So sorry everyone, but my excuse is legit this time. My computer is MESSED UP. Not even kidding. I couldn't access a single web page. Unfortunately for me, that also means I couldn't update. This was posted covertly (and illegally) at school. For that, all I can say is that the formatting is still entirely screwed up, and I can't give responses this week, but I thank everyone for reviewing, including the new reviewers. Thanks for your patience and understanding w/ this stupid Quick Edit crap and my wonky computer.
It worked.
Like most crazy and irrationally brilliant ideas, it worked.
Because, of course, it was originally thought up by the craziest, most irrationally brilliant pirate ever to roam the Etherium.
Captain Flint always sent his pirates into the most unlikely battles, they attacked at the most unlikely times, they stole from the most unusual people. Outnumbered or outweaponed nine times out of ten, they still managed to win.
Flint used surprise. He used the shocking.
He used genius.
That was why he had collected so much treasure over the years, why no one could find it.
Until now, as a ragtag group of sailors and pirates stood staring through the enormous portal at the door that would take them to the product of a bewildered and ingenious mind: Flint's Trove. The door opened up for the first time in 100 years.
Jim stuck his arm through the glowing translucent screen of the door, the portal flickering gold and green where it made contact with skin or sleeve. Trusting the safety, Jim pushed through, sending darts of alien symbols, of alien code across the divider. Jim started to smile, but a grip on his shoulder stopped it.
John Silver's mechanical hand roughly clamped him as he thrust into the room. The eagerness was smoldering behind both Silver's eyes as he examined the room- vast, incredibly vast, indescribably vast. So great, several of the largest treasure ships from Galleona could comfortably fit inside, with room to spare. Of course, this was no surprise as it was the center of a planet, but it's difficult to imagine just how small you are unless you are standing inside one.
Once Skye and the other pirates had moved through, they walked towards the edge of a ridge ahead.
No one saw the tiny red beam that had been tripped upon Silver's entrance.
The group paused at the ridge they'd seen, although "stopped dead still" might be a better way to describe it.
Their first thought was that everything was awfully shiny.
The second thought was that there was no way there could be that much of the shine. It was impossible.
The next thoughts were all jumbled together, consisting mostly of realizing where they were, what was making all that shine, and that putting the two together was entirely logical.
Silver gaped; BEN's jaw dropped. Jim seized Skye's hand and squeezed hard to make sure he wasn't dreaming. The pirates whooped in exhilaration, running off to collect.
It was treasure.
Boatloads upon boatloads.
Mountains upon mountains.
Heaps upon heaps.
Treasure upon treasure upon treasure.
And just when you thought there wasn't any more- there was.
The loot of a thousand worlds.
Silver stepped off on his own, marveling at the sight he saw. Finally...finally.
"A lifetime of searching," he whispered to himself, scooping up a handful of gems and coins, "and at long last- I can touch it!" It was a dream, a wish, finally granted.
Jim saw Silver walk away, and immediately began looking around, surveying the area. Something made him nervous. Maybe it was the way the treasure-covered core, spinning, was kept in place by little more than lasers. Spikes of machinery above the core shot out purple blasts of light and code, interacting with the center of the planet. This unsettled Jim, and he was immensely relieved when he saw a battered old ship crash landed on a pile of treasure not too far away.
"Skye," he whispered, "come on. We're getting out of here and we're not leaving empty-handed."
The two, followed by Morph and BEN, picked their way past the tempting piles until they reached the ship.
"Do you know what's strange?" BEN commented as Skye and Jim lifted him into the treasure filled ship, "I can't tell you how frustrating it is, 'cause there's something that's just nagging at the back of my mind, why this is all familiar-ahh!" He was cut short toppling into the boat, but Skye had seen something else to cause her to drop BEN.
"Captain Flint?" she breathed, incredulous.
"In the flesh!" BEN shivered, righting himself. "Well, s-sort of, except for skin, organs, or any thing that-that resembles flesh. That's not there."
It was true. The unmistakable skeleton of Captain Nathanial Flint grinned wickedly at them from a perverse golden throne, the ancient tattered clothes a limp, mocking shroud.
Jim and Skye moved towards the body, BEN talking on. Creepy though it was, this was THE Captain Flint, a legend to. Gold tooth among fangish ones. Six eye socket slits. A clenched, bony hand.
Wait.
His hand. There was something in the hand.
Jim pried open the grip, breaking fingers off in the attempt to extricate the object. It was copper; sort of a half-moon with colored wires and plugs emerging.
Jim studied it, when everything BEN had been rambling about registered.
"It's so odd," he had said, "I remember there was something horrible Flint didn't want anyone else to know, but- I can't remember what it was! Oh, a mind is a terrible thing to lose!" he wailed.
Skye turned at this. She saw BEN half sobbing in self-pity, but what interested her was the back of his head. Colored wires protruding from a half-moon hole.
Well, she thought, obviously.
"BEN," Jim said, "I think we just found your mind!"
Skye placed her hands on BEN's head to steady him. "Hold still!" she said, positioning him so his back was to Jim.
"Skye! Your hands are so very cold, I-"
He stopped.
Jim had placed the half-moon of copper wiring up against the indentation at the back of BEN's head, and, as though magnetized, the piece had sprung back into place like returning to an old friend.
"Whoa!" BEN said, his head spinning, giving a jerk. His eyes flashed, and he said, simply, "Hello."
"You know, Jimmy, I was just thinking," he said, then stopped, realizing what he had said.
"I was think-...It's all flooding back, all my memories!" he trilled in delight.
"Right up until Flint pulled my memory circuits," he finished, "so I could never tell anyone about his booby trap!"
A loud explosion split the air.
"Speaking of which..." BEN quaked.
Every head turned to see what had made the noise. The metallic prongs that surrounded the treasure center were being riddled with fiery blasts as explosion after explosion rocked the core.
BEN immediately began talking.
"Flint wanted to make sure that nobody could ever steal his treasure, even in death. After collecting for so many years and reaching the end of his life, he rigged this entire planet to blow higher than a Kalepsian kite!"
A laser spike of machinery separated from the rest of the planet's mechanics and drove downward into the core. A loud jingling filled the air as treasure began spilling into the new chasm, and disrupted laser paths streaked the purple energy across more piles of loot, destroying all it touched.
BEN and Morph tugged at Jim's arm, yelling, panicked, "Run, Jimmy! Run for your life!"
Jim's world paused as he decided.
Running was out of the question. Not now, after all this. He was standing on a ship, wasn't he? He was going to get out of here and with loot to spare.
"You go back and help the captain and Doc," Jim commanded BEN sharply, "If I'm not there in 5 minutes, leave without me." Jim dropped to the deck below an outdated navigational panel, immediately tinkering away.
BEN gripped Jim's boot to yank him out, saying, "I am not leaving my buddy Jimmy!"
As Jim slid out from the pull on his leg, two wires that he gripped near his chest crackled and sparked. They threw into relief the cold glint of steel in his eyes that meant only one thing.
Do it.
BEN gulped sheepishly.
"I mean, unless he looks at me like that...bye Jim!"
BEN and Morph leapt over the edge of the boat and raced towards the glowing portal door.
Skye didn't bother to watch them exit. She dropped to the floor next to Jim.
"What do you need, mate?"
Without waiting for an answer she slid under the panel and took over the wiring. Jim instructed as he stood up.
"We need power to these controls, can you do that?"
"You know I can."
"Good." Jim turned his attention to rerouting the directionals and overrides on the navigation of the 100-year-old ship.
He hoped it would work.
If it didn't, they were toast.