CHAPTER XXIV

THE SHIP HITS THE FAN

Kairi, Goofy and B.E.N. sat in the longboat as Sora guided the solar sails and Jim ran the engine. It wasn't a long trip up to the R.L.S. Legacy, but it gave everyone a few moments of much needed silence.

Jim stared off the back of the boat with a worried expression on his face. Silver was taken by the Unsmiling Man…so were the rest of the pirates on his crew…so what's the big deal? They weren't Jim's problem anymore…

But Jim knew that wasn't true.

"Look, I'd love to tell you that the Unsmiling Man just took those pirates to an amusement park…but they're in real trouble," Sora told Jim.

"I know, I know. They're as good as dead," Jim said, emotionless. "And that's just fine with me! They betrayed my whole crew!" He slammed his fist onto the engine, making it sputter. He regained his cool and looked back at Kairi and Goofy, who were trying not to make eye-contact with him.

"Ya know…we're gonna have to defeat them. The Unsmiling Man is going to send them back at us as heartless slaves…" Kairi tried to break it to Jim softly.

"But the good news is, we can take their hearts and find the other part of 'em called Nobodies to make 'em whole again! Isn't that right, Sora?" Goofy blurted out.

Jim looked shocked. "Didn't you hear me, dogbreath? They're already monsters…I don't care about them anyway," Jim sighed, moodily plopping down on the seat.

"Well…the offer still stands," Sora said, putting his hand on Jim's shoulder.

"We're here! We made it! Where were we going again?" B.E.N. chirped.

As Jim and Sora hoisted the longboat into the cargo hold of the Legacy, they were treated with even more of a spectacle than they had seen from outside – it was full of rich, dark woods and rustic looking machinery that none of them had ever seen before. It was quite a beautiful ship.

"Let's just get the map and get out of here," Jim said. "It should be in a coil of rope hidden down here somewhere, according to Morph."

As he said this, Morph zoomed out of his pocket and started darting around the room, very erratically. Finally, he whooshed up the ladder to the main deck and out of sight.

Sora and his friends were treading along the long, narrow girders that filled the belly of the Legacy, when they saw a sight none of them particularly enjoyed. A scaled down replica of the Unsmiling Man flew down the ladder to the belly and began to wave its arms at Jim and Sora.

"The Unsmiling Man?" Sora asked, perplexed.

"He usually only turns into things he's just seen…he must be up on the deck," Jim said gravely. "We should just grab the map and go back out before he notices us."

At that point, the Unsmiling Man replica began tossing a glowing yellow and gold orb up and down in his hand…

"What's that?" Goofy asked.

Jim bit his lip and swallowed, taking a breath before saying it. "The map."

As Jim and Sora poked their heads up from the belly of the Legacy, they looked straight ahead – sure enough, in the fore of the ship there was the Unsmiling Man, standing on a box in front of a small group of heartless. A group of strange and very unique heartless. They were all dressed as pirates, of course – wooden legs on some, eye-patches on others – but they each had their own distinguishing trait. Some had five eyes on stalks, some were giant brutes with yellow teeth, and some were covered in disgusting flaps that had odd sorts of gas passing through them.

The last pirate they noticed was the strangest of all. It caught the map that the Unsmiling Man tossed at it with two large, red pincers. It was like a giant scorpion – six red, slender legs; a head with bulging yellow eyes and dagger like teeth; and a small mane of white hair poking out from beneath his cap.

"Mr. Scroop," Jim whispered to Sora and down the ladder to Kairi and Goofy. "He's the one who killed Mr. Arrow. It was no accident. It looks like all the pirates are there, except Silver."

Suddenly, B.E.N.'s head popped up between Sora and Jim on deck.

"Okay, so what's the plan!" he babbled, causing all the pirates and the Unsmiling Man to turn and look at them.

"Well, we can rule out 'surprise attack.' Robot, when I find a memory unit for you, you'll never forget what a butt-kicking feels like…" Jim said, pushing B.E.N. down the hatch and vaulting up onto the deck. He stood side by side with Sora, scimitar and keyblade out, as Kairi and Goofy came up behind them. Kairi's flower keyblade glinted in the reflected light of Treasure Planet.

"So nice of you to make it all the way up here and save us the trouble of hunting you down. Well, I can safely say that my work is done on this world," said the Unsmiling Man, right before he snapped his fingers. In a stunning flourish, the small Legion ship that Sora and the others had seen clamp onto the Legacy came floating up into view on the side of the ship. The top hatch opened and the Unsmiling Man leaped straight into it, closing the hatch on his way down. Before turning and jetting off into space once more, the intercom on the ship crackled as the Unsmiling Man left them with some parting words:

"Now, my pirate friends, you truly know what it is like to be heartless. Goodbye, keyblade master."