Disclaimer: I don't own anyone besides Danae. There, I said it, all right?
Also, sorry it took so long to write this, but I have a certain activity called school that tends to get in the way. Bloody education system...
Chapter One
And who is this individual who's mucking up the perfectly vague atmosphere of this story, you ask? Well, I suppose that it is my duty as Author to elaborate. Danae Bloodsail was an irishwoman (like an irishman, only female), standing at a freakish near 6 feet, with sandy golden chin-length hair and dull green eyes. She wasn't exactly what you'd call the good-looking sort (not what you'd call bad-looking, either. Somewhere in that icky gray area between the two), being rather plain of face and all too solid of body for anyone's comfort. Well, anyone's besides her own, of course. She liked to hang around taverns in less than respectable colonies most of the time, and took altogether too much pleasure in throwing full-grown men out of tavern windows and picking fights. This was, of course, because she had little else to do with men (seeing as they never took any interest in her in any other fashion), and what's a girl to do when she's dead bored? Embroidery? She'd tried that, along with knitting, sewing, and cross-stitching, and had since sworn off any hobby that involved a needle and thread (getting needles stuck in your fingers is pretty annoying). Since women's past times in that day and age always seemed to involve a needle and thread (besides making babies, and she wasn't about to try THAT), she'd moved on to the hobbies of the dumber and nastier-smelling creatures on the planet. No, I don't mean pigs, I mean men.
Strangely enough, she thought it all to be a blast. Drinking, brawling, wenching, she loved all of it. Wait, no, scratch that last one, she's straight. But more than anything she loved sailing (though drinking came in at a close second), and would do almost anything to be part of a ship's crew. Unfortunately, the small bit of things she wouldn't do were what kept her from ever staying on a crew for very long, but it was long enough for her. She'd been raised to sail, and if it weren't for certain family problems, she'd probably still be on her fathers ship right now.
The first of these family problems was her father. His name was Degaul Bloodsail, and as long as she had known him, he had been a cruel and merciless man. Of course, he could have been a great man in the first three years of her life, before he returned to that port in Ireland for his wife and son. Well, he found his wife, but the child that she had born him was a very strange boy (being that the boy was missing certain body parts that made him male). Degaul had at first suspected that in a terrible accident the boy had been castrated, and later his...er...parts had been replaced with female ones. Then again, Degaul Bloodsail was about as clever as the sea. Once his wife, Tiann, had finally gotten it into his head that the child had been born with female parts, and was in fact his daughter, they were too far out to sea to dump her onto an island somewhere. So, with a disgruntled growl, Degaul had allowed the child to stay onboard, but he treated her (and disciplined her) in as much a way as he would have a son. By this, I mean he had her learn how to sail, how to fight, and strangely enough, how to smith. However, every time she made a mistake (tied the rigging in a bow instead of a knot, etc.), he belted her, beat her, even sometimes cut her. Once she got into her moody teenage years, this caused quite a rift between them, being that she didn't like being belted, beaten, or cut, and had began to use her raging hormones against him.
This rift between them turned into a great abyss on one particular occasion, when (during a stop on an island) Danae failed to make the blades Degaul had ordered her to make in the time that he gave her. When being informed of this, he dragged her over to the forge fire, and pressed a white-hot piece of metal against the skin of her left forearm. This caused a scream to erupt out of the 14-year-old girl so high in pitch and in volume that it left her father with one deaf ear, and a beggar outside found himself a fine breakfast of seagulls whose brains had been turned into something similar to chicken soup. It was, suffice to say, not enjoyable for the girl, as it was quite painful and left large burn scars on her arms. In fact, if it wasn't painful, then she wouldn't have screamed, and this whole paragraph would have been pretty damned pointless, wouldn't it have been? In any case, she never quite forgave her father for that little act (then again, he never asked for forgiveness), and less than two years later, she left the ship and temporarily joined the crew of a different one. This crew, however, dumped her on a different ship once they found out that a) she was female, and b) she wouldn't sleep with them for the world. This continued to happen, until one day she'd finally reached somewhere on land, and left (or rather, was shoved off). She didn't really work anymore, just sat in taverns and lived off of stolen money. Occasionally she'd find a crew that would take her, and then she'd be dumped somewhere else, and start living the same way.
Now as the reader, you must be thinking: Why the bloody hell are you traveling so far off subject? I honestly don't know, so let's get back on track, shall we? Yes.
The other one of these family problems was that they were dead. All of them. Her father, mother, and little sister (who, in the time this story is set in, would have been ten by now) had all gone the way of the dodo. The ship had been attacked by pirates (pirates attacking pirates...go figure), and sunk in the middle of the ocean. This left Danae little more than a hollow shell (Oo, I like that metaphor) where a heart used to be. Only her heart was physically still there, only...oh, you know what I mean. We'll just be technical and say she was chronically depressed, all right? Good.
Now, finally, we can go back to the present time. Danae was now twenty-seven years old, and had been the only living member of her family for six years now. She sat in the Faithful Bride, a well-known tavern to the inhabitants of Tortuga, drinking a very unlady-like flagon of rum, and giving the cold evil eye to anyone who even thought about sitting next to her. She gave an especially evil eye (if it had been any more evil, it would have popped out) to a rather drunk, or perhaps rather crazy looking man across the way.
Meanwhile, a certain rather drunk AND somewhat crazy Captain Jack Sparrow spotted a place to sit in the crowded tavern. It was just up at the bar, by some hulk of a man who Jack didn't really care to talk to, unless it bought him some alcohol. He would have immediately sauntered on over and sat down, but that man was giving him a rather dirty look, as if just daring him to sit there. Of course, Jack was a daring sort of fellow, so he walked right on over.
Danae kept glaring at the man as he approached, and before he could sit down at the stool next to her, she put her feet up onto it. She liked drinking alone and alone she would stay, she thought, as her glare became even colder. Unfortunately, this fellow didn't seem the type to take hints all that well, and after looking down at the feet which now inhabited the previously vacant stool thoughtfully, he placed a hand on her ankles and shoved them off, sitting down before she had time to retaliate. Well, fine, if she was going to have to stand someone sitting next to her, she'd bloody well make it worthwhile. Scooting a hair closer to him, she ordered another drink.
Well, Jack thought, after seeing the front of this "man", either men were being made a bit differently than before, or this wasn't one of the same gender as him. The voice that ordered the next drink confirmed those suspicions, no man besides a unic could have a voice like that, and unics, despite some people's belief, did not have breasts. However, shortly afterwards he discovered that this woman had a problem with keeping her hands to herself, so he returned the favor.
Later, as Danae was walking out of the bar, she lifted her rewards for moving closer to that man. She'd manage to pickpocket his coin purse, a few beads of ornate kind, and some gun powder off of...well, whatever his name was. But, upon patting her now alcohol filled stomach, she stopped in her tracks. Where was her flask and her...damn. It seemed she wasn't as subtle a thief as she thought, since now her own coin purse was missing, and so was the flask that held some of the strongest alcohol known to man: homemade Irish whiskey.
She turned halfway, seeing the self same man waltzing away, and stormed (well, stormed as much as a drunkard could) after him. She had some beating to do.
Also, sorry it took so long to write this, but I have a certain activity called school that tends to get in the way. Bloody education system...
Chapter One
And who is this individual who's mucking up the perfectly vague atmosphere of this story, you ask? Well, I suppose that it is my duty as Author to elaborate. Danae Bloodsail was an irishwoman (like an irishman, only female), standing at a freakish near 6 feet, with sandy golden chin-length hair and dull green eyes. She wasn't exactly what you'd call the good-looking sort (not what you'd call bad-looking, either. Somewhere in that icky gray area between the two), being rather plain of face and all too solid of body for anyone's comfort. Well, anyone's besides her own, of course. She liked to hang around taverns in less than respectable colonies most of the time, and took altogether too much pleasure in throwing full-grown men out of tavern windows and picking fights. This was, of course, because she had little else to do with men (seeing as they never took any interest in her in any other fashion), and what's a girl to do when she's dead bored? Embroidery? She'd tried that, along with knitting, sewing, and cross-stitching, and had since sworn off any hobby that involved a needle and thread (getting needles stuck in your fingers is pretty annoying). Since women's past times in that day and age always seemed to involve a needle and thread (besides making babies, and she wasn't about to try THAT), she'd moved on to the hobbies of the dumber and nastier-smelling creatures on the planet. No, I don't mean pigs, I mean men.
Strangely enough, she thought it all to be a blast. Drinking, brawling, wenching, she loved all of it. Wait, no, scratch that last one, she's straight. But more than anything she loved sailing (though drinking came in at a close second), and would do almost anything to be part of a ship's crew. Unfortunately, the small bit of things she wouldn't do were what kept her from ever staying on a crew for very long, but it was long enough for her. She'd been raised to sail, and if it weren't for certain family problems, she'd probably still be on her fathers ship right now.
The first of these family problems was her father. His name was Degaul Bloodsail, and as long as she had known him, he had been a cruel and merciless man. Of course, he could have been a great man in the first three years of her life, before he returned to that port in Ireland for his wife and son. Well, he found his wife, but the child that she had born him was a very strange boy (being that the boy was missing certain body parts that made him male). Degaul had at first suspected that in a terrible accident the boy had been castrated, and later his...er...parts had been replaced with female ones. Then again, Degaul Bloodsail was about as clever as the sea. Once his wife, Tiann, had finally gotten it into his head that the child had been born with female parts, and was in fact his daughter, they were too far out to sea to dump her onto an island somewhere. So, with a disgruntled growl, Degaul had allowed the child to stay onboard, but he treated her (and disciplined her) in as much a way as he would have a son. By this, I mean he had her learn how to sail, how to fight, and strangely enough, how to smith. However, every time she made a mistake (tied the rigging in a bow instead of a knot, etc.), he belted her, beat her, even sometimes cut her. Once she got into her moody teenage years, this caused quite a rift between them, being that she didn't like being belted, beaten, or cut, and had began to use her raging hormones against him.
This rift between them turned into a great abyss on one particular occasion, when (during a stop on an island) Danae failed to make the blades Degaul had ordered her to make in the time that he gave her. When being informed of this, he dragged her over to the forge fire, and pressed a white-hot piece of metal against the skin of her left forearm. This caused a scream to erupt out of the 14-year-old girl so high in pitch and in volume that it left her father with one deaf ear, and a beggar outside found himself a fine breakfast of seagulls whose brains had been turned into something similar to chicken soup. It was, suffice to say, not enjoyable for the girl, as it was quite painful and left large burn scars on her arms. In fact, if it wasn't painful, then she wouldn't have screamed, and this whole paragraph would have been pretty damned pointless, wouldn't it have been? In any case, she never quite forgave her father for that little act (then again, he never asked for forgiveness), and less than two years later, she left the ship and temporarily joined the crew of a different one. This crew, however, dumped her on a different ship once they found out that a) she was female, and b) she wouldn't sleep with them for the world. This continued to happen, until one day she'd finally reached somewhere on land, and left (or rather, was shoved off). She didn't really work anymore, just sat in taverns and lived off of stolen money. Occasionally she'd find a crew that would take her, and then she'd be dumped somewhere else, and start living the same way.
Now as the reader, you must be thinking: Why the bloody hell are you traveling so far off subject? I honestly don't know, so let's get back on track, shall we? Yes.
The other one of these family problems was that they were dead. All of them. Her father, mother, and little sister (who, in the time this story is set in, would have been ten by now) had all gone the way of the dodo. The ship had been attacked by pirates (pirates attacking pirates...go figure), and sunk in the middle of the ocean. This left Danae little more than a hollow shell (Oo, I like that metaphor) where a heart used to be. Only her heart was physically still there, only...oh, you know what I mean. We'll just be technical and say she was chronically depressed, all right? Good.
Now, finally, we can go back to the present time. Danae was now twenty-seven years old, and had been the only living member of her family for six years now. She sat in the Faithful Bride, a well-known tavern to the inhabitants of Tortuga, drinking a very unlady-like flagon of rum, and giving the cold evil eye to anyone who even thought about sitting next to her. She gave an especially evil eye (if it had been any more evil, it would have popped out) to a rather drunk, or perhaps rather crazy looking man across the way.
Meanwhile, a certain rather drunk AND somewhat crazy Captain Jack Sparrow spotted a place to sit in the crowded tavern. It was just up at the bar, by some hulk of a man who Jack didn't really care to talk to, unless it bought him some alcohol. He would have immediately sauntered on over and sat down, but that man was giving him a rather dirty look, as if just daring him to sit there. Of course, Jack was a daring sort of fellow, so he walked right on over.
Danae kept glaring at the man as he approached, and before he could sit down at the stool next to her, she put her feet up onto it. She liked drinking alone and alone she would stay, she thought, as her glare became even colder. Unfortunately, this fellow didn't seem the type to take hints all that well, and after looking down at the feet which now inhabited the previously vacant stool thoughtfully, he placed a hand on her ankles and shoved them off, sitting down before she had time to retaliate. Well, fine, if she was going to have to stand someone sitting next to her, she'd bloody well make it worthwhile. Scooting a hair closer to him, she ordered another drink.
Well, Jack thought, after seeing the front of this "man", either men were being made a bit differently than before, or this wasn't one of the same gender as him. The voice that ordered the next drink confirmed those suspicions, no man besides a unic could have a voice like that, and unics, despite some people's belief, did not have breasts. However, shortly afterwards he discovered that this woman had a problem with keeping her hands to herself, so he returned the favor.
Later, as Danae was walking out of the bar, she lifted her rewards for moving closer to that man. She'd manage to pickpocket his coin purse, a few beads of ornate kind, and some gun powder off of...well, whatever his name was. But, upon patting her now alcohol filled stomach, she stopped in her tracks. Where was her flask and her...damn. It seemed she wasn't as subtle a thief as she thought, since now her own coin purse was missing, and so was the flask that held some of the strongest alcohol known to man: homemade Irish whiskey.
She turned halfway, seeing the self same man waltzing away, and stormed (well, stormed as much as a drunkard could) after him. She had some beating to do.