Disclaimer: Disney owns everything but Microsoft. That includes POTC and everything affiliated with it. Disney owns you, Disney owns me, and Disney owns your city. The Mouse is everywhere- he's big with a capitol huge.
A/N: Everyone who reviewed: you're all wonderful people! Seriously, each and everyone one of you are so kind and generous you make Mother Theresa look like Simon Cowell. You're all so intelligent, if Einstein were alive today...he'd apprentice under you. You're all so clever...each of your mental energies could provide power for a small municipality. In short, I thank you. Oh, and Chaosity: I'm new to FF...I had no idea it was possible to deny unsigned reviews, never mind that I was doing exactly that...thanks for informing me! The situation has been rectified. To the Unmajestic Majesty: I researched? Where? When? Ooh. Right. Research...lol
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Chapter three- "Boys Will Be Boys."
In my defense, it's an adjustment for anybody, and I did quite well at adjusting, thankyouverymuch.
Yeah, being on a ship takes a mite of getting used to, even for those born to be on one. During my first day onboard the Black Pearl back when belonged to my uncle Ris, everything was strange and foreign and confusing and...in motion. Yes, very...motionous. You know, the pitch and roll of a ship, and how it's so different from the inherently stationary nature of dry land.
I'm loath to admit this. But I like you, so I'll let you in on a little secret.
My first time on a ship, I got seasick and couldn't keep my balance.
Don't you start looking at me like that again- cut that out! It was my first time, after all.
Billy was a very good sport about it. Helped me out. Taught me how to walk with the rhythm of the ship. And it was only about a day and a half before my stomach stopped its rebellion. And never a wise-ass smirk or laugh out of Billy. A very good sport about helping a whelp get used to the sea. During my...time of acclimatization...I had, probably wisely, decided to stay below deck, in short distance of my hammock, and when he wasn't tending to his cabin boy duties, Billy was with me, and we talked, and joked, and acted like I wasn't nauseated and off-balanced.
At the end of the approximately day and a half, maybe two days- a very quick adaptation, I might add, compared to usual five- that it took me to get comfortable with the pitch and roll of the ship, I started following Billy around. Just to help him with what needed to be done and amuse myself, you know.
One evening when I was helping him with some odd job-I believe we were hauling out a crate of salted pork to open for the crew to eat for dinner that night, though I don't rightly remember- the topic of the prevention of my being "dropped off" came up again.
"Billy?"
"Aye?" he answered with a smirk. Our first meeting had made that particular syllable a running joke.
"Where are we going?" I asked, realizing for the first time that I didn't actually know. "If anywhere?"
"We're heading over to Isla Muelle. Them there in Isla Muelle look the other way at "acquisitive activities", as Captain Ris calls it, and one of the important tradesmen buys the things we get because it's cheaper than buying from the merchant fleets. When he gets our stuff, he gets it at half the price, so he can sell it for less and still be making heaps of money from all the people who come for his lower prices."
I considered this. Good strategy. That way, everybody wins. Except the merchant fleets...but nothing's perfect.
"What's Isla Muelle like?" I interrogated further.
"A Spanish colony." Billy said, not minding explanations at all. "Ever been to one?"
"No."
"Well, you weren't missing much. All the buildings have the architecture from Spain to them. That means they're all that bleached-looking, tawny brown, all look like sand. And the streets are made of them rounded cobblestones what are only a bit darker brown than the buildings, instead of them slate-colored, flat flagstones most other colonies have."
I thought of this for a moment.
"So it's all...beige like that?
Billy nodded his head.
"You got it."
"Sounds...boring."
"You got it." We looked at each other for a moment, then laughed.
"Well," I said, "Do you think Ris would consider trying to leave me there?"
"He might." Billy said, "He just might. It's a pretty upscale colony, probably expects you could be properly taken care of by some orphanage or church over there."
"Now, I think my uncle comes off as a responsible man, the sort who wouldn't leave me there if it didn't seem a fit place to leave me."
"Yeah, that sounds like Ris."
"Well, then how do we make the Isla Muelle orphanage or what-have-they look like entirely the wrong place? I've got a few concepts, but what've you got to say about it?"
"Let's hear yours first, Jack."
"Alright. I think we should use this as a skeleton plan, and change it how what happens in Isla Muelle suggests. I could suggest something I've pulled before where we steal all the stuff outta there that we can. You know, take their furniture. But I've done that before and I don't wanna do the same trick twice."
"Sounds logical."
"So here's a fresh plan I've thought of-"
"This should be good."
"Thanks. Anyway, I say we look into the local delicacies." I said. Billy gave me a weird look. "I don't mean to eat. I mean to throw. We mess the building right up, from the inside out. A gigantic, two-man food fight. And without getting caught. Your thoughts?"
Billy looked at me for a minute.
"That's insane."
I grinned, taking it as a compliment.
"I know."
"You're brilliant."
"Great minds think alike."
We looked at each other, watching the wheels in each other's heads turning. This promised to be amusing.
It was late morning the next day when Billy and I were trying very hard to keep out from underfoot while the Pearl was being moored in Isla Muelle. Ris had brought the Pearl there for the sale of their ill-gotten gains, and so they moored at the pier, a gangplank put out so things that were on the ship could be carried to somewhere on land. Erm, you know what a gangplank is, right? You know, a ramp that goes from the dock to a moored ship, so people and things can go on and off? Right.
As I was saying, Billy and I were busying ourselves by not getting underfoot. When everything was tended to, Ris came to me and started herding me toward the docks.
"Jack, lad, this is where you get off."
I followed him, looking over my shoulder to Billy. A conspiratorial expression passed between us, and Billy followed too. Ris looked at him.
"And where do you think you're going?"
"With you and Jack. I wanna see the city."
"You said you thought Spanish colonies were profoundly dull."
"So?"
Ris looked at us for a moment. We looked as innocently as we could manage back at him. Thankfully, I hadn't had a chance to shine in the particular area Billy and I planned on venturing into, at least not that Ris knew of, so he couldn't think of what- if anything- we could get into.
"Fine. I'm gonna tend to mercantile bit here, then, Jack I'll tend to you. You two...don't go too far, stay around here...and try not to do anything...stupid."
We uttered some expression of agreement, and scampered off the ship.
A moment following my feet having hit stationary, motionless land, my face would nearly also have hit it, if it weren't for Billy putting out his arm in front of my chest and catching me, keeping me from pitching forward, face-first into the ground.
"It's a different thing, huh? You had to get used to being on a ship, now you have to get used to switching between the two."
I shook my head as my inner ear assimilated its new equilibrium. Billy nodded.
"That'll be much easier from now on."
And with that little formality out of the way, we headed off into the city. Once we were safely out of sight, we reviewed our plans.
"Billy-remember our plan?"
"Down to the last detail!"
"You got your half of the supplies?"
Billy pulled his shirt up off his stomach, where he had stowed a couple flat, empty burlap sacks, by wrapping them tight around his torso. He lowered his shirt again.
"What about you, Jack?"
I showed him the sacks I'd hidden around me, under my own shirt. I'd managed to get several more than he had: how loose my shirt was had provided me with a little extra cargo space. Billy raised his eyebrows at the quantity of burlap sacks I'd successfully smuggled off the ship.
"And all that fit under your shirt? We need to feed you more."
I rolled my eyes.
"Let's just get this into action."
I looked around for the best way to proceed. I spotted a herd of children being shepherded down the street in a neat little knot, by several women, not one of whom could have been their mother. I considered the significance of this before pointing it out to Billy.
"Let's follow the leader."
I trotted off in their direction, and Billy followed behind. To this day I'm not sure if he had a clue what I was up to at that moment, but I can't say I really care. Prefer to keep people in the dark, don't ask-don't tell, need-to-know-basis and all that.
I was perfectly right about where they were headed. As the local orphans returned to the local orphanage, Billy and I remained right quiet and hidden around whatever corners made themselves available. I smiled mischievously.
"Billy-there's our target."
"But we have nothing to throw...no ammunition."
"I know that. But first things had to be put first. Now's phase two. Remember what we decided that was?"
"Acquiring discarded food?"
"You got it."
We unwrapped the sacks from around ourselves, finding ourselves with six sacks in all, each a bit bigger than would fit comfortably over someone's head.
Not that I'd know a lot about that.
And again with that look. Knock that off.
We left them piled there, except for two, and went off to look for what we needed. The first "port-of-call" was, of coarse, the local garbage heap, just outside the city.
"And you're sure we should check here? Who know what's been dumped?" Billy said dubiously, prodding the remains of a moth-eaten pile of clothes hanging out of an over-turned and rotting chest and looking back over his should to the tan-colored city that lounged lazily inside the city walls.
"It'll be fine." I said, carefully moving a heavily- decaying sheet of lumber and throwing it to the side of the trash heap that reeked of who- knows-what.
It was a truly titanic heap of garbage. Mountains of it, and if we had a mind to, we could have climbed it. But since the exact contents of this mostly-gray collection of were in earnest question, we had no such desire. But whatever was food related and identifiable, we put in the sack. Chicken bones, fruit remnants, mushy potatoes, onions that were sprouting white growths, mushrooms of unknown quality and origin, bits of cheese, spoiled meat, shriveled...something.
We found a good bit of trash in there, filling the two sacks as full as we could, without gagging from the smell, in only a few minutes. Our trash-to- ammunitions effort was put to an abrupt end by a rather mangy looking dog. On it's own, it would not have been enough to dissuade us, particular with the fact that it seemed to be going more about it's own business than anything else. But a mangy looking dog and an angry badger, that was plenty.
We got some very...special...looks from the locals, who spotted us carrying a sack each, filled with foul-smelling food wastes, and carrying them not to the garbage heap, but away from it. Leaving the sacks around the corner from our target, we picked up another sack each and went to the next place. Incidentally, this was the market square, where vendors had stalls of goods set up, each beside the other. Which was just asking for trouble.
I got a cat from an alley. Billy found the largest stray dog he could. And then we set them loose among the market stalls.
"You ready?" I said, clutching the squirming and wriggling cat.
"Let's get on with this." Billy said, holding tight to the collar of the huge dog.
I let got of the cat, which landed-on it's feet of coarse-and Billy released the hound. Chaos inevitably ensued.
The first stall to topple was an apple cart, which had fallen because the owner backed into it to avoid the sharp, pointy bits of the cat. A fishmonger's stall listed and then keeled over when it was hit by a passing dog. A startled horse kicked over a produce stand. Of coarse, it had to bite me, the innocent bystander, first. The two animals rampaged around the marketplace for a while, causing all sorts of wonderful havoc. When the cat found somewhere to sit that was safely out of the sizable canine's reach, it looked like a tornado had struck. Merchants were busily righting the stalls, other people where either helping to put the goods back up or pinching a few for themselves. I'll leave it to the imagination which category we fit under.
So anyway, when the evidence of the preceding example of an urban predator/prey relationship had been contained, we quickly left, and business went back to usual, sans a small quantity of the lower-quality edible wares. No big loss to anyone, right?
Right.
Back at the mouth of the alley where we were hiding the filled sacks, we were gaining quite a collection. We each picked up our final burlap sack and headed for our final heist. Rather...well, much less glamorous than the second, but smelled better than the first. Begging at the backs of permanent-residence food markets and inns.
We approached the nearest inn, put our bags out of sight, and went to the back door. Then I had a brilliant idea.
"Billy! Wait."
He turned around, stopping in the middle of knocking on the back door.
"If we're gonna pretend to be beggars, let's look the part."
Billy looked at me quizzically. I knelt and put my fingers in the dirt between the cobblestones, then stood and rubbed it on my face. Billy smiled.
"You look like that badger at the dump heap." Billy said.
"But it works, doesn't it?" I said, rolling up the sleeves of my shirt and the hems of my pant-legs to make them look torn, and applying a bit more dirt.
"Actually...yes...it does work." Billy did the same, and I knocked at the back door of the inn. A red-faced, gray-haired innkeeper answered the door.
"What you two want?" said the proprietor in a Spanish accent.
"Please, sir," Billy started in what I must admit is a very good starving- street-urchin impersonation. "We need some food."
"Oh yes. Rancid meat even would be a blessing we'd all thank Heaven for." I said, making a similar impression as Billy.
"Who's 'you all'?" the innkeeper asked.
"Our family." I said. "We live in a really old barn. Our youngest sister has contracted a disease from it, and prior to that, the ailment was known only to goats. Our mother died of frostbite."
"In the Caribbean?!"
"It may have been something else, the only doctor we could afford was a true quack. And even that took us five months to save up for." Billy pleaded.
"I see."
"We have seventeen brothers and sisters, and our father has a game leg and can't work! And all our siblings have game things too! We're the only two healthy ones in the family!"
Billy took this opportunity to pretend to cough vigorously. I pretended to have a nervous outburst.
"No! Not you too! In the name of whatever deity you happen to be partial to, not you too!" I over-acted. I always have, I suspect, but what looks stupid for anyone else, looks good when I do it. Oh and that bit about deities was a little phrase I'd picked up from my uncle Ris.
The innkeeper looked thoroughly perplexed. He was entirely unsure of what to make of this, but he knew he wanted it to stop. Someone might notice and it couldn't be good for business.
"If I give you some old leftovers, will you two go...away?"
We nodded energetically. "Yes!" we said in unison, then I added, "We'll be forever in your debt! May you find a fortune in diamond encrusted muskets, each stuffed full with duck a l' orange!"
This time, both Billy and the innkeeper looked confused. Billy shook his head, and the innkeeper disappeared for a moment, then came back with a jumbled mess of the refuse of countless meals, all combined into a single semi-solid swill. Wordlessly, he dumped it on the ground, and went back into his establishment. We laughed and gathered the rubbish into the sacks, half filling both of them.
"That was..." Billy paused to think of an adjective.
"Fun!" I finished. "Now, if we get this much at the big food market, we're set!"
We crossed the square, went up the tan-colored stairs, and crossed the street, toting sacks of leftovers. When we found the major food market in town, we circled it several times before finding that it had no back entrance. Depositing our sacks near the entrance, we had to think of a new plan.
"Can we...?" Billy ventured
"No, that'll never work." I declared.
"And if we...?"
"Nope."
"We could...
"No we couldn't."
"But I haven't even said anything!"
"You say that like it matters."
"It does!"
"It's a matter of perspective, really."
"Well, do you have a brilliant idea then?!"
"As a matter of fact I do."
"Kind of you to share it."
"Keep your hair on, I'm getting to it!" I said, then paused, putting my idea in final order. "Now-follow my lead." "Don't you think you ought to tell me-"
"No I don't think I ought."
I opened the door to the food market and looked around at the shelves and racks piled with merchandise. I put on an anguished face, and a sickly stagger, and Billy, picking up on the clue, did the same. People started to walk wide around us, and some put a hand or piece of cloth over their faces. Inwardly, I laughed myself silly over their fear of catching something from us.
Me and Billy walked up to the counter the proprietor was standing behind. He looked apprehensive, more so than the last people we'd passed, probably because he was worrying not only about his health, but his establishment too.
"Excuse us, sir," I wheezed, and pretended to cough heavily over the foodstuffs in the rack by the counter.
"Yes, yes, what is it?" he demanded, wanting us out as quickly as possible.
"Our families-" I coughed all over the foods again, "Need food."
Billy picked up the plan.
"We're very poor, so we can't pay you. We live under the porch of a tavern. It's very difficult, especially for the taller of us." He hacked.
"All twenty three of us need a doctor, but we can't afford that either." I faked coughing again.
"What do you all have?"
"Larry's disease." Billy put in.
"Who's Larry?"
Billy and I looked at each other for a moment.
"Our father." I improvised. "The condition was unknown before he got it."
"But we think it's airborne." Billy added and we both proceeded to cough on the merchant's wares.
"So," I concluded, "Do you have anything you could offer a poor starving family of twenty four?"
"It was twenty three last time!" "I forgot to mention our three-legged dog."
"With one ear."
"And with one eye."
"And with half his tail missing."
"And with mange."
"And fleas."
"And toe-fungus."
"And arthritis."
"And gingivitis."
"And only four teeth."
"His name's Lucky." I finished.
Both Billy and I proceeded to hack heartily over the food by the counter. The storeowner grimaced.
"Here. Take it. You can have all this!" he gestured at everything we'd supposedly contaminated. We gathered it all up in our arms and as we were leaving the store, we heard him call to one of us:
"Hey, wait a minute! You're limping on the other leg!"
Billy and me looked at each other for a minute then pretended not to hear him, and left the store. We deposited our prizes in our sacks, filling them right full and finishing our acquisitive activities. We reported back to where we'd stashed the other bags and gave a good, hard look at our target.
The orphanage was tawny, like every other thing in the city. It was a decently large building, with a cobble stone courtyard out front, where some kids about our age puttered about. The courtyard had a black grate fence part of the way around, and no gate to barricade the opening.
"You know something, Billy?"
"What?"
"We'll need a guy on the inside for this job. Someone more able to escape detection than us."
I sauntered over to the kids playing in front of the building, Billy a few steps behind me. I looked at the possible accomplices, and one kid looked like a particularly able conspirator. He had a mischievous glint permanently affixed in his eye, a fair complexion, a bright red shock of hair, and a large helping of freckles on the exposed skin of his arms and face. He certainly didn't look very Spanish, unlike everyone else we'd seen so far in the colony, but he looked like he'd be up for a bit of harmless pranking.
"Hello." I said amiably. "What's your name?"
"Henry." The red-haired boy said simply.
"This is Billy Turner." I said.
"Hi." Billy said, and Henry responded in kind.
"And I'm Jack Sparrow."
Henry erupted laughing.
"Sparrow? Really? That's weird! Why don't you have a proper name?"
I was not amused. A man's name, well, that's who he is and all. Nothing funny about anyone's name.
"Henry." I interrupted. "I have a proposition for you."
"What you want?" he seemed intrigued.
"You're not too much of a neat-nick, are you?"
"No..."
"Good, good...so would you be adverse to...messing up inside a bit?" I asked, pointing to the building.
"Well, no...but...why?"
"That's not your concern. Just...would you mind at all spreading these about, just where anyone visiting would see it is all." I said, handing him two of the bags. He grinned impishly.
"My pleasure." "Wonderful! Great, you'll see us working the outside a couple times I expect. But we're in a bit of a hurry, so..."
Henry dashed off into the building, strewing detritus as he went. Billy laughed.
"You make convincing people look easy!"
I looked up at Billy. He was older than me by several years and taller than me by several inches, if you remember.
"As far as I'm concerned, it is."
We each carried two of the remaining four bags and splattered things over the sides of the building, occasionally stopping to wave at Henry through a window. By the time all three of us were finished, everywhere that Ris might conceivably see was thoroughly and strategically slimed.
We met up with Henry and the varied expressions of the other kids outside the building in the courtyard. He handed back the sacks and assured us that he and the other kids would keep quiet, pretend this was nothing out of the ordinary and we told him that would be ideal.
We wandered easily back to the area surrounding the docks, where my uncle had just finished his bit of business. He looked down at us.
"Jack," he said, leading us back into the city. "Like I said, living on my ship was just a temporary thing. I know you've liked it, and I know you've been getting along with Billy, and I'm sure he appreciated your help with chores, but I can't keep you. Now I hear the orphanage here is very high quality. Good staff, well funded, clean, and..." he trailed off as we rounded the corner to the orphanage. Billy and I looked at each other, both suppressing peals of laughter. Ris stood gawking at our handiwork.
The building had splatters of food remnants covering it, and not all of it was readily identifiable as food. The kids who were out front a few minutes before had apparently migrated inside. Teams of women who must have comprised the cleaning staff were already outside, making good headway both on cleaning and chatting. A very efficient place, it seemed. Fortunately, I never became any more familiar with it, because Ris took a moment, then decided that a place that he found in this big a mess was no fit place to leave his only nephew. He turned us around, and Billy and I waved over our shoulders at the roguish Henry, nodding him thanks for his help as we were taken back to the docks, and back on to the Black Pearl.
That night, Billy and I were shooting the breeze in the darkness of the cargo hold. I looked up, talking to the ceiling, and Billy would answer from his own hammock in his own corner. We couldn't see each other through the crates and darkness, but we could hear each other. "Well," I said, "Today felt like a success."
We both laughed.
"You had some pretty good ideas out there."
I shrugged, forgetting he couldn't see it.
"It's what I do. And hey-You did pretty good too."
"Thanks!"
"Where do we go next?"
"I dunno yet."
"Ah."
"Well...if we can keep you off the adoption circuit there too, I feel like we might be home free." Billy suggested hopefully. I thought for a moment.
"Not home, exactly, seeing as I'll lack a fixed address. But free- definitely."
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A/N: I know, I know, I'm evil. I haven't updated in, like, ever. But I updated now! I was just stuck with writer's block, couldn't figure out how what they could pull off to keep Ris from putting Jack up for adoption. As usual, please read and review, and tell me if I'm being a retard! A preview of the next chapter: the Pearl goes to a French colony. Hijinks ensue. And (drum roll please) Jack invents his symbol thing and learns the word "savvy"! Ta! I promise to update sooner this time!