⁕JACK⁕
Chapter Fifth:
Almost…
Jack did not act right away, but he had already made up his mind.
Delia would die.
The ghost of Jacque Merridin was alive and strong in him. This world is as vile as the one I left, I just haven’t seen its underbelly yet.
Delia’s night-time escapade had shown him that. It was the smallest sign of something much worse. Jack realized that he had not been put here to observe a world where love reigned, but sent here to ensure that wickedness did not take root. He was put here to rub out and cleanse the buddings of evil.
Delia though, he did not truly want to kill, but he had to. He knew that he could not rest easy until the very first sign of depravity, however slight, had been put to the blade. If he spared her, he feared he would never be able to carry out his purpose.
The first kill would be the hardest, the most bitter, but it would be the medicine, it would be key to open wide the gates.
“Delia,” Jack said from the table, a cup of coffee steaming at hand. “Did you go somewhere? I heard the door open…”
She turned from the kettle and gave him a slightly smile. “I was nearby. An old friend had something to tell me.” She held a hand to her mouth all woman-like and gave a little, exaggerated laugh.
Jack nodded slowly. “Not Ash’s father?”
The smile faded from her mouth. “Ash’s father? Where did that come from?” She eyed him dubiously.
“I’m sorry, I only assumed. Ash mentioned to me that you talk to his father on some nights.”
She glanced away from him slowly. “No, none of that… It was a neighbour if you must know.”
Jack’s eyes glinted. And a liar too…
The Englishman’s heart hardened towards her then, and so did the steel of his resolve.
Delia’s time amongst the living was coming to an end.
When Mrs. Ketchum retired to bed, this time genuine, Jack loitered in the kitchen, looking at the household collection of knives. It occurred to him that he had yet to see blood since his reawakening. His fingers traced through the handles and the metals of the blades until he landed on one that was of a similar size and weight of his most trusted blade from his days in England. He had so aptly named that blade the ‘Smiler’, as many throats had been given smiles from ear to ear with it.
He curled his palm around the blade of the kitchen knife and slowly pulled down on the handle with his other hand.
The sharp sting of his flesh being cut made him want to groan, but as the deep, crimson blood overflew between his fingers and trickled down his arm, he smiled. Here was a colour he knew. In this whole wide world where nothing was familiar, blood had remained blood. Always constant, always red. Always as comforting as an old friend.
He felt at home at last for the first time since his escape from Death.
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He cleaned up the mess and retired to bed.
There was much to prepare.
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Three days had passed, and Jack was ready. It had taken slightly longer to set things in order than he anticipated, but this was a new world, and there were things that had to be considered now that didn’t have to be considered then.
The biggest one, as one might guess… was the Pokémon…
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“Jack, it’s been interesting to have you around and I hope you find the answers you are looking for.” Professor Samuel Oak was shaking his hand.
A few close neighbours and friends of the Ketchum’s had come to bid their farewell to the Englishman. Jack could not but feel slight pity for them. The people of Pallet Town were as saints compared to his English brethren, but God Almighty had judged this world by sending Jack among them, of that, he was sure.
He knew what I was. If He had wanted me start anew, He would have made a change in my heart. He knows what I am…
“Where is Ash?” Jack said as he hoisted the travel bag on his shoulder.
“Aww, you know what he thinks, Jack,” Delia replied. “He doesn’t want to see you go.”
The small gathering of Pallet folk murmured and muttered their agreement, and Jack only offered them a slight smile before making his way up to the lad’s room.
Ash was in his bed, face down and hands grabbing onto the bedding.
“Ashketchum!” Jack called, setting his bag down by the door. The boy had found the name funny, and Jack had used it several times in the last two weeks to get the giggles out of him.
This time, it only made him whine as he grasped at the beddings tighter.
“Ash, I am leaving. I should not like this to be how we part…” Jack put a hand on the boy’s back, but there was no reaction.
“We shall meet again. That I know.”
When Ash still gave no response, Jack tapped his fingers on the child’s back and shifted closer.
“Promise to me that you will remain as pure as you are now. You have a big dream, Ashketchum, and I will be quite disappointed if you fail to reach it… Promise me that no matter what happens, you will remain uncorrupted.”
Ash did not reply, so Jack scratched lightly at his back and stood up. He made his way to the door and picked up his bag when suddenly, Ash screamed out behind him, “BYE!”
Jack turned and watched the lad throw himself face-down to the bed once more. He smiled. “Bye, lad.”
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Jack camped in the outskirts of Pallet Town, waiting for nightfall, but he wasn’t alone. Professor Oak had been so kind as to grant him the Poké Ball containing Weedle after he had announced his leaving some days prior. Though it had been the single greatest gift Jack had ever received, it had been calculated. Expected. He would not have left Pallet Town without it. Had it not been offered, he would have had Ash bring it to him for ‘one last battle’ and left without returning it.
The reason for that was simple… Weedle would play a key role in the killing of Delia.
He wasted little time in releasing the Pokémon from its confines. He wanted to let it loiter about to serve as another pair of eyes in case another wild critter were to happen upon him. He also had time to practice the commands he would use, which gratefully, with a Pokémon’s knack for understanding tongues, Weedle quickly got the gist of what was being asked of it.
“If I’d had you in England, perhaps I would not have been caught.”
The terror he would have wrought in London with a Weedle by his side would have surpassed any of his previous works. Its String Shot was strong enough to bind grown men, and its Poison Sting, though not lethal, could paralyse victims momentarily, and if jabbed multiple times, induce a state of toxic shock that could send people into comas, or so Professor Oak claimed.
The sun was gliding through the sky and Jack remained as inconspicuous as possible, settling himself amongst uninhabited bushes until the light of day had waned enough that someone would not be able to recognize him unless they were close. Once sunset arrived, he put Weedle in the ball and circled back around Pallet Town, laying low some few hundred yards away from the Ketchum household.
He would wait until Ash went to bed.
He would do so not because the lad might alert someone (the killing would not take long), but because the lad might very well thwart him. Perhaps leaving him with the Bulbasaur had been reckless. However, taking it might have been too suspicious once investigations were under way.
When nightfall came and Delia had locked the doors, Jack removed his clothes and put on ones that he had woven out of Weedle’s silk with painstaking effort; rolling the strands along the ground to remove their stickiness and weaving the threads into a hood-mask and a short kilt. They were slightly uncomfortable, but they fit well enough, and he felt unrecognizable.
Jack set off, dressed in webs, with a Poké Ball in one hand and a knife in the other.