Lost Pirates 2 - Chapter 1

 (NOT FINAL EDIT - did I share this yet?)

Frank still hadn’t been able to process the fact that he was back home, but that it was completely changed. He should’ve known. Wasn’t that always how it went in the movies? He’d watched his fair share of Sliders, and had grown to hate squeaky gates for the fact they’d always represented when that team would be home, but they kept going on across worlds. 

Would he now be destined to repeat that show’s hell, but through time? Or maybe it was worlds in his case too. It was a theory, one he was starting to wonder about. This didn’t make sense. Frank’s own world should have been just as he’d left it. They had changed the past, defeated the fake Pirate King—or the PK, as they sometimes referred to the man. Not anymore though. Now it was strictly Rick Draper, or as Frank liked to call him, Rick the Dick. 

Frank walked ahead of his group, but glanced back now to see them watching him with concern. They knew he had no idea where he was going. Their plan was to find the other compass in this time, and figure out how to use it to go back and stop the PK. But if this was a parallel world type of time travel, would that do any good? 

Mostly he was trying to piece it together as he walked. If that were the case, maybe it worked like a branching path narrative, with different alterations in time creating different worlds like the nodes that then reconnected with the right path, if corrected. They could still all exist in their own time in their version of their own worlds, but the final path wasn’t determined yet. 

It was the only way he could make sense of this, and really the only way he could accept it. The alternative would mean changing time and erasing all of the amazing adventures he’d had, and he refused to accept that. 

“We’ll find him,” Rose said. While she was his grandma, he still hadn’t gotten used to the fact that she didn’t look much older than him, due to having been lost in time. 

Frank nodded to show he was trying, and this time it was Keisha and Esmerelda who came to the rescue. They stood on each side of Rose, dressed in their pirate outfits and looking ridiculous in the modern world. It was enough to make him smile, and their sexiness was enough to bring his mind back to blissful memories of being pressed against their nude bodies. With that in mind, nothing else seemed quite as dreary.

“After what we accomplished back there,” Esmerelda said, “I have no doubts in our ability to pull this off.”

“She’s right,” Keisha said with a grin. “We’re amazing.

“You—” he started to make a witty remark, but quickly lost it as a bus drove by. Or, he thought it was a bus—the top was sawed off, a man in a bandana driving and shouting as he went, and he nearly slammed right into them!

“Watch it, psycho!” Frank shouted, and swore he saw someone in a pirate hat glance back at them from the only occupied seat toward the rear. Maybe a convention? 

“You’ll have a lot to get used to,” Rose said to Esmerelda and Keisha, who were both staring after the mutilated bus, and then slowly turning to see a car parked by the side of the road. 

“Oh, damn…” Frank said, unable to comprehend what they must be going through. “Imagine when we get to World War II.” 

“Even we’ll be in over our heads then,” Rose replied. 

They kept walking, passing regular suburbs with the odd tree here and there. A squirrel darted out into the road, looked at Frank, and then kind of hissed before running off. 

“What the hell kind of squirrel hisses?” Frank said with a frown. If even the squirrels were going to give him problems in this world, he wasn’t sure what to expect. Now that he thought about it, the shadows in the trees felt too dark, their green not green enough. 

Or maybe he was letting his imagination run away with itself. 

“You think they’re better off back there?” he said, turning to the ladies. “M&M, I mean,” he added, earning a chuckle from Rose but clueless glances from the other two. M&Ms were among the many aspects of this time they’d have to get ready for—Frank had a bit of an obsession with the candies, especially the kind with peanuts in them. Though, ever since one of his professors had gone off about peanuts carrying mold, he’d been less certain. 

“Are we going to fit in here?” Keisha asked, looking down at her clothes. They hadn’t seen many people yet, but he guessed she could tell from the houses and cars in the driveways that they were in for some new experiences. 

“Let’s get you all out of those clothes, first of all,” Frank said, only then remembering that he, too, was wearing pirate clothes. 

“Frank, maybe we don’t in front of your grandma?” Esmerelda teased, nodding at Rose. 

Rose laughed, and said, “I think he means that you should find other outfits.”

Frank nodded, leading them down a curve in the road and motioning them to stay to the side. They weren’t used to the idea of roads like this, or that cars or busses could go speeding around corners at any minute.

“We’re not exactly in your time,” Rose said. “Or even an adjusted version of it, anyway, but do you think there’s anyone who could help us?”

“Since my family wasn’t in my home, chances of anything being how it should be are low.”

“Still, doesn’t hurt to try.”

“Maybe… it’s a longshot,” Frank said, wishing he had his cell. There was only one friend’s number he could remember—his college roommate. But he had to try. “Follow me,” he said, walking up to the closest house. “I’m going to try to make a call.”

As Rose did her best to explain what that meant, Frank knocked on the door, anxiously. No answer came, but he could see through the window that the T.V. was on. Frowning at the thought that someone was ignoring him in his time of need, Frank was turning to go when he froze, eyes glued to the T.V screen. 

“This might be easier than we thought,” Esmerelda said, seeing it at the same time Frank had, apparently. 

There on the screen of a television in this house was an image of the fucking PK himself, speaking into the camera as if this were the most natural thing in the world for someone like him to be doing. Oddly, he was wearing a suit that still had pirate flare to it, including a sword at his waist and holstered pistols—though at least they were modern. 

But that wasn’t all. Behind him was the Puget Sound with several ships, and a view of the Seattle Space Needle. Both the ships and the needle were sporting the PK’s modified Jolly Roger with the crowned skull and crossbones.

Only, there was something different about it all, too. Something Frank couldn’t quite put his finger on, but that would continue to bother him until he could, he just knew it. For now, he had one major realization—they had found themselves in either the biggest pirate festival he’d ever seen, or they’d stumbled upon a version of the world where somehow the PK had created his pirate empire after all. 

He was willing to bet it was the latter. 

   f