At the end of the week, Jones and company packed their bags and left the hotel for the port. Their trip would be by steamboat, across the bay to the city of Ningpo where Indiana claimed they would do about a day's worth of research and scheduling transport to finalize the location of the alleged wrecked ship. In the early hours of the morning, they arrived to the docks and boarded a small, shambling, foul-smelling passenger ferry set to cross the bay, Anna had to admit: she'd much preferred the airplane.

"I no get out of Shanghai that often," Short Round said, walking up beside Anna and leaning on the railing, "Not until last year, when your father took me to Nepal."

They stood near the bow of the steamboat on the lowest weather deck, where the water gushed along the hull plating just a few feet below and the early morning fog still drifted by them. Anna leaned her back against the railing, the fresh air of the dew and fog being better than the air in the interior compartments.

Looking over to the boy and away from her atlas (the brand new, updated copy that her grandfather had given her), Anna tilted her head, "'You don't get out of Shanghai that often... You ever left China?"

Short Round nodded, both at the question and at the correction, "Shanghai big- Shanghai is big city, lots of people to work with there, not much reason to leave."

"Shanghai is a big city," Anna said, before shifting her weight around as the bars of the railing dug uncomfortably against her spine, "I mostly stay in America, but when I was little I went to France and England... and New Zealand and Samoa once but I don't really remember that at all," most of Anna's memories from around that time were very fuzzy. The only thing she remembered was the man standing at her door and the same man's guts slowly spilling from a gunshot in his abdomen.

"What is America like?" Short asked, removing his arms from the railing to slide down it and sit next to her. Shuffling over a bit, he looked over her shoulder at the book in her forehooves.

Muttering to herself, Anna flipped through the pages of her Atlas until she got to the section dedicated to the individual states of America, "This is where I live. Connecticut," she traced a hoof up the railroad track from New Haven, before tapping a small dot next to a forest, "Bedford. That's my town."

Short Round squinted at the atlas, "What it like there?"

"What is it like there, or what's it like there," Anna corrected before turning to a page containing a topographical map, "Well it's not really all that different from Shanghai," she pointed at a few, unlabelled lines crossing the map from side to side, "That's latitude. Connecticut and Shanghai are almost on the same one, so if you follow this line far enough right you'll eventually get to China."

"Huh," Short Round nodded slowly to himself, "Does it snow there?"

"Yeah, but Connecticut's a bit colder. It snows a bit more there than it does here," Anna traced a hoof over to some climate information written in the section's one-page information blurb, "We get about five or six days of snow. This year we had a winter that was colder than usual."

"Not here, we did no see any snow," Short Round shrugged, looking up from the map towards Anna as he admitted, "I like snow. I think when Doctah Jones takes me to America, I go live somewhere where there plenty of snow."

"Hmmm..." Anna hummed, flipping through the pages of her atlas again before landing on a few more maps of other states, "This place has a lot of snow. This is Vermont. I think it's the snowiest place in the United States that isn't Alaska."

Short Round's attention was once again brought back to the book as his eyebrows raised, "Where this next to Connecticut?"

Anna's nose scrunched as she was confronted with a tough correction. Eventually, she settled with: "Do you mean where is Vermont relative to Connecticut?"

Short Round blinked blankly.

"When you wanna say where something is while also pointing something else out, you say 'in relation to'. Liiiike, this boat is about fifty miles south in relation to Shanghai."

"Okie dokie," Short Round shrugged, "So where is it?"

"North of Connecticut," Anna flipped back to a wholistic view of the United States, tapping the location of Connecticut before moving northward to Vermont, "It'd only be a day's journey to get there I bet. It takes about that long to get to Chicago. That's where I first grew up, you know?"

"That where Al Capone is from," Short Round pointed out, sagely.

"That is where Al Capone is from," Anna corrected, "I don't think he was from there... I think he was from somewhere else..." Anna muttered, eyes wandering off as she tried to recall.

Short Round, meanwhile, rocked back and forth in his seating position, before eventually speaking up again, "What it like in America? Do you have a house?"

"Yeah," Anna raised an eyebrow, somewhat incredulous at such an obvious question, "Don't you?"

Short Round simply shook his head.

Anna's face fell, "Oh..."

"I use to live in this place of the city called Zhabei. The Japanese come and set the place on fire and bomb it with aeroplanes," Short Round's fidgeting and rocking all ceased as he recounted it. After a pause, though, he resumed with a bit more energy as he resumed eye contact with Anna, "After that, I live on street. I work with opium den gangsters. Then Doctah Jones comes around and hires me to be his assistant. Say that if I useful, I get to go to America one day and have a house and go to school. For now though I stay with Wu Han."

"I'm... sorry..." Anna said. It was all she could think of saying. She went to close her book.

Short Round's fingers clasped the side of the page, pulling it open again as he shrugged, "Why sorry? You no do- You did not anything wrong," pushing the book back open, he returned to his normal position and crossed his arms, "Tell me about your house in Bedford. When I go to America, maybe I get something like that when I come back to Shanghai."

Anna blinked, processing the response for a moment, before he eyebrows settled in confusion, asking: "Wouldn't you want to stay in America?"

"Maybe. But after I learn everything I need to from school, I want to come back here. I don't think I like to stay in America once I grow up," Short Round said, pausing for a moment, before reaching up to rub his chin and nod in exaggerated sageness.

"Well..." Anna looked back to the book and turned to the topographical map of Connecticut, "My house is pretty small compared to some. We have three bedrooms, an indoor bathroom, a study, and a garage-"

"Do you have car?" Short Round immediately asked.

Anna pursed her lips. She would've thought the fact they bought a car here in China would lead one to an obvious conclusion. Still, she answered, "Yes."

"What kind of car?" he pressed further.

"Chevrolet Standard Six," Anna read from memory, "We got it last year because the old one broke down and they couldn't fix it."

Short Round raised a hand and pressed a finger to his right temple, "When I grow up and come back from America, I open garage in Shanghai. Cars becoming very much in the city, so when they break down they come to garage. I get somebody to run garage for me and pay me rent. Then I drive taxi and when I break down nobody rip me off because I own mechanic!" he finished by placing his thumb to his chest.

Anna frowned, before thinking for a moment, and eventually nodding as she accepted the wisdom of his proposal, "You're smart, you know?"

"I very smart," Short Round lowered his hand and raised his chin, "Stupid kids die in Shanghai. I no stupid. I become very rich one day, just like Doctah Jones."

Anna gave a dry chuckle, a smile finally spreading across her face as her vision slowly panned upwards towards the cap sitting on top of Short's head, "...So, you a fan of the Yankees?"

"Who?" Short Round asked, following her gaze upwards and touching the tip of his cap.

"The New York Yankees?" Anna reached up and tapped the logo on the front of the baseball cap.

Taking off the hat and turning it around to face him, Short Round eventually looked back up to her and said, "Doctah Jones buy this for me when we met."

"I like the Yankees," Anna said, "I watch their games in the cinema, and when they have home games I go to New York to watch them."

"I watch one time with Doctah Jones in the cinema," Short Round recounted, "He tell- told me you like it, so that's why he show it to me. That was when he was teaching me how to drive."

Anna's frown soured slightly as she mentally recounted the dates, "...This didn't happen to be summer of last year, did it?"

Short Round nodded mutely.

Anna looked away, "...He was going to take me to watch that in person. But then he had to go to China, and he left me at home. I had to go to that game without him..."

Short Round replaced his baseball cap, "I'm sorry."

Anna heaved a heavy sigh, closing her atlas and shoving it back into its place in her backpack. Standing up, she silently moved past Short Round to head to the prow as the morning sun cut through the fogbank up ahead.

Ningpo was a great sight different to the relatively modern city of Shanghai. After getting off of the ferry at the docks, Anna learned their destination sat somewhere within the city proper. Short Round and Wu Han rode in a hired cart, while Indy and Anna rode in a rickshaw - the two of them wary of riding in wagons drawn by animals after a certain incident in England.

For Anna, being in Ningpo must have been what the time-travellers in her stories felt like when they went back into the dark ages. She saw the occasional automobile, but the streets were all mostly populated by vehicles drawn by animals and people. Gone were the civilized dressings of those back in Shanghai and in were more of the strange and unfamiliar traditional garb. There were thriving markets and a few modern-looking buildings amongst a sea of old and strange.

Despite the wealth of strange and, frankly, exciting things to look at, the conversation between her and Short Round still lingered in her mind. She knew being jealous of a criminal beggar child was ridiculous and a voice in the back of her head told her to be ashamed and embarrassed. Still, though, as she spared a few glances at her father, who was staring blankly away from her deep in thought, she felt an unconquerable desire to confront him.

"Dad, you remember back in last year when you said you'd take me to the Yankees game?" Anna asked.

Indiana blinked and looked back towards her, "Mhm?"

"Well, um..." Anna suddenly wilted, not knowing how to properly express her grievance, "...I saw that baseball cap that Short Round has. He says that he got it after you watched that game... that I wanted to go to, like-" a stutter, "-Erh, like the one we wanted to go to, you went to together instead... in the cinema."

Indiana's forehead creased, "Didn't you get to go to that one with your friends?"

"Well, yeah," Anna looked away, lowering her head.

"We had some spare time and there was a cinema nearby," Indiana said, "I'd like to have seen it with you, Anna, I really would've, there was just important business I needed to get done."

"More important business than me," her subconscious whispered. She didn't have the energy to argue with it... or explain herself more to her father, especially not with how unlikely it seemed it would be for him to understand.

Anna's frown turned glum, "Forget about it..." she muttered.

Indiana's eyes lingered on the back of her head for a few moments, before his vision eventually drifted back off over the streets as he resumed his pondering, rubbing a thumb along his jaw.

They finally arrived on the far side of the city, where they got off and paid for their modes of transport. By then, it was around noon and Anna's stomach rumbled for food. While some of the inner city streets had been paved, out here at the peripheries of the city the streets were mud, still wet from recent storms. Anna's hooves sunk into the ground and she felt the hairs in her nose shrivel as the stench of dung and sewage stunk from the unidentifiable quagmire below her, marked with ruts of wagon wheels back and forth.

Up ahead, a small door-sized gateway lead into some sort of compound between the buildings, Chinese lettering pasted onto the wall next to it. Wu Han waited on the sidewalk, or at least what a sidewalk counted as on a mud street, standing next to the door.

"This is the Chinese side of my family's home," Wu Han said, giving a weak gesture towards the gateway, "They should have a spare room or two."

"You have... another side of your family?" Anna asked, spreading her wings and jumping into a hover in order to avoid the mud from staining her sleeves.

"I am half Dutch," Wu Han simply said, raising a hand towards the gateway, "Please watch yourselves. They are wary of westerners, but are willing to show hospitality because I have assured them you are more sensitive than most."

Indiana's eyes immediately turned towards Anna as he doffed his fedora, "Behave, okay?" he said sternly.

Anna gave an insulted frown, before giving a wandering side-eye towards Short Round, who was not scolded in any such way as he ducked underneath her hind legs to go stand by Wu Han.

"I got a gift to give to them. Good quality cigarettes, imported?" Indiana said, reaching for his back pocket and feeling the box-shaped bump there. Anna vaguely remembered him droning on about something about how having expensive gifts on you at all times was important when travelling outside of America and Europe.

"That should be fine, yes, but I know my grandfather does not smoke, and he is the patriarch..." Wu Han trailed off, before shaking his head and starting: "But it should be more than fine, even the gesture-"

"No, no," Indiana reached over and patted Short Round on the head, "That's why we have assistants. Shorty, do you think you can find some good chocolate to get and bring back before dinnertime?"

"Uh huh!" Short Round nodded.

Indiana reached into his jacket pocket, taking out his wallet. As he thumbed through for a few coins, Anna spoke up, "I could probably fly all the way to the docks and be back in half the time."

"No, Short Round will know his way around better," Indiana dismissed quickly, putting a handful of coins in Short Round's hand, who began to count them as he turned away back towards the street.

"Caaan I go with him?" Anna bargained.

Indiana, once again, shook his head, "No, I want you here."

"Why?"

"Cause I said so."

Anna deflated as she watched Short Round run off. Her father's hand gripped her shoulder and gave a gentle tug, guiding her to follow as they made their way inside. A small corridor followed through the gate, forcing Anna to close her wings and walk behind the two men as they made their way into an interior compound.

Grass grew underhoof, a table and chairs sat along one of the walls, a small pond bordered by stones gubbled with clean water from a fountain, and a tree gave some shelter from the pale sun peeking between the clouds of the overcast sky. All around the courtyard, which was around the size of Anna's front and back yards combined, were doors and windows leading into what could only be a normal-sized house unfolded into a square-shaped complex.

What could only be Wu Han's family came out to greet them. There were a few children, going from around Short Round's age up to the eldest - a teenager. There were women and men, whom Wu Han referred to as 'auntie' and 'uncle' as he introduced them. A conversation was exchanged in rapid-fire Chinese, of which Anna could not understand a word of. She was used to Short Round talking to her slowly and clearly, and even then her error rate for understanding him was very high.

Many strange looks were aimed towards her, which she was more or less used to at this point. Indiana gave her a quickly whispered command to mimic him as he bowed his head politely and greeted. She mirrored him as commanded and the eyes of many widened when she muttered a greeting in Chinese (at first, she was worried she had said something wrong, but after a moment she realized they were more likely surprised she could talk at all).

After a moment, one more woman walked from the entrance to the buildings, supporting a very elderly man who walked with one arm on a cane and the other around the woman. A long, thin white beard grew from his chin, robes adorned his figure, and his eyes were heavily squinted. Though, as he approached, his head raised from its hunched-over position to stare at her squarely.

"This is my grandfather," Wu Han said in English, "And... the woman is my eldest aunt. She was the twin to my mother."

Indiana nodded towards Wu Han, before giving one final greeting towards the two newcomers. Anna quickly mirrored him, trying not to stare back at the squinting elder.

As soon as the greetings were over, the patriarch raised his cane and pointed it at her, before quickly placing it back onto the ground with a slap. He then said something in a low, weak voice to the woman supporting him, who leaned in to hear him. Anna's ears could pick it up, but couldn't make any sense of it - the words had such a slant to them that she was unsure if she was hearing a heavy accent or a dialect.

Wu Han's aunt eventually nodded as the whispering finished and looked towards the westerners, saying in something in Chinese towards Indiana. He gave a slight smile in response, before shaking his head and responding - his words once again too fast for Anna to translate. Fortunately, though, after finishing his response he turned towards Anna and said, "He asked if you were a spirit."

"Mhmmm..." Anna muttered, eyebrows lowered and forehead creased as she looked around.

They were soon ushered inside and shown their room. They had only one room to spare for Wu Han and the foreigners. All it contained was a double bed, a couch, a window looking out into the courtyard, a painting with an artistic style Anna hadn't seen before, and a wardrobe right next to it.

"There's only one bed," Anna pointed out the obvious.

"We'll sleep on it together," Indiana said, shrugging off his bag and placing it in a corner, prompting Anna to do the same.

As she slung her backpack towards the side of the dresser, Anna asked, "Huh?"

"Well unless you'd like to sleep on the floor, Wu Han says he'll take the couch, Shorty will probably take a blanket on the floor, and I'd personally rather like a mattress to sleep on. There's plenty room for someone as small as you," Indiana said casually.

Anna knew that proper girls never slept with men before marriage... especially not their own fathers! This horror came through on her face as she hovered there, backpack still looped around one foreleg, staring at Indiana like he'd turned blue.

Indy, eventually meeting her gaze, just laughed, "Anna, if you're so desperate to travel like me, you're going to have to learn to live rough sometimes. That means sleeping, completely platonically, next to other people sometimes. You'll definitely appreciate it when you're in somewhere with a freezing average temperature at night."

"I'll... pass..." Anna eventually muttered, looking down at the floor, where a mat covered a part of it. It surely couldn't be that bad, right?

"If you can get a good night's sleep on the floor, I'll be proud of you," Indiana teased, punching her lightly in the shoulder as he moved out the door and back into the hall.

Fortunately, Anna's dietary preferences were communicated far enough in advance to include a full vegetarian option in the meal. After lunch, which seemed to be a fairly rushed affair as most of the family left the home soon after and the patriarch went down for a nap, Anna found herself killing some time in the courtyard. She found herself sitting at the table, the atlas open to the maps on China as she took a red pencil and marked it with a thin, red line that marked the route they had taken, originating all the way in Bedford.

Wu Han's voice caught her ear, making it pivot towards him as he asked from behind her: "What are you doing?"

"Killing time," Anna muttered, boredly, shifting around in her seat, "How about you?"

"Reminiscing," Wu Han said, walking past her and placing a hand on a chair to her right, "Mind if I sit with you?"

"Better than sitting around alone," Anna sighed, putting away her pencil and ruler before closing her book.

"Doctor Jones said you really wanted to come along on this expedition?" Wu Han asked, folding his arms as his eyes trailed out overhead towards the pond and tree, "You don't seem to be having very much fun."

"Not really all it was chalked up to be," Anna said, leaning an elbow against the tabletop and supporting her cheek with a hoof.

"What were you expecting, then?" he then inquired, resting his chin on a fist and looking out towards the pond.

"Just some time with Dad, doing things I think we might both be interested in," Anna mumbled, eyes drifting downwards.

Wu Han hummed, "Not having much luck?"

Anna was unwilling to show her entire hand to the man quite yet, so she simply settled with saying: "I feel like I'm spending a lot more time with that kid than with Dad."

"Did he not frame this as a business trip to you?" Wu Han asked, the lack of confusion in his voice suggesting he already knew the answer.

Anna rolled her eyes at that realization, "I didn't expect his 'business' to be days on end of sitting around doing nothing. I could be doing that at home, but at home I'd have things like my friends, the freedom to go and fly around wherever I want, and at least the late afternoon and dinnertime to actually spend with him."

"His work has always tended to have a lot of slow moments that he must not talk a lot about," Wu Han nodded sympathetically, his eyes leaving the peace of the garden and going towards her, "Then, there may be a few extremely dramatic days. Sometimes. We never hope for those dramatic days, though."

"Speak for yourself, I'd like something to happen," Anna grumbled, "Do you think at least the journey out to the shipwreck will be interesting?"

"I think examining the remains may be historically interesting," he gave her a coy smile, "But it's likely the ship has been stripped clean by looters long ago. It will very likely be a dead end."

Anna hissed at that, looking away and muttering under her breath, ears angrily flattened down against her skull and tail tossing. Despite this, Wu Han continued after only a short pause.

"Anna, this is far from the first time I have worked with your father. I do not look forward to the dramatic days, but I enjoy the slow ones very much," he took a deep breath, leaning back in his seat, "Like this one. Sitting underneath the leaves of the tree, feeling the cool late-winter air, watching the fishpond..."

Anna suddenly perked up, staring at the pond, "Fishpond?" she mouthed, staring straight at it. Now that she was fully focused on it, she saw a few, black shapes moving beneath the slightly murky water. Her heart rate rose dramatically.

"The dramatic days are the ones I dread, actually. People always die on the dramatic days. So far, it has been the enemies of Doctor Jones. Next time, I am afraid..."

A splash came from the pond as one of the fish inside attacked a seedling of some kind that had dropped into its surface. The thrash was enough to make Anna scream in fear, jump out of her seat, knock her knee painfully against the bottom of the table, before flying off in a panicked fury of beating wings and loose feathers.

Wu Han, left stunned and mid-sentence, looked up from his place at the table at the golden dot quickly disappearing against the skies overhead. Creasing his forehead, he eventually looked away and back to his peaceful surroundings, "Was it something I said?" he asked himself.

Short Round returned sometime that afternoon, just in time for dinner. While most of the dishes available had some sort of meat in them, Anna's was fully vegetarian. Once again, Indiana was absorbed in reading and polite conversation in Chinese with the rest of the table, who themselves had no conversation for her. After the early morning start for the ferry, she was fully tuckered out.

As promised, she attempted to sleep with nothing but the floormat beneath her and a blanket around her. However, about an hour or so after rolling around a bit on the hard floor, bones constantly digging against her skin as the hardwood boards pressed against them, she gave in and climbed into the actual bed next to her father. He had been right, there was plenty of space for her, and although the mattress was by no means soft, she eventually found sleep...

...only to be awoken five hours later by an early start.

Being given her already packed backpack, having apparently been allowed to sleep in after everyone else had gotten up, she was promptly dragged out the door and to a rickshaw bound for the docks. Their transport out to the island was going to be aboard a fishing boat, which wanted to take them early before their regular work in the fishing lanes began.

So, it was through the misty morning streets that they went, Anna dozing off a few more times until they reached the port, where she finally summoned enough energy to wake herself up and follow the group. Upon noticing Anna's vigor finally return, Indiana made a comment, "Sleeping on the floor is harder than it seems, huh?"

Anna was tempted to say something rude, but simply rolled her eyes instead.

They all approached the boat, bobbing up and down in the water next to the port. The trawler was nothing special, layered in the correct amount of rust and grime that Anna had come to expect since arriving in China. As the boat puttered out to sea, she tried to stoke the flames of her enthusiasm. They were going to see a shipwreck, that was going to be exciting, right?

It was hard to even keep her eyes open long enough to fully enjoy the journey. She'd not been getting proper sleep since arriving in China and the last night had been an extreme example.

"That's something I don't really tell you about, you know?" Indiana said.

They all sat together near the aft of the ship as it puttered out to sea. There was hardly room for the crew to move about freely on its tiny hull, so its passengers had to make do with squeezing themselves into benches on the weather deck and keeping out of the way.

"What?" Anna asked, rubbing an eye as she looked up at her father.

"The messy details of travelling," Indiana elaborated, toying with his fedora in his hands as he spoke, "Trying to catch sleep, constantly travelling around, being in places without some of the amenities we take for granted."

Anna narrowed her eyes as she examined his face. There was a slight, smug grin on his face. A knowing grin, one that told her the man was almost... enjoying the sight of her struggling. She gave a derisive snort, "Well you've clearly had plenty of time to get used to it."

Indiana gave a humorous chuckle, reaching over to rub her head, "Looking forward to being back in your own bed?"

"I'd be perfectly happy to be in Bedford if you would be there with me," Anna thought to herself as she frowned in annoyance at her father's hand digging at her scalp.

She was far too uncomfortable to doze off. As much as she wanted to go for a fly, she both knew she lacked the energy to enjoy it and knew Indiana wouldn't allow it. So, she sat, stewing as they swayed together in the back of the small ship as it bobbed up and down with the endless swells of the waves. The more she sat, though, the more her stomach slowly unsettled as she succumbed to seasickness.

By the time their trip ended, the sun coming up on the horizon, she'd thrown up twice and been left to languish after returning to her seat from the side of the ship. There was little the adults could do to comfort her and she was not much for conversation with Short Round. She envied the boy's ability to seemingly phase out reality, staring off into the distance at a whim and allowing the time to pass.

Finally, though, after sailing aimlessly for a while they found their destination. A remote atoll, with only a few scraggly palms sticking up from its sandy surfaces, just a little while away. Anna spread her wings to fly towards it, desperate to get back to solid ground, but as she went into a hover, her tail was grabbed and pulled down by her father. Indiana quickly pushed past the grounded girl, raising a pair of binoculars to his eyes.

"I see it," he said, "Right there. You can see wooden ribbing poking out of the sand."

Anna reached into her backpack, pulling out her own pair of binoculars to try and spot it as well. Along one of the wave-washed, rocky beaches was the skeleton of an old, wooden ship. She could see a mast broken and crashed over, the rags of sails and shattered planks lying all around it. Despite the wreck not being that extremely old, it was clear storm and wind had done a lot of damage to its exposed body as it slowly sunk in the sand.

The ship finally reached the beach, its hull being shallow enough to allow its passengers to climb down its side and wade in through the water. Anna, at least, was allowed to fly from the ship's side to the shore. She sat on the beach, trying to shake the sickness in her stomach while the rest caught up.

The shipwreck, in full close relief, was not massive by any means. It was a simple, single-masted clipper. Anna could have imagined it carrying no more than ten or twenty crew members. Over the years, parts of it had become buried in sand, while the rear of it had sunk into the ocean. The waves still lapped the rotting planks making up the wreck, even at low tide.

"This looks like the ship that took the Peacock's Eye from you back in 1919," Anna commented, recalling one of her father's many stories.

"No, that ship was triple masted," Indiana dismissed, distracted as he kept his eyes on its shattered form and lead them forward.

"Youuu said it was double-masted," Anna corrected.

"Did I?" Indiana furrowed his brow, looking down and kicking the end of the fallen mast with his right foot, "Well it was triple. This one is single."

"Hopefully the water hasn't ruined the ashes," Wu Han commented, pointing towards the rear of the ship, partially submerged in the water, "The cargo hold is likely back there."

"It's not like they can tell whose ashes will be in it. The object itself is made out of jade, it'd have survived, that's all that matters," Indiana muttered, ducking through the hull ribbing.

Anna followed right behind him, eyes widening with curiosity as she gazed around. There was a musty smell of seawater and moldy wood hanging around her and soft, wet sand enveloped her hooves. The interior of the cracked-open hull, aside from being eerie and old, held very little of actual interest however. There were a few rotten, woven baskets in a corner, bundles of wet and ragged fabric in the forecastle, and a few spools of useless rope.

Indiana's attention was turned to the rear, where a layer of water rolled and swelled with the incoming waves. Wu Han was with him as Short Round poked around with a similar level of curiosity to Anna's.

Something stood out from the greenish-brown wood and the blackened rot of the rest of the waterlogged equipment of the ship. Anna narrowed her eyes and crouched down, digging with a forehoof at the sand as she revealed a small, rusted hook. Its end was blunted by its age, and it fit in the frog of her hoof. A keepsake, perhaps. At least she could say she extracted something vaguely historical from the wreck. At the sound of splashing from behind her, she quickly dusted off the hook and placed it in a pocket of her bag, turning around to see the source of the noise.

Indiana had given his fedora to Short Round, before entering the water soaking the rear portions of the hull. With a deep breath, he submerged, disappearing below the dark and murky water soon afterwards. The thought of other things being in the water with him did not make Anna envy his task.

Soon enough, he re-emerged, shaking his head and blinking seawater out of his eyes, "Nothing. This is a dead end."

After doing a few final checks of the island, the group returned back to the ship to be dropped back off at the mainland. It was as Wu Han had suspected, the ship had already been looted of all of its cargo, leaving only behind the dilapidated and waterlogged baskets, hammocks and ropes.

"What now?" Anna had asked.

"Back to Shanghai. We'll have to try and find another lead. Whoever looted the wreckage would probably have sold Nurhachi somewhere. We can try and get it back that way," Indiana sighed, leaning back in his seat and pulling his damp hat down over his eyes, "This is why this sort of thing always takes months to do."

Anna had not gotten any more used to the bobbing of the ship on the way back to port. She was fortunate that they had not brought anything to eat, or else she surely would have simply just thrown it up again as they made their return trip. How she wished for the big, stable ferry they had taken to Ningpo, or even better the passenger liner that Uncle Marcus had taken her to Europe on several times now.

Jeez, was she really wishing to travel with Uncle Marcus? Had she really fallen that low after just a week or so of adventuring?

She pondered that as they moored at port, being ushered quickly off by the crew as they hurriedly took payment and refueled their ship, having very little time to wait around at the docks. The plan was to find a place to eat before taking the afternoon ferry back across the bay to Shanghai.

Anna tried to make her father promise that it would be a ferry large enough to not bob around constantly with the waves, yet she was stayed as he spotted a strange figure waiting for them at the pier. She followed his gaze, seeing a Chinese man in a black suit and a similarly colored hat.

Indiana reached a hand down to rest on the holster on his belt, for the first time reminding Anna of her own pocket revolver. Still, though, they both kept from any hostile movements as the man grew closer and bowed his head.

"You are Doctor Jones?" he asked in accented English.

"Who's asking?" Indiana asked, stepping forward to place himself between the man and Anna.

The man gave a slight smile, "You are searching for the Ashes of Nurhachi. We are in possession of what you need and may be willing to arrange for a... trade."

Author's Note

Sorry for the delay on this one. Experiencing a bit of burnout after going so hard on this project for so long. Don't worry though, I just need a bit of a slow-down before I continue posting. These next two chapters might be especially hard since I need to write them from scratch, the old versions of them were lost.

Canonicity note: Short Round is meant to have met Indy, gone on one novelized adventure with him, learned how to drive, and foiled the Temple of Doom all within the timespan of 1935. This is obviously a bit of a time-squash, so here they met a year or so earlier.