HoloPirates: A Tale of Adventure

Celebrations

Boy. I hadn't had so much fun since I went to my family's barbecue on the Fourth of July, six years ago. And still, that was absolutely NOTHING compared to what I was going through today. There was so much food, and, since we were hailed as heroes, of course we gorged ourselves on so much of it. So much breaded and fried meat, which I never even considered how much I had missed from my world. They even had fried chicken, and boy, I tore into it with a near reckless abandon. I missed fried chicken so much.
"This is so good!" I told the cook as he lowered another set of chicken legs into the deep fryer.
"Well, thank you very much!" He replied. "Anything else I can get you?"
"What else ya got?"
"We got some fish sticks over here!"
Immediately, I dropped the chicken leg that I was tearing into, catching it with my plate, and I looked him straight in the eyes.
"Fish sticks?" I asked, a sick feeling growing throughout my entire body.
As he saw my face, an explosive laugh erupted right out of his mouth, and a wave of relief washed right over me.
"Messin with ya pal." He said. "We got beef cakes, if you like that stuff."
"What is that?"
"Its beef, fried and wrapped in a crispy wrap of bread. Is that your thing?"
"Uhh, sure." I said. "Yeah, why not. I'll give it a shot."
"Trying our food?"
I turned to the source of the voice, and there stood Gura, holding her trident like a gigantic walking stick as she chowed down on a shish-ka-bob, tearing into it with her shark teeth.
"Oh hey Gura." I said. "I just haven't eaten in a while. Thought I'd enjoy the festival with some food."
"Oh of course! We didn't want to let you guys go hungry for any longer." She said, tearing the last of the chicken off of the shish-ka-bob. "Anyway, we got tons of activities for all of you if you'd like!"
I stopped and stared right at her, attempting to process what I'd just heard.
"This isn't it?" I asked. "There's more?"
"Uhhhh, yeah?" She said, giving me a funny look while trying to keep in her own laugh. "We have sea horse racing, Battle Dome, casinos, and so much more if any of you are interested!"
"Whoa wait, Casinos?" I asked.
"Yeah, one of the biggest in the city is just down the road, wanna head to it?"
"Sure, lemme just get Marine."
"Well, she can catch up, can't she?"
I stopped right in my tracks, and the thought shot through my brain faster than a cannonball. Just leaving Marine behind to go with Gura? It didn't seem like the right thing to do, but before I could even think about what choice I should make, I grabbed the Beef Cake from the vendor, paid him, and turned back to Gura.
"Lead the way." I said.
She gave me a gigantic smile, then hefted her trident and took off running through the crowd.
"Try and keep up!" She yelled.
"Hey, thats not fair!" I yelled, running after Gura.
I pushed past the various Atlantans, trying to catch up to Gura, and along the way, I nearly tripped and fell, almost breaking my skull open on the hard, white stone of the agora. I caught my fall just in time, then got back to my feet and kept running, trying to keep the pace with Gura. I tried to keep my eyes on her to not lose sight of her, and as soon as I vaulted over a small divider that held the rails for a set of stairs, I saw that Gura had beaten me to a set of gigantic, floating seahorses. I say gigantic, since they were smaller than both of us, it still, they were at least four feet tall each, and they were both yellow, with a very small and near insignificant glow to them. They bucked and neighed (which was more of a clicking noise rather than a neigh) as I approached, so I held my hands up to calm them down like I did with regular horses when I was young, but the seahorse that I was closest to bucked again, shaking its head in protest.
"What are you doing?" Gura laughed, handling her seahorse perfectly.
"I'm trying to calm the damn thing down!" I said as the seahorse bucked again. "But it ain't cooperating."
"Thats cause you're holding your hands up. You're making yourself look bigger. Just put your hands down, slouch a bit, and you'll be fine, trust me."
I did as she asked, letting my hands fall by my side and slouching my posture a little bit, trying to make myself look smaller, and thankfullly, the thing calmed down enough for me to get around to the back of the seahorse. I mounted the saddle and put my feet into the spurs, and I grabbed what looked like the reigns, which was this metal bar that was strapped to the things chest, having two small handles that jutted out from the sides of it, just big enough to grab. I held onto the handles as I got comfortable in the saddle, and I turned to Gura.
"Alright, which way?"
"Well, turn around first, silly." She said. "If you spur the thing now, you'll run everyone over, 'cause these things are really fast."
Yeah okay. I thought, shrugging the comment off in my mind. They're just seahorses, how fast can they be?
Nevertheless, I turned the mount around with the handles, which was surprisingly easy to use, and when we were both turned around and facing the street, Gura kicked the seahorse as hard as she could in the side, and the thing shot, and I do mean shot, forward. The thing went from at least zero to forty in a split second, and it was rapidly heading farther and farther down the street. I'd soon lose sight of her if I didn't go.
"YAH!!!" I yelled, kicking mine in the side.
Just like Gura's, my seahorse blasted forward, nearly scraping me against the wall before I steered it away and down the street, passing around passerby and carts that were strewn about at random throughout the city. And boy, this seahorse was FAST. I barely had enough time to react to anything as I constantly steered the thing away from all of the hazards of the road. The seahorse wasn't exactly the hardest to control, but I couldn't slow down at all, because Gura was still sixty feet ahead of me, and she was handling the seahorse near perfectly. I gripped the handles even harder just to get that extra bit of handling, and I jabbed the thing in the side one more time, pushing it forward even faster as it picked up a near monumental amount of speed.
"The casino is right up ahead!" Gawr Gura yelled from up ahead. "Get ready to slow down!!"
"Up ahead??" I yelled back, trying to spot anything that remotely looked like a casino. Instead, in front of us, and rapidly approaching, might I add, there was a very large watering hole nestled right into a very, very wealthy looking community. "There's nothing up ahead!!"
"Just trust me!" She yelled back.
I shook my head, but as we got closer and closer to the body of water, I started to pull back on the bar, slowing the seahorse down so that I didn't just plummet right into the water. The seahorse slowed down just fast enough to not toss me straight in the water, and I dismounted, letting my boots crunch against the stone tablets of the ground. I looked around the water, but so far, there was absolutely nothing above the water that looked remotely like a casino. However, as I stood at the edge of the drop off to the lagoon with Gura by my side, I saw lights, very, very faint lights, all the way down at the bottom of the hole, looking almost like an entrance of some kind.
"Is that it?" I asked. "All the way under there?"
"Yup!" She said. "Thats it down there!! Can you swim?"
"Yeah, duh."
"'Yeah duh'." She playfully mocked. "Bet I'm faster than you!"
Before I could retort with some snarky remark, she leapt right down into the hole, landing with a splash as she sank below the surface. Through the cloud of bubbles, I saw her waving me on to follow her. I gave out a sigh, then, I steeled my nerves and jumped straight into the water.