AN: HERE IS AN IMAGE OF CURRENT JACK D SPARROW
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They learned something new that day.
The World Government, the great iron monument that demanded kingdoms bleed themselves dry in yearly tribute, was spectacularly stingy when it came to the people who actually stood at the gates and pulled the levers.
Jack stood on the deck of the Black Pearl and watched a line of uniformed officials argue over a single barrel of gold like starving seabirds fighting over a fish head. Their hands shook with urgency. Their eyes darted left and right, as if the very air might report them. Their pride tried to keep their backs straight, but hunger and resentment bent them anyway.
Gibbs leaned close to Jack and muttered, "A kingdom goes broke paying tribute and these poor fools look like they're one missed meal away from eating their own shoes."
Jack took a thoughtful sip of rum and watched the barrel disappear behind a locked door with the kind of reverence usually reserved for holy relics.
"Stingy," Jack said, voice full of offended awe. "A world-spanning authority and they pay their gatekeepers like they're part-time dishwashers."
Gibbs exhaled. "Because the money goes up."
Jack lifted a finger. "Up where?"
Gibbs jerked his chin toward the peak of the Red Line, toward the holy city that sat on top of the world like an ugly crown. "To those… people."
Jack stared upward. The Red Line rose like a brutal wall carved from the concept of "no." It didn't just block the sea; it mocked it. A continent pretending to be a border. A place where the sky felt closer, and yet freedom felt further away.
"Ah," Jack said quietly. "The ones with the bubbles."
Gibbs' mouth tightened. "You know, I once heard a rumor that Red Line actually once used to be underwater. It was a God who flipped the world upside down and the Red Line appeared like how it is today."
Jack considered the exchange that had just taken place. Officials glancing at each other, deciding whether they could stomach the risk. A final nod. A stamp. A scribble. A thin smile that tried to look official but came out desperate.
The Pearl, for the next few hours, would be a "merchant vessel conducting World Government business." The ink on the papers was still wet. The lie was fresh enough to shine.
Jack didn't call it a bribe.
"No," he said pleasantly to the official who had handed over the documents, "this is merely rewarding you for your hard work. You're welcome."
The official blinked, as if unused to anyone being grateful to him for anything, then bowed so fast his cap nearly flew off.
Gibbs watched the whole thing with a look that kept alternating between disgust and reluctant admiration. "One barrel," he murmured. "That's all it took."
Jack patted the railing as the Pearl was guided toward the transport route. "It's not a barrel. It's a gesture."
"It's a barrel," Gibbs insisted.
Jack's smile widened. "A barrel of justice."
Pintel had been listening with his usual half-suspicious, half-hopeful expression. "Captain," he asked, "if one barrel works, what does two barrels do?"
"Encourages loyalty," Jack said.
"And three?"
"Encourages poetry," Jack replied.
Ragetti squinted. "What if we give them four?"
Jack looked him dead in the eye. "Then they start thinking they deserve it. Never do that."
The Pearl rolled forward through the controlled channel built into the Red Line infrastructure. It was less like sailing and more like being swallowed by a machine—massive gates, thick stone, chains full of platforms and lifts. Jack felt it was way too complicated.
And then, slowly, the world opened.
Jack stepped up to the helm, rum bottle in hand, and watched the sky spread above him like a painted ceiling. The top of the world had a strange kind of beauty. A cold, imposing grandeur that made the ocean beneath look like a map someone had carelessly spilled across the planet.
Far below, water stretched endlessly. Tiny dots that were ships moved like insects. Clouds drifted at eye level. The wind was sharper here, and it tasted like altitude.
Jack stared into that open expanse and felt something in his chest twist—something he didn't like naming.
Freedom.
He tried to pin it down the way he pinned down deals and schemes. Freedom wasn't a treasure you found; it was a thing you stole and kept moving with. Freedom was not asking permission. It was going anywhere in the world without someone telling you that you couldn't. It was the sea, the sky, the islands, the underseas—everything open, everything possible, everything yours if you were fast enough and mad enough.
Jack chuckled, a soft sound swallowed by the wind. "Be free," he murmured, not quite sure if he was speaking to himself or to a ghost.
Then he remembered something else.
Haki.
"Observation," he muttered. "The thing where you know you're about to be punched before you are punched."
Gibbs, standing nearby, raised an eyebrow. "That's… one way to describe it."
Jack didn't answer. He leaned both hands on the helm, closed his eyes, and let his breathing settle into something slower. The world went quiet in a way it never truly did—rumbling mechanisms, distant voices, the groan of stone and chain—those sounds became background.
He flared it out.
For a heartbeat, Jack perceived the world differently.
He felt shapes rather than saw them. Movement rather than sound. Intent rather than footsteps.
Below deck: Ragetti stirring a pot with reckless confidence, the smell alone radiating danger. Robin nearby, her calm frustration like a steady flame. Pintel rolling coins between his fingers and humming loudly like a man who had never lifted a woman's skirt.
Above: Augur's watchful stillness, the weight of his gaze on the horizon with a rifle barrel that never lowered. Gibbs' wary attention, split between the officials and the ship. Even the officials themselves—nervous, greedy, afraid of their superiors, afraid of pirates, afraid of being poor forever.
Jack pushed just a little further. He tried to feel the edges of the Red Line corridor. The walls. The gates. The countless lives up above he could not see. The pressure of the place itself.
His head throbbed.
His stomach turned.
The sense wavered, and in a flash he felt what Chinjao had meant: this wasn't magic you used casually. It wasn't a trick.
Jack let it go and opened his eyes, blinking hard as if the sunlight had slapped him.
He swayed once.
Then he took another swig of rum as if rum had always been the solution to spiritual exhaustion.
"Interesting," he muttered, mostly to himself.