VARIOUS DISCLAIMERS: Credit for the original fanfiction university that inspired this spinoff goes to Camilla Sandman (also known as Miss Cam, creator of the legendary OFUM) and all her loyal followers. Disney owns PotC, the "Pirate's Life For Me" song, and all the characters therein. All students of the University belong to themselves or to their creators and are used only by specific request.

CORRECTION: In the previous chapter, Jack refers to the wheel at the helm of the boat as a steering wheel. This is incorrect and is not what he would hacve. It was referred to as just the helm, or occasionally, the wheel. Thanks to Janette Morgan for catching that.

ADDITIONAL NOTE: The basics of Jack's life story are taken from several reliable sources that cited the Disney website and Disney publications. I tried to fill in a few small details and word it as he himself might tell it. Any editing errors in this chapter are due to me not being given time to edit this fing thing because my boyfriend is an idiot and my mother won't let me have five minutes to finish this even though I already did everything she asked.

Darkness hung heavy over the ship in the silent hours before dawn when Abby crept from her hammock. She made her way onto the deck as quietly as she could, sticking to the sides of the ship and edging around guns and lashed-down barrels. Shadows obscured most of the deck. She was edging around a tall pile of crates and congratulating herself on her stealth and cleverness when she turned a corner and walked right into something in the dark.

Or perhaps a better term might be someone. There was a yelp and her unintentional victim jerked away, and then they collided with something that also made a suspiciously human sound of pain. Abby stumbled backwards, alarmed.

"Ow! What the heck! Wait a second… Linsey?" the first voice asked in a whisper.

"Tierza?"

"Who's whispering over there?" a third voice hissed from a few feet away.

"Who ran into you?"

"Me," Abby told the first two under her breath.

"Abby?"

"What is everyone doing up here?" a fourth voice whispered from behind her.

"Sarah?" Abby asked, spinning around.

"I don't know about everyone else," the third voice confessed, sounding suspiciously like Koneka, "But I'm waiting for Summer to finish using the head so I can go.

"That's what I came out here to do!" either Tierza or Linsey- she couldn't tell in the dark- burst out.

"Me too," Abby admitted.

"That was my plan too," Sarah added, then yelped in painful surprise as the hatch next to her opened and slammed against her shin.

"Who's that?" one of the others whispered.

"Um, Holly," muttered the shadowy figure climbing out of the hatch. "I thought no one would be up here at this time in the morning, so-"

"You came out to use the head?" Abby guessed ruefully.

"How many people are up here?" Holly whispered in confusion.

"Anyone else out here? Speak up," Koneka said to the ship in general.

"Me, and I think I ran into Grace going back down on my way up here." Kelsey's voice chimed in.

"What is this out here, Grand Central Station?" Kat asked, following Holly out of the hatch.

"Apparently," responded someone who sounded like Becca from a pool of shadow on the other side of the deck.

"Well, so much for privacy," Tierza sighed.

"I'm next after Koneka," Kat announced quietly.

"I call third," Linsey said. Abby groaned and let herself slide down to the ground, leaning back against the crates.

It was almost twenty minutes before she was able to use the head and then slink back to the cabin to get some sleep.

Those who were still asleep by around 8:30 or so were woken by a heavy banging on the door of their cabin. Abby put down The Flying Dutchman And Other Dark Legends of the Sea, rolled out of her hammock and opened the door to an empty hallway.

"What the…" she blinked a few times.

"Down 'ere," someone said, and she glanced down to see Marty looking up at her. "Breakfast is… interesting, and ye've got yer first class in 'alf an hour."

"Breakfast is… interesting?" Abby asked, confused.

"I suppose I meant ready," he corrected himself, tugging on his goatee. "I think." He went down the hall a short ways and banged on the next cabin as Abby went to the mess hall to see exactly what 'interesting' consisted of.

"They're apple spice muffins," Summer said meekly, backing further into the corner, a dot of flour still on her nose.

"This is a thing that should not be done to an apple," Barbossa said, looking at his muffin sorrowfully.

"And if you throw it the right way, it bounces," Becca commented, throwing it at the floor. It hit the floorboard with an audible thud and then rolled away a couple inches to reveal a newly made crack in the wood. The student cringed. "That, I think, is what happens when you throw it the wrong way. I'll fix it. Please don't kill me, captain."

"Can't exactly 'ave someone put to death fer droppin' a muffin on the floor, can I? Get it fixed by dinnertime an' we'll pretend it ever 'appened, savvy?" Jack paused and tapped the surface of a muffin with his fork. "That's interesting. I never thought it was possible to make anythin' harder than hardtack," he mused.

"How did you get so strong?" Linsey was singing quietly, tossing her muffin from one hand to the other, "How did you get so hard?"

NIN, "Ruiner"

"I fhink I cracked my toof," Pintel said, poking around gingerly inside his mouth.

"Sorry." Summer swallowed hard.

Siren was rummaging through the galley looking for leftover rolls from the afternoon before. Finding four of them wrapped in a cloth, she put them on the table along with the remainder of the sack of apples. "Here. Not too fancy, but at least we can eat this without injuring ourselves in the process."

"No, I'm curious about this," Will said, waving off Summer from his spice muffin as she tried to inconspicuously clear them all away. "How did you do it? Does anyone on board have an anvil?"

"Will, there's edible breakfast now," Elizabeth told him softly, tapping his shoulder.

"Professional curiosity," Will argued, but took an apple with him as he wandered off to experiment with the unbreakable muffin.

"But you're a pirate and a blacksmith, not a cook!" Elizabeth called after him.

"I know! I may have discovered a new weapon!"

"Welcome to the most interesting class ye'll have aboard this ship!" They were all sitting in a semicircle around the helm, where Jack stood, his arm draped across his knee and his other hand resting on the wheel. "This is the Captain Jack Sparrow class, where you will learn about ME." Several students cheered. "Thanks, luvs," he said, grinning. "Now, to begin. I was born and grew up in India, not England, mind you, India. Just because someone 'as a British accent doesn't mean 'e's from London. The British've got a whole big fancy empire thing goin' if ye haven't noticed. This's how they spoke English where I grew up. I also speak Hindi, an' can sorta get by in 'alf a dozen other Oriental languages. Not that that's unusual, seamen tends to be familiar with a lot of diff'rent tongues -" several of the students snickered at this. Jack paused. "What? What'd I say?"

"Oh, you might want to avoid using the word seamen," Siren said from a nearby pile of crates where she'd been sitting and listening to the lecture. "They get ideas."

"What kind of ideas?" he asked, straightening his hat absentmindedly.

"Extra credit to anyone who can explain the relevant homonym to the captain and keep a straight face while doing so," Siren offered.

A few minutes later, after Jack had finished laughing, called Gibbs and Anamaria over to tell the joke to them, and had them roll their eyes at him and walk away, the class was resumed.

"As I was sayin', me dad was a captain, so I spent a lot o' time on his ship with 'im; all but grew up on the sea, really. She's me oldest an' best friend." He looked almost sentimental for a fleeting moment, then the mischievous smirk returned to his features.

"Was your father a pirate?" Sarah wanted to know.

"Nah. Didn't even become a pirate meself until I was well into me twenties an' captaining a ship of me own."

"Under thirty is really young to be captain of a ship," Cate observed. Jack shrugged.

"I'd been sailin' since I was old enough to knot a line an' shootin' since I was old enough to load a gun. I was smart an' I knew the waters I was sailin' like the back o' me own hand. And what can I say, I'm-"

"-Captain Jack Sparrow!" they all chorused along with him, smiling.

"I like you lot. Rum fer everyone!" He waved an arm grandly in the air, then looked confused when rum didn't appear. "I said, rum fer everyone!" He waved his arm again, then looked over at Siren, who was still sitting there watching, looking amused. "Well, ye've got legs, 'aven't ye? Rum! Bring us rum!"

"What am I, the bar wench?" she asked dryly.

"Who's ship is this, then?" Jack reminded her. She sighed.

"All right. Rum," she agreed, heading down to the galley with a long-suffering expression.

"So how did you become a pirate?" Angel asked, looking up at him adoringly.

"Well, fer a while I was a smuggler, which many merchants tend to be at times, when the opportunity strikes. An' I won't say I never lifted the odd load o' silks, spices, or opium off the Dutch. But I didn't actually go on the account until I got the P on me arm. Not officially. But once ye're branded, ye might as well make a career out o' it, savvy?"

"You got branded pirate for smuggling, or for stealing?" Grace demanded.

"No, got branded fer doin' something right fer a change. Isn't it ironic? Ye sail 'round the world cheatin' an' stealin' an' wenchin', an' then someone brands ye a criminal fer showin' a bit o' human decency." He shook his head in disgust. "What 'appened was I was given a cargo full o' fresh-captured slaves from Africa to take to the Americas. They 'ad 'em chained up in the hold like - no, not even like animals. Never known anyone to keep animals in those kind of conditions. When they rounded 'em up an' dragged 'em out of there to load them onto me ship, the floor they'd been chained to was inches deep in blood an' filth. There were dead children in there." He was quiet for a long moment. "I let them take the slaves to me ship, an' then I got together me crew an' told 'em what I was thinkin' o' doin'. Those who wanted to leave an' find another ship to serve on were given leave to go. Nearly all o' me best men stayed. Then we set sail for Africa an' took those people home." The students were silent, eyes riveted to his face. "Some o' them, the men without families left to go back to, ended up joinin' the crew. When Cutler Beckett ordered me ship torched and sunk, they died with the rest of me men. Me, they branded pirate an' hauled back to be hanged publicly. Well, bugger that. I wasn't dyin' a pirate until I'd got a right 'andsome career o' piracy to my name. So when I escaped, me and Davy Jones, we struck ourselves a bargain."

"To raise your ship from the sea for thirteen years, in return for serving him for a century," said Holly reverently, because Davy Jones was just that awesome.

"That'd be it, yes." Siren returned with some rum bottles and dumped them in Jack's arms. He struggled to catch hold of all of them without any dropping, grabbing at the load of slipping bottles, then got all but one of them in a secure hold. That one fell to the deck, and his eyes grew wide and horrified. Kelsey, who was sitting the closest, quickly reached out and caught it in both hands. He let out an exaggerated sigh of relief and bowed deeply to her, careful not to drop the precious bottles.

"Ye saved the rum! If I ever get marooned with Lizzie again, I'm takin' ye with me." There were jealous gasps from the other Jack fangirls. "Ye've got the power to save rum, she's got the inexplicable compulsion to burn it," he continued, blissfully unaware of the way his lusters were interpreting what he'd said. "I could just lie in the shade an' let the two of ye fight it out …"

"I'd defend your rum!"

"So would I! I'd protect it SO much better than she would!"

"Take me! We could knock Elizabeth out, tie her to a palm tree and drink rum naked on the beach!"

"I'd KILL Elizabeth for the safety of your rum!"

"I would cut off her head and put it on top of a palm tree for you!"

Someone cleared their throat from across the deck and the students slowly turned to see Will watching them, hand on his sword hilt, looking dangerous.

The ones who had mentioned violence towards his fiancee whimpered quietly in fear. He had been sparring with them for over a week now. They knew exactly how easily he could kill them. Angel and Kat clung to Jack's ankles like little kids trying to keep their parents from leaving them with the babysitter. The Captain looked at them and Will and back again, then tried to stagger away from the confrontation with limited success, arms still filled with rum bottles.

"Er, not the best time fer this, mates," he said pleadingly to the rest of the world in general, glancing meaningfully at his arms loaded down with rum.

"If I may?" said Siren carefully, stepping between Will and the frightened Jack fangirls. "Kat, Angel, and Linsey, for threatening violence to a staff member you will be swabbing decks and giving your rum rations to Elizabeth until we get to Tortuga. Angel and Linsey, for threatening to kill a staff member, you will in addition get a ducking from the yardarm and be sleeping on your cabin floors for the rest of this trip. Your hammocks will be returned to you when we reach Tortuga." She looked at Will. "Will that be satisfactory?"

"They'll apologize to Elizabeth as well, I think, after telling her exactly what they said," Will added after a moment of glaring at them. Siren nodded.

"Will! A little help with the rum, please?" Jack asked urgently. "I seem to be falling and they won't let go o' me legs." Will walked over and pointed his sword at the two cowering fangirls, who immediately let go, then he helped Jack steady the rum bottles and put them down safely on the deck. "Thanks, lad. Don't worry 'bout the whelps, they'd never 'arm her. It's only my innate instabilitizing effect on the female mind." He winked.

"Right, of course it is, Jack." Will gave him a deadpan look but did take a bottle of rum with him as he headed belowdecks.

"That boy'll become a pirate yet," Jack said softly with some satisfaction.

"I been told you girls are always writing about women going to sea on pirate ships." Anamaria, ever practical, had commandeered the captain's cabin for her "Women At Sea" class so she could sit in a comfortable chair while teaching. Tierza, Grace, and Koneka had claimed the other three chairs, Nina was sitting on a chest bolted to the foot of the bed, and Kelsey, Abby, Summer, Cate, and Holly were crowded onto the captain's bunk while Linsey, Angel, and Kat scrubbed the floorboards dejectedly. To the students surprise, the captain's quarters were considered sort of a general meeting area for the crew in general, and not the captain's private den of iniquity. When they'd come in to use it, they had had to evict Marty, Gibbs, and Barbossa, who were trying to calculate a route and time schedule by which one could hit the greatest amount of trade vessels as they were passing through the Carribean waters. The table was solidly covered with maps and notes which they had been forbidden to touch on pain of death.

"I should first make you clear on something," Anamaria said, her lilting, accented voice taking on a stern note. "Dey was no female pirates on the Black Pearl before Jack broke the curse and got her back. I was a special circumstance. Taking a female crew member on a pirate ship, it is not a thing that usually happens. But on the Pearl… after me and Elizabeth spending so long a time here, the crew getting used to the idea of a pirate of "the female persuasion"… Captain Jack would be more open to the idea than other captains, I will give you that. But a woman on board has ta pull her own weight, do her share o' work, and act the same as the men she work beside. Ya hear? She is not a crew member just because she hang over the railings all day wit' the wind in her hair an' argue wit' the captain. She's crew when she roll up her sleeves and join in heaving lines and tightening sails and loading cargo wit' the other men. Dressing like a mon helps, but pretending to be a mon only work for so long 'less you're flat like a boy on top. Hot days, the men work wit' dey shirts open. Hotter days, no shirts on at all. Storms, you're wearing a white blouse in the wet rain. Up north it is probably easier. Cold weather, more layers to hide under, it wouldn't surprise me if more women made it onto ships passing as lads."

"Now, a female crew member does not flirt wit' the men on the ship. It makes things difficult. If she want a mon, she can find a nice lad at some port and keep company wit' him. Maybe a nice lad at each port if she want it. No one will stop her. But she is not a woman to the men of the company. On land, she is a woman. At sea, she is a pirate. Repeat that please," Anamaria ordered.

"On land she is a woman, at sea she is a pirate," the students chorused obediently.

"Yes, good. That rule also means that you can't be too…" she paused, searching for the word. "… too sensitive. Pirates are not soft or gentle wit' their words. Nothing so crude or so personal that they won't have a joke or story about it. Nothing. You have to just laugh wit' them, even if it just disgusting and it not funny. No one cares that you're female when you laugh off talk about raping women and joke right back about raping men. No one cares that you don't have a firs' mate danglin' between your legs as long as you don't have a fit if somebody pull their own out for no special reason. But if you take those things they say seriously, if you get upset… the entire point o' bein' a pirate is you get to ignore all those social rules of what you can say, how you have to act. That goes for them, too, you understand? If dere gonna be a disapproving woman on board, they might as well have stayed on land or joined the navy. It get a lot easier when you realize that most of what they say is just the bilgewater swishing around inside their heads. They try to impress each other, to top the other mon. Ragetti, Pintel, Marty, Jack, Gibbs, I don' believe a one of them has ever bothered with an unwilling woman, let alone had relations wit' a sheep, but damned if they don' sing the song as if they would, an' damned if I don't sing it wit' them as if I would too." There was a momentary silence followed by a sudden outburst of indignation from the students.

"Hold on, with a sheep?"

"What song?"

"Which song are you talking about?

"That can't be in a song!"

"Sheep?"

Anamaria laughed. "Oh, come, don' tell me you girls don' know the words to 'A Pirate's Life For Me!' You supposed to be pirate fangirls, aren't you?"

"There's nothing about rape or… or sheep in that song!"

"No, there are devilish black sheep and really bad eggs, but there's nothing about sex."

"Besides, Elizabeth sang it when she was a little girl!"

"I can recite the lyrics! That's not in them!"

"Are you making fun of us?"

"You don' believe me? Linsey, put down that sponge and go fetch your pirate shanties textbook so I can show you all." Linsey did so, the undead monkey immediately snatching up the sponge like a prize and running away with it when she got up.

"Damn monkey," she cursed, a phrase that one inevitably found oneself saying when on the Black Pearl for any length of time. (Its current projects seemed to be hiding dead fish and random stolen objects in Jack's boots and dropping down on people unexpectedly from above. Only Barbossa was seemingly exempt from the creature's mischief. It was, Jack had been heard to say, as if the two had formed some sort of unholy pact.)

When she returned with the book and handed it to the dark pirate, they all gathered around as Anamaria flipped through it.

"Yes, here it is. See for yourselves." She held the book out, open to a page of lyrics.

"We sail our ship upon the sea
To see what we can see
We got no compass, we got no charts
Besides we can not read

Chorus: Yo ho, yo ho, it's a pirate's life for me.

And if we happen upon your town
We'll break your door right down
We'll rape your women and kick your dogs
Or the other way around
(chorus)

We'll drink your ale and drink your wine
And anything around
And when we've had enough to drink
You'll find us on the ground
(chorus)

Scurvy, the Pox, and Syphilis
Of these we do not fear
For when you lead a Pirate's life
Your end is always near
(chorus)

Once a year we raid the farms
The sheep, they are so dear
And if you need a better grip
You grab them by the ears
(chorus)

And then one day I left the ship
To find myself a wife
All she did was nag at me
I said, "Give me the Pirate life!"

The students stared at the printed words in horrified disbelief.

"But Elizabeth-" Becca began, running her hands through her hair and trying to make sense of the situation.

"That's not the song they sang in the credits!" Summer accused.

"What's all this yelling down here?" Siren demanded, opening the hatch to give them a curious look.

"A pirate's life for me. Those aren't the lyrics!" The book was passed over to her for verification. She skimmed the page briefly.

"They're not the Disney lyrics, but they were the original ones. In fact, until recently, it was possible to find these lyrics online. Funny thing though, lately all the sites with those lyrics on them seem to have disappeared. You can only find references to them on old message board archives, with links to no longer existing sites where the posters found them. I think Disney is behind it. I mean, with those kind of lyrics on a song that was suddenly being looked up by children with the intent of finding Disney content, I can see why they would want to do something, but I find it kind of creepy how all those websites just suddenly disappear. The Wikipedia links to the original lyrics were also eliminated and replaced with more information about the Disney version of the song, which, in case you're curious, was written in 1967 specifically for the park ride."

"Sites? Websites? Posters? Disney?" Anamaria asked, looking at them as if they were speaking another language. "What park? Riding what?"

"I liked the devilish black sheep before people started raping them," Grace mourned.

"If what she just said's right, they'd been being raped for hundreds of years. Disney just dyed their wool and made them smile and entertain small children," Tierza reflected gloomily.

"This is dissilusioning," Nina added quietly.

"The new version is better, musically and poetically," Siren agreed, "But real pirates never sang it, or the "Fifteen men on a dead man's chest" song that DMC was named for."

"That's not real either?" Cate asked, horrified.

"Robert Louis Stevenson made it up in Treasure Island. Someone else wrote more verses to it later on. Real pirate shanties were not that literate or elegant, girls. 'We extort, we pilfer, we filch and we sack, we maraud and embezzle and even hijack'? Seven synonyms for steal, two of which don't even apply to piracy? And don't forget'We kindle, we char, inflame and ignite'. That song was clearly written by someone with access to a Thesaurus."

There was a heavy silence. Siren handed the textbook to Anamaria, who put it on the table and left the room.

The silence continued. They would be at Tortuga by afternoon tomorrow, but the prospect was suddenly not so exciting as it had been an hour ago.