"So who else is simply delighted with this vacation?" Norrington griped, sarcastically enthusiastic, as he threw himself down in a window seat. Glancing out, he found to much annoyance that after five dragging hours of flight time, their peripatetic plane was still soaring over rolling blue seas. Though he was thrilled at the prospect of ditching Jack and Barbossa permanently in some distant jail, he hadn't meant for the prison to be so distant that travel time took up over half his Saturday.

Elizabeth rolled her eyes and examined her nails again.

"Have they changed in the last five minutes, luv?" Jack queried with a smile, leaning over the seat in front of him so he could peer closer.

"Hey, not so close," Norrington snapped defensively, poking Jack back in his seat. "Miss Swann doesn't need pirate breath in her face."

"It's not 'Miss Swann' anymore—it's Mrs. Turner," Will corrected, patting his wife affectionately on the hand. He sighed dreamily. "What a lovely wedding we had."

"Oh, no," moaned Norrington, fearing another flashback from Matrimony Boy.

Barbossa shrugged, impartial. "It wasn't that great. Nobody had anything to steal."

"But there was pie. Lemon meringue. It was beautiful," Will reminded him, glazy-eyed.

"And rum. There was rum."

The Commodore examined Jack with disdain, criticizing, "That you hoarded the entire night. I don't believe anyone else ventured close enough for a taste."

"Aye. I don't know what yer complainin' about, though, Norry. The rum's a bit too strong fer yer weak stomach. Ye grow faint jess lookin' in the mirror." He paused. "Then again, that's understandable."

"All right, all right," Elizabeth cut in. "That's enough. We should at least try to humor each other when we're together. Pretend to be grateful if you have to. Remember, my father was kind enough to pay for our flight."

"And even after he paid for the wedding," nodded Will.

Elizabeth paused. "Well, almost all of it. We did pick up the tab for the priest."

Jack couldn't help but laugh. "That be right! Hey, Gillette, ye must've hired the most expensive priest this side of the Caribbean!"

Gillette reddened, lifting his nervous eyes from his paperback edition of Ways to Form Lasting Bonds: The Siamese Twin Edition. "Well, after the original priest bolted, I was short on time. I did the best I could."

"What was the bill? $900 an hour, I recall?" Norrington prodded, enjoying seeing Gillette squirm uncomfortably at the memory.

"I be in the wrong business," muttered Barbossa. He dug through his knapsack, yanking out a thin, square black object. "Maybe I should search for ordination degrees…"

Jack narrowed his eyes. "What is that?"

Flipping it open, Barbossa revealed his latest prized possession to the others. "It's a laptop. I'm looking into online degrees. You know, to have something to fall back on when my pirating days are over."

Will blinked. "Where did you get a laptop?"

"Actually, I stole it from you. It was Gillette's wedding gift to the bride and groom."

"I thought that looked familiar," Gillette said.

"And you're going to enroll in college?" Norrington repeated with amusement. "Please. These institutions have standards to uphold."

Barbossa scrolled down, ignoring him. "Hmm… Pastor Degrees, Priest Degrees, Voodoo Master Degrees… Genetics…"

"Sign up fer that last one!" encouraged Jack, reaching for the computer. "Maybe ye could learn how to fix Norry's nose."

Elizabeth sighed, irritated already. The men were once again showing the maturity level of two-year-olds. She turned to Will, only to find that her husband had dozed off on Gillette's shoulder, and the Lieutenant was tentatively trying to straighten his slumped head before his trickle of drool drizzled onto his shirt.

Gillette pinched his nose. "Whew, does his breath reek of peanuts!"

"So that's where all those free snacks went!" Jack said, slapping his knee and pouting a bit. "He'll be thirsty in a few minutes—quick! Save me rum!"

Norrington gave Elizabeth a somewhat sympathetic, self-righteous smile. "I expect you are thrilled with that marriage, Miss Swann."

"It's Mrs. Turner," Elizabeth corrected curtly, tossing her dark curls over her shoulder, where they flapped into Jack's face.

"Ow, my eye," muttered Jack, dodging back as his bottle of alcohol dropped, clattering to the ground. "Don't take it out on me luv. After all—"

The plane gave a sudden lurch, cutting his sentence short. Norrington, clutching his seat with white knuckles, muttered over the turbulence, "Who's flying this thing, anyway?"

"My father would appoint only the best Port Royal had to offer," Elizabeth quickly assured them.

"And what a superb selection to choose from!" Norrington added with facetious enthusiasm. "Because we all know Port Royal is just crawling with pilots."

"It is?" Will asked, groggily waking from his nap.

"Wouldn't they be flying, not crawling?" put in Jack.

Norrington threw up his hands. "Sarcasm! It's called sarcasm! My best quality that is just too superior for your primitive minds. Along with my charm, good looks, and sense of style."

"And then you see his nose," Jack said, "and it all goes down from there."

"Ha-ha," Will smiled, "a 'nose-dive.'"

The plane took cue and dropped significantly once more. A few metallic rumblings and engine grindings rattled the windows. Elizabeth reached for Will's hand, but he had already clutched on to Jack, shielding his eyes.

"Are we going to crash?" he whimpered.

"'Course not!" Jack replied heartily. Not a second later, he was rummaging through the serving cart, which was currently sliding down the middle of the aisle as the plane tilted. "I propose a toast! To flying!"

Again, the plane jostled and dropped another thousand feet.

"And to crashing! Drinks all around!"

Barbossa frantically clicked away on his laptop. "Hold on. There has to be something on here about what to do in this situation—"

Elizabeth closed her eyes, wishing for some peace and quiet. "Barbossa, what do you care? Aren't you supposed to be dead already?"

Gillette craned his neck over the others to look for some safety words of advice from Norrington, but he had disappeared. He managed to catch a glimpse of the door leading to the pilot's cockpit, which had oddly been recently opened.

With his uniform's coattails swinging dramatically behind him, Norrington barged into the cockpit. "I demand to know what you think you're doing, because you're obviously not flying," he snapped. A hunched figure loomed over the controls, every now and then giving them a hard pull or push that sent the plane wheeling unsteadily in the stratosphere. Norrington stumbled, made a desperate dive for the empty co-pilot seat, and managed to steady himself temporarily. "I said, what do you think you're doing?"

"You must be the Commodore. What a pleasure to see you—again."

Incredulous, Norrington crawled closer to the pilot, only to find that he was the same bantering Harbor Master who had given him the second-biggest, second-grandest, second-most-expensive ship out on the docks the day he had sailed out in search of Maggascotchi.

"You were expecting Captain Kirk?" the Harbor Master inquired with a carefree grin before turning his attention back to the controls. "Going dooowwwnnn…"

Norrington felt his stomach lurch upwards as the plane dived, like it had just been tossed above the ceiling. Grabbing the Harbor Master, he gave his sleeve a hasty shake.

"Are you insane? Lemon Meringue Boy just ate twenty bags of peanuts back there, and I don't happen to see any stewardesses ready to mop up any messes!"

"Speaking of messes," the Harbor Master cut in, "what ever happened to my ships that you rented?"

Norrington, with his face turning a seaweed shade of green with the falling altitude, fumbled for his sword. "Listen. I could care less about your ships. Right now, I just want to make sure my precious feet touch solid ground again. Now, you're going to find a suitable place and land this plane immediately, do you understand? That is a command straight from the Royal Navy!"

"Well, my commands come straight from the Governor," replied the Harbor Master. "And according to his directions, we ain't quite there yet."

"This is ridiculous," the Commodore muttered between clenched teeth as he returned his sword to its sheath. "I don't know what exotic prison Governor Swann planned on dumping Jack and Barbossa in, but we're certainly taking a round-about way to get there. And of course, he makes it a grand family affair."

"Is the company upsetting to ye, eh?"

"Upsetting?" Norrington looked aghast. "You try prying pie out of Will's fingers every twenty minutes; or try to dodge Jack's breath so it doesn't contaminate your breathing space; or try to rid Gillette of the ludicrous idea that we're related; or try to figure out why Barbossa still isn't dead!" The Commodore paused momentarily, wiping the dimples of sweat from his creasing brow. "And Elizabeth, may we all pity the beautiful girl. Doomed to spend the rest of her days without me… And now the Governor sends us all on this torturous escapade. I frankly don't see why we just don't make short of it and dump Jack and Barbossa out the back of the plane now—"

The plane's engine rumbled, seemingly louder and more grating than before. The Harbor Master looked up, realizing that Norrington had ceased griping, leaving the cockpit in silence except for the mechanical humming.

"That's it," he murmured. A slow grin wrought its way along his face. "Ha-ha. That's it. Brilliant."

"Glad to see you chipper again, Commodore. Best be heading back to your seat now—"

With a flash of metallic light, Norrington's sword had been expertly positioned under the Harbor Master's chin, wavering ever so slightly. "I don't think so," the Commodore interrupted lightly. "We've had a slight change of plans. Do you see that island over there, just at the edge of the horizon?"

"Uh…no…"

"That one, with all the vegetation?"

"Oh, yes, there she be."

"No, that's your postcard from Hawaii on the dashboard."

"Oh, how silly of me."

Norrington swiped the memento down, shredding it in multiple halves with disgust. "Don't mock me, Harbor Master."

"I do have a name, you know."

"Well, for all purposes of this story, we don't really care."

"Why don't we just start calling you Guy with Wig, then?"

"Because half the people here have wigs. And I'm more important anyway."

"I think—"

"Stop distracting me!" shrieked Norrington, brandishing his sword again. "Now, do you see that island or should I take over the controls?"

"The island," sighed the Harbor Master. A vague outline of land hovered in gray mist, slightly silhouetted by the waning afternoon sun. He blinked and hastily checked his map. "Actually, that is where we're—"

"Silence! Now, where do you keep the parachutes?"

The Harbor Master looked up at him again. "Commodore, are you seriously going to toss Captain Jack Sparrow and Barbossa out of the plane? As if they were…luggage?"

Norrington scoffed. "Luggage? Please, don't regard them that highly. Where are the parachutes?"

Seeing the approaching point of the sword, the Harbor Master reluctantly gestured over to a compartment right and above the controls. "There."

The Harbor Master watched as Norrington hurriedly ripped free two vests.

"Commodore, really. Reconsider. I hardly think Captain Jack and Barbossa would appreciate—"

"Enough! These parachutes aren't for those bumbling idiots! They're for me and Elizabeth."

"You and Elizabeth?"

"Yes, is that clear? I'm not wasting my time any longer. Now, you're going to listen very closely."

"Very closely--?"

"You're going to fly over to that island, and then—"

"Over to that--?"

"Yes, you're going over to that island, and then you're going to fake—"

"I'm going to fake—?"

"Stop repeating me!"

"Oh, so sorry. Carry on."

"You're going to fly over to that island, and then you're going to fake a crash landing."

The Harbor Master stared blankly.

Norrington drew in a careful breath, repeating evenly, "I said, you're going to fake a crash landing."

No response.

"Are you listening to me!"

"You said I can't repeat!"

"Are you a parrot? Must you repeat people to have a conversation?"

"Must I?"

"Are you mocking me?"

"Am I?"

"Stop with the rhetorical questions."

The Harbor Master stopped.

Taking a breath, Norrington paused, his face turning from airsick green to frustrated red so quickly he looked like a streetlight. "Now you made me forget what I was saying!"

PLEASE STAND BY BEEEEP… THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION WE NOW RETURN YOU TO YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAM