In this chapter, we'll be checking up on the Jolley-Roger Pirates! They're gonna visit a very obscure crossover no one will have heard of, but don't worry: we're also gonna meet a new villain from a more popular franchise.
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Pirates Next Door adventure…
Operation:
C.O.R.T.E.X.
Cortex's
Operation
Ravages
Territory
Enquiring
X-tinct
Loading adventure…
The breath of the sea was refreshing in the morning. Matilda had yet to tire of it, even two months after becoming a full-time pirate. …That, and her best friend's sardine breath. "Haaaaaaah." Jim Lad exhaled. "Mornin', Tilda!" The rookie pirate had messy black hair under a red bandanna with white spots. He wore a T-shirt with thick blue and white stripes, a black sash with red edges and a skull, and blue jeans with rolled-up legs over his bare feet.
"Morning, Jim." She returned with a light smirk, one that suggested she was used to his 'manners.' "Think we'll catch something new for breakfast?"
"I could go for some clams. I hear there's some really big ones out in this neck of the sea."
"Are you forgetting something, Jim?"
"Tilda, look!" Jim pointed excitedly. "It's one of them Sky Tunnels!"
"Oh! Those things from the race? I thought they were supposed to disappear."
"Well, that one hasn't! And I bet it'll take us somewhere new! You up for it?"
"You know it!"
"And now we're on a whole new ocean. So, how could you know if there are giant clams down there?"
"It's a pirate's hunch, okay?"
"LAND HOOOOOO!" bellowed Jim's dad from the crow's nest.
"What?! Land?!" Grandad Jolley panicked. "QUICK, HARD TO STARBOARD! Before it draws us into its maw!"
A tremendous island stood in the horizon. "Now, there's some adventure!" Jim said with beaming eyes. There was a vast forest, a volcano, and some mountains that ascended toward dense clouds. "Looks like there's civilization, too. Some ruins over there!" He noticed a great temple built along the seaside. "And an airship, too!" Jim indicated the dark-purple blimp, marked with a large orange "N" on its upper back fin.
Matilda frowned inquisitively. "Um…I feel like that ship isn't native here."
"It ain't? That means…"
"We might not be the only visitors here."
The two rookies rowed a boat toward the temple. There were numerous water channels and tall spouts, the walls were mostly gold while the floors were checkerboard style. They entered one of the dim-lit corridors of the temple. "Ooooo! Turtles!" Matilda beamed seeing some turtles crawl about the path.
"I guess we have our answer for breakfast." Jim's statement earned him a disbelieved glare.
It was then one of the turtles fully turned its head to face them… exposing the cybernetic half of its face with a red eye. "Um…" The other turtle did as well. One extracted two sawblades out of its shell, while the other simply had spikes around the side. "WOT?!"
The turtles maintained their patrol formations, but Jim was hesitant in stepping near them. "Time to put that practice to work, Jim!" Matilda ran forth and jumped over the turtles. Jim took a hearty swallow and followed suit. Their next obstacle came in the form of high water wheels with platforms on them.
"Throw me up there!" Jim climbed on Matilda's shoulders. Matilda jumped and hurdled him up onto the nearest orbiting platform. He then grabbed his bundled-up rope and tossed the end down for Tilda to grab on and be pulled up to his level. They jumped their way up more of the waterwheels and reached another corridor. "WHOA!" Standing in their way was a blue, reptilian creature with a very long neck and a Mayan-like mask on its head. "It's a giraffe!"
"It's definitely not!" Tilda argued. "It barely looks like a brachiosaur!"
The creature took a breath and blew a stream of frost, the kids dodging apart. When the frost cleared, they joined back as Matilda threw Jim up to its head, from which Jim struck his cutlass against its mask until it toppled. The duo raced past it and up a flight of stairs, soon to stop at a tall shaft. A water spout rose partway up it, ending level with some hanging rings, from which another spout was available. Jim jumped in the spout and shifted himself to grab the first ring, pull-jumped up to the next, and entered the second spout from there. Though not thrilled about totally soaking her clothes, Matilda hurried after.
The duo crossed another corridor that descended along with a flowing water channel. The two excitedly rode down like a waterslide, and the momentum carried them along the flat part of the channel. Jim, who had gone first, would stop against the end of the channel while Matilda bumped into his back, to which they shared a brief chuckle.
However, the water seemed to grow more dark as they entered a sanctum with an inactive fountain. A band of human-looking men with labcoats, glasses, and cylindrical heads were loading the darkness into vats before carrying them away on jetpacks. "What do ya suppose that was?" Jim wondered.
"Jim, look!" Matilda heard footsteps running up an opposite corridor, sloshing over some shallow water. Soon, their source became clear: a girl of about 13, with tan skin, violet hair tied in braids, with feathers on top. Her attire was Mesoamerican, with a white tunic tied by a brown sash, brown shorts underneath, and wood sandals. She carried an axe whose staff was as tall as herself, and whose head possessed a human-like face with a thick mustache.
The girl stopped and looked toward the strangers in shock. "Itorah!" the axe spoke in a foreign language. "(More humans! And they… seem like children, too!)"
"MARY!" Jim exclaimed. "A talking axe!"
"So, you speak the same tongue as the invaders." the axe replied in English. "But look… that girl has spots on her face." Matilda perked up, trying to look at her own freckles. "Itorah, (she must be the one Ahui spoke of.)"
"Okay, quit swapping languages!" Matilda shouted. "I can't follow at all, what's wrong with my freckles?!"
The girl narrowed her eyes and rushed at the strangers. "Arms up, Matilda!" Jim raised his cutlass while Matilda grabbed the blunderbuss she borrowed from Grandad. She tried to position the blunderbuss in self-defense, but the force of the girl's swings quickly made her drop guard. Matilda would keel over from a blow to the shoulder, and when Jim jabbed a cut at her hip, the girl rolled behind and swung her masked axe into his own hip. "HUWAG!" Though it left no cut, the blunt force brought Jim to his knees.
"RAAAAH!" The girl was jumped by a smaller child with black hair, a violet dress with a skull design, and monochrome-striped socks going into black shoes. "Unhand me captain, ye stick-slinging beast!" yelled Jim's 5-year sister, Nugget.
"BARK!" A black and white dog with a peg-leg pounced and bit the girl's leg. She used the staff of her axe to hit the dog away, then grabbed and yanked Nugget off.
"Ho there!" Mr. Jolley jumped and raised the girl up in his bulky arms. "Already into a bit of roughhousing, eh kids? Whoa!" The girl kicked him in the legs and shook free before throwing her axe into his portly belly.
"(HEY!)" another voice screamed. "(MORE HUMANS!)"
They all looked to see a violet-furred lemur girl run out of the corridor. She had a large fluffy tail, long ears, a yellow and orange patterned scarf, and her own brown tribal gear and head feathers. She also wore some explorer's headwear with a monocle above it. "(Uh…wait. Why are you attacking them?)"
"(Ahui, is this spotted girl the one who attacked the village?)"
"(Huh?! She doesn't look anything like the one I saw! That girl had white skin, a giant forehead, and hands of metal!)"
"(What? But they… have to be with those invaders. Where else would they have come from?)"
"Hey, axe thing!" Matilda shouted. "You can speak English! Can you please just talk to us?!"
"Hmm… then answer me this: have you come here with those sky invaders?"
"We don't know what you're talking about!" Jim answered. "We're the Pirates Next Door! We came here looking for adventure, not invading! …Though I guess we did come from the sky."
"We just saw a bunch of scientist-looking guys steal jars of… some kind of dark purply stuff." Matilda replied. "We aren't with them."
"I see… then it appears we've had a misunderstanding."
"You can say that again!" Jim snapped.
"But how amazing that more humans showed up!" Ahui beamed. (The axe will now transcribe all their words.) "What a momentous time this is for Nahucan!"
"Is that where we are?" Matilda asked.
"Yep! And I'm Ahui, the great explorer!"
"I am Koda." the axe replied. "A great warrior known far and wide! And this young human who wields me is Itorah."
"Well now…" Jim held his hip as he pushed himself up. "Much as I didn't like the unpleasant greeting, I gotta commend a girl with an arm like that!"
The girl looked a bit tense as she held Koda close. "She is not one for conversation." Koda said.
"Well, she was sure shouting a lot when she was breaking our bones in."
The girl bowed her head in apology. "Oi, it's fine now!" Jim grinned.
"But what were these invaders doing?" Matilda asked. "What was that stuff they took?"
"Let's head back to my village, Chimali!" Ahui said. "We'll try to catch you up!"
Aboard the airship, N. Deavor
The scientist studied the readings thoroughly. He possessed a yellow head with a bulbous cranium and a silver "N" stamped on top. He had a black hair tuft on top, dense eyebrows over his reddened eyelids, goatee, and black wavy bodies of hair jutting out to either side. He wore a white labcoat, yellow gloves, and black arm and legwear.
"So, thousands of years ago," he thought aloud with a composed voice, "this country was locked in a sub-dimension to keep this Plague from spreading to its greater world. It wouldn't be the first time such a phenomena occurred. The tribe that once dwelled here was wiped out, and then masked beings arose… surely, this has to be connected to that Firstborn!"
"But the king has no interest in that one, does he? Only the Freeborn." Behind him was a taller man with the blue skin of a Lunarian. He wore bronze torso armor with a large Roman numeral clock on the chest, a similar helmet with a silver tuning fork above his clock, and a labcoat underneath. "All he'll desire are these specimens. It would be scant to think he'd even desire these samples of the Plague."
"The king accepts my modified animals, N. Tropy. If I can concentrate this Dark Chi to further enhance them, surely he'll see value in that."
"Well, I'm certainly not abject to the potential." N. Tropy turned toward one of the vats, where it seemed small dark parasites with spikes and eyeballs were bouncing around. "But if these things do originate from that Firstborn… then exactly which world did this country originate?"
"Dr. Cortex!" Another impish scientist with orange hair, and a distinct missile lodged into the cybernetic right half of his head, rushed into the room. He was N. Gin. "I've spotted a pirate ship! Just south of the Tlalocan temple!"
"A pirate ship?! What colors were they flying?"
"It does not look like any in our database. In fact, it looks rather shabby."
Cortex came to look at the telescope feed. The Jolley-Rogers' ship, the Blackhole, was roughly the size of a house and hardly remarkable. "It doesn't even look capable of air travel. How would it have gotten through my Cortex Vortex? No matter. Once Nina is finished looting the rest of the archives, we'll make sail. And if these pirates attempt to threaten us, we'll dispose of them."
Chimali
The pirates followed Ahui and Itorah through a frostbitten cavern and snowbound forest, an environment Jim certainly wasn't suited for. "Oi, Itorah." the lad stuttered as he noticed her sandals. "H-H-How come your toes ain't all chilly?"
She merely responded with a shrug. Along the journey, they faced masked creatures such as boars, bat-like things, and more of the frost-shooting long-necked beings. Itorah was an exceptional jumper and could throw Koda like a boomerang aside from her basic martial arts. Eventually, they left the frozen zone and entered Nahu Falls, a vast cavern network with waterfalls and coral formations growing from the rock. It seemed that Itorah wasn't a swimmer, as she would jump platforms between the falls, while the pirates had no problem swimming through the pools beneath them.
Afterwards, they crossed a forest, where masked plants were spitting nuts the size of baseballs, along with large insects and sickle-swinging monkeys. The forest led to a pleasant meadow, where they approached a village protected by a dense wooden, spike-tipped fence.
Chimali Village was made of rock houses with yellow straw roofs, along with some homes built into the giant central tree. There was a farm, a waterwheel, and waterfalls pouring down the cliffs. The only unfortunate aspects were the burned patches of grass and crushed houses. There were some lemur and chimp-like citizens, but there were also some humanoid masked folk.
Ahui approached a male, older lemur, injured and resting beneath a tree. "Ahui! Who are… Are those more humans?!"
"They said they're not with the invaders, brother! But we were too late. The invaders stole the Echo from Tlalocan, and they've taken more fragments of the Plague."
"And just who are they?"
"Really confused, for starters." Matilda replied.
"Haha, right. I promised an explanation." Ahui blushed. "For generations, our country was tormented by a dark force we call the Plague. The Plague wiped out the humans that used to live here… until I was lucky enough to find this one!"
"I found her first." Koda said. "But young Itorah here… she possesses a remarkable gift. She is able to contain and quell the Plague. Just a year ago, we barely succeeded in crushing the Plague at its core, relying on the power of our four guardian spirits. Dhalia the Forest Spirit." Ahui showed a drawing of a green-skinned woman with a dress of red and green leaves and roses for hair. "Tlaloc the Water Spirit." A man with a body of water, a blockish head designed like Mayan architecture, with a gold crown and brown bushel on top. "Quetzalcoatl the Sky Spirit." A great serpent dragon with electric spike bushels on its body. "And Chantico the Fire Spirit." A human-sized being draped in red wielding an axe designed like a jawed mouth and flaming hair.
"And yet, the Plague survived in small remnants, though we've had no trouble stopping it. Until two days ago… when a whole new race of humans began reaping us of the Plague and our land."
"Okay, but… if they're stealing the Plague, that can't be all bad, right?" Matilda asked.
"It is when they are stealing the spirits' Echoes which keep the Plague from spreading too far across our land!" Ahui's brother argued. "They've stolen Dhalia's and now they've taken Tlaloc's."
"Well, they're probably going to that ship up there, right?" Jim asked. "So, let's raid 'em right back and get back what's yours!"
"You want to what now?!" Mr. Jolley asked.
"YEAH!" Nugget cheered. "Let's pop it like a balloon!"
"Jim…" Matilda was blindsided by her friend's heroic statement.
"Hey, Mat, if blighters were raiding your town, we wouldn't stand for it. And I'd say these lot are our mates now, eh?" Jim put an arm around Itorah, who blushed.
"Hm hm!" Matilda giggled. "So, we're heroes all of a sudden? Is that why you started calling us the Pirates Next Door?"
"What? No, that's because it's what you were callin' us."
"Haha, really?"
"Well, I mean… it kinda clicks, don't it?"
"But how're we going to reach their ship?" Mr. Jolley scratched his noggin as he looked toward the sky. "It's… quite a way up there."
"It's close to the Storm Archives!" Ahui said. "We'll lead the way!"
Leaving the village, the group rode a large, wooden elevator up the cliff. There was a sequence of high, hanging rings they would have to swing from. "Watch and learn, lubbers!" Jim climbed on Matilda's shoulder as she threw him up to one of the rings. He swung the rings and pulled a lever on the ceiling to lower the rings, allowing the others to grab on.
"She could've thrown me, too." Koda said dejectedly.
The wind howled as they journeyed over a rickety bridge. Beneath them was a shrouded, misty forest, but most splendid was the enormous tree. "The Tree of Life." Koda said. "As the chief said, its Echo was taken."
"BOAR!" Nugget screamed.
"Hey, that's not boring!" Matilda said.
"No! Boar!"
A warthog charged over the bridge. Itorah leapt and Ground Pounded Koda against the hog, but it held strong against her. "JUMP!" Jim exclaimed, he and Tilda leaping over the hog. Mr. Jolley grabbed Nugget to help her jump it, and they ran before the hog could double back. "That creature's not from around here!" Ahui said. "It's one of the animals the invaders brought!"
"So, their minions are animals?" Jim replied. "You don't reckon… they could be the Kremlings, do you?"
"It couldn't be!" his dad said. "That ship wasn't flying the Kremlings' colors."
"What're you guys talking about?" Ahui asked.
"We'll tell ya a bit later." Jim answered.
As the grass began to turn golden around them, the crew ascended an interior cliff cavern using strong updrafts. Some of the drafts weren't strong enough to carry them up on their own, but there were bounce plants afloat in them. These plants would grant the jumping momentum needed to ride the wind and ascend the cliffs.
"Whoa…" They were awed to see they were above the clouds. The ground was broken into numerous levitating masses with golden grass at their caps. It wasn't Jim's first time amid Sky Islands; they sailed the White Sea during the Dead Man's Race, but it was always a captivating sight.
"Welcome to the Storm Chunks." Koda said. "Watch your footing." Itorah and Ahui demonstrated by leaping between some of the small, bobbing masses. Jim and Matilda followed suit with their Team Throw skill.
"Er…you tykes might have to go ahead without me now." Mr. Jolley panted. "I just don't have the vigor for this much climbin'."
"WAIT!" Nugget yelled. "Take me, too! Jim, throw your rope down!"
"Eh, actually, Nugget, maybe best you stay with Pops." her brother reasoned. "It's lookin' quite a bit… jumpy up here." And so, Jim and his first mate advanced.
"AAAAAGH! It's not fair!" The child stomped in repetition.
"Oh, it's alright, Nugget." Mr. Jolley patted her head. "Why don't we pass the time with a bit of 'I Spy'? Even brought me handy spyglass!" He held it up.
"NO! I don't need them to climb a few bloody floating islands! I got a better partner! SCRRRRRAWK! SCRAWK! SCRAWK!"
Aboard their ship, Grandpa's parrot, Squawk perked up. It flew into the cabin and grabbed a block-shaped cannon helmet before flying up Nahucan.
The crew climbed to larger islands with golden trees. Itorah bravely relied on the wind to make the long jumps between them. Jim and Matilda were eager to follow her example. Eventually, they reached a larger island with a golden grass meadow, the N. Deavor looming beyond its shore. "Be careful with those, you nitwits!" They saw a muscular Mobian thylacine and koala carrying stuffed husks of the masked animals. "I need my collectables to be in one piece!" They were being ordered around by a girl with pale skin, freckles, black hair, an "n" on her big forehead, metallic gauntlets, and buckteeth.
"What good stuffed displays for, anyway?" the tiger asked. "Even meat don't smell good."
"HEY!" Ahui pointed her tail. "Those are the ones that attacked Chimali! That's the spotted girl!"
"Her?!" Matilda cringed disgustedly. "You mistook me for that?!"
"Huh?!" The girl faced them. "Humans?! No… pirates?! I thought no one else was supposed to find this place!"
"Who are you?! What do you people want with this place?"
"I am Nina Cortex! Heir to N. Terprises! We're just here on a research expedition. Managed to find some good souvenirs out of the deal." She picked two relics out of her backpack, one blue and slightly tear-shaped, and one green and more crystal-like with a pointed tip.
"Dhalia and Tlaloc's Echoes!" Koda exclaimed. "You must return those at once so the guardian spirits may return someday!"
"No! If these are really spirit hearts, they'll be useful to me, yet!" She returned them to her pack. "But on the other hand… that lemur pet of yours looks pretty cute!"
"M-Me?!" Ahui gasped.
"Yeah. So, maybe I'll part with these gems if you trade me!"
"Absolutely not!" Koda responded. "Nothing is yours to take from our land!"
"Yeah, so give that stuff back!" Matilda shot her blunderbuss at Nina, but the large koala blocked the shot.
"Fine then! Tiny Tiger, Koala Kong, rough 'em up!" (Play "Nina Cortex" from Crash: On the Run!)
When her two henchmen charged forth, Itorah was the first to meet the challenge. Tiny gnashed his massive fangs, but suffered toothache as Itorah bashed Koda against them. Koala ripped a tree out of the ground and intended to smash Itorah with it, but she threw Koda like a boomerang to hit his arms and make him drop it on his head.
Nina ran toward Jim and Matilda and stretched her cybernetic fists in the form of a punch, the pirates dividing to split her attention. His cutlass ready, Jim rushed Nina and evaded her punches as he got close enough to cut her face. His blade left no visible scar, but she did yelp from the pain and send him flying with a gut punch. "Peh! That ain't nearly as hard as Jason's punches!"
"D'OH!" Nina took a blunderbuss shot to the noggin. She stretched her right arm at Matilda, but even though she dodged, the robotic arm looped behind Tilda to grab her ankle. "WHOOOAA!" Nina began spinning with Tilda flailing at the end of her arm. Jim ducked and crawled under the rotating arms until he was able to cut Nina's leg. She released Matilda, but quickly coiled her arm up to smash-punch Jim's back.
Tiny Tiger tried to jump on Itorah, but as she evaded him, Koala tackled her from the other direction. He bound Itorah in a hug while Tiger readied to puncture her with a pitchfork. "Pick on someone your own size!" Ahui jumped the tiger's back, put hands over his eyes, and wrapped her tail around his neck as best she could. In Tiny's aggressive effort to shake her off, his trident stabbed the upper right of Koala's chest. He released Itorah to pry the trident out, then tried to swat the lemur off, but Ahui quickly vacated Tiny's head and allowed the tiger to be slapped. Itorah rolled behind Koala, mustered a small amount of Willpower Chi, and swung Koda into his back with enough force to push him into Tiny.
Matilda pushed back to recovery and shot more bullets at Nina, who performed shorter-ranged spins toward Tilda while deflecting them with her large hands. But when Nina got close, Matilda dropped and thrusted the back end of her weapon into Nina's hip. Forced out of her spinning, Matilda spun her blunderbuss back around for another direct shot.
"You know what, I got a better idea!" Nina grabbed and pressed a remote, summoning a floating platform with rockets and the "N" logo. She leapt on and flew safely airborne above the pirates. "And I'm not leaving without my lemur!" She stretched her arms down to grab Ahui.
"OW! LEMME GO!"
"Your tail is so fluffy-wuffy!" Nina cooed, pressing it against her cheek as the grip of her cyborg hands tightened. "I can't wait to snuggle with it!"
"Y-You're… killin' me!"
"AH!" A cannonball struck the platform, freeing Ahui.
"AYE! Bull's eye!" Nugget cheered, armed with her cannon helmet while Squawk carried her by the back. "She's a bad guy, right Jim?!"
"Aye! Good shot, Nugget!"
"I'll show you a good shot!" Nina thrusted fists, but Squawk evaded them as Nugget kept up her cannonfire. The child genius flew backward while the pirate pursued, but Nina's aircraft dropped devices that would strike red bolts upward, nearly catching the 5-year-old off guard. "Agh!" A lucky cannonball struck her platform's right engine, descending as Nina tried to regain balance. However, this put Nina low enough for Matilda to throw Jim onto her platform. "Hey!" He quickly pilfered her backpack and grabbed the two Echoes afore flipping off. Itorah then seized the chance to boomerang Koda and take down her platform. (End song.)
The genius recovered only to find Jim, Matilda, and Itorah surrounding her; with Ahui cowering behind the latter. Tiny and Koala were KO'ed behind her. "We sure showed her, eh Squawk?!" Nugget grinned. "AAH!" A ray gun took them out of the sky.
"Nugget!" Jim gasped.
"You! How dare you bully my poor niece?!" Dr. Cortex appeared on a hoverboard. "Nina… are you alright?"
"You're embarrassing me, Uncle!"
"So, are you her captain then?" Jim wondered.
"I should have you scoundrels turned into gelatin for what you've done… but you see, I'm on a rather busy schedule. And I've already got what I need here." Cortex raised up a relic, light-blue with curved tips on its top and bottom.
"It's Quetzalcoatl's Echo!" Koda yelled.
"Containing the Storm Chi of a sky dragon spirit. That's just what we need to have a chance at hunting Skaios. Now, pirates, allow my niece to come aboard and I shall not destroy you… yet."
The kids shared frustrated glances. They hated to just let him get away, but it was becoming more of a fight than they bargained for. They stepped aside as Nina stretched to grab and pull up to her uncle's hoverboard. "But Uncy, they took my other souvenirs!"
"We have no need for those ones. But know this… you've just incurred the wrath of Cortex!" And so, they returned to the N. Deavor. Tiny and Koala groggily limped their way over as well.
"Grrrr… bloody sky pirates." Jim grumbled. "Grandad was right. Pirates who use that fancy tech are just cheaters."
"It wouldn't hurt to have some of that ourselves." Matilda reasoned.
"No, you just don't get it, Tilda!"
"Without Quetzalcoatl's Echo, the skies will grow unbalanced." Koda said. "We cannot let them escape!"
"Afraid they're gonna be long gone by the time we get to shore. But you know, I was thinkin' of asking, anyway…"
"Asking what, Jim?" Tilda asked.
Jim turned to, "Itorah… wanna join my crew?"
The girl blinked in surprise. "Hey, what about me?!" Koda asked.
"I meant you, too! But look, you're a tough lass. And if we're gonna make it as a crew, we'll be up against plenty of nasty blokes like that. So, havin' someone like you would sure help us some."
Itorah thought for a moment. She had to get back the Echo. Not to mention they took samples of the Plague. What if they planned to spread it beyond Nahucan? Itorah shook Jim's hand.
"Can I come, too?!" Ahui asked. "I never knew there was a world outside Nahucan! I wanna learn all about it!"
"Well, I reckon there's room." Jim shrugged. "The more hands, the better!"
"Hatoi!" Ahui's tail gave a thumbs-up!
"First, we must return these Echoes to the World Tree and Tlalocan." Koda said.
"Yeah, we can spare time for that." Jim smiled.
"There's just one little thing I'm worried about." Matilda said.
Blackhole
"NO! OFF! GET THEM OFF!" Grandad swung his hook hand at Itorah. "I barely got used to Matilda aboard me galleon! Havin' another lubber and her monkey aboard is intoxicating!"
"I'll tell you what's intoxicating!" Koda argued. "Your filthy teeth! Or what's left of them!"
"Every tooth I lost is a battle well won! What would a cursed axe know?!"
"I am the greatest warrior in all of Nahucan! You look like you could barely settle a squabble over a playset!"
"I bet me hook cleaved more warriors than ye!"
"If I still had a body, I wouldn't have lost my hands at all!"
"THEN HOW IN BLAZES DID YE LOSE YOUR BODY?!"
Jim, Matilda, Itorah, and Ahui were sitting around a small table sharing cups of juice. "This'll take some getting used to." Jim said.
"Welcome to the crew!" Tilda winked. Itorah and Ahui giggled and sipped their cups.
N. Deavor
The airship flew into the vortex they used to enter the sub-dimension, but noticed the wind current going through it. "So, that's how they got there." Cortex observed. "One of the Sky Tunnels from the race? That shouldn't be there. Unless… our elusive Firstborn is closer than we think."
"Then we may yet have two at our fingertips." N. Tropy said. "I'll take these Dark Chi samples to my laboratory for further research. I'm sure your king will be delighted to have new fauna amongst his ranks."
"As you will, Nefarious."
…
Dr. Cortex stepped into the cabin of a certain pirate ship. N. Tropy entered a corridor with a lavish mirror.
King K. Rool chugged a large barrel of melon juice before facing down at his small scientist. "So, Cortex… what have you learned?"
The mirror reflected N. Tropy beautifully… as a star-glittered man with horns, white hair, and midnight-blue skin appeared behind him. "And what did that place have to offer?"
"I can confirm with certainty," N. Tropy replied, "that Nahucan was indeed part of the Terminan Sea. And it suffered its own Plague beneath Majora's influence until the gods saw fit to seal it."
"So, before we commence hunting for the Freeborn," Cortex said, "I want to visit the Wumpa Islands once more. We may yet find resonance between the masked creatures we've abducted, and the mask spirits there."
"Heh heh har." K. Rool laughed. "Sounds like an adventure."
"Then Majora's child may yet be close." The Stargazer said.
Kremling Krew's Science Kommander
NEO CORTEX
One of the Thirteen Workshop Managers
NEFARIOUS TROPY