Hey guys - I don't know about anyone else, but I really liked the character of Mac in KotCS. Really liked. And considering that apparently he had known Indy for a while - why not write an adventure for them? Obviously I am going to get things wrong throughout the course of this story - at the moment I don't think anything is wrong time line wise, but if there's something wrong with it, please tell me!
So, this is a prequel to KotCS - so naturally won't have any spoilers in it I don't think besides the character of Mac ;D I was stuck for a location for this first bit, so I went for Ceylon - you know, from the video game Emporer's Tomb? Maybe I'll throw in a little reference later on or something! I'm not a big fan of OCs, but I've had to come up with a couple for this - I hope they aren't too shallow - I'll give them a chance to develop later on in the story! Anyway - I'm gonna shuttup now xD
No characters are mine besides the incidental ones I made up to move the story along. I hope it's okay - I'm not too experienced in the writing business! Forgive any typing errors D:
Indiana Jones and the Eye of Time
"You move, you die."
Dust rose as Mac's boot slid forward of its own accord. He blinked and turned his head as a man ascending the creaking boards to the gallows faced the crowd below him. The grimace he wore was nothing compared to the size his eyes had widened to. His usually tamed hair had fallen across his brow and was plastered there, the strands akin to the spindly, curled legs of a dead spider.
He had been leaning forward with his palms pressed against a moss covered wall, the foliage that sprouted from the stone concealing a substantial amount of intricate and detailed carving below. He had held his head as far as he dared to the stone, a newly discovered crack in the wall wide enough to permit him to keep an eye on the goings on beyond.
Now, however, the bark of the order, containing a word he really disliked, had caught his attention and all interest in the activity behind the wall was lost. His foot slipped but he retained his balance, turning to look over his shoulder with a distinctly worried look on his face.
The figure he stared towards was a confidently poised character, his face shadowed by the brim of a hat, but despite that, George McHale knew that the expression on his face was not a vicious or threatening one, but one of deep concern. His hand was outstretched, but Mac's eyes flicked toward the other hand, which was reaching steadily for a revolver nestled in its holster.
In a panic, Mac spun around, nervous, bird-like movements giving away his momentary distress. He was not a subtle man. When his eyes fell on a slim, scaly something he suppressed a yelp and staggered backwards, tripping on a single step worn by weather. Landing on his back and feeling his shoulder connect with a sharp object that simply happened to be there to catch his fall; Mac ignored the flash of pain and got to his feet rapidly.
After a second or two of heavy breathing, he narrowed his eyes dubiously and stepped forward. He snatched the slim scaly something from where it was resting, and tugged on it. Its roots prevented it coming completely from the wall.
Mac turned around and glared at the man with the brim of his hat pulled low over his face. "And I thought you were good at what you did!" he said with an eyebrow dangerously close to his hairline.
"How was I supposed to know it wasn't deadly?" came the cool reply.
"Deadly?!" Mac retorted, pausing briefly to remind himself to keep his voice low, "Deadly? I don't think a plant can give me anything more than a nasty bought of hay fever!" Mac replied, dropping the forlorn-looking vine with a slap.
"Fine – the next time you find yourself subject to poison ivy, don't come cryin' to me."
"Don't you worry, Jonesy, I bloody well won't. I know how to keep things to myself, unlike Indiana 'Jesus Christ it's a snake – actually no it just looks a bit like one' Jones!"
Indiana Jones smirked at his British companion's tone. He watched idly as Mac returned to where he had been standing, making a point of stamping the vine into green mush upon the slabs as he went, and continued to peer through the gap in the stonework, a dark mood settling upon him.
"What's going on?" Indy asked after an awkward silence, approaching Mac and standing beside him.
"Ah, nothing at all. Just carrying on what they were doing yesterday. Two on the left stop and have a natter every half hour before that swaggering bastard comes along to give 'em a good kick up the 'arris. Besides the yammering and the noise, I'd say they're a pretty boring bunch really. They don't have a clue what they're doing, which is pretty high standards for grunts like them. Clever ones stay stupid, right?" Mac replied, his voice brighter as he indicated the various players in the game laid out before him.
"Right – because the stupid ones get caught."
Mac felt more than one set of eyes boring into him and turned about on his heel, his hands already up in surrender and his eyebrows meeting in a frown, yet his expression remained vaguely amused.
"Ha, ha, very nice." Mac observed when he caught the glint of guns being held before snarling faces. A tall individual with thin blonde hair and a nasty scar racing down his right cheek brushed aside the four static men standing in front of Indiana Jones and his counterpart. He held his head away at an angle, as if he was royalty forced to visit the lowest of the low.
"You disgusting creatures. How dare you sneak around our operations?" he hissed, his accent thick and nearly obscuring his words. His pale eyes settled on the American, and his lip curled into a grim smile. "Well, if it isn't the famous Indiana Jones. I have heard a lot about you, nothing positive I'm afraid, you know how it is." His opinion on the situation had apparently altered upon noting the presence of the American adventurer. He stepped forward and with the flick of his wrist the flanking soldiers lowered their weapons.
"What tipped you off?" Indy asked, curious as to how they had been discovered.
"Someone heard one of you stumble. Apparently it was incredibly noisy." The officer replied with a wry smile. Indy shot Mac a dark look but said nothing. Mac tilted his eyes up to the sky, suddenly extremely interested in it.
"What an honour it is to have you with us on this glorious Ceylon day. You shall be our guest tonight, and tomorrow you can join us on our little expedition into the ruins." The officer said, clapping his palms together and looking about him.
"Somehow, 'guest' doesn't strike me as a particularly good thing to be." Indy replied, his voice indifferent and his expression stern.
"It is better to be a guest than dead. Please." The taller man insisted, waving Indy forward. Mac, a little envious of his friend's 'popularity', hung behind, and waited for the officer to extend his greetings in a similar fashion. That was not the case, as Mac felt the barrel of a gun press itself into the small of his back. He didn't need to glance over his shoulder to tell a solider had slipped in unnoticed behind him.
The pair was escorted from the steps and the wall through the exterior ruins. The stone was gleaming bronze, gloriously highlighted in its resting places. A column lay here, a pillar there, some leaning against the structures they once supported, and some lying across the clearing, nestled in the dirt and emerald grass, never to stand again. Yellow birds fluttered to and fro like petals on the wind, settling and preening their bright feathers on the foliage that had emerged through the orifices of the buildings. Their twittering rose into the air, but even their harmonies could not lighten or lift the atmosphere that had descended like a blanket of mist over the travellers. A crude camp loomed ever closer as they walked. Crates and boxes littered the landscape; workers forcing them open with splintering cracks and heaving out yet more boxes from within. Stained and slightly ragged tents suddenly enveloped them, choking the humid air from their lungs.
"Oi, Jonesy." Mac whispered, but Indy appeared not have heard. "Jonesy!" he tried again, this time a little louder. Indy shook his head slightly in response and Mac fell silent, but not before rolling his eyes.
Indy and Mac were roughly shouldered into one of the larger tents and the scarred officer stood before them as his lackeys melted away. A figure shrouded in darkness behind him caught Indy's eye, but it disappeared the moment he looked up. Patches of shadow dotted the ground, cast by the canopy of trees above the roof, black islands in a muddy sea.
"Jonesy. What d'you reckon they're up to? I thought they were just shifting boxes around and excavating and stuff. Looks like a full blown operation t'me--"
"You do not talk," the officer suddenly snapped, turning on the American now and folding his hands behind his back. "What year is it?" he asked abruptly, raising an eyebrow as he waited for a reply.
"1942…" Indy said, his voice slow and puzzled.
"Very good. Do you know what will happen next year? For certain?" the officer shot back.
"Besides shaving every morning? Probably not." Indy replied with a shrug. Mac grinned inwardly, because grinning outwardly might land him into trouble.
"You cannot be absolutely certain what tomorrow will bring, even if you have a regime, Doctor Jones. You might find yourself unexpectedly changing it due to an event or another. What if you could see what is about to happen, before it does, and therefore change something in future history? Imagine what we could achieve knowing what was coming next…"
"Is this goin' anywhere 'cause last time I checked, guests need a good meal and a kindly reception. At the moment, I'm getting none of either." Mac interjected with a sly smile.
The officer tilted his head at him as if he hadn't seen the man before and he had materialised in that sudden moment. He stepped toward him and rubbed his chin, analysing him like a critic scrutinised an imperfect painting. "You are very funny, Englishman. Do you use your humour to cover your intelligence or simply to cover the fact you have no intelligence at all?"
"You tell me." Mac said darkly, challengingly. The scarred officer pulled back, the smug grin on his face not as wide as it had been a moment before. He turned to Indy once more, a look of vague interest now crossing his features. "Doctor Jones, we have discovered somewhere, here, is a priceless find. One that would turn even your usually tanned face green with envy." The officer continued, pride obviously swelling beneath his barrel chest.
"Wait for it…" Mac muttered to himself.
"But, we have one problem. We haven't uncovered it yet. It is buried beneath stone and fire. We are going to blast the entrance tomorrow at dawn – but who better to lead the expedition than the fabled archaeologist himself? I was looking for someone with enough…experience… to go first. Maybe you will let your friend here go before you and assure that you get all the way to what we are looking for, hmm? We cannot have you killed after your first step."
"What exactly is it I'm looking for?" Indy asked bluntly, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.
"That would be telling." The officer scolded, looking beyond Indy to the tent's opening. "Dark is falling, I suggest you get a good night's sleep before your early wake up tomorrow morning. Remove their weapons." He clicked his fingers, pointed to the pair and they were promptly forced from the tent. Indy watched the ground as it moved past him as he walked. He ran over the facts in his mind, flipping them over like cards on a table. The scarred officer was either a Nazi or worked for them, probably the latter, as his accent wasn't quite German, but who could tell in these trying times. They had somehow discovered something hidden within the ruins, but hadn't quite found their fingers touching it yet. How did they know it was here? Did they have a map, or had they stumbled upon something else that pointed them in the right direction? What was all that about knowing what came tomorrow, today? He had a suspicion even before arriving that he was going to find himself in some sort of peril, and here he was, feeling his wrists being bound by wiry old rope and his revolver, holster, whip and satchel almost ripped from him.
Mac, meanwhile, was succeeding in making his imprisonment as difficult as possible for the man assigned with tying him up. His hands had 'slipped' through the bonds twice before the other had managed to tie a knot tight enough to hold him. Once both of the intruders were tied to a satisfactory degree, they were tied back to back, with a pole that supported one of the larger storage tents between them. Besides the splinters wriggling their way into their hands from their home in the deteriorating wood and the thick rope holding their shoulders back, at least they were far away from the melee and noise of the main dig site. The night before, neither of them had been graced with a moment's sleep.
"Well…" Mac began after they had spent several minutes in silence, "At least we're not dead." If Indy could have seen his weak attempt at a smile, he would have felt, if anything, a lot worse.
The setting sun was an orange orb, sending brush strokes of red and yellow streaking and arching across the darkening sky. The trees were glowing gold and even the artificial elements of the clearing were bathed in warm colour, tints of pink sliding down the tent's steep roofs and down to meet the crates and boxes gathered at their sides, casting long black shadows behind them. There was an eruption of flapping and a flock of quiet birds called in the distance. Mac must have been feeling impatient, as Indy could hear him shifting and occasionally clouds of dust cascaded around them, confirming Mac's squirming to be a little on the desperate side.
Indy lowered his gaze to the floor. He felt his stomach sink as he saw something slither toward him, cutting a path through the leaf litter. It was the width of a finger but the length of an arm, and even in the dimming light, Indy could see coloured bands hugging it. It careered forward as if it was swimming across the ground, until it reached his foot. Frozen in terror, Indy could only stare at it, his only comfort tied up behind him in the form of the roguish, thirty-something Mac.
"Red and yellow, kill a fellow, Doctor Jones."
The voice was deep, feminine, with a distinctly clipped English accent, yet the fact that she had lowered her voice and spoke barely above a whisper intrigued him. She was one of them, so therefore shouldn't be afraid to flaunt her authority. She stepped forward, and Indy gave her a quick observation, the same way he observed a patterned floor in a trap-ridden temple before taking a step forward. She was very ordinary. Not pretty, not plain. Her hair was tied back due to the heat, but strands had escaped their hold and had fallen down beside her ears. She was possibly early thirties, late twenties at least. She was nothing special, but somehow that made her so.
"What do you want?" Indy voiced his thoughts, watching her as she scooped up the snake and let it wrap its coils around her arm.
"I want you to wish us good luck tomorrow." She said innocently, placing herself so that both men could see her. Mac's expression was less accusing than Indiana's, naturally.
"I wish you good luck tomorrow in searching for your men – they'll be very difficult to find in there, especially the ones that aren't in one piece." Indy replied calmly, an undertone of threat escaping him.
"I thought you were an academic, Doctor Jones. Surely you can take apart my sentence and deduct whom I am talking about. Good night, because it won't be a good morning." And with that, she turned about. A flicker of a snake tail later and she was gone.
Indy ignored Mac's questioning and thought about what she had said to himself. When he reached a conclusion, he laughed just a little. "She didn't mean 'us' as in them, she meant 'us' as in we."
"You mean, as in, we three? That kind of us?" Mac asked.
"Yes."
There was a pause while Mac let things tick over in his mind before he came to his own conclusion. A grin flourished across his face.
"I ain't got no objection to that. Bring on tomorrow!"
...
End of chapter 1! I promise the next will be more action packed - and I hope Mac's British dialect isn't too difficult to understand xD