I'm so sorry this chapter is a week late. I didn't have access to a computer part of one week and then had to deal with some not-so-fun mental/emotional health stuff last Monday that ground this thing to a halt. But it's here now.
Shout out to Phoebe Miller for being there for me. And to CoffeeTime who was worried about me, too.
Fact #160: Surviving is easier when you must only contend with nature.
Season: 5th Season
Danny peered out at the ocean below. From this height it was an endless blue expanse, spanning from horizon to horizon. No wonder the astronauts called the earth the blue marble. It was almost terrifying to think that dragons could and would fly at this altitude. A ghost tremble went through his currently hidden wings.
"You okay there, bud?"
Steve yelling at him over the thump of the blades despite their headsets brought his mind back inside the helicopter and away from the blue void that was the Pacific Ocean.
"Peachy. You know how much I love flying."
"You're a strange guy, brah," Kono said. "I love flying."
"If this was a fun morning tour around the island, I might feel different, but no," Danny said, hands gesturing in the small space of the cockpit. Between the five members of Five-0 and the pilot, it was a tight fit, which wasn't his favorite type of fit.
"The Governor thought it would be better for Five-0 to handle it instead of HPD," Steve stated.
It didn't make a difference. Danny had heard all the reasons before they left Oahu, and he had gone over them in his mind since they had left in the helicopter. He wasn't looking forward to this case.
Forty minutes later they were on a boat heading towards the island. If Danny disliked being on the helicopter, he disliked the boat more. The reason the helicopter didn't go all the way to their crime scene was because of a storm that had been holding onto the western most islands in the chain.
So they put them on a boat. Because obviously it was much safer to ride these swells than to fly in the dangerously gray clouds overhead. Obviously.
As he stood in the cabin of the boat, holding onto whatever he could grab with white knuckles, Danny decided he should have volunteered to be the tech guy back in the safety of the Palace. The weather on Oahu was actually pleasant right now. Not too hot, not super humid, sunny.
Did he get to enjoy the rare mild climate?
No.
No, here he was, standing in the cabin of a boat bouncing over swells, watching an island take shape through the spray on the glass.
"Don't like being out on the waves, I take it?" the captain said, eyes never leaving the rolling ocean between them and the island.
Danny glanced at him and then at Steve who was standing in the aft of the boat in the open air, staring out at the water like a weathered old pirate. Kono and Catherine were outside, too, one to either side of Steve. Chin, on the other hand, was a wise man and was catching a nap in the corner of the cabin.
He looked back at the captain. "I'm more of a solid land kind of guy, you know?"
The captain chuckled. "Not much of an adventure guy, eh?"
"I get enough adventure being a cop, thanks. I'm not going to volunteer myself to be tortured for who knows how long like these guys." Danny gestured to the island.
"Takes a certain kind of person, that's for sure," the captain said. He twisted his head to look out up at the sky. "Hope the weather holds for you. Or you may get an adventure whether you want it or not."
Danny exhaled heavily. Murphy's Law was never that kind to them.
The base camp for the rescue team and the rest of their crew wasn't too far from where the boat dropped them off. There was another boat moored along the short dock and another helicopter sat in an open field next to the small collection of buildings uphill from the shore.
Steve hiked the straps of his gear bag up on his shoulders. The rest of his team were doing the same. Chin was his usual quiet calm self. Kono looked eager. Over four years into the job and she was still the rookie in some ways, from her lack of experience as a beat cop to her enthusiasm for cases. Catherine was much like Steve, approaching this from a military background. Danny was…well, Danny. Underneath all his complaining bluster and flinging hands was the competence and stalwart loyalty Steve had come to rely on.
He turned his head towards the buildings. It was a TV show. Not a drug cartel stash house. They had satellite phones. The Governor knew where they were.
It was more than they'd had with some cases.
Nodding to assure himself it would be fine, but falling back on the fact to never be overconfident, he led his team up the footpath as the other boat backed away from the dock and out of the shallow water. As they gained altitude, he could glance over his shoulder back down at where they had started. The waves were somewhat impeded by a sandbar, but beyond that the ocean roiled dark, shadowed by storm clouds. A cool breeze whipped across his face, bringing with it tiny speckles of rain that caught on his eyelashes.
He looked back up towards their destination. A man was waiting for them outside of one of the buildings.
"Commander McGarrett?" he asked.
Steve shook his hand. "Yes, Sir. This is my team, Detective Williams, Lieutenant Kelly, Officer Kalakaua, and Inspector Rollins."
The man motioned for them to follow him inside out of the rain. "I hate having to call you guys way out here, but I'm glad you're here now. You came highly recommended from the Governor."
The building was a wide open one, maybe at one time having been a garage or something, and was currently cluttered with equipment of various sorts. There were three ATVs parked by the rolling garage doors, several tables with camera equipment, two fridges, a large freezer, a dust void where it appeared another freezer had sat at one time, a handful of generators, and an extensive emergency response kit in one corner, all packed up and ready to go.
Six other people were milling around inside.
"I'm Tom Gardner, by the way. Safety manager for the crew," the man that had met them outside said. He shrugged off his red raincoat and draped it on the coat rack. He started to point at the others. "That's Ned Fleming, producer. Those guys over there are Connor Melton, Lucas Thorne, and Beverly Watt, our onsite medical team. And that's Hassan Huffman and Aden Trejo, our cameramen. Our tech team is next door, Lilah Dolan and Debra Cresswell."
Steve took in each person rapidly, noting down faces and names. None of them stood out as particularly odd. Mostly just tired. Some of them were twitchy with nerves.
"How long have you guys been out here?" Kono asked.
Tom pulled his ballcap off and scratched his head through his thick scruffy mop of black hair. "We did prep work before the contestants arrived, and we rotate out teams after so many weeks. I've been here for sixty-three days. So has Ned. Everyone else switched out at day thirty. They were supposed to switch again on day sixty, but considering what happened, we figured you guys wouldn't want anyone leaving the island."
"Speaking of, what exactly did happen? The Governor was a little light on the details in an effort to keep this whole thing under wraps," Danny said.
Out of the corner of his eye, Steve caught Aden making a cross over his chest and Beverly looked away.
Tom sighed. "I think it's best if you see for yourselves. You can leave your equipment here, if you want."
Hesitant to leave their laptops, cameras, and survival gear unattended in the presence of strangers, Steve started to protest before Catherine cut in.
"It's okay. Chin and I will get set up," she said.
Steve nodded and shrugged his backpack off. He, Danny, and Kono followed Tom back out into the rain to yet another building that sat adjacent to the living quarters Tom pointed out.
The door opened into another garage looking structure, this one smaller than the last. Another man was sitting in a chair towards the back where another large freezer was. It must have been the one that had been in the other building at some point.
"This is Cecil Gutierrez, he's one of my guys," Tom said. "This is the Five-0 team."
Cecil stood up. He put his hand on the freezer lid. "It ain't pretty."
Unfortunately, throughout the years, Steve had become numb to things that weren't pretty. He could stand at a crime scene with a perfectly straight face while younger HPD officers ran outside or turned away in disgust. The blood smeared on the outside of the freezer didn't quite prepare him for what was within.
"Please tell me you guys didn't do that," Danny said, averting his eyes back over to Tom and Cecil.
"Was like that when we found him," Cecil said.
Tom pointedly didn't look at the corpse in the freezer.
Steve continued staring. It was a Drake. Small enough to fit in the freezer with some bending. It helped when there were no organs in the way. A cut ran from chin to tail on his underbelly, the ribs were surgically snapped so the ribcage was splayed open, and all the organs were gone, leaving an empty cavity.
Steve shut the lid.
"What happened?" he questioned through gritted teeth.
"We do med checks on the contestants every so often to make sure they're not losing too much weight or have injuries that need immediate attention. We call them on their emergency sat phones and let them know we're coming that day," Tom explained.
"That way they stay around the camp," Kono added. When Steve and Danny gave her a raised brow, she shrugged. "I've watched the other seasons of the show."
Tom nodded. "Well, it was Malcolm's turn and he never responded to our call, so we went out there immediately. Searched all over the place."
"Finally found him hanging from a tree by his ankles," Cecil said. He wiped a hand down his round, babyish face. "The girls have his camera footage and ours and all the photos at the tech hub."
"How long ago was this?" Steve asked. He had spied maggots frozen in the freezer alongside the body.
"We found him yesterday and brought him back here. We didn't know what else to do so we put him in the freezer. We don't know how long he had been out there yet. Our last contact with him was two weeks ago," Tom said. He looked heavenward. "Didn't take this job to put dragons in freezers."
"Was only a matter of time, though," Cecil muttered.
Steve crossed his arms over his chest and scowled. He needed to get this case under his control. Now. He needed details from the crew and the footage. He also suspected by Cecil's statement that something had happened before this.
Most of all, he needed to craft a plan to track down the killer still on the island.
Kono sat quietly with her elbows on her knees. With rapt attention, she listened to Tom tell them the backstory that had led up to this point.
There had been a lazy day a year or two ago when Adam wasn't around, the waves were chopped up by a storm, and they had no cases. It was the perfect day to watch TV. That's when she had started watching this show. She figured with the life she led that learning a few survival tips could prove to be useful.
Plus, a survival show where all the contestants were dragons surviving out in the wilderness had a hard time failing to be interesting.
"I remember that," she cut in.
Tom glanced at her as did the others.
She sat up straight. "One of the contestants last season had a string of bad luck, everything kept failing. Nets, fire, shelter, snares."
"Yes, that was Hugh Orson. He finally called in and tapped out," Tom said. "And he wasn't the only one that mentioned it felt like he had been sabotaged. There were a few other contestants from that season and the previous season that complained. But when we checked their equipment, everything looked like a natural failure caused by weather or wildlife."
"Then the winner from last season showed us this trap he found," Ned, the producer, said. He was a big man with a graying beard and could have possibly been Jerry Ortiz from the far future. "We didn't put that bit on the air."
"What kind of trap?" Steve asked.
"Some kind of bear trap. Big metals jaws, concealed in the brush," Tom said. "Howard, the guy who found it, said he almost stepped on it. We have the footage of him triggering it with a stick. It would have taken a leg off, dragon or not."
"And so you decided to keep filming, despite the possibility that you had a sabotage who was growing more violent by the season?" Danny questioned, hands flipping out and gesturing between them.
"That's why we brought the show out here, Detective," Ned said flatly. To Kono, he just seemed tired and like he wanted to go home. "It's a remote island that had pretty much one way on and one way off. If someone was sabotaging the show, it would be a lot harder to follow us here."
"And yet," Chin left it hanging.
Tom rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah. Now someone's dead."
A woman darted into the equipment garage with a laptop tucked under one arm. She pushed her hood back and gave a half-heart grin at the team.
"Hi. I'm Lilah. I've got that footage queued up," she said and set the laptop on one of the tables.
The team crowded around to watch.
"Debra and I have gone over most of his footage since they brought him in," Lilah said, tapping at the keyboard. "I think he was being stalked."
Kono crouched by Lilah so she wouldn't have to be squashed between the boys as they leaned in. Catherine crouched on Lilah's other side, seeming to have the same idea.
She didn't realize how much footage was actually recorded compared to what was shown on the show. Most of it was boring. Malcom, being one of the few Drakes to have a stoking chamber, kept his fire burning steadily the majority of the time. There were a few moments where he just sat in the rain and cursed the wet wood.
Lilah sped through a long stretch of nothing until the cameras shifted to night vision.
The green footage showed Malcolm curled up with his sleeping bag on the cot he'd constructed out of various branches. He was wide awake, just staring at the camera.
"I can hear that stupid thing outside my shelter again," he whispered.
Kono and Chin shared a look.
"What was he hearing?" Chin asked.
Lilah ran the footage forward. "He thinks it was a boar."
Danny held a hand out. "He thinks? What was it really?"
"We don't know. Whatever it was didn't activate the trail cam he had set up on the perimeter of his camp," Lilah said. She looked up at them. "Ever. If it was a boar, it probably would've tripped the cam at least once. It was right on the game trail."
"Are boars the only big animals out here?" Danny asked.
Kono rolled her eyes. She had given him crap once about an elusive Hawaiian bear once during their first year as a team. He hadn't been too happy that she had picked on him like the guys at HPD had. Since then, he wasn't sure what lived on the islands and what didn't.
It almost made Kono feel bad. Almost.
"The biggest native animal," Chin answered his question. "Out here? I'd guess the rest would be birds, rats, maybe snakes."
Ned nodded. "The contestants this season are doing a lot of foraging and fishing, or that was the goal at least. I know some of them hoped to hunt down a boar."
"Let's assume that whatever was outside his shelter was whoever set that snare," Steve said. He leaned down to squint at the time stamp on the footage. "Was this the only night this happened?"
"It was off and on after the first week," Lilah said. She heaved a shaking sigh and looked up at them. "The next footage shows him…well…it's his last moments."
Tom gave her the go-ahead.
She pressed play and slunk out of the chair she'd been in.
The footage looked like it was from a body cam mounted on Malcolm's head. It was early morning. The sun pierced through the tree canopy where he was walking. It looked like a trail that had been worn down. Beneath the crunch of underbrush, she could hear Malcolm muttering about going down to the shore to see if his repairs on his gill net had held.
The angle violently changed and a string of curses was clearly picked up by the mic. The body cam must have fallen off in the abrupt moment because it was now looking up at the trees from the ground. At the edge of the screen was Malcolm, flailing like a fish with his ankles caught in a taut wire.
The mic was muffled by leaves and underbrush, so what Malcolm was saying couldn't be heard well. But it sounded like he was talking to someone. Then yelling. Then a wet choke. And then silence.
From the angle of the cam, they couldn't see who was there with him.
Lilah reached over and forwarded the footage clear until nightfall. The silhouette of a rat eclipsed the screen, pink nose and whiskers filling the camera. Small hands rolled the camera over into the dirt, where it saw nothing else.
"That was two days ago." Lilah paused the footage. "There's nothing on any of the other cameras since then."
"How did his camp look when you got there?" Steve asked.
Tom shook his head slowly. "Like nothing was wrong. Nothing was missing. He even still had his emergency sat phone strapped on him when we found him."
"Great. That means our guy did it just for the thrill of killing," Danny said.
As Steve asked more questions about the scene, the footage, and the crew, Kono frowned and pivoted to look around the garage. She had only seen the crew hanging around.
"Malcolm wasn't the last contestant out there, was he?" she asked.
Ned looked at the ground while Tom shook his head.
"No. We've got four others out there."
"What?" Danny's hands stilled. "You found one of your contestants dead, brutally murdered, and you left the others out there? What the hell's the matter with you, huh?"
Ned's face blushed a shade redder than it already was. "This show has survived hurricanes and bears without pulling contestants. If this season doesn't do well, it's going to break us because we had to come so far out of the way."
"And what makes better TV than murder, right?" Danny shot back. He waved a hand towards the door. "I'm sure those contestants' families will be thrilled that you risked their loved ones' lives for ratings."
"They risked their own lives signing up for this show," Ned said. He looked on the verge of getting up out of his chair. "Do you know how many applicants we get every season? They all know the risks of coming out here, they all know they could potentially die."
"But that's from a freak accident or something like that, I'm sure none of them would've signed up if you had said, 'Oh, and by the way, we have a stalker and murderer running around on the island. He may come after you, so stay on your toes. It'll make for great ratings, don't you think?'"
Steve stepped between Danny and Ned, breaking eye contact. It was like diffusing a dog fight. Steve eyed Danny. It was a look that Kono read as 'drop it, it's too late to argue about it'. Danny held up his hands. Then Steve turned to Ned.
"We need the locations of the other contestants. I have a plan."
West side of the island, 4:36pm…
Randal Montgomery grumbled out a mutilated curse that would've made his momma shoved soap in his mouth and would've made his dad chuckle. He sighed and turned to look at the tripod camera set up a couple of feet from his firepit.
"You know, for some reason, of all the things that I thought was going to be difficult on this island, making a fire wasn't necessarily one of them," he told his invisible audience. Or his future audience. In a couple of months, depending on when they all went home, this would air on TV, and people in the comfort of their own homes with their bag of chips could point and laugh at the Amphibian dragon that was tired of being wet all the time.
"The wood's just wet. Everywhere! It doesn't matter where I collect firewood from, it's just soaked," he continued. He continued the back and forth motion of turning the stick on the flat piece of wood, hoping against all the odds, a spark would finally catch.
He grunted. This would be easier as a human without webbed feet, but the on stipulation of the show was that it had to be undertaken completely in dragon form.
"You know, my wife told me to take a flint stick, but no, I decided I needed a Swiss army knife instead as one of my ten items. What I really should've brought was another tarp. But I didn't know which side of the island I was going to be stuck on. I was hoping the leeward side, but nope, I'm getting drenched on the windward."
A twig cracked off to the side.
Randal jerked his head up. The pale aqua fins on either side of his jaw fanned out.
He dropped his fire-starting stuff when he glimpsed a body moving through the trees toward him. He patted down the band around his foreleg, making sure the emergency sat phone was still holstered there and he hadn't missed a call from the med team. Though, they usually came from the southwest by water, not from the east through the trees.
"Who's there?" he called out.
"Randal Montgomery?"
He frowned. "Yeah?"
"I'm Lieutenant Commander Steve McGarrett with the Five-0 Taskforce," the man said, still walking on the thin boar trail toward his camp. "We have a situation."
North side of the island, 5:02pm…
"You've gotta be flippin' joking me, man. Are they making us come in? Because I'm not leaving."
Danny silently cursed Steve for sticking him with the young gun with a loudmouth. Of course, they didn't know much about any of them other than a name and location, but he still blamed Steve for assigning him this particular guy.
He was a Drake with terracotta scales with flecks of sage green and a dark puce stripe running from nose to tail. He was short, probably no taller than four feet, and reminded Danny of Eric with his long, gaunt build. Except Jacque Sheppard's gauntness wasn't from genetics, it was from surviving out in the wilderness for sixty days on nothing but what he could catch with his bare claws or with whatever contraption he could set up.
"No, unfortunately, they're not making you go in, though why you'd want to continue to live out here with no food is beyond me," Danny said, hands gesturing wildly between him and the dragon.
They were both sitting at Jacque's camp, Jacque on the bamboo platform he'd constructed to keep himself and his firewood off the damp ground, and Danny on a stump. It wasn't raining currently, but by the looks of the gray clouds that could be glimpsed between the trees, it might start any time.
Danny cursed his partner's half-baked plan. Again.
"You sure this isn't going to interfere with my chances of winning? I'm not going to get disqualified because someone else was out here with me?" Jacque questioned. "Because I haven't survived sixty days on coconuts, crabs, and fish just for some cop to ruin it all for me."
"You know, people pay good money to eat coconut crusted crab and fish filets," Danny said.
Jacque barked out a laugh. "And they get wine with it while I get boiled water that tastes vaguely like dirt."
"Hey, buddy, you're the one that signed up to push yourself to the limits and live in a hut on a miserable island for who knows how long." Danny pointed at him.
Jacque glared at him. "What would you do for five hundred thousand dollars?"
Danny spluttered. "Excuse me? That's how much you get for staying out here longer than everyone else?"
"If you stay out here longer than one hundred days you get a million. I want to be that guy," Jacque said with a cocky, toothy grin.
"The boogeyman might get you before then. That's why I'm here," Danny said.
He and Jacque stared at each other over the crackling fire. It was going to be a long night.
East side of the island, 5:25pm…
Chin allowed himself an amused smile as he watched the dragon scurry around her campsite. Robin Hunt had been surprised at first when he had showed up. She had just been coming up from the shore with a stringer of fish draped over her neck.
Now she was clearing out a place for him to sit with her while she cooked her dinner.
"Well, it's not the Four Seasons, but it's dry," she said.
Chin sat on the stump she had dragged out of her shelter. He nodded to the fish she was busily propping up on sticks directly in the path of the smoke rising from the fire.
"Seems like you're doing pretty well for yourself."
She frowned. "The first two weeks were rough. Things kept happening to my lines and gill net."
His face hardened. Maybe they were problems caused by the weather or user error. Maybe not.
"Fortunately, I didn't put all my eggs in one basket. The foraging is actually quite good in this area. I've pulled in coconuts, breadfruit, and mangos. I found a mountain apple tree, but it didn't have any fruit on it. And, of course, if you turn over a rock down at the beach, fifty quarter-sized crabs run everywhere."
Chin laughed. "We used to catch those as kids."
"You put enough of them in boiling water, you can pretend you're at a five-star restaurant eating crab cakes," she said. She reached into a basket woven from strangler vines. "Mango?"
"No. I don't want to take your food. You're the one that's been living out here for two months," he said.
She insisted, placing the perfectly ripe fruit into his hand. "These ones are going to go bad on me."
She glanced at the tripod set so it would record everything going on at the fire.
"Don't tell anyone, but I'm probably the only person on this show that has had an overabundance of food," she whispered. She sat back and started to scrape the meat out of half of a coconut with her hook claw.
She was an Arboreal/Amphibian like Steve, but smaller. Chin felt she leaned more towards Arboreal than Amphibian, the only Amphibian qualities being the shiny fish-like scales and partially webbed feet. Her scales were various shades of gray-green from a rosemary underbelly to an evergreen down her back. Pinecone brown and cream rosettes dotted her shoulders and faded out down the rest of her.
She also wore a leather strapped necklace around her slender neck with three little charms on it.
"So," Chin started, using his knife to slice into the sweet golden mango. "What made you want to come out here?"
"I want my kids to see that they shouldn't be afraid to try something," she said and lightly touched her necklace.
She shot another glance at the camera.
"You know, I don't think it's a dragon that killed the other guy," she said under her breath.
Chin paused. "What makes you say that?"
"After those first two weeks I finally swam my gill net out where even during low tide you had to swim to reach it," she said. "The problems stopped. The lines quit snapping, the anchors quit uprooting, I'm catching fish in it now. Another dragon would probably be able to swim out to it, but a human would have to be either very desperate or very stupid."
"At least it was only your net that was sabotaged," Chin said.
Robin nodded and touched her necklace again.
South side of the island, 6:01pm…
Kono resisted the urge to pull her gun on Adrien Hamilton and then call the emergency team to let them know he was tapping out. She had pretty much tuned him out ten minutes into getting to know him. Though he was a well built Drake with powerful shoulders and sturdy legs, with gleaming rusty red and tan scales, she knew she could take him. Maybe his chauvinism wouldn't let him hit a girl.
He reminded her of some of the guys at the Academy when she was training to be an officer. The kind that still believed being a cop was a man's job. This guy was still ranting and raving that they had let a woman come out here to protect him.
She thought he was going to have an aneurism when she reminded him that there had been three women at the start of this season.
"Well, how many people are left?" he questioned, still pacing a rut on the other side of his firepit.
They weren't supposed to tell him, but she couldn't help rubbing his nose in it.
"Three others. And one's a woman."
She would never again take Danny's ranting for granted after witnessing Adrien's reaction to that. At least Danny was entertaining and not a pig. This guy was just annoying. How he had a wife was beyond her.
"…can't believe they let a scrawny woman armed with nothing more than a pea shooter come out into this rainforest all by herself with the idea that she's going to protect me. I'm going to have to take care of you, now, and it was already hard enough by myself…"
She checked the safety on her sidearm and then released the butt of the gun with a grunt. Curse Steve for sticking her with him.
West side of the island, 8:12pm…
Steve smirked as he dug into the passionfruit with his knife. "I know what you mean, Sir."
Randal was a great guy. He had been in the Navy like him but had papered out a couple of years ago. Now he was officially retired and losing his mind. Steve could tell that he was glad to have someone out there to share his thoughts with.
"I'm sure you do, Commander," Randal said. "When it comes down to starving or eating a grub, you eat the grub."
Steve tapped the sweet fruit with the edge of his knife. "You're doing a lot better than grubs."
"Hell, if it didn't rain so much, it'd be paradise here," Randal said. His assortment of light turquoises and blues glittered in the light of the fire.
Steve was impressed with his shelter that he'd managed to construct with mostly found materials. What had started off as a simple lean-to was now a fully enclosed cabin. He had a tarp propped up off the front of the cabin like an awning to keep his firepit from getting soaked in what he had said was a near-constant rain.
"Like, dang, I knew that Hawaii got a lot of rain, but this is ridiculous," Randal said.
"It's beautiful back on Oahu," Steve said, finishing off the passionfruit he'd been given.
"Of course it is."
Darkness had already fallen with the help of the heavy cloud cover, the only light provided by the glowing fire Randal had finally managed to get going. It had taken all of Steve's willpower to not intervene and lend a hand.
The trees off to the side rustled.
Randal eyed Steve and then stood up. He strapped on his body cam and his headlamp.
"Where are you going?" Steve questioned.
"Gotta go check my trap. You may have power bars in your backpack, but I do not."
Steve wiped his knife blade off on his pants and sheathed it. He shrugged on his rain jacket, checked his gun, flicked on his flashlight, and followed Randal out into the trees away from the flickering light of the fire.
North side of the island, 8:10pm…
"Look, I'm not the enemy here, kid," Danny said. He brushed his hand over his damp hair.
"No, you're just the guy who's intruding on my chances of winning a million dollars," Jacque said.
Danny waved a hand around at the quiet and serene surroundings, surroundings that were all-consuming in their loneliness and emptiness, so much so that it was almost claustrophobic in a strange reverse of what Danny was used to associating with claustrophobia.
"Can you honestly tell me you're not happy to see another living soul after sixty days?" Danny questioned.
Jacque rubbed his face with his chunky, dirty claws. The deep sigh he heaved reminded Danny of Steve when he was trying to keep himself in control in a tough situation.
"It just gets harder after every med check," Jacque said quietly. "It's like I have to reset all over again."
Danny glanced up at the low throated rumble of thunder. Rain began to pitter-patter on the leaves piled on top of the tarp roof of Jacque's shelter. As far as shelters went, he guessed this one was pretty good. Better than what he could do. If he was left alone out here in the woods, he would just be sitting under a tree miserably, blaming Steve because it would definitely be his fault.
"So, why are you really out here?" Danny asked.
Jacque grunted. He was just a vague outline in the dark of the shelter. "I have a kid. A little two year old girl. I grew up super dirt poor, and I want to make sure she has socks without holes in them."
Danny nodded. Now he had some common ground. "I have a daughter. She's twelve. She's the whole light of my life, and I would do anything for her. Her name's Grace."
"Mine's Emily."
A branch snapped outside.
Jacque rustled around and then nearly blinded Danny with his headlamp.
"Hey, watch where you're pointing that thing."
"Sorry." Jacque stood up and peeked out the door of his shelter.
"You're not thinking of going out there, are you?"
Jacque looked back at him. "That sounded like one of my snares. Might have snagged a rat."
Danny grumbled and got to his feet with his gun in his hand. "You sure you don't want to just check it in the morning?"
"Did that once. The other rats had eaten it and it had bugs by morning," Jacque said and slipped out of the shelter.
"Fan-freaking-tastic. Some paradise, Steven. Who wouldn't want to live where it rains all the time, has active volcanoes, cannibalistic rats, and oh, yeah, a psychopathic nutcase on the loose."
He followed him outside.
East side of the island, 8:14pm…
Chin glanced around uneasily. The trail they were on was wet and crowded with plants. It would be all too easy to hide a snare or beartrap in the undergrowth. But Robin had insisted on checking her net one last time before turning in for the night. She was obviously at ease with this environment now, knowing exactly where to put her feet even without a light.
He slipped on a protruding root.
"Whoop, easy there." She caught his elbow.
He found his footing again and tried to get his pounding heart under control. "Thanks. Thought for a moment there that I'd had it."
He had seen the wound on Malcolm's ankles. He knew what kind of snares they had used to try and trap the mutant Wyvern. They would crush a human limb, possibly even severe it clean off.
He'd take muddy knees and scraped up palms from a simple fall over the alternative any day of the week.
Robin seemed to be on the same wavelength as him. She kept her neck craned down so her headlamp illuminated the path in front of her, and she took it slow. Hopefully, they would spot any shiny wire or triggers before it was too late.
"It's quiet," she said offhandedly.
At first, he thought she was referring to his lack of conversation in the last hour while she checked her net and lines, but now that she had mentioned it, he noticed that the rainforest was unusually quiet. He couldn't hear any night birds, only the lap of waves at the foot of the hill they had just scaled. Even the insects seemed suspiciously silent.
South side of the island, 8:20pm…
Kono whipped her head up. Adrien looked up, too.
They had spent most of the evening across the fire from each other. Glaring. She swore that she was this close to getting up and walking back to base camp. He could obviously fend for himself. And if he couldn't, she didn't care.
But she was a cop first and foremost, so she followed orders and stayed. Stayed through the sexist jokes in what she could only guess was his attempt to drive her off. Except she had heard them all during training. And from her cousins. And from being alive in general.
"Sounds like a boar," Adrien said, and got to his feet.
Kono stood up as well, hand on her gun. "Or it could be the killer."
"Do you know how long I've been waiting to kill a boar?" Adrien snapped. "Even if it's not, I'll get him before he gets me."
Kono gritted her teeth and started to follow him out of camp.
"What're you doing? Stay here."
She laughed. "Yeah, fat chance."
Adrien huffed and trotted away through the underbrush.
She wondered if she could tase him.
West side of the island, 8:21pm…
Steve stared at the thin wire in front of him. It was one of Randal's snares. It had managed to catch a rat by the tail. Randal had quickly and efficiently dispatched it with a rock and seemed rather pleased by the catch.
"Didn't think I'd stoop to eating rats," Randal commented as Steve help him reset the snare. "But, when you're starving, meat is meat."
"We had them get into everything no matter where we were," Steve said. He had a fairly hearty distaste for the vermin after being stuck in the trenches with them.
"I hated 'em until my son brought one home from the pet shop. Of all the creatures he could've brought home, I hoped it would've been a snake or a scorpion or something cool like that," Randal said. He placed a fish head in front of the snare. "But I'll be darned if that rat isn't one of the smartest creatures I've ever known. I've had dogs dumber than that thing."
Steve nodded at their handiwork. "Okay. We should get back to camp."
Randal picked up his rat with a nod. "Couldn't agree more, Commander. I'm brave, but not stupid. Well, maybe a little bit stupid if you ask the wife."
East side of the island, 8:25pm…
Chin and Robin sat in the dark in her shelter. The only source of light was provided by the few glowing coals she had brought in from outside.
His teeth vibrated in his skull as a white flash penetrated through the minute gaps in her bamboo walls. The thunder that accompanied it was so loud it was barely even a sound, it was much more like a force of nature that rattled everything from the dainty leaves high above to the pebbles under their feet.
Chin blinked and worked his jaw. His ears rang.
"That was a big one," Robin commented.
"Must have hit a tree nearby," Chin said. Or shouted. He didn't know. He was pretty deaf.
As his hearing returned to normal and the rolling thunder moved further south, he let out a quiet breath of relief. The insects were humming in the trees again. A particularly incessant cricket chirped on the other side of the shelter. The trees calmly whispered with a slow moving breeze.
"Good thing you built a sturdy shelter, sistah," Chin said.
"Hawaiian wind and rain is nothing compared to Canadian wind and rain," Robin chuckled.
South side of the island, 8:28pm…
"Some hunter you are," Kono snorted.
"I would've gotten him if you hadn't scared him off," Adrien growled.
Kono sat back on the stump she had occupied most of the night. They may have to move into his shelter soon if the approaching thunder was anything to go by. She decided she was going to sleep outside, anyway.
Adrien scowled and glowered at the fire. His scales were still caked in mud and leaves from his impromptu wrestling match with the young boar. He had nothing to show for his efforts besides a bloody nose.
Kono had rooted for the boar the whole time.
North side of the island, 8:30pm…
Jacque grumbled under his breath.
Danny flicked the flashlight around. The darkness stood waiting at the edge of his beam, like a hungry predator. It closed in around him as soon as he swept it around to check their other side.
"Are you sure your rat trap is out this far?" Danny asked.
"No," Jacque said. He stopped and swung his head over the stretch of jungle in front of them. "I had it closer to the tent than this."
"Then where is it?"
"Man, I don't know. But we're never going to get warm if we stay out here in the rain much longer." Jacque finally relinquished his search for the snare and started to lead the way back to the camp.
"You can have one of my power bars. I won't tell anyone," Danny said.
Jacque tapped the camera mounted underneath his headlamp. "You just did."
"How about we call it extenuating circumstances, huh?"
Jacque grunted. "If I don't catch something tomorrow I may have to take you up on tha–"
Whooshthicktump!
"Jacque!"
Danny froze to the spot. He directed his flashlight upwards quickly, following the trail of leaves raining down. Jacque's body was illuminated, suspended from the tree.
His stomach turned. It reminded him of the impaled body they had found hanging in the trees last Halloween.
Except this one flexed and arched its back.
"Jacque? Hey, calm down, are you okay?" Danny asked.
He didn't dare move his feet until he knew there weren't more triggers.
"Does it look like I'm okay?" Jacque yelled down at him.
Danny shined the flashlight further up. It glinted on the wire snagged around one of Jacque's ankles. This was not a small game wire. The thick, heavy duty wire was the kind Cassandra's team had used in an attempt to trap the very same mutant Wyvern that had placed the body in the tree last year.
He followed the line of the wire to the high branch it was strung over. It would have to be anchored somewhere, right?
"Looks like titanium alloy. Not going to be able to cut through it with a knife," he said.
"Well, it's cutting through my ankle right now," Jacque said. He craned his neck up to see how he was snared. "This is the biggest freaking snare I've ever seen."
"Okay, survivalist hotshot, how do I get you down before the Grim Reaper shows up?" Danny asked.
"I don't know! It's tied off way up in the tree. I don't even know how they got it set with enough tension to lift a dragon off the ground."
"Hate to break it to you, babe, but you're kind of a scrawny beanpole at the moment," Danny said.
He cast his eyes and the flashlight beam up into the canopy. The line did indeed go high up into the trees and abruptly end. There was no anchor for him to dislodge. And he wasn't a monkey.
Once again cursing his partner for sticking him with Jacque when an Arboreal would've been much more useful in this situation, he scanned the ground around him. Hopefully, the snare had been the only trap on this particular trail.
He had just stepped off the trail into the brush under where Jacque was hanging when he felt a sharp breeze pass overhead.
Thwip!
He whipped the flashlight around while simultaneously ducking. A crossbow bolt stuck out of the tree behind him. A taller man would've taken it to the face.
"Really? A crossbow again?" He brought his gun up and shined the light out into the trees where he thought the arrow had come from. He sidled up behind the tree Jacque was hanging from. "This is Detective Williams with the Five-0 Taskforce. Put down the crossbow and come forward with your arms up."
A second bolt skimmed the bark off the tree next to his shoulder. It might have even torn the fabric of his rain jacket.
He glanced up at Jacque who had gone deathly still.
"Can you swing yourself over to the tree? Try to climb up to a branch or something?" he hissed up at him.
Jacque twitched his tail. He curled upward a few times, then lunged. Danny held his breath as his forefeet scrabbled for purchase on the wire around his ankle. He could tell it was taking whatever reserves of strength Jacque had left after sixty days in the wilderness to haul himself up the wire.
He released his held breath once Jacque had pulled himself on top of a branch and was mostly out of the way of any more bolts.
Just in the nick of time, it seemed. A bolt struck the underside of the branch Jacque was clinging on.
Danny seized his chance to shine the light into the trees again and fire at the camouflaged shape that wasn't quite like the others. A cry of pain told him he had hit something alive and not a stump.
Lightning lit up the sky in a brilliant display. The jungle was bathed in white light that Danny had to squint against. The following clap of thunder drown out any other noises.
As the thunder faded, he was aware of crashing footsteps coming closer. He frantically swept the flashlight to and fro, barely catching sight of the camouflaged man before he plowed into him.
They tumbled through the wet underbrush. He momentarily lost his breath as he landed on his back. Despite that, he brought his knee up and knocked the man off of him. He rolled to the side, dodging the knife that hacked at him, its blade catching the light of his runaway flashlight.
His fingers slid through the mud. He lost more guns this way. It was a wonder someone hadn't questioned why they were constantly requisitioning sidearms. Improvising, he grabbed a handful of mud and slung it at his attacker.
The man cursed unintelligibly and stumbled into the edge of the beam of the flashlight.
Danny shoved off the ground and tackled the man around the waist, folding him over with the surprise and the force. An elbow to the face, a foot to the shin, a knife dangerously close to his shoulder. Fighting in the dark left him guessing where every blow was coming from and where his were landing.
He finally pinpointed where he was at in relative position to the man.
Scales covered his knuckles and he lashed down. Hard.
The body went limp under him except for a low groan.
"When I signed up to be a cop, this isn't what I had in mind," he grumbled as he dug his flexi-cuffs out of his zip pocket on his muddy rain jacket. He rolled the man over and secured his wrists behind him, then checked his pockets for more weapons. "I thought, hey, I'll help make the world a better place. A safer place. Catch some bad guys and throw them in jail. Write a few tickets. I didn't volunteer to wrestle a dragon trapper in the dark, rainy jungle on Nowhere Island all by myself."
"It's actually a rainforest," a voice said from above.
Danny blinked, then remembered it wasn't God correcting him, but rather Jacque still up in the tree.
"You. Shut up. Are you okay? Can you get down?" Danny asked. He wiped the mud off his face onto his sleeve and picked up his flashlight. At least Steve didn't skimp on their equipment. He'd lost more guns than he had broken flashlights.
"Yeah, I think so. I managed to get the snare untangled from my ankle."
Danny spotted Jacque on his way down the tree. Being a Drake and not an Arboreal, it was a less than elegant descent. Jacque hopped over to him, holding his right back leg up off the ground.
"Who is it?" Jacque asked.
Danny bent and rolled the man onto his back. Probably should've done that in the first place. Wouldn't want him drowning in the mud. Not that Danny was currently sympathetic towards him.
He shined the light in the man's face.
"Old man Jenkins," Danny said.
Jacque looked up at him. "What?"
"I don't know who he is. That's who it always was on Scooby-Doo."
"I don't recognize him, either."
Danny combed his wild hair back and dug into his other pocket for the sat phone. "Congrats, Jacque, you survived your encounter with the boogeyman."
Jacque laughed. "If only they gave out money for that."
"Babe, I would be filthy stinking rich if they gave out money for that," Danny said. He held the sat phone up to his ear. "Hey, Steve. Guess who drew the short straw."
Oahu, two days later…
Danny sat at the table in Steve's place, glaring at the torrential downpour outside. The rain had followed them home.
Steve sat down across from him. "You good, bud?"
Danny sighed and leaned back in the chair, one hand dancing around his coffee mug. "I still can't believe people want to live out in the wilderness with nothing but their wits and a tarp. I was done after a couple of hours."
Steve stared outside at the rain. He appeared less perturbed by it than Danny felt.
"It could be fun," Steve said.
"For someone with a screw loose like you, maybe," Danny said. He looked over at him. "The FBI finally come pick up the nutjob?"
Steve nodded. "Apparently, he had a rap sheet full of harassment and assault charges. They're adding murder, attempted murder, and position of illegal traps to the list."
"I can't believe it was just some random stalker that had been following the show around for years," Danny said. He pressed his lips together in a fine line and watched the dark waves roil outside. "I thought it was going to be a crew member."
"Tom."
Danny raised a brow. "Really? Because my money was on Ned."
"Can you imagine Ned being stealthy out there?"
Danny shrugged. "I've seen weirder things. Like Kono. What was up with her when we left?"
Steve cracked a grin. "Apparently, Adrien underestimated her and paid for it. He tapped out the day after we left."
"What'd she do to him?" Danny questioned.
"I don't know. All I got told was that he couldn't take it anymore. Had some sort of a mental breakdown."
"Hmm. Sounds like Kono's becoming proficient in the ways of the Force. Too bad she's going to wind up being a Sith lord if she keeps following you," Danny said.
"Hey. I'm a Jedi."
"I beg to differ. You blow up too many things to be a Jedi.
"Fine. I'm more of a Han Solo than a Luke Skywalker, anyway."
"Nuh uh, you don't get to be Han Solo just because he kissed Carrie Fisher."
Steve sat there silently for a few moments.
"We should go watch Star Wars."
"I'll make the popcorn."
Next time on "Dragons", Grace picks up an instrument and Danny learns something he never knew about his partner.
I know the ending was kinda rushed, but I lost my train of thought and motivation with this chapter, so I tried to finish it out the best I could. And of course, the best kind of finish is some banter.
The next chapter should come out on time. The chapter after that may take me a while to finish. It might get a little large if I can continue it how I want to. If it gets to a monstrous size, I may split it in two and post the parts on separate weeks. But that's still all up in the air for now.
Also, I want to pass on the news that CinderH, one of our fellow readers, lost her husband recently, so hugs to her.
Thank you for reading, reviewing, faving, following, and being patient with me! Lots of love! :)
