EIGHT: DAY OF TERROR

The boom of cannons simply added to the confusion and madness of a sea battle. The Empress and the Fortune—which is the name of the Company ship that was attacking—both slid through the water, circling around, going past each other, cannons firing everywhere. Elizabeth's crew rushed around, loading cannons, fixing damage, each with their own tasks in mind, as well as the mission to stay alive.

Jack was trying to keep out of it, creeping around the ship as surreptitiously as possible. This seemed to work. The booms and crashes and crackles and shouts echoed all around him, and Jack wondered if perhaps ghost-Beckett would like to hurry back and help them all.

Or maybe not. If Beckett were to go and knife their captain, he would be committing murder—which was a sin, after all. And Beckett had been very, very devoted to the East India Trading Company; attacking one of its vessels would quite possibly be completely out of the question. Jack was thinking about all of the things Elizabeth could ask of Beckett—some of them were smashing his already broken innuend-o-meter rather badly.

Filthy thoughts for filthy minds, or so it seems to work.

The Fortune moved towards them once more, and as they got ready for another assault from the starboard side, Jack hopped around the foremast. Elizabeth was right out in the fray, giving loud orders as usual. Jack had to admire her bossiness—she was real captain material, right there.

Elizabeth was in the heat of battle, and in the heat of battle, you forgot all else. People became just that—people. Simply people. She didn't know them; if they died, you had to remove them so that they weren't in the way. No lives had been lost yet, as far as she could tell. The Fortune was ruthless in its attack; obviously determined to bring the smaller vessel down. However, junks were a very ingenious style of ship—the oriental deign of the ribbed sails meant that they had much more flexibility in the water.

Putting one foot onto the splintered banister at the edge of the Empress, she shouted out the order to fire, which carried right down to the belly of their ship—right down to the brigs, joined by the many voices of her own crew. Cannons swept forwards, backwards, skirting past each other in a gruesome ballet; and the force of the hit rocked the Empress, sending her keeling to one side steeply.

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Tearing himself off of the oncoming manatee, Beckett swirled through the water, staring in complete horror at the thing, which had turned at a sharp angle and was beginning to circle once more. He looked upwards—the surface was a long way away, as the beast had pulled him downwards.

"Calypso?" Beckett tried, ignoring the pain in his chest as much as he could; he hadn't really known that he had had to breathe, but it seemed that he had to take in something—he was finding it hard to suck non-existent air into his lungs. And it was odd how he could feel pain. He hadn't, really, felt it in ghost-form before. It was... strange.

There was no reply from the monstrous manatee; it simply faded in and out of sight, reflections and refractions of the light going through the water shimmering over it's large, grey body, otherwise it was cast in darkness. Beckett began drifting upwards, in an almost nonchalant way; moving? Oh, I'm not moving. Was I moving? Sorry...

Out of nowhere, the manatee struck again; it flew through the water, and Beckett used as much mental strength as he could to tell himself to go upwards; his body shot towards the surface, the pressure of the water suddenly arcing him to the side. Somehow, he could feel the water more now. It was closing in on him. He wasn't wet, but he could feel it. Heavy. Very heavy. Since he had been in ghost form, he had been light as a feather, it had been easy to swoop through the air. Now, though... it was harder. Like he was being weighed down with something. He was far down...

Desperately trying for the surface again, even kicking his legs uselessly, as if it would help, Beckett rose again; the manatee swept in from his left-hand side, they crashed together and Beckett was once more hit, and sent rolling to the side. The manatee's powerful back tail had smacked him around the jaw, flinging his head upwards—almost transparent blood fell from his mouth, clouding in the water around him, tainted a slight red, invisible to everyone but himself and the manatee.

Listen. Stop panicking. You're dead—what's the worst that could happen? Hang in there. Get to the Black Pearl. Whether this is Calypso or not, something isn't right, and you need to get out. Thinking reassuring thoughts, he began to swish towards the Pearl, water speeding past him on both sides. How can I feel it?

He couldn't doubt now that he could feel the water. It was all around him. His movement began slowing down as he came ever so closer to the Pearl, his limbs began dragging in the ocean, his ghostly powers seeming to be dimming. He felt alive—but suddenly, this wasn't a good thing. If he felt alive, it meant that he could be feeling very dead, very soon.

The manatee was daunting; it was more then twice the size of him, a bloated creature—he was used to seeing them moving lazily about, slowly swishing through the water, happy as clams to feed on plants. Not people! And especially not dead people that they weren't supposed to be able to see!

Imagine it. Imagine a creature, twice as tall as you, three times as thick, four times as fast. God knows how many times as strong. Stand up, look upwards, imagine your height doubled—how tall that is. How monstrously, hideously huge that is.

Suddenly the creature battered him again, sending him spinning through the ocean, feeling heavier then he had since he had died—feeling almost as heavy as if he were alive. His clothes began to absorb water, and he felt himself becoming heavier and heavier—it was harder and harder to use his mind to get anywhere.

The buffeting of the manatee had pushed him closer to the Pearl; in a last-ditch attempt at escape, Beckett thought back to his vague transporting powers—take me to Elizabeth! Take me to Jack! Take me to Port Royale, or London; take me to Russia, for all I care, get me out of here!

But it didn't work.

This wasn't possible, was it? There was something unnatural about this...

Squeezing every last drop of strength out of his very being, Beckett used his powers to go towards the Pearl; and he was so close now. Never had the dirty underside of a pirate ship seemed to welcoming to him. Beckett wanted to look behind him, he was desperate to see what was happening behind. But at the same time, he didn't want to. He knew that if he saw that manatee behind him, gearing up for another attack, he would just drop dead.

But he couldn't, he was already dead.

But he could.

He didn't really know what was happening—but he remained sharply aware of everything around him, his thoughts reaching out, every sense struggling to detect any hint of evil manatee in the water around him. He was getting closer to the Pearl. Closer and closer. The sea became heavier. He became heavier. Any second, he expected the manatee. Any second now.

Perhaps it was gone? Maybe it had given up? Because now he was feet from the hull. Inches. Just a little more...

Beckett smacked into the hull of the Black Pearl, headfirst. The barnacles scratched his skin. The hard wood splintered into hands that were groping for a way out of the water. What? He was meant to go through. How could real barnacles cut his spectral skin? What was happening?

Scratching his hands against the hull of the ship, Beckett realized something. He wasn't breathing. He couldn't breathe. He opened his mouth, and closed it again. How odd.

He couldn't breathe.

He was drowning.

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The men on board the Fortune ducked behind smartly painted railings as cannon balls from the Empress splintered into strong wood, crashing through all manner of materials. The Fortune rocked to the side, and as did the Empress; the air was thick with smoke that poured from the cannons as they fired.

Finally, after what seemed like a million years, the vessels parted with each other; each turning and beginning to go back towards one another, none of them willing to back down, each of them ready for battle.

Elizabeth's arms waved as the Empress bobbed back to its upright position, and she regained her balance, and looked on as the two ships turned about, painstakingly slow, and then began moving towards one another again. She smiled a humourless smile, her teeth gritted tightly, as the vessels rounded on each other once more.

"Fire!"

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Calypso didn't have a mind at the moment.

She was the sea. She was a manatee. She was the storm. She was wind and rain and typhoon. She was every fish, every crustacean, every marine mammal. She was the sea—and she was angry. All of that time trapped as a human; now she was back. Back, and angry.

In her manatee form, she was still as Beckett floundered for the hull of the Pearl, becoming heavier, slower, clumsier, his powers waning away. She concentrated on turning him fully human, the manatee's eyes sparking as she focused energy on turning Beckett into a human once more—so that he could die. He would get no second chance. He did not deserve it. Nobody deserved it. They all deserved death—each of those who had betrayed her...

However, her resolve lessened ever so slightly when Beckett turned in the water to face her. His blue-green eyes looked boldly into hers; fear pushed down deep inside. Breathing was difficult for him—water was beginning to filter into his lungs, but painfully slowly, as his ghostly powers began to leave. He reached into a pocket of his frockcoat, and brought out the green orb.

It was glowing; nearly completely full. All of the good deeds. The goodness in the orb was simply a physical form of the goodness in him; it was his conscience, after all. Calypso's maddened state slowly cooled down as she looked at Beckett, struggling in the last moments of his time in this world. Perhaps her anger was misdirected. She had gotten a tad carried away in her righteous rage.

"Calypso," he said in a somewhat raspy, one hand holding the orb tightly, the other at his collarbone, "You're not... being... fair..."

He could pretty much guess that the terrible manatee was Calypso, now. His powers were vanishing, his sort of death-life fading away; and it was true! At the risk of sounding like a four-year-old, it wasn't fair! He looked on at her, keeping the panic at bay, wondering when the feeling of water rushing into him would come. Wondering if it would come. He looked down at the orb. It was very nearly full. Maybe they have discount offers on getting into Paradise now?

When he looked up, the manatee was heading straight for him—its head pummelled into his stomach, going at least twenty miles an hour.

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Pain exploded in every part of Beckett's brain; suddenly, he landed on his back on hard wood. Taking a deep breath, he sat up—making ever tendon in his body scream. He glanced around himself, through the gloom. Where was he? What the bloody hell had just happened? He was in the brig of the Black Pearl. The manatee—Calypso—had pushed him through the hull.

He drifted upwards into the air, still in his sitting position, and he realized that his ghostlike powers were back. He put his hand through a crate just to make sure... and it worked. Closing his eyes, he seated himself on the floor once more.

His loud breathing filled the air. It was eerily silent down here, compared to the mad rush of adrenaline and near-death experiences that had been the water. Waves buffeting him from all sides, a crazed manatee mauling him to death, his breaths becoming short, and the panic. Stark, white panic that had flooded him, even though he'd buried it as deep as possible inside his stomach, it had still been there. The sort of panic that no other panic could match. At least triple the amount of panic of the realization that something you desperately needed was nowhere in sight, no matter where you looked, and you needed it now.

In the complete and utter deadness of the air of the brig, Beckett's breathing slowed, and the shaking stopped, and eventually he was smoothing down his waistcoat and fixing his wig straight and wondering at the fact that he was still dry. Then he closed his eyes, and took a deep breath.

Right. Time to get on with things, then.

But Calypso's message had been clear; you're not welcome in the ocean. I don't like you. And you are not forgiven. He should have guessed, really. She hated him. She should join the queue.

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Once more, the cannon balls skirted past each other, soaring through open air before smashing everything in their path; wood, metal, material, flesh and bone. The Fortune tilted to the side with the force of the blow—and so did the Empress, her magnificent red sails arching in the wind.

Elizabeth had one booted foot on the edge of the Empress, and as it keeled backwards, and that was not the problem. It was as it shot back forwards again that things went wrong; as the Empress crashed upright once more, Elizabeth was thrown forwards too, and sent plummeting down towards the ocean in between the Empress and the Fortune.

"Lizzy?" Jack popped his head out from around barrel, and realized that she was gone. Not again—how many times would he have to save her from drowning? He began running across the deck, throwing all caution out of his gait, but he never got the chance to dive into the water.

NB: Heh, drama. I wasn't sure about this chapter. If it was too 'OMG!!!' ...if you know what I mean.

Sorry for the HUUUGE gaps between updates. It's so hard to find the time, these days! XD