Hey everyone, thanks for all the reviews so far. I know I'm having a lot of fun writing this, and I'm glad you're all having just as much fun reading it. :D

Chapter One: Cueva de Conejo

The group that went ashore numbered twelve altogether. In the lead walked the two competing captains, Jack Sparrow & Hector Barbossa. Behind them were the two bumbling pirates Pintel & Ragetti, followed by the dwarf pirate Marty, the mute Cotton & his translating parrot, the former Marines Murtogg & Mullroy, and three new recruits Barbossa had picked up in Tortuga before abandoning Jack.

Before them, at the bottom of a small hill, stood the ominous Cueva de Conejo. The sense of foreboding would probably be nonexistent if it was just the cavern itself, surrounded by ferns growing out of the cliff face into which the cave led. The ground leading up to the entrance looked equally pastoral, covered in healthy green grass. But amongst this grass lay a vast collection of human bones, picked clean and bleached by the sun. Many of them were broken into fragments, but all hinted that their owners had met violent ends.

Jack sensed the crewmembers behind him and Barbossa starting to stiffen with fear, and decided it was up to him to set an example for them all. He stood tall and began to stride confidently towards the cave.

"Right," he said casually. "You lads keep me covered."

"What with?" Ragetti asked. Jack paused, before deciding to reply: "Just keep me covered. Savvy?"

"Too late!" said Barbossa. Jack jumped in surprise, and then backed away quickly to rejoin the others. "There he is," Barbossa continued, pointing to the cave mouth.

At first, Jack didn't see anything. Then, he caught a glimpse of...something – something moving. He could feel his body tensing up, ready to retreat at a moment's notice, as the moving shape emerged from the cave, revealing itself to be...

...A fluffy white rabbit, with pink eyes and a little pink nose. This it twitched quizzically at the pirates standing twenty feet away from it, until it lost interest and began to poke its head through the grass. Jack relaxed for a moment, only to stiffen again. Yes, what he had seen coming out of the cave was merely a stray rabbit, but it was only a matter of time before the real terrible beastie lying within the cave would appear. Jack quickly glanced at Barbossa, whose eyes remained focused on the dark hole in front of them.

After a few seconds, Jack couldn't help but ask. "Where?"

Barbossa did not shift his gaze, and instead simply said, "There."

Jack followed the man's gaze, frowning. "What, behind the rabbit?"

"It is the rabbit."

It took another few seconds for Jack and the others to process Barbossa's words. Once they had, however, any terror the men may have felt quickly vanished.

"You silly straggly-bearded sod!" was all Jack could think to say. "You got us all worked up!"

Barbossa turned his eyes away from the rabbit to look at his companions. "But this be no ordinary rabbit, lads," he said, as if it was obvious. "According to the charts, that there be the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent you've ever set eyes on!"

Jack was having none of it. True, he had seen enough in the past to realize that danger was not always obvious – while it could be in the form of things as horrifying as skeletal pirates or mutant fish-people, it could also be lurking within such mild-mannered vessels as people like Cutler Beckett, or Elizabeth Swann (he'd especially learned that last bit the hard way). But, as far as he could recall, he had never come across anything dangerous that looked as adorable as this fluffy little creature, now blissfully nibbling the grass around it as Jack and the others scoffed at Barbossa's claims about its nature.

"You tit!" Mullroy exclaimed, "I soiled my trousers, I was so scared!" Indeed, Jack noticed, the budding pirate's trousers now sported a dark stain on the front that he didn't remember seeing there before.

Barbossa, despite the criticisms of the crewmembers, remained undaunted. "Look, lads, that there rabbit has a vicious streak a mile wide; it's a killer!" His words were met with cries of "Get stuffed," and "Oh, yeah?" and, in Mullroy's case, "What's he do, nibble your bum?"

Barbossa's voice took on the tone of a schoolteacher quickly losing patience with the particularly dense pupils in his class: "He's got huge sharp...he can leap about... look at the bones!" he finally exclaimed in frustration.

Jack decided he'd had enough of this weirdness. "Go on then, Mr. Arrow," he barked to one of the newer recruits, "chop its head off; show our dear Barbossa just how terrible his little beastie can be, eh?"

"Aye, captain," Arrow replied boisterously, "silly lil' beater, that thing. One rabbit stew comin' right up!"

As Arrow walked towards the rabbit, Jack turned to Barbossa, eager to see the expression on his rival's face as he was proved wrong. Barbossa, however, pointed at the rabbit. "Look!"

Jack heard a squeaking sound, and then, as he turned back round, a scream. He stared, dumbstruck: the rabbit, in the space of a second, had leaped onto Arrow from ten feet away, and was now looking up from the bloody mess where Arrow's head had been. The man's body fell to the ground alongside the severed head, and the fluffy killer landed in the grass, its lips flecked red with blood,

Somewhere in the back of Jack's mind, he felt truly annoyed that Barbossa had been right, but he ignored the feeling. "Jesus Christ!" he yelled, jumping back. He could hear Barbossa saying, "I warned ye," and then, from Mullroy, "I've done it again!"

"I warned ye," Barbossa continued to Jack, "but would ye listen to me? Oh, no, ye knew all along, didn't ye, Jack? Oh, it's just a harmless lil' bunny, isn't it?"

Once again, Jack decided that he'd had enough, and that he'd better make an example of himself for the rest of the group. "Oh, shut it!" he said to Barbossa. "Right, then, mates, that was just one man he was facin'; let's see how he does with all of us together. Charge!" He and his men drew swords and threw themselves to the rodentious carnivore.

Later on, all any of the survivors of that fierce battle could remember was a blur: swords clashing, men screaming, a furry white shape rocketing in every direction; and throughout it all, that terrifying squeak, like some demented Greek chorus. After about twenty seconds of this, Jack felt is was time to change tactics, and embrace the oldest and noblest of pirate traditions: "Run away!" The surviving men were only too happy to obey.

Once safe back aboard the Black Pearl, everyone was able to relax. Barbossa was already there, and after laughing his head off at Jack's miserable campaign, he joined his fellow pirates as they discussed their next move.

"Well, we can't risk another frontal attack," Jack decided, "that rabbit's dynamite!" The men nodded in agreement. "Would it help to confuse it if we retreated even further?" asked Mullroy. "Oh, shut it," Jack replied, "and go and change your trousers." He shook his head, wishing his old friend Gibbs had joined him instead of staying in Tortuga; he might not have been able to come up with anything good, but at least he could still think of a more intelligent plan.

"Let's taunt it!" Ragetti piped up. "It might get so angry that it'll make a mistake." "Like what?" snapped Jack. Ragetti paused for a moment, thinking, then gave up.

Beside him, Pintel spoke up; a sudden thought coming to him: "What about the Golden Hand Grenade?"

"Aye, of course!" Barbossa exclaimed. "The Golden Hand Grenade of the Brethren! 'Tis one of the sacred pirate relics carried by Captain Teague, the Keeper of the Code." "Lads," he continued, shouting to everyone aboard, "set sail for Madagascar!"

As the crew prepared to sail, Jack's heart sunk. It looked like he would be seeing the Pirate Lord of Madagascar again sooner than he had hoped.

To Be Continued...