The Flying Krock, at full sail, cut through the water. Luigi swore he could hear, no matter how faint, as if from a church's pipe organ, a haunting and mournful tune. Rool had put Luigi to work right away, with the rest of the crew treating him as a sailor. It actually was not bad work, a bit hard, but not really much different from plumbing. Luigi knew that given enough time, he could get used to being a pirate. He just didn't want to end up green, octopusy or lizardish like the others. It was also the least sexist job, as Luigi noted, he had seen several female sailors around as well. The biggest difference in them was that they seemed to look green, but otherwise retain a normal composure. Working the deck alongside the phantasmagoric crew, they were trying to move a cannon and hoist it towards the bow. The bosun was supervising them and by the mean mug on his face, Luigi really did not feel like stirring up trouble. Carrying a nine tailed whip, he used it liberally: "Secure the tail of the mainsail tackle! Segale!" Seeing that as his cue, Luigi moved towards the line and reached for it.

"Step aside," he told a female sailor in his way.

"Mind yourself!" she barked and pushed him aside. Luigi stared angrily at the back of her head. This green woman was asking for it. Grabbing her shoulder, he turned her around to face him. "Hey now!" she cried out in frustration, pushing him back. Some of the crew was paying attention, especially the bullet skinned one. She was ready for a fight, she raised a fist slightly but then got a good look at Luigi. "No," she whispered silently. "Not you." Any crewmen watching stopped and began to move the hanging cannon, the line, however, had not been fastened. It moved fast, very fast and by the time Luigi caught it he was swung over hard into the gunwail as the cannon fell.

"Haul that weevil to his feet!" the bosun, whom Luigi acknowledged as Spiny because of his red face and the spines growing out the back of his head. The crewmen yanked Luigi up from his feet and shoved him against a pole, his back exposed. "Five lashes'll remind ye to stay on them!" Spiny raised his hand, but it was caught by the woman, who Luigi looked at curiously, it was almost as if he knew her, her and the Bullet Bill figure. "Impeding me in my duties?" questioned Spiny. "You'll share the punishment!"

"I'll take it all," added a third figure who came to the scene. It was Bullet Bill in all his, well, it wasn't glory whatever it was. At some point during the ruckus, the organ music had ceased. Nobody on the crew, who had either taken the side of Bill or Spiny, realized this. Unbenownst to them, King K. Rool stood on the deck, apprising the situation. He made his way forward, not thundering, but silently.

"Will you now?" he asked, making his way forward. "And what would prompt such act of charity?" He looked at Bill with such malevolence that even though the man did not want to answer, he knew he had no choice.

"He's my nephew, my brother's youngest son," Bill bluntly answered. Luigi turned around and looked at the man, no, that could not be his uncle Bill. There was no way, it did not make sense! Luigi's glare at the man was vile.

"What fortuitous circumstance be this!" Rool roared in laughter. "You spare your niece punishment for so long and now ano'er of your brood has entered my ship! You wish to spare your nephew the bosun's discipline?"

"Aye," Bill confirmed.

Rool took the whip from Spiny and analyzed it. "Five lashes be owed, I think it fair," he surmised and handed Bill the whip.

"No, I won't -," Bill started but a look at Rool's face crushed all defiance.

"Bosun, to the bone," Rool clearly stated, looking hard at Bill. The bosun raised his arm, but was again stopped by the woman, who handed the whip to Bill. Bullet pushed Spiny to the ground and nodded to the crewmen holding Luigi, they turned him around and bared his back. Bullet raised the lash, some defiance grew in him but he looked at the fearsome draconic-like Rool and five times the whip cracked. Five times Luigi screamed himself sore. Five times Bill pained himself inside. With each crack of the whip, Bill waited until Luigi was silent to start the next one. At each silence, Rool let out a single: "ha".


For a few moments Luigi lay sprawled, gasping for air on the deck as the crew got back to work around him. Slowly getting up, he staggered into the hold. The girl followed him and tried to help him onto a bench. "I don't need your help."

"The bosun prides himself on being able to cleave flesh from bone," the woman bluntly claimed.

"So ya want me ta believe that handing my 'uncle' Bill the whip was an act of compassion?" Luigi asked the green woman.

"From a sister to a brother," her words were blunt, but they pierced Luigi's soul. "Yes, it was." Luigi looked long and hard at her and he knew it, she was his younger sister Rosalina. Hardened and mutated by the waters of King K. Rool, the kruel kaptain had transformed her into something he had never thought she could be. On her bandana, and Luigi was shocked that he didn't see it before, was the faded star known as Luma. Luigi refused to cry.

"Then I guess I really am Mario's brother," Luigi whispered. "For years I've been telling myself that you're dead. You and dad, Mario hit with a slab of diamond ore and left for dead, but you and dad - missing."

"What?" Rosalina asked.

"The debt!" Luigi exclaimed, horrified that Mario actually was not lying. "The debt that pop had to repay! You, he and Uncle Bill you all just up and vanished one day! Mario kept looking for you but we could never find you and then we found that Luma cap in your room one day, based off of some Japanese anime character - I think. We'd stopped searching after someone threatened Mario with a note, we took it as a meaning I'd be next if Mario didn't stop." Rosalina nodded in understanding, but stopped - puzzled by something.

"Who's Mario?" she asked.

"Our brother!" Luigi quietly said, horrified that she could forget. "I know you were just a baby, but... how on Earth could you forget?"

"We're not on Earth...," Rosalina responded, slowly remembering things of Brooklyn. "I doubt I could tell you much of anything except the here and now, only reason I remembered you. I don't even remember what my mother's name was." Luigi was shocked. How cruel was Rool. Then he realized it, the green on men and women aboard the ship, it was a rot. For one hundred years they would rot aboard his ship and slowly burn away, the few who could remember why they served in the first place would escape, but the others, the ones who would become the most cannibalistic and lizardish out of all of them, would stay. "So many here've joined the crew thinking they've cheated the powers, but they've entered oblivion - New York is a state in our world, right?" Luigi nodded and she continued talking. "Eventually, those not sadistic enough but not strong enough to remember'll end up like Dark Bones." She pointed to a mass of goop on the wall. In it lay a set of bones, like the ones Daisy had shown Luigi back when all of this was just beginning to start. His body was a part of the ship. "Until you can remember when your debt is paid, your a part of the ship. Not like me and uncle Bill - I think - maybe, why did you do it Luigi?"

"I don't owe Rool anything," Luigi said, pondering his sister's words.

"Then you've got to escape, it's too late for us!" his sister advised him. Luigi remembered when she was just a baby, the cutest thing he had ever seen. He shook his head, he had to focus at the task at hand.

"Not until I find this!" Luigi opened up the folding of the key. "This key leads to some chest belonging to Rool that I can use to save someone... maybe you." Rosalina had never seen it before and looked at it, amazed. Her green skin sparkled and Luigi wondered how long she had exactly been there.

"Dead Kremling's Chest!" groaned Dark Bones, with the picture of the key having had triggered some kind of memory in the skeleton's long lost brain. "Open the chest with a key. Stab the heart. Lose your heart. Gain a restriction. Or don't stab the heart. The Krock must always have a captain! Hidden key! Hidden Chest!" Luigi tried to make sense of this and for a second pondered what it meant. If by stabbing the heart one would lose their own heart, where did a restriction come into play and would the stabber become captain? Surely stabbing the heart would kill Rool and if so, couldn't the heart be used as blackmail? Slowly, Luigi began to see through Toadsworth's thinly veiled lies. "DON'T STAB THE HEART!"

"There is no key, can't be found, so there is no key," Rosalina reasoned.

"I'm sorry sister, but like I said, I don't need yer help," Luigi answered with a smile, formulating a plan.