FIDGET, BATRISHAN PRINCE OF DARKNESS
The Reunion
About five years later
"And there goes one other round lost to you, mate!" Captain Killian Jones chuckled as he tossed his deck of cards onto the table. His crew's cheers rung among the noises heard in the tavern while Milah, Killian's right-hand mate and lover, placed a kiss onto his cheek.
"Well, mate, looks like you're going low on the doubloons," Killian chuckled as he began collecting his newly won coins from the center of the table. "Would you like a rematch, or are you too afraid to lose your own ship?" He and his crew snickered in unison as his opponent drank from his mug of rum.
"Lose the Black Pearl?" he asked as his eyebrow arched. "Nay, mate. You deserve much better than my boring old ship." His hands went down under the table and brought onto the wooden surface a silk satchel. "Have a peak in it."
Killian looked at Milah and urged her to look first. The woman grabbed the satchel, unraveled the cord that kept it shut, and had a peek. A dim, yet illuminating red light came out of it. One at a time, the pirates had a glance into the satchel until Killian was the last to have a peek.
"The Devil's Eye," he said in disbelief as he gave it back to the pirate. "How'd you find it, Sparrow?"
"My crew and I had to go through perilous seas and storms until we reached the dreaded Devil's Bayou, where it was held," Sparrow said. His fingers full of rings walked towards the diamond and caressed it. "We've been lucky for the last three years, me and my crew: such valuable diamonds like the Devil's Eye have been rewarded to us for our sailings."
"How much you've got?" Milah asked, her eyes craving for the diamond.
"About two chests full of 'em in my ship," Sparrow told her before turning back to Killian. "Jones, old chap. You've been quite the hospitable chap since our crews have arrived here in Port Muerte. Bothering to pay for ten mugs of rum and asking for fair repay? Why take such lame doubloons while you can have half of the diamonds from my chests?"
It seemed very tempting for Captain Jones and his crew: an assortment of diamonds like the Devil's Eye could make them rich beyond comparison. However, the captain didn't exactly trust Sparrow fully, for he was a pirate captain known for being rather witty and frolicking with death like an eel easily slipping out of a fisherman's grasp and back into the water. The idea of Sparrow willing to give half of his treasures to another pirate captain seemed very unlikely.
But Captain Jones chose to play things his way and make a fool out of Sparrow once and for all. "It's a deal," he declared.
Sparrow grinned. "Shall we say at the break of dawn in Hangman's Alley?"
The next day at dawn
"Killian, how certain are we that this plan might work?" Milah asked as she, Killian, and most of their crew hid in the shadows behind a couple barrels and observed The Black Pearl, Sparrow's precious ship, sitting peacefully above the waters and right at the port.
It was a simple plan: while five pirates replaced Killian to the rendezvous point with Sparrow and disposed of the latter, the rest would take over the ship and shanghai everyone on it to join the Jolly Roger's crew or to walk the plank.
"Let's go," Killian ordered. He and his pirates then stormed their way towards the Black Pearl and climbed their way to the main deck...
Only to find Sparrow lying onto the mast.
They had fallen into a trap, but they realized it too late, for several other pirates hopped out of nowhere and surrounded the intruders, who began to pull out their weapons.
"I wouldn't do that, if I were you," Sparrow warned. "Things could be left hanging around here."
His words didn't make any sense at first until Killian noticed something red and circular appearing on the main deck. Then another. And another. Soon it seemed like red rain was falling onto the deck similar to how water falls off a willow tree after it rained as you shake it.
Killian's eyes dared to look up and saw five bodies hanging from the sails as if Hangman had chosen to perform an improper execution. As the tight nooses around their dead necks dangled in the air, more of that red rain came. A rain of blood...coming from the five pirates that Killian had sent earlier to Hangman's Alley.
"What have you done to them?" Milah gritted her teeth.
"Sparrow did nothing to them," a dark voice said. The ship's main cabin door opened and out came a dark figure. Killian's eyes popped open as he recognized the figure that had come closer and closer. "I did."
"F-Fitzgerald?" Killian gasped.
"Surprised to see me, codfish?" the Batrishan asked. Fitzgerald looked so much different than the last time Killian had seen him: his long, black hair was still groomed, but had traveled all the way down the hips in a messy form of darkness. His purple-and-black clothes were styled in a way that both looked like his old Aldoradian First Class Navy Sergeant uniform and a pirate's outfit. His fingernails were sharper, thus giving them more claw-like features. Red marks, symbols of tiredness, could be seen above his eyes.
The scariest part so far were his wings, both large and sprung open out of his back like those of a demon. But while the left one looked healthy, the other looked it had been half-ripped and replaced by some sort of mechanism. Killian was shocked to see the appearance of his old friend, a once heroic militant who loyally served his country and related well with Killian, to some sort of rogue Batrishan whose eyes shot hatred and anger at the man he wrongly accused of killing his fiancée and foster father.
"Killian, do you know him?" Milah asked her lover.
"Aye," Killian said as he watched Fitzgerald march up the main deck, glaring at the 'intruders' with his sinister red irises. "Fitzgerald Denada Cortés, the infamous First Class Navy Sergeant of the extinct Aldorada. We were friends..."
"And some friend you turned out to be!" Fitzgerald snorted. "Oh, let me guess. She's another woman that you used to ruin someone else's life?" He pointed at Milah. "Wasn't her husband's name Rumplestiltskin? And her son Baelfire?"
Milah's mouth dropped. "H...how did you know that?"
"Allow me," Sparrow said. "Rumors spread very quickly in Tortuga, the pirate haven. After you made your first visit to Tortuga before hitting the large sea with Jones on the Jolly Roger, the rumor spread quickly of the woman who ditched her husband and ten-year-old son for some pirate captain who romanced her in a tavern. Funny thing that eventually occurred: right after I had shared the rumors and a couple mugs of rum with other pirate captains, a charming fellow then came to me asking about the rumors."
"And we've made a deal," Fitzgerald grinned smugly as his clawed hand gave a friendly pat on the back to Sparrow, who grinned back. "Jack Sparrow would eventually help me lure Captain Killian Jones, the blasted codfish, into my clutches while I, in return, helped Sparrow track down all the jewels in the world that he could ever ask for."
"And what was the purpose of killing five of my men?" Killian asked, horrified at what has happened to his old friend. What he saw right now was the image that every outsider feared whenever they saw Fitzgerald physically.
A monster.
"Your men?" Fitzgerald briefly looked up at the dangling corpses before returning his attention to Killian. "That was just me being hungry...for revenge and your death."