Barbossa might have started to panic.
There was no sign of their stowaway, be it Jack or soone else. No pranks, no chases, just silence.
All the boats were accounted for. The barrels were too. There was no way for them to have left without going into the water; and if they had gone into the water with the missing coin, Barbossa and his crew would have felt it.
So where in the hell were they hiding?!
It must be magic. So kind of voodoo or witchcraft. Did Dalma Tia help them with this?
That was a dangerous suspicion to have, Barbossa knew. Dalma Tia wasn’t sobody you could antagonize with baseless accusations. Not if you valued your life, and perhaps your soul.
The true depths of that woman’s abilities were not sothing known to Barbossa. If he had any say in the matter, he would never know.
It was getting dark, though, and neither he nor any man under his command had anything to show for their search. At the rate things were going, they’d be forced to wait another night.
Barbossa heard screeching, then Jack (the monkey, not the man) ca rushing into the room like a bat out of hell. His fur was smoking and as he got closer, Barbossa saw so patches that were still afla.
Barbossa patted the flas to smother them completely, then gave the monkey a once over. He wasn’t concerned that he was hurt; the monkey was just as undead as the rest of them. No, what he was looking for was a clue. This was the first ti in half a day that the stowaway struck at them, Barbossa was sure of it.
Sure enough, Barbossa found sothing.
Rather, he found two sothings. Two identical gold coins with identical skull carvings, stashed into a small leather bag and strapped to Jack’s belly.
Barbossa groaned and started to run. The Isla de Muerta wasn’t a big island, so he arrived at his treasure room in just a few minutes. Along the way, he grabbed a few of his crew to co with.
He burst inside and beelined for the stone chest in the center. The Turner girl watched him cautiously from where she sat in a gaudy chair wearing a crown, several necklaces, and an ungodly number of rings.
He ignored the impudent young woman using his treasure to play dress up and pushed the top of the stone chest off in one go.
Nothing looked off at a glance, which was good, but that didn’t an much.
"Count them!" Barbossa ordered the n he brought with him.
He could almost hear the gears turning in their little heads screech to a halt as they caught the implication of his demand.
They all knew the number by heart. Exactly eight hundred and eighty two coins, minus one for the single coin that Bootstrap Bill sent away. Naturally the number should co out to eight hundred and eighty one.
Barbossa and the guards he left in the room to watch Elizabeth watching in silent anticipation and mounting dread as the other n pulled coins from the chest and arranged them in neat stacks of ten.
"How many?" Barbossa asked, tapping his foot as he stopped pacing.
"Three hundred and ten," the first replied.
"Two hundred and seventy," the second answered.
All eyes were on the last man who gulped at the attention. He said, "T-three hundred and... two."
The room was deathly silent. The man held up two coins; two that, apparently, didn’t fit into the stacks of ten.
"Impossible," Barbossa hissed. He got down on his knees and personally inspected every single pile.
Every single one had exactly ten coins; none were short as he assud.
"Then what in Davy Jones’ locker are these?!" Barbossa roared, holding aloft the two coins he took from Jack. "There can’t be eight hundred and eighty four! Where did the extras co from?!"
"Er, maybe they’re fakes, captain?" an absolute idiot suggested.
Barbossa shot him in the face.
"Does anyone else want to state the obvious?!" Barbossa dared them.
No one did. Especially not the idiot who already did so once, and only partly because he hadn’t managed to dig the bullet out of his nasal cavity yet.
"I ca in here to confirm that the chest hadn’t been stolen from, after these were... delivered to . Instead of finding the proper amount, or worse, that there were more missing than there should be. Instead I find that every coin is apparently inside the chest," Barbossa summarized. "Except, I also have these two coins. Does anyone know what this ans? Care to take a guess?"
Silence.
"It ans," Barbossa gained a wild look in his eye. "That there are traitors amongst us."
His lessers eyed one another with suspicion.
"Gather the whole crew. It’s ti we got to the bottom of this," Barbossa ordered, and they scrambled to follow lest they be accused of mutiny for being too slow.
...
Oh, this was delicious.
Cherry had just wanted to fuck with Barbossa so more, but she had inadvertently sent him spiraling into full blown paranoia.
In hindsight, she could see his reasoning though. The stowaway, as she had co to be known, had seemingly completely evaded both capture and even sight in such close quarters for days. The real kicker, though, was the fake coins.
Simply put, Barbossa must have assud that the fakes were made in advance. She actually just made them from gold in her pockets and a little bit of fusion fruit molding, but Barbossa didn’t have the context for that.
What was supposed to be a funny mind fuck instead beca a full blown conspiracy against the captain years in the making. In his mind, nobody else could have planned it.
Sure, Elizabeth had a coin herself during that ti, but it was a much bigger stretch that she was the mastermind behind it all. At worst, she was an accomplice. She didn’t even have unsupervised access to the stone chest! Plenty of the crew had, though. Not just on this visit, but on nurous others over the years. It’s not like they counted the chest’s contents every ti they ca here.
Heh.
Cherry watched Barbossa flail his arms about like a mad man, spewing spittle from his lips as he picked apart every little thing he noticed in hindsight during the voyage.
Boy, was the crew pissed.
Not at Barbossa for accusing them of plotting a mutiny, no. They all seed to trust his judgnt on this, in fact. They were angry at the traitors!
Hah!
Once Barbossa said his piece, others began to chi in. Pointing out innocuous details that they noticed about their crewmates and twisting them into well hidden malice.
With each accusation, the voices grew louder and louder. Barbossa had no intention of stopping them. No, he was listening to them, trying to piece together a puzzle that doesn’t actually exist.
"The Turner girl must be in on it! She’s been a distraction this entire ti!" There went the first one leveled at herself. Or rather, at Elizabeth, who wasn’t present.
"Pintel and Ragetti were the ones who brought her here!" Ah, now the heroes who brought the final coin back were traitors in disguise!
This is even better than watching Grandma’s snail operas.
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