Mai sighed. They've been out on sea for two weeks ever since the Ching-Shih treasure incident. Her ankle had fully healed, and she was debating what this meant for her.

For one thing, she was back in control now. And she had hundreds upon thousands of dollars to spend at her leisure. And most assuredly, her friends would miss her. Miss Chau might be going frantic now that she hasn't showed up in ages, not that disappearing for weeks on end wasn't a common occurence among crooks. And it wasn't like she was planning on being a pirate.

But, at the same time ... Mai thought what it would be like to just turn her back away from these stupid idiots and go back to her old life ... and it just didn't seem so interesting anymore. Here, every day was fun, every day was full of excitement. Sure, the pirates' plans for stardom didn't always work -- more like NEVER -- but they sure had fun doing it.

"Whatcha thinking about, Mai?" P.O asked, coming to sit down next to her as she looked out at the water surrounding the boat.

"I'm wondering if I should go back home," she said honestly.

P.O stopped messing around with his long hair and turned to her, horrified. "You can't! You're one of us now! You're part of the crew! The company! The merry band! The gang! The --"

"Okay, I get it!" she interrupted before he went on forever.

"Anyway, you can't just leave! After all we've been through?"

"Uhh, let me think ..." Mai counted it on her fingers. "I guess you could consider that moment when you kidnapped me an adventure ... then Zico wanted to kidnap a real rich girl, that was suuuper fun ... then Ching-Shih's treasure ... that's about it. We haven't really been through much."

"You're forgetting the time when we took a break at that small island last week and Jaehyo hyung managed to get an octopus to latch onto him," P.O reminded her.

"Oh, yeaaaaah." Mai made a face. "I'd rather forget about that, to be honest."

"And the time Zico hyung tried to learn how to cook and almost burnt down the kitchen?"

"Yeah ..."

"Or when U-Kwon hyung got mad at Jaehyo hyung and B-Bomb hyung and messed with all the computers so they went down for a few hours and Jaehyo nearly had a panic attack?"

"Right ..."

"Or when we decided to pull a prank on Taeil hyung and stole all his candy and he went into some sort of post-sugar depression-slash-anxiety attack and almost threw himself off the ship?"

"Okay, that was pathetic, not amusing."

"Point is," P.O nudged her. "We've gone through a whole lot already! You can't just walk away from that!"

Mai just scowled at him, but didn't say anything. She privately felt that he was right.

"Well, I can't force you to make up your mind. Just know that U-Kwon hyung will throw a fit if you try to escape." P.O laughed at the disgusted look on Mai's face and stood up, walking away.

Mai stared out at the ocean water. It was calm and peaceful, but she had a feeling it wouldn't stay like that for long. 

"AAAAAAAARGH!!!"

Mai woke up with a jolt. Blinking the sleepiness away from her heavy eyes, she ran out of her room and down the hall to the control room, where Jaehyo was shrieking like a madman.

"What is your problem?" She demanded, throwing the door open. Jaehyo clearly had an overnight shift at the controls. Chip bags and other sorts of snack crumbs littered the table, along with several crushed cans of pop. Jaehyo himself was currently swearing as he picked himself off the floor, having fallen from his chair in shock.

"Mai! You gotta help me!" He pointed at the computers with a shaking finger. "Something terrible has happened!"

Mai noted the panic in his voice. "What? What happened?"

She ran to the computers. At first, she didn't get what was so bad -- then she realized the screens were all blue and staticky. Only small yellow text was shown on the top of the screen in Korean. Mai, who was fluent in speaking the language but had trouble reading it, took a few minutes to figure out the words: ERROR OCCURED. NO HARD DRIVE FOUND. PLEASE INSERT HARD DRIVE.

"What does that mean?" she asked Jaehyo, who was still looking terrified. A few seconds passed by and the door slammed open once more, this time with B-Bomb, Zico, and Kyung showing up.

"What happened?" Zico growled, dark bags under his eyes and hair messed up. "Jaehyo hyung, what the , man?" 

"Something happened to the computers," Mai quickly explained. "See?"

Taeil looked them over. "But that ... that's impossible ..."

"What's this about hard drives?" Kyung asked, scratching his head.

"It's a main function of your computer," B-Bomb quietly explained. "In order to get the hard drive out, you'd have to unscrew the entire thing and dig around inside of it. So, unless Jaehyo went on a mini acid trip and managed to remove the hard drives out of every single computer here and then put everything perfectly back in place ..."

Mai realized where he was getting at. "Then something happened to them, something so bad it made the computer think it's hard drive was nonexistent."

Kyung gave a low whistle. "That's some hardcore hacking. Jaehyo, who could it have been? The only person within, like, ten miles of this boat with any decent hacking skills is you, and I don't think even YOU can handle this."

"Of course I can't!" Jaehyo snapped. "Do you know how hard that would be? How many codes I'd have to wire into the machine?Even if I could -- which I'm pretty certain, given enough time, I could manage -- I'd need state-of-the-art equipment and the right systems and tools to do so! Not these pieces of s!"

"Those pieces of s were expensive, you know," Zico muttered under his breath. Mai ignored him.

"It's okay, it'll be fine," Kyung said, attempting to comfort Jaehyo, who looked like he was about to pass out over the damage that happened to his precious hacking devices. "We'll find a way to boost them up again. Something must have happened and short-circuited the hard drive. We can always fix them."

"I don't think that's the worst of it," Mai interrupted, looking at the computers warily. She turned to Jaehyo, who nodded. It seemed like the broken computers weren't the only thing he was worried about either.

"What do you mean?" Zico asked as Mai slowly paced the small room.

"Think about it -- computers don't just destroy themselves in the middle of the ocean. Jaehyo was here the entire night, and he's not an idiot, so none of us did any sabotage, which could only mean that someone ELSE, outside of this boat, did it. Which means they must be nearby. Which also means ..."

"... That, with our computers broken, we have no way of knowing where they are and what they're doing," Zico finished, eyes widening. He suddenly looked worried, and began absent-mindedly running his hands through his mussed-up hair.

B-Bomb instantly left the room without a word. Mai stared at him, bewildered. "Where's he going? We're kind of in a bad situation here!"

"He's probably going outside to look around," Kyung explained. "B-Bomb hyung acts like a bodyguard sometimes. It's not like he's going to see anything either, it's pitch black out there."

Mai frowned, feeling a sense of foreboding. She sighed, ruffling out her hair in frustration. "Looks like I can't leave yet ..."

"HUHHHH?" Zico's head snapped up. "YOU'RE LEAVING???!"

"Not now I'm not," Mai retorted. "Calm down. It's not like I can do anything anyway, not when there's something dangerous going on. I'll go wake up the other two."

She ran down to the room the boys all shared and opened the door. U-Kwon had just woken up, having heard the ruckus. He rubbed at his eyes sleepily. "Whash goin' on?" He mumbled.

"Something important. Wake up." Mai shook his shoulder to try and get him to snap out of it sooner. U-Kwon blinked blearily up at her.

"Short hair? Pretty ..." He leaned in, as if to kiss her. Mai immediately punched him in the arm, and he fell backwards with a grunt of pain.

"Asshat!"

"What's going on?" The sound had finally woken up Taeil, who's short hair was sticking up every which way like a hedgehog. P.O jolted awake mid-snore a few seconds after.

"Something happened to the computers," Mai explained, quickly giving them the whole story.

"Wait -- so we have NO way of picking up nearby boats?" Taeil gasped, jumping to his feet and nearly tripping over the tangle of blankets. "I better go see!"

"Ahh, what a pain," P.O whined, tying his hair back into a loose ponytail. "And I hoped we could have a few more days of relaxation."

"We've had, like, a week," U-Kwon reminded him.

"Yeah, yeah ... better go join B-Bomb outside ... no doubt hyung's already started patroling." Yawning loudly, P.O shambled away.

"What are you going to do, Mai D -- Mai?" U-Kwon asked, stumbling over the nickname when Mai shot him a dirty look.

"I think I'll start with some early breakfast, maybe brew a ton of coffee. I can tell we have a lot of work ahead of us, but I'm awful with computers and there's no point searching outside because the sun hasn't risen yet."

"Ooh! Ooh! I'll follow!" U-Kwon scrambled up and followed after her like an overgrown puppy. "Can we have bacon and eggs? And grilled cheese sandwiches? I think we still have a few cups of rice left, we could put fried egg on top!"

"That ..." Mai was about to snap at him about annoyances, but paused. "That doesn't sound bad, actually. Okay, we'll make eggs and fried rice for ourselves. Don't tell the others, okay?"

"Got it!" U-Kwon gave a playful salute, and Mai couldn't help but let out a small smile. She was getting used to the weird personalities of the members of the pirate crew.

She really was staying after all, she supposed.

Hey guys! Sorry it took so long! Summer school is awful. Well, it's done, but that means I'm going to Taiwan for three weeks, so you probably won't get that much updates from me in the meantime.

Please wait for me~