Author's Note:
Wow… already on Treasure Planet… Well, thanks very much to Whisperwings and enjoy reading my loyal readers!
Chapter 26: Treasure Planet and Bioelectric Navigator
"Jim, Jim!" Ariah's voice called to the brunette teenager. He felt Ariah's hands reach out towards him and gently shake his shoulders.
Jim opened his pale blue eyes and came to realize where they were. The inverted longboat was over them and they were stuck in a lengthy, but shallow, trench; likely made from the longboat during impact.
"Are you all right?" Ariah asked.
Jim coughed from the dusty air. "Yeah…" He groaned from a slight headache, but all else was fine as far as he could tell.
"Good." Ariah coughed. "Let's get this thing off of us." She suggested.
Jim sat up and pressed his hands against the wooden seats of the longboat. Ariah did the same and the two teenagers managed to shove the longboat off of them, opening up to the jungle environment that they had crash-landed into.
"Oh my goodness." Doctor Doppler sighed gratefully as he shakily stood to his feet by the overturned skiff. "That was more fun than I ever want to have again." He stated, wiping the dirtied lens of his spectacles.
Captain Amelia chuckled lightly at the astrophysicist's comment as she pulled herself to her feet. "That wasn't one of my more… gossamer landings." She stated bluntly.
Suddenly the feline spacer sank to her knees with a cry of pain.
Ariah, Jim and Doctor Doppler moved to help the hardened captain back up onto her feet.
"Oh don't fuss…" The feline frowned. "Slight bruising, that's all."
Captain Amelia stubbornly waved away their hands and pulled herself to her feet.
"A cup of tea and I'll be as right as rain." She stood confidently, straightening out her blue coat. "Now, Mister Hawkins…"
Captain Amelia squinted at the other three with her, trying to recognize which one was the cabin boy.
"The map, if you please." She held out a gloved paw.
"Oh…" Jim reached into his jacket pocket and retrieved the strange sphere that was undoubtedly the treasure map to Flint's Trove. Or was it really?
The sphere spontaneously rose to eye-level, the buttons between its inscribed runes sucked in to its core and the map changed into a rather amused transformer.
"MORPH?" Jim yelled in disbelief at the laughing pink blob. "Where's the map?" He demanded.
Morph giggled and illustrated plainly that it was still in the coil of rope in the longboat dock house on the RLS Legacy.
"Are you serious?" Jim shouted, tempted to tear out his hair. "It's back on the ship?"
A feeling of dread came across the quartet as Morph joyfully flew around the clearing while Jim was trying to catch him and find a means of strangling the protoplasm.
Captain Amelia's ears perked up at a whining of a longboat engine above them. "Stifle that blob and get low…" She commanded. "We've got company." The feline motioned to the approaching longboat.
Jim finally grabbed Morph and silenced him. He and Ariah knelt down behind the overturned skiff, watching the pirate-filled longboat slowly ease down through the mushroom foliage.
The longboat passed over their skiff's crash site, yet they weren't spotted, and the pirates continued journeying through the thick jungle, searching for the escapees.
Captain Amelia inhaled slowly, using a proton rifle as a means of support. "We need to find a more defensive position." She pulled a laser pistol from one of her hip holsters and handed it butt first to Jim. "Mister Hawkins, scout ahead."
"Aye Captain." The brunette teenager nodded, taking the pistol. He glanced at Ariah and then began walking through the ferns with Morph at his shoulder.
"Oh… ooh." Captain Amelia slowly lowered herself to the ground from pain.
"Steady, steady…" Doctor Doppler gently helped the captain to the ground with his hand at her elbow. "Now let's take a look at that." Doctor Doppler said, referring to the captain's injury.
Immediately, sensing a very awkward moment, Ariah turned towards the path that Jim had broken through the jungle.
"You know, I'm just going to go give Jim a hand." She stated with a nervous chuckle.
"What?" Doctor Doppler demanded.
"Well, two heads are better than one, after all… and besides," Ariah paused and bit her bottom lip, "You are the doctor." Ariah added as she rushed from the clearing and ran to where Jim had gone off to scout.
Doctor Delbert Doppler sighed and continued the work he had begun.
Scroop paced the main deck of the RLS Legacy. His duty, as commanded by Silver, was to guard the ship in case anyone restricted from it somehow managed to access it; those restricted primarily being their dead weight.
After all, if the crew managed to find Flint's Trove, they'd need the RLS Legacy to stow away a minute portion of the unimaginable amount of treasure.
Scroop remembered watching the flaming longboat crash though the forest-covered surface of the legendary planet; the planet said to hold the loot of a thousand worlds.
The crimson arachnid climbed aloft and stood at the topsail, in the position that Ariah often took during launches.
Scroop hoped, something he hardly did often, that Ariah was all right. That somehow she had escaped death's cold, vice-like clutches once again.
His red pincer gently gripped the rope extending from the solar sail and his legs fully extended and he slowly inhaled.
Ariah used to do this when it was just him, her and Silver sailing together. She had said that it made her feel like she was flying and that she was completely free.
But had the cold, dark truths of everything she had found out in the past few hours finally clipped her wings and brought her plummeting to the ground?
Scroop sighed and looked out upon the Etherium. Questions that he didn't know the answers to filled his mind as he gazed upon the uncountable stars.
The arachnid slowly brought himself back down to the main deck to give the RLS Legacy another thorough patrol.
Jim and Ariah cautiously wandered through the exotic jungle. Morph flew apprehensively between the two teenagers' shoulders, peering around the unfamiliar foliage for unseen monsters. Jim vigilantly lead the way, armed with Captain Amelia's laser pistol.
Without warning, Ariah sighed sadly and slowed her footsteps until she had stopped.
Jim turned to face the black-haired teenager. "What's wrong?" He asked.
"It's just…" Ariah bit her bottom lip and rubbed the back of her head. "I'm not really used to having this much stuff happening to me in one day, you know." She looked up in Jim's eyes. "That's why I couldn't do anything to stop us from crashing, and I'm sorry."
Jim raised an eyebrow. "You're still going on about that?" He sighed. "Look. It's not your fault we crashed, it's the pirates'…"
"Yeah, but if I had gotten my solar glider attached to the main engine then maybe we wouldn't have crashed." Ariah stated.
"The engine was toasted." Jim shook his head. "Even if you had enough time, we were still going to crash the longboat."
"But I could've done something!" Ariah shouted angrily. "Instead of just sitting still like some helpless airhead and not do anything useful, let alone avoid a crash-landing. I could've done something!" Ariah's voice caught at the back of her throat as she balled up her fist and looked away from Jim.
Jim stepped towards Ariah and gently grasped her hand. Ariah first looked at Jim's hand and then up at Jim.
"We can do something now…" He stated determinedly.
The young man smoothed his hand up Ariah's arm to her shoulder reassuringly.
"Captain Amelia and Doctor Doppler are counting on us to find someplace safe, right?"
Ariah nodded. "Right." She cleared her throat and faced Jim. "And we can't let them down, no can we?" Ariah smiled weakly and Jim smiled back.
"Set up camp." Silver ordered to his band of pirates. "We'll scour the jungle for 'em once everything's ready."
The loyal pirates quickly spread out, preparing the clearing in the jungle for an adequate outpost. Though the ruffians thirsted for more action, they knew better than to go against Silver's orders.
Once they cleared more of the jungle, the two teenagers and Morph arrived in a wide clearing, devoid of snagging vines and branches.
Jim halted and scanned the area cautiously. Ariah stopped beside the young man and gave him an odd look. Jim's hand went to the laser pistol he had been given and he looked forwards through a bushel of ferns at a pair of large glowing eyes.
Suddenly without warning, the creature with glowing eyes leapt out at him.
"Ah!" Jim jumped back, unable to fire the laser pistol because the thing that had pounced on him was hugging him.
"Oh this is fantastic! Carbon-based life forms come to rescue me at last!" The creature clinging tightly to Jim cried out cheerfully. "I just wanna hug you and squeeze you… and hold you close to me."
The leaping creature actually turned out to be a very rusty, outdated robot with round telescopic eyes.
"All right…" Jim wheezed from lack of air. "OK." He glared at the now giggling Morph sharply to halt his laughter; Ariah simply looked curiously at the android. "Would you just let go of me?"
"Oh sorry, sorry, sorry…" The robot immediately jumped back, looking up at the brunette teenager with wide eyes while speaking rapidly. "You see I've been marooned for so long…" He idly twiddled his metal thumbs. "I mean solitude's fine. Don't get me wrong." The android sighed. "For heaven's sake after a hundred years… you go a little nuts." He chuckled uneasily. "I'm sorry. Am I… I am, uh…" The short robot clutched his head as if experiencing an intense migraine. "My name's, um…"
Morph illustrated this robot's likely state of mind. Jim bluntly chastised the transformer while waiting for the tiny robot to remember his name.
"BEN!" The robot cried out in realization. "Of course, I'm BEN: Bioelectric Navigator. Oops…" A small compass inadvertently popped out of his chest and the android embarrassedly shoved it back into its proper place. The robot glanced at the two teenagers. "And you are?" He raised one of his metallic eyebrows.
"Jim."
"What a pleasure to meet you, Jimmy!" The robot chirped happily, shaking the young man's hand until his arm felt as if it were going to fall off.
The aforementioned teen squirmed under the robot's tight grip. "It's Jim." He narrowed his eyes irately at BEN, immediately disliking the nickname, and he pulled his arm out of robot's grasp.
"And you?" The rusty robot looked up at Ariah.
"I'm… Ariah." The nervous young woman stated; unsure whether this psycho robot was going to pounce on her as well.
"Please to meet you, Ariah…" BEN polite bowed to the black-haired teenager, obviously his manners towards ladies differentiated than to men.
"Look." Jim cleared his throat. "We're kind of in a hurry." The young man pushed back a few of his bangs from his pale blue eyes. "We need to find a place to hide, because there are pirates chasing after us…"
"Oh pirates!" BEN clenched his fist in anger. "Don't get me started on pirates! I don't like them." The short android tapped the side of his head to recall a memory. "I remember Captain Flint. This guy had such a temper."
"Wait, wait, wait. You knew Captain Flint?" Jim gasped, amazed that the rusty robot could know the legendary pirate lord.
The rusted robot leaned against the trunk of a nearby tree. "I think he suffered from mood swings, personally." BEN stated. "I'm not a therapist, and anyways- you let me know when I'm rambling…"
"But wait, that means that you gotta know about the treasure." Jim's eyes lit up at the mere mention of the word.
"Treasure?" BEN asked, clueless of the matter.
"Flint's Trove?" Jim demanded. "You know…" He sighed in frustration, trying to put the legend in a nutshell. "The loot of a thousand worlds?"
"It's--well, it's... it's all a little--" BEN flinched, clasping his rusty head once more to focus his concentration. "Little--little fuzzy." The rusty robot blinked, or rather the lens on his telescope eyes blanked and returned to their normal screens. "Wait. I--I r-r-remember." He nodded. "I do. I--treasure! Lots of treasure buried in the centroid-- centroid--centroid of the mechanism." BEN's voice repeated itself, as if echoing in the short robot. "And there was this big door: opening and closing..." His eyes resembled a triangular door opening and closing. "And opening and closing... and Captain Flint wanted to make sure... nobody could ever get to his treasure... so I helped him..." BEN sputtered. "Ah! Data inaccessible! Reboot!"
Ariah and Jim looked bewilderedly at the robot, which continued shouting.
"BEN?" Jim grasped the aforementioned navigator by his shoulders and shook him to his senses. "BEN? BEN!"
"Reboot!" BEN yelled loudly.
Ariah shouted and hit the robot over the side of his metallic head with the palm of her hand, to get his functions back into place.
"Ah!" BEN yelped in alarm. He temporarily shut down and came to his senses, facing Jim. "And you are?" BEN asked, as if they hadn't gone through the past few minutes of introductory conversation at all.
Jim's jaw dropped, he was lost for words. "Wait, wait, wait!" He demanded, frustrated at the incompetent machine. "What about the treasure?"
BEN looked over Jim, scratching his jaw. "I want to say Larry." He stated.
Jim's face darkened from disappointment and irritation. "But… The-the centroid of the mechanism, or-"
"I'm sorry." BEN sighed miserably. "My memory isn't what it used to be. I've lost my mind." He laughed. "I've lost my mind. You haven't found it, have you?"
BEN searched Jim while the two teenagers looked at the robot in disappointment.
"Uh, my missing piece?" BEN tapped at a near empty hole at the back of his head. "My primary memory circuit?" He explained.
Ariah sighed dejectedly. "That makes sense…" She rubbed the bridge of her nose. "He doesn't have enough storage in his memory circuits to contain much information."
Jim sighed. "Look, BEN… we really need to find a place to hide, OK?" He glanced nervously at the robot. "So we're just gonna be, you know, moving on."
The young man motioned to Ariah and to Morph to follow him as he turned away.
The short robot looked crestfallenly at his metal feet, which were nearly buried in the moss-covered clearing's ground. "Oh, uh, so, well, then..." He looked up at the two teenagers with wide saddened eyes. "I guess, uh... this is good-bye, huh?" BEN sat down at the base of a tree with his head bent in shame. "I'm sorry that I'm so dysfunctional. So, uh, go ahead and, I do understand. I do." He half-heartedly waved to the trio. "Bye-bye."
The pink blob whined slightly and gave the two teenagers innocent eyes, showing that he pitied the small robot.
Jim sighed. "Look, if you're gonna come along..." He shoved his hands into the outer pockets of his pants. "You're gonna have to stop talking."
"Huzzah! Ha, ha, ha!" BEN cheered noisily, latching himself onto Jim once more. "Oh, this is fantastic! Me and my best buddy are looking for a..."
Jim cleared his throat loudly, glaring daggers at BEN.
"Being quiet…" BEN whispered with a slight chuckle.
"And you have to stop touching me." Jim pried the robot off of him.
"Touching and talking." BEN rubbed his neck. "My two big no-nos." He duly noted.
Jim looked ahead, pointing his pistol at the ready. "OK. Now, I think that we should-"
"Say, listen, before we go out on our big search..." BEN interrupted. "Um, would you mind if we made a quick pit stop at my place?" He chuckled nervously. "Kind of urgent."
Ariah and Jim's jaws slackened as BEN parted the leaves of a fern, revealing a large hill with a strange sort of natural fortress situated atop it.
Jim chuckled. "BEN…" He couldn't help but smile widely as he looked upon the amazing hideout. "I think you just solved our problem."
It seemed like things were looking up for once that entire day…
Author's Note:
Hmm… now what?
MG#6