A/N: This is an OT4 shipping fic, which means Kendall/James/Carlos/Logan.

AU in which Kendall, Carlos, and Logan are pirates and James is a prince. That they kidnap. Why not.

It was a sunny day aboard the infamous pirate ship Rush, and as the likewise infamous pirate Captain Kendall stood at the bow of the ship, the sea breeze rustling his hair, he could feel a smile slip its way across his face.

"Slip its way across your face?" Logan, the quartermaster, scoffed. "What, are you comparing smiling to mopping the deck?"

"Well, what are your suggestions then?" Kendall asked, affronted. Logan rolled his eyes.

"He could feel the beginnings of a smile tug at the corner of his mouth," the genius responded. Kendall stuck out his tongue childishly and grabbed the telescope hooked on his belt, propping his leg up on the steering wheel to get a better look at the approaching black spot on the horizon.

"That's the kingdom of Rocque," Carlos announced, yelling from where he was balanced on the railing framing the deck. He hopped down with a disappointed expression. "No relation to the kingdom of Androll. I already checked."

"Rocque is all about the hierarchy, K-Dog, so you should take your unsightly peg leg off before we get there," Logan suggested, eyeing said peg leg and nudging at it with his boot. Kendall raised an eyebrow pointedly at his face.

"I'll take my peg leg off when you take that stupid eyepatch off," he replied breezily.

"The eyepatch is cool," Logan shot back, fingering the black string across his face fondly. "Unlike your stupid… stump."

"We should take a hostage," said Carlos, out of the blue, before Kendall could tell Logan an interesting fact about his mom (though Kendall knew Mrs. Mitchell was an extremely nice woman… as nice as moms got, anyways). The sudden declaration made even Logan's giant whirring brain stall with a dramatic clog-y clang.

"Say what?" Kendall replied for the both of them, cool as always.

"We should take a hostage," Carlos repeated, sounding so matter-of-fact Kendall couldn't even hope that he was joking. Carlos waved a hand in the general direction of the starboard, where a giant hole in the woodwork made by an imperial ship was being patched up by crew hands. "We've made a really big name for ourselves back in Minnesota, so."

"…So if we took a royal hostage from Rocque," Kendall picked up slowly, "we have insurance against the royal navy."

"Then we won't have to put on these ridiculous disguises to sneak ashore!" Logan finished, cheering with joy as he tore off his eyepatch. "Woohoo!"

"Hang on," Kendall said, bringing the one-man festivities to a screeching halt. "Isn't it kind of… against moral conduct to keep someone against his will?"

"But we're pirates!" Carlos swung his arms in emphasis. "We're supposed to be against moral conduct in the first place!"

"But we've never raped or pillaged any of the kingdoms we came across," Kendall said, a pained look on his face, "and I doubt we want to."

"We just kind of… accidentally destroyed everything in our way," Logan muttered unconvincingly to himself. He looked up. "But Kendall's right. It's not right to kidnap a person, even if we'll treat him with respect and give him awesome living conditions and share our earnings with him and bring him to the End of the World with us."

"…Go on," Kendall and Carlos said together, arms folded across their chests. Logan smirked.

"See, there's this little psychological condition people call Stockholm Syndrome…"

-Five minutes later-

"Alright, it's decided!" Kendall declared. "We're taking a royal hostage!"

Carlos and Logan whooped with joy, and the three had an impromptu dance party right there on the deck, waving at the band they kept aboard the ship to play music for exactly this purpose.

-Another five minutes later-

"So who should we kidnap?" Carlos asked, panting after coming to a stop. Kendall shrugged.

"Quartermaster, we need a list of candidates," he said. Logan straightened from his crouch, his research face on.

"A list of all nobility in kingdom Rocque coming right up."

"Alright, let's see." Kendall began pacing the deck for dramatic purposes. Carlos watched excitedly, hanging off the side of the bow. "We'll want someone our own age, preferably male, preferably fun-loving, preferably not so quick to yell at us when we do something wrong."

"Narrowing down the list," Logan notified the captain as he scrawled with a feather on a piece of yellowed parchment. He had been overjoyed when Carlos got him the set for his birthday ("I know a guy," Carlos had shrugged casually).

"Ooh, and he should be pretty," Carlos added. "There's no one pretty to look at onboard."

"Hey!" Logan exclaimed, indignant. Carlos winced apologetically, mouthing sorry, but definitely not taking back his claim. Looking towards Kendall for support, all Logan got was a meaningful nod. With a huff, Logan looked back down at his list. "Fine. Be that way."

"So what have we got?" Kendall asked, changing the subject.

"Well," Logan muttered, still scribbling on the page. "After inputting the list of candidates through a logarithm customized to our needs, we have… exactly one candidate." He turned the paper over and held it up, showing the sketch of a rather handsome face. "Meet Prince James Diamond, son of Duchess Brooke Diamond of the royal court of Gustavo Rocque."

"Ooh," Carlos and Kendall chimed in together. Logan cleared his throat, holding the paper up to admire the picture himself.

"At only sixteen years of age, James is a well known troublemaker in the court," he introduced. "The official cause of the fall of the Camerelli Castle was listed as an accident, but local word has it that he was actually the one responsible, after getting into a fight with Baron Chet Camerelli and launching a cannon at the castle."

"That means he won't yell at us if we destroy too many things," Kendall said happily. "He's a dude, and he's our age. Three out of three. He's perfect."

"And he's pretty, too." Carlos clapped with joy, almost falling off the railing in the process. "He's perfect eye candy!"

"Okay, maybe a little," Logan consented, his gaze never once leaving the portrait. "So James Diamond it is?"

Kendall and Carlos exchanged grins.

"James Diamond it is."

/

James Diamond sat at his dressing table, barely suppressing a yawn. Despite his effort, his mother still whacked him lightly over the head with an– was that an ascot?

"But mom, the ball is going to be so boring!" James whined as his mom squeezed a handful of mousse into his hair, slicking it back.

"Don't say that," Duchess Diamond scolded. "You're showing your face as an apology for blowing up the Camerelli castle."

"But I don't like Mimi," James continued to protest. "Remember that one time I was playing ice hockey with Jenny Tinkler?"

"The time we needed to call that physician in from all the way over in Minnesota because of that ridiculous paper cut she gave you?" Duchess Diamond said sarcastically as she uncapped a stick of kohl. "How can I forget?"

"Yeah well, Jenny only gave me the paper cut because she was so mad after Chet and Mimi called us cavemen on skates," James defended, unconsciously smoothing his finger over the scar on his arm where the paper cut had been. That had been a scary day for the entirety of the kingdom of Rocque as all the citizens feared for their princes's life. "Those Camerellis deserved everything their castle got."

"Still, it's for your public image." His mother wasn't going to give in– James could tell as Brooke smoothed her hands over his shoulders over the black dress shirt he was wearing. "You are the prince, after all, and we need to keep your public image good."

There really wasn't much James could say in response to that since despite his protests, James couldn't help but admire himself in the mirror because he did look good. Really good. Worthy of a prince good. And he had his mother to thank for that.

James stood up with a muted sigh, kissing the duchess on her cheek with a grateful smile.

"Promise you won't give Mimi a hard time?" Brooke said as she handed her son the black quarter-mask that went with the masquerade theme of the night. James fought hard to keep the smile on his face.

"I'll be kidnapped by pirates before I would even dream of it," he promised.

A/N: I realize the dark potentials this fic can have, but I'm not gonna go there (unless people want me to). Review and tell me what you think, if I should continue?