Naturally I don't own Jack Sparrow, or any of the real places he ends up. I really hope you enjoy this! Reviews would be much appreciated.
1.
Jack tipped the bottle to his lips, shook it, grunted, and slammed it down on the table.
"Why is the rum always gone?" he asked his candlelit charts.
They didn't answer.
Well, they wouldn't.
He was very squiffy. If he wasn't, he wouldn't be questioning the linguistic abilities of paper.
More rum. That was always the answer.
He tipped his hat to Gibbs as he passed the helm. Gibbs gave him a friendly wave back.
Good old Gibbs. The affable blighter.
Was there ever a time that Gibbs had sung anything but Jack's praises?
Not counting the sea shanties, which admittedly were irritatingly frequent.
He was thinking nice thoughts about other people.
... Definitely inebriated.
Jack flung open the hatch and dropped below to the berth, winding his way through strung hammocks full of snoring bodies. He almost tripped over a small bag of effects at one point, and had to grab onto a post to prevent himself from falling ungainly on his face. One of the crew nearest him stirred. "Alrigh', Captain."
"At ease." he slurred, and carried on determinedly to the hold.
However, upon his unsteady descent, his mind was entirely taken off the rum.
Firstly, there was an unnatural glow illuminating the hold, which never meant anything good.
Secondly, the glow was coming from the windows of a peculiar blue box, and how a great big bloody thing like that had gotten into his ship without blowing a hole in the side was beyond him. Perhaps he was hallucinating. Had his rum been poisoned?
The box opened - a front door, apparently - and voices could be heard echoing from inside.
No time. Jack dived behind a stack of crates.
Three sets of footsteps invaded the hold. Jack peeked, and caught sight of a wild sweep of brown hair, some sandy cropped spikes, and a mane of orange.
"Alright. You check the deck, discreetly." the central figure told the ginger, then turned to Spike, "And you have a good look around here. I'm going to have a look round the stern quarters."
The trio split up immediately, with only the spikey large-nosed one lingering behind. He looked a little uncertain and half-hearted, from what Jack could see of him from his hiding place.
He wasn't armed either.
Jack, similarly lacking in any decent weapon, decided to sit tight until the blighter buggered off.
It was only when he looked back at the blue box that he realised something terribly odd was going on.
He could see through the door of that impossible cubbyhole, and what he saw -
He couldn't believe what he saw.
He had experienced some supernatural tomfoolery in his life, but a room the size of the entire hold, inside that tiny container - what? Just what?
He had to get a better look of this beautiful paradoxical magical thing.
The spiky nosed whelp was relatively easy to get past. He just tended to look in the wrong direction a lot. Jack slipped by without a sound from his leather soles, and nipped into the tiny-large cabin.
If he'd thought he'd seen a jaw-dropping sight before this moment...
A blue wooden box he could handle.
At least it was wood. Wood was good. Wood he was familiar with.
What he wasn't at all familiar with was the flood of artificial light, the artificial auburn coloured decor, with a platform made from glass and mesh, and metal - so much metal!
Not even daring to mention the great whacking big monster, squatted in the middle of this strange deck, glowing and bristling with all kinds of knobs and levers and confusing-looking contraptions.
Where was he? What on earth did it all mean?
Even big mystic otherwordly things like fountains of immortality couldn't match this.
Davy Jones' facial tentacles would have run squeaking at this sight.
He didn't have any more time to consider the sheer impossibility of the entire situation, because voices were yet again rebounding off the wooden walls of the hold, quickly advancing towards him.
Yet again, he was forced to find a hiding place. This time, it was behind the main post underneath the deck, where he crouched quivering despite himself.
"False alarm. Nothing interesting." came the slightly nasal voice of the ringleader.
They didn't sound very dangerous, but Jack wasn't about to risk his neck on any accounts.
"So we got to the Caribbean alright. Can we please aim for Rio now?" the woman chided in a broad Scottish accent.
"Yes, yes, yes, of course. Make yourselves comfy and all that."
The door slammed shut, and Jack realised the mistake he had made all too late.
If he made a break for it now, they would definitely see him.
They had talked about aiming, and moving. How?
He would just have to wait until they made another exit, or disappeared down one of the long corridors he'd glimpsed.
Damn rum. Damn shabby drunken reflexes.
Abruptly, there was the most awful screeching, grinding, bewildering noise he had ever heard, repeated over and over and over - he clapped his hands over his ears and stopped himself from crying out. He really hoped none of his unknowing captors looked down, through the translucent deck, and spotted him. He would have a lot of explaining to do. Who knew what torturous instruments they had on board here.
The whole room jolted hugely - Jack was lifted off his feet for a moment - and the crew fell about, grabbing onto handholds expertly, as though this happened to them all the time.
"Not Rio then?" the wench yelled.
"Afraid not!" came the reply, "Looks like we're headed for Liverpool!"
What?
Jack had no clue what their namby pamby game of play-pretend was all about, but he was more concerned about what had happened to his ship that had rocked this blue box so violently.
It was still quaking slightly, consistently.
The Kraken was long dead. How many more atrocious sea monsters could there be?
He really ought to make a break for it, and get his crew to safety.
Gibbs was at the helm. God help him, if he was closest to that danger presently.
Then, abruptly, it all stopped.
"Ah! Here we are." the sweeping-haired fellow exclaimed, "Looks like we're back in your native time zone as well."
... Eh?
"Let's go, let's go!" the ginger cried, dragging the other two to the front door and hauling it open.
Jack, peering around the post, felt his mouth fall open.
He felt incredibly sick, and more than a little dizzy.
But his eyesight was fine. And what it was telling him was definitely, inescapably not fine.
That wasn't the hold.
That wasn't his ship, outside of this tiny box.
That was a street. And a very weird-looking street at that. It was night time, but the place was lit up with colours, or rather, coloured lights. Words, light-up words, and pictures. Big metal pillar things, with flames in glass containers atop them. Very, very bright flames. Buildings that emitted explosively loud, pounding, drumming noises, and female shrieks and babbling voices.
He was having trouble not passing out right there and then.
This couldn't be happening.
His rum had definitely been dodgy.
He was currently in the middle of the most hallucinatory dream he had ever experienced.
But it wasn't real.
Nothing of this magnitude of oddness could be real.
He managed to slide out of the door and dash quietly into a nearby shadow before the crew of this amazing transportation device could lock him in or spot him.
It occurred to him that if he'd stayed in the box, he may actually have had a better chance of getting back to the ship, where it had definitely visited before.
But it was done now. They were closing off that option to him, and heading at a quick pace down the road.
Now he was nowhere.
Or possibly in Liverpool.
Which, at the moment, looked nothing like he'd thought it would. Nothing like London.
Nothing like anything.
And he had no idea of how to get back home.
No idea which direction he should walk in.
No chance of defending himself, with no weapon, against any thieves and villains who happened to spot him.
Not even a place to sleep for the night. Everything was so big, and packed together, and nothing had a plain, useful sign on it. No big helpful words like INN or PUBLIC HOUSE.
It was time to panic.