Treasure Hunting 101

Chapter VIII

Avery

Music: Sand Storm from Gradius III Arcade

Sam stops us near the Pacific Coast Highway in San Francisco. I was expecting to see a beach with lots of people, towels, a dock for boats, and some massive hotel nearby, but all there is to see are a bunch of rocks, some sand, grassy bumps, and miles and miles of ocean. Not too far from where we land is a bridge that I'm guessing is the Golden Gate Bridge. As per the highway name, a road stretches by the shoreline with a car occasionally passing by on it.

We all step off of the hovercraft and spend a few seconds staring at the coastline, looking for anything that seems off that could be investigated. Nothing immediately jumps out at us.

"Nothing to go off of here... is it even a surprise?" Skylar sighs.

The hovercraft activates a red scanner and begins flying around the beach, with Sam, Heath, and Luke in tow. They spend the next minute traversing the entire shoreline without the hovercraft detecting a single thing. "Well, nothing's below the beach," Heath calls out to us once the hovercraft's done scanning.

"There has to be something around here..." Brea mutters, looking around in all directions. A blue SUV starts coming towards us from the road, and Brea runs off in its direction.

"Brea! Get back here!" I yell, running after Brea with Elle by my side. Brea stops right at the side of the highway and waves an arm out. The SUB slows to a stop right as Elle and I reach her. The driver's side window rolls down, and a woman in her twenties with a red skirt, black hair that hangs down, and way too much makeup stares at us, not looking too pleased to be stopped.

"What the hell do you want?" she asks not-so-politely. "Whatever it is, it better be important. I have somewhere to be in fifteen minutes and I can't afford these stops."

"Hi, do you know of any secret passageways around this shoreline? Like, one that could lead us to a hidden temple?" Brea asks, acting like this is a normal question to ask. Elle grumbles to herself and facepalms. I'm resisting the urge to drag Brea aside and knock her senseless. There is absolutely no way this woman would be able to tell us anything about this shoreline. I doubt anybody even stops by here for any reason.

Not surprisingly, the woman glares at Brea like she can't believe what she just heard. "What are you, some kind of nut job child?" she asks. "Head on back home and call a therapist, you delusional twit." With a sassy hair flip, she rolls up her window and drives away. Brea tries to get her to stop, to no avail.

Once the car is out of our sight, I grab Brea by the shoulders and slap her across the face as hard as I can. "OW! What was that for?!" Brea shouts angrily, holding a hand up to her cheek.

"You IDIOT! Why the hell would you think that would EVER help us?" I growl.

"Hey, if there's anybody who lives around here that would know something about this, it's better to ask around than just keep trying to solve this on our own," Brea answers. This reply is so stupid and ilogical that I can't do anything but let out an exasperated sigh and walk away. Elle comes with me, and Brea stays behind us by a few steps. I know this is Brea's first time doing something like this, but you'd think she would have a little more common sense than that.

We find Sam, Heath, Luke, and Skylar climbing up some rocks off to the side of where we just were. The hovercraft's scanner is still on, and still red. "Got nothing, I presume?" I ask them.

"Nothing here. Something tells me this isn't the right location," Sam replies.

"Oh, so now you realize that?!" Skylar asks rhetorically.