Jim’s PoV

Jim was staring into two faces and he didn’t think he knew either of them. Jim asked “Hello. Who are you? Who am I?”

They both looked confused for a second and then the woman in red said with a fake looking smile “I am your best friend! You were about to start looking through your hand wavy thing to give me better gear! Come on! Do it!”

Narrowing his eyes at her he asked “Who are you.”

The woman was in thought for a couple seconds and said “Sapphire! Call me Saphire!”

The man dressed in green said “What are you doing Scarlet?”

The woman hissed through her teeth saying “Trying to get me a different color set of gear.”

“Why?”

She mumbled “Because I want to see how this armor looks in blue!”

Irritated he asked the man “What’s your name?”

Sighing he said “Forrest, and this is Scarlet.”

Nodding he asked “Forrest, who am I? Why can’t I remember anything?”

Scarlet muttered “We could have taken him for everything he had!”

Forrest said angrily “Jim saved my life when I was on death’s doorstep. I would have been dead and we definitely wouldn’t have met if not for him. I’m not going to kick him while he's down.”

“So my name is Jim?”

Forrest nodded and said “Yeah. You’re kind of really strong.”

Then he gestured behind him. Jim blinked and saw the corpse of the creature and he yelped saying “What the hell is that!”

Forrest shrugged and said “Beats me. You killed it.”

Scarlet broke off and started searching through the pieces of the debris. Jim asked “Why am I here?”

“Something about an airship. You didn’t really explain.”

Sighing Jim said “Can you fill me in on what you know about me?”

Jim listened intently. The more Forrest talked the more he sounded really powerful. Also this previous quest he was on to collect the three artifacts sounded promising. But how could he find the location of the other two?

After the conversation had finished Jim still had so many questions. One thing that he did find was his menu, or the so called wavey hand thing. When he hit the logout button it returned an error and text appeared saying “Unable to log out. Linked user has died.”

Guess that explains some of it. He was killed in this other world. Was that why his memory was gone? While he was in thought Scarlet yelled “Come check this out!”

Scarlet’s POV

As she saw the Airship she grinned. It was apart of the old lore that these things use to exist, but no one had seen a real one in a long time. And she had one to play with! Oh the fun!

The thing was spectacular. It had billowing sails with huge fans that spun on each corner of the ship. Or at least she hoped they spinned. If not this thing was useless. She definitely remembered those things needed to spin for the thing to work.

It also seemed to have a few more gizmos that she had no idea about. There were some rods that stood straight up and loops of metallic looking rope on a large spindle. Weird. Some kind of anchor system maybe? But the thing wasn’t in use before and the airship had been here a long time. Maybe something else?

When the two arrived she asked “Any idea how this thing works?”

Jim sounded confused when he said “Can't you just use the wheel over there? Seems all the controls should be present.”

Skeptically she asked “Memory back already huh?”

Jim shook his head and said “I don't know but it feels right.”

Shrugging Scarlet went up to look at the mechanisms. There were two levers next to one large ship's wheel. Impulsively she took one of the spokes and spun the wheel. Then the craft started to shudder.

Forrest hissed “What did you do that for!”

“To see if it worked. Looks like it does!”

As the trio clinged on to the ship it started to raise off the ground. Then tilting the ship swerved on a different heading and then stood perfectly still.

Scarlet was about to yank one of the levers when Forrest stopped her. Annoyed she said “We need to find out somehow!”

Forrest then pointed to a little diagram next to the controls. Next to the first lever there was a picture of the side view of the ship. Arrows then pointed upwards toward the sky and downwards toward the ground.

Thinking about which way she was about to pull the lever she was glad that Forrest had seen the diagram. Or else they would've had a few dings on their newship from crashing back into the ground.

The other lever seemed to control how fast the ship moved based on the picture. Scarlet said “So, can I drive now?”

Reluctantly the two nodded and she took the thing for a spin. It was a rush. Looking hungrily at the knob that would bring them higher she cranked it all the way to the top. They soared straight up in the sky and we're quickly above the clouds.

Jim seemed to take it well but Forrest was hanging on to one of the railings with a death grip. In glee she said “Now let's see how fast this thing can go!”

Scarlet jammed the other lever all the way forward. Zooming through the air she was laughing as her hair flung all around her. This was freedom. True freedom.

Captain Voss’ POV

Voss was boredly waiting for the team to return. They were stuck here till those people got back. It was impressive, the dogs were intelligent as hell. One always seemed to be station where the anchor was and the other where the wheel was.

Still it didn’t really matter to him. The food that Jim brought over was a boon but he still had the short end of the stick if he came home empty handed. His first mate would probably get some bit of reward money to bring the ship back in one piece, after all the lucky bugger never signed anything.

A couple of his crew tried to fight the beasts but they ended up with a few nice gashes. It was getting really windy for some reason though. He didn't like it. Didn't seem natural.

Then the wind increased and there was a thrumming noise. To his horror he saw something swooping in on them from above!

Yelling Voss said “We are under attack! Help!”

Scarlet's POV

She was getting the hang of this thing! But then Jim wanted to have a go at it so she reluctantly stepped away from the controls.

Jim's hands moved lightning fast and they seemed to be everywhere. Scarlet used one control at a time. Either the wheel to turn, then up and down, and then speed. Jim on the other hand made it look like art. His hands flew over the controls and the craft started banking and weaving in fluid motions.

Then Jim yelled “Get ready! I’m going to kick it up a notch! Hold on to something!”

Her stomach did a little flip. They were going into a dive and then the craft rotated straight up. She could feel her weight being pulled towards the ship. But then the ship kept rotating. Down was then up and up was down! They had dipped down below the clouds and could see the island and ocean by looking up! Then the turn continued and they leveled out on a normal course.

Scarlet looked over to see how Forrest was doing and he seemed to be green again. At least he matched his armor! Sheesh, sooner or later he was really going to need to learn how to control his stomach. Rushing over to the railing she expected him to do his signature move, but it seemed like he actually got it under control.

Walking up to him she asked “So lover! You ready for more?”

Forrest looked in a panic and started shaking his head frantically while both hands still covered his mouth.

With disappointment she yelled over to Jim “Looks like Forrest needs a break. How about we pick up some baggage from the ship, then Forrest will be ready for a few more loops after. Let’s see how fast you can get the ship to go in the meantime! Step on it!”

Forrest finally seemed to look less green and he said “You are evil. I think once we have Fluffy and Princess aboard I should ask them to greet you properly. I think they would do it if I asked.”

Scarlet was shocked! She said heatedly “You wouldn’t dare!”

Forrest shrugged and said “Oh? You don’t like that? Okay. But I think my memory gets foggy when we do those crazy maneuvers. Hopefully someone will moderate Jim to keep it steady… or I might forget.”

Damned blackmailer. He’s learning though. Too bad. Reluctantly she said “You win. For now.”

Scarlet yelled “Can you take it a bit slower?”

Jim nodded and the erratic motion smoothed out and they gently glided next to the water bound ship.

As Scarlet heard Captain Voss yelling for help she cackled. He hadn't seen anything yet! When they finally got along side the ship she said casually “Looks like we got an upgrade Vossy. You want to come along or you staying?”

The other crew did a round of muttering but Voss instantly said “Right. Sounds great! Let's go.”

As he jumped over Jim's wolves followed. Scarlet said sadly “Aww, no other takers? It’ll be fun!”

Then Forrest beside her whispered “Aren't we forgetting something?”

“Huh?”

“The prisoners Jim brought over.”

Scarlet waved dismissively and said “Who cares, not important now.”

She heard a couple mutters of crazy lady and mad woman from the seabourn ship but she ignored them. Getting all the passengers that seemed to be willing to go Jim started to take off. After a couple minutes they stood still high above the island.

Jim called out “So where do we go now?”

Then Voss pulled out a map. Jim scanned it and then asked Forrest saying “That marker right there. It's near King’s End. You said I got an artifact there right? Was it at this spot?”

Scarlet watched as he pointed to a spot on the map. She still had one of her own so she took it out too and compared it to the weird colorful map. There were differences but they were very similar, although the colorful one seemed to have a lot more areas.

Still a second later Forrest said “Yea, it was there.”

Then he drew their attention to the marker that was on the map. After that he pointed to two identical looking symbols.

Jim said “You mention that these could make someone into a god. But what if I just wanted my memory back? It should at least be able to do that.”

Forrest asked hopefully “Is there any way we can stop by King’s End? They need to know about the threat from Jacksberg.”

Jim shrugged and said “Sure why not. With this air ship it shouldn't be a problem. You're Voss right?”

“Yea.”

You think you can manage navigating?

Voss grinned and said “Sure thing. I found an island with a ship on water. Doing so from the air will be too easy!"

After giving him a quick run down of the controls they set off to King's End. As Scarlet spun her daggers around she wondered if they could make a short stop at Xalross. No one would expect an airship!

Charlotte's POV

Charlotte thought she was nuts but she wanted to give it a try. When Maria mentioned that there was still some kind of energy in Jim at first she was hopeful that somehow he would just wake up. She knew it was irrational but still her expectations of him had skyrocketed over the past couple weeks.

But Jim always seemed to have another trick of his sleeve. She remembered spying on Jim when he was pulling out a helmet which had other equipment attached to it. When she rehired Greg and the team Jim had dropped off four of the helmets at the new lab. But he didn't bring that extra weird module she saw that day.

Charlotte hadn't called the police immediately. It was stupid but she had hope for some reason. After Maria had said Jim's body was dead she when over to his house. It was eerie. The house looked like it had been in a war movie, yet it was so quiet.

Why? Surely the police would have been called. Determined she took her chance and started searching the house. She found what she was looking for shortly after. The computer, helmet and a module of some sort were all hooked up. Taking it she quickly exited the building.

Looking back she could only shake her head. The police should be here. With this new evidence it looked like Jim really pissed off someone big time. Someone with enough clout to stop police from investigating gunshots and explosions.

Opening the laptop she figured out the password in her first few guesses.

“FinalFantastic3”

She rolled her eyes at that. Only Jim. There was another piece of equipment that she had no idea what it was. But it had a specialized helmet connector on one end and a USB port on the other. Just going with it she hooked it up and put the helmet on Jim's head.

When logging on to the computer she saw one of the icons was a diagnostic tool and figured that would probably be a good first stop. The first icon said “Me right now.”

Opening it up she saw a graph that was constantly in motion. She knew this graph. It was the digital representation of brain activity using the sensors from the helmet. The results from this were weird. It was not a flat line, which would represent him being dead. But it was also not full activity. It was somewhere in the middle? How?

The second icon on the diagnostic tool said “Me in the game.”

Charlotte clicked it. When it opened she blinked. It was labeled as the first NPC in the game but this graph.. it was the same constantly moving graph. But this one was fully active!