Dedicated to one of my best friends, Jason, and my cousin, Sarah.

...

Oh, almost forgot. My friend who is totally awesome, but just doesn't know that I think so, Brandon.

And...well everyone else that has taken their time to read this.

Hope you like it =D


Chapter One

A story always starts with a beginning. Never in the middle or end, that would be horrifically terrible.

Well too bad. This story starts in the middle.

Mind you, I suppose that this is considered a beginning.

I also suppose I should mention that the two main characters.

One is Luke Shan, even though I suppose that you should know this already. Luke was a normal kid, dark brown hair, really blue eyes, fair height and strong.

Well, that all changed when Luke turned ten.

The second main character for a time is named Alexia Leaf, or otherwise known to by many people as Princess Alexia. She is the daughter of the Queen of Flora Peak. She was fairly normal as well, although a bit spoiled at times.

Now we will begin with the middle, when Luke was sixteen. Princess Alexia will come in later. The end will be the end. Don't worry. Or maybe the end will be the beginning. O.o

~Part I~

Luke Shan

"Stay here, Luke, we can handle this!" The captain, Darren Shan the Fourth, told me.

"But I want to help! I've been on so many raids before I can-"

"No. You're staying here. Trust me, we need someone to look after the ship while we're gone. We'll take you on another raid another time." And with that he left with the rest of the crew. The crew looked at me with sneers and snickers.

One of the crew members, Scarface, laughed meanly out loud as he tossed around his short sword. "That's right cabin boy. We'll take you another time when it's less dangerous for you handle. Try not to break anything, if you can manage it."

The others laughed as I turned red with embarrassment.

I snarled to myself once they were all gone. Now I was mad that I had shown pity to Scarface before when I first got onto this ship. The captain was the only one to actually call me by my real name. The rest called me Cabin boy.

Storming back to my small cabin, I flopped down on the bed. Nothing ever happens on the ship when we go on raids.

I stared at the many shelves attached to my wall. Each one was lined with something that we had taken from a raid and each had a significant story.

I was sixteen already. I had learned all of the fighting moves from my pirate comrades and even had my own sword that I could beat half of the crew with. So why couldn't I have gone on the raid?

"Luke, this is a very serious mission. We are raiding a part of the Queen of Floral Peak's land. If we get caught, we all die, do you understand?"

Aka, he thought that I would mess up the whole thing.

Well, there was no use in mopping all day.

I need some meat… I thought, getting up and slowly made my way to the cooking side of the ship. Might as well eat since I'm here all alone, I decided.

~Part II~

Princess Alexia

"Stop Princess! Come back here right now!"

As if. I was finally free! I ran as fast as I could out into the open. The maid's attempts to stop me epically failed. Mama was out somewhere and had left me with a maid.

I giggled all the way while running through the forest. Everything around our house was pretty much ours, and since my mother was queen, she had power over everything right? That's why I wasn't worried about anything. Nothing could hurt me even if they tried, I thought.

Boy was I wrong.

"Whoaa! A ship!" I cried in delight when I reached the beach side, northwest of the house. "Mama never told me she got a ship!"

Climbing on, I could smell a smell of foul smelling beer, but other than that this was the coolest thing ever! It seemed to be deserted at the moment as I made my way through all of the cabins, opening doors and peering inside.

One room was smaller compared to the others but had shelves against the walls with a lot of different items on it. I went up to the shelf and stared at it. There was one particularly interesting object that caught my attention, a very small shiny silver ring on the very top shelf that I could only see if I stood far away enough.

Mama is crazy for buying all this stuff. I grabbed the chair from the desk sitting in the corner and carefully climbed onto the chair. Mama always told me not to climb on things since I was five, but that was two years ago and probably wouldn't matter now.

"I got it!" I laughed out loud, proud that I didn't hurt myself in the doing. I spoke way too soon. Suddenly the chair started to tip, and I lost my balance reaching for anything that could stop my fall.

The closest thing was the shelf below and I grabbed it. Not until I did, did I realize that it was loose and fell, all of the items on it falling to the floor. I screamed in surprise, falling on my bottom.

Gathering myself as quickly as possible, I ran out of the room and onto the deck (Older Sister number one had read me stories about ships before, so I knew what a deck was) clutching the ring hoping to tell Mama before she found out about the broken shelf, when someone grabbed my shoulders violently.

"Just where do you think you're going missy?" The person holding me snarled and spun me around. I screamed.

I couldn't stop my staring. He had several scars running down his face in all angles, crooked teeth and horrible breath. A bandana-like thing held his greasy hair back and he smelled of something rotten. He smiled, making it even worse.

"Ahha, that's what they do…" He looked down at me with a hard stare. "What are you still looking at? And is that a ring from our ship, girl?" I immediately looked down in embarrassment. He laughed his hard laugh and smiled at me like when a vampire is about to drain his victim of their blood. "Just wait until I show you to the captain. He conjure up a very nice punishment for you."

At that moment, I realized that I had boarded a pirate ship.

A bunch more pirates came back from the raid on Mama's house. I only figured that out by the insane chatter back and forth from the pirates.

"Say goodbye to your little home, darling." The pirate that caught me before said softly into my ear but menacingly. "You're never going to see it ever again."

"No!" I thrashed about but couldn't get away from his grasp. "Let me go!" Sobbing now, wishing I had never come aboard and listened to my maid as we took off, leaving the shore line.

He dragged me by my hair towards one of the bigger doors and threw it open. A few people were already standing inside, chatting to someone whom I presumed was the captain.

"Sir, this little brat was trying to steal from us while we were on the raid." The scar-faced man reported. "Can have her as a pet?" The way he said it made it sound like a doll.

"Please…please don't hurt me." I whimpered, afraid to look up.

"Bring her to me." The captain's voice boomed out, silencing everyone else.

The man that held me threw me at his feet. "Move."

I slowly got up and walked up to the captain. For some reason, everyone was staring at me, including a fair haired boy who seemed to be the youngest of the group.

The captain's two strong arms grabbed me by my waist and placed me on his lap. I looked up dumbfounded at his understanding brown eyes. Unlike his mates, he was well groomed.

"Everyone, leave." He ordered.

"What? But we want to-"

"Leave. Now."

The rest of the crew left without question.

"Did they hurt you?" He asked me gently once they were gone.

I shook my head and lied. "Not really."

He touched my cheek softly. "Where did a beautiful young girl like you come from?"

"I thought that my Mama owned his ship." I admitted, tears springing into my eyes. "It was my first time out by myself 'cause the people won't ever let me outside, and I was really excited. My Mama is the Queen of Flora Peak."

He nodded. "Ohh. That make sense."

"Will I ever see my home again?" I whispered to him.

"Of course. But it might be in a while though. We're travelers you see? We go in a circle around the Oriole island just to hit our deadlines." He told me.

"Oh." I looked down.

"Hey, it will be ok. It won't be that long and you can learn all sorts of skills on the ship. I'll let the other knows about you thought. Don't worry. They always treat people like that." Said the captain. "But I suggest that you should stay by my side most of the time, just so that I can look after you.

"Oh…ok!" The captain seemed nice enough. "But where am I going to sleep?"

He nodded towards a door behind his chair. "I could get you a room. We do actually have showers, though some don't really prefer to have showers."

I smiled a little bit.

"How old are you, kid?" The captain asked suddenly. "And what's your name?"

"I'm seven, and my name is Alexia. What's your name?" I said, curiously.

"Most people just call me captain, but I'm actually known as Darren. Darren Shan the Fourth that is." He laughed. "Usually anyone who boards my ship inherits my last name, but I think that you should keep yours."

I brightened. "Ok!"

"Come here." He ordered, standing up and leading me to another door. "This is the weapons room. I'm going to equip you with one in case you ever need it."

"A sword?! Mama told me never to touch those." I hesitated.

Darren Shan the Second gave me a look. "When you're on a pirate ship, you will need one. Trust me."

~Part III~

Luke Shan

The captain showed a surprising nice side of him to the girl that showed up on that ship. I'm still surprised that he hadn't gotten mad at me for letting a trespasser onto our ship.

Mind you, most of the crew blasted at me at dinner time, although they knew that it was better that I hadn't found her, or she would have been dead and thrown off the boat by now. As I helped serve the food, they kept bugging me about it, driving me slightly insane.

Also, for some reason one of my shelves in my room fell down. I didn't mind much though since I have plenty of time and didn't want to hear about how great the raid was.

One of the nicer pirates, Oswald, saved me a small diamond trinket that he had picked up from the Queen's room for me to place on my shelf. He gave it to me when I had gone into his room to help clean up stuff.

After straightening everything out, and then fixing up my room, I suddenly realized that it was midnight already. It wasn't too late to visit the captain for my daily visit to tell him what I had done today.

I knocked on the door and then opened it when he didn't answer.

I was utterly shocked at what I saw. The small girl that had wandered onto our ship was lying on the chest of the captain, sleeping. The captain, instead of throwing her off him, was grooming her hair with a brush as she slept.

"Captain?" I asked quietly.

"Not now, my boy." He replied, when the girl stirred.

"But-"

"Don't you remember when you were this little?" He asked me.

"Yeah. Alright. I'll log in my time tomorrow." I said. Usually I have to log in how much I did every single day to the captain so that we wouldn't have lone pirates trashing the place and saying that I didn't clean it up already.

The captain nodded as the girl started to lightly snore, making faint whistling sounds. "Ok."

He waited for a little bit, and just when I thought that that was my cue to leave, he started to speak again.

"I miss the days before my pirate time." He said quietly. "I know I have already told you this once before, but I feel as if I'm getting a second and third chance to raise a child again."

I nodded slowly, not really comprehending.

"And that also brings me to why I didn't let you go on the raid toady. The real reason was that the palace was full of guards and if they caught us all, they could take you away from us and I would never see you again." He said. "You are like a son to me, and after the loss of…your friend, I can't bear to lose another youngster.

"Oh." I never thought of that. He saw me as his son?

"But anyway, you may leave now, I just wanted to make it clear."

"Oh…ok." I replied quickly exiting the room, suddenly understanding fully about what he was talking about. A while back, the captain had told me that way before he became a captain, he was living a normal life. He had a wife and they had just received a child, but not much later, the pirates raided their village and took him away from his family.

No wonder he cares for kids so much. He was actually taken away before he found out that his wife was pregnant and missed the thought of taking care of children.

Fresh tears sprung to my eyes at the thought of my old friends I walked back to my cabin to catch some shut eye. Damn, how I missed him so much. And it was all my fault.

No it wasn't. My brain tried to convince me. He did it for you, so live for him!

It would be hard to sleep tonight.