"So...it WAS you trying to take me out all this time, Jack Sparrow."

That voice was enough to make Jack's stomach churn with nausea. A thick Scottish accent matched by a deep, resounding voice. There was absolutely no mistaking who that could possibly be.

The smaller man's jaw flapped uselessly for a moment before he finally found his voice. "No...no, not me...I've done nothing of the sort." He glanced down his arm at the gun he was currently aiming between the larger man's eyes. "This...this is merely self-protection." His expression darkened. "I imagine it was YOU that's been trying to take ME out. But isn't that just like you, Davy Jones."

Jones lowered his weapon in disgust. "Pfft. Why would I waste my time with that? You seem to be adept at taking care of that yourself!"

Jack lowered the pistol from Jones' visage as well, considering it was no longer being matched by a far more modern and absurdly powerful weapon. "Don't make me laugh. You've had it in for me since you first laid eyes on me...you've spent years trying to kill me. Why change now?" He scowled. "And what the hell are you doing in 2008, on dry land?"

Jones smirked, placing his hands on his hips. Noteworthy was the fact that they were both human hands, albeit large and a distinct murky green colour...no crab-hand, no tentacles. "Curses take on different forms with time, lad. You should know that. Alas, you're stuck with the knowledge that I'm on land as long as I please."

Shuddering at the mere thought, Jack holstered his pistol. "Brilliant, bloody brilliant." A deep sigh escaped his lips as he folded his arms over his chest.

Jones tucked the gun away safely, continuing to glare at the pirate before him. How typical - he'd barely modernised his attire at all, and stuck out like a sore thumb. Jack wouldn't even realise, Jones mused. "So..." He stated thoughtfully. "If it wasn't you constantly trying to riddle me with bullets...then who?"

Jack perked a brow. "Good question. What's to bet it's the same mongrel that took a pot-shot at me down in Mission Bay..."

"High chance of that, considering pistols are hard to get hold of in this godforsaken country."

"Can you think of anyone that would want to take us both out, though?" Jack's brow knitted in thought. It wasn't like they had any obvious mutual enemies any longer. Or so he thought.

Jones sighed softly, following Jack's train of thought. The train, it seemed, was going fairly much nowhere. "Nope. We both have people that want us dead, but to my knowledge no mutual enemies. Not any more..."

A feeling of distrust washed over the smaller man...he couldn't be sure what games Davy Jones was playing with him, but he could be sure that the man was still dangerous. "Well...dash it all. All I know is I don't want any more shots fired at me...and I don't want to see the likes of you any more. No offense, but you...give me the creeps." He shuddered, pushing past the Scot. "Let's pretend this never happened, shall we?"

Jones frowned, but relented. "Sounds like a wise idea."

---

What a horrible start to the week...and an equally horrible week to follow. Sleepless and exhausted, Jack had gone about his job in an entirely lacklustre manner. His nights were haunted by terrible memories of events of the past, every one shadowed by a tentacle-endowed visage. His days saw nothing but difficult customers coming and going, a perpetual nightmare forming as the days went by with next to no sales.

He knew he'd been drained of the life and zest he'd exude with far more passion than anyone else. Instead, he'd worry...more than anything, he did not want anything to do with Davy Jones. His debt, the Locker, their less-than-friendly past...he wanted none of it. By the time Friday had come and gone, he'd managed to work himself into a near-frenzy, the sheer worry that he would have to come to terms with Jones at some point or another panicking and torturing him more and more as the days went by.

Why he was so terrified he did not entirely understand - Jones had no crew as far as Jack could see, and hadn't attempted any more than pointing a gun at him. But that feeling he owed him something, and that he would come and get it, haunted him relentlessly. If anything, he felt almost...guilty. Terribly so, whatever that feeling was.

To ensure he actually got sleep at all, he spent Friday night drinking as much alcohol as he could possibly consume in one night without killing himself, and once done, passed out on the couch in an undignified mess of limbs.

The former half of Saturday was lost to drunken sleep. So inebriated he was, that for once there were no nightmares...

...until the nightmare of the morning's hangover became a reality as the shattered pirate's eyes met sunlight.

"Gawh..." He winced as the sound of his own voice proved to be too loud. Great...one of the most spectacular hangovers he'd had in years...considering he normally never managed to drink enough to get the better of his unthinkably high tolerance.

Still, he knew what would cure it. Stumbling awkwardly into the kitchen, he snatched a glass and filled it with cold water, guzzling the lot in one go and refilling the cup for a second round. Water...lots of water.

Followed by a cold shower...more water...and a ridiculously long piss straight after. After downing a coffee as well, the hammered pirate was starting to feel...well, blatantly less hammered. Time was often just the healer the doctor ordered, in this case with a generous helping or three of strong liquor; he'd almost forgotten what he'd been so haunted by as the sun hung low in the sky.

"Blimey, I've wasted most of my day!" The realisation hit with enough force to knock him clean off his recliner outside, landing him arse-first and backwards on the wooden deck. It was true...he'd woken up in the early afternoon and had spent a good few hours simply relaxing and willing away the remnants of a rather rotten, yet not unexpected hangover.

He scrambled to his feet, determined to achieve something other than sit and do nothing. Maybe a joust in the Pearl...

The nickname brought a smile to his face. Well, if he was going to be haunted by unpleasant memories of the past, he might as well bring with them far more enjoyable memories...and the name he'd chosen for his obsidian-coloured car seemed apt at the time.

Dipping below the horizon and leaving smatterings of pink and purple, the sun marked the end of another day...and the beginning of another weekend's nightlife. Dressed warmly for the cool night air, Jack parked his backside in the STi's stiff, bearhug-like Recaro seat and proceeded to fiddle with the sound system. He'd recently deciphered the damn thing and had managed to fiddle some modern music he didn't mind too much out of it. Music finally playing away in the background, heater on, windows wound right down, he hit the street in search of trouble.

Enthusiastic burbles from the black Impreza echoed about the city buildings as the vehicle slicked about the streets. Jack still wasn't sure what the allure of the beast was, considering it was a whole lot smaller and faster than the ships he'd prefer to be sailing (more of a dinghy in the scheme of things...a hellishly fast dinghy)...all he knew is he loved the sensations to the point it was about as much fun as a man could have with his pants still on.

That view had really only come into light in the last fortnight or so – ever since he'd raced that 'Legacy'. Silently, he hoped it would reappear...either that or something similar. It was about damn time he was able to break the law and enjoy it!

Up and down the coastal road he cruised, up and down the main road through the city...nothing but the usual 'boyracer' types in their rustbuckets. Nothing. How dull.

On a final pass down Quay St before resigning to a night at home in front of a bottle of wine, something caught Jack's eye. A familiar tail-light pattern from several cars up. Interesting...

It took not an ounce of effort for the STi to roar up the road behind the vehicle in question...and what do you know. Black Legacy with a sizable wing and even more sizable exhaust - no mistaking it.

The Impreza's enthusiastic spurt of speed was enough to send the Legacy flying; upon seeing the smaller Subaru blat up behind it, the Legacy's turbo spooled up and it took off fast enough to nearly leave skidmarks on the road.

Jack was in hot pursuit within no time - this was what he'd been waiting for all day!

The pair darted amongst traffic, screaming turbos and roaring exhausts polluting the night air with sheer noise. Slick and powerful, the STi stayed hot on the heels of the Legacy until they reached the top of their rev ranges - at that point, it would suddenly pull away sharply.

Before long the Legacy lurched across the empty street and darted up a steep, winding road leading away from the shore. Subaru home territory...both vehicle stuck like glue as they pushed absurd g-forces through corner after corner.

It was something Jack had not done since he'd driven the grey Impreza months ago; like battling high seas, there was something exhilarating about the danger of more violent territory.

The Legacy pulled away substantially from Jack's Type R as a roundabout finally caught up with them. Without warning, a deafening screech of tyres - the rear end of the Legacy swung around the front, encircling the roundabout loudly and pointing in directly towards the little concrete ring.

"...bastard!" Jack mumbled in surprise...how the heck did that thing manage that? Oh well...only one thing for it. Do it the only way he knew how.

After weighing anchor hard enough to be just above setting off the ABS, Jack yanked the wheel around as hard as was safe. Before he had his foot back on the throttle...in a split second...something overcame him. Without a second thought he gave in to the urge to fiddle with the scrollwheel by the handbrake, rolling it all the way back.

As his right foot hit the gas again...something different to the norm happened. Plenty of noise, for one. The tyres screamed as the STi lurched around the roundabout fully sideways, its driver not entirely sure how to control it without traction.

"Whoa! Hang on!" Jack's hands fought with the wheel as the car continued to howl around the roundabout. Before the machine finally manage to snap straight to chase the Legacy once more, the panicked pirate managed to sledge toward the kerb, snap-oversteer the arse of the car wide around the roundabout, and nearly end up on the wrong side of the road.

"Great fucking scott..." he hissed through clenched teeth as he roared off after the Legacy. "What the hell is that thing..."

Nevertheless, the chase continued back toward the waterfront. As much as Jack tried, he could only just keep up with the larger Subaru...yep, he was certainly more at home on the water. This 'Pearl' may be fast, but the Black Pearl was the fastest ship of her time!

It wasn't long before the leading Subaru finally pulled over into a beachside car park. Curiosity eating him alive - and considering the near-empty lot - Jack followed, parking up with a couple of spaces between him and the Legacy. As the car cooled down in idle he climbed out to meet the driver of this absurdly fast car...

"I thought'ye didn't want to see any more of me, Sparrow." Leaning against the open driver's door of the Legacy was a rather smug-looking redhead - but the eyes were unmistakable. What was going on?

"What in blue blazes..." Jack struggled to find his voice. "...Jones?"

"Aye." He smirked, slamming the door behind him before strutting towards the smaller man, confidence oozing out his pores. "Not exactly how you expected, am I?"

Indeed - instead of the writhing tentacles and green-hued flesh, this 'Jones' had the visage of a man perhaps in his early twenties. Barely olive skin and jaw-length ginger-coloured hair, he was nothing akin to the Davy Jones that haunted the seas centuries ago. He was however unmistakable; added to the hauntingly familiar voice were those piercing blue eyes, distinctive high cheekbones and trademark smirk. The eyes, in particular, showed a wisdom and harshness well beyond their owner's apparent physical age.

"Well, not a bloody thing like I'd expected, to be honest." Jack stammered as he backed away from the taller man. He was cornered within seconds and found himself pressed up against the passengers' side of his car. "So what do you want?"

Jones stopped a mere foot or so from the other. "Isn't it obvious?" He grinned, leaning in uncomfortably closely. Voice barely above a whisper, he continued, grin plastered firmly to his features. "Just wanted a race."

A jump of surprise later, Jack scowled. "What? So you're not here to take my soul, turn me into a fish-monster or otherwise make me pay dearly for anything in particular?"

"Hah!" Jones stepped away, unable to hold back an amused cackle. "Jack, you owe me nothing. Think about it!"

Of course, Sparrow couldn't help but sigh with relief.

"Honestly, Sparrow. We're stuck two hundred-odd years in the future. Neither of us has a ship, let alone a crew. You've been dead, rotting in the abyss, for more than two centuries, as have I." He grinned. "But seriously, lad, if I wanted something from you I'd have taken it long ago."

If he could have retracted his sigh of relief at that point, Jack would have. Smarmy bastard. "So the full truth of the matter is that you merely wanted a race?" Somehow, that was almost insulting.

Jones smirked as he turned back towards his own car. "Why not. You seem to have some idea of how to drive."

Trying to wash down the powerful cocktail of emotions he was experiencing with the usual bout of curiosity and potential kleptomania, Jack casually encircled the black Legacy, eyeing up every detail. "I see you've given this thing a name." He nodded down at the personalised number plate reading 'DTCHMN'.

"Aye." Perhaps it was a little pain, a little pride...the expression on Jones' face was difficult to read.

"Little bit of the past, eh?"

"The only pleasant memory of the past, you mean." Jones scowled down at the Legacy's rear before heading toward the front end.

"Interesting." Jack followed in his signature style, arms raised as per usual. "So...now that I'm sure you're not going to...eat me, or something equally as horrible...may I enquire as to why you appear to be...um..."

Jones stopped and whipped around to face Jack, which nearly resulted in the shorter of the pair wholloping face-first into him. "Lacking a few tentacles?"

Quick evasive action had Sparrow standing upright within a heartbeat, rather than flat on his back after walking into someone a few inches taller and wider. "Yes, that."

"Long story."

Why not hear it, then, Jack thought. I have all night...

Both men sat themselves a little way from their cars, perched atop the beachside rocky wall.

"You're well aware of what 'G-Corporation' is, aren't'ye?"

Jack nodded. "Yep. Had my fair share of their meddlings."

Jones chuckled softly. "Meddlings. Good way of describing it I suppose. Then you'd understand the nature of how we both came to be in this century I'd imagine."

It wasn't hard for Jack to quickly cover his experiences with G-Corp - his first confusing, near-terrifying month in the 21st Century. As Jones shared, it was evident he'd had the far harder run through the corporation - he'd been resurrected in a form no one had expected, considering the tentacles, lack of a nose and unusual skin.

It was even a surprise to Davy, who had noticed significant differences to what he knew the moment he'd regained consciousness; a breath of air came in either side of his face, rather than from the left alone. He'd quickly discovered the octopus-like pouch on the back of his head to be gone too, as with his crab-like arm and leg. All four limbs were simply discoloured human arms and legs...

Before long he found himself subjected to experiment after experiment as copious numbers of doctors and scientists tried to find the reason he was the way he was. Though he could understand them, his accent wasn't something they were accustomed to, and many simply disregarded him as not remarkably intelligent. Made sense to them, considering his 'mutations'. All this made for some dangerous frustrations for the sufferer involved.

A month of painful and at times humiliating procedures pressed on before anyone had any answers whatsoever. Jones had forced a full explanation out of one of the doctors when the rumours finally got the better of him - she relented, starting from the very beginning and explaining 'DNA' and the like to the mythical beast bordering on holding her hostage.

Jones' DNA, so it seemed, was once human...at this point, however, it was most definitely not. Quite a number of his genes had mutated - not in a dangerous or fatal way, but rather, in a way that simply described his mythological appearance in DNA form.

It meant that during the resurrection process, unlike Jack, Jones had not taken on his former human form. He'd been brought back in 'complete' form - instead of the mutations of the sea taking hold one by one, slowly, over time, they'd formed all at once, written to form directly from the DNA samples G-Corp had found. Evidently, they were from the old bones that had been dredged up from the bottom of the ocean...a detail he somehow wished they'd left alone.

All this information was threatening to throw Jack into overload. "So...uh...all that technobabble aside...why do you currently look a whole lot more like a man, rather than a...beast of sorts?"

"As I told you before, curses can take on different forms. This world hasn't completely lost its' magic yet..." Jones pulled one leg under the other - they'd been sitting on the rock wall a while by now, and it was starting to get a little uncomfortable. "I am no longer tied to the sea or the Flying Dutchman; the only thing I'm bound to is that cursed form. I'm still a man deep down, or 'human' as they like to say nowadays; strangely enough it was about two months after I was resurrected that I discovered I could still take on a 'human' form."

Jack's gaze had long since fixed on the blinking lights way out in the harbour - but he had by no means tuned Jones out.

"The first time it happened there was pain beyond comprehension...I thought I was dying. It was like being torn apart from the inside out. Despite it all, when I awoke I found myself looking almost exactly as you see me now." He'd aptly left out the part where he'd simply fainted from pain overload.

"Over the next month it happened four times...erattically, but about once a week. Then I'd change back after two days or so. Thankfully...the return to the cursed form came with one single blessing...none of that absurd pain."

Jones could feel brown eyes boring a hole in the side of his head. Though it seemed a quick glare from his own pale blue orbs was enough to avert the stare. "So, like I said Sparrow, you've had it easy. Always have."

He snorted indignantly. "Not necessarily...easier than you perhaps, but it hasn't been a walk in the park you know."

Laughing heartily, Jones leaned back and glared right back at Sparrow. "You'll have to let me know next time you mutate into a sea creature and have umpteen dozen tests performed on you against your will."

"Disfigurement isn't the only thing in this world that's hard." Jack's expression mirrored Jones' own determined glare. "Anyway..." In an effort to diffuse what would normally lead to one of their epic arguments, Jack hopped up, marched over to the Legacy, and stabbed at the bonnet a few times with an extended index finger. "Why's this so different to mine when you put your foot down?"

"A few things..." Jones followed the shorter pirate over to the black beast. "Yours is unmodified. Mine has a somewhat larger turbo and exhaust...it used to be a twin-turbo, but I grew tired of the power curve...so it's been converted."

Jack's eyes glazed over. "I won't even pretend to understand all of that. Do you actually understand all of this technobabble rubbish yourself, Jones?"

"Aye, I do." He patted the Legacy's bonnet proudly. "It's not that hard."

Completely distracted, the pair managed to spend another entire hour simply talking - switching between events of the past, time spent at G-Corp and the two black vehicles parked in the lot. It seemed that while Jones was in this youthful human form, it was easy for Jack to all but forget who he was...and just as easy for Jones to let it lie.

It was only when a security guard warned them their cars would be locked in if they didn't rack off within five minutes that it seemed a good idea to move on.

"Right. So...I guess I'll write to you at some stage then, eh?" Jack started towards the Impreza.

"That's what this is for, lad." Jones, smirking, reached into a pocket and pulled out a cellphone.

Jack paused. "For what, exactly? I've been given one but have no idea what to do with it."

Rolling his bright eyes dramatically, Davy motioned for Jack to hand his over. Grudgingly he did so, watching intently as Jones fumbled with the phones - one in each hand.

"Quite simple, really. If we know what the number for each of these is, we can use them to contact each other. Strange technology...but simple concept."

As he tapped away awkwardly, Jones became aware of the fact that Jack couldn't possibly get closer if he tried - the pirate was leaning right over his shoulder, fascinated by the two glowing screens in each of Jones' hands.

"Jack. Did anyone ever tell you that you have no concept of personal space?" Jones glowered across at him.

Jack whipped back and settled himself sitting beside Jones. "Erm...no, actually."

"Well then just sit tight and watch, would'ye? I don't need you huffin' down m'neck."

A few taps later, Davy's phone roared to life with a violent buzz and high-pitched series of beeps. He just about damn near dropped the wretched thing in surprise.

"Blasted, confounded...there you go, there's my number." He handed the phone back to Jack.

"Yes but...well, thanks..." Jack tucked the phone back into a pocket. "I guess I'll see you round, then."

A half-hearted wave from both parties later, and Jack was on his way again. What an evening...he had plenty to think about, yet somehow he was convinced he'd get a good sleep. As the city partied on until the wee hours, headed home and Jack drifted off into the first both sound and sober sleep he'd had in well over a week. Nightmares no longer plagued his dreams - happy thoughts once again filled his mind as it sailed off into the abyss aboard the Black Pearl, still very much alive and afloat in his dreams.