Disclaimer: POTC is great.

"Near to scuppers? Shiver me timbers!" Mister Cotton's parrot waddles across the deck and looks at Squirrel with a beady black eye. Anamaria swipes at the blue-and-yellow bird, scowling. It flutters away, squawking indignantly.

"How dare he!" Ana grizzles, kneeling alongside Squirrel. "How DARE he! This is slave-labour, this is! Completely sexist! Slavery! I didn't kill three men for my freedom for nothing! This is absolute injustice! I should make him eat this brush, make him choke on it…" Ana continues along the same vein for quite some time. Squirrel mutters along with her, though not as loudly.

Jack watches with a bemused expression from the helm. Squirrel tucks a stray strand of her hair behind her ear, pausing in her scrubbing of the decks. She glares back at the captain.

"As Cotton jus' said, you missed a spot!" Jack calls out. Anamaria throws the brush at him. Jack catches it one-handed and then throws it back at her.

Squirrel returns to the task at hand. Back and forth, the brush in her hands scrubs the deck, coating it in soapy water. Anamaria keeps muttering under her breath.

"Don' know why he's so pissed at us." Ana says. "We let him out, didn't we?"

"He did run into the rail pretty hard." Squirrel whispers back. She rolls one of her sleeves up higher on her arm.

"That's no excuse!"

Squirrel fights back a smile. "Below the belt."

Anamaria's mouth forms a perfect 'O', then splits into a grin. The two women continue to swab the decks.

"What are you going to do, Squirrel?" Ana asks after a while. "Jack's in a fine mood after you locked him in, and he's hidden the map. You won't get it back easily. Or ever."

Squirrel squints in the bright sun, wishing for her cloak, but it's back in her cabin. "I'll think of something."

"But the treasure!" Ana insists. "It's yours by right! A last gift from your father! You'll think of something? You'd better!"

Squirrel sits up, dunking her brush in the bucket of water. She sees Jack watching them. Looking around, the rest of the crew have become suddenly too absorbed with their own tasks to meet her eyes. Squirrel looks out at the horizon, into the sun setting right into her eyes. Slowly, a rare shy smile crosses her face briefly.

"I have."

Ana looks up briefly, expecting something involving bloodshed and a fight, and quite possibly, Jack choking on the scrubbing brush. But Squirrel just gets back to work, and cleans the deck in double-time. Afterwards, she returns to her cabin and sorts through her papers, organising them by date in the chest.

After re-organising her meagre possessions, she opens the bag that contains her candles. Ten of them in total. Outside, it's already dark, and most of the crew have gone below deck, either to eat or sleep. Squirrel leaves her cloak behind.

Jack watches suspiciously as Squirrel sets the candles around the deck and lights them all. Nervous narrow flames flicker in the sea breeze. Squirrel steps back, twenty paces away from her candles, then reaches back into the bag.

Snift.

A candle goes out, and a single stone skitters across the deck. Squirrel lowers herself into a crouch, then aims her shanghai at the next candle.

Snift.

The stone has not even stopped bouncing when she fires again.

Snift. Snift. Snift. Snift. Snift. Snift. Snift. Snift.

Jack claps as each of the candles die out, one by one. Squirrel stands up, blushing, and retrieves her ammo. Not a single one has wax on it.

"Well, that's interesting." Jack says, coming over. "When did you learn to do that?"

"My name's S-Squirrel." She blushes. "I th-though I'd l-live up to th-that n-name by doing things that squirrels do." She shrugs. "So I th-throw stones."

"So that's how you fight, Miss Squirrel?" Jack smiles slightly. "Very interesting."

Squirrel retrieves her candles and puts them, her shanghai, and her ammo back into the bag.

"A-about the m-map…" She starts. Jack glares at her slightly.

"What about it, luv?"

Squirrel takes a deep breath. "It's m-mine. A g-gift from m-my father. I w-want it b-back."

Jack considers for a moment, then says, "No."

"Why?" Squirrel asks, outraged.

Jack shrugs, then swaggers back to the helm. "I'm captain here, in case you haven't noticed. I call the shots. And I don't want to be locked in your room again." He grins back at her and winks. "Unless you're going to be in there with me, savvy?"

With a squeak, a red un-cloaked Squirrel clambers up the rigging and crouches in the crow's-nest. She rummages in her bag, pulls out a handful of nuts and starts chewing on them. Living up to your namesake as Squirrel, all right. She curses herself. Hiding in a high place and chewing on nuts, stammering, and throwing rocks. What's next? Hibernating for the winter?

If it wasn't for sharp-eyed Squirrel being up in the crow's-nest, the dark ship would've crashed right into the Pearl.