Chapter 10
I was beginning to wonder why it took Sora so long. They've gone astray but I've managed to find the boat that crash-landed. So I lead Captain Amelia and Dr. Doppler back to where Ben's home was. I even had to shut the robot up during the trip when he cried out "Sora!" repeatedly like a cuckoo bird, so as to not give our position away.
At his home, the robot offered drinks for the "happy couple" but I continued to observe his oval shaped building. It was made of brass like he was, but markings were scattered across the wall and ceiling, strikingly similar to that of the treasure map. There were algae growing at the sides of the walls and at every single nook and cranny where the plants can fit their way into. The doctor commented that the markings could be the hieroglyphs of an ancient culture.
"Mr. Hawkins," the captain commanded me, "Stop anyone who tries to approach." She then moaned as her injury continues to torment her.
"Now listen to me, you have to stop giving orders for a millisecond." the doctor told her as she set her down, using his coat as a pillow, "and lie still."
To which Captain Amelia replied, "Very forceful, doctor. Go on, say something else." Dr. Doppler then smiled at her, not saying a word.
"Hey look! More of your buddies!" Ben pointed out. He waved his hands frantically, "Hey fellas! We're over here!"
Upon hearing the robot's voice, laser bullets came into the dome as the skinny robot barely dodged a few fires. I pushed Ben out of the way and returned fire with Morph in gun form. After a few rounds I heard a rusty voice call out from the distance "Stop wasting your fire!" and the shooting ceased. I hid behind the frame of the open door, peeking out to see the pirate, "Hello there, Jimbo!"
There was a white flag that was raised up as the handicapped pirate climbed up the steps, "Jim, if it's all right with the captain, I'd like a word with ya," I looked at the captain, who now has his arm as a pole to support his faulty leg, unsure of what I should do. The cyborg continued, "No tricks, just a little palaver."
"Come to bargain for the map. Doubtless," she sneered, "Pestilential–" she groaned at the pain but the doctor held her back so she could lie down.
I thought, "That means, he still thinks we have it." So I accepted the palaver and went to meet Mr. Silver halfway.
Morph floated pass me and then greeted Mr. Silver with a coo, to which he responded "Ah, Morphy! I wondered where you was off to." He sat down by a protruding rock, adjusting his cyborg leg before he was sitting down comfortably. "Boy, this poor old leg's downright snarky since the attack game we played in the galley, eh?" He giggled, but I just frowned at him, refusing to say a word.
"Whatever you heard back there, at least the part concerning you," he continued talking, looking guilty, "I didn't mean a word of it." He sat upright, "That bloodthirsty would've thought I gone soft, they would've gotten us both." He then indicated with his finger to come closer, "Now listen to me, if we play our cards right, we can walk away from this rich as kings." I placed my finger around my chin, pretending to think that it's a good idea, "Yeah?"
"You get me that map, and-" he looked around to see no one was looking. "An even portion of the treasure is yours!" He extended his cyborg arm to shake my hands to the deal.
I smiled, then sighed, "Boy," and frowned again, "You are really something." I chose my words carefully, knowing that he had manipulated me. I began circling around the cyborg, "All that talk of greatness, light coming off my sails...what a joke."
"Now just see here, Jimbo–"
"I mean, at least you taught me one thing, "stick to it" right?" I continue to eye him, "Well, that's just what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna make sure you don't see one drabloon of my treasure!"
"That treasure is ow'd me, by thunder!" he shouted.
"Well try to find it without my map, by thunder!" I shouted back, reusing his phrase.
"Oh, you still don't know how to pick your fights, do ya boy?" He whistled to a pirate, which then took out three captives from below.
"Sora! Donald! Goofy!" I cried their names and wanted to run down to them but Mr. Silver stopped me from going further.
The three of them muffled something from their covered mouths, but all I knew was that all three of them where shaking their heads, signaling me not to give him the map, whilst Sora's head was swinging diagonally upwards, which his sign I couldn't understand. He then held out from his tied hands from his back a sharp, shiny object, which looked like a keychain. I took that as a sign of them having a plan to escape.
"Now, by dawn tomorrow, either I get that map from you, by force or choice, or so help me I'd use the ship's cannons to blast you all until Kingdom come!" He threatened me, but in my head I'm figuring out how to handle this situation.
"Morph, hop to it." he ordered the pink blob. "NOW!"
His loud voice startled the poor blob as it hovered to hide behind my back. Mr. Silver just grunted and walked away, seeing as he didn't want to force the floating blob away from me. I walked back up to Ben's home, not looking back.
Nighttime fell before us, and the captain wanted to give us an order, "Gentlemen,"s he sighed out, "we must…stay together. And…and" her breathing becoming more slow and she exhaled a sharp burst of air.
"And what? What?" The doctor watched her helplessly. "We must stay together and what?"
The captain looked up with tipsy eyes, "Doctor," she began, "You have…wonderful eyes."
He looked away helplessly, "She's lost her mind!"
"Well you could help her!" I suggested.
"Dangit, Jim. I'm an astronomer, not a doctor. I mean, I am a doctor but not that kind of doctor!" he signed his arms around, speaking rapidly, "I have a doctorate and it's not the same thing. You can't help people with a doctorate, you just sit there and you're useless." By now the captain has passed out. I approached him and gave a comforting pat on the shoulder, "It's ok doc. It's alright."
The robot then chimed in, "yea doc, Jimmy know exactly how to get around this. It's…it's just Jimmy has this knowledge of things" he giggled before whispering in my ear, "Jim, any thoughts at all?"
I brushed against my hair, leaning on the railing of the door, "Without the map we're dead." I looked up at the galleon hovering at the distance. "If we try to leave-" I looked at the pirate's campfire over the distance "-we're dead." I shifted my focus into the house, "If we stay here…" Morph managed to finish off my sentence "We're dead! We're dead, we're dead, we're dead!" its jelly-like body letting out bursts in between the words "dead". I sighed heavily, now clueless on what to do.
"Well, I think Jimmy could use a little "quiet time"." the robot made signs that stood for inverted commas, "So I'll just slip out the back door."
I suddenly lit up, "back door?" I saw the robot trying to roll up a sphere, "Oh yeah, I get this delightful breeze through here." I helped him move the sphere so that the opening can be seen, "Which I think is important because of ventilation, among friends."
I peeked down to the hole, slight breezes brushing against my face and I saw what looked like machinery running deep down the house. "What is all this stuff?"
"You mean the miles and miles of machinery that runs through the entire course of the inside of this planet?" the robot looked up, "Not a clue!"
"Hey doc, doc I think I found a way out of here!" I called Dr. Doppler over and began to climb up the sphere. But he hesitated "No Jim, wait! The captain ordered us to stay put."
"I'll be back" I promised the doc, and I hopped into the hole, with Morph and Ben following quickly, the android's echoed screaming "Cannonball!" can be heard.
Dr. Doppler, looking frustrated, muttered, "Woof…"
After getting our way around the pipes, steam, gears and gizmos, I found another exit in the shape of a hemisphere that was right next to the camp of the pirates. I peeked around, noticing that every lot of them was sleeping.
"So what's the plan?" the robot thud against the door and asked loudly. To which startled me but I acted quickly to shut him up, clamping on his mouth. I carefully watched the pirates, it's a wonder how they weren't awakened by a sharp sound like Ben's voice.
"Ok here it is," I whispered to Ben, still clamping on his mouth, "We release Sora and his gang from hostage, then sneak back up to the Legacy, disable the laser cannons there, and bring back the map."
"That's a good plan," Ben muffled from where I was shutting his mouth, "I like that plan. The only thing is that, how do we get there?"
I looked up to where Sora's gang was held captive, in the long boat, "On that." So we climbed up the rope that anchored the boat down, woke the other two of them up and shushing their groans when necessary. I noticed that Sora was halfway through cutting the ropes. But I had a more efficient way – I had Morph shapeshift into a dirk and I cut their bonds free within seconds. We quietly hovered our way up to the ship.
When we hit the starboard side of the main deck, I peeped up from the railing, seeing that the coast is clear, then hopped over to the deck. Sora, Donald and Goofy followed suit, but Ben got down clumsily, making a loud thud and a yelp. I shushed the robot again. He apologized again, repeatedly.
Right when we got onboard, more heartless began spawning. How many of these even exist anyway? So Morph turned himself into a dagger by instinct and we cleared our way out. "Protect the robot!" Sora called out at one point, seeing that Ben didn't have any offensive mechanism and very low defence. When we were done, we tiptoed to the main hatch. "Ok, me and Sora will get the map, while you wait here," I whispered, but the quirky robot responded "Okay Jimmy, We'll neutralize the laser cannons, sir." The robot rode on his gears cheerily, going against my plan, and the other two were following him. I tried calling out to them, but Ben's already off singing, "Yo-ho, yo-ho, a pirate's life for me." I hit my forehead with my palms, but proceeded to find the map where Morph left it.
"Disable the big cannons, what is the big deal?" the robot was in singsong. Donald and Goofy looking weirdly at each other. "All we gotta do is to find out one little wire." the robot opened the wire box, gawked "Oh mama," when he realized that many wires were plugged into different circuits inside the ship.
"How are we gonna figure it out now?" Donald questioned, irritated.
Meanwhile I snuck down to the hull, back to the pile of ropes. To my delight, the map was still there. "Yes," I cheered silently, and Sora gave me a pat on the back. But I hear an alarm go off, at first thinking that someone found out I was here, but it died down later. I ran up the stairs muttering "That stupid robot is gonna get all of us killed!" As I said, "killed", my worst nightmare blocked the way – Mr. Scroop, looking ominously at the two of us. "Cabin boys…" he snapped his claw open.
It's a mystery how that thing got up here. Without thinking, I pushed Sora back down the stairs and ran as fast as I could, away from the arachnid. I pushed down a few barrels behind me to try and hinder the spider psycho. But his pace wasn't getting any slower as he maneuvered around the barrels with ease. Morph shapeshifted himself into a cream pie and threw himself at Scroop, buying us more time. The irked creature then swapped the cream away from his face and Morph was thrown sideways, but the little creature flew back to where I turned around to hide at a bend. Sora, hiding at the other bend, summoned his keyblade. I told Morph to shapeshift into a laser gun. When the creeper approached, I pointed my gun. But the lights went off, presumably Ben's fault. When I felt someone snuck up my back I turned around and fired a few bullets, screaming, only to hear them getting reflected off by who knows what. When the lights came back on, Sora was breathing heavily whilst holding his keyblade in an awkward position.
"Do you know how scary it is to reflect laser bullets in the dark?" he panted.
I held his mouth shut, "Shh, and sorry." Then I indicated him to look out for Scroop from the back. We switched our positions around the corridor, but none of use could spot that spider psycho. Morph floated around in dagger form above us, but he squealed then shifted into finger form and poked Scroop's eyes, and it was then I realized that he was above us. So he swiped Morph away, the pink blob getting sucked into a piping system due to his relatively small size, and the psychotic pirate lunged on top of the two of us. Sora's keyblade was tossed out of his hands and Scroop target the keyblade wielder first. But be fore he could do anything everything on the ship started floating upwards.
"This could be it," Ben unplugged a wire but as he began floating upwards, "Maybe not." Donald now struggling to get the wire from Ben's hand "Gimme that!"
"I'll plug it back!" Ben shouted as the two ended up having a tug of war in mid-air.
I kicked Scroop away from us to our advantage. He busted through the skyline and Sora and I also began floating upwards. I strgguled to find a grip on the mainmast, and the presence of heartless on the deck made it all the more worse. Sora was already fighting some of them off in mid-air. Somehow he knows how to attack aerially without being affected by gravity. Scroop snapped his claw at me, causing me to float upwards in a more rapid pace. After hitting against the crow's nest I finally managed to grab hold of the flag. Before I could breathe a sigh of relief, Scroop was already climbing upwards. He began sawing off the rope with his claw, "Do say hello to Mr. Arrow for me." Quickly I crawled my way down to the mast and grabbed hold of it. That bug, upon seeing this, approached me quickly. I leaped off and kicked to his back, "Tell him yourself!" and quickly I grabbed onto the pole again. His exoskeleton head popped through the Jolly Roger, and the rope snapped. He screamed as he floated off into space, presumably to his death.
"C'mon guys," Goofy said as he tried to handle the wire from the two arguing quacks, "Just plug it back in!" He pushed his hand, which was also holding the wire, into the plug. Instantly, a glow of purple lit on the floor as artificial gravity was activated once again. I landed on the crow's nest with a big thud. Morph came out through a pipe and he was pitch black, filled with soot, and began coughing it out. I held Morph in his dagger form again as I slid down a rope and helped Sora clear the heartless out.
When that was done and dusted, Ben finally came out, "Laser cannons disconnected, Captain Jimmy, sir!" Donald and Goofy came out from behind him, their fur standing out like they have been electrocuted. "Geez, that wasn't so tough!" Ben commented while the other two fell on the floor, exhaling frustration out of their breaths.
Author's Note: in case I've got anyone here lost, this is Jim's POV, and it would've been really interesting if Sora suddenly became out of play in the game for a while (like those King Mickey saving Sora parts) and control Jim as a character :D