Gati opened her eyes into darkness. She blinked and tried again but all she could see was black nothingness. With a sigh, she reached into her pouch and retrieved a lighting globe. Gati tossed the globe up and waited for it to light up the area.
To her surprise, she had landed in a giant plant. It took some work, but Gati managed to climb out and look around. This was not anywhere close to where they had meant to fly to. Despite her best efforts, the solar storm must has pushed their ship into the gravitational pull of this planet. Well, as the co-navigator of the Norfol 4-90, it was her duty to figure out how far off course they had gotten and safely see the crew back into space.
The first job was easier. Gati started exploring, trying to pinpoint identifying features of this new planet to determine where they had landed. She peered into a canal of some sort, then wandered around the plants to find a paved path. Well, some intelligent life must live here, to carve out paths, so that narrowed the list of planets. Gati continued on down the path.
Plant life here was very strange. Gati pulled out her indexer and scanned various samples. There was plants identified as belonging to a desert biome next to chaparral plants. There were even tropical flowers! Gati knew her twin brother Navi would love this place, for all he tried to hide his love of flowers from everyone else. As she admired the wild variety of plant life, a metallic sparkle caught her eye on the other side of the path.
Machines. Gati loved machines. She did tinkering on the side (truly, navigation was her main love, but she couldn't pass up any kind of machinery) but these monstrous machines were just marvelous to look at. She climbed into a tunnel and popped out the other side into an entire field filled with the machines. The wheels on the sides indicated vehicles of some sort but she had never seen anything so large before. She turned her indexer on the closest machine.
Identifying...
Car. Mini. Cooper.
"Cooper," she repeated, liking the sound of the words.
She walked down to the next one.
Maserati. Ghibli.
Carefully she sounded out each of the words again and continued scanning everything in sight.
Chevrolet. Camaro.
She took her time admiring that one
Nissan. Rogue.
"Ah! Another Nissan!" she shouted, recognizing the same symbol on the next car.
Nissan. Versa Note.
She nodded, happy to be right, then continued to the next car.
Toyota. Yaris.
She squinted at the unfamilar markings on the last car on the row.
Dodge. Durango.
Gati shrugged. She could memorize the symbols, as that was how she learned how to read maps after all, but she couldn't read the words on the car until the indexer scanned and translated them for her. Well, if they managed to stay on this planet for any length of time, she decided she would learn their written language. That way she could read off the names of the cars any time she wanted!
A familiar sense tugged at her. Navi was nearby. She turned and headed towards where her twintuition led. It was never wrong and it even had a better sense of direction than she did. The row of cars she headed down had a new set of cars to look at so Gati continued scanning.
Honda. Accord.
Chevrolet. Volt.
Mitsubishi. Lancer.
Hyundai. Veloster.
Dodge. Dakota.
"Another Toyota!" she shouted with glee when she spotted the ovals in the logo.
Toyota. Avalon.
Suburu. Forester.
Toyota. Highlander.
That was the last car left. The paved field opened up and she climbed through another tunnel to the path covered in plant life. No one was within view. She climbed up on a nearby flower but still saw nothing. Gati squinted, confused. Navi was just here...
She followed her sense of him farther along the path. Light was just beginning to touch the sky when she reached the apparent end of the path. She stood at the edge of a small cliff, and peered around. Gati scratched her head.
Muttering to herself, Gati said "I swear he is right around here..."
Turning around to survey the path one last time, she spotted a garden. "Ah... That explains it."
Gati pushed her way through the plants to the center, to find a very still, wide-eyed bean that could have been her mirror image.
"Navi? I've been looking all over for you."
Gati left behind a code. Collect all the codes from the crew to find the ship.
Visit the other caches in the series!
#1-June 29th 2014
#2-Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!
#3-'Aliens'
#4-The Great White Fog
#5-Ohana
#7-Twintuition
Final-The Blue Box and the Bronze Ship
*Please do not remove Gati's escape pod (bison tube). She needs it to return home.*
You can validate your puzzle solution with certitude.