Lost Pirates 2 - Chapter 8

“What is this place?” Frank asked, eyes wide. They had run and found a subway station where the ninja had led them into a secret entrance. Inside, he had led them through near-darkness until they’d found a false wall, entering this crazy hideout. 

Crazy because it had other passages going off of it, maps of the city above, and training dummies, cots, and several mats for sparring or wrestling. Clearly not some random side room of the subways. 

“The key to your success,” the ninja replied. 

“I think… I need a minute. And a seat.” Frank found a cot in the corner and plopped himself down. The ninja stood aloof, while Esmerelda and Keisha moved over to Frank’s side nervously, the latter sitting and taking his hand. Rose stood in the middle, arms crossed. 

“All of this is related, isn’t it?” Rose asked. “I mean to the hidden items, the crafting.”

The ninja’s eyes lit up and he nodded. 

“So you were the one…?” Frank asked. 

“No, but we’ve been putting the pieces together. Some of us believe a future version of our group is doing it, in a sense. I’m sorry if this is all going to be confusing, but basically here’s what we know, okay?”

“Please,” Esmerelda replied. “If anyone knows anything, put it on the fucking table, because I’m lost.”

“Let me do the best I can to help,” the ninja said. “The condensed version, anyway. When time started being messed with, it became a bit of a jumble, not easy for any of us to really grasp. Suffice it to say, a version of Frank has gone forward, then back, and… sideways? Multiple versions, really.” 

“I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about,” Frank protested. “All I’ve done is go back, then here.”

“This version of you, yes.” The ninja held up a hand. “It’s… hard to grasp. What you should know now is that you can’t just go back and stop the original version of Rick. It’s already in motion—meaning, the alternate paths have been created. All you’d do is affect that one world, instead of merging the paths back into one.”

“The fuck?” Even Rose was looking confused now. 

“Wait, I think I get it.” Frank gave Keisha’s hand a squeeze and stood up again. “Like a branching narrative, kind of. Instead of, when choices in a game create new paths for the game to go, time travel here is essentially creating new versions of our reality. Or alternate universes, sort of.”

“Simplified, and in talk that none of the rest are likely to get,” the ninja chuckled, “sure. If that helps.” 

Frank nodded enthusiastically. “It does! And it’s like, you can’t just go back and delete the game, because that would be stupid. You have to finish the game and hope you get a satisfactory ending.”

“Correct. Deleting the ‘game’ in this case doesn’t work, because each time you travel you create new realities. The most we can do is try for the best outcome and work to lower the suffering of as many along the way as we can.”

“Or merge the realities back,” a new voice said, and the group turned to the doorway to see a woman standing there, hands in her pockets, looking at us hesitantly. She was a woman with straight, brown hair with silver streaks running through it, though she looked young. Maybe a couple of years older than Frank, at most. What really stood out on her was the strange eyepiece she wore over one eye. It had a green lens and two others next to it she could swap out, and she wore a strange, steampunk-looking device on her shoulder and at her hips. Her breasts were pushed up by a sort of vest that made Frank wonder, and she wore a metal glove on her right hand.

Now that he was looking, he noticed her exposed eye was red. Strange. 

“That’s your theory,” the ninja replied, referring to her comment about merging the different realities. 

“Which you don’t agree with?” Rose asked. 

The ninja shook his head. “Anything’s possible, but… basically a new version has been written over the old—others have tried this already, but it causes new memories and understanding of the world to layer on top of the old, causing confusion. Enough of this would threaten to drive everyone mad.”

“Maybe,” the new girl admitted. “Or maybe it would lead to everyone seeing how things could’ve been, and an advanced state of enlightenment.” 

“A pretty big gamble, there.”

“Seems to me,” Rose cut in, “we’re gambling either way.”

Frank shook his head, then grasped it as if that would help it to not explode. “You all are killing me. Hold on, so are you from the past? The future? How do you know all this?”

“When you managed to travel back, you started a chain reaction of alternate realities,” the ninja explained. “There were already a couple from previous time travels, but your involvement put it to the extreme, because you reactivated it after it was stalled. As I was starting to explain before, you’ve now traveled to the future, the past, and—”

“Sorry, but I haven’t. Not to the future.”

“Right…” The ninja turned to the girl here, then back to Frank, eyes narrowed. 

“He’s having a hard time telling you,” the girl said, “but we might as well get it over with. You have, but… not you, you. Other versions of you.”

“Other… versions…” Frank bit his lip, then laughed. “You all are fucking with me.”

“We’re not,” she said, a deep sorrow in her voice. 

“Show them to me.”

“We can’t,” she admitted. “And not just because of flux capacitor shit, as ‘other you’ liked to say. But because…” She stood there, mouth moving as if to say the words, then looked down at the ground and took a deep breath. After a moment, she added, “Because they’ve all died.”

Now Frank was really confused, and actually getting annoyed. “How the fuck is that supposed to help me? There are supposedly other versions of me, but they’ve all died? Bullshit. As far as we know, you all are with Rick the Dick.” 

“You still call him that?” The girl stepped forward, hand reaching out to Frank, but she stopped, pulling it back suddenly. “Sorry, my Frank did too. It’s hard to… oh, shit.”

“She was with another version of you,” Esmerelda voiced what Frank was starting to process. 

The girl nodded. “And you’re our last hope.”

He stared, scoffed, then frowned and licked his lips. “Why me?”

“Because, Frank,” the ninja said, “you passed the early tests, you leveled up with the compass, triggering some sort of event that someone set up, and now it’s like…” He paused, hands out, moving one around as if that would help him come up with the answer.

“Like I’ve put in my quarter, so I’m the one.” Frank laughed. “Shit, so… because I traveled back, because I got it to work and used it, I’ve basically nominated myself the time hero or something? Maybe I should just go back in time and erase that decision.”

“That’s not—” the ninja started. 

“I know, I know, not how it works. Still, kinda makes me wonder.”

“And if you could do that, you’d never have met us,” Keisha pointed out. “Rick would’ve remained the Pirate King, the world as you know it would’ve somehow changed or never been what you knew it to be in the first place.”

“Yeah, you had me at the ‘never met us’ part,” Frank admitted. He shrugged. “Fine, we’re in. No choice. Hope I don’t die, but… I guess we’ll see. What’s next?”

“Next is you all take some rest,” the ninja said. “Grab some food, sleep if you can. We have a room prepared for you. And in the morning, we’ll start your training.”

“Training?” 

“Of course,” the ninja said. “You have to become one of us if you hope to stand a chance.” With that, he gestured to Rose. “Perhaps you’ll accompany me, for a bit? Give them some privacy?” 

Frank blushed at that, but couldn’t deny the fact that some alone time with his ladies sounded great. 

“I’d like that,” Rose said, eyeing the ninja with curiosity. 

“Hold on,” Frank interjected. “We trust you enough in that you saved us, but I’m not letting you take my grandma alone to wander off, who knows where.”

“She won’t be alone with him,” the other girl said. 

“And… it’s not like I’m some stranger,” the ninja said. He stood there a moment longer, and then reached up, undoing the back of his mask. When he pulled it off, Frank gasped. 

The eyes staring back at him were eyes he knew very well, though the rest of the man standing before him he’d only seen in a much older form, or in pictures. 

“Grandpa?”

His grandpa—the ninja—smiled. “Apparently.” 

“I just—how?” 

Before his grandpa could answer though, Rose had thrown her arms around him, mouth on his, and they were kissing passionately. The girl blushed, eyes meeting Frank’s, and then turned from the room. 

“I’ll leave you all to it,” she said before exiting. 

“Temra,” Frank’s grandpa said, pulling free for a moment, but she was gone. He held Rose, looking over at Frank. “She’s… going through a lot.”

“We all are,” Frank said, staring in awe at the image of his grandparents so young, holding each other like this. “You were… dead.”

“So I’ve heard,” his grandpa replied. “Old age, at least. I’ll take it.”

Frank nodded. “And you’re here… how?”

“It was a world much like your own,” his grandpa started. “Only, in that version I’d just returned from the pirate time—so assume that’s where the split began—and was starting to lose my cool, realizing Rose wasn’t with me.” He spared a moment to look her way, taking her hand. “Well, no sooner had I felt my head spinning, then you come in. Another version of you, explaining everything, telling me all sorts of things that could happen, and how we had to chase down Rick and stop him. What followed was time spent in Temra’s world, a journey to World War II, and then… tracing him back to Ancient Japan. There we trained, and ultimately butted heads with him, ending it there. Only, that’s when we returned to learn about the multiple worlds, to find that Temra’s world had changed and that others were changing, too. The only hope we had was to make our way to this one, where we’d intercept the final Ricks and… you. Only, we didn’t know we’d lose the other version of you in the process.”

“And this… other version of me?” I asked, trying to process everything he’d just told me.

My grandpa smiled, wistfully. “The one that Temra loved, and who loved her back.”

“Loved?” Esmerelda spoke up, standing at Frank’s side and looking down the hallway where Temra had gone. “Well, shit.”

“We should… I mean, you should at least talk to her,” Keisha said. 

“Just a second,” Frank protested. “I’m still trying to, I mean, this is my grandpa.”

“We’ll have our time,” his grandpa said. “Plus, I mean—I don’t want to be insensitive here, but… this is the first version of your grandma I’ve been able to connect with. I wouldn’t mind some time to talk.”

“Talk, huh?” Rose replied with a wink.

“Gross.” Frank grimaced when they both turned to glare. “Sorry, but… I mean, you are my grandparents after all.”

They laughed, nodding. Rose pointed to the hallway. “Go. Get some rest. We promise not to fuck, if that makes you happy.”

“Rose!” Frank’s grandpa stared at her in shock. He lowered his voice, as if Frank wouldn’t be able to hear when he asked, “Really?”

“No, I’m just trying not to scar the boy,” Rose replied, grabbing his ass. 

Frank moved for the hallway. “Okay, scarring in progress. Grandpa, I look forward to catching up.”

“Me too,” his grandpa replied, then laughed as Rose smacked his ass. “In the morning.”

As soon as they were out of the tunnel and through the first door, Esmerelda took Frank, turned him toward her, and pressed her lips to his for a passionate kiss. When she pulled back, he turned to see they were in a large room, several people eating at tables on the far side and glancing over at them with curiosity. Temra was over by the far wall, looking their way as she knelt at a footlocker. 

“What was that for?” Frank asked, dazed. Then Keisha did the same. “And that…?”

“To get you thinking straight,” Esmerelda said. “And also… so you have us in mind when you go comfort that poor girl.” 

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” he admitted. “But appreciated.”

“She needs to talk to you,” Keisha said. “Just… help her in that respect, and we’ll be waiting for you with some food.”

With that, they meandered over to the tables, leaving Frank to address Temra. He wasn’t sure what to make of this, walking over to a woman who he had, supposedly, been in love with. Or not him, but an alternate version of himself… which made it even more confusing.