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[Carribean Sea ~ The Black Pearl]

Noelle gave herself a mental pat on the back as her spear struck Xaldin, taking no time in calling it back to her hand for another throw. Just as she reared back, however, her weapon vanished leaving her empty handed. The agromancer froze, looking at her hand as if she didn't understand what was going on--but she knew the feeling. Her magic was gone, meaning no weapon, and no communication with Titan. With the disappearance of her weapon, Noelle moved to a cat stance, hands on guard. She knew things were about to get ugly. Especially when Zexion showed his true colors.

"Keep close," The blonde said in a low voice to James, "We're stronger together."

Prote was blasted nearly off his feet by the Blizzaga spell, falling forward to his knees with the force of it. He immediately felt its effects, unable to hold his arm in a blade or do anything but stay in his true form. The others would see him flicker and fade slightly as destruction threatened him. Something so simple as that wouldn't be able to take him out completely, though, not by a long shot. He just knew futility in battle when he saw it.

[Joe: Caribbean Sea: Black Pearl]

Joseph got back up as quickly as he could while Luxord taunted him, legs apart and braced. He couldn't do anything 'fancy', which meant a punch or kick. Heck, even if he just had a weapon, a stick or knife, he'd feel better. And with Zexion taunting them....

"Dammit shut UP! You don't know that! You don't know how we'd do! We're not weak, dammit!" he shouted. He couldn't let everyone get completely disheartened. But one thing changed that worry for the others to something else.

Something dark, and twisted, within the male.

"...The replicas?" he whispered, his jaw locking into place, shoulders squaring, his face losing his mask and donning a look of pure anger. "Let them come! I'll take them on and kill the f***ers!" he screamed out, hand clenched into fists and nails digging into his palms, not moving from his spot because there was nothing he could do at the moment.

{James, Auron, Luxord : Caribbean Sea : The Black Pearl}

"Right..." James replied quietly, nodding his head in understanding to Noelle's words.

He moved a bit closer to Noelle and the others, getting into a somewhat defensive position himself, though it wasn't very intimdating without his hexagun. He watched as Auron and Jacob went in to attack, only to have it stopped by strange Nobodies with mirrors, which he had to figure were Zexion's. Resistance was futile it seemed as the Nobodies then took on Auron and Jacob's forms, just like the Epitaph's in Final Fantasy IX.

"There is nothing we can do..." He muttered under his breath.

Auron was confident that his strike was going to hit, until it suddenly met with the mirror of the Nobody. His body froze in place, he was unable to move for a moment until he was forced to back petal somewhat in order to prevent hitting the deck as his own force was sent right back at him.

"This can't be good..." He said quietly, his eyes narrowing at the physical clone of himself.

Luxord chuckled again seeing Auron and Jacob's attacks being sent right back at them. This was over and done with, soon the Earthlings would be out of the way for awhile aboard the Dutchman.

"I suggest that you fold. As you can plainly see, we are on top of the game!" He declared smugly.

James' attention was now focused on what was coming their way, of course he immediately recognized it as the Flying Dutchman. The ship of Davy Jones, crewed by the souls that were not ready to move on. The mention of the replicas sent a shiver down James' spine, even though he couldn't detect the darkness that was fuming from the approaching ship.

"Oh no..."

[[Louis : Black Pearl : Lower Decks]]

The last thing the shadowmancer saw before his eye closed on him forcefully was a twitching machine he easily recognized from Final Fantasy X. Even as his shock set in, he had to snatch back his arms as his portals lost shape and nearly collapsed on his arms. There was no way to tell if their collapse would have actually done any harm, but Louis was not about to find out.

Louis opened his clear eye and looked around at the dark hold. His strained his ears to listen, but all he could hear was a deathly quiet. He moved swiftly but quietly. He reached the exit to the deck in a few moments and stopped a few inches away, coming in late on the conversation taking place...

"-... you are bound for failure. What I am doing is merely logical. Am I not correct... Kyle?"

Zexion?

"You... you said you'd stick with us, as long as we had a chance. We still have a chance!"

You've got to be...ugh... crap...

"If you'd have stepped in, if you hadn't done this-"
"You would have 'succeeded', but is that really a success due to your own abilities or mine?"

Louis gritted his teeth, his fist forming a mold around the hilt of his dagger. As much as he despised Zexion's betrayal and wished to drive his dagger through his empty chest then put a bullet through that wretched machine, he knew where he was going had its indisputable foundations.

"If you want to live, you'll cooperate. Unless you think you can take on those little doppelgangers with your bare hands, don't try to play hero."

The replicas... it's true. They don't have the power to take them on... neither do I...

Thoughts that had been dormant for the battle returned like a re-lit flame only recently snuffed out. Louis retreated into his mind, suppressing the surging depression that threatened to overwhelm him, Powerless. Powerless to correct my own mistakes. Why did it have to turn out this way...

[Joe: Caribbean Sea: Black Pearl]

The male turned to Dawn, anger spreading through his features until he looked downright pissed. Calm down? Someone was telling him to CALM DOWN?!

"Shut up, Dawn! They killed Rae, and are a threat to us all! I will get rid of them if it's the last goddamn thing I do!" he yelled, before turning back to watch the ship move closer.

Sayrike::Screwed Central The Black Pearl

What was the point of fighting? Others might say, "You keep fighting even when it looks like failure!" but the wise man knows when to pick and choose his battles. Contrary to fiction, it wasn't very often when desperate struggle won the day. The other side had to do something incredibly stupid, like pull back when they almost had victory, as in the case of Mark Antony vs Octavian, or have some kind of magical intervention--which wasn't something you could rely on, and in this case it didn't look like it was going to happen.

Speaking of ship battles...She flicked her eyes across the ship. Where was Jack Sparrow and Barbossa? This was the Flying Dutchman coming! What were they going to do? Most likely betray the Earthlings if that meant their own survival, of course. Still, she wondered how Jack, at least, was going to play this game. Did he owe those lives yet? Was he going to try and give up theirs? Stupid, stupid movie and it's stupid, stupid plot. They should have just stuck to the first one.

Sayrike wasn't one to get mad easily. Things just were, and that was the way of life. No 'good,' no 'bad,' just...existence. She couldn't blame the Nobody for switching to another side if that's where he saw his advantage. Kyle's outburst revealed there had been a deal of some sort. So, that was the game. The little tidbit might have been useful if shared. Ah, well, no point helping it now. Zex---something, what was it again?---had a point; if the requirement was for them to have a chance at success, then this moment seemed very much out of reach of that goal.

That's when Ze-Whatever pulled out his own set of mirrors. Something inside Sayrike twisted. Hey! That's mine! she internally frowned. Well, she knew the Nobody probably already had it before she came along, but Sayrike still felt a little violated to see a parallel to her physical manifestation of her heart. No one could copy her heart. And then the mirrors made copies of Auron and Jacob! She pouted for a few moments, thinking to herself, Okay, next time I get the chance, I have to show off how much better my mirrors are than this and really kick some butt, otherwise whenever I summon them all anyone will think about is this friggin' situation, and then I'll just be inspiring despair whenever I fight. This sucks. Majorly.

To keep her mind off of this, she reviewed what Anthony had to say. A dawning realization came to her. "s**t." She didn't usually curse in front of strangers, but it kind of slipped out. Sayrike barely turned her head to the man behind her, instead muttering out of the side of her mouth. "Well, for one, we wouldn't have screamed for everyone to jump. And two, we wouldn't have drowned for obvious reasons. Note I use the past tense, because..." and here she gestured with her eyes, "if you've noticed, your clothes have stopped mending. Which means that the magic has failed on them too. And from the bits that were explained to me, the clothes will change according to worlds. Which means that they might have accounted for what we saw in the ocean. Which means that, if magic isn't working, it wouldn't help for us to jump in anyway. Dang it, dang it, dang it. Sayrike tended to resort to lesser expletives when she got past a certain point of frustration. "But, for the record, you wouldn't have drowned if it WAS working, silly." She glanced back at the opponents, tense, hoping that she wasn't going to get picked on by them like a student passing notes in the back of class.

Well, Joe's outburst would have been enough to distract the attention away from them. She didn't even try to say anything to him, because it obviously would have been an effort in futility. Logic and reasoning would not reach him at this point, and Sayrike didn't know him well enough to know what to say that might actually help. Dawn looked panicked and worried, though, and she wasn't too far away. Sayrike said quietly but firmly, "Dawn, don't pay attention to him. He's not thinking at the moment. Stay calm. This isn't the end. We're alive for a bit longer yet. And as long as we're alive, there will be chances."

She raised her voice so that the ship's occupants could hear. "I cannot speak for the others, but I do know when it is the time for struggle and when it's wise to capitulate. But, obviously, your mission isn't to kill us, otherwise you would have done so already. What is it, then? What's the use of holding us here and giving us over to these "replicas"? Personally, I have no reason to fight you, except out of survival at this point, because you attacked first. There is nothing to be gained by keeping the few of us here who have no qualm with you, or the people you're working for. That is, you seem to be working for someone, or at least doing their dirty work."

Sayrike hoped that her self-assurance and unruffled appearance would diffuse to the others in the group. Despair was going to get them nowhere. Still, she couldn't help a bitter jest, and muttering very quietly to Anthony so that no one else heard, "But your point remains. I think we are, in layman's terms, screwed."

Jacob ll H.M.S. The pwnage The Black Pearl

Jacob just couldn't stop. He knew everything about himself. His strong points. His weak points. Just when he thought he connected and began to grapple wit the nobody, a mirror flashed in front and sent him back into the hard wooden deck. He slid down into a quadrupedal stance to reabsorb the energy and stared at a new unique opponent. Himself. Why did every god d--- video game have to have an overpowered clone in it?

But Jacob had one thing the nobody didn't. A heart. The knowledge that Jacob had accumulated over 18 years of getting into scraps and fights and brawls. It was a pseudo-mindless puppet of a totalitarian, evil, two-faced liar. And that pissed Jacob right off.

Jacob galloped along the deck in quadrupedal style, feinted right with his body, but brought up a twisted back kick; it was also a feint. Thank goodness for capoeria If it was one thing he could do, it was dance his way under his own guard, get in close, get behind his crappy clone and completely destroy it by breaking its neck. Yeah...that was the plan. Jacob spun and collapsed to the ground, before pushing off the ground with his hands as hard as he could to try and put a foot right though the glass-jawed nobody.