applepirate | 01. Shipwreck [Action]

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01. Shipwreck [Action]

[Little did Captain Barbossa know that day at Tortuga that he won't exactly wake up in the same place he had fallen asleep in - that is, the captain's cabin on the Queen Anne's Revenge. So when his eyes snapped open, it wasn't the hull of the ship they were looking at, but instead it was several tall trees they saw looming over him, along with the overcast sky.

The pirate captain proceeded to stand up from the ground, immediately feeling a new sensation in his back - that of a... pair of wings?]

Shiver me timbers... What is this wretched place?

[Fittingly enough, it was then when a chill ran up his spine and caused his body to quiver, making him notice that he was also shirtless - save for the white cotton pants on his legs.

Wait... did that mean...

Yes, turning his head around, Barbossa also saw no sign of his hat anywhere in the forest he was now in. The hat he had only just regained possession of.]

Arrr! Where be me hat? I swear, if somebody took me hat...

[Speaking of, what had happened to his ship that he had just acquired? Did his crew commandeer it somehow and left him here to perish while he was asleep? Just what in the world had happened in Tortuga? And what was up with this drastic season change? And that journal lying on the ground, which he knelt down to pick up - it wasn't a treasure he remembered uncovering. He was too confused and angry right now to make any sense of it.

Was this all that scalawag Jack Sparrow's doing again? If it was, he should better pray that Barbossa doesn't get his hands on him. Just marooning him on that bloody island wouldn't do this time... No, his fellow pirate would remember him as the scourge of the seven seas...

The (former) captain was already walking through the forest, trying to find anything - a path, a tavern, a port. It's there where somebody could find him and possibly help him understand what's going on.]

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A few people have earmarked it as their beverage of choice. [ she leans over the counter, grabbing a stout little bottle of a decent rum. ] Mostly, the funny talkers. There's a correlation worth noting: if a guy walks in talking like he's off a History Channel special? He's probably gonna ask for the rum.

[ she offers the man the whole bottle, cork intact. ]

[The captain accepted it eagerly and proceeded to sit down, still looking curiously at the woman as he did. Aye, it was the funny talkers who liked the beverage, but it wasn't until they actually started drinking it when they spilled everything that was on their head at the time. Naturally, it didn't lead to anything good most of the time.

But Barbossa? While he was a fan himself, he knew his limits, not wanting to leave himself vulnerable to anyone, and he wouldn't start doing so now - especially here.]

Then I assume ye already knew I was going to ask for the rum?

[He was already taking a drink from the bottle.]

That's a very interesting observation indeed, miss. And I certainly agree. Those you describe are naught but humble pirates from where I come from. We're not the most eloquent of folk.

You're a pirate?

[ she tries very hard to feign surprise. she also tries very hard to feign only the most casual of curiousities. but a chill hits her spine and she braces herself lazily against the bar: palms tucked against the counter's lip.

jack had tried for years, now, to teach her how to lie and subterfuge and undercover it with the best of them, but buffy will always be a brash and brusque. it's hard for her to hide her sharp interest in the man who claims piracy so readily. ] I wasn't aware that pirates made a habit of being humble, y'know.

[He was too busy taking another drink of the rum to notice that she deep was in thought. Her question amused him, though.]

Ye only got it now, did ye? This is a very strange place indeed.

[Not only would he be recognized as the infamous captain he was, but just being a pirate should already attract certain people and push away others.

He then looked at her with curiosity of his own, scratching his beard a little as he did.]

Well, then. It sounds like ye've had the... pleasure of making acquaintance with a pirate then, miss. Or have ye only heard tales?

Both. [ she reaches for a cocktail stir-stick. ] With the making of acquaintances and the hearing of tales. Also? The watching of the movies and the illegal downloading of the music.

[ chewing idly on the stick, now. ] I guess this means you have one of those wildly kitschy pirate names?

[This was a second time that several words went over Barbossa's head, but he didn't make the effort to inquire further as to what 'illegal downloading', for instance, meant. Though it sounded like his kind of thing.

Instead, he answered her next question with a scoff.]

Only as kitschy as the pirate himself, miss. Besides, the name of one's ship is what matters more, I'd say.

[And the best one there was, truthfully, was the Black Pearl. That was not to say that the captain didn't matter, though. Surely, the Black Pearl wasn't ever at its full potential at the command of one Jack Sparrow.]

I'll indulge ye, however. I be Captain Barbossa of the Queen Anne's Revenge.

[ the little distraction of a stir-stick clatters to the floor, for buffy summers drops it in her surprise. she hasn't quite managed to crouch low and retrieve it when she demands -- somewhat sharply: ] Come again?

[ both names are familiar: barbossa and the queen anne's revenge. the former, from a long litany of jack's tales and the latter from one told just after sparrow had returned from a brief return home.

she tries to question him as obliquely as possible: ] You're not talking about the Queen Anne's Revenge that used to belong to one very irate and ill-reputed Blackbeard, hmm?

[Now she had him intrigued. Even people in this place seemed to know of the existence of his ship and its previous captain... Or was it somebody from his world who had been speaking to the village's residents, spreading tale after tale?

He folded his arms on the table as he looked at the woman with a hint of a smile.]

Aye. Seems like the ship's fame transcends worlds, wouldn't ye say?

[The pirate then quirked a brow inquisitively.]

May I ask ye something, miss? Where are ye from, exactly?

[ knowing this is likely the very same barbossa part-demonized and part-immortalized in sparrow's stories, buffy has a hard time not getting at least a little...enthusiastic when she speaks. ]

California. Scotland. This place. Take your pick; I've lived in all of them. And -- please -- call me Buffy.

[And indeed he was, right here in the Good Spirits bar, in the flesh. Though surely Sparrow's stories contained some exaggerations and possible untruths about him.

Her excitement didn't go unnoticed as Barbossa regarded the woman curiously, taking another sip from the rum. California was not familiar to him, though Scotland certainly was. Interesting - that could explain her knowledge about Blackbeard's ship, though he still didn't have Jack Sparrow figure in anywhere in the equation.]

Well, miss Buffy, the ill-reputed Blackbeard was met with an ill fate, ye see. He made the miscalculation of attackin' and sinkin' me beloved Pearl, which was also when I lost me limb.

[He pointed to his wooden leg as he shifted it to the side a little, and then looked back at Buffy.]

The price, I'm afraid, was his life and his ship, which I was still in command of before I got here.

I know. [ she plays just one of her cards with a sly half-grin. ] You keep rum in it, don't you? [ she also points to the wooden leg. ] But you must have emptied it already. Or else it came empty. Because otherwise, why would you be here -- knocking on my door for bottles of the stuff?

[ oh, the pearl. the pearl which she's only seen in jack's dreams and in ill-fated malnosso experiments. but she tries not to leap up and pounce upon the pearl's mentioning. not yet. ]

[Oh, no. Now, those sure weren't details he expected her to know. His eyes narrowed a bit as he looked at her suspiciously with his brows furrowed, leaving the bottle on the table and leaning backward a bit, folding his arms as he did.

How did she guess that about the wooden leg? She couldn't have this intimate knowledge unless she was actually a crew member of his... or if she knew someone who was.]

...Aye. That's correct.

[He had already drank the rum inside when he had gone to sleep before being taken to Luceti.]

How exactly do ye know that, though, I wonder, hmmm?

[Barbossa didn't recognize the woman from anywhere, so the information she had must have come from another source. Hmm...]

Edited 2013-03-27 18:18 (UTC)

...I know things, Captain. [ her smirk doesn't quite reach her eyes, for she knows she's playing with a loaded gun. but play she shall, for as much as she trusts others from jack's world she's not certain this pirate is anywhere near worth trusting. ]

Isn't that a barmaid's job? Well. One of her jobs. Knowing things. Such is her nature.

...If that were a barmaid's job, miss Buffy, then I can assure ye it'd be a lot more dangerous than advertised.

[People with too much knowledge about sensitive subjects weren't exactly the most liked from his experience. They could be a liability for someone who has a secret or two worth hiding... Now, this wasn't a secret worth making a fuss about, but it was still odd that she knew that regardless.

She was dodging the real question here, and that may have irritated the pirate captain a bit, but he was going to play it slow and steady himself until he found out more.]

The folk ye have comin' in here... ye've heard someone talkin' about me, then?

[He looked at her with a slight frown on his lips.]

That naturally makes me curious, ye see, whether I have an old acquaintance here that I have yet to meet, perhaps... An acquaintance with a big mouth.

The job could do with a bit more danger. If I'm honest. I mean, it hardly measures up to my last gig, danger-wise...

[ but neither of them really cared about her job. nor about the danger. they were both still dancing perilously 'round the red-hot question. how does she know?.

perhaps she'd try... ] I used to live with someone who knows you, I think. Captain Barbossa. If you're the same Captain Barbossa. Me and Elizabeth Swann go way back.

[ swann. not turner. the girl hadn't married, yet. the girl also wasn't the one who'd told her about barbossa, either. but buffy had at least a passing duty not to leap immediately to spilling every last one of sparrow's proverbial cats from his proverbial bag. ]

She's not here, any more.

[Buffy was doubtlessly a curious lass to someone like Barbossa. There were no small number of wannabe pirates in Tortuga who would abandon ship in the face of real danger, and those were all people who didn't have it in them to be suited for that job. This woman, however, didn't really strike him as somebody who would cower easily... And hey, she apparently knew who he was, and didn't seem particularly intimidated. At all, actually.

His brows lifted in recognition upon the mention of Elizabeth Swann, though. That was certainly somebody who would know a great deal about him.

A moment passed before he considered what she had said for a while, however, and it was then when he spoke.]

Aye... She would know me. Ye could say we go way back ourselves. Ye see, it was even I who ended up marryin' her to the son of Bootstrap Bill Turner on me ship. [In the middle of a goddamn fight, too. He was mentioning it now, but back then he certainly wasn't particularly thrilled about having to do it.]

[The pirate captain then leaned a bit forward and narrowed his eyes further in Buffy's direction. His gaze was clearly suspicious.]

I'm afraid I have not had the pleasure of seeing the fair lass since I lost me limb... And I hadn't heard of her husband ever since he became captain of the Flying Dutchman.

[One of his hands stroked his beard a bit as he spoke.]

...Which makes me wonder exactly how she knew that I kept rum in me wooden leg, miss Buffy.

Edited 2013-03-27 23:28 (UTC)

[ rats. buffy waves off the chronological gaffe with the tips of her fingers, as if suggesting that the discrepancy means nothing. less than nothing. whatever. no big deal. ]

How exactly did you lose it, anyway? The leg.

[ with dogged determination, she shifts the conversation firmly back onto the old pirate's shoulders. she knows it won't last long. her evasion is hardly veiled. but it buys her a moment or two to observe the man before she reveals her own allegiances. ]

[And the change of topic was all Barbossa needed to reaffirm the suspicion that Buffy didn't know this about him from Elizabeth. It was true that the girl he knew back home wouldn't know any of this information, so that meant that there was also somebody else other than her that came from the pirate captain's world.]

Yer... informant didn't have anythin' to say about that, miss Buffy, hmm? It is a curious thing if ye really don't know how exactly I lost me limb. Ye know, seein' as ye were already aware of where I keep me rum, of all things.

[He narrowed his eyes at her, a smirk on his face as he regarded her. He didn't very much like it that she was keeping this from him, whether she had a purpose for doing so or was just toying with him for some reason.]

I was too busy being disgusted by the concept to ask questions. Y'know, at the time.

[ which is, for once, the honest truth. ]

...Aye. I can assure ye that it wasn't a pretty sight.

[And on that, at the very least, they could agree. Anything beat being caught there for eternity and not being able to get the revenge against Blackbeard that he had already begun developing strong desire for.]

But who, I still wonder, could ye have learned more about it from if ye wished?

[On top of everything, Elizabeth never quite became a pirate. And from Buffy's earlier words to him, it sounded like whoever else had come here from Barbossa's world was a pirate himself.]

I don't suppose you'll believe it if I say Admiral James Norrington, will you?

[ after all, even she knows that james would already be dead. ]

[And now a mention of James Norrington too. Well, of course, if the barmaid knew Elizabeth, the man must've come up at some point as well anyway.]

The poor Commodore wasn't exactly around anymore at the time, I fear.

[William Turner would have been mentioned a good number of times himself - though as Barbossa had said earlier, being captain of the Flying Dutchman would've prevented the bloke from learning anything about what happened with Blackbeard later on. With the way this was going, next on her list of mentions was going to be old Jack, probably, heh, and Elizabeth surely would've told her about him...

Wait. Jack Sparrow. Now this was someone that could've potentially found himself in Luceti just as Barbossa had. And he certainly fit the criteria of having a big mouth.]

... I don't suppose the pirate you were acquainted with, miss Buffy, was a certain Jack Sparrow... was it?

[He hadn't really considered it before, but now that he did, it was an unnervingly viable option...]

Am acquainted with. Is Jack Sparrow.

[ at long last length and last, buffy summers comes clean. the act deserves some kind of reward -- or else holding out for so long does -- and so she reaches over the bar to grab herself a can of diet coke. ]

Present tense.

[He had suspected to be right, but Barbossa had to blink upon hearing it confirmed.]

...Blimey. Old Jack be 'ere then as well. Ill winds blow for the both of us everywhere we go, don't they?

[Both the surprise and the irritation were clear in the pirate's voice as he said it, and then quickly went to take another drink - a rather big one, too. Gosh, with what had been going on and what he just learned, he really needed it.

A pause followed after he put the rum down, sighing deeply as he looked at Buffy again.]

I suppose that he is... rather entertained by the situation. Provdin' amusement for the folks too, perhaps. If anybody could cower their way out of a place like this, however, it'd most certainly be him.

[Which was why it was surprising to him that Jack hadn't managed to find a way off here by now. The scalawag was full of surprises.]

Entertained is not the word I'd use, Hec. Or should I be calling you Barbossa?