Hector Barbossa, gay theme park extra, woke up for yet another depressing day in his depressing life.

"What's the point in living without him?" he sobbed melodramatically at a seemingly sympathetic squirrel as he flung himself onto the carpet. "I just can't do it any longer! I. Just. Can't. Do. It!"

And that's when another squirrel brained him with a bottle of rum because seriously. Have some pride, man.

There was a brief chittering conversation over the pirate's prone body before it was decided that they'd call it a coma.

They just had to get him to the clinic!

Barbossa squelched home muttering to himself about lousy cheating pirates, unhelpful kidnapped squirrels and a sad, sad lack of rum.

Then the date occurred to him.

"I LOST A PIRATE-OFF ON TALK LIKE A PIRATE DAY?!" he bellowed to the skies.

Barbossa hated everything.

[OOC: Mostly establishy. Hee.]

Barbossa was still on the run. On the lam. Hiding from the fuzz. The feds.

...the really mean Greek police.

Which did...nothing...to explain why he was sneaking through the crowds on his way back to the dock wearing a raspberry beret (the kind you'd find at a secondhand store) as he cut through Paisley Park.

"I be knowin' that I couldn't be gettin' around the world in a day, but I thought I'd be out o' Europe by now," he grumbled. "Next time me getaway vehicle won't be a Ski-do."

He slowed down as he walked past a number of yachts with "FOR SALE" plastered on them in the local language (just another sign o' the times), found a particularly shiny one and paused. "Let's go crazy," he snickered to himself, and climbed aboard.

A few moments later, Barbossa was motoring out of the harbor, heading west.

This had not, Barbossa decided as he frantically packed, been his best plan.

Sure, that necklace on special exhibit at the Santorini Archaeological Museum had belonged to him.

You know, at some point. When he'd won it from that guy--Xerxes, was it?--in a card game in Singapore a few centuries back. And yes, he had been far too responsible recently, running a respectable (...ish) business, even beginning to think about paying his broadcasters.

Or unlocking the booze cabinet, which he saw as the same thing.

But noooooo, he had to listen to the stupid part of his brain (the bit that sounded entirely too much like Jack Sparrow) and nick the damn bauble. And there had been alarms, and children staring, and men in uniform chasing him (that part, at least, had been familiar), and Barbossa wasn't sure if the barrier around the island would hold back law enforcement types and wasn't very keen on finding out.

So after checking his seabag to make sure he'd grabbed the essentials--necklace, cash, rum, fake ID (he thought he'd make a terrific "Barney Stinson")--he jotted off a quick note.

Jaye-wench:

Had t' leave town all sudden-like. Congratulations on yer new summer job. Here be the keys t' the good liquor. Back when the law stop following me I fleece th' necklace I can.

--Barbossa Barney Stinson. Aye. Barney.

He tossed the keys into an envelope, dropped the whole thing into the mail to be delivered in LA, and was fleeing the island in a commandeered jet ski ten minutes later.

[OOC: ...and 'bossa's gone for the summer. Silly pirate.]

Barbossa was in the radio office drinking heavily as squirrel after squirrel after squirrel came in with notes about the day's events.

He wasn't doing the broadcast, no.

Didn't mean he wasn't using the amount of work as an excuse to drink.

"I be needin' a vacation," he grumbled to the nearest squirrel. "I be far too responsible these days. 'n what be wit' the ream o' paper about someone not givin' ye pie?"

His eyes caught a brochure about a the pirate lairs of Greece and a new exhibit of pirate booty.

He brought the brochure closer, then rubbed his eyes and looked again. "That necklace be mine!" he cried.

He'd rightfully stolen it from someone before some Greek pirate'd taken it from him, anyway.

Time to take it back. It was good to have a plan for next week.

[OOC: Establishy!]

Most of the people Barbossa knew had already been sucked into the past before he'd left Fandom, and it wasn't like he was one to write anyway, but he'd hit the latest batch of rum pretty hard and so...

( He'd written the squirrels. In their own language. As you do. Did we mention the rum? )

'Twas the night before Christmas and all nice people were snuggled all warm in their beds.

Barbossa? Passed out by a tree ladened down with packages of nuts and tiny bottles of rum for the radio staff.

Such great Christmas presents!

He snored like a great snoring thing.

[OOC: For stealer of said presents.]

Barbossa, as always, had listened to the broadcast last night.

And then he'd reread the notes.

And then he realized that Rupert the park squirrel hadn't come in for his assignment today.

Which was why Barbossa was now sporting a garlic necklace, swearing under his breath, and covering the doors and windows in pointy stakes as he took swigs from his bottle of rum.

Last time this sort of thing had gone down, Angelus had come into Barbossa's house and tried to eat a couple of his roommates. It hadn't escaped Barbossa's notice that he didn't have any roommates to offer up this time.

After a moment's consideration, Barbossa posted a sign in the window: Bait Roommate wanted.

A little bit of preparation never killed anyone, right?