Fanfic: Submerged, Chapter 2
Mmm, moar fiction.
Thicker plot now. For once, I've actually got a proper PLAN as to bad guys in this fic, so hopefully it'll be a touch more captivating than my usual guff.
Title: Submerged
Author: ShaleSubaru / Shale
Rating: PG ...just Jack being a tad crude as usual.
Pairing: Right now...God knows...you guess ;D
Disclaimer: I don't own PotC or any characters within. Disney does. I don't own any Tekken character either, Namco does. Oh yeah. Broke as a joke and earn NOTHING from this folly!
Warnings: Some AWE spoilers, as it is WAY post-AWE. Might want to hold off reading til' you've watched. Also, this is a crossover...modern-day for the most part...you have been warned.
Summary: Jack is adjusting to life in the 21st century...but one thing he will never lose is his wit, cunning and slippery nature. Good thing - because it might just save him.
"Mr Sparrow, you've been in here for hours. Is there nothing else we can get you that will satisfy you?"
Jack stood - disgruntled - before the imposing full-height mirror, situated beside an open wardrobe, a mountain of discarded clothes and a dresser with half the wooden drawers pulled out and thrown, contents and all, on the carpet. "I already told you. I want the Pearl."
He fiddled with the buttons of his white dress shirt until they were all undone, then pulled the garment off and chucked it onto the ever-growing pile. "A crew..." He added thoughtfully, raising a pointed finger to head-height. "A crew would be good too." He took a few paces to the right and began digging through the pile of garments. A larger, baggier white shirt caught his eye...yes, that might just do. "A ship can't sail without a crew."
Akio was starting to show the first signs of exasperation at this point. "Sorry, sorry. But the ship you refer to - the Black Pearl - is on the ocean floor...she sank many, many years ago."
Jack held the shirt up in front of him and frowned. Oh how he hated his current look! He'd been told that during the resurrection process, which built him from the bones up, he had essentially lost all his hair. There was very little body hair left on him, even less than normal. His eyebrows and eyelashes had thankfully grown back quickly, but his beard and moustache were sparse and fluffy, and though he had a full head of hair, it was short and fluffy as if growing for the first time.
"This makes me look white as a ghost." He scowled again. Unfortunately, another side-effect of the process meant his hard-earned tan and hard-earned muscle tone were gone as well, along with his tattoos. With renewed youthful features, he barely looked older than his early twenties and like he'd lived indoors his whole life. Blegh.
"Perhaps this one, Mr Sparrow?" Akio held up a dark red shirt that would be most suitable with a corporate suit.
Jack cocked his head to the side. "Hmm...no. Red goes on me head. Speaking of which..." He began to rummage through the pile enthusiastically. "Why is there nothing to go on me head?"
"Like...a hat?"
"Yes, a hat. Amongst other things." A deep sigh escaped his lips. "Where's all the bloody rum..."
Akio perched himself on the edge of the nearby bed. Though this would be Jack's home for the next few weeks while he adjusted to life in the 21st century, Akio seemed to think he was making it homely just a bit too quickly.
Finally, Jack returned to the white shirt he'd plucked out earlier. A quick fight with the buttons led to his victory, and the garment proved to be a perfect fit - and not nearly as overly form-fitting as the previous dress shirt. "This'll do I s'pose. Now..." He began tossing aside pair after pair of trousers in an attempt to find one he liked. After all - he was standing there in nothing but a shirt and a pair of satin boxers.
Half an hour passed before Jack was finally somewhat satisfied with an outfit. It ended up being a rather casual business suit sans jacket, and though he felt like a damn fool, it was better than running around starkers.
Akio led him through the vast, sterile G-Corp hallways; naturally, they paused several times so Jack could poke at, admire or otherwise fiddle with items that caught his attention. Still...the growing smell of food was making the pirate's stomach churn.
"Starving. There better be some good grub around here!" With no provocation, Jack marched ahead of Akio and followed his nose...
...just around the corner to the cafeteria. A large room with ample supplies of food, plenty of chairs, and an entire wall of glass overlooking Tokyo city.
"Brilliant! Just what I'm after!" Jack marched onward, eyeing up a large fruit bowl sitting on a bench just a few metres into the room.
BANG.
Before he knew it, Jack had rebounded off something solid he'd apparently failed to see, and found himself sitting on the carpet, dazed and nursing an assaulted nose.
"Blimey! What in blazes..."
Akio stepped around him and grabbed a steel bar seemingly floating in mid-air...an invisible door opened as he pulled it aside. "Glass door, Mr Sparrow."
Jack stood back up, brushed himself off, pulled together what little dignity he had left and glared down at Akio. "I knew that." Without waiting for a response, he charged straight through and headed for the fruit bowl.
After devouring half the contents of the fruit bowl - apples, pears, bananas...he avoided all the exotic fruit he didn't recognise - Jack was introduced to G-Corp's buffet. Akio left him alone for a while once he'd managed to pile two plates full of tasty morsels...finally, some time to himself.
His perch by the giant cafeteria windows began to truly drive home the realisation that this was no longer his world. Jack couldn't even begin to comprehend the massive buildings reaching out to the sky around him, the millions of shiny, horseless carriages crawling around on the street below...the noise, the flashing lights, the sheer mass of human beings. He had almost literally been plucked out of the world he knew and completely submerged in something beyond alien.
Still...the chicken drumsticks of the future proved to be delicious!
Curious, Jack thought to himself. Those hovering things aren't bugs...they're a long way off!
Even further into the distance was a mass of blue. Only one thing that could be...the sea! For the first time since his rude awakening in this strange world, he felt almost at home...yes, if he could get out of here, find himself a boat of any humble proportions, and head back out to sea...maybe pick up a small crew of scallywags if he could convince them to join him...things would be alright.
Further inspection of the mass of blue revealed hundreds and hundreds of little objects floating about on it. Ships, obviously. How different they were to what he knew, however, was a matter of debate in Jack's mind...heck, with all these bleeping, squawking, buzzing, glowing objects here in the future, who knows what humans had done to mutate boats from the simple but highly functional masterpieces they'd been for millenia previously.
Now, if only he could work out a way of getting out of this infernal maze of white walls...
***
A week or so drew on as Jack continued to adjust to this new world. He was woken up by the sun early in the morning, leaving him plenty of time to do his own thing before he was essentially led around the place on a leash for the rest of the day. As he discovered, baths were to be taken every day in this time...not just when you were an indistinguishable colour from pure dirt; and the one good thing they seem to have invented was the shower. There was nothing quite like glorious, fresh hot water pounding on the skin first thing in the morning!
The clothes pile had mutated into two; clothes he'd already worn, and clothes he was thinking about wearing but couldn't quite bear to put on just yet. Each morning he'd spend nearly an hour agonising over what ridiculous outfit to put on.
This particular morning saw him try a red shirt, black pinstripe pants and a pair of shiny black shoes...he still wasn't fond of the look, and had decided that first order of business once escaped from this bedlam was to get some 'real' clothes.
At least his beard had started to regrow in a more manly fashion!
Jack peered out the small bedroom window at the sun. Aw heck...still early...it would be at least another hour or so before the came and got him.
Bored.
Bored bored bored.
He recalled Akio had shown him how to use the black-box thing sitting on the dresser opposite the bed...but he couldn't for the life of him remember how. It had scared the bejesus out of him at the time, suddenly roaring to life in an epic display of colour and sound...no, he didn't need to have the wits frightened out of him at such an early hour.
Tick, tock. Tick, tock.
Where was that infernal noise coming from? It had annoyed him to no end from the moment he got into the room...time to get rid of it!
Jack rummaged through everything he could find to rummage through in an attempt to find the wretched noise-maker and shut it up...through the bathroom, under the bed, in the wardrobe, in the drawers...
Tick, tock, tick, tock...
Argh!
Tick, tock, tick, tock...
Funnily enough, when he raised his head from under the bed, Jack noticed the sound was remarkably close.
Slowly, cautiously, he raised his head so his eyes could peek across the bedside table...it seemed almost as if all that noise, so quiet yet so irritating, was coming from a tiny little silver object sitting there. A silver strap...with a little circle in the middle of it. Interesting...
Jack carefully picked it up between two fingers, then held it at his ear.
Yep...that's what's making all that ticking...
Time for an examination...interesting. It seemed to have been divided up by numbers from one to twelve, with three little arms pointing in different directions. One was moving at the same time as the ticking.
"You tellin' me the time or something, little gadget?" Jack enquired quietly. "How remarkably clever."
Considering it appeared to be made out of silver, Jack slipped it stealthily into the pocket of his trousers. Might come in handy.
As for what to do with the rest of the morning...
To Hell with it. He went for the door, carefully turned the doorhandle, and peeked out.
Nothing.
What a golden opportunity...it was usually relatively busy out there in that corridor. Jack seized the opportunity as only he could do best, and slipped out of the door - being sure to close it after him.
Rather than head straight for the cafeteria - which he'd gotten out of the habit of calling the galley - he thought it a better idea to indulge in a little...reconnaissance.
With little effort, his search returned a set of stairs. Why not, he thought to himself. Let's try it. Up he went, climbing two floors before exiting back into the main part of the building. Corridors, corridors, corridors...
Voices!
Sparrow found himself ducking around a corner as quickly as he could to avoid detection...but it seemed, after a few seconds, that they weren't walking around. Rather, they were in a room nearby.
Bingo, a closed door a few yards further down the corridor.
With his signature slippery stealth, Jack crept up to the door and silently placed an ear against it.
"...but what are we going to do with that Sparrow character? He's a pirate, Akio says. No use to us." That accent was not a 'local' accent...it was distincly the Queen's English! Sparrow shuddered...it reminded him of Cutler Beckett.
"I imagine we can send him away. He is not adjusting as well as the others have." That one, however, was a distinctly Japanese-laden accent.
"Yes, but most of the others were not complete reconstructions. This was a bad idea."
A third voice piped up. This one was that of a woman. "Only a few have been like him and they have still adapted."
"You must remember the Jones incident, however..." The Japanese man interjected.
A moment of silence.
"You have to admit," the British voice added, "That the Jones incident was almost exactly like the earlier Mishima incident. The only key difference was their choice of weapon..."
"We can't afford to let Sparrow go the same way as the last two...he is far more unpredictable. Though, that being said..." the woman continued, "He doesn't seem quite as bright as the other two, does he?"
The sound of shuffling papers had Jack jerking his head from the door and beating a hasty, but silent, retreat. Within no time he had fled down the hall, down two flights of stairs, and was casually making his way towards the cafeteria before anyone suspected anything.
By the time he had served himself a hearty breakfast of whatever he could find at the buffet, Akio arrived in the cafeteria, flustered and somewhat panicked.
"Jack! Mr Sparrow! There you are!" He ran over, gasping for air, and sat in the seat opposite him.
"Yes, there I am." Jack enthused through a mouthful of bacon as Akio pulled his steamed-over glasses off to polish them clean with a rag. "What's all this fuss about?"
"Ah. We were looking for you. You weren't in your room."
"And?" He swallowed his mouthful and replaced it with another. "I was hungry. You people sleep in too long, lazy landlubbers. I'm up with the sun in the morning...why is it such a major event if I simply help myself to me own breakfast?"
"There is no problem..." Akio seemed exceedingly nervous this morning, and Jack was never one to let such an observation slide.
"Then why in blazes are you so fired up? You look as if someone's slipped gunpowder into your breeches and 'as just struck a flame..."
"Oh. No reason. Don't worry!" He smiled reassuringly. "We have a busy day ahead of us Mr Sparrow, we are going to teach you how to use a computer..."
"A what now?" He murmured through a mouthful of toast. "Another of your strange contraptions designed to scare the good sense out of someone like myself?"
"That is...one way of putting it."
"Do I have to?" There was a gruff whine in his voice...he was growing tired of these games.
"Well yes, you do..."
Akio allowed Jack to finish his truly enormous breakfast before dragging him off once again to another full day's activities.