A/N (8/22/04): Well, I'm bored, so I'm updating the chapter. Erm, I don't own Gurhurt. He's a guy at my school. And I really have nothing to say, so, well, bye for now, and on to the reply to review. Singular. I'm rather disappointed. I wonder where Friday got off to. I haven't heard from her since last Friday. Lol. Maybe the Black Pearl came and kidnapped her. Come to think of it, I haven't heard from Rachel either. Maybe Friday got the Pearl to go kidnap her as well. Oh, and I just remembered, I got on the news while I was in the Netherlands. Cool, huh?


Fireblade K'Chona: Sorry, I've never seen the Matrix either. Has Legolas appeared yet? I forget... funny, eh? I'm planning to have him appear sometime. Poor Trey. Katie won't know which of them to look at.


Into the Vortex Chapter 10: Homecoming


One day in the middle of August, Lyn screwed up her courage and approached Jack. "Jack," she said, "will you marry me?"

The question took him by surprise. Usually the guy proposed to the girl. In fact, Lyn had told Katie to tell Jack to ask her to marry him, and Jack just hadn't gotten around to it yet. So he really wasn't expecting her to ask him. "I, er, that is, I mean, yes," he babbled. "Yes, love,' he said more coherently. "I love you an' I want to marry you. I shall buy you an engagement ring the next time we go into a town."

"Buy?" Lyn was astonished. She'd expected Jack to offer to steal a ring for her. But buy...well! "Oh, Jack!" She threw her arms around his neck. "You're so sweet!"

Once again, Jack was taken by surprise. He made the best of the good situation, hugging Lyn back and planting a kiss on her lips.


Jack bought Lyn the ring, a plain gold band, but rather thick. Lyn took to calling it her Precious, which caused Gollum to try to steal it. Jack came to Lyn's defense, and Jack and Gollum decked it out on the Pearl until Uncle Jack yelled at them for fighting on his ship.

Lyn also bought Jack a ring, also a plain gold band, but Jack didn't call it his Precious. He reserved that title for Lyn.

"Say," Lyn said, "ye wanna go to Homecomin' wi' me?"

"What's Homecomin'?" Jack asked.

"It's a dance," Lyn explained. "It's for people 'oo 'ave graduated from the school to come back an' mingle wi' the students."

Lyn bought tickets for them.

Her brother Tom was there as well; his semi-girlfriend had asked him to the dance, and he had reluctantly agreed to come. Nick had decided to come as well, although he didn't have a date.

Lyn danced a few dances with Jack, then danced with Nick a bit. When she got tired, she wandered off in search of refreshments. She ran into a boy we will simply call Gurhurt to preserve anonymity.

"Oh, Lyndsay Astra, I didn't expect to see you here. Looking as ugly as ever, I see," Gurhurt said.

"As blind as ever, I see," Lyn retorted. Calling her ugly was rather pointless; she was model material and knew it. In fact, one summer she had taken a modeling class.

"Do you ever wash your hair?" Gurhurt asked, wrinkling his nose.

The insult was rather lost on Lyn. She had, in fact, washed her hair before the dance, but usually she didn't. It was rather difficult to bathe aboard the Black Pearl. "Why, yes, in fact, I believe it rained the day before yesterday," she said.

"Ew!" Gurhurt drew back in disgust. "No wonder no one will go out with you!"

"Actually, son, I do have a date, unlike you," Lyn said in her Captain Jack Sparrow voice.

"Who would want to go out with you?'

"See that man over there?" Lyn asked, pointing at Jack. "The one half the girls are trying to ask for a dance?" (The other half were sighing over Trey, who had come to the dance with Katie). "That's my date. And my fiancé."

"He must've felt sorry for you."

Lyn laughed. More likely he felt sorry for himself! she thought, remembering how they'd met. "Wow! You can actually come up with an insult more creative than 'You're ugly.' Did you come up with it all by yourself, or did your mommy help you?"

Gurhurt didn't have a good answer for that, so he said, "I'm not going to waste my time talking to you any more," and wandered off.

He ran into Katie. "Oh, you're here, too," he said, not very intelligently.

"What an intelligent observation," Katie said sarcastically.

"Ah," Gurhurt floundered, "I was wondering if you'd like to dance?" He'd had this thing for Katie when they were in Health class together, and apparently he was still trying to get her to notice him.

"I think not," Katie said coldly. "If you try to flirt with me, my husband will kill you, if I don't do it first."

Gurhurt gulped. "H-husband?"

Katie smiled. "Chris, meet my husband, Trey." She put an arm around Trey's shoulders. "Trey, meet the school dunce. You'd think we wouldn't have one, seein' as it's a school of choice, buy Gurhurt here managed to surprise us all. Personally, I'm surprised he hasn't yet failed out of the school."

Gurhurt stalked off in a huff.

Katie turned to Trey. "He's blind. He didn't even notice that I'm six months pregnant."

Lyn, meanwhile, had gotten into an argument with the DJ.

"Do you have any country songs?" she asked.

"No," he said, not even bothering to check.

"You'd better have some country songs!" said Lyn.

"Look, girl," said the DJ. "Even if I had any, I wouldn't play them. Nobody likes country."

Lyn didn't very much appreciate being called "girl." "Look here, you!" she said. "I like country, an' I'm not nobody. I'm an infamous pirate, an' so's me fiancé, an' if ye don' do as I say, I'll have him hunt you down an' shoot you!" She still wasn't quite comfortable threatening to kill someone herself, but Jack was a good go-between.

The DJ looked unconvinced. "Oh really?"

Lyn took out a pistol. "Really."

The DJ swallowed hard. "H-how'd you get that?"

"I tol' ye, I'm a pirate."

"Ah, isn't it against School Board rules to threaten people?" the DJ asked desperately.

"I'm not a student at the school anymore," Lyn pointed out.

The DJ conceded the point. The very next song was Alan Jackson's "It's Five O'Clock Somewhere."

Lyn danced and sang along. It was one of her favorite songs. Her very favorite song was Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue."

The next dance was a slow-dance. Jack extricated himself from his crowd of admirers in order to dance with Lyn.

Jack's admirers went their own separate ways. Some of them clustered around Toby and Sam Stormwind, who had managed to sneak into the dance after Lyn, Jack, Katie and Trey. One girl, a curvaceous thing with hips infinitely better than Lyn's, who was wearing a rather revealing dress, fluttered her eyelashes at Toby. Her date, a very muscular mean-looking guy, saw this and blustered a bit at Toby. "Who d'you think you are, flirting with my date?"

"Why, I think I'm Toby Stormwind, mate," Toby replied. "An' in case ye 'adn't noticed, yer date started the flirtin'." He raised his voice so the girl could hear. "Say, love, would ye care for a dance?"

"Sure, she said, fluttering her eyelashes some more and smiling coyly. "By the way, Toby, my name's Jenny."

As Toby tried to walk toward Jenny in order to escort her to the dance floor, her date stepped in the way. He cracked his knuckles menacingly. "Leave her alone, pretty-boy."

Toby bowed with a flourish. "Why thank ye for the complement, but she just agreed to dance wi' me, so if ye'll get out o' me way...?"

"I don't think so," Jenny's date said. He picked Toby up by his shirt and brought Toby's face hear his. He was obviously expecting Toby to begin to kick his feet helplessly.

Toby, however, was far from helpless. He brought his knee up into the bigger man's groin, and the man dropped him and fell to the floor, groaning.

"Sorry 'bout that," Toby apologized to Jenny as he escorted her to the dance floor. "'E seemed to think ye dinna wanna dance wi' me."

Jenny looked at Toby with something bordering on awe. "How did you learn to do that?"

"Can ye keep a secret?" Toby asked.

Jenny nodded eagerly.

"Me real name's Tobias Carter. The thing is, I'm a pirate, an' me dad's in the Navy, so we call me Toby Stormwind so no one'll make the connection."

Jenny giggled. "A pirate! How exciting! Have you ever seen the movie 'Pirates of the Caribbean'?"

"Ah, actually, I haven't seen it yet, but Lyn's recited the intirething for me more than once. Scared the Hell out o' Uncle Will firs' time she did that."

"You say your dad's in the Navy? Isn't he a bit disappointed in your career choice?" Jenny asked.

Toby laughed. "Naw. T' tell the truth, 'e rather expected it. Y'see, me mum's a pirate as well. But don' tell 'er I said that. She still maintains that she's a thief, not a pirate."

Jenny giggled again. "You're much more fun than Mark. That's my date," she explained. She pursed her lips. "And my ex-boyfriend. Care for a date tomorrow night?"

"Sure," Toby agreed. "Where do you live?"

She gave him her address, and he wrote it down.

They danced in silence for a while.

"Is that your brother?" Jenny asked suddenly, pointing at Sam.

"Aye," Toby replied. "Sam's me twin. Care to meet 'im?"

"Sure," Jenny agreed.

"Ahoy! Sam!" Toby called.

Sam made his way over to his brother. "An' jes' 'oo's this love'ly young lady?" he asked.

"This is Jenny," Toby introduced her. "I have a date with her tomorrow night. Jenny, this is me brother, Sam."

Sam made a face. "'Ow come you always get the pretty girls, Tobe?"

"It's 'cause I'm more handsome," Toby replied.

Sam made a face.

A beautiful dark haired girl walked up to them, looking slightly jealous. "Why do you always have the luck with guys, Jenny?" She and Jenny had been friends for a long time.

"I'm open, darlin'," Sam told her, "if you'd care to dance."

"Sure!" the girl said. "I'm Becky. Who're you?"

"Sam," he replied. 'sam Stormwind. This 'ere's me brother, Toby. We're twins."

"They're pirates," Jenny giggled.

She and Toby moved away from Sam and Becky.

"Where are ye from?' Toby asked.

"Texas," Jenny replied. "My family moved here a few months ago, along with Becky and her family. Becky's my best friend."

"So, where do ye wanna go on our date?"

"Oh, I figured we could go see a movie. There's a good romance playing."

Meanwhile, Sam and Becky were talking.

"What're your plans for tomorrow?" Becky asked.

"Oh, I was plannin' to 'ang out in the votex, maybe chase after a yacht. Depends on what Grampa decides to do. 'E's the Captain o' the Red Sun."

"Say," she said suddenly, looking at his face, "weren't you one of the pirates who almost got hung?"

"Naw," Sam replied, "that was Toby."

"Anyway," said Becky, "how about going on a date? Say, to a movie or something?"

"Sounds good," Sam said.

And now back to the misadventures of Gurhurt. Despite his earlier words, he had returned to bother Lyn some more.

"I thought ye said ye weren't gonna waste yer time talkin' to me any more," Lyn remarked.

"I just wanted to say that you need to buy some clothes," Gurhurt told her.

Lyn gave him a withering glance. "What, so I can look like you? No thank you!"

Jack walked up to her and put a hand on her shoulder. "Ahoy there, love. Is this kid botherin' you?"

"Actually, I find his antics rather amusing," Lyn replied.

Gurhurt made a face at Jack. "You two both have no taste in clothes."

"What an amazing discovery!" Lyn declared. "You can count to two!"

"Amazing," said Jack to Gurhurt. "The girls here wouldn't agree with you. There are some very pretty girls here—"

Slap!

Jack rubbed his cheek. "I suppose I deserved that. I was about to say that Lyn here is of course the prettiest."

"You're blind," said Gurhurt. "She's ugly."

A knife appeared in Jack's hand, less than a centimeter from Gurhurt's throat. "Would you care to take that back?" Jack asked in a dangerous voice.

Gurhurt gulped. "Um, yeah, I take it back."

The knife disappeared.

"You are going to burn and burn and burn," Gurhurt told Jack.

"What circle of Hell is reserved for thieves?" Lyn asked.

Jack shrugged. "I don't remember."

"I don't think it was fiery," Lyn said. "In which case we're not going to burn."

Gurhurt looked blank.

"Read Dante's Inferno," Lyn suggested. "Oh, sorry, I forgot. You can't read."

"Now go away," Jack told Gurhurt.

Gurhurt refused. "No."

Nick, who had been watching the entire exchange, winked at Jack. "Watch this." He fluttered his eyelashes at Gurhurt. "You've got such nice, long eyelashes." He took a sideways step toward said idiot. "You know you want me."

Gurhurt shrieked and ran.

"Hey, look!" someone said. "It's Jack Sparrow!"

Jack sighed. "An' here I was, hopin' no one would recognize me."

"We weren't talking about you," the boy said offensively. He had meant Lyn; the kids in her Driver's Ed class would call her Jack Sparrow because she used to show up at school dressed as a pirate.

"Well then yer idiots," Jack declared.

Lyn said, "I think we already knew that, Jack."

"Why're you calling him Jack?" the boy asked.

"They are idiots!" Jack laughed.

"More like gurhurtmabobs," said Lyn.

"Son," said Jack, "I'm Captain Jack Sparrow. Savvy?"


After the dance, they stopped by the school and stole one of the toilet seats as a prank. Lyn had the idea of sending it to J. K. Rowling. They did so, adding a not that said, "With love, from Fred and George Weasley."


There. I'm done with the chapter. The next chapter is either going to be titled "Drinks All Around" or "Baby, Go Cry on That Little Boy's Shoulder," I haven't yet decided which. If you have a preference, please tell me.