The gang’s ship received a message from one of the Kearthian ships.

“Hand over James McMouse and we’ll let you go,” said the robotic voice of a mouse-mech. “Otherwise, we’ll kill you. And don’t even think about powering up your hyper engines because we have disabled your energy shield and if we hear you powering up the engines we will kill you!!! We shall give you 5 minutes.”

“Yo, gang, what do we do?” asked Bird.

“What can we do?” asked Snorter.

“Duh, just take the mouse dude out of his suit!” suggested Klumpkrump.

“Then how will I communicate?” asked James McMouse.

“We’ll get to that when we get to that,” said Klumpkrump.

And so James McMouse was taken out of his mech suit.

“Won’t they see that he’s not in the suit?” asked Mushpuff.

“We can cover the suit with a blanket or something,” said Klumpkrump.

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The mech suit was covered in a blanket, put into a storage container, and launched towards the Kearthian pirate swarm. One of the ships aligned to retrieve the box. Bird began to power up the hyper engines.

“Halt!” warned a broadcast from a Kearthian ship. “Power down the engines.”

Bird did as instructed.

“We need to be sure you haven’t tricked us. Wait for our confirmation, and then you will be free to go.” The next minute was extremely tense. Everyone was anxiously waiting for the ships to blast them to death… but it never happened!

“Okay, one more thing,” said the voice from the Kearthian ship. “We just need our ship back.” Then, at that very moment, the gang got another broadcast from DeBear’s ship.

“Get on our ship and leave their ship!” ordered DeBear. “Never be on the same ship at the same time as them, that’s a very bad idea. It’s rule 86 of Bear Code.”

“We will board one of the ships of our allies and then you can take your ship back,” said Bird to the pirates.

“Nope!” said the mouse-mech from the pirate fleet. “We have very strict rules, you see. All exchanges must be done in person.”

“Why?” asked Bird.

“If you leave the ship, how can we be sure you haven’t planted a bomb and the whole thing is going to blow up as soon as we board it?”

“Dang, that’s a good point,” said Plagiarize out loud to nobody in particular.

“Drop all your weapons and wait there. We’re boarding your ship.”

“You guys need to think of something, fast!” ordered DeBear. “They’re not just going to take their ship back.”