were hurt. "Tsk, tsk. Perhaps before you run away, you would share a little secret with me, yes-no? Where is the box?"
Kit suddenly found himself staring at the business end of Karnage's sword and he gulped.
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