Yumi wiped the sweat from her forehead. She had been working out in the sun for at least two hours now, helping her mom prepare the site they had chosen for the garden. Her mom, as usual, could not make up her mind about where to place it. Most of the two hours had been spent staking out the area, only to take it the stakes out and start all over again.
It was only now that she had started digging. Yumi wondered how she had been convinced to do this. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but now she was seriously regretting it. She pushed the shovel into the soil, and immediately hit something hard beneath the surface. Scooping it away, she looked down to see stone.
"Perfect." Yumi muttered to herself, sarcastically. "Just when we find the right spot, it turns out that there is a boulder right beneath the surface. Go me."
She kept digging anyway. If it wasn't too big, perhaps they could just pull it out. That hope was quickly crushed. The rock was large and flat, just below the surface, and covering the entirety of the garden site. It was far too big to move on her own. But when Yumi had uncovered all of it, she noticed that there was something very curious about it.
There was writing of a sort on the stone. She couldn't understand a word of it, though. It was complete gibberish.
"Hey, mom?" Yumi called out. "Can you come and take a look at this?"
Mrs. Ishiyama came over at her daughter's call, and gave an angry gasp.
"Yumi! I told you to till the soil, not dig a big hole!" She said angrily.
"Mom, that's not the point. Look at this stone. There's some kind of writing on it. I can't understand it."
Mrs. Ishiyama looked at the stone more closely.
"Well, I can't understand it either. Lets just move it out of the way so we can move on."
The two of them each grasped one end of the stone, and with great effort, they were able to move it out off the ground, and they set it on the grass next to the garden site. Yumi turned back to where the stone had been only to discover a gaping hole, stretching sloping down into darkness.
"What? We move that giant rock only to find this stupid hole underneath?" Yumi's mom shouted.
Yumi was thinking. It had definitely been writing on the stone, and now that there was this tunnel here, it looked like the stone had been set there on purpose to cover the entrance. She was startled out of her thoughts when she saw her mom take the shovel and start shoveling dirt back into the hole.
"Wait! Mom! lets see what's inside first!"
"Inside?"
"Uh huh."
Yumi ran back into the house to get a flashlight, then the two of them went down inside. It wasn't long before they were standing in the chamber, the first two living creatures to do so since the time of the dinosaurs. The reactor had long since run out of energy, and the security systems did not react to them. Yumi waved the light around the walls, finding more writing along one of them.
Of course, the thing that really caught her attention was the Grail, sitting on its little stone table, reflecting the light.
"Wow." Yumi said. "What is this place?"
"We need to tell someone about this." Her mom said.
Then next day, a van pulled up to Yumi's house, and a team of five archeologists hopped out, with enough high-tech equipment to, Yumi, guessed, run the space shuttle. At least that's how it seemed to her. They went about busily, setting up lights, staking out the area, taking soil samples, and a host of other things. Yumi watched with interest. All thoughts of the garden were gone now.
"Mr. Della Robia, did you really have to bring your son?" Yumi heard, and turned to see an annoyed archeologist, talking to another one.
"I barely get any time to see him these days, Hector, and now that this has popped up here in France, I wasn't going to say no when he asked. Besides, he says one of his friends lives here."
"Ok, ok, ok. You don't have to explain everything. We've got work to do."
Yumi raised an eyebrow. Mr. Della Robia? It wasn't the same-
"Hi, Yumi. What's up?" Odd said, coming up behind her.
"GAH!" Yumi shouted, startled at the voice. She turned around to see Odd, grinning like a maniac.
"Odd! Don't scare me like that!" Yumi said, angry and relived at the same time.
"Sorry."
"I didn't know your dad was an archeologist. And why are you here?"
"Well, you know. Jeremie and Aelita are working on something Xana related, as usual, Ulrich is chest deep in backed-up homework, and so I've got nothing to do with hang out with my dad. And you, of course."
Odd's dad came up out of the entranceway to the chamber, holding the Grail, looking like he was afraid of dropping it.
"Any idea what that thing is?" Odd said, gesturing at the golden object.
"I haven't the faintest idea. I was hoping these guys could tell us that, but it looks like they don't know either."
"That's a shame."
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Xana was watching the scene also. He always had a few live feeds of what was going on in the real world, and was looking at one right now. There was definitely something unusual going on at the Ishiyama household. All the attention, right now, was centered on the Grail. He sighed a virtual sigh and turned the feed off. There was nothing too interesting about the fuss the humans were making, but he could try to take advantage of the excitement. Quickly, he began to plan his next move.
