HoloPirates: A Tale of Adventure

Marine

I slowly awoke as pain pounded behind my eyes, a product of the incessant headache that had sprung up from my drinking last night. I groaned as I rubbed my eyes, and I buried my head in Marine's shoulder, trying to make the headache dissipate. As I pressed my head into her shoulder, I felt her shift underneath me, and her soft morning voice washed over me.
"Got a hangover?" She asked as I buried my face farther into her shoulder.
"Aye." I said.
"Did you have nice dreams?"
"I can't remember." I said. "All I remember is that there was a volcano.."
"That might be the Deep Fire, below the Southern Archipelago." She mumbled. "I've been down there a few times."
"Why?" I said, my voice nearly muffled against her warm shoulder.
She paused for a moment, and she readjusted herself in the bed, trying to get comfortable as I used her shoulder for a pillow.
"Mmm, mostly to escape the Kingdom or the Alliance after raids. They don't really like the Deep Fire region, because when the volcanoes erupt, the fiery rocks that are launched out can be really dangerous, so its a haven for pirates."
"Is the Island of Death in there?"
"Aye." She mumbled, her voice losing strength as she became more and more tired.
"Still sleepy?"
"Mhm." She said. "Should we just stay here? Jansen can lead the crew."
"I guess so." I said. "Take a day off from all the adventuring."
"Aww, are you not having fun?"
"Maybe." I said. "First we got attacked by pirates, then I got my ass kicked by a lion lady, then we blew up a fortress, then there were bounty hunters, a robo leviathan, and now we're here."
"And?"
"And I mean I'm tired of always almost dying. I already died once, and it sucked. I just wanna relax."
"Mmm. I understand."
I felt her shift again, but this time, she wrapped her arms around me, bringing me into a cradle position as I pressed the side of my head against the upper part of her chest, near her collarbone. We both laid like that, for quite some time, until she shifted again, breaking the trance of comfort. I looked up as my neck popped, and I saw Marine reaching for a book from her nightstand. It was small by book standards, with maybe a couple hundred pages or so, and the book was leather bound, looking like the book was really, really old. On the front of the book, there was a leather latch, bound to the front of the book by a gold buckle.
"What is that?"
"Its the ship log." She said. "Also my personal journal. Sorry if I disturbed your beauty sleep."
"Its fine." I replied sleepily. "What're you writing in there?"
"I just write my thoughts and it helps with everything." She said. "But the journal is enchanted."
"How?" I asked.
"If I write what happened to me, it can either lessen the pain of the memory, or it can strengthen the happy memories."
"Thats...actually pretty neat." I said.
"Aye, magic is pretty handy."
I paused for just a moment, thinking over my next words very carefully.
"Can I ask something?"
"Sure, what is it?"
"Do you write about Charlie in there?"
"Aye, I have." She said, pausing slightly. "It helps with the memory of him."
"I get that." I replied. "I used to try and keep a journal when my life was starting to go down, and it helped a little bit. But I kind of fell out of it after a while."
She giggled a little bit, and I looked up at her as she gave me a smile.
"What are you laughing at?"
"I just tried to imagine you sitting still and writing in a journal for more than five seconds."
My jaw dropped at the comment, and I scoffed at her before laying my head back down on her stomach.
"I used to study, thank you very much." I said. "Back in my first year of high school, I studied a lot when I cared about school."
"High school?" She asked. "Is that like, universities here?"
"Well, kind of." I said, straining my brain to try and explain the education system in a way she would understand. "So, as kids, when you reach six, they send you to school, and then for the next twelve years, until you reach 18, they keep you in school, and the last four years of that is called 'High School'."
"Is high school fun?"
I shrugged.
"It can be." I said. "I mean, in the first year, I participated in a lot of things, like club activities, which is where you hang out with a bunch of people who like the same thing that you do, and I also went to a lot of football games."
"Football?" She said quizzically. "Isn't that the game you told me about where you try and get the ball into the other team's goal by throwing and beating each other up?"
"Well, kind of, but aye, thats the gist of it."
She looked genuinely proud of herself that she remembered, and she smiled again, writing in her journal.
"What else was there?"
"Well, sometimes we would go on field trips, where you would go either close by the school, or far away from it, and we went on a two day train trip to the town of New Orleans, in a state called Louisiana."
"Was Louisiana like California?"
"Oh not at all. It was hot, humid, and it had a lot of bugs." I said. "But when we went there, we went to go see the museum of World War II."
"What was that?"
"The museum? Its where a bunch of artifacts and relics-"
"I know what a museum is, Micheal." She laughed. "I've been to countless museums."
"And how many have you robbed?"
She looked away with a smile, and I giggled as she continued writing in her journal.
"So what was World War II?"
"Well, I don't know much about it, but I do know that it was a huge war between a bunch of different countries, hence why we called it World War II. It was like the whole world was at war. But anyway, it was the first war where we used Atomic Bombs."
She stopped writing for just a minute, and she looked at me.
"What are those?"
I strained hard, trying to think back to what I learned in history class about the atomic bombings.
"Well, I know it had something to do with atoms." I said. "Thats why they call them Atomic. But the bombs were enormous. They could destroy entire cities."
She fell silent as she kept writing in her journal, and finally, she looked right back at me.
"Were you in World War II?"
I gave her a strange look.
"Marine, World War II ended like sixty years before I was born."
"Oh. Sorry." She said, suppressing a grin. "So, were there ships?
"Well, yeah, but if I remember right, most of the action took place on the land and in the air." I said. "Remember those airplanes that I told you about that I would ride with my mother?"
"Yeah I remember. The big ones right?"
"Right, but the ones we used for war were a lot smaller, and the ships that we had were made out of steel, and they could fire at targets that were miles away."
She nodded, and she kept scribbling in her journal, then turned the page and continued scrawling.
"Were there any bad guys in the war?"
"What do you mean bad guy? Like someone evil?"
"Aye."
"Oh of course. Leading the Axis Powers, which were the bad guys, was a man named Adolf Hitler." I said. "And he killed over nine million people, I think."
She stopped writing, and when I looked up, her eyes were the widest that they had ever been.
"Nine million??" She whispered. "Why did he do it?"
"I can't remember." I said. "I think it was just because of their religion though."
"That's....sick." She said.
"Well, that's exactly why every hates him." I replied. "But don't worry. He's dead, and he's been dead for a long, long time."
She nodded again, still invested in her book, and by now, I was getting curious as to what she was doing, but I stayed silent so that I didn't disturb her.