Chapter Seven - The Convergence
'"Are you meeting people?"
Yeah, she thought, you people.
"Not intentionally," she said.'
- Rainbow Rowell
It was a long time before they were able to leave the room and approach the captain's quarters. Or, at least, it felt like a very long time to Jessi, who had quickly grown bored of listening to essentially nothing while John kept himself entertained by running his hands through his hair like he was surprised that he even had any at all. For a while she tried to distract herself by thinking of things like how long it had been in their world while she was stuck here and if Herman had gotten himself hurt already and if their mother missed them and what exactly the worlds being destroyed really entailed.
The thoughts grew old quickly. It wasn't as though she had thought of much else since her arrival.
So instead she chose to count birds as she spotted them flying over the waves, but the birds turned out to be circling the same area of water repeatedly so it was all one group and she only actually got to twelve and then that was over with.
She wondered again how long it was before Ray and the others got here, and realized she still had no idea how many pirates they would be up against. She wasn't sure she cared anymore. All she knew was that she was going to take whatever Hook had that was worth stealing and then… well, that was about all she had thought of. Truthfully, she wasn't even sure she wanted to be involved in the fight at all. Given the way Neverland operated, even if they won it wouldn't be a very decisive victory and any peace that resulted certainly wouldn't last long at all. Maybe they could just have the upper hand long enough to get everyone off of the boat and then Jessi could leave and everyone else could fight in the ocean. Let the mermaids get involved or something. Spice things up for a change. She'd be doing them a favor, she reasoned.
Jessi was pulled out of her thoughts by the sudden sound of footsteps on the deck above them. Finally. She looked across the room and locked eyes with John, who tilted his head upwards to listen as the two above them moved across the room.
The door above them opened and then closed, and the footsteps continued across the deck. There was silence for a few seconds. Jessi counted them under her breath, moving quietly closer towards the door, eyes trained upwards.
"We should go now," she whispered.
John nodded his agreement, and the two had to try to remain as silent as possible while swiftly removing themselves from the room and making their way to the top deck. For the first time in a while, they'd been graced with the luck of not running into anyone as they ascended the stairs, though they had to keep their heads ducked low as one pirate passed close to the stairwell leading to the top deck. Once they were in the clear, they sprinted towards a small cluster of crates near a pile of rope. It was a decent enough spot for one person to crouch behind, but the two of them were rather obvious and Jessi chose to keep things quick. They had already discussed their plans, and it was all fairly straightforward. Get in, look for anything, get out. Maybe steal something. Maybe trash the place- that hadn't really been part of the discussions, but Jessi thought it was a rather sound part of the plan regardless.
"Alright," Jessi said under her breath, and slowly stood up after scanning the area again, motioning with one hand for John to remain crouched behind the crate. "You keep watch. If someone starts to get close, just, uhh… let me know. Somehow. Do a bird call or something."
John furrowed his brow. "Do I know any bird calls?" he asked himself. Jessi sighed, and was about to tell him to just forget about the whole thing, but John spoke up again before she could with a shake of his head. "Never mind. How about I just whistle instead?"
Jessi studied him for a second. "Can you whistle?"
"I think so. Otherwise I wouldn't have suggested it," John pointed out, though he didn't look entirely convinced. He seemed constantly surprised by his own words.
"Oookay. Well. That... works," Jessi said with a shrug, as there wasn't much more time left to argue, though she wondered if that would just attract attention to him rather than her (and then wondered if he was aware of and okay with that). She wasn't particularly against the idea of John getting captured in her place, though it did mean she was down one potential link to someone who could very likely be at least somewhat important.
Shaking it aside, she gave John a thumbs up before hurrying to the door and slipping into the room and shutting herself in. If he was willing to give himself up to become imprisoned rather than her, that was his own business. She would deal with it if it came to that.
Once inside, she shifted a chair and a couple other various objects sitting around nearby in front of the door, creating a makeshift barricade just as they'd done previously. It wasn't going to be effective, not really, but it gave her a second to prepare if someone did try to get through the door. It would at least be noisy.
She paused for a few seconds to make sure she couldn't hear any footsteps or voices outside, and then let out a short breath of satisfied relief, turning to study the room she was in. She only vaguely recognized the layout from the movie, but she didn't take the time to dwell on that fact. She'd already seen more of this ship than she cared to think about, and the coloring of the floor and the walls was strangely unnatural in the same way Oswald was. It was difficult to focus on and only grew more confusing the more she tried to understand it. This entire thing was more of a headache than she could be bothered to deal with.
Instead, Jessi hightailed it towards the desk, running her hands over the papers atop it, shifting them to the side to search underneath. She scanned through most of them, looking for significant names or places. Most things didn't matter at all- notes scribbled down regarding business on the ship or, more often than not, Peter Pan. Perhaps worth grabbing under any other circumstance, but she didn't particularly want to become involved with him in any capacity. There was some speculation on the events taking place in Neverland over the last couple days, which didn't prove anything other than Hook probably didn't have anything to do with whatever had happened. She figured none of his guesses were correct enough to bring back to the castle to show the others, and instead tossed them to the side, letting the papers fall off the desk and onto the floor. She quickly tried the drawers of the desk, but found them to be locked, and with a frustrated grunt she went back to searching atop the desk.
She didn't have to look much longer before she found something of interest. A map- a map of a place that clearly wasn't Neverland, given it wasn't an island and featured no beaches or forests. But it looked to be a work in progress. The basic land shape was outlined, and things such as rivers and dots that perhaps corresponded to cities had been made, but there was no labels on it. There wasn't even an X to mark the spot or anything, just a handful of circled areas of interest… or markings that indicated something else. She couldn't be sure, not without knowing where it was a map of.
But someone at the castle might know. They had to know, surely at least one person had a basic understanding of geography. Assuming, she thought, that this world even bothered with concepts such as geography. For all she knew it was constantly moving, nothing staying in its proper place. That would be befitting of a freakishly annoying cartoon world.
Carefully, Jessi folded up the map and tucked it into her bag. Another scan over the few papers remaining on the desk revealed nothing more of particular interest, and she swiped them to the floor just as she had done with the others in a brief fit of smug spite. She tried the drawers one more time, debating whether it would be a safe risk to bring John in here to pick them open, and then did another quick scan of the room to dismiss the tingling on the back of her neck.
Her breath caught in her throat.
There was someone standing on the other side of the room.
He was next to the hammock, and Jessi was angry at herself briefly for not checking to see if it had been occupied when she'd walked in. This thought only lasted for a split-second, though, as her mind quickly processed the rest of the situation. The guy wasn't a pirate, or at least he didn't look like a pirate. He looked too young, around her age or a bit older. And he was wearing… well, frankly, he wasn't wearing much at all.
"Who are you supposed to be?" He asked.
"Why aren't you wearing clothes?" Jessi squeaked, not long after.
The man gestured pointedly at the red speedo he was sporting, and then at the sunglasses covering his eyes (indoors, Jessi might add), as if that ensemble counted as a proper outfit.
It did not.
"That's not-" Jessi found herself unable to speak, trying to keep her eyes pinned on the wall above the guy's head but discovering that it was hard to remain in control of the situation when that was the case. She cleared her throat, her mind simultaneously trying to process the sheer ridiculousness of the situation and decide which emotion she ought to be feeling, cycling from disgust to disbelief to rage. It wasn't even as though the guy was unattractive- he was obnoxiously conventionally attractive, on the other hand- but Jessi could think of very few things she wanted to see less than a man in a speedo at the current moment. Or any moment, upon further consideration. "Those aren't. Pirate clothes."
"I'm not a pirate," the guy said, sounding as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, and then he cast a look at Jessi's outfit, lowering the sunglasses so he could peer over the top of them. It allowed her to see just how judgemental his gaze was, and it lingered on her ratty shoes and tangled hair. As if he was in any position to judge given his near lack of an outfit entirely. "Those aren't pirate clothes."
"I know," Jessi said testily, and any feeling of being uncomfortable was replaced with indignation at the way he'd studied her. She felt less like she was defending herself against not wearing a pirate outfit and instead defending her choice in footwear, which was a lot more rational than wearing nothing but a speedo and sunglasses while on a pirate ship in a Disney movie. "It's not meant to be a pirate outfit. What are you- were you in the hammock? What happened to your clothes?"
The man was surprisingly calm with the whole situation, though he did sound annoyed at the line of questioning. "Are you really that hung up on it?" He sighed, and then sounded as though he was patiently walking her through the rest of the explanation. "You just broke into a pirate ship, I was trying to take a nap on a pirate ship- there's more important things to worry about than my outfit. And this is," he cut off Jessi as she went to protest, "an outfit, okay? I'm wearing clothes. Don't you judge me."
"Barely," Jessi sputtered.
It was hard to see his expression given his eyes were covered by the sunglasses again, but she got the feeling he wasn't impressed by her response to the situation, and then his head tilted towards the desk behind her. Jessi could sense the shift in the conversation before it actually took place. "Looking for something?" he asked, and Jessi suddenly felt very wary about the fact that he had been chilling in the hammock in the captain's room. Perhaps she had misjudged the pirate outfit thing. Perhaps he was still associated with Hook.
She studied his face for a second or two, trying to dissect his tone, and then thought that he wouldn't have asked the question if he had seen her steal the map for certain. But he had been smart enough to pull the power in the situation out from under her feet, robbing her of any proper line of questioning during her confusion. The ball was in his court, and the advantage in the conversation was his- Jessi really hated people who understood other people.
"Nothing," she answered curtly, still stuck in disbelief over everything about him. Then, as the first answer seemed rather weak, she added, "it's none of your business." An attempt to gain back steady footing.
"Wow," he said, but his tone wasn't even slightly astounded despite the set of her jaw and the purposeful lowering of her brow. "Someone's moody."
"You," she said with certainty, because her brain had finally decided on at least one thing, "are not from Neverland."
"I-" the guy looked at her (or at least she assumed he did). "You know about that?"
"...Yes?" Jessi guessed, suddenly unsure what he meant, but at least they both appeared to be equally surprised at this point.
"That I'm not from here. I mean, you're obviously not from here either," he gestured at her outfit with that same look of distaste. "But the pirates didn't really want to talk about it. Crazy. It's obvious, right? But they avoided it so much I was like, Jesus, I better not mention it or it'd blow their minds."
Jessi debated how much she wanted to tell him and then decided that the answer was, actually, nothing. She wanted to tell him nothing. Not yet.
She looked towards the ceiling for a moment before leveling her gaze at him again. "I'm not getting into any of that until you answer some questions first. You clearly know this is- well," she gestured around the room. "It's Captain Hook. Obviously. What are you doing in here? Do you- are you working with him?"
He'd looked at first as though he wanted to protest having to answer questions at all, but at that he opened and closed his mouth wordlessly before finding himself able to respond. "That," he said, raising a finger, "is complicated."
"Complicated?" Jessi echoed in disbelief. "No it isn't! You either are or you aren't."
"First of all, that view's going to get you nowhere in the real world. Come on now. Second of all, he and I, I mean, are we teammates or something? Uh, no. Are we enemies?" he paused. "...Not necessarily-"
Jessi stared in unabashed bewilderment. She'd been so used to expecting people like Kat and to Ray- people who also knew full well they were in a Disney film, but obeyed the laws of the universe well enough. Laws like 'don't team up with villains'. It seemed only natural for teenagers to want to join the Lost Boys, but what on earth was this guy hanging around with Captain Hook for?
"You're working," she said slowly, as though wanting to confirm she had heard him right or perhaps simply trying to get a point across, "with a villain. A straight-up classic Disney villain."
"Don't phrase it like that."
"How else should I phrase it? You're not denying it."
"He is working with me, not the other way around."
"That doesn't make any sense."
"I could explain it if you would- you know what? Actually, no, I'm not going to explain it." He crossed his arms at her, the both of them reduced to petty arguments over rational discussions in the midst of indignant confusion. "I don't even know you, why should you get an explanation?"
Fair, thought Jessi, who was beginning to realize that she really didn't care what this guy was planning or doing in general and if they had to kick him off the ship with Hook then so be it. She'd gotten what she came for, anyway, and he didn't seem like he was immediately going to raise any alarms. She'd wasted way too long here talking about things that objectively didn't matter at all with a guy who was impossible to get a read on. Speedo boy and his perfect hair could be dealt with later, if it came to that. As it was, she just shook her head at him and turned towards the door.
"You're right. Forget it."
"Hey," the guy said as she made to exit, "I still don't know what you were doing in here. How'd you even get on the ship?"
"If you don't have to answer questions then I don't have to, either." She suddenly wondered if, given his outfit (or lack thereof), he'd just fallen directly onto the boat from the real world. "So it doesn't matter. I'm leaving now, anyway," she said over her shoulder.
And then he started to say something else, but Jessi didn't quite catch what it was. Another noise had distracted her for the moment, though it at first was difficult to pinpoint where it had come from or what it was. It'd been a sharp, high pitched noise from outside the room somewhere.
And the other individual in the room had heard it, too. "What was-"
"Shh," Jessi hissed, and turned towards the door just as she heard it again, louder this time. More frantic. And this time, Jessi recognized the two-tone note.
The first words that flew through her mind didn't suit Neverland much at all. In a wave of panic, and with the sudden realization that literally none of their previous conversation had mattered in the slightest, she grabbed speedo man by the shoulder and yanked him around the other side of the desk, attempting to push him into a crouch. But in the midst of his protests she was unable to get either of them out of sight in time before the door flew open.
The barricade was entirely useless, which made sense when Jessi noticed that the two pirates standing immediately behind Hook- and yes, it was Hook- were incredibly large in both stature and strength. Positioned in the opened doorway of the room, their gazes were directly on the desk where Jessi stood half-crouching next to speedo boy, who looked vaguely annoyed but otherwise not out of sorts.
There was surprised silence all around for several seconds, and Jessi could practically see the puzzle pieces aligning behind Hook's eyes as his gaze suddenly snapped towards speedo guy, mouth quirking into a distantly familiar snarl. The silence was broken just like that, voice raising into something very near to a yell.
"I knew better than to trust you, boy!"
"Whoa, hey," speedo guy held his hands up placatingly, and though he sounded diplomatic Jessi could see what might have been slight panic in his tense face. Or perhaps it was just inconvenience. Watching the two of them, Jessi wondered how on earth he had managed to get Hook to work with him if that was really the case. What were they even teaming up for to begin with? "Let's not be hasty, here! You and me, we had some good terms going on, alright? So-"
"-So here you are, working with a stowaway! A stowaway," Hook's gaze traveled towards the papers scattered across the floor, and his gaze snapped back to Jessi, "and a thief."
"I didn't take anything," Jessi lied.
At the same time, the other man made a noise of protest, spreading his hands out to begin the most poorly thought out pitch Jessi had ever heard. "Why is everyone assuming I'm working with someone else? It's all… it's a convenient, very temporary agreement. We're not working, okay, it's just business. So let's all take a couple steps back-"
Hook jerked his head towards a couple of pirates hovering behind him, and when one of the larger ones advanced, Jessi noticed the ropes in his hands. In a last-ditch effort at peace, she held her hands up in surrender.
It went about as well as could be expected, and being tied to the mast was more uncomfortable than it looked. The discomfort may have been magnified by the complaining going on behind Jessi, though.
"This is your fault. I had a good thing going, I was this close to convincing him to dropping me off somewhere tropical with a lot of gold. You-"
"You were not," Jessi spat, jerking her head sideways to try and glare at the guy tied to the other side of the mast, and she heard him exhale sharply in frustration. "He didn't seem even remotely interested in any of your stupid business talk back there. If you're honestly dumb enough to try working with Captain Hook then it's your own fault." He had been playing him from the start, Jessi knew. But then, on the other hand, she got the impression that Hook had been played just as easily.
Was it so hard, she thought, to just make an honest and fair deal with anybody in this place? Why did it always have to be so annoyingly complicated in Neverland?
"Working with him is a very strong way of phrasing it," he said, and she felt him jerk his hands towards the mast in an attempt to loosen the ropes. "It was a temporary alliance at best."
"Temporary alliance? You're just using synonyms at this point. It sounds more like you've just been lying to everyone to benefit yourself."
"You know what? Maybe that's true. And it's been working out great so far."
"You're currently tied to the mast of a pirate ship, most likely about to be executed."
"And guess which one of us got us into that mess? I had him wrapped around my finger right up until you walked in." He sighed, short and frustrated. "Not sure what you did to piss him off."
"I'm a good person," Jessi spat, and then paused. "Mostly. I mean, sort of. Just- good enough that villains don't let me lounge around in their hammocks! That's what I did to piss him off, I was a semi-decent individual who happened to not be working with him!"
"Those are some awfully big assumptions you're making there."
"You have no room to comment on how good of a person I am. Zero. None."
"Yeah, well, you don't know anything about me, either! You can't criticize me just because I was trying to get off of this island using a slightly different method than you."
"Slightly different?"
"You're sneaking around and trying to steal things. I was pretending to team up with a villain. Neither of us are shining beacons of moral purity here."
Jessi grit her teeth in indignant frustration and tugged at the bonds around her wrists, unable to find any protest against what he was saying. She just hated his smug attitude.
"I'm only trying to leave," she grunted as she yanked at the ropes, "because I have something important to do. I'm trying to help people. People other than myself." Sort of, at least. She felt that perhaps her argument didn't sound very strong when she knew it was a lie. She looked across the deck, and briefly saw John peer at them from over the top of the crate he was hiding behind before he ducked back down.
"Right. Okay. Sure." Speedo guy didn't sound wildly convinced. "Like who?"
"Like the backup I have coming," Jessi said. "A genuine temporary alliance, or... whatever you called it. Maybe you could learn from it."
Or she hoped as much. She strained her neck to peer towards the shore, wondering if they could see her tied to the mast and if that really mattered in terms of their attack plans. She felt as though she hadn't mattered in terms of attack plans at all, and wondered what the point of all this was.
She found it hard to focus on much else but their bickering. Hook was having some sort of conversation with… she didn't even know, because they were over behind her back and craning her neck around the mast was awkward at best and painful at worse. John hadn't glanced out from his hiding spot since he had ducked back down, and Jessi somehow doubted he would be much help at all regardless. She couldn't even work up genuine concern over her safety because the whole thing was an annoying mess of posturing and waiting and she was sweaty and annoyed and her wrists hurt from the rope.
Their arguing faded after that, neither of them wanting to carry on with a topic that didn't seem to be getting them anywhere. Besides that, one of the pirates keeping an eye on them to make sure they didn't actually get the ropes loose was giving them stern looks and Jessi really didn't want to make the situation any worse than it already was. For the next couple of minutes they both twisted their wrists around in their ropes without much success, and then Jessi turned back to look at the crates John was behind, frustrated with his lack of helpfulness. The guy didn't seem like much of a fighter, sure, but hiding while they were stuck like this was just annoying.
Someone speaking loudly near her drew Jessi out of her thoughts, not for the first time that day, and she grudgingly tilted her head sideways to look at Hook. He was looking back at them, almost expectant.
"What?" Jessi asked, far beyond tired and fed up.
As displeased as Hook seemed with the fact that Jessi quite clearly hadn't been listening, he had no problem repeating himself. Disney villains, Jessi thought, and their tendencies towards the dramatic. His tone, though, was just short of an all-out growl. Actually, he seemed quite a bit more agitated than Jessi remembered. His voice wasn't as… well, it had never been straight-up comedic from what she recalled, but it was a step in the other direction entirely. Noticeably so, now that she thought about it. Of course it made sense- he wasn't quite an actual cartoon, not in the way Oswald or the ship seemed to be. He felt more real than he would have otherwise, and naturally his voice couldn't sound as identical to whoever had voiced him back in their world. It was strange thinking of them that way. Like they were real people being portrayed by paint and voice imitations.
"I said," he repeated amidst it all. He raised one hand, and Jessi couldn't quite help her gaze widening at the gun in his grasp. "Which of you is first?"
"Just skipping the walking the plank thing entirely, then," Jessi said before she could stop herself. To her surprise, the man tied to the other side of the mast didn't immediately throw her under the bus to be shot first. His silence wasn't much better, though. "Didn't know you were in some kind of hurry or we would've stopped yelling at each other."
Though her tone had been wry, she didn't miss the way Hook's gaze flickered sideways, looking towards the treeline near the shore. Jessi followed his line of vision.
Oh.
Oh.
If he didn't outright know about the oncoming attack, then he strongly suspected. Perhaps he had always suspected, given the way things operated in Neverland.
She squinted into the trees and saw the barest hints of movement.
What a colossal waste of time and energy this all turned out to be, thought Jessi, and then the treeline exploded.
Not literally. But the noise from the trees was rather loud as a bunch of kids shot out of them- and that was literal, the way they launched into the air and over the boat. Out of the group of them, Jessi picked out Ray fairly easily due to her sweatshirt, though the relief was short-lived as she realized that they all had slingshots in their hands and she very much didn't trust their aim enough to not worry about getting hit in the head with a stone.
The guy tied to the other side of the mast flinched as they soared above them, and Jessi wasn't sure if he was caught off-guard by the flying kids part or the fact that the attention was instantly taken off of the two of them as the pirates started shouting. "What the-"
"That's my backup," Jessi said over the noise as shouting filled the ship around them. Clearly all of the pirates had been suspecting an attack- that or they were constantly prepared for it, because within mere seconds fighting picked up on the deck. She couldn't quite feel relief, though she was grateful for the distraction. More than anything she wanted to get out of here, wait out the fighting and then leave. Leave and never come back. This place was fifteen different kinds of annoying, even for Disney, and having extra people to keep track of now was an added pain. John, at least, could keep out of the way well enough. And… well, how easy would it be to just leave Ray? That would solve one problem.
In the midst of it all, Jessi tried to follow the battle as best she could, though it was all chaos as far as she could tell. Kat was only briefly leading the bunch, and then Jessi watched as she landed near the helm. Though it appeared she was attempting to direct the battle (Jessi couldn't entirely hear any orders she was providing), her position out of the way of any major scuffle was telling. Hook seemed to be busy trying to keep no less than three of the Lost Boys at bay, and the rest were really just going all-out with their slingshots. Because flying kids with rocks was surely as much of a battle plan as anyone needed.
Stones rained down all around them, and in the chaos of the shouting and the running pirates surrounding them Jessi spotted John again, this time weaving his way around the others. He must have remained behind the crates this whole time, and Jessi wondered how he had managed to remain undetected when he hadn't been subtle in watching the earlier proceedings. His whistle back when she was in the room had been loud enough to hear through the doors, surely someone on the deck must have heard that, too. Either the pirates were clueless or he was weirdly stealth-inclined despite it all.
As he approached them, he scanned the deck before darting out to retrieve a knife that had been knocked to the planks, and then returned to carefully start sawing away at the ropes.
"Hey," said Jessi, agitated, as she turned her neck to watch him saw away at their bindings, "thanks a lot for helping out earlier. You know, when he threatened to shoot us."
John looked briefly guilty, pausing in his actions only for the blink of an eye. "I would've stepped in if he actually went for it," he rationalized. "I had an eye on things. But I- I don't think I really could've fought him. It was safer to wait. Can't-"
"-be too careful, you said that earlier," Jessi groused. But she let the subject drop. She didn't quite take John for the type to just abandon her to the mast because she was grouchy, but she'd rather not see if this day could get any worse if she could help it. She felt one of the ropes fray enough that she could wriggle her wrists. "Hurry. You can just leave the other guy," she suggested.
"Leave him?" John glanced between the two, and then gave her a look. "Is that your idea of makin' friends?"
"I don't even know his name but I can promise you we're not friends."
"I can hear you," speedo guy complained, tucking his legs closer so as not to get them caught up in the scuffle on the deck. He looked rather displeased with the whole situation. "I'm right here."
John looked back towards him, apologetic. "Sorry, son." He turned his attention to the other guy's bonds as Jessi's ropes fell away entirely from her wrists, and she rubbed at the red marks that had been left behind before waving a hand to catch John's attention.
"I'm serious, just leave him," she said.
"Jessi..."
"He's working for Hook!"
John glanced between the two of them again at that, sitting back on his heels to better examine the situation at hand. "And that's… bad." He seemed uncertain.
"Yes! Yes, it's bad."
"I am not working for him," the stranger corrected, looking affronted.
"Okay, fine. It's complicated. Whatever. John, do whatever you want," she said, and she meant it because frankly she couldn't worry about keeping track of him when she still had to find Ray and, ideally, get out of the way of the fight until she could find some way to help without getting shot. "I'm not cutting him loose."
Over her shoulder, she saw John proceed with freeing him after looking at her for a moment, and she grit her teeth as speedo guy scrambled away from the mast as soon as the ropes were loose. Absently, she scanned the deck for Ray, but her attention was quickly drawn back to the helm. Yekaterina was waving her over, half-crouched behind the wheel.
"Just make sure you get out of the way," Jessi told John before he had the chance to turn away. "Out of sight again. Watch me, though. We're gonna get out of here sooner rather than later, I think."
"Aren't you going to help?" He asked, looking towards the ongoing skirmish.
"Are you?" Jessi challenged, and he drew himself up slightly.
"I could very well try," he said, and she wondered if she had vastly misjudged him and he was actually going to attempt to fight just out of spite.
"Why?" Jessi asked. "It isn't going to matter. It's not like we outnumber them now or anything. We've just got. Like. A handful of kids on our side."
He winced at that. "I'll admit, I'm not sure how I feel about kids using slingshots, of all things, but-" they both ducked into a crouch as one of the Lost Boys swooped over them, whooping. "-they're doin' pretty well."
"They aren't going to win this."
"Never underestimate the little people," John said.
"Do you read those in books or come up with them yourself?"
John made an uncertain gesture and Jessi shook her head.
"Never mind. Keep an eye on the kid in the green sweater for me, alright? I need to talk to her before we leave," she turned and pointed out Ray, who had taken a position up by the sails and was quite clearly having the time of her life.
John looked as though he had more to ask, but he settled on nodding in agreement instead. "Good luck," he offered, and Jessi watched as he dashed across the deck. He followed after speedo guy, who had opted to start climbing his way up to a higher portion of the ship over on the other end. John made an impressive leap up a couple crates and scaled it with practiced ease, which was slightly odd, but Jessi didn't have much more time to dwell on it.
She instead found her way to Kat, who hadn't moved a muscle throughout most of the fight. She was surprisingly straight-faced given the ongoings surrounding the, but then again it wasn't as though the battle was taking a serious turn any time soon. It was almost pathetic how much of a stalemate it had become, given how many pirates there were and who exactly they were fighting against.
"Hey," said Jessi, slightly out of breath after climbing the stairs so quickly to reach the helm. "Look, can we-"
"You should go," Kat said, cutting her off.
Jessi blinked. "Like… do you mean off the island?"
Kat nodded, and Jessi's shoulders slumped in relief, though her mind didn't quite understand why this was happening.
"Okay. Well, uh, actually, that's exactly what I was about to say. You guys seem to have everything under control and all, so… wait. You- what was all that about?" Jessi demanded. "The keeping track of pirates thing. Actually, going onto the boat in general. If you're just gonna let me leave before it's even over, I- I mean, I'm not complaining," she said quickly, "but you kind of just wasted my time. And a pretty big chunk of my sanity, I think."
And the battle wasn't even serious- it didn't even remotely matter, not like she'd at first believed. She ducked her head back behind the barrel again for half a second as a rock flew overhead and watched as Ray knocked another pirate on the head with a stone from her slingshot. She resisted the urge to pull her back down to safety- she was obviously faring better than Jessi was.
"I needed you out of the way," Kat said. "We had to get things ready. Aside from the battle plan."
"Things?" Jessi asked, eyebrows raising at the vague term. Why she bothered asking questions of teenagers who hardly knew what they were doing, she wasn't sure.
"Your transport out of Neverland," Kat said, and for a second she cast her gaze sideways towards Jessi. The way she held herself, suddenly tense about the shoulders, was suspicious. Trying too hard to act right in her choices, sure of her authority. Her tone didn't quite follow through. "I wasn't entirely honest about giving you the boat."
Jessi stared at her. "I'm going to need a whole lot more elaboration than that," she said finally.
"We don't quite have enough dust to get the ship off the ground long enough to actually make it anywhere. It's too big. And we had to use dust to launch our attack." She faltered. Jessi wondered where on earth the fairies had all gone off to, and how they'd managed to stay together and why nobody bothered to stockpile anymore fairy dust than whatever meager amount they apparently had left. "Our attack that we haven't even won yet."
And she wasn't sure if she could win, Jessi thought. Even if they did, what would they do? Leave the pirates to die? Would that even work out given the way Disney seemed to operate?
Not like any of the questions really mattered.
"You lied about the dust?" Jessi, despite her best attempts at keeping her tone even, couldn't quite suppress the outrage she felt at being tricked by a teenager who had been sucked into this world straight out of Hot Topic. "You lied about being able to help me get off of this island?"
"I slightly exaggerated the amount of dust we actually have left," Kat crossed her arms, jerking her chin up in some sort of silent challenge, though her eyes briefly darted to the side. Like she couldn't keep up with the scale of her own games. "I didn't lie to you about being able to get you off of the island. I wasn't sure if you would agree to the deal if I told you the real plan."
"So you want us to just fly solo," Jessi guessed, already thinking of the height and trying to keep everybody in line and rationing out dust. "Great. Look, I needed the ship because I'm trying to get a lot of people back to where I'm supposed to go. Ideally." Jessi didn't mention her doubts about the goal as a whole or the fact that she would rather die than have a whole ship full of Disney characters to transport around regardless of how much they could help the world from ending. "And I'm pretty sure a ship would be able to fly for a lot longer than we could."
"You're not going to fly solo. I have another form of transportation for you. Ray will take you there. That's what I meant when I said we were getting things ready."
As if she'd been eavesdropping up until that point (and she probably had), Ray suddenly landed behind Kat, momentarily pulling herself away from the bulk of the battle. Jessi was vaguely impressed at how well the other kids were keeping the pirates away from the helm, and out of the corner of her eye she watched John dart back over towards them, seemingly taking the fact that Ray was back with Jessi as some kind of signal to head back over. She had told him to keep an eye on her. Speedo boy stumbled after him, arms over his head and ducking low. Honestly, Jessi was surprised he had survived so long, even being out of the direct line of action. She wondered if he was honestly just sticking with John because he'd cut the ropes off for him or if John had gone over there just to retrieve him.
Jessi looked back towards Ray, arching an eyebrow at the kid's smug expression. "I'm not taking Ray with me."
"No," Ray agreed, "But I'm taking you with me! I know where the b- where, uh, the new transport is," she corrected herself, stubbornly deciding to keep it a secret and crossing her arms across her chest.
Jessi cast a look at Yekaterina.
"She's been given a crash-course on how to work with the dust," Kat said, arching an eyebrow to mirror Jessi's own, and Jessi hated that she couldn't get away from snide kids. How much of Kat sending Ray away was to eliminate any doubts regarding her shoddy leadership, she wondered? "And you haven't. You have to take her."
"Plus somebody has to go and find Peter," Ray insisted.
"It can't be that hard to figure out how to get something flying. And," Jessi turned back towards Ray, "why do you still think this has anything to do with Peter Pan? He's not even remotely who I'm looking for. I could've sworn we already talked about this."
"Why are you always fighting about everything?" Speedo boy's accusatory voice sounded as he cautiously emerged from where he'd been crouched behind the helm. "She said we can get off this island so let's go already."
"You," Jessi began, "are not coming with me either."
"Who even is that?" Ray asked.
"He's nobody," said Jessi. "He's staying here. Look, I'll take Ray if I have to, and I already told John-"
"Who's that?" Ray asked again.
"John Doe," said John, and for a second it looked for all the world like he was about to bow but instead he went for a handshake after a moment of hesitation.
Ray squinted at him. "That's not your real name."
"Actually," Jessi said, "it is." But if Ray was sticking around for real then she'd have plenty of time to go over that later- after all, Ray stood the best chance of figuring out who he was.
While they'd been speaking, Kat had been focused on speedo boy. It was only then that she spoke up.
"Blaine Prescott?"
"Who?" Ray asked for the third time. This time around Jessi nearly echoed the question.
Kat glanced at Jessi. "He's a model."
Blaine arched his eyebrows pointedly at her.
"The Prescott family," Kat continued. The entire group ducked as a knife flew above them. "Everyone knows them."
"I don't-" Jessi paused, searching her memory for the name, and then shook her head. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"They're rich," Yekaterina supplied unhelpfully. It made sense, Jessi guessed. She was sixteen or something, teenagers were always into celebrities and rich families or whatever.
"Okay," Jessi shrugged. "That's great. For them. I guess." She wasn't quite sure why she should care in the slightest, and how out of touch she had to seem to not know about them, but it was by far the least important topic on her mind in that moment. "It doesn't really matter. Let's just… go. You're sure you guys have got this?" She asked just for the sake of confirmation- she already knew what the answer would be.
Kat nodded. Jessi didn't point out that she was very deliberately out of the way of the fight, not even giving orders. She supposed the actual hierarchy of the Lost Boys wasn't an important matter to be concerned about, given it was all one big game of pretend, but she found herself wondering how she would continue to hold them up if she kept going on like this.
"Great," she said again. "John, Ray," Jessi tilted her head, looking in the direction of the shore.
"We're gonna swim there," Ray said, falling far too easily into the leadership position she'd temporarily been gifted with. "I'm not wasting any dust on you guys."
"I- fine. Whatever," Jessi didn't have the energy to argue at this point.
"What about him?" Kat asked, pointing at Blaine. "He isn't staying here. He's too old to be a Lost Boy."
Jessi furrowed her brow. "So leave him with the pirates then."
"We're kicking the pirates off the ship as soon as we win," Kat said. "They're walking the plank."
Jessi strongly debated just telling her to send Blaine off the deck with them, but as annoying as he was she didn't exactly have a genuine enough reason to leave him to the sharks like that. Not to mention the fact that Hook clearly wasn't on good terms with him anymore, if he ever really had been in any capacity. She felt the slightest tinge of guilt for trying to leave him tied to the mast- she hardly knew the guy, after all, it wasn't really his fault he was aggravating when she was already having an awful time with just about everything. He clearly wasn't having a much better day.
She glanced at Blaine, and he raised his hands slightly. "Look," he said, "I just want to get off of this island. Drop me off in Hawaii. Or, like, Paris or something. I don't even care." He paused. "Actually, I do care. A bit. It has to be somewhere nice, I'm not going to Kansas or something."
She looked back to Kat. "Whatever transport you got is big enough for him to tag along so I can drop him off somewhere, right?" Her voice held nothing but exasperated defeat.
Kat nodded, and Jessi sighed.
"You," Jessi pointed a finger at Blaine, "are getting off at the first stop we make it to. The very first one. No matter where it is. Non-negotiable."
"Hold on-" Blaine started to protest.
"Come on," Ray whined, impatient. "I thought we were leaving ages ago! I already have to miss out on the rest of the fight for this, I didn't sign up for standing around and waiting, too."
Jessi glanced at her, and then looked back to the gathered group and found herself wondering just how she'd gotten stuck with as many people as she had. But as much as she hated them tagging along, she hated Neverland far more. Perhaps it was because she had so little to do with the series of events that had taken place there. That she was tired of being along for the ride when she didn't care about any of the proceedings. Or maybe she just wanted something rational to happen for at least a second.
"You can swim, can't you?" She looked towards John as Ray and Blaine moved to peer over the side of the deck at the relatively shallow water. Blaine looked athletic enough that she figured he'd be fine, though she couldn't say she felt any real concern one way or another in that regard. And Ray certainly intended to fly above them with whatever dust she had left.
John looked calculatingly at the waves. "I guess we'll find out," he said, not sounding very secure in the statement.
Jessi thought that summed up the whole trip rather well. The lack of planning. The whole 'nothing working out' thing. It would be fitting if they all drowned halfway to the shore, she supposed.
"Guess we will," she agreed. She looked over her shoulder to Yekaterina but said nothing in way of goodbye.
Beneath them, the water moved in quiet restlessness as voices echoed off of the railings of the ship, and Jessi realized as they made to jump that she would, quite frankly, far prefer the ocean to another second around anything to do with Neverland.
AN: So... finals happened, and that's kind of my only excuse. Sorry about the wait, but things should pick up from here.
Couple of things to cover. Firstly, we're finally done with the bulk of Neverland (at least the first visit, because it WILL be back later on) aside from the proper departure next time around. There's a good reason this one had very little in regards to proper Disney characters, and that was to introduce the companions that Jessi's been stuck with. John, Ray, and Blaine make up the traveling party, at least for the moment. They're going to be play pretty major roles and be around for a while. There's, of course, always more spots for other characters, but for now you can count on seeing quite a lot of these three.
Blaine belongs to MysticalMosaic, who is wonderful and has honestly provided so much inspiration and drive to continue in regards to this story and its characters, even aside from submitting an incredible OC (I really adore Blaine, even if Jessi only cares for insulting him).
Thanks to everyone else who's been reading and reviewing, it's very much appreciated.
