Disclaimer: I do not own Endless Ocean: Blue World or the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. I am not making money off of this fanfiction; it is purely for laughs, kicks, and giggles.
Lost Treasures
Chapter Two - The Forgotten Island
The sound of a klaxon blaring brought Jason awake with an adrenaline rush he hadn't felt in years. He bolted upright, sending his pillow across the room as he jumped to his feet, ready for...well, anything he could safely take on while clad only in pajama pants. His vision swam for a moment as his memory attempted to catch up with the present. And then Zack, who hadn't even so much as rolled over, reached out one hand and groped for his cell phone which was beside Jason's on the nightstand.
When Zack finally rubbed his eyes and deigned to come fully awake, it was to see Jason looming over him in a manner very reminiscent of Goldar. Even that failed to completely phase him, however, as Zack luxuriated in a wide yawn and lengthy stretch before flipping the covers on his bed back and putting his bare feet on the floor. "Ummmorning," he managed around a second yawn.
"Is there some reason that your alarm sounds eerily similar to the Command Center's siren?" Jason asked in a low, dangerous tone.
"My normal alarm..." Zack paused to yawn again and made a vague motion with one hand. "...ugh. It stopped waking me up. This is the only thing that works."
At that moment, Jason's cell phone began ringing in an escalating tone that grew louder and higher the longer it was ignored. He slapped his hand down without thinking, and it sent his phone skittering off of the small table and under his bed. Jason muttered something uncomplimentary under his breath and went after it. He managed to shut it off mid-shriek before the guests next door began pounding on the wall.
They took turns hastily showering before grabbing something for breakfast out of the vending machine on their floor. Then, making sure that Zack had his digital camcorder and Jason had his laptop bag and the all-important map, they headed for Nancy's pier in the faint dawn light.
Her boat was already idling, and Nancy was coiling up one of the ropes to cast off as they made their way down the weathered walkway. The sun was just beginning to rise from beneath the ocean's edge, scattering golden light across the waves. Zack, as half-asleep as he was, flipped his camera on and did his best to capture the beauty of the early morning.
"Howdy hey," Nancy greeted them. "Get on board; I'm sure you'll want to spend as much time looking around today as possible, so the sooner we start the more time we'll have."
Still a bit too hazy to speak, Jason and Zack nodded and successfully jumped aboard. At first glance around the skiff, Nancy appeared to be equipped to do some great diving. She had a neat rack of several oxygen tanks, an open crate displaying pairs of diving fins in quite a few colors, as well as an impressive collection of wetsuits.
Nancy saw Jason looking. "Part of what I supply around the islands," she said. "Plus, I trade in the local currency—the pelagos. Some of the more native folk really appreciate that."
"Yeah, I have some of those from the...from a poker game," Jason finished. He eyed Nancy. He had a sneaking suspicion that she might know more about this island than she was letting on, but she ignored his gaze and instead launched into a detailed story of some of the other trading adventures she'd been on, all the while guiding her her boat with a steady, confident hand. She barely even had to glance at the waterproof sea chart tacked to one of the windows. It was as if she had already memorized the route they were going to take in their search and was letting that and fate guide them. Only once did she look at the drawing Jason had. The rest of the time she was content to point out the good diving spots, local fishing holes, and occasional small islands as they wended their way through coral reefs and sandbars.
At last, Nancy cut the throttle and called Jason and Zack to join her at the bow. "There," she said, pointing. "That's the place." Zack switched on his camera even before fully turning to face the island in question. Jason's eyes widened as the boat began to nose up at the only weathered pier on the small piece of land.
Dead palm branches lay half-buried in the sand, a testament to the length of time the place had been abandoned. There was what appeared to be a large, thatched shelter, and some overturned rotting chairs and what was left of a table beneath it. Patches of the thatch were missing, probably victim of more than one storm.
Just behind the wind-damaged shelter was a sturdy hut whose walls and windows looked intact. The once-white paint was peeling and faded, but the small structure appeared to have withstood the tropical whims of weather.
Jason was startled out of his first impressions as Nancy thrust a coil of rope into his hands and told him to jump out on the dock and tie up the boat. He hastened to obey, but was cautious as he took his first step onto the sun-baked boards of the pier. They squeaked a little under his weight, but did not sag or give any other evidence of rot. He looped the rope over a handy post just for that purpose and offered a hand to Zack, who was pointing his camera in all directions as if he couldn't decide what to record first.
"Wow…" Jason muttered, taking in the entire view of the little island. It couldn't have been more than 250 feet in diameter, he thought. Zack had seemed to come to himself and was starting with the first thing on the island: the pier. He was narrating a bit as he aimed the camera at a rusty bell hanging from a post at the farthest end.
"That could be a warning bell of some kind," Zack mused to his recording. "The ringer part's missing, though," he said upon closer inspection. He panned back and forth along boards by his feet. "There used to be some kind of metal barrel or something here, judging from the rusty ring on this wood." He next aimed the camera at the smaller, lower dock on the other side of the pier from where Nancy was still tying up her craft.
"Hey Nancy," Zack called, pointing to the little dock, which had a small gate at the top, "what's that for?"
"Lots of people ride jet-skis between these islands," Nancy explained, pulling the brim of her cowboy hat down to keep the sun out of her eyes. "Or sometimes they have inflatable boats with outboard motors. Those things are too short to fit up against something that takes a skiff like the Fancy."
Jason experimentally swung half of the small gate at the top of the little dock open; the other half already sagged, one hinge having rusted through completely. "I wonder if there were a lot of visitors here," he mused aloud. He heard what might have been a laugh behind him, but when Jason turned to look at Nancy, her back was to him. Jason strode to the end of the pier and took his first step onto the sandy beach. He placed one hand on the rough trunk of a nearby palm tree and glanced up at the slowly-waving leaves against the brilliant azure sky. The world had never been so beautiful as when he was here in the pacific, but at the same time… Jason glanced around at the signs of neglect and decay around him. He was uneasy. There was a mystery here, waiting to be discovered.
Zack had now left the pier and was moving clockwise along the shoreline. He passed behind Jason and kept up his narrative: "And here we see what looks like the base of a large umbrella and what's left of a chair." Jason peered around the trunk of his palm tree to see the jagged stump of a manmade pole jutting out of the ground. Zack worked the toe of his sandal under something mostly-buried in the sand and a folded chair materialized from the debris. As Zack went to set it upright, the seat fell out, the screws holding it together gone.
An uncontrollable shiver worked its way up Jason's spine, but he ignored it. While Zack continued along the perimeter, he went over to investigate the thatched shelter. The table sat sort of cockeyed, a result of the sand blowing away from beneath the legs. Jason stabilized it by scooping more sand around them, but as he did so his fingers brushed something hard. He nearly called out for Zack but bit his tongue at the last moment. It could just be another chair, he reasoned. No need to get Zack's hopes up for that. He sifted through the sand carefully, tracing a squarish outline. A treasure chest, was his first thought, but he mercilessly squelched it, trying to keep his mounting excitement under control.
A few moments later, the outline was clearly discernible, and Jason dusted the final layer of sand off of a steel gray metal box big enough for a desktop computer tower. Quickly, he scooped more sand away from the sides, trying to find a handle or something to lift it with. Jason was rewarded and a few minutes later, he dragged the metal box out from beneath the table and wiped off the sides. "Zack!" he yelled then. "Hey, I found something!"
In three seconds, Zack was crashing through the dried palm leaves littering the ground and had his little video recorder ready. "Awesome," Zack said. "What are the odds we find treasure already?"
Jason fiddled with the locked clasps holding the box shut. "This looks a little too modern to be pirate treasure," he said, but he was curious nonetheless. "These need a key, but maybe I can pick them. I have a small toolkit in my computer bag." He got up and started back to the boat. Nancy was standing on the pier, her hands on her hips as she watched them with an unreadable look on her face.
"Is something wrong?" Jason asked, caught off-guard.
Nancy looked at him for a long moment, so long that she might have been looking through him. "Nothing a strong cup of coffee won't fix," she said at last, stepping back on board the Fancy. She produced a thermos from the little cabin as Jason slung the strap of his bag over his shoulder. He cast her one last, thoughtful glance over his shoulder before heading back to where Zack was poking about at the bottom of the hole beneath the old table.
"Here we go," Jason said, fishing out his miniature tool kit. He selected one of the screwdrivers and went to work on the clasps. When that proved to be fruitless, he started on the hinges, hoping for more luck.
"Uh, Jase?" Zack was now lying on his back in the hole, and he had his video camera pointed up at the underside of the table. "You've got to see this."
Jason craned forward and ducked, trying to get his eyes pointed in the right direction without having to move the rest of him. The resulting pose wasn't very stable and he fell over, but his attention was completely fastened on the waterproof map stuck firm to the bottom of the table and he didn't notice.
"Maybe this will tell us where to find treasure," Zack said. He reached up to pull experimentally on one of the map's corners.
"Relax with the treasure hunting, man," Jason told him. He pushed himself up on his elbows to get a closer look at the script. It was all handwritten, but printed extremely neatly. The name at the bottom of the chart told him that it was a map for the Gatama Atoll. "Somebody drew this map personally," he mused aloud.
Zack worked the first corner free and started on a second. As he did so, a small metal object fell out from behind the map and nearly took Jason's right eye out. A small key, speckled with rust, landed in the sand.
Jason picked it up and turned it over, looking for markings. Zack appeared not to notice that he had tried to blind his best friend and finished removing the map. He rolled it up as best he could while still lying on his back in the hole before creeping back out from under the table.
Meanwhile, Jason was looking at the locks on the front of the metal case. "It couldn't be that easy," he said more to himself than to Zack. He fitted the key into the lock on the left and twisted. -Pop.- The lock flipped open. He tried the other side, and was rewarded with the same result. Taking a deep breath, Jason cracked the metal lid up, releasing a small torrent of sand. The hinges made a grinding noise as he opened the box the rest of the way.
"No way!" Zack crowed, practically in his ear. "A CB radio! It looks like it's in really good shape, too." He helped Jason heft the entire box, plastic-wrapped radio still inside, onto the table.
Jason was momentarily baffled. "Why would someone bury a radio?" Zack, ever the music nerd, had manhandled the radio out of its protective case, carefully slid it out of the water-resistant bag, and was fiddling with the dials and knobs.
"We'll have to find more batteries, or get it hooked up to an electric supply," Zack said as if he hadn't heard Jason. "There's probably not a generator here, but there could be solar panels."
"Wait, Zack. Doesn't this all feel just a little bit too easy?" Jason asked. At his friend's incredulous look, he continued, "We've been here for, what, an hour? And we've not only found a not-very-well-hidden map, but a key that also happens to open the one locked box we've dug up."
Zack thought about that for a few minutes while Jason took the map and unrolled it on the other half of the table. "It's definitely mysterious," Zack concluded. "But maybe that's the point. You said the old man let you win. Maybe he did all this so that we would finish something he couldn't."
"But what could it be?" Jason asked. "And is it worth us spending all of our vacation money to find out?"
Zack's expression turned thoughtful. "I don't know about you, but this is probably the most exciting thing we've done on a vacation, bro. I tell you what—we've already chartered Nancy for the day. Let's keep exploring and if we find more mysterious stuff, then you can decide what's good and what's not."
Jason had to admit that there was no precise rush to head back to their hotel. He checked his watch; a little after nine o'clock. "Okay," he agreed, taking in the rest of the small island. "We haven't looked in the hut...er, house yet."
"Could be dead bodies," Zack said, but his grin totally gave away how serious he actually was. He was about to step on the bottom stair leading up to the door, when he paused. Jason saw him stop and bend down, sifting through a drift of sand that had collected in the shelter of the house and the edge of the steps.
"What is it?" Jason asked. In mute reply, Zack pulled a dingy, mottled wetsuit free from the sand's weight. It had clearly been white and purple at one time, but the elements (and what looked like a few birds) had clearly had their way with it. There were holes and stains all through the suit, rendering it completely unusable.
Jason measured the theoretical size of the person who might have owned it, and dismissed the girl he'd seen in the wheelchair as a possibility. She was too small in the shoulders, and Jason suspected that she would also be too short, if standing.
"Probably a woman's," Zack said, "judging by the colors and the...chest."
Jason bent down and worked his fingers through the sand some more. The only thing he came up with was a single, gray glove. It, too, was filled with more sand. He dumped it out and a round, black object fell between his shoes.
"What is that?" Zack leaned over his friend's shoulder. "It looks like a pearl."
Holding the round item at eye-level, Jason had to agree that it looked remarkably similar to the necklaces he'd seen at some of the jewelry shops in the high-end tourist shopping centers. "Well, so much for not finding any buried treasure," he half-joked.
"One pearl is hardly worthy of the term buried treasure," Zack said dryly. He went back to the steps of the hut. "I think we're gonna have to replace these," he said to Jason as the first step began to bend under his weight. The second step sagged, but held for the moment. The top step came loose almost the second Zack's foot touched it.
"Mind the gap," Zack joked, carefully opening the screen door. The shriek of rusty hinges all but deafened the two of them as he swung the door wide enough to admit him. "Well, there's lots of sand," Zack called back over his shoulder, sticking his head inside. "Smells a little like dead fish."
Jason rolled his eyes; it was only to be expected. "What do you see?" he prompted.
"A few folded up cots," Zack replied. "We might be able to use one or two. There were at least four people staying here at one time." He pressed deeper into the house, and in a few more steps, the dimness of the interior swallowed his outline.
Jason rubbed his chin and thought it over. Four people. The old man and the girl, he could account for. Then there was whoever had owned the old wetsuit Zack had found. He glanced over at where Zack had folded it semi-neatly and left it beside the steps. Maybe now was a good time to ask Nancy for more information. Jason collected the wetsuit, glove, and pearl and began to retrace his steps to the pier.
He was halfway there when a jubilant shout rang out, somewhat muffled due to Zack being inside the house.
"Jase, c'mere! You've gotta see this!"
To be continued