Treasure Hunting 101

Chapter XI

Sean

Music: Starshine Beach Galaxy from Super Mario Galaxy 2

Mia and Shanna want our rest stop to be somewhere on a beach. Since I don't care and Mackenzie wants to be somewhere else, Dr. Scientist goes with what Mia and Shanna want.

We materialize in a grassy area a few feet away from the shores of some beach. Given how it's the end of August, the beach is somewhat sparsely populated. A couple of small children are playing at the edge of the ocean, and their parents are either lying on blankets or chairs and tanning or eating. A female lifeguard sits at the top of her chair and spends more time looking on her phone than actually doing her job.

"Um, where exactly are we?" Mackenzie asks once we've fully materialized.

"No clue. I just told this thing to take us to a random beach in America," Dr. Scientist answers.

The five of us take a seat on the sand, making sure that we're far enough out of sight from the rest of the beachgoers. It feels uncanny that one of our stops on this journey is a beach. Usually, whenever that ends up being the case, something always happens to us. A similar concept applies to forests. I guess when you go on as many of these trips as our group has, you're bound to come across some patterns.

Dr. Scientist gets to work on translating the inscriptions we found back at the cave, and the rest of us just sit quietly for a couple of minutes. Shanna ends up being the first one to speak since we sat down. "Am I the only one who's kinda concerned about how the other team thought we were dead?" she asks.

"If I had to guess, they probably ran into the same group of men we ran into, and I don't think they noticed that we escaped," Mackenzie answers.

"Well, whatever the case may be, I'm just happy that they got what was coming," Mia smirks.

"I just hope that was the only third party we'll have to worry about," I mutter. I get worried looks from the rest of my teammates, but no response.

"I got it!" Dr. Scientist exclaims, yelling a bit too loudly. The rest of us face him, and he shows us what he has written on his notepad. His handwriting is a messy cursive style that's nigh impossible for us to read, and it's written in a very light ink.

"I can't read that," I say.

"Oh, my apologies. The Latin translates to 'explore the cave of mystery'."

"Magnificent. Now we have to figure out what the hell that's referring to," Mia sighs.

"Already on it," Dr. Scientist says, looking at something on his tablet. He finds an image of the treasure map for Kaori's Treasure on Google Images, then looks at where we are according to Google Maps. The results cause him to gasp.

"We are literally right next to the cave!" he whispers excitedly to us. He pulls up the treasure map and points to a red circle with the number "8" inside of it drawn over southern Alabama. "I remember reading about this cave when I researched the treasure back in 2009. This cave of mystery refers to a hidden world with someone who will have the answers for our next clue, if I'm recalling my sources correctly." He then gets up and starts walking back to where we arrived at, and we follow along.

"I don't know about you guys, but I'm getting kinda sick and tired of how we always just so happen to go where we need to be without even trying," Mia mutters while we're walking. She gets no response.

We stop on top of a random patch of grass. There doesn't appear to be anything off about this particular patch, but that doesn't stop Dr. Scientist from bending down and ripping some of the grass out of the dirt. He brushes some of the dirt aside with his foot and reveals a metal trapdoor in the ground. Dr. Scientist surveys the area to verify that no one's watching us, then grasps for the knob in the dirt. When he finds it, he pulls the door open, revealing a short flight of stairs leading to a dark corridor. Just from looking inside the dark tunnel, it's unknown what this will eventually lead to.