005

Jack

Where is that little darling? I thought to myself as I examined the gold statue in my hands. At this point, it was a waiting game. Either my plan would work and give me the opportunity to kill Barbossa and, with any luck, retake the Black Pearl, or I'd be dead.

Right now, it could theoretically be possible that I've been backstabbed and Tanya was sailing off with the Black Pearl, but, well, she seems like the type to hold a bit of a grudge. I mean, getting blasted away from a ship by a cannon tends to piss people off. So, I had to have a little faith that she would come through on that part of the plan. Oh well, perhaps I should make a move now. An opportunity was fairly in front of me. Of these six guards still here, they were all pretty much distracted in their own worlds and waiting. Only the one by Will and the governor's daughter was even paying attention to what was going on.

"You know, I must admit, Jack, I thought I had you figured, but it turns out you're a hard man to predict," Barbossa said as he sat on the hillside of gold, looking in my general direction.

Internally, I smiled. This was the perfect opportunity to start a little bit of vengeance. Turning to face him, I said, "Me? I'm dishonest," and started to walk in his general direction, tossing the statue off into the ether, not really caring where it landed. "And dishonest men, you can always trust to be dishonest. Honestly, it's the honest ones you want to watch out for because you can never predict when they're going to do something incredibly stupid," I said. I came to a stop behind a man who was skipping stones across the pond of water. I looked too well then grabbed a sword right from the man's waistband and threw it to him as I kicked the pirate into the pond of water.

As I expected and hoped, chaos broke out. Will quickly freed himself and started to fight the pirates near him, and I, drawing my own sword, engaged Barbossa. He was doing a good job defending himself, our blades bouncing off each other, but I did score one victory as I cut the feather from his hat. That seemed to take him off, though, as he quickly redoubled his efforts to try and kill me, slashing and cutting with a few stabs here or there, doing his best to try and spill my blood across the wet ground of this cave.

We steadily pushed each other away from where the fighting between Will and the governor's daughter had been engaged by these six remaining pirates. Really, things didn't look like they were going to go well. But there was an opportunity here. I could feel it.

As our blades locked, Barbossa leaned in real close, saying, "You're off the edge of the map, Jack. Here, there are there be monsters."

"That's rather a good line, I admit," I said. The explosion that happened over to our left, where the fighting was going on between Will and Elizabeth, though, I don't think he planned on. As we both looked over there, we saw two of the pirates that had been engaging them had been redundantly reduced to bloody chunks.

Smiling, I said, "That's why I brought my own monster, Barbossa."

"That's impossible!" Barbossa said as my golden-haired savior walked into the room proper, carrying a musket.

"Where's the monkey?" Tanya called before a pirate charged at her. She only gave him a moment's notice before levitating the musket out of her hands and accelerating it to a rather quick speed, jamming it through the pirate's chest and into the wall on the other side of the cave, firmly trapping him there.

Tanya, for her part, walked down the ledge. Her power was apparently fully active now as she had apparently found her little trinkets. Her eyes were practically glowing blue as two swords and two Spanish spears that were in the collection of artifacts in this room lifted off the ground and came to rest within her reach, floating there and seeming to glow a strange blue coloration.

I simply smiled, enjoying the theatrics of Tanya, before I said, "What can I say? Fine knows how to train them."

That seemed to have elicited an annoyed sound out of Barbosa as he turned on me and quickly started slashing. I mean, more pushing me further and further back away from the fighting going on with Will, Elizabeth, and Tanya. Really, at this point, the odds were in our favor. Yes, two of the pirates were trying to reassemble themselves and a third was stuck against the wall, meaning they only had to deal with three. But those three tended to be tougher lots, but it looked like one threw an explosive at Tanya. She batted it away with her sword like some sort of ball game and the explosive went flying into the ceiling, doing quite a bit of damage and sending debris raining down and bathing the area in moonlight.

This ultimately gave the pirates an advantage as the two discombobulated ones were having a hell of a lot more luck putting themselves together as the moonlight flooded the room. Unfortunately, I could not pay much more attention as Barbosa was pushing me up a ramp. How such a thing had formed over the hundreds of years, I didn't know, but I did know that I was running out of room as we continued to move further and further up.

We reached about half a story up before Barbosa stopped talking and stooped down to the ground. He said, "You can't beat me, Jack, even with your mage. We are unkillable."

Looking past him, I noticed that, yes, in fact, the discombobulated pirates had put themselves back together. So I think one of them had the other's arm. How did that even work? Shaking my head, I simply got up and stabbed him through the guts, not caring that I couldn't beat him, only wanting to cause him harm until I could.

Barbosa responded as I expected him to do. He huffed, grabbed the sword, pulled it out of the pirate, and then shoved it in my chest, which hurt a lot more than I thought it would, causing me to stumble back in pain. Though the pain faded right away as I stepped into the moonlight and all my flesh regrew.

The look on Barbosa's face was priceless as I played with a gold coin. I'd hid it in my hand during the conversation where I'd convinced the rest of the pirates to go attack the Navy.

"Couldn't help myself, mate."

Oh, the anger on his face. The anger was worth being cursed as he grabbed his sword and a couple of little pieces, throwing them at me, causing me to stumble back before defending myself against the next few hits.

He was angry and off his skilled swordsmanship. I will admit, he was a bit better than me in most cases, but when he was angry, I was able to find opportunities. As we ascended to the second level, I got a chance to smash him in the face with the pommel of my sword.

And that turned out to have been a rather lucky hit, as he rolled down the ramp we had just ascended. I didn't mean to chase after him because, well, I couldn't exactly let him get any sense of what was going on in the battle. If he did, he would probably interfere in what was happening with Will, Tanya, and Elizabeth as they were about to finish off the last remaining pirates.

The fighting carried us all the way back down to the first floor. Before long, I had Barbossa against a rock in the moonlight, sword ready to strike him in the chest, even though it wouldn't do him much harm.

"So, what now, Jack Sparrow?" he said, looking at me. "We'll be two immortals locked in an epic battle till Judgment Day and the trumpet sound."

"Or, you could surrender," I said matter-of-factly. I didn't want him to surrender, and he did not disappoint, immediately coming at me again, trying to win this endless fight.

I heard another series of explosions off to my left. Not really sure what was going on, but a quick peek revealed that most of the pirates were now thoroughly broken up into pieces. Will and Elizabeth were running towards the golden chest full of cursed gold. I kept Hector's attention on me and started maneuvering him towards the gold as well, pushing him against the gold mountain. He quickly spotted what was going on, drew his pistol, and aimed at Elizabeth, who was not protected by undeath.

Whatever plan he had in mind would not go very far, as I tossed the gold coin over his head when he wasn't looking and drew my own pistol, firing a shot into his chest.

"Ten years you carried that pistol, and now you're wasting that shot, Jack," he said.

"He didn't waste it," Will called, as he dropped the gold coins, now covered in mine and Barbossa's blood, into the chest.

The look on Barbossa's face was actually not as satisfying as I thought it would be, as he pulled open his overshirt and quickly saw his chest covering and blood from the wound I had just inflicted.

He stood there for a moment before saying, "I feel cold," collapsing into the gold, dead finally.

I took a moment, took a breath, and tapped around where I had been stabbed, just to make sure I wasn't bleeding. Thankfully, it seemed like if you were lucky enough to have been out of the moonlight after your most recent injury, it had been healed over, and you were safe.

Shaking my head, I saw Tanya walking over, looking at the dead captain before saying, "Well, do you finally have what you wanted? Was it all worth it, the scheming and all that?"

My smile before saying, "If I get the Black Pearl back, it will be. By the way, I assume it's already underway."

Tanya sighed before nodding, saying, "Yes, the Black Pearl should be underway. We just need to take the Interceptor and go after her."

"Wonderful," I said, turning to Elizabeth and Will. "Well, we've had a wonderful adventure, I think, and you two are safe and sound. I think the big ship out there can handle the pirates that were attacking it. Oh, we're not in their favor without immortality, after all. So they'll be a boat along to come pick you up in a moment. If not, well," I shrugged before saying, "there are a few boats around the corner, and you two can try and paddle your way to the ship. As for us," I put my arm around Tanya, "time for us to be going - pirates and all that. You need to stick together and get out of the Royal's eyes rather quickly."

But before that, Tanya said, she grabbed a nearby chest that was full of gold. "Think we should take a bit of this as a finder's fee for helping them save the princess and all that."

I smiled at Tanya before saying, "You see, she gets it." Quickly gathering up as much gold as I could, we both made our way to the ship, Will and Elizabeth looking at us stunned. "Well, they'll come around sooner or later, have their heart-to-hearts, and deal with their lives as they came."

We quickly loaded up the boat and set paddling, escaping the cave and moving towards the Interceptor.

"How much crew do you think are on that?" Tanya asked.

"I shrugged before saying, "Probably no more than two."

"Well, we better hurry up. I think I can hear splashes in the direction of the Royal Navy, which either means they're putting their boats back in the water to start coming in our direction or dumping the bodies, and that'll be the next step."

"Good point," I said as we hurried our way to the edges of the Interceptor, quickly loading up onto the ship with the amount of gold we had, dumping it into the hold as we walked by the open doors.

"Tanya, I got to work," saying the rigging, and I wondered where the guards were as I got to work on other parts of the ship, slowly getting moving at a slow pace. The Interceptor gently sailed out of the cove, slipping past the Royal Navy ship in the fog. I heard mumbling as two individuals pushed their way up out of the hold near the front.

One was a one-eyed, wiry, tall fellow pirate. The other was short and bold. They looked around confused before they saw us, drawing their weapons as they did.

"Jack, how are you alive?" the shorter one said.

"Cuz he killed Barbossa, that's how he's alive," Tanya called from the port side of the ship.

"Barbossa is dead?" the tall one asked, which received a nod of affirmation from her.

The two exchanged a glance before the tall one spoke up. "If he's dead, that means the curse is over. If the curse is over, that means we can die."

The short one immediately realized the danger and turned to me. "Hello Jack, it's good to see you. I always thought it was a bad idea to mutiny against you. Would you care to have us aboard your crew?"

Tanya's snickering and laughter were quite enjoyable as I replied, "I would, but we really need more crew for the Interceptor. I could have my mate over there throw you overboard."

The two crew members looked at Tanya in fearful terror.

After a good half minute, I said, "However, two more crew members would allow us to get to Tortuga faster. And I don't care what happens to you once we get there. So, if you're willing to be loyal until we hit our targets, then yes, I think we'll take you on. Though you'll never serve aboard the Black Pearl again, and this ship will be given over to members of the crew who are loyal to me during this adventure. So, it's up to them if they'll let you stay after that. Sounds like a fair deal."

The pair agreed, saying, "Yes, of course, Jack. Very fair deal. We're happy to be with you again. Barbossa was always a bit too rash in the whole throwing you on to a desert island thing. We're real sorry about that. We should have spoken up then."

I shook my head and said, "Don't care, get to work. We have a sunrise to chase, and I have a ship to retake command of."

The two bumbling crew members got to work, and I just smiled as I put my hands on the wheel. Soon, I'd be reunited with the Black Pearl.

Tanya

Oh, I drank too much, I thought as I woke up in my hotel room. I had rented it the night before after escaping the Royal Navy. It had turned out to be a lot easier than I had suspected. Oh, I'm sure they were out there looking for me right now. We had taken the Interceptor again, but it shouldn't be too hard to avoid them.

But that was beside the point. We had arrived in Tortuga and had a massive celebration. We had brought along enough gold to pay for the repairs of the Black Pearl as well as selling the Interceptor. I had enough money that I would probably be able to set up a nice outpost somewhere.

Apparently, the crew had decided that they were going to stay with Jack. I could see why. They had the fastest ship in the Caribbean, and if they stuck with him and had gained a small profit off the adventure, his tides were looking up. That was a lot better than they had been when he arrived in Tortuga several days before. But that was beside the point. I had made my money, and I was now free to make a trip from Tortuga to another island. Should I take a check, or should I take another? I was pretty certain that I would probably take Jack for that trip. As much as I'm not a fan of the majority of pirates, Jack was up there on agreeable terms.

He didn't revel in violence. By the looks of it, he reveled in adventure. So having some communications and links to him, whether or not terrible, was beneficial. And he had the fastest ship, so if I wanted to get off this island as fast as possible, he was the best option.

Yawning as I woke up, I pulled myself out of the crappy bed. Even with quite a bit of a stash of gold under my control, this was still not the best place on Tortuga. Granted, I don't think there was a good place on Tortuga, so maybe this was the best place. Pirate city is not very well built up. I definitely needed to get off this island instead of my own outpost. I definitely needed to get down to the dockyard, I thought.

As I started to dress, I didn't know when Jack was leaving, but it was probably best that I'd be on the boat before he pulled himself out of whatever den of sin and villainy he had spent the night.

As I reached over to the drawer where I had stashed my valuables, I quickly saw I had made a mistake. It was empty. I blinked several times, confused, before I pulled it all the way out and looked in there just to make sure it had not come free.

What I saw ticked me off. Someone had cut out the back of this set of drawers and a hole in the wall, allowing them to reach into the drawers from the room next to mine. Said someone appeared to be sleeping on their bed in full view of the whole, apparently having drunk themselves to sleep after robbing me.

Rather annoyed, I grabbed my competitor's jewel, opened the door, went to the room next to mine, unlocked it with a little bit of magic before walking into the room, and grabbing the man by the scruff of his neck. I pulled him off the bed and threw him against the wall, using a little bit of magical strength to make it hurt even more.

"Oh hey, can a man get some sleep?" I muttered as I looked at the bed, annoyed, before my eyes widened in absolute fear.

Apparently, the man had slept on top of my belongings, including my money pouch, which I picked up and found to be fine. There were a few other trinkets worth some money that I was able to pocket, but the problem was the small glass butterfly. It was the one that Fine had given me, and now it lay in two halves as the man had apparently rolled over on top of it, cracking it.

I could almost hear her coming, the music of her love for God faintly playing in my ears.

"You bitch!" I smacked the man in the face with a fist. I had gotten a little bit too distracted by the realization that Fine was coming, so I had let the man, whom I had already assaulted, assault me. Though I will admit, he wasn't a very burly gentleman, rather real thin. That was probably the best way for him to sneak his arm in there to steal the items in the beginning. I sighed and slapped him with the back of my hand, sending him flying into the wall, and collected the remnants of the broken butterfly, shoving them in a pocket. I figured I might still be able to get some sort of use out of them as magical crystals. They were in a way, if not well...really, I had no idea what I was doing. All I knew was I rushed out of the room, back into mine, grabbed the pair of guns I had bought the night before from a local shop that had a somewhat good stock, jumped over the banister, and ran out the front door of the hotel.

"We need to leave! We need to leave yesterday!" I muttered to myself. How long had it been broken? How long did we have before she showed up? This was a terribly dangerous situation. If Fine found me, I was her love again, and I did not feel like getting electrocuted with a whip so that I could listen to her reminisce about how pain binds us all. I shivered, not remembering the last time I had seen a person on the torture rack. Thankfully, I had avoided that myself, until today.

That thought sped up my feet as I ran as fast as I could towards the docks, hoping I could get to the Black Pearl before the Valkyrie arrived in Port.

Jack Sparrow

I'm glad to help! Here's the corrected version of the text:

I was humming that little pirate tune that I picked up somewhere, not really sure where I'd heard it. It was a rather nice tune. My hands were already on the wheel of the Black Pearl. Oh, how I wanted to get out there sailing, to meet that sunrise and sunset as fast as I could, but I was not ready yet.

"Mr. Gibbs, was I trying to arrange a full recall of the ship?" I asked. "Though I would love to have that done, after all, the Black Pearl had not seen good care. Barbarossa and the former crew had done their best, but their best was not skilled labor. It was patchwork and the kind of lesser woods than what was necessary for this hall."

I stopped humming, tilting my head as I thought I heard something. Was it singing? Looking out across the deck, I saw several of the awake crew noticing it as well. Confused, I walked over to the edge and looked back towards the entrance to the Bay, which was Tortuga's main draw. Looking left and right, I didn't see anything, but there was definitely music on the wind. It reminded me of a church choir or a chant of some kind. I hadn't heard something like this since...

My eyes widened as I quickly started moving towards the wheel, shouting to the crew to get up and get ready to move out. "Mr. Gibbs!" he was asleep near the entrance to the main quarters. He got up and looked up at me, saying, "Aye, aye, Captain. What's the problem?"

"Trouble's coming, big trouble, kind of trouble we don't want to be here for," I said as the crew got to work hoisting the anchor. Looking over my shoulder, I didn't see anything yet, but the singing sounded closer. Far too close than I've heard in nearly 10 years. I looked back at the front of the ship, waiting for the sails to be unleashed. But before that happened, I saw a familiar mop of blonde hair jump onto the ship, appearing to be as tired as a person could be after a long run.

"Fine coming!" she yelled, quickly making her way up the steps to look past me towards the entrance to the Bay.

"Well that, obvious?" I said matter-of-factly as the crew finally got the ship underway. I looked back towards the Bay. We still had a chance as long as Fine didn't close off our exit.

"Why is she coming here? Of all places you think she would have better things to do than check up on you," i said, as tanya held up the damaged pendant, which made me look at her in shock.

Then, I slapped my side and said, "Well, I mean, it is Tortuga. It should have been expected."

The evil look she gave me told me that she knew it should have been expected and she felt bad about it. But you kind of had to rub these things in and make sure that members of your crew actually learned from their mistakes.

Turning my head, I looked towards the entrance to the port. Still no sign of the Valkyrie, which was good. Maybe we'd get out of here before it was in the ports.

"Extend all sails. We need to get out of here while the getting is good."

"Aye aye, Captain!" someone called as the sails fell into place and the boat's speed increased.

As we entered the channel that was the official exit of the port, I thought we were good. And then, and then the Valkyrie turned the corner.

The Valkyrie was not like many pirate ships. The Valkyrie belonged to a person who was obviously extremely wealthy, extremely insane, and extremely magical in their nature.

To start, the Valkyrie was a frigate, not a Spanish galleon. A full frigate. Where she captured this thing, I don't know, but it was an older model of frigates, nearly a hundred years old by my estimation. For what I understood, Fine would generally pass it to the next Fine. Either knowing where I would show up, where I was being abandoned, or just hunting it down because it was her ship, I don't know which. I just know that it was extremely well-maintained, and the wooden hull was painted white.

Most people would go for a less noticeable color, but well, Fine was not most people. Hell, her sails were golden yellow, making it appear as if it was a floating temple that was turning the corner and not a frigate.

Happy head of said frigates stood Fine right behind the statue of herself that was on the front of the ship. She was standing with one leg up, singing as she came, apparently ingress in the effort.

It wasn't just her voice, though, that was raised in a song. Most of her crew were singing, from what I could tell, probably under threat of being whipped.

She stood there with her golden hair floating in the wind as the boat nearly passed us before her eyes opened in mid-song, turning to look directly at me. There was a moment, a moment of confusion, her eyes looking at me, the ship, then it Tanya, a blink, and then, and then, the song changed.

No more was the worship of God and a brief mention of destroying the moon. That was, "Get Jack Sparrow," and a bit more than that, but I wasn't paying attention to all the lyrics. I was simply getting the ship as fast as I could, knowing that the Black Pearl could theoretically outsail the Valkyrie.

"I just need to catch a good wind."

"She's coming about!" Tony called, and I looked over my shoulder, seeing that when she said she was coming about, she didn't mean good old Fine was at the wheel of her ship, turning that. No, she literally used her magic abilities to lift the Valkyrie out of the water and was turning it like it was on some sort of pendulum, a full 360 before plopping it right back down in the water. The crew at work shifting the sails the entire time.

Obviously, they did that so that they would not get caught by the wind and be pushed back into the port backwards, but even with that effort, they had lost a lot of wind and were reduced in speed, which meant we still had a chance.

Pulling out my compass, I looked at it, wanting a good wind that would take me away from my ex-girlfriend.

They gave me a profitable direction to go, so I closed the compass and turned the wheel, handing it off to one of the crew to keep it going and turning to look back at the Valkyrie as it attempted to catch up.

"Jackie boy, long time no see," called the voice of my ex as her ship attempted to catch up to us.

"Yes, good to see you too. Fine, I see the Valkyrie's in good shape," I said, being as nice as I could in the situation. After all, I was trying to get away and I couldn't talk back while we sailed away. If we were not doing that, I would not have even tried. Something tells me I would end up quite damaged if I communicated under normal circumstances.

"Yes, and I see you've stolen my daughter as well," she looked at Tanya, who looked rather annoyed.

I shook my head and said, "I don't know what you're talking about. I just have a very good crew on my boat today."

"Come on, Jack, stop your running. You can't outrun me forever. You're going to screw up, and I'm going to catch you."

"You think you can catch me, but you've yet to prove that."

I saw the Valkyrie getting further away and was feeling a little bit better until I saw some movement from Fine as she stood behind her nearly nude statue.

A moment later, a whip washed out from the front of her ship and grasped the back banister of mine. The damn thing must have been 25 yards in length, which told me enough. Well, that and the glowing purple aspects of it, but this was slightly magical.

"Got you, bastard! Now, come over here and face your punishment!" she shouted.

"Not today," I replied. "Tanya, thankfully, had me covered," putting her gun to the end of the whip and firing a shot, breaking it where it connected to our ship. We came into a good Windstream, quickly putting more distance between her and us.

"You're going to regret that, Tanya!" I heard her voice call as she got further and further away.

Turning, I saw her gulp before shaking her head, saying, "Looks like I need to stay with you for a bit."

"Till we find somewhere where she can't find me."

"Oh, I have to say, that's unlikely," I moved back to the wheel of the ship, putting my hands back on and taking it away from the crewman. "But you're welcome to stay aboard, Tanya. I'm sure your skills will be quite useful in our adventures. And considering I, for the most part, have avoided Fine, you should be safe with me."

"Thanks, Jack," Tanya said as I looked out over the crew, happy to be in control of my own ship again.