A/N: For those of you who don't remember, Ragetti is the pirate with the popout eyeball, and Pintel is his coiffuricly-challenged friend.
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It seemed that some of the fish were still helping the pirates, but after three different ones attempted to kill Jack, he decided that Jones's crew had turned on them and therefore strategy had to be revised.
"Oy! Hey! Stop it! CHANGE OF PLANS!" Jack bellowed at the top of his lungs. "It seems the fish are now bad! Bad fish! KILL THE FISH!"
Gibbs began to ring the bell to get everyone's attention. "KILL THE FISH!"
"Kill the..." Elizabeth had been wrestling with one of Beckett's soldiers, trying to keep his sword arm away from a fish-person who had fallen to the deck. When she heard the announcement, she instead helped the man drive his blade into the fish-person. But then the soldier turned on her, leaving his sword where it was, and attempted to strangle her with his bare hands.
He might have succeeded had not someone pulled him off and thrown him ten feet through the air. Elizabeth pushed her hair back out of her face and turned to her rescuer to thank him...
Some rescuer. "You," she breathed, backing away. "I know you, I saw what you did, Will's father told me all about you – you're sick." It didn't occur to her that calling a man who was half coral reef "sick" was a little silly.
The bosun laughed. "I likes to have me fun, if that's what you mean."
She thought of the men she had seen bleed at his hand. "On my word, you've had your last fun." Her voice was so low and guttural she was surprised he heard it.
"Little lady, I'm about to have some right now." His trusty whip was coiled over his shoulder, but he opted to attack with a sword pulled out of a nearby dead man.
He was stronger, no doubt about that. But thanks to all the coaching she'd had lately, Elizabeth could tell immediately that she was the better swordsman. She defended herself, waited for him to make a mistake, and in the opportune moment, slashed a deep wound into his thigh.
The bosun howled with pain, but to Elizabeth's shock, the enormous gash that would have a man bleeding to death in minutes was not enough to stop him for long. He grabbed her by the hair with one hand, and used his other to withdraw her blade and throw it away. She heard it clatter on the stairs, but there were pressing matters. Like how to get this creature off her. He was pinning her arms now, and of all the people fighting around them there was nobody she could shout for help from, but luckily she knew all about how to handle this situation.
She headbutted him in the face. His face was much squishier than Jack's, and she got him hard enough to make something that looked like a cross between a jellyfish and an eyeball pop out and wriggle to the deck. He let go of her, roaring even louder than when she had stabbed him, and she jerked away and made for the stairs to retrieve her sword.
She was almost to the top when she heard a whistle and felt her feet jerked out from under her. She cracked her head on the top step at the same time her stomach landed hard on the middle step. Dazed, with the wind knocked out of her, she tumbled the rest of the way down the stairs before she even knew what had happened.
She tasted blood. Her vision consisted of colorful fireworks. She couldn't yet draw in a breath.
Her ankle burned something awful, and an instant later she realized what had happened - the bosun had tripped her up with his whip.
The whip. She looked up just in time, heard the whoosh, and threw up her arms to protect her head. The blow caught her across her shoulder, chest, and forearm. For a moment she stood paralyzed, the sheer shock of it making her unable even to cry out.
A second later her body really registered it; the pain flooded through her in a warm rush, and she started to scream as only a girl can.
He laughed at her and pulled the whip back to do it again.
For one second his arm was upraised to strike, making his chest a perfect target. Before she even realized what she was doing, Elizabeth jerked Barbossa's knife out of her bodice and hurled it as Will had taught her.
She pegged him right in the chest. He froze. The whip fell from his hand. He staggered forwards a step and Elizabeth just watched, wondering if he would fall or not. Then all of a sudden he screamed, and jerked, and collapsed in a heap.
When he fell she noticed a very large sword sticking out of his back.
Elizabeth looked past him, and there was Will, waving.
"I told you not to baby me!" she shouted, smiling despite her best efforts.
"You're welcome!" They both laughed. But then Will frowned. "Look!"
"What?"
"Where's Barbossa going?"
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The chaos was complete. Everyone was fighting everyone else, fish-people and Beckett's crew and the pirates and Norrington's soldiers, and half the time someone looked to be helping you until the very last minute, and then changed his mind and tried to run you through.
So Pintel wasn't taking any chances. It was every man for himself, and anybody who stood in his path was going to get it.
He was chopping through people left and right, til one of them cried, "'Ey – I'm on your side!" as their swords clashed.
It was Ragetti. "Are you sure?" Pintel demanded while they continued to hack at each other.
"Yes!" Chop. "We're always on the same side, aren't we?" Parry.
"Then put down your sword!"
Ragetti ducked under a blow that would have taken off his head. "No! You first!"
"No, you first! Or I'll poke out that other eye!"
"Oh, now that's not nice," Ragetti complained. He missed Pintel's shoulder by a hair, jumped over the stroke aimed at his knees, and lectured, "'Sides, if you did, I'd have to poke out yours right back. An eye for an eye, that's what the Bible says."
"Grarrr!" Pintel was more annoyed at the Biblespeak than at the sword blows. "The Bible also says you're not sposed to kill anybody – so stop tryin to kill me!"
Ragetti paused long enough to tsk at his friend reproachfully before stabbing at him again. "Now don't you start quotin the Bible, you don't really mean it, and that's blasphemy, that is."
They continued to fight each other until a fish-person lumbered over and attempted to kill them both. At that point, they immediately began working together, and from then on had at least that much straight.
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Jack took a break from fighting long enough to call out and get Barbossa's attention. He raised a bloody hand and pointed over to Beckett's ship. "That's him."
Barbossa looked. The battle was so fierce that Beckett had apparently deployed everyone, leaving his ship deserted except for one guard at the top of the stairs, and a short little man who couldn't be identified because he had a spyglass glued to his face. He wore a wig. Aha. Barbossa nodded at Jack, finished off the man he had been struggling with, and headed over. He felt awful, cold and dizzy and sluggish, but he knew he could gear up for this one more killin.
He ran through the melee, vaulting over pairs engaged in messy combat and stopping every now and then to strike a blow for some pirate in distress. He preferred to throw over his own grappling hook rather than trust someone else's, and though swinging with one hand was difficult, soon enough he made it to the other ship and reached the stairs. He took them two at a time, dispatched the guard who stood at the top, and reached Beckett before the fool even managed to turn around.
Barbossa had left his sword in the guts of Beckett's bodyguard and was not in the mood for a long hand-to-hand struggle, so he drew a knife and buried it to the hilt just below Beckett's shoulderblade.
Beckett gave a short, high scream and arched backwards.
Barbossa twisted the knife to open the wound wider. Stabbing people in the back was tricky - he was always of the opinion that since you often don't hit something vital on the first try, your best bet is to make the hole good and deep and then just wait for them to bleed out.
Beckett screamed again. Barbossa let go of him, leaving the knife where it was, and spun him around so they stood face-to-face. "Word is you wanted to meet me," he said conversationally. "Captain Hector Barbossa, at your service. Glad to make your acquaintance. Although it does look like our friendship will have to be a short one." He reached around to pull the knife out, and blood began to pour.
"N-no," Beckett breathed. That quickly, he felt his strength going, and it was only the arm around him that stopped him from collapsing. He lifted his head to look his killer in the face.
The pirate's smile was gentle, sympathetic, with only the lightest hint of mockery to it. "Fraid so."
All of a sudden Elizabeth was beside them, looking horrorstruck. "Oh my God- Lord Beckett? Here, let me have him." Barbossa dumped him in her arms and helped ease her to a sitting position. "Lord Beckett?"
He was limp and his eyes were closed. "Cutler, please," he whispered. "Look at me."
"Cutler, then," she whispered back. Her voice was deserting her. Over Lord Beckett? Amazing. "Cutler, I'm so sorry."
His eyes fluttered open. "Is that...was he..." She couldn't make out the rest.
"Yes, that's Captain Barbossa," she answered. "My... well, my teacher, I guess."
He reached up to touch the tears on her cheek, and his face contorted with the pain of moving. "You st... ah... lot to learn."
She wiped angrily at her eyes. "Yes I know. I have no stomach for this. Is there anything I can do for you?"
He seized up and choked and it was a moment before he could speak again. She smoothed bits of his wig off his forehead. "Yes?"
"..." His mumble was completely unintelligible, save for two words: "...could have..."
That clue was enough to help her know what to do. "I understand, Lord Beckett. I'm really sorry things turned out this way..."
"C-C..." He couldn't even get out his own name.
"Yes of course. You made a fine adversary," she assured him, stroking him, not stopping to think whether it was the truth or not. "And you might have made a fine ally, too... Cutler."
He smiled at her, but it was ghastly because his mouth was full of blood. That meant it was almost finished, didn't it? Elizabeth leaned down and kissed him on the forehead. He reached for her hand, brought it up, and kissed it in return. It was the last movement he was able to make.
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Barbossa had not stayed to witness his victim's final moments. Now that Beckett's men were leaderless, he thought it would probably be easier to get them all to surrender and stop putting holes in his pirates. Although it did seem that some of Beckett's men were actually helping the pirates against the fish-people. It was hard to tell... some of Davy's crew were fighting for one side, some for the other, and a very stupid few were fighting amongst themselves because they couldn't determine whose side each other was on.
All in all, Barbossa thought it was time for this battle to end. He knew he was fading fast and wouldn't last long enough to sort everything out, so he decided to pass the orders on to somebody else. He sought out his only lieutenant with a face honest enough for people to surrender to – Will. They met up on deck and fought their way to a space with a little quiet.
Will pulled the spyglass from his belt and held it out, but Barbossa shook his head and gestured for Will to keep it. "I'm going below to clean up," he said, a euphemism for rinsing out his wound and then fainting. "You're in charge while I'm gone. Put an end to this - Beckett's dead now, his men ought to surrender. As for Davy, I don't know what game he's playin, but if he doesn't rein in those monsters in the next two minutes, if I hear so much as one gurgley roar from where I'm sittin, it's curtains for him, is that clear? Now off I go. Jack!"
Jack followed him obediently. It was not the first time he had been called to stand guard while Barbossa fell into a state of near-death hibernation, but it was the first time he'd ever actually thought about what it meant, and he found himself touched.
Will was thrilled to be left in charge for two reasons. One was that, no matter how much he thought he disliked Barbossa, he could not help feeling proud that the pirate thought he was doing a good job. The second reason was that with both of the real captains occupied, there would be no one to stop him from doing something... incredibly... stupid.
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TBC.
RIP, poor Cutler Beckett. You know, he's grown on me. I'm really sorry he's dead. Why did I kill him? Damn it! Oh well.
About Beckett's death. I think Barbossa would certainly employ this method of removing somebody he wanted removed, and I think Elizabeth would not be happy about it. It's an important difference of opinion, and it's the sort of thing that makes Barbossa and Elizabeth not a feasible couple. Much as I may prefer Barbie to Will, I think that Lizzie is destined to become Mrs Turner after all.
Leave me some love!