HoloPirates: A Tale of Adventure

Betting

As Gura and I walked up to the top booths of the stadium, I couldn't help but shake the feeing that I had hurt Botan. Pushing out of her hug had clearly done a number on her, but as Gura and I walked farther and farther through the halls of people and food stalls, the feeling of regret slowly faded away, until all I felt was hope for some happy times betting and eating with Gura.
"Hey Micheal, I'm a bit curious about something."
"Aye, what is it?"
"You and Botan fought before?"
"Aye." I said. "We had a really big fight when we first met, but we made amends after that."
"Have you?" She said with a curious gleam in her eyes. "It still feels kind of...tense."
"With Botan?" I said, thinking. "N-no, we shouldn't be."
"And she hugged you straight away. Was she even looking out for your own comfort?"
Although my brain was still rather foggy, I tried to think about it as hard as I could. She did just cross a boundary, as Gura had said, and she completely disregarded the fact that I didn't want a hug from her, whether she knew or not.
Gura was right.
"Thats....true actually." I said. "Aye, you're right."
I looked over at Gura, and I noticed that she stood a little bit taller, and her twin tails stretched a little bit longer, resting on her shoulders. It stuck out to me a little bit, making me wonder how she was taller, but I pushed it out of my mind, which wasn't very hard. As we kept going through the stadium, a drum began to play, and all of the Atlanteans began to frantically move around, grabbing their food and running to the doors that led to the inside of the Battle Dome's arena.
"Come on Micheal!!" Gura said, bouncing up and down. "We gotta get to the booths!!"
Both of us took off running with me following a pace behind Gura so that I could follow her to the booth. After turning a few corners and heading down another hallway, we arrived at an oak door, and Gura pushed it open without a second thought.
And boy, was the booth beautiful. There was a large kitchen, with our own chef that was cooking up a bunch of festival food, like hotdogs, burgers, and nachos, which nearly drove me insane. I missed regular food so much, and until this point, I never even realized how much I had missed all of it. My eyes started watering as I grabbed a bowl of nachos, smelling the gooey cheese and steaming hot meat that radiated off of the nacho bowl.
"Holy fuck." I said, my eyes watering more and more. "Good God, I missed all of this."
For some reason, as I held that Nacho Bowl, all kinds of memories started coming right back to me, like the time that my mother brought me to a fair on the outskirts of Los Angelos on one of her few days off. It was another of my happiest memories, just my mother and I digging into a gigantic bowl of nachos, and, for the first time since coming to this world, I was starting to miss home.
"You okay Micheal?"
I was ripped out of the memories by Gura, who was giving me a rather concerned look. She reached out to take the nacho bowl from me, to which I refused, and, without skipping a beat, she reached up and brushed the hair out of my face.
"Micheal?" She said. "Are you okay?"
"Aye. Just memories." I said.
"Memories?" She asked. "Memories of what?"
"My family. I'm from another world, you know?" I said.
"Really?" She said, her eyes nearly lighting up with wonder. "Thats awesome!!! Whats life like on your world?"
"It was really different from this one, to be honest." I said, stuffing my face with the steaming hot nachos.
The burning hot ground beef and cheese nearly scorched my mouth, but I chewed it happily, savoring the memories that came to my mind.
"There was a lot more people, and it was way more boring than this one." I said, my mouth nearly full of cheese, chips and meat. "There weren't any giant monsters, or old ships, or underwater cities. It was just really, really boring, and it was worse since I was kind of an outcast."
"Oh, so you didn't have any friends?"
"I had friends!" I said defensively, right before my mind wandered back to when I nearly beat Paolo's face in. "Well, they weren't as good as my friends now, but still, they were okay."
Gura nodded without saying a word, and suddenly, as I grabbed another nacho with beef and cheese, a loud horn sounded all throughout the arena, and Gura's eyes lit up.
"Its starting!! Get to the window!!" She said, grabbing a hotdog and tearing into it with her shark teeth.
I held that Nacho bowl with all of my strength as both of us ran up to the couch that was in front of the gigantic window, and as soon as we were in front of that window, I was amazed by what I saw. The Arena was so much bigger than I saw on the outside, and on the inside, there were so many trees all around the inside, with small creeks, pools of water, and streams, and on the very other side of the Arena, there was a large waterfall that was flowing from the edge of the Arena down into a small stream.
"Oh wow, its beautiful!" I said, stuffing more of the Nachos into my mouth. "And God, these things are so good!"
Gura gave me a playful slap on the arm, then turned to the window and called one of the servants in the room over to us. In his hands was a large, rectangular lockbox with a small emblem of a trident on the front of it.
"What is that?"
"Its the BetBox. Place your bets on whoever you want now, and we lock the funds in a vault. Then, whoever wins, the better and the victor gets the jackpot."
"What if there's multiple winners?"
"Then it gets split between the victors. So, place your bets now, because you can't withdraw from it once you place the bet."
At this point, I was all in. I knew how well Botan fought, especially against me, and so, I grabbed the BetBox, grabbed two massive handfuls of gold coins out of my pockets, and put them in, before taking the pen out of the servants scaly hand and writing Botan's name on top of the box so that he could place my bet.
"Feeling confident?"
"Absolutely." I said. "She's gonna trash every single one of them."
"She must be amazing then."
"Absolutely, you just watch."
I looked back out the window as I grabbed more of the Nachos, and I realized that I couldn't see Botan anywhere. In fact, I couldn't see any of the contestants.
"Where, uhh, where are they?"
"They'll be up in about a minute's time. Just give them a chance. Once the horn sounds, the battle will start."
"Sweet!" I said, leaning forward in anticipation.
I counted down the seconds as they passed, and, true to Gura's word, once almost a minute passed, there was another of those massively loud horns that sounded through the air, and with that, the entire Arena roared with a nearly thunderous cheer. As the cheering reached louder and louder levels, suddenly, at the very bottom of the wall of the inside of the Arena, a ton of doors, at least 35-40 of them, opened up simultaneously, and all of the contestants stepped out.
Including Botan.