The door slammed open, once an enraged Barbossa managed to get it unlocked. If Barbossa was embarrassed by how long it took him to do so in his frustration, he didn't show it.
"Where is he?!" Barbossa demanded. "Where's Jack! I know he's in here!"
Elizabeth didn't need to fake the confused expression that appeared on her face. Even though Cherry told her that they thought that it was Sparrow Jack stowing away on the ship, Barbossa had thrown her for a loop because of the way that he barged in like a lunatic.
"Jack who?" Elizabeth answered.
"The compass led me right here!" Barbossa almost shoved the navigational instrument right into her face.
"I'm pretty sure that isn't how compasses work," Elizabeth lightly pushed his hand back. "And this one doesn't seem to work, regardless. Unless we've changed headings in the last few minutes?"
"Not everything in this world is as it seems on the surface, Miss Turner!" Barbossa didn't appear discouraged by her words. "This compass points to what the heart of the holder desires most! It led Jack in circles, no doubt because that fool couldn't make up his mind. That's why we mutinied against him!"
"And now, you're hiding him!" Barbossa accused. "The compass led me here, so this must be where he's hiding! I don't know how he's ignoring the walls of my ship, but it matters little! It certainly won't matter once I've caught him!"
"If that compass really leads you to what you want most, then how do you know that what you want most is to catch this 'Jack'?" Elizabeth poked a hole in his logic.
"I…!" Barbossa cut himself off. "I, uh… hmm…"
Elizabeth stopped herself from laughing right in his face as he actually started considering it.
…
"Aye, you might have a point," Barbossa admitted with no small amount of reluctance. He glanced at the needle and saw it was pointed right at Elizabeth.
Barbossa was no horndog, but he was still a man. The years without feeling the warmth of a woman had been difficult, though certainly not what he'd missed most. That had been good food and drink.
It was a shame that the Turner girl was much too young to truly catch his interest. If he were a younger man, he might have seduced her just to spite Bootstrap Bill; but as he's aged, so too have his tastes.
Just to be sure, he pushed the girl aside.
The needle didn't budge. He smirked.
"Think's he's clever, does he? Hiding behind a girl?" Barbossa muttered to himself.
He stormed forward, towards his writing desk. He didn't circle around it; instead, he directly grabbed it by the bottom and flipped it over. The deck banged against the back wall and revealed nothing beneath.
Barbossa frowned. He thought for sure he'd catch the bastard off guard with that move.
Then he paused. The floor boards… did they always look that way.
Barbossa got to his hands and knees, all but pressing his face into the wood.
"There was a knothole here," Barbossa traced the spot with his fingers. "I'm sure of it."
He had spent quite a lot of time in this room, being his personal quarters and all. He might not have memorized the grain of every plank, but certain details that stood out would be noticed after they've mysteriously gone missing.
"He really is moving right through the walls and floors," Barbossa voiced his suspicion. He looked Elizabeth right in the eye. "And you've seen him."
The girl said nothing, and that was a response in its own right.
"Well, you've just voided your right to privacy," Barbossa stood. "From now on, one of my men will be in here at all times, just in case Jack decides to visit."
The girl frowned. "What about when I need to… relieve myself."
"You should have thought about that when you were conspiring with the enemy," Barbossa snarked. "The best you can do is convince them to turn around. Good luck with that, Miss Turner."
Barbossa marched out and called on the first of his crew that he spotted. It was Monk. He was a quiet man, taciturn. The girl was lucky, for now, as Monk could be counted amongst the more polite members of his crew, albeit still a savage.
"Monk! Get in there and keep watch!" Barbossa ordered. "You see Jack, then kill first and ask questions later! Otherwise, just don't let the girl get too comfortable."
Was it petty to order the girl's would-be babysitter to treat her poorly? Absolutely, but Barbossa was just in that kind of a petty mood.
…
Cherry felt a bit bad that her little game had gotten Elizabeth a chaperone. Barbossa was, perhaps, just a bit more observant than she gave the man credit for.
Well! Don't let anyone say that she didn't clean up after herself!
Barbossa hadn't quite given up on catching "Jack", so she led him away from Elizabeth's room. She didn't doubt, now, that Barbossa would probably work out what she was doing, but he didn't have much choice in the matter. Either he let Cherry roam about the ship freely, or he gave chase.
Barbossa clearly wasn't worried, though. He had a hundred men under his command and "jack" could only be in one place at a time.
However, he was missing that crucial fact. That he wasn't actually dealing with a man who was hopelessly outnumbered and forced to sneak around with tricks to survive on a hostile ship. He was, in reality, dealing with a woman who was only toying with him for shits and giggles; a woman who could, at any point, decide to sink their sorry asses and let them rot on the sea floor.
Not that there was a sea floor, this far away from land. They didn't know that though. They only knew that if a ship sunk too far away from land, the sea would never surrender it. They would never imagine that it would simply drop out the bottom and fall to another, larger sea below.
Whether or not they learned that fact was entirely within Cherry's hands.
When she had Barbossa on the other side of the ship, she ambushed him.
First, she pulled an empty burlap sack over his head and shoulders, then she gave him a good shove. When he was on the ground and cursing at her, she swiftly tied a rope around his legs and hoisted him upside down.
Only then did she make a hasty escape, leaving him to dangle until one of the crew heard him making a ruckus and came to let him down.
In the meantime, Cherry had a babysitter to deal with.
She found the man in question, Monk, sitting in a chair that he'd dragged over in front of the door. From there, he sat and watched Elizabeth and the room in general like a hawk.
That didn't hinder Cherry at all, so she made a point to loudly unlock the door.
It being the one place that he couldn't see from his position, he naturally turned to see who was coming inside, but he didn't know they were already inside.
Cherry reached her hands out and grasped his head between them. One exertion of force later, the man's skull was pulverized and his body flailed about as it attempted to put up a fight against an adversary it was no longer capable of seeing.
Cherry proceeded to crush bone after bone until it stopped moving. She wasn't sure if it was because the man could no longer maintain consciousness after so much damage, or if he simply didn't have enough of himself left intact to do so.
Cherry would bet on the latter.
She gathered up the bits of bone and dust in another sack, then unceremoniously dumped it outside the door, before locking it back up.
All the while, Elizabeth watched in morbid fascination and horror.