"Might've been a little too long," comments Akien.

"You may have forgotten, but I'm pretty practiced."

Nick fetches and applies rope. "...What do we do with our scoundrels now?"

Evara shrugs. "Can we get out of here, get on our way and leave them behind?"

"Yeah - I can just sabotage their ship in an easily fixable but time-consuming way."

"Sounds like it'd be the best route." Pause. "And maybe take some things, if there's anything particularly useful – teach them a lesson or whatever."

"… Or maybe not, if it's not actually necessary."

"Take their weapons, I think. And maybe you all should reflect on your high-risk lifestyles. But I don't want to be a pirate myself. Be right back."

Shrug.

"… It wasn't that high-risk," protests Evara.

"Clare!" One of the pirates shouts. "You come out too! Don't try to fuckin' ambush him like I know you're planning to! It'll just make 'em want to kill us!"

Clare comes out without a weapon after about a minute. "...Thanks for the warning," Nick opines. And then he goes inside.

See, Akien could go check whether there's anyone else present but they're all probably Chi-less – Oh actually he hasn't checked, could just be Nick.

He checks. Nick is in fact the least Chi-less of the pack.

And shortly the pirates are weapon-free and have a whole lot of rope tangles to unravel and other chores before they can fly anywhere. "Let's get the heck out of here."

They get back into the ship.

"You might be happy to know you are not a weird Chi-less anomaly. None of you have it."

"So it might be a feature of your world, having chi, or of mine, not having it."

"Seems that way. … Seems weird, though."

"There's even less point arguing with reality than there is arguing with a mid-level bureaucrat trying to charge you taxes."

"Right, but – when I said you should be a rock I was being slightly facetious but only really slightly."

"You should be decrepit and have long grown old and probably be on the brink of if not literally already dead, if you're that low on chi, and if you were at absolute zero then you probably should have crumbled to dust. Which you didn't."

"Perhaps more evidence that this world doesn't run on chi?"

"But then would we still do that, if we got low on chi, and is there a risk we'd just lose it completely, and would that have other side effects…"

"All of which sounds quite dangerous to test out, if you were thinking of that."

"… Well, yes." Pause. "So I probably won't."

"Animals have chi, yes? I can catch a bunch of pigeons and let you test things on them if it might help."

"They only have it in low quantity, and it's still hard to manipulate, but maybe?"