Pre note: despite how the start of this story may seem, it is not a Mary Sue, the girls do not magically find themselves in pirate land, they are merely telling the story with a backdrop of the modern tall ship program.
Of Hell and other Adventures
Chapter one
Rachael lay on the deck of the Lady Washington, looking up at the clear blue sky. She was a young woman now, fascinated by the sea and the legends of the tall ships that sailed the ocean for so long.
She was quite content to feel the gentle roll of the water beneath the ship. Some of her peers might say that learning to work a tall ship was too much work, or too boring. Some of her classmates might even complain that they couldn't smoke their cigarettes while on board.
But then, she despised many of those classmates; average American druggies who went to alternative school because they had no other choice. She was different; she was here because she wanted to be.
She could not get enough of traditional sailing, already she was a member of the longboat rowing team, the marine tech class, and the science at sea program, but she was also a functioning coxswain, and helped to repair the longboats, jolly boats, and even the lady Washington herself. When she got out of school she was hoping to find a permanent position on a tall ship. But for now she would have to settle for the science at sea program: a week sailing during spring break.
Beside her was Amber Lynn, one of the few people in the program who felt the same way about the sea as she did. There were a few others; Austin, Maria, and Sarah, but these were the exceptions to the rule, the rest of the thirty students on board were here for the credit, not the adventure.
Amber actually didn't have any other incentive for being here than the love of tall ships; she was home schooled. She came in every Tuesday for rowing practice and considered herself lucky that she had been able to come at all, the rowing instructor, Carl Brownstein, had had to write special permission to allow her to come.
There were few of the crew on deck, most people were below decks reading or sleeping, or doing other time killing activities, so aside from the people on watch; the helmsman, messengers, bow watch and navigator, they were the only two people on deck that didn't have a job at the moment.
Racheal breathed in deeply, the tang of the salt air clearing her mind, when Amber spoke.
"They should have kept the helms wheel." She said
"Huh?" Racheal responded intelligently.
"You know, from the movie." Amber elaborated.
"Well then it wouldn't be a historical replica of Captain Grays ship would it?" Racheal pointed out
"Still, a tiller just doesn't suit her at all."
"I agree, but it's not really our decision is it."
"Nah, I suppose not." Amber sighed. "But it was the helms wheel that Captain Jack Sparrow stood at." She continued.
"You mean Johnny Depp." Racheal corrected.
"No, I mean Jack Sparrow." Amber insisted
"He's a fictional character."
"He might have been, once. But I don't think that's the case any more. Look at all the people that character has affected. It's gone beyond fiction; Jack Sparrow is an archetype."
"You drank saltwater didn't you?" Racheal said with exasperation.
"No, listen. Think about it, every once in a while, a character comes along, and that character resonates with the public so much, that the character is almost alive."
"Like who?" Racheal asked, interested to see what other lunacy her friend could come up with.
"Like Darth Vader, Indiana Jones, Lara Croft, Jack O'Neill, or Spock. People think about these characters, relate to them as real people." Amber said earnestly. Racheal blinked, for once Amber seemed to making a weird kind of sense.
"So Jack Sparrow, in a sense, is a real person? I can live with that." Racheal went back to looking up at the sky. Amber smiled mischievously.
"I thought you might be able to." There was a companionable silence for a few moments before Racheal spoke again.
"This is my idea of heaven." She said to her friend. Amber looked off into the distance for a moment before responding.
"For me heaven is either sailing a twilight sea with ports of call with manga, anime, and margaritas, or playing jazz trumpet for a male strip club in New Orleans."
"You certainly have a very specific image of the afterlife.' Racheal said noncommittally. "What do you think Jack Sparrows heaven would be?"
"Sailing a sea of Stars on the edge of forever. But Jack Sparrow can't die, and if he did, he would cross through the veil alive and with his Pearl, tell Chiron to go to hell, and loot Hades." Amber said succinctly. Racheal smiled.
"That he would." Racheal said with a grin, imagining Jack Sparrow holding up Satan himself with a musket and a cutlass.
"I can just imagine it." Amber went on "Just hand over your valuables, savvy?" she said doing a fair impression of Sparrow. In her mind it was almost like a memory; she could see him doing it that clearly.
"And then Anamaria would say: 'Ey, what do you want me to do with this three headed dog?'" Racheal said, mimicking the pirate woman's cutting voice. Amber gestured broadly with her hands, much as Sparrow would and continued in her imitation of his voice.
"Just tell it it's a nice doggy, and whatever you do, don't call it a mangy cat."
And then it seemed as if they needed no words to tell the story, for the tale was telling itself.
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"Aye captain." Anamaria shouted in affirmative.
Jack Sparrow was pacing back and forth in front of the line of figures; being a well traveled man, he could name off most of them; Satan, Hades, Kali, Hecate, Persephone, Hel, and so on and so forth.
Jack was currently holding a pistol on them, and they watched him with wary eyes as his boots crunched over the brimstone on the bank of the river Styx. Behind him the Pearl rested majestically upon the black waters, dark sails clewed up and illuminated by the fiery lights of hell. Some of the lesser creatures of the afterlife were being dealt with by other members of the crew; Anamaria had successfully collared Cerberus, Marty the dwarf was sitting on the grim reapers back, picking his teeth with its scythe, and Gibbs was- well okay, he didn't actually know were Gibbs was.
Probably halfway through a barrel of rum. This brought him to his next subject;
"Were do you keep your rum? We've got a lot of celebratin' to do. It's not ev'ry day Jack Sparrow becomes an uncle."
They looked at him incredulously before one of them spoke up in a disbelieving voice;
"You sail up the river Styx, collar Cerberus, hold the collective deities of the underworld at gunpoint and all you want is rum?!" Jack looked at the man in annoyance, it was one of the gods he didn't recognize; one of those blasted oriental ones.
"Yes, rum. What else is a man supposed to drink?" he said as if it were obvious, waving a hand in the air to punctuate his point. His gun remained trained on them though, even as he appeared to sway with the movement of the sea while standing on dry land.
The goddess Hel spoke up in a cultured voice;
"We gods drink Ambrosia, far better than any mortal alcohol."
"Nah, tried that; didn't have enough kick to it. Might take some back for Will though, 'e's gonna need somethin' stiff now that 'e's a father like." He put his finger to his lips, face upturned, apparently deep in thought.
Around him his crew continued to load the treasures of the underworld onto the Black Pearl; two of the men were carrying a heavy chest with seraphim carved onto the top, halfway up the gang plank one of them cursed and dropped his side, and Jack looked at them in alarm.
"Careful with that! That thing's been lost for a millennia! We can't have you seasick dogs dropping it into the drink!"
Thinking perhaps that Jack was distracted enough to surprise, Hades shifted on his feet, ready to make his move. Without even looking back, Jack said.
"Try anything and you'll have one of these iron bullets between your eyes and eating away at your brains, savvy?"
"How-?" one of them started to ask. But was cut off as Jack resumed his pacing and spoke;
"Turns out critters like you have an aversion to iron, isn' that right? Acts kind of like acid doesn' it?" he asked.
The deities, still looking as if they were getting over the shock of being referred to as 'critters' by a madman with a rum fetish, merely nodded.
"Oh good, now that we understand one another would you be so kind as to direct me to the ambrosia? If you don't have rum, I might as well make do."
One of them pointed off down one of the many tunnels that riddled hell like a rabbit warren. Jack needn't have asked; for no sooner had Lucifer pointed than Gibbs came stumbling out with an incandescent bottle in each hand, and two men struggling to carry a large crate behind him.
"Good man, Gibbs." Jack called "watch your step there. No not there- there." Gibbs went sprawling, and upon righting himself attempted to wander off in another direction.
"The ships' that way Gibbs." as the graying man finally moved past Jack and onto the Pearl, he appeared to be holding a conversation with a beautiful woman, a woman that Jack apparently was unable to see.
Thinking thoughts of drunken delusions Jack turned back to the main cavern, his attention drawn to the pirate woman dragging a man along behind her.
"'Ey capt'n, look who I found." Anamaria came striding up to Jack dragging along none other than Bootstrap Bill.
People say that young William Turner looks just like his father, well, likewise his father looks just like him, save for a few details. His hair was longer than his son's, and much darker, tied back in a sailors pig tail. Despite this restraint, some managed to escape the tattered black ribbon that held it back, and the loose strands hung in front of his face, giving a sinister cast to his green eyes, another marked difference. It was not just the hair that gave Bill's eyes a dark cast, but an overall knowledge of the world; Bootstrap had seen a lot, not all of it pretty.
Despite his tenure in hell, he was dressed similarly to the attire he had always worn in life; a faded black vest worn over a bare chest, missing all of it's buttons but held closed by a heavy baldric, a sword belt, and a stained, but still vivid crimson sash. One would expect the broad and powerful bare arms to be decorated with tattoos from all corners of the ocean, but unlike so many other pirates, Bill had never once let ink and needle touch his skin, preferring to let his scars, of which he had many, to tell his tale.
His threadbare britches ended snug about his upper calves, just short of his boots, the boots for which he received his name. They were knee high, but unlike most, did not have the tops turned down, per fashion. They were black leather, scuffed and worn, and creased with use. The most unusual thing about these boots however, was that they were covered in tight, buckled straps, from ankle to knee.
"Oh good, you did find 'im then. I was worried he'd gone and gotten himself into heaven; it would'a been a might harder to sail up to the pearly gates. This'll be a fine surprise for Will!"
"What do you mean 'A fine surprise' Jack? I've been dead for ten years! It won't just surprise him; it'll give the kid fits!"
"Ah, you do have a point. But in those self same ten years your son was rescued from a burning merchant vessel, brought to Port Royal, and apprenticed to a blacksmith. Then after leading a blameless life of loyalty to the crown, broke me out oughta' jail, became a pirate, fought and killed our former crew, which, I might add were undead in the first place, rescued a damsel and married. Oh, and he's an expecting father soon."
"Is that all?" Bootstrap looked slightly put out
"I think so, but give 'im a rest, he 'ad a late start."
Bootstrap shrugged and Jack gave him a consoling pat on the back, and then gave him a push towards the Pearl. Jack watched with a nostalgic feeling as Anamaria guided Bill up the gangplank. It was nice to see his old friend again, and he couldn't wait to see the look on Wills' face when he introduced him to his father. It would be worth a thousand barrels of rum, that would. Well maybe not a thousand, that was an awful lot of rum after all.
He turned back to the gods of the afterlife, a conglomerate of deities from every culture in the world. This was not the first time he had hoodwinked all powerful beings, but he had never conned so many at once, it was, he had to admit, slightly unnerving, so he was careful never to allow his pistol to waiver from its mark.
He did not even stop to worry about the fact that the pistol was in fact, quite empty, and had been since he had shot Barbosa. He was not foolish enough to think that anything on the mortal plane could harm a god. What was important was that the gods believed that the pistol was loaded, and that it could actually hurt them, because, if the gods believed it, then it was true.
If Jack squeezed the trigger, a magic bullet with acidic properties would shoot out; all because Jack had been able to convince them that he was in possession of such ammunition that could harm them.
It was Jacks personal rule number one for hunting gods; 'Use an empty gun, that way there is no reality to interfere with fantasy.' It had worked the first time.
Finally, when his crew was done loading up their well earned plunder, and the Pearl was bursting at the seams with all the loot, Jack allowed himself to smile. Then, thinking better of stealing a kiss from the lovely Persephone, began backing up the gangplank and onto the well worn planks of the Black Pearls deck.
Even after two years of being back in command of his dark lady, the feel of his boots on the smooth planking still brought a tingle of joy to his heart; it was the feeling of home, but it was more than that as well; it was the feeling of freedom.
"Strike the gangplank and cast off mooring lines, Weigh anchor! Get us ready to make way!" He shouted, and his crew scrambled to obey, dodging nimbly around the crates and loose treasure that had yet to be stowed in the hold. His crew had been puzzled by the order to drop the anchor right next to a perfectly good dock, and then attach mooring lines anyway, but Jack knew that the Pearl, although she had been a sailing hell for nigh ten years, did not belong in the underworld, so he wanted as many points of contacts as possible to keep the Pearl stabilized in this otherworld. The plank was hastily loaded on board, the lines were cast off, and soon the clanking of the great chain could be heard as the anchor was dragged out of the river, and Jack was glad to see that it had not been corroded by the black waters. His Pearl was made of sterner stuff than mere death.
He suspected that he would not need to careene the bottom for quite a while, seeing as how the poisonous water had probably taken care of any pervasive creatures clinging to the bottom. This, he thought, would be a truly welcome bonus, as one of sailor's worst duties was the odious job of cleaning the bottom, an arduous task of beaching the ship and systematically scraping off every bit of detritus, barnacle by barnacle.
So the trip was worth it just for the removal of this biannual task, even without the loot, ambrosia, and Bootstrap.
Almost by magic Bootstrap was by his side as if summoned by Jacks thoughts, which, given the circumstance, was not entirely impossible. A fellow could get strange powers when he was dead, Jack knew from experience.
"You haven't gone all telepathic like, have you mate?" Jack asked impulsively. Bill gave him an odd look.
"What kind of question is that Jack? I'm dead, not a fortune teller." He said with a grin. As the ship began moving back down the river, he thought of something and his grin faded slightly.
"Are you sure you're going to be able to take me out of here?"
Jack shrugged.
"Shouldn't be much of a problem. Tha's the nice thing about the underworld; you take your body with you when you go down, so when you go back to the land of the living through more direct routes than reincarnation, you can take it back up."
Bootstrap looked at him dubiously
"So you're sure that I won't just disintegrate in sunlight?"
"Of course I'm sure! I wouldn't have come an' gotten you if I didn' think I'd be able to take you back out. All you have to do is wear this." Jack tossed him a black gem the size of a grape.
Bill looked at it dubiously; trying to figure out what it was and were exactly he was supposed to wear it. Jack must have sensed his confusion, for he explained;
"Not sure what it's called exactly, but I do know that lesser creatures of the underworld wear 'em when they're making prolonged visits to the mortal realm. Keeps 'em from snapping back to hell, see."
"How am I supposed to wear it?"
"Oh, that. You just stick it in the middle of your forehead like those Hindu belly dancers do."
Jack demonstrated by taking the gem and pressing it into his friend's brow, were it seemed to adhere easily. When Jack took his hand away he showed Bill his reflection in the glass on the binnacle near the helms wheel.
There, nestled in his dark bangs so he could barely see it, was the black jewel, glinting like a third eye. Bootstrap was somewhat surprised that he could see his reflection at all, and so took a moment to examine himself. After being trapped in Hades for so long, he had forgotten what he looked like; he was pleasantly surprised to find the same handsome devil that had terrorized the British navy with Jack ten years ago. Same jaw line, same nose, same green eyes, same hair tarred back into a long ponytail with his bangs hanging down around his face.
It was strange, rediscovering himself in this fashion, made all the more ironic that he was looking down at the reflective surface of a compass to find himself.
"You know Bill, you've given me quite a chase." Jack said, snapping Bootstrap out of his strange reverie. He shook his head to clear it before responding;
"What do you mean?"
"I mean I didn't think to find you in Hades." Jack elaborated
"To tell the truth, I expected you to be there before I even arrived, Jack. You must have been on that island for two weeks by the time they killed me, how did you survive?"
Jack thought a moment and then decided to stick with the fairytales.
"Sea turtles." He said picking an explanation out of the air. Bootstrap gave him an amused look.
"Somehow, I doubt that."
"But I'm Captain Jack Sparrow." Jack said with a look of mock hurt and a hand on his chest.
"I'm well aware of that Captain. And I know for a fact that what you said you did and what you really did often differ a great deal."
"It was sea turtles, I swear!" Jack said with a grin.
"It was a Rum Runner island wasn't it?"
"How'd you guess?"
"I knew they were active in the area, it was the only reason I didn't fight Barbosa when the bastard mutinied. But when you didn't come charging to the rescue in the nick of time I thought I was wrong… What about you, why didn't you think to find me in hell?"
"You were supposed to be cursed you lummox. I thought for sure that even after me traitorous crew cast you to the depths, that you'd 'ave found your way to land by walking on the bottom." Jack told him, making walking motions with his fingers. Bootstrap rested his arms on the rail, looking down into the ghostly depths of water that after ten years had finally become familiar to him.
"I was never cursed Jack, I took the gold from the chest, but not for myself. I was the only man there who did not have greed on my mind that day. When I saw what was happening to the others, I knew my time was short and sent the coin to my son, hoping that somehow some good would come of such a terrible legacy." Bill glanced up to his friends face, Jack looked thoughtful.
"You know Bootstrap, you always were too high minded for your own good, I swear your boys just like you." He informed him. Bill smiled.
"So he did turn out okay then?"
"If by okay you mean an incurably dull eunuch, then sure, the kids just fine."
"Eunuch? I thought you said he was to be a father!"
"It must have grown back." Jack muttered darkly; in his opinion, people who were that incredibly honest shouldn't be allowed to reproduce, it made life too unpredictable.
Ahead of them the veil between the worlds became visible; a great swirling curtain of purple and blue mist.
Jack directed his attention to the task of crossing back into the real world and began shouting orders to the crew. Bootstrap, with an amused shake of his head at Jacks antics, went to work as if he had never left the Pearl, and in a strange sense, he hadn't.
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AN: this is my newest story, and my first Pirates of the Caribbean fanfic, feel free to blast it to hell, just so long as you review.
I'd like to know what you think of the story telling format. if it isn't any good, I can change it.