Cherry had to admit that playing ghost was one of her new favorite pastimes. After her little training camp with Ussop, Chopper, and Nami, she had found herself craving wanting more.
She almost wished that she had found Uta's devil fruit instead of the fusion fruit all those years ago. It wouldn't have been that helpful on her cultivation journey, but what fun it would have been!
Still, the challenge of haunting whilst still alive and without the benefit of a nightmare fuel devil fruit made for a good time in its own right.
Especially since Barbossa was keener than he looked, and he looked pretty keen! If she cheated like Uta did, he'd figure it out pretty quick, and that'd be no fun at all!
"I know you're here, Jack," Barbossa grumbled as he prowled through the bilge. "You've hidden well, I'll admit, but you can't hide forever."
It was impressive that he had tracked her down here, since this really was where she hid most of the time, as well as where she was right this moment.
Most of the crew was convinced that she was the ghost of Sparrow Jack at this point, but Barbossa stubbornly insisted that Jack was still alive and just very sneaky.
One might think him foolish for assuming his stowaway is Sparrow Jack, but he simply lacked the context to reach a different conclusion. Jack was probably the wiliest pirate he knows, and thus the only person in Barbossa's world who might be able to pull off Cherry's shenanigans, even if he couldn't exactly explain why.
Of course, Cherry wasn't about to disabuse him of that notion.
Barbossa practically pounced over the last barrel, fully expecting to find his old rival hiding there. Instead, he found what Cherry wanted him to find.
An old compass.
Jack's old compass, and Barbossa recognizes it instantly.
If there was any doubt in his mind that Jack wasn't the one fucking with him, then it was gone now. Cherry can see the moment the doubt fled his mind in his eyes.
That wasn't the sole reason she left it there for him to find, though.
After discovering that they were all once part of Jack's crew, including Barbossa, Cherry wanted to know if they knew about the compass.
Barbossa gritted his teeth in clear frustration for failing to catch his quarry, but he did not outright dismiss the compass. Instead, he picked it up and turned it over in his hand thoughtfully. He seemed to ponder it, as if this was the first time he was truly seeing it despite recognizing it on sight.
'So he doesn't know what it does,' Cherry surmised silently. 'But now he's wondering if there's something different about it.'
Barbossa didn't strike her as the kind of man with his head in the clouds.
He wasn't a dreamer.
He didn't believe in magic.
Not until he was forced to believe.
And now, after his eyes had been forcefully pried open to gaze upon depths he never knew the world possessed, he was viewing an object he previously dismissed as mundane and uninteresting in a different light.
Barbossa snapped the compass open. He watched the needle intently as it turned this way and that before settling in a particular direction.
Stubborn man that he was, he pulled out his own compass and compared, just to be sure. Sure enough, his own compass that pointed true north as any proper compass should, was decidedly not the pointing same direction that Jack's compass pointed.
Barbossa turned to look behind him, back the way he came. He narrowed his eyes, as if that may help him to see something that wasn't there.
He glanced back at the compass and furrowed his brow. It was still pointed behind him.
Barbossa scoffed. "Ridiculous…"
He just about tossed it onto the ground, but something stopped him. He took a closer look at the compass once more, then he moved it side to side. The needle was moving, just not as he thought it should. It was pointing not behind him, but towards him.
Barbossa reached into his coat and extracted… a green apple. When he moved it away from himself, the needle followed like a lost lamb followed the shepherd, come to retrieve it.
"So that's what you were doing, leading us on those wild goose chases…" Barbossa muttered, as if he solved some confounding riddle.
Barbossa dropped the apple and stomped it into mush without hesitation. He commanded in a low tone, "Lead me."
The compass seemed to understand and spun wildly before settling on… Cherry's true hiding place; a barrel full of oats. Or more accurately, a barrel half full of oats, and half full of Cherry.
Barbossa marched over, letting the compass guide him true. He was fast and didn't hesitate to trust the mysterious navigational device once he had an inkling of its true function.
Cherry was faster, though. Barbossa had barely taken a few steps toward her before she dropped through the bottom of the barrel, through the hull, and into the water.
Now that she had a small handicap, the hunt would get a little more interesting!
…
Elizabeth heard the tell tale sound of creaking floorboards that signaled Cherry's arrival in her prison. She knew that Cherry was making the noise for her benefit, so that she wasn't too spooked by her sudden appearance.
Truthfully, Elizabeth didn't need the courtesy anymore. At this point, Cherry had popped in and out of the room enough times that Elizabeth just decided to pretend she was always in the room unless proven otherwise.
She can't be surprised that she isn't alone if she always assumes that she isn't!
Admittedly, that mindset does make using the chamber pot a bit awkward…
"So why are the crew all up in a tizzy? Were you seen or something?" Elizabeth asks conversationally.
"No, no," Cherry smirked. "But get this. You remember that pirate who saved you from drowning, then held you hostage?"
"Yes?" Elizabeth answered with a frown. It was kind of hard to forget something like that, let alone only a few days after it happened.
"Well, Jack used to be the captain of this very ship!" Cherry chirped in delight. "The crew used to be his crew, before they mutinied and stranded him on an island with just a pistol with a single shot. You know, to off himself if he didn't feel like starving."
"That's horrible," Elizabeth said. She certainly didn't like Jack so much after he put a gun to her head, but he hadn't actually hurt her at all.
"Yeah," Cherry nodded. Elizabeth got the impression that she didn't agree that he deserved that fate either. "So I got bored and started pranking the crew, and now half of them think Jack stowed away on the ship, whilst the other half think he's dead and haunting them."
Elizabeth snorted. "Really? I've heard sailors and pirates are a superstitious lot, but believing in ghosts is a bit much, no?"
"Eh," Cherry waved her hand in a so-so sort of way. "I've seen some weird shit, some of which resembled ghosts. One of my good buddies can separate his spirit from his body at will, for instance."
"What? No way," Elizabeth denied with a smile. "You have to be making that up. That's just silly."
"The world is a big place, and some of the most dangerous people I know are downright whacky!" Cherry insisted.
Elizabeth giggled at that, but she stopped real quick when she heard banging on the door.