Okay...well...I'm probably going to be shot for even thinking of this pairing. I don't know what it is about me and picturing out crack pairings lately, but it's as though the little muses in my mind have gone on a rampage. Please know that it's not all my fault, I swear. I blame a roleplay. A long, long roleplay that has left food for thought. And by long, I'm talking about nine-hundred pages in size 7.5 Verdana font that's been going on since July of '06.
Anyways...PLEASE NOTE that this fanfiction is going to be in the point of view of none other than Elena from the Turks. The reason that this fic is placed in the Kingdom Hearts category is strictly because it deals with the prospect of travelling to a different world, which is, of course, only possible in the Kingdom Hearts games, not the Final Fantasy ones. I would place it under Pirates of the Carribbean, but I think that would simply confuse more people than are already going to be confused.
Okay, so...I'll let you all start reading now. Please don't run away. It's got Jack Sparrow in it. Who doesn't want to read something that features ol' Jack, eh?
"There is nobody so irritating as somebody with less intelligence and more sense than we have."
Don Herold
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Virtues of Alcoholism
I honestly don't know how I get myself into these situations. Currently, I was now accountable for the acts of piracy, theft, assault, and arson. Of course, I wasn't directly responsible for any of these crimes, but some of the blame did rest on me, as it was. Guilty by association, as some people would say.
I was only distantly conscious at the moment, lying uncomfortably on top of a wooden crate while I listened to a low string of curses someone off beside me was mumbling under their breath. My face felt flushed. Did I have a fever? I was pretty certain that I did. I felt cold and nauseous to boot. I think it had something to do with consuming a fair amount of rum. Was the rum the reason I was sick? Yes, I think it was the rum. Or at least, the rum contributed to it.
I'm fairly certain that I'm getting ahead of myself now, though. You need to hear the whole story to understand how I got where I am now, as I don't even fully understand it myself.
Let's start at the beginning.
Well, for one thing, none of these wild circumstances that I always seem to land myself in were ever listed in the job description when I was supposed to be temporarily filling in for Reno while he was out for a time, thanks to Cloud Strife and company. Somehow or other, that job became permanent even after Reno had returned to ShinRa.
One would think that having been trained as a Turk for a few years now would account for something. Intimidation should run through my veins. I should scare people off as though I'm a pariah with the bubonic plague. It should be genetic, at least. My father is a teacher at the ShinRa Military Academy. Adina, my older sister, also happens to be a member of the Turks.
Ah, that's right, wonderful, perfect, Adina, the cold-blooded murderess. Not that I haven't done my fair share of killing people as of late, but she apparently gets more attention because she's been doing it longer. God must have a cruel sense of humor, making us both end up with the Turks. While she gets to be tall, graceful, and silently threatening, I'm seen as the five foot two blonde bimbo, for whom it's a health hazard just to walk three feet without holding onto a railing of some sort and who can't keep her mouth shut to save her life. Perhaps they're correct in their assumption, but I'd like to think that these last few years have allowed me to mature just a little bit, and that some sort of lethal quality would creep into my appearance over time.
But, of course, things just can't go the way I want them to. It's as though someone's sewn a sign onto my back that just practically screams, "Hey! Use me as bait!" I've been kidnapped by that psycho Corneo guy, and then that silver-haired trio. I can hit a soup can with a gun from a hundred yards back, and yet people always assume that I'm a clueless little ditz who can't defend herself. The sad thing about this aforementioned assumption is that these same people almost always encounter me when I'm off of my game, and so it seems that they're usually right.
Moving along, it is worth mentioning that a few months back, ShinRa had launched a program that allowed for extreme studies into the depths of interspace. The sudden interest in what lay in the confines of the galaxy all had to do with a strange little meteor that landed smack dab in the middle of Midgar. Now, our scientists have been on quite the lookout for meteors and such in the last few years, but the speed at which this thing approached was simply unbelievable. It was as though it came out of nowhere. And the substance with which it was formed was something that no one in the entirety of the Planet had ever seen—solid, but gooey to the touch, and able to break off into smaller pieces that then bonded together again in new shapes and forms. Even stranger, when it actually landed on our planet, it was going at a remarkable speed, but there was hardly any crater or mark where it laid.
A remarkable discovery was made shortly after the exploration program was launched, one that ShinRa has been keeping to itself lately, so as not to make ordinary citizens panic—the discovery being that there are other worlds out there. You'd have thought we'd have figured out this little tidbit when Sephiroth made himself known on our Planet as 'The Destroyer of Worlds'. But still, no one had ever really thought that there would be any worlds with other human life (And one world with only animal life, I've been told), some as oblivious to other worlds as we had previously been, others a bit more well-informed.
Every rocket in the ShinRa Vehicle Transportation facility was then promptly revamped to allow for interspace travel, and a few people have gone to some of these 'other worlds', and come back to tell the tale. Still, these rockets were currently off-limits to the majority of faculty and staff members at ShinRa, along with the public.
Leave it to Reno to go and break whatever rules and limits that are set down. How my red-haired comrade managed to drag me out of the comfort of my standard, sterilized office, I'll never know. Looking back, I'm fairly sure he mentioned something about there being coffee and doughnuts in the employee lounge. Laugh if you will, but working in a place like ShinRa builds up an appetite, and coffee and doughnuts are known to run out quicker than gold thrown out into the street by a generous prince. Even a Turk can appreciate a customary cup of Joe and sweet treat.
Without thinking, I had followed him, my nose buried in some paper work that I needed to get filled out. Granted, it wasn't due until a week from now, but I have a tendency to want things done as soon as possible. It wasn't until we were standing right before the door that clearly read, in big capital letters, 'RESTRICTED AREA. PERSONNEL ONLY.', that I realized we hadn't been going to the employee lounge at all. Before I could declare myself no part of whatever it was that he was planning and turn on my heel, he quickly explained his plot—he figured it wouldn't hurt to just use one of the many rockets kept by the launching pad.
I swear, he reminds me of a cat sometimes. I'm serious. He's tall and lanky, with these glinting blue-green eyes. He even walks like a cat, all predator-like and silent. And like any cat, he's got an insatiable curiosity of just about everything he feels like he doesn't understand.
"Oh, come on, Laney," he drawled, pausing to take a drag on one of his many cigarettes and blatantly ignoring the smaller, but still easily visible sign that screeched, 'NO SMOKING'. Ordinarily, I'd make some witty riposte about how he was butchering his lungs and could he please put that thing out, because not everyone wanted to inhale the secondhand smoke from his cancer sticks. I wasn't in the mood today, though, as my head had been pounding all day long and I honestly wanted nothing more than to head home as soon as opportunity allowed where I could swallow about six Advil at a time and proceed to take a long, well-deserved nap. So instead, I merely flinched at his long-given nickname for me and exhaled my own personalized little Elena-sigh, one that reeked of agitation.
"Reno," I began, shuffling my papers once more for good measure. "If you want to get yourself fired, that's all nice and well, but kindly leave me out of it. Why don't you go ask Rude?" I should have known better than to mention the word 'kind', for it was not one of my red-haired companion's known virtues.
He seemed to ignore the frustration in my voice with a remarkable amount of obstinacy, instead leaning against the wall and pausing to puff out a miniature smoke cloud before returning his feline gaze to me. "Aw, see I would, but Rude ain't here right now. He's off on a mission. And who's going to get fired?" he scoffed, shaking his head so his long, tomato-red ponytail swung back and forth a few times.
I grimaced and bit my lip, which is a habit for me in times of anxiety or frustration. When I'm around Reno, I usually end up biting my lip so much to the point where I can taste the rusty-salt flavor of blood. I didn't want to admit out loud that he had a point. As a Turk, there was hardly anyone in all of ShinRa who would dare even think of confronting him with the threat of firing him. The only one who might have the guts to do such a thing was Tseng, but he'd been dealing with Reno and his antics for years now, enough to know that the red-head was a much better Turk than he appeared to be at first glance. Plus, the guy is second-in-command, so I certainly can't make any threats to him. I'm just 'the rookie', despite the fact that I've been with the group for years now.
He continued on with his efforts to persuade me, sticking out his lanky, marble-like arms to block my path from heading back down the hallway to the safety of my office. "Really, yo, it's a Friday. What other plans could you possibly have? It's not like we have to worry about being late for work tomorrow," the red-head yawned, lazily clenching what little was left of his cancer stick between two fingers.
I thought about reasoning that he wouldn't have the first idea on how to fly a rocket, but bit my tongue as I recalled that he happened to be an expert helicopter pilot, and trained daily in stimulations that dealt with vehicles like our newly revamped rockets. Finally, I masterfully exhaled again, my pale-blonde eyebrows furrowing. His trademark smirk instantly widened, for he knew that my sigh had been one of defeat.
I don't know what made me give into his demands. Perhaps I was simply less in the mood to argue than I'd thought. Perhaps I was tired of really not having anything better to do with my time on a Friday night. Or perhaps I was simply curious, too. For whatever the reason, I ended up getting in that damned rocket with him, making sure to buckle in all manner of seatbelts just in case he really was quite inexperienced with flying a rocket.
As it turned out, the ride was a smooth one. For the first few moments, we flew in silence, the only noise being Reno's occasional sigh that he'd at last completely burned down his dosage of nicotine. I stared out the window with genuine, child-like interest. I had never really seen space like this before. Everything was so…so huge. I had absolutely no idea where he planned on taking us, but for the moment, I was simply preoccupied with my first-class window-seat.
Finally, my comrade took it upon himself to break the silence between us, leaning back in his chair as he pulled up a radar screen featuring several of the long-awaited other worlds that I was able to view from my seat.
"This one looks promising, eh?" he inquired, pointing to one world a little off to the left on the screen. It came as no surprise to me that he'd gone for the gloomiest looking world featured on the map. When you're a Turk, you tend to develop little sadistic tendencies and likings for dark, gloomy things. I was the only one who was any different, and I am known for commonly enjoying puppies, flowers, sunshine, and whistling while I clean off a bloody knife. Oh, don't look at me like that. Is there really something wrong with trying to make my life seem a little bit cheerier when one has a job such as mine?
I didn't verbally respond to his inquiry, instead deciding to answer with a simple shrug of my shoulders. Truth be told, I didn't care where we went. My head was still pounding, and I figured that no matter what input I gave, he would still do whatever his selfish little heart desired. Such was my disinterest that I didn't even bother reading the minute-description that was offered on the world, figuring it couldn't be too different from my own Planet. I was fairly certain that Reno wouldn't be picking the all-animal world if he was really looking for some amusement on a Friday night.
I couldn't have been more wrong. Not about the animal thing, but about the world being different. We ended up in a strange little town called Port Royal that seemed to be perpetually stuck in the late seventeenth century. My fellow Turk and I stared, wide-eyed, around us, spotting all kinds of people from your standard powdered-wig-wearing officials, to filthy pig farmers that looked as though they hoarded a lifetime supply of dirt on their body.
Reno being, well, Reno, he got over the shock of the different era much quicker than I did, and proceeded to drag me on to a place that drew people like him to it like honey draws flies—a tavern. Or a bar, or whatever the heck you want to call it. He took me to a freaking seventeenth-century bar.
I'd been out drinking with him and Rude in the past, of course, but truly, the most I had ever drunk at one time was a simple cup of champagne. I sincerely doubt that qualified as 'getting tipsy'. Still, I think I'd have sooner spotted a cup of worms in this place before champagne, as it certainly didn't seem like a beverage that would be typical of it. I was too shocked to protest against being hauled over to this local pub, even though I did habitually flinch as we walked inside. The entire place was filled with drunken men and women, some of them squandering their money on a good many drinks, others simply snoozing in the corner with a dozen or so empty mugs lying beside them. So many aromas wafted through the air on miniscule breezes—everything from the acrid stench of many people who hadn't showered in what seemed like months at the very least, to the sickly sweet smell of warm rum.
Somehow or other, I ended up with a cup of the aforementioned liquid in front of me. The noise had driven me to it. There was so much senseless yelling and off-key music, I thought my head was going to explode, and upon barely hearing Reno's suggestion that a drink might do me good, I numbly ordered the beverage without even paying attention to what it was at first. We stuck out like sore thumbs in our standard navy blue Turk uniforms that were crisp and ironed and decidedly formal. Well, mine was crisp and ironed, anyways. I don't think Reno's ironed a shirt a day in his life. He wouldn't know an ironing board from a surfboard if it came up and bit him in the butt. Strangely though, no one seemed to care. Perhaps they were too intoxicated to care, or perhaps they got enough odd characters as it was. Either way, no one asked where we were from, or wildly started pointing in our direction and calling us witches of the dark arts.
I'm still not too terribly sure when Reno left the measly little table we picked up in the corner. By this point, he was probably off lying in some gutter, in a drunken stupor. I also had no real reckoning of just how much time had passed since we'd first entered the deafening tavern. All I was aware of was that suddenly a man with whom I was completely unfamiliar was taking a seat across from me as though I was a long-lost friend of his who he had decided to come over and talk to.
He flashed me a brief smile as he sat down, exposing a rainbow of golden and silver filled teeth, with only the occasional glimpse of white every now and then. If I'd ever thought in my life before that Reno was eccentric, I took it back now, for the man before me was the single definition of the word. He wore a dark red bandana over his mass of black locks, with a number of shiny medallions and other knickknacks attached to the said bandana. Surprisingly enough, he was one of the better-dressed people in the vicinity, as opposed to the rest of the paying customers. Or at least, his outfit appeared better because he apparently attempted to keep it away from all of the grime and filth donning the rest of the people here. His face especially was quite different from anyone I've ever known, with more little ornaments strung to the end of his slight beard, and distinctive brown eyes that were highlighted by the mass of dark, blotchy kohl surrounding them.
Turning his attention away from me for a moment or so, he waved his hand frantically through the air so as to get the bartender to notice him, I could only assume, but it looked more to me as though he had some sort of poisonous lizard or something attached to his hand by its tongue and he was trying to shake it off desperately.
"Oy!" he shouted, his voice barely audible to the bartender in question above all the other racket going on. "Give me one over here, along with another for the lady!"
Taken aback by his action, I frowned and turned my attention to the mug full of rum I already had right in front of me—only to find it empty. Huh. That was odd. I didn't clearly remember drinking any of it. I suppose that Reno had been right about one thing, however, for the sweet beverage seemed to have calmed the agonizing pain of my headache down to an annoying little pang every now and then.
A mere minute or so later, a slim, anorexic-looking attendant girl rushed by our table with two more ridiculously large glasses of rum that didn't so much resemble cups as they did tankards, depositing them in front of us while she whisked my other empty mug away.
My current company wasted no time in grabbing his own mug and downing its contents in all of maybe three sips total. It was like watching one of those Tootsie Roll commercials: 'Mr. Stranger, how many gulps does it take to get to the bottom of a huge-ass cup of rum?' 'Let's find out, shall we? One, two, three—Mmm. That hit the spot.' Once he was done with his drink, he glanced around the room for a moment, looking almost as though he half expected someone to be standing directly over his shoulder. When he turned to face me again, however, all traces of paranoia vanished, replaced by a rather amused grin.
I looked down, feeling uncomfortable in the strange man's presence. I knew of only one type of man who came and sat down next to girls that were by themselves in bars, and they weren't necessarily the charming fairy tale princes that whisked you off your feet and promised their undying love and affection to you. My face felt flushed, though whether it was from embarrassment or simply the alcohol, I didn't know.
"If you're trying to get in my pants, you can buzz off now," I mumbled, still not looking up into the man's almost dangerously intense brown eyes. I surprised myself with that one. I have a tendency of overreacting, but I was usually never that blunt with my oh-so-witty statements.
He blinked once or twice, also apparently caught off-guard by my direct and rather quick assumption. The man opened his mouth once, closed it, opened it again, and then proceeded to close it once more, giving him the temporary appearance of a fish out of water.
"…I was trying to do no such thing," he insisted, still blinking as though I had slapped him across the face.
"Sure you weren't." Note that this statement was said with an exquisite amount of sarcasm on my part.
He gave another one of his paranoid stares around the room at that moment before suddenly leaning in closer to me, so close in fact, that I could smell the sticky, sugary aroma of the alcoholic drink on his breath. Considering he'd only had one drink—as far as I had observed, anyways—in the time he'd been here, the smell was far too strong on his breath than it should have been. I could only assume that perhaps he had ingested more of the beverage before coming here, which would account for his slight swaying motions back and forth in his seat.
"Listen here, Miss," he began, his voice dropping in volume although there was no chance of anyone overhearing us considering the current noise level in the pub. "I'm in rather a hurry tonight, and while you are certainly, ah, most attractive, I'm afraid I've no time for a one night stand, love."
I could only imagine that it was my turn to do the fishy-faces this time. I stared at him in complete and utter disbelief, unsure whether to be mad, insulted, or mildly amused. And here I'd thought I was the blunt one. I quickly took a gulp of my rum before the stress that his sudden remark had left on me could bring back my headache.
I settled for a combination of my first two options, and attempted a glare at him from my spot across the table. However, my vision was starting to grow fuzzy and things appeared to be blurrier than I remembered them being, so I couldn't even be sure if I was glaring directly at him. All in all, it didn't have as impressive an effect as I had hoped it would.
"What makes you think that I would ever want to crawl into bed with you in the first place?" I snarled, though it probably didn't resemble a snarl in the least. All in all, I was just proud of myself for not suddenly hiccupping in the middle of my sentence.
"Well, darling, who wouldn't?"
I chose to ignore this comment of his, finding that the respectable buzz I was working up—and I was fairly sure that this one had nothing to do with my headache whatsoever—was preventing me from making one of my usual sharp-tongued comebacks. Instead I took another long slurp from over the rim of my glass and stared down at my uniformly shined black dress shoes. Funny. I didn't recall having four feet before.
After a long lapse in the conversation, he cleared his throat and apparently decided to try again with small talk, though it was more than likely a lost cause. "So, lass, do you perhaps have a name?" he inquired, eyebrow arching upwards as he looked over my outfit that blended in about as much as a cactus blends in with a pot of tulips.
"Yes," I stated matter-of-factly, silently working hard towards keeping the slur out of my speech that so desperately wanted to crawl into it. "My name's Elena, so you can stop calling me that."
"Calling you what?" He simply grinned unrepentantly. "Lass, darling, or love?"
I paused briefly, considering this for a moment as I hadn't exactly thought it out. All I knew was that he was using nicknames for me, and I disliked them more than I even disliked 'Laney'. "All of them," I finally grumbled.
"All right. Miss Elena it is, then," he agreed, flashing me another silver-gold grin.
At that moment, the door of the crowded tavern opened, and two more men walked in, I assumed to simply do like everyone else was and get a drink. They were complete opposites, I noted, even through my state of slight intoxication. One was tall, with a mop of dirty-blond hair, and he was apparently missing an eyeball so that a wooden one took its place in the socket. The other was shorter, plumper, and he wasn't so much missing an eyeball as he was the vast majority of his graying hair.
I didn't think much of them as I looked their way once out of idle curiosity before finding the rum set before me of slightly greater interest, but the man sitting across from me suddenly went rigid in his seat. Noting how peculiar he was suddenly acting due to the two men's presence, I glanced their way again to try and see what was of such great interest—or horror—about them.
Without warning, he stood up suddenly, grabbing his empty mug and simply chugging it across the room. For someone who seemed as though he was inebriated, his aim was surprisingly good, for it went sailing over the heads of the two new men, only to shatter on the back of the head of a rather large male in the pub who I would say more resembled our early ape-like ancestors than a modern day human being. As the little glass bits shattered to the floor, Gorilla-Man turned around with much more speed than I would have thought capable of him and glared at the nearest person next to him, automatically assuming that whoever was closest to him in range must have thrown that glass.
What ensued next truly taught me the meaning of the phrase 'all Hell broke loose'. Men and women alike began to pummel the crap out of each other through the use of anything they could pick up and use to beat someone down. Suddenly chairs, tables, and even the anorexic-waitress chick that had brought me and the mysterious mug-throwing man with me our rum, had newfound uses in life such as those of Sock 'Em Boppers.
Before I could even register what was going on, my drinking partner was suddenly grabbing me by the wrist and dragging me along with him out the door hurriedly, causing me to drop my glass to the floor as I struggled to get the world into focus through the spinning that standing up so quickly had caused.
"What are you doing?!" I yelped, too shocked to even attempt to pull my scrawny little wrist out of his impenetrable grip while we ran along, escaping from the bar and all of its chaos. I was more focused on remaining upright, as the rum I had ingested had left me mimicking this man's swaying habits. And I had definitely picked the wrong night to wear heels. Trust me—heels on cobblestones do not mix.
He chose not to answer me, instead proceeding to drag me all around the town that I was completely unfamiliar with, around corners and down the streets, until finally we stopped in a customary damp, dark alleyway. Even then, he didn't let go of my wrists, instead glancing around as though expecting to see the same two men from the bar suddenly pop up right beside him, even though I was almost certain that they had no more idea of what had just gone on than I did.
I tried to catch my breath, for while I can run for long amounts of time and at fair speeds, I only reach a grand height of one inch over five feet, while he was a good head and a half taller than I was. It had taken about three steps on my part for every one of his long, loping ones. Vaguely, I wondered if he would have perhaps slowed down if I had actually fallen while we were running. Something in my gut told me that he probably would have merely kept on dragging me, however.
"Hello?!" I tried again. My voice began rising in volume and octaves, as is customary when I'm upset about something. "What the heck was that?!"
He finally seemed to acknowledge my presence once more and slammed his hand over my mouth as my voice threatened to echo all the way to several more of the other worlds out there in the depths of interspace. "That was a distraction, love, the whole point of which will be worthless if you continue to shout like that so everyone in the entire city can hear you. Savvy?"
I wasn't paying attention to his words, though, because my perfectionistic, germophobic mind froze the instant that I felt his dirty, filthy hand covering my mouth. All the years of training as a Turk seemed to kick into effect as I wrenched my arm free from him in one swift movement, instantly grabbing onto his hand and yanking it away before swinging him around so he hit one of the walls in the alleyway with mind-staggering force. He must not have been expecting such a feat from me, for he stared at me in a startled fashion while I fumbled for my gun. After a minute or so, I gave up on trying to find where I'd put the stupid weapon, deciding that the rum rushing through my veins wouldn't allow me to hold onto it properly even if I did find it.
I braced myself against the wall opposite him in the alleyway, partially for standing support, and partially so I could better attempt to keep my eyes narrowed at him. "Who are you?" I hissed, all screaming forgotten now.
He blinked once or twice and rubbed the side of his head tenderly where it had collided with the wall, staring at me with renewed curiosity evident in his memorable features. "Well, now…where did you learn a trick like that?" he asked softly, as though he hadn't heard my own inquiry.
"I asked you something first!" I shot back, irritated.
"If you must know," he began with a sigh, muttering something under his breath regarding women and just how difficult they were, "I'm Captain Jack Sparrow. Now, tell me just how a girl like you learned to fight like that," the self-proclaimed captain demanded, waving his hands through the air for added effect to show his impatience.
I regarded him suspiciously, wondering just why he wanted to know anyways. After much arguing with myself in my own intoxicated mind, I came to the conclusion that it probably wouldn't hurt anything to give him some of the truth without giving him all of the specifics.
"I've been learning for a few years now," I declared, still keeping my measly excuse of a glare locked onto his blurry figure. I hoped that by announcing such a fact, perhaps he would back off of my case and leave me to find my red-haired companion so we could fly back home where I could proceed to murder said companion in peace.
Of course, I had no such luck. In fact, my luck is so terribly awful as of late that I am starting to wonder if someone pushes me under ladders or lets black cats run back and forth across my path in my sleep. It certainly would account for a lot.
In any case, the course of action that this Jack Sparrow took was not one of retreat. Rather, it was something that I had most definitely not been expecting, and thus he caught me completely by surprise. He regarded me with fascination in his smoldering brown eyes, looking me up and down now as though I was an interesting new fish on display at a local aquarium—that is, if they even have aquariums here in the perpetual epitome of the late seventeenth century.
"That's interesting," he finally commented, lazily bobbing his head up and down once as though to prove his statement's worth. Without warning, his marble-like arms suddenly shot up and latched onto the sides of my abdomen. He hoisted me up with relative ease and then flung me over one shoulder, spinning me around so that my head and torso came down to about his lower back. My legs abruptly hung in the air, searching in vain for ground that was no longer there. All in all, I would have to say that my position was one that is more commonly witnessed when people carry around sacks of potatoes—not young ladies.
Without waiting for me to adjust to this new position, he began walking onward. If he hadn't been using his full strength in dragging me along before, he was certainly doing so now, for I found that the one arm he was bothering to hold me steady with possessed an even more inescapable grasp than his previous grip had.
I stared at the ground down beneath me, instinctively clawing at the back of his shirt with my hands, struggling to hold onto something. "What the…what are you doing?! Put me down!" I shrieked, but his shirt muffled my voice and thus diminished some of the volume that I had been hoping for. A moment or so later, I jammed my eyes shut tight, for the cobblestones loomed at me while I bounced violently along in my uncomfortable position. I didn't much fancy cracking my skull open on the pavement, and all of this jiggling around was threatening to make the rum souring in my stomach suddenly rebel.
He ignored both my question and demand, continuing to carry me off to only God knew where in the potato-sack fashion. "You know, dear, you should probably consider trying to lose a few pounds. You're a fair bit heavier than you look," he drawled and then grunted as he hoisted me up further onto his shoulder in an attempt to make carrying me easier on his part.
I disregarded the fact that this strange and more than likely psychosomatic man had practically called me fat to my face, instead muttering every remotely obscene thing that I had ever heard Reno use when blatantly complaining about something or other at ShinRa. My legs now flailed wildly in the hopes that one of my lethal high heels could perhaps squash his nose like an overripened melon, but much to my disappointment, they were too short, and thus my target was just out of reach.
"Let me go!" I screeched once again. A heavy sigh was the only response he offered, and so the single satisfaction that I had from this whole situation was that at least while he was dragging me off, he had no way of silencing my bold and powerful voice.
Just before we could round yet another corner in this maze of a town (He had already made his way, with me in tow, around more than I had cared to count, considering my eyelids were still tightly clamped together), a new and unfamiliar voice could be heard, and my kidnapper stopped in his tracks, exhaling in aggravation.
"Jack Sparrow, I presume." The sneer that was no doubt on this unknown (and unseen on my part) man's face was almost audible in his tone as well. "I suppose it's not enough that your disgusting acts of piracy have already managed to get half of the Queen's Navy on your trail, but now you feel the need to kidnap an innocent maiden? You'll be a lucky man if your only punishment is death by hanging."
I opened my eyes against my better judgment, just in time to catch a glimpse of a man whose powdered wig and fancy, shiny outfit simply oozed authority and superiority in every strand and stitch. But then Jack turned on his heel to face the man instead, and I was left with a dizzy, out-of-focus view of the darkened streets of Port Royal once more. At least we weren't running anymore at the moment. My stomach definitely couldn't take much more of the running before it sent back up its contents.
"Commodore Norrington!" Jack Sparrow greeted. "What a pleasant surprise!" The rather amusing thing about this statement was the fact that he did in fact state it as though he and this apparent Commodore were long-time friends, even though it was more than a little obvious that the military official of Port Royal less than considered Jack a companion.
Without waiting for a response from the Commodore, my kidnapping stranger shifted to look down at me for a minute before his gaze lifted back up to the man. "Aye, mate, she's a maiden, all right. But I would hardly call her innocent. She slammed me head into a wall. I believe that's assault, no?"
I had just been about to open my mouth and make a sarcastically grateful remark that Jack had at least established my gender correctly, but I was forced to pause as I realized…he was right. I had hit him first, and I could hardly reason that it had been in self defense considering the worst he had done at the time was place his hand over my mouth.
Norrington exhaled in a sigh that sounded much like how my own could, expressing how his great, withstanding nerves were wearing thin. "Sparrow, I am offering you a chance to give yourself up now. Hand the girl over, and I won't have to harm you while taking you over to the prison keepers once more."
"With all due respect, mate, the rest of your lot is going to hang me by me neck the minute they're sure I can't escape from their lovely little cells—again. That doesn't give me much incentive to be handin' her over, now does it?"
Apparently, while my oddball captor did not apparently feel like 'handing me over' like one would currency, or perhaps some vintage trading card, he did see fit to let go of me just then, confident that I was too dizzy to run anywhere just yet. I hated him all the more because this postulation of his happened to be correct. He made no move to grab the sword dangling from his belt, and simply looked about the alleyway as though he had lost something important.
"I sincerely hope that you can fight, Sparrow," the Commodore quipped in quite the sardonic tone. "You are without a doubt the worst pirate I've ever heard of."
The emphasized word didn't catch what little remained of my woozy attention as I simply laid there, sprawled out in a heap on the ground, but a different one certainly did. My head snapped up and I turned to stare incredulously at Jack Sparrow.
"Pirate?!" I repeated, sounding about as thick as a peanut butter and mud sandwich.
Both men turned to stare briefly at me. I only managed to stare blankly back in response. It occurred to me now that that small little fact must have been blatantly obvious to any local citizen in this town—or even possibly in this world—and my already flustered face reddened. Well, heck, how was I supposed to know? The only pictures of pirates that I'd ever really seen back on my own Planet had been in a few storybooks of mine that I'd had when I was younger—and they usually all involved peg legs, eye patches, and talking parrots. I hadn't seen those books in years, and I'd never felt any interest to watch television programs or movies regarding pirates.
Jack decided to go back to ignoring me for the moment. His face brightened as he turned to his other side and spotted a torch resting in an iron holder that jutted out from one of the stone walls at a ninety degree angle.
"Ah, but you have heard of me," Jack pointed out with a grin in response to the official's previous sentence. "In any case, old chum…While I am, sadly, lacking the time to show you my fighting expertise; I hope that you can show me how you catch," he grinned. Before my fuzzy mind could process the threat behind his words, Jack had already tossed the torch into the air towards the Commodore, who had no time to do anything, save for promptly step back and out of its path.
As luck would have it (and considering this is Jack Sparrow that I am talking about, it is yet to be determined whether or not that luck is good or bad), the space where the Commodore had been standing was filled with hay, oats, leaves, and a pile of other highly flammable silage that might otherwise have served as some horse's tasty meal. The mass of fodder caught flame instantly, and in all of two seconds, those flames were leaping towards the small wooden shack not three feet away from the large heap.
Commodore Norrington looked frantically back and forth between Jack and the blazing shack. With one last bitter glare at my kooky pirate kidnapper, he finally came to the conclusion that the burning building was of more importance than putting this peculiar man behind bars for an apparent second time.
"Time to go!" the pirate announced cheerfully, to me I suppose since I was the only one present besides himself since Norrington had just run off. Without waiting for a reply or reaction, he had hoisted me up and slung me over one shoulder again, and was paying no more attention to the flames engulfing the hovel.
I tightly clamped my eyes together as the running started again, putting up much less of a fight about being carried this way than I had the first time. I found that all my dizziness had drained the strength required to rebel right out of me. Either a few hours or a few minutes later (I wasn't sure which, as I hadn't been paying attention) I could suddenly hear waves slapping against something. It wasn't the gentle lull of waves breaking on the sea, but rather a hard, continuous slap-slap-slap. I opened one eye open a slit, only to see that we were now in fact at a pier of sorts. Even though I couldn't see where we were going due to the fact that I was facing backwards, I could only assume that it was, presumably, to find his ship.
No sooner were we at the ship that I had accurately predicted in my intoxication than he swung me around, setting me down on my feet this time instead of dropping me as he had before. Although there was still no chance that I would successfully be able to run away at this point in time, he held me in place with one of his surprisingly strong hands all the same, just in case. I found I was actually grateful for the support—I was still swaying due to all the rum, and the rocking of the ship under my feet made me liable to fall flat on my face without even so much as moving an inch from my position.
A sudden wave of nausea in me prevented me from making the sarcastic remark that I'd been practicing my mind, and I could only stare around the surprisingly well taken care of and clean ship before returning my gaze to his face and finding that he was giving me another silver-and-gold grin.
"All righty then! You just make yourself comfy-wumfy for the time being, aye? I must converse with the young Mr. Turner for a little while—we can start talking about your crew duties tomorrow," he declared, finally removing his hand from my shoulder and swiveling around to go find this so-called Mr. Turner.
No sooner had his hand left than did I start swaying much more violently, the nausea peaking to a dangerous level. I didn't have time to inquire what he meant by all of this—that is, kidnapping me, 'crew duties', his accomplice Mr. Turner, and setting a building on fire—before I suddenly crumpled into an involuntary heap on the deck with a loud thud.
As ditzy and utterly blonde as most people who see me assume me to be, I usually am not one for fainting. It was a good thing that Reno was probably still conked out cold in a ditch somewhere, because had he witnessed me simply passing out like that, he would never have let me live it down.
Some of my consciousness remained with me enough for me to remain dimly aware when Jack glanced back my way, startled, and rushed over to find out just what my problem with standing was. He knelt down by my side, poking and prodding at my arms and shoulders as though there was some switch concealed in my attire that would suddenly make me get back on my feet.
"Hey now, can't you get back up?" he demanded to know, his eyebrows furrowing.
"No…" I moaned, fighting to keep myself from hurling up the contents of my stomach.
He stared at me intently with those bright brown eyes of his, finally ceasing to jab me with his finger. He pressed one rough, calloused hand to my forehead and though I instinctively squirmed at thinking of the dirt and germs that must have been covering it, I didn't have the strength to push it away.
When he removed his hand, he continued to stare, his eyebrows furrowing in slight aggravation that seemed ill-suited with the rest of his face. "Let's get this straight, shall we? You're not from around here, are you not?"
"No." I was grateful that I was only required to give a one-word answer—the longer I kept my mouth open to respond, the more dangerous it was.
"And how much alcohol can you usually stomach, lass?"
"Ugh…a glass or…or two? Of champagne."
"And you mean to tell me that you decided to hang around a local tavern in the lovely Port Royal where it's rare to end up gettin' a tankard of rum that's smaller than the size of your head?"
"…Mmmhmm."
He simply kept staring at me in a disbelieving fashion before his head suddenly whipped up, looking around the ship resolutely.
"William!" he hollered. "Come 'ere and tend to this gal!"
A male voice that couldn't have belonged to a man a day over twenty answered him, panting slightly and sounding more than a little frustrated with the pirate when it did so. "I can't—I'm getting the ship under way, like you told me to, in case you've forgotten!"
There was a long pause from Jack, in which I simply focused on not giving in to the urge to spew chunks all over the place. He looked from me, then up in a direction that I and my dim, blurry vision weren't able to glimpse (More than likely he was looking at this Turner guy, who was no doubt the source of the other voice), and then back again.
"Aw, hells." Heaving a sigh, he picked me up. Thankfully, he decided to carry me in a different fashion than he had the first time, using both arms instead of flinging me over one shoulder. We came over to what I guessed was a pile of crates after being lowered—more like dumped, really—onto them. I was just taking a lucky guess here. I could have been lying on a feather bed with goose-down pillows and I wouldn't have known. All that I was aware of was that I was no longer being forced to carrying out the dizzying action of walking.
From that point on, I'm not really sure what happened. I must have fallen asleep, or passed out, for a time because the next thing I recalled was what I described at the beginning of this explanation to you. I didn't really feel much better now that I was awake, considering that, while my state of intoxication had died down, my face was now flushed with fever.
I listened to Jack and his steady stream of profanities for a long moment, keeping my eyelids shut because I was exhausted and it felt as though it would take too much energy to force them open. I finally decided to give the pirate some sign that I was awake for the moment, letting out a long, slow groan.
"Ah! So you have seen fit to rejoin the land of the living! Wonderful."
I ignored this comment, rolling over onto my side, which was a rather difficult feat considering the crates that I was on top of offered about as much support for my frame as a giant slab of rock would. "I feel sick," I moaned. The only good thing about this was that at least I was too nauseated at the moment to register the splitting headache that would no doubt accompany whatever massive hangover I was probably experiencing right about now.
"Well, darling, you are sick. Just peachy, if you ask me," Jack muttered. I could tell that he was aggravated about something or other without even looking his way.
"It's just a cold, Jack. She'll be better in no time," another voice stuck up in my defense. This was probably Will Turner speaking once more. I vaguely wondered what he looked like, considering I hadn't had a view of him beforehand and my eyes were still closed tight now.
"Whatever the case may be, Mr. Turner," the pirate began, "the whole point of my going out and searching for more help aboard this vessel was so it would make this whole voyage easier. Babysitting isn't exactly lessening my loads, lad."
I didn't bother to point out that he was the one who had kidnapped me. If it were my choice, I wouldn't be here at all. I'd be back at home, swallowing too much Advil and remaining free from seventeenth-century bars and oddball pirates. I instead focused on just why I had gotten so sick, so suddenly, and came to the conclusion that it had to be the day and age of this other world. For as tough as we are, we Turks are still city-people. Midgar doesn't exactly offer the same multitudes of viruses and bacteria that were swarming around this town, and so my immune system had been completely and utterly caught off guard.
Of course, the rum had probably contributed to it, too. And the fact that I'd already had a headache all day long to start with probably hadn't made matters any better…
"Now that you've kidnapped me when I'm awake, are you going to shoot me if I go back to sleep?" I mumbled, curling up on the crate and letting my fatigued eyes remain clamped.
"Even though it's mighty tempting at the moment, I'm afraid not, love." Apparently that was his last word on the subject, for I could hear him suddenly stand up and walk to elsewhere on the ship.
My eyebrows furrowed in frustration, and I uttered a grumpy, "I told you to stop with the nicknames," before frowning and drifting back off to sleep.
A/N: Yes, yes, it's LONG! Well, for my writing anyways.
If anything, I can rest assured knowing that I've tried to please Vixen. She read the first seven or so pages of this chapter shortly after the idea of it came to my mind, and she seemed happy with it. So, my dear friend Vixen, I do hope you like it so far.
Oh, and about Elena's sister's name--well, Wikipedia said there isn't one. She is referred to as "Female Turk (Guns)" in the Before Crisis game. I didn't think that would work very well in a fanfiction, so I kind of cheated. I stole the name of the sister of a different Elena in a different video game. x3 Worked out just fine in the end, so I'm perfectly all right with it. Sorry if I confused anyone.
I will be continuing this fanfiction, of course, though for how long it will go on, I am unsure. I may follow strictly by the guidlines and events of the first movie, all three movies, or I may simply 'hang the code' and think up my own little plots.
Know that the relationship between poor Elena and our dearest Captain, already at rock bottom, will probably grab a shovel and start to dig.
I hope you all enjoy this so far! Reviews are appreciated, but I won't force them considering I'm sure the majority of you will say something along the lines of 'Go die for thinking this up'. x3
Oh, and the quote at the beginning pretty much sums up Elena and Jack in a nutshell. Yep, yep.
