This is the third installment of my POTC, FFXII fanfictions, and I am very happy to publish it. Thank you for all the support for my writing! And now, without further ado, the story.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything.
Ah, how good it felt to be on the high seas again. Jack unrolled his map, cut out from the chart he'd stolen from Barbossa. He'd been sailing for almost two years, alone in his dinghy, but his solitude didn't last. It never did. A cannon boomed in warning, splashing a shell so close he was showered with water. Jack turned in his seat to take in the visage of the Black Pearl, gaining on him day by day. It was finally within firing range? Brilliant. He would have run out some guns, except his boat was so miniscule a cannon would not have even fit inside.
"Leave me alone, you pox ridden lummox!" Jack hollered as another shot came dangerously close to his ship. He opened the sail a little wider, and the skiff sped forward, the Pearl dropping almost out of sight, but still a threatening spire on the edge of the horizon. Jack went back to looking at his map.
He was searching for the Fountain of Youth, hopefully a method of immortality that did not involve becoming undead and evil. Unfortunately, that goal, too, seemed so very, very far away. Jack had been sailing a sea with absolutely no landmarks for days, and the repetition was killing him. Not even the compass, endowed upon him by Calypso, could point out where he was. It simply spun in circles, never stopping.
That night, he watched the moon sparkle on water like mirror glass. The wind had stopped completely, and his dinghy drifted with barely a wake. The Black Pearl also drifted, her sails slack in the windless night. Jack took a deep drink of rum and put his head down to sleep. Unless they started rowing, they would never catch up to him tonight.
The roar of a waterfall jolted him to wakefulness. Had he reached an island? Jack sat up and looked around. There was still no land in sight, and to his surprise, the Black Pearl had gained on him somewhat. He looked back to the horizon, where the roar was coming from, and white mist rose toward the blue heavens. He'd heard of things like this before, in stories about the edge of the world.
The edge of the world. A huge waterfall, plummeting over the side of the Earth. Jack suddenly realized his danger, a moment too late. He sprang to his feet, bracelets, earrings, and necklace tinkling as he attempted to do everything in his power to turn the dinghy, but to no avail. The current had already taken hold of the boat, and nothing he did could change the fact that he was about to be flung from the face of the Earth. He sat down and pulled the cork from his rum bottle, taking his time in finishing it.
At least the Black Pearl would go down with him. Barbossa was making no effort to turn aside, and let the ship run straight for him. Jack belched, patting his stomach. It was good rum. Wherever he ended up, he hoped it had some.
The dinghy bobbed up and down on increasingly choppy waves, going faster and faster. Whitecaps splashed at the gunwales, threatening to swamp the boat, and Jack began to bale water madly.
"Bugger." he grunted. "Bugger, bugger, bugger!" The bucket he was using seemed to be eluding his grasp, and he did not notice he was at the edge of the waterfall until the prow of the dinghy was already over the edge. Then he dropped.
It felt as if his stomach was fighting to burst out of his mouth as he fell at dizzying speeds. Above, he could see another ship falling as well, and if he listened hard enough, he swore he could hear them screaming.
Strangely, the sky surrounding him did not fade into darkness, but maintained a serene shade of blue. Suddenly, the water vanished, bending in a way that defied gravity to glue itself to a new sea. A different sea. Jack's dinghy also curved around the bend to crash down upon the new ocean, a sparkling royal blue expanse that seemed to go as far as the horizon. With another crash, a row boat splashed down noisily nearby, holding Elizabeth and Barbossa. Jack pointed at them.
"You? Where's the Pearl?" he asked. Barbossa snorted.
"Mutiny. The crew took the ship and dumped us in a rowboat."
"Take that, you back stabbing, thieving goat!" Jack shouted triumphantly, punching the air. Barbossa jumped to his feet, almost capsizing the dinghy he and Elizabeth shared until she pulled him down.
"I'll show you back stabbing, you mutton-brained piece of rat excrement!" he bellowed, taking out a pistol.
"It won't do to shoot him, he has the map!" Elizabeth said, pushing the pistol away.
"So he does." Barbossa admitted grudgingly, putting the pistol back in his belt. "Well, navigator? Where be we, according to yer map?" he asked. Jack stared at the map, then looked at their surroundings. A tall building that was even bigger than the piled ship-town of Shipwreck loomed over them, right on the edge of the waterfall that must have been the end of this world. Unfortunately, it wasn't on the map.
"I don't know where we be." Jack said, perplexed, as he looked from tower to map and back. "It's not on the map of un-map-able places."
"That's not even a word!" Elizabeth exploded. "Where are we?"
"I told you I don't know, lassie!" Jack yelled, waving the map over his head. Barbossa flung a rope across the gap between them, getting no small satisfaction out of the fact that it bounced off Jack's head before landing in the dinghy.
"Well, it wouldn't do for either of us to get lost before makin' it back home. Tie this round yer mast, and we'll lash these two ships together." he said. Jack rubbed his head, complying.
"I ain't planning to go back, not yet. The map directed me over the edge in search of the Fountain of Youth, and I'm not leavin' till I got it." he grumbled. Barbossa froze.
"Fountain of Youth? That be the case, I'm a-stayin' with you." he said. "I want in."
"Then you can have in, because I now have absolutely no clue as to where we are, therefore making the Fountain impossible to reach."
As Barbossa and Jake continued bickering, Elizabeth spotted a black triangular fin cruising toward them. She frowned, and nudged the bearded pirate next to her. She was ignored until the fin was right next to them, and the creature reared its head.
It was horrifically ugly, bearing the same colorations and markings as a killer whale, but it had a huge, jutting jaw and a colorful tail. Elizabeth screamed, and Barbossa whipped around, pulling his pistol from his belt.
"Take this, fish face!" he yelled, firing the shot. The creature squealed, but kept coming. Elizabeth drew her sword, and attempted to hack at it, but the scales turned her blade away. Finally, after a prolonged battle, they managed to drop the fish, dragging the body onto the boats.
"You think it's edible?" Jack asked, cautiously slicing open the creature from chin to tail and peering at the red meat inside. That was strange— wasn't fish meat normally white or pink?
"Even if it is, we've no means to cook it." Elizabeth said, scanning the horizon for any more enemies. She did spot a few things: a tiny black dot high in the sky, and something that looked like a sparkling bug rising out of the tower, almost at the top. "Now, what is that?" she wondered, shielding her eyes from the sun's glare. Jack squinted up at it.
"It's coming toward us." he gulped, as a high pitched, whining roar filled their ears. Barbossa pointed his pistol at it, but he doubted the bullet would even make dent in the bug's shining white underside. Two eyes at the front, glowing purplish-blue lids whirling round and round in blinding circles, goggled at them, unblinking. The boats were rocked back and forth in the winds caused by the creature's invisible, buffeting wings, as it lowered to a distance just to their left, edging closer and closer. Finally, with a sigh, the winds died, and the bug hovered nearby, its voice silent. Jack stared at it, his ship being the closer one, and clenched his hand about his sword nervously.
"I don't know what you are, but I'm armed and very dangerous!" he shouted.
"I'm sure you are." a very familiar voice echoed seemingly from the bug, which drifted through the air at a sedate pace to keep up with them. "Now tell me if my eyes deceive me: Jack? Elizabeth? Barbossa? What in the name of Ivalice are you doing here?"
"How do you know us, you great shiny insect?" Jack demanded, then stopped. "We're in Ivalice?"
"Yes, you are in Ivalice." the bug sounded faintly amused, then very quietly, they heard it say, "Insect?"
An even quieter, but feminine voice said something back in an unintelligible tongue, and the bug laughed. Did it have a mate? Jack wondered.
"Sorry, I forgot. You've never seen an airship before, have you, Jack? Might I welcome you to the Strahl?" the bug asked, and at the same time, there was the hiss of escaping air while part of the bug's carapace dropped away, forming stairs. And at the top of them stood a man whose smile looked wide enough to swallow the fish the pirates had killed whole.
"Balthier!" Elizabeth cried, jumping to her feet and rocking the boats dangerously. "How did you get here?" she asked.
"I live here, Elizabeth! You're in Ivalice! Didn't I tell you?" he smirked.
"That is the Strahl you always talk about?" Barbossa gawped, his eyes looking as if they were about to pop out of their sockets as he stared at the bug— no, the airship hovering just off their port side.
"Indeed." the sky pirate nodded, taking a few steps down the stairs so that his face was bathed in sunlight, no longer hidden under the ship's wings. "Now, what I'm interested in is how you got here. You're floating just off the bloody Ridorana Cataract, and it's a nasty place, if I do say so myself."
"We sailed off the edge of the world!" Jack said, gesturing toward the waterfall the Pharos Lighthouse was perched on. "We seek the Fountain of Youth. Perhaps you've run across it in your travels? You haven't aged a day. And where's Fran?"
"Pure circumstance." Balthier dismissed the aging comment. "The Fountain of Youth? Can't say I've ever heard of it, though I can guess what it does from its name." he said. "As for Fran, she's in the cockpit, making sure we don't drift too far away from you. Can't leave the ship running without a pilot, you know."
"Pilot?" Elizabeth asked.
"You naval types would call them helmsmen." Balthier clarified. "Usually, that's me, but I'm out here talking to you. Why don't you throw me a rope? We'll tow you in to Balfonheim, and then we can talk more easily."
"Agreed." Jack said, tossing a rope as far and as high as he could. Balthier leaned over from the steps, looking as if he was about to tumble over the edge and into the sea, but caught the rope, tying it around one of the metal slabs that made up the stairs into the ship. He went back inside, where they heard him calling to Fran. Jack grinned hugely at his two companions. "I can't believe we made it to Ivalice!" he said cheerfully.
"Well, now that we're here, what do we do now?" Elizabeth asked.
"Explore!" Jack proclaimed.
"Find the Fountain." Barbossa said.
"Explore and find the Fountain!" Jack waved his hat jubilantly. Elizabeth crossed her arms and rolled her eyes.
"Pirates and their sense of adventure." she huffed.
"We're going back to Balfonheim, nice and slow since we're towing them with plain old rope." Balthier told Fran, sitting back in the pilot's chair and gripping the steering wheel. It drove him crazy to fly so slowly, and his fingers itched to press the overdrive button, pulsing green on the dashboard, but doing so would sever the rope, marooning the pirates he now dragged behind him. "They seek the Fountain of Youth."
"Eternal life, eternal youth." Fran said softly. "Any Hume would wish it. The Viera are long lived by nature, aging slowed to a crawl by grace of the Mother. And so it is for you, bound to my life as you are."
"Hm, I rather like that, actually. How long do you think we have left?"
"Morbid, are we?" Fran looked at him sourly. "I will only say this once. I did not want to tell Vaan this because he would never think the same of us again, but I shall be eighty-nine this year. I suppose that means we have about two-hundred years together."
Balthier whistled. "Long time, eh?"
"In the eyes of the Mother, a lifetime passes in the blink of an eye."
Balthier checked a few gages and flipped the autopilot on. "I had better go check on our unexpected guests again. Wouldn't want them to be eaten by another Piranha, would we?"
Jack finished carving out another strip of Piranha flesh, smelling it daintily. Balthier reappeared on the stairs from inside the Strahl, and now Fran came to join him. In the mean time, the ship continued its lazy drift northwest.
"Is this fish edible?" Jack asked the sky pirate. He shrugged.
"Edible enough, I suppose. You could eat it raw, if you're really desperate." he answered. Fran brought out their map.
"This Fountain of Youth you speak of, on a map it is marked?" she asked. Barbossa nodded.
"We'll show it to you at this Balfonheim place." he promised. Jack perked up. Didn't Balthier mention Balfonheim, a long time ago? Didn't he say it was like Tortuga?
"Is there rum in Balfonheim?" he asked. Balthier laughed heartily.
"Of course you'd ask if there was rum." he stretched a hand toward the horizon, where over a town by the sea, airships flew in and out of the aerodrome and filled the sky above it, and a sea ships made completely out of metal floated in the harbor. "Behold, Balfonheim, and, might I add, the seat of the Pirate King." his eyes gleamed with mirth as he took in the sight of the trio's awestruck faces. "And I'll have you know, Balfonheim is tiny compared to places like Archades."
"The Pirate King? That's you!" Elizabeth said, her eyes filling with understanding. "You were slithering out again!" The sky pirate winced.
"Spare me the lecture, Mother, I was hunting a Mark, the Ixion. Not that you'd know what it is. I was earning gil."
"Gil?"
"Money." Fran explained, tossing a coin up and catching it in one hand. "But technically, you've been dodging your duty for the last two years, ever since we came back from the Caribbean, and you've let it fall to Raz, Rikken, and Elza to uphold the port unless they pin you down to something. You are a King in name only."
"I would like to keep it that way, thank you." Balthier said curtly as he untied the ropes from the stairs and dove into the sea. "Dock the Strahl, would you? I'll meet you at the Whitecap." he swam to Jack's dinghy so he could help direct them into the docks, shaking his head like a wet dog and spraying water everywhere. "Now, a word of warning. Humes, like us, are not the only intelligent race, unlike your world, so do not be alarmed." As soon as he said that, a grey bangaa stuck his nose over the side of the quay, and broke into a reptilian smile with row after row of teeth.
"Balthier! This is the last place I thought I'd see ya, and wet as a fish! Somethin' happen to the Strahl?"
"Heavens, no! I'd never abandon my girl like that, Sorehn. What do you take me for?" Balthier put a theatrical hand over his heart and tossed the rope to the bangaa, Sorehn, who caught it in a three fingered grip and began reeling them in, his strong muscles bunching.
"Who're yer friends?" Sorehn tied an expert's knot around a dock post, and reached out a scaly hand to help the occupants of the skiffs out.
"May I introduce you to the Lady Elizabeth Swann, and Captains Jack Sparrow and Hector Barbossa?" Balthier nodded to each of them in turn.
"A pleasure, to be sure." the bangaa shook their hands warmly, dwarfing the human's hands in his huge claw. "Normally I'd make ye pay to tie up at these docks, but you're Lord Balthier's friends, so you get 'ta stay fer free, 'cuz he's the King and all."
"Please, don't flaunt my sore spots for the world to see." Balthier groaned, leading them away with Sorehn's laughter ringing in their ears.
"What are they?" Elizabeth whispered, clutching Balthier's arm as they made their way down the wood plank street toward the Quayside Court, where the Whitecap lie.
"Bangaa, possibly the Humes' closest cousin when it comes to intelligence and mannerisms. They're quite amazing creatures, really." he answered. "Then you get the Seeqs, who are nice enough in their own right, I suppose. They're the really fat ones with big teeth that hang out of their mouths, even when closed."
"Like a crocodile and an alligator!" Jack said, rubbing his twin braided beard.
"Sure." Balthier said noncommittally, not exactly sure what those were.
"You tell the difference between 'em by looking to see if their teeth stick out when their mouths are closed." Barbossa explained. Balthier nodded, before opening the door of the tavern to graciously let Elizabeth through first, followed by the two men. He spotted Fran sitting at the table, and Nono on the table, and waved the three following him to go to her. Then he sauntered up to the port wench who commissioned the hunt for the Ixion in the first place.
"You killed the Ixion! No more nightmares for me! I can't thank you enough, my lord." the girl said, almost weeping tears of joy as she grasped his hand. "As promised, your reward." she handed him a gil pouch and a greatsword she produced from under the table, a small quiver of bolts hanging from the handle. Balthier took it from her with a charming smile before drifting back to Fran.
He found Barbossa engrossed in conversation with Nono. Apparently the man had a penchant for loving all things small and furry. Nono laughed squeakily.
"Amazing that you come from another world, kupo! Master Balthier was talking about you when he came back from being sucked into the Gate Crystal, and everyone thought he was absolutely crazy!" Luckily the Moogle didn't seem to begrudge Barbossa for turning Balthier into an undead zombie for a few months. Of course, the Moogle was also very good at hiding that sort of thing… Balthier shuddered. He didn't think Nono had quite forgiven him yet, for faking his death on the Bahamut without saying anything to him. Nono had been quite broken up about it, going on to call him "an insensitive peacock in Hume skin, kupo!" Balthier rubbed his eyes. There was the matter of the huge monkey wrench that had fallen on his head and knocked him out cold about two weeks ago, and now he couldn't remember exactly what he had been doing at the time.
Jack unrolled the map, pointing to the picture of the Fountain. "That's where I was headed before I sailed off the face of the Earth." he said. Fran laid the map of Ivalice next to it, frowning thoughtfully. She rotated the Ivalice map a few times, before tapping a peninsula labeled "La Florida" with her long fingernail.
"Balthier, where does this look like to you?" she asked. Her partner squinted at it, before replying,
"It looks like the place where Giruvegan lies, but I'd be dead before I went back to that place."
"You are dead." Elizabeth pointed out. Balthier buried his face in his hands.
"I mean I don't want to go back to Giruvegan. Too many bad memories. And, it's the only Jagd the Strahl can't fly through. I think it has to be a barrier those damned Occuria put up." he explained.
Barbossa looked up from where he had been talking with Nono. "You mean we can't get there?" he looked angry. "I sailed off the end of world again just to find that I did it for no reason?"
"We installed a skystone in the Strahl that enables her fly through Jagd, which are places that the Mist is so thick that airships can't fly, kupo." Nono said. "But the Occuria are like the gods of Ivalice, and seem to have put of a field in which airships and the like cannot fly all together, kupo. You must go by foot."
"Aye," Balthier agreed. "And the closest I can get the Strahl to the Feywood would be the Paramina Rift, a horrible place of ice, snow, and creatures who would decide you are lunch as soon as they'd look at you."
"But you can get us to this Giruvegan?" Elizabeth asked.
"Must I?"
Barbossa stood, pointing a pistol at Balthier's face. "You must." he gave a snaggle-toothed smile. The sky pirate raised an eyebrow.
"I don't take well to being given orders. I have you by the… never mind, Barbossa. Kill me or Fran and who will pilot the airship for you? It's not easy, and the Strahl is a touchy girl." he said wearily. Barbossa snarled and jammed the pistol back in his belt.
"Ar, ye got me."
Jack looked up from where he had been happily drowning his worries in a mug of rum. "If I may put in my opinion- hic- you need to appeal to the better side of a man's nature and call up some on some boons and favors he owes you." he said. Fran's amber eyes darted toward Balthier.
"You owe him favors?" she said ominously.
"Yes, I'm afraid ole Balthy does owe me favors." Jack continued drunkenly, ignoring the fact that Balthier's hands gripped the table with white knuckles. The sky pirate was imagining the table was Jack's neck. "When he first came to our world, I got him out of prison and acted as his personal transportation service to get him home."
"Oh? Who made it possible to kill Davy Jones?" Balthier challenged him. Jack waved a hand shakily.
"Different kind of boon. I'm askin' for the transportation one- hic!" Fran touched Balthier's shoulder, and he twitched, his face one of passing annoyance.
"Fine!" he groaned, standing up. "But before we go on this goose chase and get ourselves killed, I want one last night to myself."
Elizabeth stared at Balthier in disgust. The Hume was slumped shirtless over the table in the Strahl's miniscule onboard kitchen, with two strong smelling empty bottles and a third one half full for company.
"How could you do this to yourself, Balthier? I thought you couldn't eat or drink anymore!" she cried. Balthier hiccupped, raising his head from the metal surface to look at her through bleary, lidded eyes.
"Th' lassie Calypso fixed me up, so I can eat and drink now if I wan' to." he slurred, dropping from his usual highborn Archadian accent to a very vulgar form of Balfonheim street cant. He put a hand against his forehead, grimacing. "Mm… my head hurts… Fran!" he moaned, staggering to his feet. Elizabeth tried to keep from staring at the puckered scar adorning his chest, right where his heart should be, a glint of gold shining through it when he passed under a light shining from the ceiling. Fran appeared at the door, her nose wrinkling as the smell of alcohol assailed her senses.
"It would appear you are quite drunk, Ffamran Balthier Mied Bunansa Archades." she said calmly, while her ears turned back. Balthier flinched— even in his severely inebriated state, he knew that when Fran used his full name and his pseudonym in the same sentence, he was in deep trouble.
"'msorry." he mumbled, scratching the back of one hand bashfully. His cheeks were red, but it was from the amount of liquor he'd consumed. Jack and Barbossa also came to see what would happen, peeking over Fran's shoulder.
"Your punishment today shall be to successfully cast Esuna on yourself, then scrub yourself clean and wash your mouth until I can no longer smell alcohol on your being." Fran said, before vanishing into the cockpit. Jack clucked his tongue condescendingly.
"Hard luck, mate. You could have chosen a better time to get smashed, you know." the rum loving pirate said.
"Shut up." Balthier was pulling his shirt on, hiding the scar. Elizabeth relaxed and settled down to make sure he did not hurt himself before managing to sober up. The sky pirate began to chant an incantation haltingly, stumbling over the words as his tongue did not have the capability to perform the gymnastics required for casting spells at the moment. When he stopped, there was a bright flash and a muted boom. When their vision cleared, Balthier was hunched over the metal garbage can, heaving his guts into its cool depths. Barbossa knelt by him, laying a claw like hand on his back. Balthier glared at him, panting.
"Aye, that's a good boy. Get it all up, an' you can try your spell again later." the pirate was chuckling. Balthier spat out a glob of something he didn't really want to think about.
"Damn spell recoil." he gasped, going into heaving fit number two. Barbossa, having plenty of experience dealing with hung-over pirates, motioned to Jack to get some water. After searching the cluttered drawers, he managed to find a plain wooden cup, filled it at an amazing device called a faucet, and passed it to Balthier, who drank it very slowly, gagging. "Thanks, mate." he began casting Esuna again, this time the spell taking properly, and his creased brow relaxed.
"We'll be waiting for you in the cockpit." Elizabeth said, marching out of the kitchen. Balthier's lip twitched as he pushed into the bathroom.
The cold water pounding on his forehead eased away the last remnants of his hangover, though he cast Esuna on himself one more time to be sure. Balthier stepped out of the shower, methodically pulling on his clothes with deft, precise movements. He could no longer smell the liquor permeating his skin, and his five senses still remained very much heightened from his little jaunt as a flesh eating zombie. Maybe Fran would let him drive the airship now, though he hated to think of their destination.
Giruvegan. When Balthier was sixteen, his father, Doctor Cid, had made the journey to the city of the Occuria, and come back a changed man, twisted by the nethicite and the whispers of the Heretic, Venat. He had gone to Giruvegan to find power, and power he had found. Balthier shook his head, his earrings clinking together quietly. He was twenty eight now, though he still looked twenty-five (He had Calypso to thank for that), and his father was dead, but still, he was haunted by flickering visages with winged armor and glowing yellow eyes. Bespectacled men vanishing into shining crystals plagued his dreams, when he chose to sleep.
"Still I run from the past, though cutting my ties I have tried." he muttered, combing his hair. "Will it never end?"
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