Lost Pirates 2 - Chapter 2

(Not final edit) 

“What the hell’s happening here?” Rose gasped, out of breath and holding up a hand to stop Frank. They had started running, not wanting to waste any more time and hoping to see more signs of what they’d seen on the T.V., only in person this time. 

At the base of a tree covered hill—a hill that, in Frank’s world and time had been covered in houses—they plopped down. He had to admit, he was hungry, tired, and exhausted. Back in the pirate time, they could at least find other pirates or enemies, and therefore ask for help or take what they needed. Here, not so much. 

“I think it’s clear,” Frank said. “Somehow, in spite of all we did… we lost.” 

“Not possible,” Esmerelda said. “And this is different, if you didn’t notice.”

“She’s right,” Rose chimed in. “It wasn’t just pirate… didn’t you see the Celtic patterns on the sails? It could be coincidence, or it could be something else entirely.” 

Frank hadn’t noticed, but now that he thought about it, he remembered seeing something like that. “How does that change anything?”

“It’s not how I remember my America,” Rose answered. “And it’s not the pirate way of our time.”

“You think he went back to another time… an earlier time, maybe

“Not Celtic,” Rose said, eyes lighting up in realization. “Nordic.”

“What?”

“The patterns, what if they were Nordic?” She stood, looking around as if hoping to see confirmation right there. “I mean, could he have gone to another time, a time before ours, and set up his empire from there?”

“How…?”

“Easy,” she was pacing up and down now, the other two ladies watching with confused excitement. “He finds another time in history that would’ve made sense and repeats what he tried in the eighteenth century with us, only this time without interference.” 

“And without the English,” Frank pointed out. 

“He’s figured out how to travel through time,” she countered. “I think working around language barriers would be the least of his problems. Especially if he managed to bring back modern or futuristic—by his standards—tech.” 

“And it might not have been only one time period,” Keisha pointed out with a worried look in Frank’s direction. 

“Great.” Frank frowned, leaning back on the hill and staring up at the clouds. “But what I really meant was how would that affect M&M?”

“Ah…” She didn’t have an answer for that.

“Our plan was always to check in on them when we need their help, right?” Keisha said. “Well, first chance we get, I’d say checking in to see how this time alteration affected them could be pretty damn useful.” 

“Agreed,” Frank said. “I wish I could check my own head for reference, but since we weren’t here in the time change, we would be unaffected.”

“You have a guess for how it would work?” 

Frank nodded. “Purely speculation, but it’s entirely possible they would remember both sides—the part they lived through, and the version their new world expects them to have lived through.”

“Sounds painful,” Esmerelda said. “Extremely. 

“And it’s just an idea,” Frank replied. 

“It’s more than an idea,” Keisha said. “It’s a wish. A hope. Because the other version is that they don’t remember us, since that timeline didn’t exactly happen.”

“Or it did, but we showed up and fought and lost, or something—I don’t know, but… yeah, starting to hurt my head.” 

Frank held his hands to his temples, lying there and trying to figure out their next move. Meanwhile, Rose took Esmerelda and said they’d check their surroundings, see if they could spot anything that might possibly help them. Frank wanted to shout that this wasn’t their land, it wasn’t some place where fancy futuristic weapons were buried and all that needed to be done was for them to win some battles. 

But… maybe he was wrong? For all Frank knew, his world was now transformed into a land of piracy and chaos. Maybe kicking some ass was exactly the right step.

“My dad, I don’t know,” Frank said, lying back and glancing over to Keisha. “For example, on my nineteenth birthday, he invited me home, told me we’d have a party and all… but I had plans, and told him we could just celebrate next time I was on break. I had essays, exams, you know?”

She frowned. “No, not really.”

“Yeah, well… turned out he’d actually gotten us tickets to see the newest Star Wars movie in 3-D. My dad? He never paid to go to a theater, let alone 3-D. I only found out later when a neighbor asked how the movie had been, six months after! That’s how excited my dad had been to take me to such a simple thing as a movie! We just… didn’t connect anymore.”

She leaned up onto her side, stared at him and ran a finger along his chin, “That’s cute… touching. But what is a movie, and what the hell is Three-D?”

Frank chuckled, wondering if he’d ever get used to this, and leaned over to kiss her. “Someday, I’ll show you.”

That seemed to satisfy her curiosity, because she lay with her head on his chest, holding him. “And the birthday celebration?”

“Never happened,” Frank replied, only realizing it for the first time right then. Maybe he’d wanted to, maybe even had something planned, but Frank had been in his own world, going through a breakup after a two-week relationship at the time. Damn. When had he not been lost in his own bullshit? The old man had been there for him, and he’d been… well, a snotty kid.

If he ever made it back, he decided he’d change that. And then, with that thought, he realized he profoundly missed the man.

“I’d like to hear more about him, someday,” Rose said, and Frank turned to see they’d returned. “But right now there’s something you have to see.”

Frank shared a moment with his grandmother, looking into her eyes and realizing she’d never really gotten to know her son—not as well as she probably would’ve liked. Never had the chance to watch him grow old. He nodded, pushed himself up, and followed her up the hill with the other three ladies at his side. 

The roar grew louder as they neared the top of the hill, and before they crested the top and looked out to see freeways intercrossing and the cars zooming by, Frank recognized the sound they made. 

“What am I looking at here?” Keisha asked, eyes darting from Frank to the freeway and back, as if he were about to announce it was a big hoax. 

“Holy hell,” Rose added. “The world has changed.” 

But while they were looking at the cars, Frank was staring at a large billboard that had once been an ad for car insurance. Now it was a woman in a pirate outfit with text reading, “Buckle up or die!” with her sword pointed out toward us. 

A different method of enforcement, it’d seem. 

“This is normal,” Frank said, but his eyes moved back to the billboard. His mind on the sawed-off bus earlier. “Well, mostly. The amount of cars, anyway.” 

“Is this how we’ll get to the city?” Rose shook her head, still processing it. “We had cars in my day, but this… this is insanity.”

“It’s what happens when there are so many people.” Frank glanced left, eyes searching, and then he saw it—a corporate building, with several others behind it through the trees. If there were buildings like that, there would likely be more people, more answers… and maybe a way to catch a ride into the city. 

From there, all they had to do was find the PK, steal his version of the compass, and then go back through time to fix all of this. Piece of cake… if the cake was the type to cause major indigestion.