AN: Looky here! I've updated! Sorry for taking so long and all that, but I've been working on Given and you know...school. It doesn't help that it's the last semester before I graduate...anyways, so here you all are! This chapter is just kind of for fun...and the last of the Tortuga Chronicles (I started getting tired of writing them). And I still love reviews...hint, hint, wink, wink...

As always, enjoy.


Jack took another few hours to be completely comfortable with the idea that maybe, just maybe, we weren't witches, and in fact were victims to circumstance. I think the thing that helped was when I mentioned that if he could believe in walking, talking skeletons that can never die, all because of a bunch of gold, than surely he could believe in what we were telling him. Whether he entirely understood our explanation, I'm not exactly sure, but eventually he accepted it and things were…back to normal. Kinda.

At least Will didn't give us strange stares whenever we walked by.

Whatever the case, Jack forgot about our odd origin when he realized it was time to mop the deck again (I had…accidently-on-purpose forgotten that the deck needed to be mopped everyday, and had been depending on Jack being completely distracted with everything else to not bug me about it).

"I want it spotless," he ordered grumpily, curling up his nose as he scanned the area.

Meg and I didn't bother hiding our glares; the deck was nasty. Who would have thought salt water could do so much damage. And after being previously threatened with a gun, I was no longer particularly inclined to follow Jack's orders. However, it was that same pistol that made me decide it would be in my best interests to listen.

"I hate mopping," I stated, splashing the rags into the soapy water and ringing them out. A frustrated grunt next to me showed that Meg agreed whole-heartedly.

As I did this, I made the mistake of looking at my hands. They weren't brown anymore. As opposed to the rest of my body, which was coated in…something. I wanted to gag, but then made an even bigger mistake. I looked at my hair.

"Uhhaaggg!" I retched. "My hair!"

For anyone who might have forgotten, I like to have my hair clean. And neat. And most certainly not covered in crap. The past week or so had been rather life-changing, and consequently, I had not been paying any particular attentions to my hygiene. But now, when everything was becoming habit, I was back to where I was before--worrying about my hair.

And it was disgusting.

I nearly dunked my head into the bucket we were using, but then remembered what was in that water. In the meantime, Meg had looked at her hair. We were both sitting there gagging when Will came over.

"What's going on?" he asked, suddenly very wary.

"My hair!" I shrieked.

"My face!" moaned Meg.

"My body!" we whined in unison.

Will stood there silently, if not a little vacantly.

"Don't you understand?" Meg continued. "We haven't bathed in over a week. I've never felt so disgusting in my life. I haven't even brushed my teeth!" She covered her mouth in horror.

I covered mine too, thinking of how bad my breath must smell.

"You're on a ship," answered Will after a pause. "Everyone gets like this."

"Surely you all…wash yourselves. Right? Even a little?"

Will shook his head.

I wanted to shriek again. But, because I do have some sense of self-control, I didn't. What I did do (with Meg by my side) was stalk up to Jack, who was at the helm.

Our interactions (from the past two days) now were usually pretty strange--not awkward, strange. It started with him staring at us coldly, turning his head and muttering to himself, then looking back with some type of plastered expression (not always a smile). Though Jack acted like he was over the "revelation of our origins," his body language was telling me a totally different story. Whatever. He can go be weird by himself, for all I care.

"Where are the large basins? We need two," I said.

The frown that showed up next was not fake. "What do you want two basins for?"

"Baths."

The smirk that came to Jack's face wasn't fake either. "You can't take a bath out here. We need water to drink."

"Oh, for heaven's sake, we're only two days or so from Tortuga; Will told us. And I don't see you hardly drinking any water, just rum. We'll take your share of the water and use it to make ourselves decent."

Jack snorted and rolled his eyes, but gave us another one of his "I-can't-believe-they're-not-from-this-world" stares. "Neither of you need baths."

Meg narrowed her eyes. "Our hair is greasy, our skin is probably breaking out like nothing else, and we're covered in crap. We are going to take a bath."

I had the distinct impression that Jack had not drank rum for quite some time now, because he was losing his temper faster than normal--normal meaning when he was drunk. "The only way you two are getting any type of bath is throwing yourselves over the railing or walking a plank; feel free to do either, but the ship won't sit around and weigh anchor. We are going to continue sailing. Now go back to your mopping before I throw you overboard personally."

Both of us stomped off with grumpy faces. But our luck was going to change…sort of. Depends on your definition of luck.


The next day, there was no wind whatsoever.

At all. And it stayed like that throughout the morning. By afternoon…it hadn't changed. We were stuck under a burning sun sweating like pigs.

"I need a swimming pool," gasped Meg, red faced and stretched out like an eagle under what little shade we had, her brown hair like a mat underneath her.

I wasn't faring any better. "We're sitting in the largest swimming pool on this Earth, and Jack won't let us go in," I moaned. I was sure that if we had gotten Will on our side, we would have won the argument, but Will saw no reason for bathing either. Stupid men. Stupid cultural time differences. Stupid lightening bolt that brought us here.

Meg suddenly sat up. "No, Jack just said that the ship would keep sailing if we jumped in. The ship isn't moving. We could technically go swimming."

The heat didn't seem so bad anymore. "You're right! What are we waiting for?" I crowed, jumping up with energy I didn't know I had. It didn't matter that sweat was dripping in my eyes--it was going to be gone very shortly.

Within ten minutes, we had scavenged the area for some soap-like thing, which we found, and spare clothes to change into. The only problem was that these particular spare clothes were meant for large, navy men, which we were not. But anything was going to be better than our smelly, vile track outfits that we had been wearing for almost three weeks solid. Disgusting. As soon as I got somewhere that fire was allowed (Jack didn't trust us with flames on a wooden vessel…can't quite understand why. I mean, I'm not a Boy Scout or anything, but even I know how to deal with fire…), I was going to burn these sorry scraps of cotton. Or polyester. Or whatever the heck my clothes are made out of.

Anyways, we were ready to embark on Operation Sparkle, as in sparkling clean. The stage was perfect: clear day, NO WIND, and even better, no Jack. Will wasn't there either, but we wouldn't have minded that.

Actually, I might have minded that just a little. I mean, I wasn't about to jump into the ocean with my clothes on--don't worry, I was keeping my underwear and bra--but I've never worn a bikini before. I have enough problems wearing suggestive dresses and the like; pretty much anything that shows that I have a body. Not that I wear baggy clothes or anything like that…oh, heck, you know what I mean. Just suffice it to say that I was glad no guys were watching us.

At first, we were just going to cannon ball into the waves, but then we remembered something that Jack had said about walking the plank…

"Okay, I think it's stable now," I huffed. "Ready to go?"

"I was born ready," Meg quoted (at least I think it's a quote…).

I smiled mischievously. "Argg, matey; are you ready to walk the plank?"

Meg cocked an eye brow. "I don't think pirates made their 'mates' walk the plank. Wasn't usually the damsel in distress?"

I stuck out my tongue. "Fine. Argg, ye troublesome wench, prepare to meet your doom." I stabbed at her with my air-sword.

"Oh, whatever shall I do?" she swooned, clutching at her heart.

"Off with yeh!" I growled, inching closer to her. We were both teetering on the plank by this point.

"Not without a fight, I don't!" Meg squealed, and with a delighted laugh, she grabbed my shoulder and tried to push me off the plank; instead, she lost her balance too, and we both went splashing into the water.

We emerged howling with laughter and spent about three minutes fooling around and splashing ourselves. Meg had been smart enough to throw a large plank in earlier that we could grab onto, which was where we put the "soap." Ten minutes later, our hair was washed, our body was squeaky clean, and I was feeling sufficiently refreshed.

"Ah, this is the life," I sighed, floating on my back contently. "No homework, no classes, no track practice. I could get used to this."

Meg joined me by splashing water all over my face and swimming away with a cackle. My initial reaction was to splash her back…but then I saw it.

I had always thought Jaws was a hilarious movie: huge shark eating everything in its path. I mean, what animal does that? And shark attacks…psh, I didn't need to worry. I live in the middle of this desert area where no shark was going to get me.

That wasn't what I was thinking when I saw that fin in the distance…and coming toward us.

"SHARK!" I screeched, and in my frenzy to get to the ship, I flipped Meg over.

"WHAT?" she screeched back. "SHARK?"

To say the least, it wasn't long before we were both at the hull of the ship; it was then that we realized out mistake.

We didn't have anyway of getting back up the ship.

We looked at each other, looked back at the shark fin, and up the side of the large wooden thing in front of us. Then we screamed bloody murder.

I know blood attracts sharks, but I am now convinced that so does loud noises, because by the time Will peeked his head over the edge of the railing, there must have been three sharks circling around us. They weren't terribly close…yet.

"What are you guys doing down there?" he asked. I loathed the calmness in which he spoke.

"Throw us down a rope!" shrieked Meg, pounding the hull frantically. "We have to get out of here!"

By this time, Jack had wandered over to see what all the fuss was about. "Swimming after all, I see. Clean?"

"Don't just stand there!" I ordered, the pitch of my voice rising steadily. "We're surrounded by sharks!"

Jack frowned and looked at the three fins coming in for their prey. "Looks like dolphins to me."

"What do you mean dolphins?" I screamed. "I know what dolphins act like; and they don't swim like their going to eat you! These are sharks!"

"Eh, let them soak a while, Will. Won't hurt them," grunted Jack.

"JACK SPARROW!"

The outburst was unison, and right after, Meg screamed again, but with good reason. The plank we had been using earlier had floated off without our guidance--it so happened that at that moment, one of the sharks tried to take a chunk out of it.

Naturally, I shrieked too.

But it didn't seem to phase Jack in the least. "Good thing you guys weren't on that."

By this time, all the sharks had realized the plank was a bad decoy that certainly wasn't edible. They were sniffing for us--I could tell. Grabbing the hull in front of me, I attempted to hoist myself up like a rock climber, but there weren't any real grooves to grasp, and I fell into the water again in seconds with a resounding splash.

The sharks were circling again, and that circle was getting steadily closer.

"Throw us down a rope!" Meg yelled, hitting the hull forcefully.

"Hm, what do you think, Will?" asked Jack. "I have an idea; we'll play that what's-it-called game those two were playing…rock-paper-scissors, and if you win we'll haul them back up. If I win, we leave them to the sharks."

I wish I had never taught them that game.

Will, bless his heart, looked disconcerted at the thought. "Jack, those sharks do look pretty intent."

"Then why destroy their fun?" finished Jack with a hearty smile. "Think of all the trouble we'd be throwing away!"

"You're the frickin idiot that brought us here in the first place!" I screeched, pounding the ship again. "Now don't you stand up there any longer and argue about this! Bring us back up!"

Well, to make a long story short, they did stand there for another ten minutes "arguing" about whether it was smart to bother letting us back on the ship, during which time Meg and I were flippin' out about what the sharks were up to. It probably would have gone on for another ten minutes if one of the sharks hadn't brushed up against Meg's leg, sending both of us into fits of howls and screams (okay, who wouldn't?)

Anyways, Jack finally decided maybe we were in a little danger, and threw us a rope that Meg shimmed up in an instant; but because I have no upper-body strength, Jack and Will had to pull me up the whole way, but not before watching me struggle above the water, avoiding the fins of the sharks that had realized that there had been something rather tasty in the water only a few moments ago.

"I wasn't really going to let you get eaten," said Jack when I flopped up onto the deck. He was wearing his signature grin that said 'malicious.'

You know what I have to say to that?

Liar, liar, pants on fire. And I really hope he does catch on fire one of these days.