Jake heard the faint sound of music nearby, but it wasn't just any music, it was a tune he was very familiar with.
"Rose." he said, as he dive bombed in the direction of the sound.
This was it, after almost 48 hours of worry and uncertainty, Jake had finally found her. Jake started preparing himself for a fight, he wasn't sure what was keeping Rose from reaching her phone, but whatever it was, it was about to receive a complimentary smack down courtesy of the American Dragon.
"Rose I'm here!" Jake shouted.
He received no reply, just the faint sound of Rose's ring tone.
"Rose?" Jake asked, scanning the area with his dragon eyes, searching for something in the environment that stood out against the rest, but there was nothing. Jake was completely alone by the lake, listening to the sound of a cellphone ringing. Jake switched back to human form and walked over to it, and picked it up. It was Rose's phone, but Rose was nowhere to be found. Jake sat there and starred at the phone, as it rang in his hand. Finally he anwered it.
"Spud, I found the phone, but Rose isn't here. Let's head back to the shop. We've done all we can here for today." Jake said.
Depression dominated his voice. He immediately hung up the phone and slowly walked away, leaving with more questions and fewer answers than when he started searching Staten Island. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the photo of him and Rose from the dance. He carried it around with him all the time. He looked at for a minute, his hope was fading, but he refused to give up. Jake started to drift off from reality, as he list himself in thought, reflecting back on his memories of the time he'd spent with Rose.
He thought about the first time he met Rose, he ran into her when he was riding his skateboard backwards and not paying attention. He met Rose a lot that way. It was always the same, he'd run into her, she'd drop her books, he'd panic, apologize, and start helping her pick up her books, then he'd look up and see who it was.
"Hey." Jake would say.
Rose would always reply, "Hey yourself."
Even after Jake's wish, when Rose had lived a completely different life and had no clue who Jake was, their brief encounter still somehow played out that way. It was almost like...
"Hey Jakie!" the voice sprang out of the radio earpiece Jake was wearing, breaking his thoughts and bringing him back to reality.
"What is it?" Jake responded.
"Are we done here or what? I've got some serious scrubbing to do if I want to get all this dirt outta my hair." Trixie said
"Yeah, for now." Jake replied.
The three sat in the back of Gramps's shop and looked at the map.
"Ok the airport where Rose's plane landed is right here," Jake said, as he drew an X on the spot, "and we found Rose's phone on Staten Island right here."
Jake drew a second X where he found the phone.
"So that means she was going in this direction." Jake said as he drew a line from X1 to X2.
"Hold on Jakie," Trixie said, "I doubt Rose made a bee line across the water to that spot."
"Right," Jake agreed, as he drew a route along the streets until he made it to Staten Island, but then he ran into a flaw in his plan. "but wait, Long Pond Park doesn't have street routes we can trace, so how are we going to track her?"
"I think I have something that can help." Fu said as he walked into the room, "The potion is finally ready, now here, take it back to where you found Rose's phone, and spray it around the area. It will make all recent footprints glow, so you should be able to see what direction Rose was heading."
"But Fu," Jake said, "I thought the potion wouldn't be ready until tomorrow."
"The original amount would've been." Fu replied, "But with how you've moved the starting point a lot further down Rose's path, that's miles and miles we don't have to try and track, so now we don't need as much potion, and I think the amount we have now will be enough."
"Fu! That's awesome!" Jake said, happy something was actually happening quickly, "Let's get back over there."
Jake and Fu stood by the water where Jake found the phone.
"Kid, you sure this where you found the phone?" Fu asked.
"Yeah," Jake answered, "I can see my dragon prints over there."
"Ok, start sprinkling the potion around, when you see footprints glowing, start following them." Fu instructed, "The fresher they are, the brighter they will glow, so don't get confused by your own footprints."
"Right, got it." Jake replied, as he uncorked the bottle and started sprinkling it around.
The forest started to light up with footprints. Jake traced his own from earlier that day to the exact location of where he found the phone. Next to the spot, were 2 sets of footprints, old enough that they didn't really glow, but still recent enough that they showed up. At about the spot where Jake found the phone, one set went a little crazy and off balance, like their owner had stumbled and fallen there.
"Fu, I think I found them." Jake called out, "They're going this way!"
Jake took off following the footprints, sprinkling a little more of Fu's potion whenever the trail stopped. The trail continued alongside the lake, slowly making it's way around the perimeter. He was mentally preparing himself for what he may face at the end of the trail. He thought carefully over the events of the last couple of days. Rose had vanished mysteriously, actually scratch that, she vanished suspiciously,Jake had collected more than enough evidence to count the circumstances as suspicious. He found her phone in the woods of a completely different district of New York, one that Rose had no motive that he currently knew of, to even be in, and now he following 2 sets of footprints around a lake in said district.
Jake stopped and looked behind him. He noticed that both trails of footprints were smaller than his own. He wasn't for certain which one belong to Rose, but he could conclude that whoever her captor was, they weren't very large.
Then something happened that left Jake baffled, the trail of footprints stopped, and no matter how much of Fu's potion he sprinkled, no more would appear.
