A/N: We plunge into the craziness! With craziness comes tons of divider-line things, and (again) I hope there's not too many. I never knew writing two duels at once could make such a mess of POV. My poor beta...thank you so much, jedipati.

A HUGE thank you to everyone who reviewed! Your time and thoughts mean so much!

Disclaimer: POTC belongs to Disney

All he has to do is convince a bunch of unbathed ruffians to paddle out where we can blast them. How long can that possibly take?

Evidently it took more than fifteen minutes and thirty-seven seconds.

Commodore Norrington snapped his watch closed and tucked it into his waistcoat. He was thankful for his thick wool uniform: this place was practically winter in England.

He took a steadying breath, held it, and let it out. He was waiting just outside the yawning opening in the rock with all his men, waiting, waiting, waiting. He'd started cursing Jack Sparrow every few minutes but now he averaged about two curses in the space of sixty seconds. He could feel his men getting further and further on edge, could see it in their stony faces. Something had to happen, and soon.

And then something did. A flash of white emerged from the ink blackness and Norrington's heart leaped. Then it tripped and fell.

This apparition was a single rowboat, not a legion. It carried not pirates, but...ladies?

British rifles were beginning to click in readiness. Norrington turned and found his men practically quivering.

"Hold fire," he said as calmly as he could, then turned back to squint at the mysterious rowboat.

"Oh, this is just like what the Greeks had done at Troy." Clad in a dull red lady's gown, a lacy cap perched on his unwashed hair, Ragetti grinned into the black fogginess. "Except they was in a horse, instead a' dresses. Wooden horse."

Pintel rolled his eyes and pulled on the oars again. He had been given a gown of the most delicate yellow to wear, trimmed with lace and everything else scratchy or uncomfortable. There was also a matching bonnet, which the bosun had tied under Pintel's chin with cruel flourish.

He was only glad that the bosun had not forced Ragetti and himself into corsets like he had threatened. Each pirate had a white parasols perched on his shoulder to keep the moonlight away. They were even wearing high-heeled shoes and lordy, did they pinch. Pintel could survive it, though, by imagining just what was going on around the Dauntless.

Two white skulls surfaced from the inky water, right where the Dauntless' anchor ropes vanished under the waves. Bone hands grasped the anchor ropes and rotting arms pulled the monsters upward. One after another, the pirates emerged from the glossy waves, climbing, leering, killer ants crawling up two strings.

"Elizabeth?"

Elizabeth turned when she heard her father's call. She glimpsed his wavering form through the warped glass and turned away. Perfect.

"I just want you to know, I believe you made a very good decision today," he said. "Couldn't be more proud of you."

Pain and panic and determination made her hands shake as she knotted the last tablecloth to the last bed sheet.

"But, you know," Governor Swann continued, "even a good decision, if made for the wrong reasons, can be a wrong decision."

She opened the balcony doors and stepped into the ominous night. Nobody had thought to lock these doors. Where would she go, down the forty-foot side of the Dauntless?

She leaned down to check on the small dory that was tied to the Dauntless's rudder, thanks to Jack Sparrow. Then she tied the tablecloth around the rail and heaved a giant pile of linen over. It unfurled toward the water, a quivering white line.

Before Jack Sparrow, she would not have gone down the forty-foot side of the Dauntless. It was his fault. Let them blame him.

This bravado died the instant she put one foot over the rail.

"Look into that. Report back."

The lower officer nodded obediently and Gillette savored authority. He could be a ship's captain any day, any night, even a cold, mucky one like this.

"Lieutenant." The helmsman stepped up from the background, reminding Gillette of his true rank. Before Gillette could get annoyed, he saw that the helmsman's eyes were squinting off into the darkness. Curious, Gillette peered in the same direction.

The fog had lifted its skirts from the water's surface. Now a small, confused shape, bobbing on the water, caught the moonlight. Observing cleverly that the object was small because of distance, Gillette briskly pulled out his spyglass and, holding it to his eye, extended the tool outward.

This, he did with the proper flourish, though he thought so himself.

It seemed to be a rowboat, with two passengers shielded by parasols. Captives, women, perhaps, sent out by the putrid pirates? Gillette was pleased. If he saved those poor souls, he might be promoted.

"Yoo, hoo!" A call came to Gillette across the water. Satisfied, he nodded. Definitely women.

Water droplets from the air collected on the spyglass lens, so when one of the women waved, her arm warped.

Death slid aboard the Dauntless, emerging from midnight wings to make a surprise appearance on a stage of moonlit planks. Joints popping quietly, all white and stringy, with evilly glowing eyes, it crept closer, closer . . .

A cold slice of moonlight slid across a soldier's throat.

He fell on his face without a sound. Feet of bones and rags slipped past him and continued down the deck. Past a gargling soldier held inches off the deck crept the cracking white feet, a multitude of them, an army of spiders.

"Elizabeth?" Governor Swann leaned his curly gray head toward the silent, glowing glass windows. "Are you there? Elizabeth–" he stood. "Are you even listening to me?"

He opened one of the doors by its small, icy-damp handle and looked around. Empty.

"Elizabeth?" he entered the room and immediately spotted the gaping balcony doors. He rushed through them and leaned over the narrow balcony rail like a seasick sailor, his eyes following his daughter's makeshift rope. It fluttered all the way down to the empty water.

"Oh," he whispered thickly. "What have you done?"

"Oooh!"

Pintel ground his teeth at Ragetti's falsetto cry. "Stop that! Already feel like a fool."

"Look nice, though," said Ragetti.

The beginnings of Pintel's sarcastic smile contorted into a thunderous scowl. He released the oars, threw down his parasol and twisted around to bat Ragetti's parasol into the water. He grabbed Ragetti's neck with naked bone fingers, and shook. "I look nice?" he howled.

Gillette nearly dropped his spyglass in shock. Those things were most assuredly, definitely not women; he would swear it by the famous oil lamp in the Dancing Palm Tree Inn at the British harbor of–

The angry monster shoved his partner down and squeezed off a shot that knocked Gillette's hat right off his head.

A cold breeze scented with carrion blew over Gillette's shoulder. He turned and his eyes met the glare of another creature's, a creature that should have been dead. It looked like he imagined his late great-grandfather looked in his grave–

The bone man yelled and charged up onto the deck. He was followed by more demons, a host of them. The British lunged backward as one, putting a railing at their backs. Guns and swords flashed as they tried to overcome their revolted shock and live.

This was all terrible, but the British slowly realized something worse.

A pirate stumbled back; his mouth glowing with a bullet shot from mere feet away, howled then righted himself and charged again. Sword thrust after sword thrust into rib cages and at necks were fruitless.

These creatures could not die.

Even in his panic, Gillette felt the blow to his ego: Miss Elizabeth had been right.

Then a monster flipped him headfirst over a railing and he slammed onto the main deck.

This simply could not get worse.

Governor Swann dragged himself toward the doors of the captain's quarters. The humiliation he was about to suffer, telling that haughty Lieutenant Gillette that he; Governor Swann, could not control his own daughter. It didn't matter that he was one-thousandth of a thought proud of Elizabeth, touched by the way her spirit mirrored her dead mother's.

"Oh, that cursed Sparrow creature," he moaned.

And mostly, curse that horrid Will Turner. That blacksmith boy had forcibly taken Elizabeth's heart for his own possession. Probably added it to his collection, that impertinent wretch.

Vaguely surprised at the brutality of his thoughts about a youth he did half-care for, Governor Swann pulled the neat door open.

A young soldier sprawled to the moonlit deck only feet away. He lay helpless on his belly as a–a–

The monster stabbed the lad repeatedly in the back and a nauseating liquid noise joined the more nauseating stench that filled Swann's delicate nostrils.

The almost-elderly man drew back and slammed the door against a death he knew would find him anyway.

Will Turner's hands had been asleep, but now they were as dead as two nails.

He remembered making nails in the shop under the eye of Mr. Brown. Nails in general were tiresome, boring things . . .

He lamented his loss of appendage. If he tried to escape, he would fumble all over everything because his blood was tired of shoving itself under his bound wrists to get to his hands. Not to mention the agony there would be when the rope was actually removed.

Would there even be need to remove it? Would he be alive?

His gut ached with hunger and fear and impatience.

Around him, the entire island waited with thick, simple patience. Patiently, it allowed the moonlight to pierce its main cavern in blinding shafts. Patiently, it got colder and colder as night deepened.

Captain Barbossa, Captain Jack Sparrow, Will, and three of Barbossa's minions waited in the main cavern, definitely without the endurance of the island stone. They all quietly avoided the moonlight, feeling useless as they listened to the gentle lap…lap…lap of the dark water.

The medallion was cold on Will's skin. He shifted, rubbing his late hands against his breeches. The hand of his guard tightened about his shoulder, and Will shot the pirate a nasty look. This monster was bald and tattooed, a savage dog.

"Whelp," the pirate goaded softly.

Will turned away to watch Jack Sparrow. Ashore, the wacky pirate had been poking at a pile of gold and silver. Now he hefted a dull, gold figure that was the size of a small barrel.

"I must admit, Jack, I thought I had y' figured." Barbossa sat easily on the front side of the chest-crowned treasure pile. He was only yards from Will, who stood with his guard on a steppingstone in the center of the moat. "But it turns out you're a hard man t' predict."

Jack turned unsteadily. "Me, I'm dishonest. And a dishonest man you can always trust t'be dishonest." He tossed the gold figure aside and it landed with a disturbing crash. "Honestly." Jack slowly approached the moat. "It's the honest ones you want to watch out for because you can never predict when they're going to do something . . ." he stopped behind an older immortal engrossed in stone skipping, "incredibly–" his eyes slid to Will "–stupid."

He booted the stone-skipper in the rear, grabbing the immortal's sword as the immortal toppled into the water. Jack threw the sword to Will who turned sideways, put his hands through a forced resurrection, and caught it. Vengefully, Will slammed his back against his savage guard, and then there were two monsters in the water.

The short pirate who loved explosions, named Smoke-beard in Will's mind, was starting to get very annoying. First, he refused to die. Second, he was screeching like a cat and trying to slice Will in half with a filthy sword. A filthy sword. Heinous! Will turned and the tip of Smoke-beard sword sliced through his bonds like they were threads. Free, Will turned on Smoke-beard, determined to make him pay for his dirty tricks and his dirty blade. Burning and stinging, Will's waking hands drove him faster, made his blows harder, and Smoke-beard, off-balance on the stepping stones, finally stumbled ashore and fell backward.

When Jack charged, Barbossa had wondered if he were seeing things, but the burning determination in Jack's eyes dried up his confusion. Now the rival captains dueled like fiends, their pockmarked past fueling every blow and deflection

"Ha, ha!" Jack took advantage of a lull in their rhythm. His sword flashed up and then black fragments of Barbossa's prized hat feather were floating down. Outraged, Barbossa snarled like a lion and Jack's eyes went wide. Bugger!

Will's savage and now-dunked guard chose that time to haul himself ashore and charge his former captive. Now Will was swamped, fending off three cross pirates, one of them with a scraped back and the other two dripping wet. He sent Savage and Stone-Skipper bumbling backward, then whirled to face Smoke-beard and grimaced.

The grotesque immortal was in a shaft of moonlight. His beard, which was somehow still intact, still smoked. "Aaagh!" he yowled. Will rallied and parried Smoke-beard's thrust, then punched his bony jaw as hard as he could. Smoke-beard squawked and retreated. It was all Will could do not to squawk as well as he shook out his smarting knuckles.

Thirty feet away, Barbossa and Jack danced over black-gray rock with water on one side and a pointy overhang on the other. And treasure; always treasure everywhere, watching them with gold and silver eyes.

Their blades crossed and remained crossed as Barbossa pressed Jack over backward. "You're off the edge of the map, mate," he snarled, his yellow-rimmed irises glowing at Jack's pale face. "Here there be monsters!"

It was not easy, returning to the solid nightmare called the Black Pearl. Elizabeth, her stolen boat sidled to that evil hull, found her hands were trembling as she made them grasp the first rung of a wood ladder leading to the rail.

She made herself climb, pressing her belly to the cold, damp wood. Then she was level with the glowing gunports. The snouts of ready cannons flanked her.

"Right." Some chuckles, along with the scent of roast turkey came from the gunport on Elizabeth's right. She went rigid.

"What would you pick to eat first?" the rasping male voice continued. "I think we should decide now. Just so we're ready when the time comes."

Elizabeth cautiously peeked in and found the speaker only feet away. He was a stringy-haired pirate with a tri-cornered hat. He sat across a table from a mountain of a pirate who had glowing green eyes. Their table, hung over the cannon, was heavy with candles, cake, seafood and a turkey. A feast.

Mountain grinned fearsomely and nodded. "I was thinkin' cake."

"I was thinkin' cake, too!" Stringy straightened indignantly.

Mountain snarled and slammed a wicked knife deep into the table's only clear space. Terrified, Elizabeth jerked away and continued to climb as fast as she could.

Beneath Elizabeth, stringy-haired Mallot drew back. Grapple's green eyes glared. For a tense time, the two pirates didn't move. The cake sat between them.

Then massive Grapple smiled evilly, and pushed the knife's handle toward Mallot. "You cut. I'll choose."

Thank you for reading! :)