Pirate101 belongs to Kingsisle Entertainment
Everything else - the OCs - belongs to me, apart from a few characters that jump in...those are other people property (you know who you are laddies).
PS.: 3+ years and only now I figured out how to replace the damn chapters! WHAT!

Once it was boring...

Scotland. Specifically Edinburgh. More specifically - in a mall on a lovely Sunday afternoon. It was bursting with people during this weekend...or any other weekend for that matter. Plus Fridays, because Fridays are celebrated by a few students as a bonus day of freedom. Course, that's for those who mostly have short and easy school days on Friday.

For those few lucky folk the day might've been just slightly more enjoyable if a young girl wouldn't be clawing her way the opposite direction through the stream of people. She kept muttering under her breath apologies, because the first twenty times of actual shouting got rather tiring.

When the girl finally slipped out of the busy crowd and into a more secluded section of the mall (believe it of not, those were a thing. Rare, but still a thing). There, she was greeted by a boy in black, messy hair, green eyes, which were behind rectangular black glasses, wearing a green shirt with a Xbox logo on the chest, orange jeans and black and white Nike sneakers. From a further glance, you'd mistake him for a overgrown carrot.

'' An antique shop...'' the girl had started, panting and supporting herself by leaning her hands against her knees. A brown leather purse (though she hated that word), which was supposed to hang over the girl's shoulder and swung over on her back so it wouldn't get in the way, instead slided forward, bumping it's owner's wrist. The owner just swung it backwards again and straightened to continue her thought.'' An antique shop. In a luxury, twenty-first century mall...that's the first,''

'' Got to admit,'' said the boy, his hands in the front pockets of his orange jeans.'' I can't believe it's still here. My grandma used to take me there.''

'' Really?'' the girl followed him.'' I feel kinda hurt that I didn't know about it sooner.''

'' Oh yeah,'' the boy chuckled.'' I'd imagine that'd be heaven for you. A very...dusty, old-leather-smelling heaven,'' he frowned at the thought.'' Meanwhile I was always a cranky kid when gran took me to any kind of place that had old stuff in it. Kinda like you when someone takes you clothe shopping,''

The girl suddenly had a painful expression. '' Ok, I see your point. We go in, take whatever looks good enough for Mr. Keenley's presentation and get out,''

'' I like the way you think, Ashley,'' the boy smiled, satisfied with his close company. These twelve year olds had a task for school. If they hadn't, do you really think they'd be spending their free time looking for an antique shop in a twenty-first century mall?
The task was to present and talk about a Roman artifact, what were it's specs, where was it used...And this time these two were working together to bring down their rival at school - Venus - a stereotypical fashion girl, but she really knows her thing about history though. And electronics. Even though Ashley and her friend - Benjamin (or Ben as everyone calls him) are one of the best at these subjects (Ashley's good with history, while Ben has an eye for IT) they always end up second to Venus and her cocky personality really doesn't help coping with it.

They stopped in front of a scurvy-looking shop with dark green paint peeling off the wall. The shop's title was painted in yellow, but some sort of mixture was added to the paint to make it look like it has strings of gold (which didn't really help to impress since the painting job was done rather poorly).

Ashley looked trough the dark glass. Didn't look like anyone's inside. The only thing she could see was her own reflection: blue eyes, pointy chin, round jaw, barely tanned skin. Her long, walnut coloured hair was unevenly cut - just how she liked it. She was wearing a regular blue T-shirt, the surface was littered in music notes and beat waves. She also wore simple black jeans and purple Puma sneakers.

The girl noticed that the bell above the door was still moving. She wondered if someone had left the shop shortly before they arrived

'' Let's go, Lucky Girl,'' Ben pulled open the antique door. The shop was surprisingly big. Behind the wooden counter sat a man, about in his late thirties, boringly flipping the pages of a magazine about...architecture, of all things.

'' Ah, hello'' Ashley recognized a slight Spanish accent.'' Are you lost?''

''N...No'' said Ben.

'' Sorry to bother you, sir'' started Ashley. '' but, see, we have this history project on Rome and we need to borrow a Roman artifact.''

'' Roman you say?'' the man grinned.'' Sure, sure. Right here'' he waved to follow him to the other room behind him. It had everything here! Armour, helmets, spears, swords, capes, an old roman flag - that was almost turned to shreds and of which the cloth started to decay - vases, books and scrolls ...

'' What about this?'' Ben picked up a helmet.

'' Nah, don't think so'' Ashley shook her head. She remembered Venus bragging about a Roman helmet that her mom used as a utensil dryer. She had no idea how true that was, but figured not to risk it. As Ben placed the helmet back, something caught Ashley's eye on a shelf just right of her friend. It was a sort of snow globe...with no snow. Behind the glass dome it actually had puffy clouds inside. Ashley gazed at the snow globe, as some of the clouds flew aside revealing a big skull. she frowned.

'' Ashley!'' Ben yelled right in her ear. The girl flicked back to reality and, just for a few seconds, looked around startled like a confused cat.

'' What?!'' she shouted also, once she got her bearings back.

'' What do you think of this?'' he pointed a thumb at a rectangular, red shield, which would easily manage to cover a fully grown man.

'' Yeah,'' she answered, completely unaware what Ben asked. She turned to the salesman and pointed at the globe.

'' What is that?''

''This? I have no idea'' he admits. '' Some lady walked in just before you and begged me to take it. She was talking about some curse, pirates, sharks, and her son getting almost killed. I thought they just had a bad day at Orlando park,'' he shrugged.

Ashley frowned. '' Can...'' she said uneasily. '' Can I take a look at it? at home, I mean.''

'' Sure, but you'll need to return it with the shield,'' he shrugged casually once again and went back to the counter to get some papers.

XXX

Ashley hopped up every second step to her room. Her room wouldn't strike you as a normal girl's room right off the bat: light, wooden floorboards were covered up in the middle by an oval blue carpet portraying a colourful owl. To the right of it, against the window with white curtains, stood her bed with purple bedsheets and a bunch of pillows at the corner of it for extra comfort. To the left was an armchair, for when she felt like reading something from her lovely bookshelf. The bookshelf contained fantasy, mystery and adventure novels, also a special section for DvDs and video games. She played and watched those on the few consoles that she had, which were connected to a hanging, flat-screen TV on the western wall. On the remaining areas on the walls, so they wouldn't look so empty bland, hung video game posters and paintings that Ashley felt really proud of. Against a second window was Ashley's desk, currently messy as hell...but the area around her computer keyboard and mouse was clear enough for her to use them. The other part of her desk had at least three different cups of tea, one of them being more full than the others. One of the cups was standing on a pile of old grading papers, another was placed between some misplaced disks and flash drives, and the third cup had the luxury of standing off-balance on several earpiece wires. Mind you that was the one that was half empty.

I'm just gonna get it out there and say that, like any other typical parent that doesn't know how creativity works, Ashley's mom - Bella Holystone - was always quite cross with her daughter's style of living. Ashley liked to argue and she had her own view of the world around her since a very young age, and her parents thinking that they have much more superior minds because they have decent jobs and are much older, therefore - experienced, constantly denied their daughter's wild thoughts and ideas if they were too...well, wild!

Ben was Ashley's childhood friend and the closest friend she ever had. They always worked as a team and refused to go to different schools when the actual time came to go down that path in life. Even though Ashley gave him quite a few heart attacks when they were little, he still ended up enjoying the adventures they always had. Most of them being in the woods not too far from their street.

Ashley opened up her desk's upper drawer and scavenged inside it for a magnifying glass. The girl was so interested in the snow globe she didn't even bother to take her shoes off in the main hall, or throw off that annoying purse that keeps getting in the way when she leans forward.

Once she had found the magnifying glass she sat back in her office chair and examined the big metal pedestal the glass ball was standing on. It had a lot of detailed carvings, from which she managed to make out a rearing horse, sharks, fencing weapons like swords or firearms, people that seemed to have eagle heads, marching penguins, marching monkeys holding spears, some figures that reminded her of dinosaurs and odd-looking fish.

'' Ash!'' called Ashley's mom from the kitchen,'' dinner's ready!'' Ashley sighed heavily and sat there for a moment, contemplating this situation. Her stuck up teenage side won the spiritual battle brewing in her:

'' That's not my name!'' she shouted back. She hated when she was being called ''Ash'', yet almost everyone used it, even her own parents. She liked her name the way it was, Ashley Holystone, and she took that shortened version as an insult. Not to mention that Ash is technically a boy's name, but when Ashley first thought about it she connected the name with ash, as in, like after a fire has settled and the embers went cold and hard and for some reason she always pictured a that being the remains of a building or...

Ashley puts away her magnifying glass and looks at the globe. She was thinking - why clouds?

She shook the strange thing, not expecting any snow. Her eyes widened. The clouds behind the glass started swirling, till they stopped and revealed a mansion that reminded her of Taj Mahal. The columns around it had monkeys carved on them though...

Ashley shook it again. Now it had a pretty colourful place with a ridiculously large tree covering most of the view. Another shake and the clouds turned to a soft pink colour, which embraced a place she'd recognize as Mt. Fuji, yet not quite...

One final shake out of curiosity. The clouds swirled and turned shamrock green. Now lightning was flickering inside the globe. Ashley thought this was very strange, but cool at the same time. In the middle of the snow globe was now some kind off flying device...or station? She watched as it's man-built wings circled round and round, keeping the station airborne in the stormy clouds.

Ben would get a kick out of this, Ashley thought and shook the globe one more time. She heard the angered pounding of her mom's feet up the stairs. She directed her attention back to the globe before hiding it from her parents, little did she know she wont be doing that and she certainly won't have to go through the torture of listening another monologue about manners towards elders. For when Ashley Holystone looked back at the snow globe, the clouds had turned purple and spun wildly in every possible direction. Then...white. Everything went white.