Copyright disclaimer: Oi, oi, my back hurts. Goddess, I haven't slept in days. When I manage to fall asleep, I have nightmares about the fact that I don't own the Legend of Zelda. Hylia, protect me!

CHAPTER 22: ...And the Hazy Sea

The yawl swayed in the gentle waters, bouncing back and forth lightly. The chilly ocean breeze set the sails flapping loudly. It might have been a nice scene, but I was shivering: the breeze had chilled all the sweat that had stuck my clothes to my body, and there was nothing I could do about it. I glanced at Pipit, and though he looked like he was in deep, brooding thought, I could see pronounced gooseflesh through his damp shirtsleeves.
Skipper stood at the stern of the ship, hoping to steer it, but to no avail.

"It's been awhile, and my joints are old," he said. "Switch with me, won't you? I'll give directions."

Pipit took a step forward, and Skipper stopped him. He nodded his head at me, and I assumed control of the ship. Right as I took grip of of the metal tiller, a current of warm vibration shot up my arm. The familiarity of the tiller's cold metal handle in my hand was breathtaking.

"Alright," Skipper said, "it seems you've got the hang of it. Keep straight, but drift a bit northeast. When we get there, it'll be on the right. We're close."

I continued on, still feeling warm. There was a large rock formation approaching on the water, and I steered us toward it with ease, slowing as a small wooden dock neared.

"Yes, that's it; pull in slowly. You've caught the hand of this quickly." Skipper pulled out the rope connected to the yawl and tied it to a knob on the dock. We disembarked the boat and took a few steps from the tiny dock and onto the rocky surface of the desert. Skipper's Retreat stood in all its excessively narcissistic glory: carved into the highest part of the rock formation was Skipper's face. It looked like something Ghirahim would do. There were unstable looking tracks going in strange, looping directions, leading wide circles around the rocks countless times. At the very top of the structure of stone was a small home. You've got to be kidding me, I thought to myself.

"Link, you go on ahead," Skipper said. What? Why me?

"Yessir," I replied. I walked to the closest, smallest plateau and began to climb it so I could find a way to the rickety tracks. There was no way that I was going to climb all the way up the flat rock platforms. It would have taken too long, and we had wasted plenty of time already: I was ready to crack down and get serious.

At the top of the plateau was a small coal car—why a coal car was present without a mine in sight was above me. I climbed into it, muttered a short, rather sarcastic prayer to Hylia, and sat in it, leaning forward.

If it worked anything like the coal cars in the Lanayru Mine, it would start moving.
It did not start moving. I grumbled another sarcastic prayer to Hylia, this time asking her to give me a freaking break, oh goddess. I stood and looked around, my eyes landing on a blue stone a few plateaus away. I probably should have thought my actions through a little more.

To get to the platform, I would have to climb quite a distance up a rock wall and then jump across two separated formations. This time, I didn't pray; I ran at the wall and tried to jump high so that I could land up higher. I didn't make it very far but continued to climb.

It took about ten minutes of quick, angry climbing and ten second breaks for me to get the edge of the platform. I pulled myself to the top and wiped my dust-covered hands off on my pants. Blisters had formed on the tips of my fingers and the heels of my palms.

I sighed and looked at my next obstacle. Taking a step back and a deep breath, I ran for it, I jumped.

The moment of soaring through the air, my future completely unknown, was rather peculiar. Like flying, but with an even larger sense of mortality looming over my head. I enjoyed the doubly macabre and free feeling until I slammed hard into the side of the rock. I reached out for the cliff with both hands, and caught it with the fingertips of my left hand.

I put my right foot on a stone that was jutting out of the side of the wall and hoisted myself up, using my leverage to get my legs up. I sat for a second and contemplated my chances at making the next jump, seeing as the distance was even longer.

I stood and I jumped. I wasn't going to get anywhere if I wasted my time overthinking it.
This time, during the moment of soaring through the air, my future completely unknown, I really felt like I was going to die. I wasn't going to make it, I was going to plummet to my death and be reduced to too pulpy flesh that had been impaled by those sharp rocks that seemed so very, very far away when I looked down—
and I made it, this time, standing. I placed my hot and blistered hands on the blue stone ahead of me and closed my eyes, feeling a new and reassuring sense of safety wash over me, complete with a pleasant gust of desert wind and a scream from Pipit, down so far below:

"Watch yourself, asshole!"

I gave him a thumbs up and looked around. I was much closer to the little house than I was to the stupid coal car. One more jump and I'd be there; the only problem was that the rock I was standing on was much lower than the one on which the house stood. I'd slam right into the side and have to grab onto something quick, or I'd slide down.

"Okay, Hylia, I am so sorry for being short with you earlier... If you could forgive me for the time being, that would be great. I will repent for my sins later, I swear to goddess—I mean, I swear on my life that I will repent. I will go to temple and I won't even fall asleep. Please, let me make this jump." I scanned the rock across from me and found two rocks spaced out enough for my hands to hold on securely, and one below them for my foot.

I jumped. I wasn't too sure that I'd die, but I was positive that I wouldn't walk away from this one unscathed. As I cut through the air, I reached my hand out for one of the rocks I was aiming for and missed. The rest of my body caught up with me and I dug the toes of my boot into the wall as I slid down uncontrollably. I was going too fast to be able to grasp anything, so as I threw my hands out wildly on the wall, hoping for something, I could feel my skin being scratched off by the friction.

Maybe I should have said I'd go to temple for two weeks in a row, I thought in resignation just as my right foot hit a stone sticking far out of the wall. It was a tiny cliff, but big enough for me to put both of my feet on it and stand up straight.

I pulled my bloodied hands away from the wall. I wouldn't be able to clean them because I had left my pack with Skipper. Instead, I took the thin linen scarf that had been wrapped around my neck and ripped strips of it off, using my teeth. I hurriedly wrapped it around my lacerated hands and sized up the wall. I'd be able to get up there if I paced myself, but I was so far below that the shadows of the tall stones surrounding me were thrown everywhere at strange angles.

I couldn't see Pipit or Skipper, and I wondered if they were getting impatient.
I started the climb. Slowly, because every time I took a hold of a rock, the pressure increased the pain in my palms.

My forearms were becoming sore and I started to depend on my legs to lug my body up the wall. I should have felt tired, but I wasn't. There had to have been some otherworldly force working on me just then, because I made it up the wall in roughly thirty minutes. When I got to the top, I expected to collapse in exhaustion, but I only felt exhilarated by what I had just accomplished.

The house was much larger than it had looked from below. The door didn't have a lock and I turned its warm, gilded gold doorknob with curiosity. The inside looked as if it had been uninhabited for ages. A thick layer of a dust and sand mixture covered everything, making it seem even more ancient. There was an unkempt dresser shoved into the corner, covered in loose paper and protractors, maps, and the like. Next to the desk was a bookshelf, packed full of atlases and different sized globes. It looked like the home of an avid sailor, no doubt.

I went to the desk, taking care not to disturb any of the dust around me. I filed through the papers, looking for the map of the Sand Sea. I had almost forgotten that I was looking for it.
I found a small slip of paper with childish, loopy handwriting. I can't wait to see you after your next trip, Dad! It was rather sad to see, though I couldn't understand why I felt that way.

The map was at the very bottom of the stack. It felt like it might disintegrate in my hand, so I tucked it into the waist of my pants and left the almost suffocating home.

Outside, I was lucky enough to see that there was a coal car up there with me. I traced its path with my eyes and hopped in without a second thought.
This was true soaring. The car flew down the tracks, almost falling off at every sharp turn. I had to lean into the left when I was turning right, and vice versa. I will admit that I enjoyed the adrenaline rush a bit too much.

When I got back to the ground, I stood proud of all I'd done. Pipit grabbed me by the collar and shook me.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" he said angrily. "When you disappeared down the rock, we thought you were gone. Don't screw with me like that."

"Sorry, Pipit," I said. "I got the map, though." I took it from my waistband and handed it to Skipper, then set to work on cleaning out the bloody blisters on my hands and bandaging them. When I was finished, my hands were bandaged like a boxer's and I could move them freely. The skin had been completely removed in some places, so I was glad I'd brought enough bandages to cover it.

"Are we ready, then?" Skipper asked after consulting his map for another ten minutes or so. Pipit and I said that we were and Skipper showed us where he believed the ship to be. We trusted in his years of nautical experience and set sail again.

We had been sailing for an hour or two, and the early evening sun loomed above us.

"I don't know if we will make it there before nightfall," Skipper said. Pipit and I looked at each other, sharing an equal understanding. We didn't have that kind of time.

"Are you okay with sailing at night?" Pipit asked. "We don't mind."

Skipper gave a hearty laugh.
"Of course! Do you know how many years I've been sailing? I was just wondering how you city boys would fare away from land overnight."

"We city boys were raised pretty tough," Pipit joked. I nodded.
Between Pipit and I, we had enough food and water to keep the three of us full until the morning. We had flashlights and plenty of weaponry if we perhaps ran into trouble. We'd be fine.

We sailed for another half hour or so until I spotted a ship off in the distance.

"Is that it?" I asked, pointing in its general direction.

"Yes, that's her," Skipper said, a relieved look on his face.

"Pipit and I will investigate. Please stay here, for your own safety. If something seems amiss, just scream and we will be here as soon as we can."

Skipper nodded solemnly.

We circled the Sanglider a few times.

"How are we going to get up there?" Pipit asked.

I didn't want to say it aloud, but I had an idea. The only reason I suggested it was because we had no other options.

"I could tie a rope around my sword and throw it up there, to that wire that's connected to the mast. It looks sturdy enough. And then we could climb aboard," I said.

"If someone's aboard, they'll know that we're there," Pipit warned.

"If someone's aboard, they know that we're here. We've circled the ship three times already."

"Point taken. Let's go."

I took the rope and tied it around the sword. I wanted to hold it to my chest and keep it near me at all times, but right now it was needed, and I'd have to make the sacrifice.
Pipit saw my hesitation and took the sword from my hands, chucking it up towards the sturdy wire like a baseball pitcher. It hooked around the wire easily and he climbed up first.
I climbed up after him and pulled my sword away from the wire, strapping it across my back. The wide deck of the ship was abandoned, and everything seemed frozen in time. The sails of the ship hadn't been cast, and we noted that the anchor had been set. The only things on the wooden deck were a few barrels which, after further inspection, we found empty.

"I'll check the captain's cabin," Pipit said, gesturing to it with is head. It was a small room with a wooden door on the upper part of the deck, at the top of two small steps.

"Then I'll go below deck," I offered, finding the square shaped hatch in the middle of the deck that led to the lowest level.

"I'll try to get there as soon as I can," Pipit said.

"Make sure to be thorough in your investigation," I told him. "I'll be fine." I scaled the ladder and was immediately cloaked in darkness. Fumbling around in my pockets for my flashlight, I noticed the stifling smell of kerosene, and a faint dripping sound. I flicked on my flashlight and was greeted by 1,710 barrels of crude oil—according to the inventory list that Keet had helped me get faxed to headquarters. It did, however, seem like a number of them were leaking, because I was standing in kerosene up to my ankles.

The barrels were in long rows that seemed to go on forever. I went down each row, knocking twice on each barrel to see if they were full. It was a strenuous task, but even such a useless sounding thing as the number of leaking barrels could be crucial evidence.
I counted nine barrels as empty. The overwhelming scent of kerosene was making me lightheaded, so I climbed up the ladder back up deck.

"Pipit," I called. He wasn't there. I scraped the kerosene off of my boots as best I could with the edge of the hatch, then closed it. Pipit must have used the other hatch, which led to the second level of the ship, where the rooms were.

"Pipit?" I called again, crouching down in front of the opening and peering into the darkness.

"Yes?" he said, his face suddenly popping up out of the darkness below. His faced looked absolutely ghoulish, distorted by the shadows. It was disturbing to say the least, but I climbed down the ladder and joined him.

"Did you find anything up there?" I asked, turning on my flashlight and shining it on the ground.

"Yes, there was a lot. I also have a lead as to where they might have gone."

"'They?'"

"The crew. Everything up there looked like it had been abandoned in the middle of use. So their mapping tools were left out, and their next route had been plotted." It seemed he'd found a well of information.

"What did you find?" I explained why I reeked of crude oil, and we walked through the passenger's cabins.

Only three of the six rooms had been in use. One was small, with two beds, and the other two were messy, as if they had been used by the small crew of young men.

There wasn't much to be taken from the rooms. We scoured the few other places on the ship and came up short.

"Do you think someone tampered with evidence?"

"Always possible," Pipit replied, making his way up the ladder after me. "But what is there to tamper with? All we have so far is some leaked gas and an unfinished breakfast at the captain's desk. I've got all the crucial stuff in my kit, there couldn't be anything we missed. What do you think happened?"

"Too early to speculate. There isn't enough evidence."

"Maybe they abandoned ship? Someone could have noticed the leaking kerosene and suggested that they left."

"But wouldn't they have preventative measures for fires seeing as they had almost two-thousand barrels of highly flammable material?"

"That makes sense. I did see a box of fire blankets in the captain's office," Pipit remembered.

"Well, we can think about it more after we dock the ship," I said. "Should we bring Captain Skipper aboard?" Pipit said that he would get him and called out to him. Captain Skipper yelled back that there was a platform on the side of the ship that could be lowered and raised, and that he would be able to tie his yawl to the ship after he lowered the sails.

Pipit found the switch to the electricity in the captain's cabin, and I stood in the small room to shield myself from the cold. There was a cold, half empty mug of coffee on the desk, next to a small plate with a slice of bread and a rotting apple with a bite or two taken out of it. My stomach growled.

Skipper climbed aboard the ship, looking all at once very satisfied; he walked the gait of someone in a familiar element. We sat on the deck and ate crackers as he told us old sailor's tales, like when he lost his eye in a fierce battle with some evil undersea entity.
We had raised the anchor earlier and set the course of the ship to sail. Skipper assumed that we would make it to the dock by dawn and advised that we embraced a few traces of rest before the morning came.

I removed my pack and leaned against the raised wall of the upper deck, wrapping a thin sheet around my shoulders. I let the quiet rushing of the waves and the salty scent of the sea lull me to sleep.

"Link, we're here," Pipit whispered, shaking my shoulder gently to rouse me from my uncomfortable sleep. I had dreamt of a curious, eerily familiar song that seemed to have resonated with my body. I stood groggily.

"Where's Skipper?" I inquired, rubbing my eyes.

"I sent him back home, and said that we'd be back there after we continued the investigation."

"Where are we?"

"A pirate stronghold," Pipit whispered. I blanched.

"What?"

"This is the route that was in the captain's logbook. It led us here. I'll leave that up to your thought for now, but we will have to discuss this later."

"They wanted to sell the kerosene illegally."

"Looks like someone's awake. Let's go." The sun was beating overhead, shining daggers into our eyes. We gathered our few belongings and headed out. The Sandglider had been docked and the switch between water and solid ground had a peculiar feeling, as if I was still on the ship though I was standing on the dock. We gathered our few belongings and headed out.

Pipit and I discussed our game plan after sizing up the shipyard. There wasn't a large number of ships there, but we couldn't seem to find any hidden entrances from the front. We weren't sure that we'd be able to scale the place without being seen. There weren't any windows, and there seemed to only be a front door. It was tall and falling apart, its massive pillars sitting at the top of long, wide steps. There were ancient symbols covering the huge building, and I wondered if it was once a Hylian shrine or something of the like.

"Link, stop daydreaming," Pipit quipped.

"Sorry. I was thinking that we could stick close to the walls and walk around back," I replied apologetically.

"We'll have to, there aren't any other options." We looked at each other and nodded, sprinting up the wide steps until we reached the front of the building, then stealthily turned a corner, sticking to the wall. There was nothing on this side, and though the building seemed to stretch on forever, the desert beyond it stretched even further.

"Stay close," Pipit whispered as I noticed the sound of sand shifting against something. It looked like the sand was giving away, like the ground had moved and left a large, gaping hole.

"Pipi—" I shouted, reaching out for him as I fell. Once again, his face seemed ghastly as he shrank out of my vision.
I plummeted into the darkness, and his face disappeared.

The air was cold. The heaps of sand falling with me couldn't cushion my fall—there was no way. When I hit the ground, that would be it. I would die, not seeing anything, hearing nothing but the wind in my ears.

I couldn't accept my fate, but what were my other options? Whatever pit I was falling into had walls that were too far away. I wouldn't be able to reach them.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, right when my body was thrown to the side by a strong gale of wind. The gust of air blew me through a tunnel, doing mid-air flips and turns against my will, until I fell into a shallow pool of warm water. I was safe!

A wave of happiness and relief rushed through me. It felt great to be alive, though the impact between my backside and the rocky bottom of the shallow pool of water was not pleasant. My clothes weren't soaked, but they were too wet to be comfortable. The rocky, cave-like area that I had landed in was not very wide, but I saw light shining through a tunnel to my left.

I took off my top two layers of clothing and wrung them out, then put them on again. Walking towards the light, I checked that my pack and my sword were still on and okay. The fall had crushed one of the bags of trail mix, but my canteen and granola bars were safe for the most part. My sword was completely unharmed, and I unsheathed it, pulling it upwards from my back. A surge of power went up my arm. I didn't want to let it go, so I walked through the tunnel with it in my hand. I needed to be cautious anyway.

The tunnel was longer than I thought it would be, considering the brightness of the light shining through. It was overgrown with thick vines and the sword was helpful in cutting them down. I cleared the way and ended up on the other side of the tunnel.

I was met with a large rock room with a very high ceiling, paved floors, and high metal walkways. There were stairways that led to the different levels of walkways, and doors at each of the levels. The doors increased in size as the level increased.

I didn't have any knowledge of which door to start with. I only vaguely knew what I was looking for, and what I would do when I found it. There was no other way to enter the room that I was in, however, so I climbed the first set of stairs and went into the first door. It was a utility closet, and the sharp scent of ammonia made my eyes water. I attempted to close the door quietly, but its hinges were old and it squeaked loudly. I froze and glanced around. I sheathed my sword and stood up straighter, keeping my ear out for any irregularities in the silence.
No one was there.

I relaxed somewhat and moved to the next door. This one was rusted metal, and I could see that the door would drag across the ground noisily. I weighed whether it was worth it. There was a small window on the door, and I stood on the balls of my feet to reach it, but my height did not allow me to see through the glass. I bounced on my feet to see—one, two, three times—into the room. It was only marginally bigger than the utility closet, but the sole thing inside of it seemed to be a small chest on the ground.

Curiosity got the best of me and I pulled the door laboriously; it was way too heavy! It let out a long, loud moan as I pulled it open and glanced inside. The chest there was tiny, and there was no lock. I flipped it open. The only thing inside was what seemed to be a floor plan of the pirate stronghold. It would be useful, but why was it in a random chest? This was getting increasingly suspicious. Pipit and had I agreed that it was probably a trap, but we took the risk to come anyway. We hadn't expected, however, for it to so obviously be a setup.

I examined the map of the place and pocketed it. The majority of the doors on the next few levels were dead ends, but the last two led somewhere. I climbed the metal grate stairs to the second to last door. It was frosted glass, and slid open when I stood in front of it.

Pipit was leaning against the wall behind it with a bored look on his face. When the door slid open, he sprang up.
"Don't let it close!" he shouted, reaching out for me as I took a step past the threshold. The door slid shut behind me.

"What?" I asked him. He looked at me gloomily.

"The door isn't going to open back up."

"Break it."

"I've tried."

"How long have you been here?" I rubbed my bandaged hands together to warm them up. It was cold in this room.

"Ever since you fell. Oh, wait, what happened to you?"

I explained to him what happened to me, and then he told me that he'd found a hatch aboveground that led to the room we were currently in. We decided that we'd look through the place again, hoping to find a secret passageway of some sort that led to the highest level.

We walked out of the small area in front of the door and down two steps onto a circular, marble floor. The wide circle was surrounded on all sides by steps, and beyond it there were three tall doors with taller windows between them. The frame of the domed glass ceiling, which was exactly parallel to the marble floor, had a glass Hylian crest covered in gold filigree hanging from it. The light shining through the dome refracted into the crest and sent colorful beams of light around the room.

It was gorgeous.
The rest of the room looked like complete ruin. Stone pillars were falling apart, and debris from the ceiling sat in large chunks around the floor, and there was dust everywhere. I saw the brief outline of a harp under a white sheet in the corner of the room. Next to one of the windows was a rotting wooden chair.

I stood in the middle of the circle.
"I wish Karane could see this," Pipit sighed wistfully. "This would be a great place for dancing."

"What do you think this was?"

"A ballroom. They probably came for socialite celebrations."

"In the desert?"

"Yeah. In the 1800s, explorations in the name of historic discovery were pretty important. I think this stuff is from around that time. Maybe someone came around here and found this place, and this was where all the high society people gathered."

"That's cool. I'm going to look this up when we get back," I said. And there it was. Neither of us had said anything about getting back, but now that I had said it, it was all we could think about.

If we got back, Hylia willing, what would I do? Assuming that we solved the case, they'd probably go out drinking. I would have to politely decline, though I had recently felt more and more that I'd needed a drink. After they went out to drink and somehow forced me to tag along, I'd go home and look up documentaries on Lanayru's history, and if it was interesting enough, I'd probably go to the library to find some books on it. I'd practice playing my lyre; I hadn't touched the thing in months. I'd love to hear the sound, sit back and relax. No, wait. Before any of that, I would take a long shower. Oh, but I needed to buy a pack of long-sleeved t-shirts. Perhaps on the way home? Crud, I just remembered that it was cold back in Skyloft. Nevertheless, I looked forward to going home, sleeping in my own bed.

"Do you think there's a map of this place?" Pipit said, glancing around.

"Oh, right. I have one." I pulled it out of my pocket and held it out to him. He snatched it out of my hand and tapped me on the head, feigning anger.

"Tell me that first, idiot!" He looked it over. "There's something—see it? A little square in the middle of the dance floor." He pointed to it on the map. We would have been standing over it.

"Maybe we should move off of it for now," I said. "Shit!" I shouted as the square trap doors that we were standing on opened up.

The fall this time wasn't nearly as long or terrifying. It wasn't dark, firstly, and I could see that we would land in a net suspended ten feet or so above the ground. We landed just as I'd imagined and Pipit's foot got caught in the net.

When he got it out, we glanced down. Ten feet or so from the solid ground would be a fiend to our knees.

I hopped down first, hitting the ground on both feet, knees bent, and rolled forward quickly to lower the impact. Pipit did the same.

He handed the map to me, and I looked over it. The area we were in was marked as 8B. It looked like we were going to have to find a hidden door.

"Link," Pipit said, sounding grave, "look here." I lowered the map and looked to where he was standing underneath the net, under a small body.

"Is she—"

"She's dead." The little girl had fallen when the net wasn't there, perhaps. She'd hit her head on the ground first, and the gruesome sight of blood splattered across the floor from her mangled body tore at me.

"Wait." I had seen her face somewhere. "She's the captain's daughter."

"Fuck." Pipit said. "They probably killed the entire crew." Out of the corner of my eye, I saw another body. I turned. It was a middle-aged woman, her clothes torn and tattered, blond hair strewn across the floor in thick, bloody clumps. She was slumped against the wall in an unnatural position.

"Miss," I said, crouching down to her level. I caught a glimpse of her stomach, which had deep lacerations covering it, and a pool of half-dried blood in her lap. "Goddess, Pipit," I said, backing away.

"We're going to have to bring their bodies back as evidence." His face was stone. He had reverted to the apathetic way of the detective. I supposed it was my time as well.

Pipit pulled out a small digital camera and took pictures of the two corpses. He said we would figure out how to bring them back later.

We found a boulder stuck in front of a doorway and rolled it away, walking past the the opening with a purpose.

We acted apathetic, but inside we were seething with anger.

The room that we entered had seven more mangled corpses that accounted for the entire crew, save for the captain. Pipit quickly took pictures and we passed through to the big red metal door at the end of the long hallway of a room. The doorknob was warm, and we surmised that it led outside.

"Whatever happens," Pipit said emotionlessly, "tell Karane that I love her."

"And tell Ghirahim that I hate him," I almost said. I simply nodded to his request and pushed through the doors.

We were looking at the sea. The sun was no longer shining daggers, but well-aimed rapiers into our eyes. The sand magnified this effect.

A long dock stretched over the base of the sea. There were men standing there, waiting, various weapons in their hands. They seemed gruff and grimy, and were most likely the pirates we had heard so much about. When we walked through the door, they all looked at us in silence.

We stared each other down until one of them spoke up.
"Who are you?" he shouted with a grainy voice, ironically just like the sand.

"Your opposition, I believe," Pipit said flatly. "Did you kill the crew of the Sandglider?"

"Cap'n's orders," another man replied. "And we are supposed to kill our opposition as well." He pointed his antique pistol at Pipit's head. He was at least ten yards away, and didn't seem to have a very good aim.
He pulled the trigger. The bullet hit one of the pillars a few feet from Pipit's head. Pipit walked to the man and grabbed his wrist, shoving his elbow into the man's neck. He removed his elbow and punched him in the nose, then grabbed him by the hair and shoved his knee into the man's face. The pirate fell to the ground, choking.

There were three and a half seconds of silence and then another man yelled "Attack!" and swarmed Pipit and I at the same time. There couldn't have been more than twenty men on the dock, and I unsheathed my sword as a welcome. I could use the flat part of the blade if I decided to be generous, but I wasn't feeling that way at that very moment.

The first man to come at me had a dagger. He sent a strong stab at me, but there was no technique to the attack. I hit the dagger out of his hand and spun him around, twisting his arm around his back. I kicked the back of his leg so that he fell to his knees and shoved the butt of my sword into the back of his neck. He passed out onto the ground.

The next pirate was about my size and was wielding dual blades. I could tell by his stance that he was a well-trained swordsman. He had a condescending grin, however, that showed his blackk, and lack of teeth. The sight annoyed me more than it should have and I decided not to hold back on him.

He went for my head first, stabbing quickly and retracting his blade. I dodged it easily. He went for my shin next, and left a small gash on my right leg. I lifted my foot from the ground and forced it into his chest, sending him backwards. He landed on his back and I kicked one of his swords away, stepping on his wrists. I put a gash on his arm equal to the one he put on my calf.

"Even the good guys can have a dark side, huh?" he laughed maniacally.

I looked down at him. "Yes," I said. "Sometimes we are even darker than the villains." I flipped him over and hit him in the same place as I had the first offender, just as I was yanked backwards.

"Aye, little boy, what d'you think you're doing?" Two lanky young men with pistols were looking down at me.

"I'd just like to say that your people attacked us first." I jumped off the ground and hit one in the face, then spun around to kick the other. He grabbed my foot and yanked me off of the ground, pointing his gun at my knee. This new position gave me the opportunity to see Pipit and the rest of the battleground. There were only two or three pirates going at him, and they did not seem to have nearly as much force as the men attacking me.

It wasn't as if I wished any ill happenings on Pipit, but why were there so many more men attacking me when he was the one that had provoked them?

"Hey, kid, pay attention when there's a gun to yer head." The man pointed the gun into my cheek.

I swung my free foot up and kicked him in the face, causing him to stagger and let me go.
I rolled forward, and ended up in a crouching position right under the legs of the other man. I forced my fist up into his crotch, and he fell backwards anticlimactically.

I took on the next few men—none of them posing large threats—when a large shout came forth.

"Boys, what 'ave ye gotten yerself into?" A tall man with an eyepatch and large, feathery pirate hat was standing where Pipit and I once were. The commotion stopped immediately.

"They're massacring us, cap'n!" cried one of the young men I had incapacitated earlier. The captain walked down the dock, standing at the edge of the water.

"Who?" he boomed. I saw him from a better angle here, it seemed that most of his body was composed of prosthetic limbs. He was wearing a chest-length red jacket with gold epaulets and had greying dreadlocks with a white goatee to match. He looked filthy, and that was saying something considering I had been traversing the desert without being able to clean myself for the past few days.

The men spread out and pointed at us. I looked at Pipit, who looked as if he hadn't fought at all. I, on the other hand, felt bruises forming and had splotches of blood on my clothing. Whether the blood was mine or that of my enemies, I didn't know.

"What are ye 'ere for?" the captain asked.

"We came for the crew of the Sandglider," I said.

"They're dead."

"We saw," Pipit growled.

"Well, now that ye've achieved yer goals, I'd love to let ye leave. But you can't hurt Scervo's men and get away with that." He pulled out a blade about a third longer than mine.

"Which of ye will I be fighting?" he asked, pointing his blade at Pipit, and then me.

"What's the wager?" I asked.

"Yer life or his life," he said, deadpan. His men giggled like preteens.

"How about we arrest all of your men if we win, and you get both of our heads if we lose."

"I'll take it, boy. But I'll fight ye. Be wary of the years of exposure to hardship that I've lived." He backed away, down a long gangplank. It was fenced in on both sides: I could see what he was doing.

I followed him at a distance. His men stood at the edge of the gangplank. One pushed a button and a spiked barrier shot up behind me.

"No runnin', boy," Scervo taunted, unsheathing his straight, tri-sided blade.

"Wouldn't dream of it, captain," I said, swinging my sword to clean the blood off of it. The gangplank was narrow, I wouldn't be able to swing without hitting the chain link fencing, which would parry my blows. I would have to joust at him, a very inefficient way to finish an opponent, or swing either upward or downward.

My first uppercut was a miss. I had underestimated his strength, and he blocked my blow easily. He stabbed at me twice, barely missing, and I backtracked quickly. Neither of us attacked for a moment, and then I pounced with a string of stabs and downward swings. I was able to pierce his arm, but he evaded the other attempts.

The fact that I injured him before he injured me seemed to anger him, and he stomped his foot like an indignant child. The spiked barrier moved closer to us, forcing me nearer to Scervo. He thrusted his blade at me twice, and I ducked and cut deep into his calf. He grunted with malice.

"Hey, boy, ye ain't think you're somethin' tough, do ye?" The spiked barrier moved closer still. Since it pushed me forward, it pushed Scervo back. He was only one or two meters away from the edge of the plank, and he continued to back away. His heavy clothing wouldn't allow him to make it very far, and his old-looking prosthetic limb seemed rusty and had been creaking the entire time. If he fell, he would drown. I needed information out of him.

I took one last uppercut at him cutting his chest, and he seemed to understand that he had lost the battle: he pushed off of the end of the plank. His face was blank; his time was over.

His men screamed, they shouted, they were outraged. The spiked barrier retracted.

"You heard the deal," Pipit shouted as they mourned the death of their leader. "You are all under arrest."

Too conveniently, a school bus was driven onto the scene wildly from the sand. Groose parked haphazardly and jumped out, and Impa walked off as well, holding an imposingly sized M16A4 as if it was the most normal thing in the world. A white SUV pulled up behind the school bus, and people recognized from the forensics division filed out, entering the building from the front door.

Impa filed the pirate crew into the bus, though they seemed to be going of their own will. Their loyalty to their captain was evident in their cooperation.

The forensics team interviewed us. We told them everything we knew, from start to finish. Pipit gave them his camera and I gave all the evidence that I had.

The pirates were driven back by Impa and Groose, and Pipit and I hitched a ride sitting on the top of the SUV. There were too many corpses that had to be put in the back seat, including the captain of the Sandglider who had been found brutally mutilated and dismembered.

Pipit and I mused half-heartedly on what could have happened. We'd still have to put a file together when we got back to Skyloft. After we interviewed each of the 22 members of the pirate crew, we'd have to write an extensive report, connecting each crew member to the crimes committed, and coming up with a verdict. Pipit and I agreed that it would take at least a week to get all of the evidence together.

The SUV stopped in front of Skipper's village. We met him and he thanked us numerous times when we told him that our coworkers were sailing the ship back to the dock and would be there within the hour. Evidently, more trucks had arrived at the stronghold while we were gone.

"Link," Skipper said, pulling me aside, "time is funny, isn't it?"

I tilted my head to the side. "I suppose it is, sir."

A/N: I know I'm more than a month late, and the guilt has been haunting me every day that I haven't updated. But I've been having so many issues recently, and getting even less sleep than usual—something evil has possessed me to join my school's ice hockey team, and we have early morning practices (4:30 sharp). I really hate when I don't update consistently, so hopefully you will accept my olive branch of an almost 8,000 word chapter. I apologize for the late chapter and for being unable to reply to PMs until now. I will be writing furiously until I've replied.