NOTICE! I do not own anything in this fanfiction, save for two characters.
Author's note: I suppose I should apologize again. I kinda like to take my time with my fanfiction. Please remember that. Then again, getting no feedback kinda takes the fun out of writing fanfiction. I'll try to see this through though. Please read and review. PLEASE! :(
Soon, Hogarth, GIR, Ren, and Stimpy made it back onto the island. Hogarth and GIR popped up through the back door with map in hand and ran over to a pair of small silhouettes, lying against a rock (in the shadows) that happened to be in the room.
"Chopper!" Hogarth exclaimed with a smile, running over to the silhouettes, "Chopper, wake up! I got the map!" But when he reached his friends, his smile dissipated.
Chopper and Midna were bound and gagged, and obviously struggling to escape.
A large, plump figure loomed out from behind the rock the hostages were leaning against. "Fine work, Hogarth," Jumba growled, snatching the map, "Fine work, indeed."
Hogarth looked around. The other pirates walked out of the shadows. "Thanks for showing us the way in, boy!" Mr. Turnbuckle remarked, grabbing one of Hogarth's arms. Wapol grabbed the other.
"Hey," Ren asked, pulling himself up and out of the door, "What's going--" But then he stopped and his eyes bulged out. The pirates had gone through his stuff! And they wrecked it!
He stared at a pile of broken records, and what looked like shattered bones, all scattered around the inside of the hiding place. "My records! My dinosaur fossils!" he shouted, trembling with rage, "Shattered to pieces!" His eyes twitched involuntarily when he noticed something else: several jars lying open, near Stimpy's litter box. "M-My collection of rare, incurable diseases! Violated!" Ren trembled even more, then...
"AAAAH! You IDIOTS!" Ren screamed, bounding toward Wapol with his sharp teeth bared.
CHOMP!
Wapol shouted in pain. After getting his butt bitten by Ren, he wasn't gonna be sitting down for a while. Another pirate managed to kick the chihuahua into the wall. Ren was stunned for the moment, giving the buckaneers a chance to tie him up.
"What's this sorry waste of fur!?" Salacious asked in his alien tongue, pulling Stimpy out of the back door and holding a knife up to where the cat's neck would've been.
Poor Stimpy was scared out of his skin. "N-Not the face!"
Jumba walked toward Hogarth, smirking and tossing the map to himself. "You are just like myself, Hogarth," the alien captain taunted, "You hate to lose."
Hogarth could only scowl at Jumba.
The alien chuckled and tried to open the map. I say "tried" because he tried to open it with force, trying to twist it in half, but to no avail. "What in the galaxy--" he muttered, then looked at Hogarth.
The boy smirked and shook his head. Jumba was doing it wrong.
Jumba handed the map to Hogarth. "Open it," he ordered.
Hogarth glared at Jumba for a few seconds before the alien pulled out his plasma cannon. "I would get busy."
Hogarth looked over at Midna and Chopper, who shook their heads vigorously. The boy was definitely between a rock and a hard place. If he did what Jumba asked, the pirates would have the treasure, but if he didn't do it, his friends were dead.
Hesitantly, Hogarth pressed the buttons on the map and opened it. A hologram of the island they were on, Treasure Island, appeared in the air before them.
"Oh..." Jumba breathed, "Would you look?"
The hologram dissipated and turned into a line leading out of the hideout and curving to the left outside of the entrance. It was a trail!
Jumba cackled, then glared back at Hogarth. "Tie him up," he ordered, "and leave him with the others 'til we--"
But before Jumba could finish, the holographic trail dissipated and the bits disappeared...back into the map.
Hogarth looked down at the silver orb, then glared at Jumba. "You want the map? You're taking me, too."
Jumba glared at him, then grinned and chuckled. This boy was smart, he had to give him that. "We'll take them all."
The pirates and their captors were now traveling through the jungle, following the holographic trail, which blinked faster and faster as they got closer to the legendary Roger's Trove.
Chopper and Midna were bound together with ropes, back to back. Ren was also tied up, and one of the pirates put a raingate-like muzzle on him. Hogarth, GIR, and Stimpy weren't a threat, so they were left unbound.
As they walked, GIR looked up at Hogarth sadly. "Hogarth? This isn't fun anymore."
Hogarth gave the little robot a reassuring pat on the head. "It's OK, little buddy. We'll get through this."
Then Ren spoke up, though with a muzzle impeding the movement of his jaws, it was difficult. "Hogarth, I --gulp-- I-I'm seeing my life flashing before my eyes! At least, I think it's my life. WAS I EVER DANCING WITH A DACHSUND NAMED WILFRED!?"
"Ren!" Hogarth hissed, "Shh! This isn't over yet."
A second after Hogarth said that, Jumba noticed the trail blinking erratically. "We're getting close, gentlemen!" he stated excitedly, pulling out his machette, "I smell treasure waiting for us!"
Well, Jumba chopped through the foliage with the knife, and sure enough, waiting for them at the end of the trail was a massive hoard of...
Nothing.
They were overlooking a cliff. There wasn't even anything at the bottom of the cliff.
Everyone was thoroughly perplexed.
"Where is it?" asked a pirate.
"I see nothing!" snapped Hammer Bro, "One great big stinkin' pile o' NOTHING!"
The trail was sucked back into the map, again confusing everyone.
"What is going on, Hogarth?" Jumba demanded.
"I don't know!" Hogarth said, pushing the buttons and trying to pry the silver ball open again, but... "I-I can't get it open!"
"We should never have followed this boy!" shouted Salacious, pouncing on Hogarth's back and jumping off, sending the boy sprawling.
When Hogarth hit the ground, he noticed how hard it was. Like the ground was made of metal.
When Hogarth lifted his head, he found something else: a small hole in the ground. He brushed aside the surrounding grass...
Yes, indeed. The ground was made of metal. Not soil! What was this?
Hogarth looked at the map, discovering that it could fit in the hole. The hole even had the same marks.
The pirates were getting closer, spouting threats like:
"Let's tear his guts right out, right now!"
"Throw him over the cliff!"
Hogarth placed the map in the hole...
The map's markings, and markings surrounding the hole, suddenly glowed! There were even markings glowing through the grass on the rest of the cliff!
The hole and the map were then surrounded by several glowing circles, and a small, holographic globe of the Earth rose up with a holographic line connecting to each surrounding circle.
Then, in the valley that the cliff was over, larger holographic lines rushed to the cliff, joined at the bottom, rose up as one big vertical line at the front of the cliff...
...and the line split apart, turning into a triangle that showed a view of a swamp with a long-necked dinosaur standing in it! It turned its head to the people on the cliff, then returned to its grazing.
Everyone stared in awe.
"Oh, have mercy," Jumba breathed.
"Th-- The Congo of Africa!?" Hogarth observed, quite alarmed. He'd heard of Mokele-Mbembe, the creature said to live in that area's swamps, but he never thought he'd actually get to see it!
"But that-- That's on the other side of the planet!" Jumba said.
Hogarth looked down at the holographic Earth. "A big door," he muttered, recalling Ren and Stimpy's words, "Opening and closing." He touched the other areas, making the triangle before them show different scenery from different countries and islands.
Hogarth had an idea what this may have been, but he needed to be sure.
"Let's see," he muttered, his eyes scanning the holographic globe, "...Korea..." He then smiled when he found what he was looking for. "The Japanese Seaport."
When he put his finger on said part of Japan, the lines closed together and reopened to reveal the Seaport. Boats, seabirds, and every citizen and official in the port could be seen.
"So that's how Roger did it," Hogarth realized, "He'd use this...portal to--to roam the planet stealing treasure!"
"But where did he stash it all!?" Jumba demanded, shoving Hogarth aside and placing a pudgy finger on random areas of the world, "Where...is that...blasted treasure!?"
Ren and Stimpy perked up when Jumba mentioned treasure. "Th-- The treasure!" Ren exclaimed, clutching his skull and trying to remember, "The treasure... It's...buried in the--!"
Hogarth then remembered another thing Ren and Stimpy told him. "Buried in the center of the machine... Hey, what if this island is the machine, and the treasure's buried in the center of this island!?"
When the pirates heard this, they immediately started to dig into the earth. Unfortunately, they only managed to remove some of the grass and reveal the metal beneath. Not even a pickaxe could break this.
"Then how are we supposed to GET there!?" Jumba demanded angrily.
"Just open the right door," Hogarth answered, and he touched the holographic Treasure Island...
The door closed, and opened again to reveal a veritable mountain of treasure! Gold, silver, jewels, every valuable thing you could ever imagine, and then some, was all together in one pile!
Hogarth stepped through the door first, but Jumba shoved past him, and the others followed (except for Wapol, Chopper, and Midna, who stayed behind), unknowingly stepping through a red laser line...
At first, everyone stared at the treasure with wide eyes, then...
"YES! AHAHAHAHA!"
This is what the pirates cheered, and they ran onto the pile, grabbing whatever they could fit in their pockets (if they had any)!
"The Loot of a Thousand Lands..." Jumba murmured in awe, smiling broadly.
"We're gonna need a bigger boat!" Hammer Bro laughed.
Yes, indeed. Gold Roger had the help of some excellent technicians to keep all of his treasure in one place. All of his treasure was gathered into the shape and size of a very small planet! The treasure was now the right shape to serve as the core of the island. There were lasers mounted on the surrounding walls, shooting into large holes in the "core" that was the treasure. The treasure was stuck to a strange machine that had its own gravitational pull. The lasers were keeping the machine afloat.
All of the treasure that was pulled to this machine-within-the-machine was now in the pirates' hands.
...or was it?