September 21, Present Day.

In a quiet street on the fringes of Rome, the famed Italian capital of a thousand monuments, a squat, marble-pillared building that would have looked more at home in ancient Greece than in modern-day Rome sat tiredly at the edge of the road. Its patrons were gone for the day and the car park contained only a discarded plastic bag blowing soulfully in the wind. It was six in the evening and the place was entirely dark and silent, save for the small light in the foyer which illuminated a solo young man stood in the centre of the blue-carpeted hall.

With a yawn, the foyer's only inhabitant, clad in a creased white shirt and faded stone-grey jeans, stomped across to the pile of boxes leant against the glass front of the entrance desk. The stumpy wooden crates were stamped with blurred ink and obscured the ornate letters behind them so the sign on the desk read 'The Nati…Itali…Museum O…And Hist….' The sign was supposed to read 'The National Italian Museum of Art and History', but the young man saw nothing about the building that was either artistic or historical, and it certainly wasn't a national museum. He knew well that the place was more than it claimed to be; even the facades out front weren't any kind of Italian. It was a southern Rome tourist trap, nothing more, and it only meant anything to the museum's money-grubbing owner, and to the near-constant flow of foreign tourists that streamed in daily through its mahogany doors, eager for quasi-accurate knowledge and shiny trinkets. They knew as little about history as they did of the Italian language, but were quite happy to pay forty Euros a person to get into the place.

The boxes sat in front of the sign, on the other hand, meant hours of hard, backbreaking work on a Friday evening, a day on which he usually could cut work early if he finished his jobs fast. But no, the museum had taken on a delivery from salvage company, which had scavenged a trove of historic valuables from the seabed, and the young man was expected to take inventory of their shipment. No matter how much he glared at them. This was whether he wanted to or not, and he wasn't free to leave until the job was done.

Lovino Vargas was nineteen, an engineering student at a university nearby, who had taken to working at the museum on weekday evenings in order to help pay the bills. If he had been living by himself, he wouldn't have needed to bother, but ever since his grandfather had died the previous year, Lovino had been responsible for his school-age little brother, and needed the extra money in order to keep the two in reasonably good shape. He didn't usually mind the work, as the history often turned out to be interesting behind the repetitive cleaning of exhibits, but Friday was usually his lazy day, where he didn't have much to do and could hence go home early. Unpacking and sorting a load of pointless gimmicks wasn't how Lovino wanted to be spending his Friday nights. He'd much rather be out with his friends, but fraternal responsibility dictated otherwise.

So he turned his attention to the boxes, large, tightly packed wooden crates that they were, and tried prying off one of the lids with his fingers. To his annoyance, the rough-cut timber refused to budge a millimetre, poking his digits with the threat of splinters, and Lovino growled low in his throat. He was about to phone his boss in irritation and complain about the company's lack of provision, when he noticed the unmistakable shape of a crowbar on the floor by the desk. Damn it. It looked like he was going to have to prise the crates open manually, and he had never been built for strength. On the bright side, however, he'd just saved himself a rather embarrassing phone call.

He picked up the crowbar, tensing his muscles as he realised the thick steel was heavier than he'd anticipated. The sharp edge of one end only just fitted into the gap between the planks, and even then it took a lot of effort. Lovino had to lean his entire weight on the end just to get it to move, and it was several goes before the lid disjointed from the sides with twin cracks and splitting wood. Lovino thankfully dropped the crowbar to the floor and peered inside at the packed artefacts. It looked like it was going to be a long night.

Three mind-numbing hours later, it was some time past Lovino's usual leaving hour and he was only three-quarters of the way through the shipment. He was sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the fourth box, which was thankfully the final one, having just levered it open with the burdensome crowbar and he was panting slightly from the exertion. It wasn't particularly fair that his boss had set his skinny assistant onto a task that required almost weightlifting-standard skill, when he himself was thickset as a bull. But the end was in sight, and Lovino wanted nothing more than to have this mindless task to be over and to be able to go home and have some of the juicy tomatoes that were waiting for him in the bowl on the kitchen counter. If Feliciano hadn't eaten them already, that was.

With an exasperated sigh that did little to release his pent up tension, he shoved the lid off the box and peered inside. As he'd expected, the contents looked dismally similar to the last three boxes; a dull collection of sunk and discarded paraphernalia, scavenged off the seabed by idiots with too much time and no interest in anything useful. Most of the metal objects were badly corroded – it would be one of Lovino's jobs next week to carefully clean them all up – and things made of anything else were water-damaged almost beyond repair. Lovino didn't see the point in salvaging such worthless, ruined crap.

At random, he stuck his hand into the box and pulled out the first thing his fingers contacted, which turned out to be a pointy, blunt object that Lovino immediately recognised as a Roman gladius, a common short sword of legionnaires, and something he'd seen at least four previous times that evening in various boxes. He wasn't entirely sure how they'd ended up in the sea – to the best of his recollection, the Romans did not like being on the water much – but somehow there were lots of them in the ocean's shallower regions. It wasn't really worth much, as the museum had several even before today, but perhaps it was able to be sold at some point once it had been cleaned, probably to someone rich and gullible.

He tossed into the appropriate pile disinterestedly and returned his attention to the next object in the box, a small bundle of dusty cloths that were protecting something rather oddly-shaped. Lovino pulled off the cracked pieces of Sellotape that were holding the cloths in place, and the ragged fabric fell to the floor, revealing a dull and corroded lamp beneath them. It looked to have once been shining and golden, but a couple of centuries at the bottom of the Atlantic had done nothing for its appearance. Most of its surface was a dull shade of murky grey, and the rest was scratched awfully. There was even a small barnacle on one side. Quite honestly, it couldn't have looked worse had it been run over by a truck.

Lovino frowned and turned the lamp over in his fingers. "The hell is this? A lamp? Who am I supposed to be, Aladdin? If a fucking genie comes out of this when I clean it, I am seriously going to start breaking things." He wasn't sure why he was talking aloud to himself, but it helped somehow. Nevertheless, his task wasn't complete if the artefacts weren't on the way to being clean, save for the dreadfully corroded pieces that would need specialist work, and so he picked up the duster he'd been polishing with and drearily began to rub.

With an electric shock that jolted right up his spine, the lamp suddenly began spewing green smoke and emitting golden sparks, hissing like a kettle. Lovino dropped it in fright and scrambled backwards, wondering what in hell was going on, and beginning to fear for his life. His heart pounded a tattoo against his ribs as his breath refused to come. This couldn't be happening – he had to have passed out from exhaustion, or be hallucinating from some strange undersea chemical. Yet it all seemed too horrifically real.

His heart leapt into his throat as, in the depths of the green mist, a tall figure became visible, wearing a long coat and a strangely-shaped hat, with what looked like an axe over his shoulder. But the unusual attire was the least of Lovino's worries as the flow of mist stopped and the cloud began to dissipate, revealing the identity of the man now standing in the middle of the closed museum foyer.

XxxxX

Antonio wasn't quite sure how long he'd trapped in the lamp. He didn't have any way of measuring time, and his body clock had long been knocked out of sync by the sheer amount of siestas he'd been forced to take just to kill a bit more inevitable time. But it felt like months, and several of them at least. His crew had probably forgotten all about him, or at the very least thought him dead, and Arthur would be reigning proud over his territory, having finally seen the end of his last worthy rival. Bloodlust temporarily boiled in Antonio's veins at this abominable thought before he banished it again. Violence couldn't do anything here, not even make him feel better. He'd tried bashing through the impenetrable walls enough times during his confinement, enough times for it to have become dull and boring. Everything had become boring a long time ago, and if it wasn't for the games he'd managed to make up with the myriad of objects in his pockets and knapsack, he would have gone mad quite a while ago.

To be honest, he was quite surprised that he hadn't starved to death. In fact, he'd never been hungry or thirsty even once. It was somewhat of a relief, even though dying would have relieved the constant boredom, but there were three things Antonio wanted more than anything in his golden prison, and those were tomatoes, churros and revenge. Unfortunately, it didn't seem likely that he'd ever get any of those. He was quite probably at the bottom of the sea, as he had been since Arthur's last cheery parting some time ago.

His mind seemed to be enjoying playing games with him, though. Several times, he'd thought he was getting rescued, as there were thudding and scraping noises emanating from outside of the lamp. But nothing ever happened, and more likely than not, it probably just was a fish bumping into him on the way to its next rendezvous with a mouthful of plankton. Lately, however, he was feeling rather hopeful, as there had been some strange noises very recently, and even the faintest of voices. Voices meant no sea, and no sea meant rescue, or salvage at the very least. He wasn't sure how to get out of the lamp, even if he did get found. But it was unlikely. There were no voices at the bottom of the sea. He was almost definitely hearing things.

His thoughts were cut off by a sudden banging as the lamp got picked up – at least he thought it was being picked up – and Antonio's heart leapt. Someone was picking him up! Perhaps now he'd finally be freed, after all this time. At last, at long last, he'd breath fresh air, feel the wind on his face, taste the warmth of the sun on his skin. He'd never longed for something so hard in his life. Please, just let this be the final time he'd have to hope like this! He gripped his axe, staring hopefully at the ceiling and yearning for the sky that he imagined was beyond.

A voice echoed from somewhere, having the same otherworldly, almost tinny quality that Arthur's had had all that time ago. "The hell is this? A lamp? Who am I supposed to be, Aladdin? If a fucking genie comes out of this when I clean it, I am seriously going to start breaking things." Antonio grinned to himself. It was spoken in a very strange dialect of Italian, but whoever this was, he liked them already. They seemed feisty, and that was always a good thing to have in a crew member. Perhaps he'd recruit them, as a reward for letting him out. He returned his axe to its position over his shoulder and adjusted his hat, hoping his appearance was impressive enough to have his rescuer on their knees and begging for his alliance, as opposed to arresting him, or worse. All that was left now to do was wait.

And, just as he expected, the much-longed-for pressure applied itself to his body, growing in strength with every passing second, pulling him out of the claustrophobic darkness and out into the beautiful fresh air beyond. Green mist obscured his vision as he returned to his normal size and little gold sparks fizzled around in the edges. Fresh air, the first he'd experienced in so long, flowed into his lungs, tasting sweet and delicious. Endorphins coursed through his system as his body was ecstatic to be restored to normal, and he almost felt like giggling. Being restored to his normal size was such a great feeling.

The mist began to dissipate, revealing a curiously decorated room surrounding him. The floor was covered in some kind of short blue grass, and the walls were of no kind of wood he'd ever seen before – in fact, they didn't even look like wood. Obviously, it was owned by someone rich, though, as much of the table near the edge was fronted in glass, and there were tall windows out front, the view beyond obscured by darkness. Glass was expensive, especially if there was as much as this place had. It was clearly worth looting this building. He wondered what kind of security there was.

And, cowering in front of him in a heap on the floor, was a young man, eyes wide in shock and clearly startled speechless. He was dressed in the strangest of clothes, including an impossibly shiny pair of shoes, long trousers of some unnameable material and a shirt that was cut in a figure-flattering way that he'd never come across before. There was no denying that the guy was cute, though, with dark brown hair ruffled from recent movement and a pair of golden-brown eyes that sparkled like amber on the surface of an exotic tree. Antonio was intrigued from the instant they met his own pair. This young man was so different, and it was exciting.

The one thing that he did recognise, however, was the look of pure terror on the young man's face, mingled with disbelief. It was a look that he'd been faced with many times, usually by the unsuspecting people he was about to relieve of their valuables. They didn't know how to cope with being confronted by a pirate. He didn't blame the younger for being scared – he was, after all, being faced down by a feared pirate captain in all his glory, and doing this alone and unarmed too.

"Eh…?" the young man panted, struggling for breath and blinking hard. "What…what the actual fuck?"

Charming, Antonio thought, but he was used to the cursing. He was a pirate, after all, and a lot of his crew had needed a good mouth-soaping. But it wasn't the greeting he'd been expecting, and it confused him. He'd been expecting more of a 'don't hurt me' or a 'whoa, it's Captain Carriedo!'. It was also in the strange dialect of Italian that he'd heard earlier, the one with strange tone and unfamiliar words. Yes, he could understand Italian, just about, but the phrasing that this guy used, he'd never encountered anything like it before. Along with everything else in the peculiar room, he was really beginning to wonder what sort of strange land he'd washed up in. Certainly a foreign one, perhaps on the other side of the New World. Did they speak Italian over there? He wasn't sure why – Italy was a defenceless little peninsula that was half ruled by Austria, half by his own country of Spain.

But he wasn't about to be dissuaded into servitude just yet. No, in this room, he was the one with the axe, and he was taller and stronger than his counterpart on the floor. It wouldn't take long for him to be back in command where he belonged, and then, then all his questions would be answered. Antonio grinned confidently, trying to ignore all the foreign, confusing objects, and ran a finger across the top of his axe. "Hola. I am Captain Antonio Fernandez Carriedo, of El Águila Carmesí. Yes, the Captain Carriedo, famed scourge of the Mediterranean. Thank you for releasing me. I don't know how long I'd been trapped in that cursed lamp."

His Italian, unused for quite some time, came out rather stilted and his accent was atrocious, but Antonio reckoned he'd been understood when the young man scrambled to his feet and the terrified look on his face morphed into something closer to anger. "What sort of joke is this, damn it?!" he spat, eyes darting in a hundred different directions. "You…the lamp…what the hell!" He seemed quite unable to comprehend his situation. Or Antonio's status, for another thing. Whoever this guy was, he certainly didn't know how to treat a pirate captain. Antonio might have to show him a thing or two.

"You don't know who I am do you?" Antonio realised. "I must really be far away from home."

The brown-haired Italian guy scoffed, seeming to be beginning to recover, despite his trembling. "Yeah, the mental asylum's about eighty miles that way," – here he jerked a thumb over his right shoulder – "and I suggest you get back there before you're missed."

"¿Qué?" Antonio frowned. This was only more confusing. Perhaps it was the dialect, perhaps the man was possessed, but he certainly wasn't making any sense. "Mental asylum? But I'm not mad. Why am I mad?"

"More to the point, why aren't you?" was the prompt retort. "You come in here with your stupid costumes and your fake axe and expect me to freak and believe you're an actual pirate after you put on some stupid show with what, a smoke machine and lights? I'm not stupid, damn it!"

Antonio pulled out his axe and swung it gently, contemplating the words. He didn't know what a machine or a costume was, but he knew banter when he heard it, and he knew well how to solve that little problem. "My axe isn't fake. See?" He took it in both hands, then swung the axe into the nearest wall with the force of a small rhinoceros, leaving a three-foot gash in the plaster that trickled dust and paint to the floor.

The other yelped and jumped back in shock. "Ahh! What the actual hell? Don't do that! My boss'll think that was me, and I'll have to pay for the repairs, you bastard! How sharp is that thing?! Where the fuck did you get something dangerous like that? That's completely mental!"

"Get it?" Once again, the strange language was confusing Antonio and it was rather beginning to tire him. "I didn't 'get' it. My grandfather gave it to me. It was my first proper weapon, and it's my beautiful pride and joy. I can split anything in half with this."

"No kidding," the Italian muttered, clutching onto the side of a wooden box and still trying to regain his breath after Antonio unexpectedly split a hole in the wall. "Whose grandfather gives a guy a goddamn axe, anyway? You'd get arrested for trying to buy something like that, let alone be able to carry it down the street!"

"The point of the axe is so you don't get arrested," Antonio pointed out, wondering what purpose his new acquaintance was trying to get across. "If any soldiers are around, they won't go near you. Their swords can't match this."

The young man shot Antonio a strange look. "Eh? Swords? Why on Earth would there be soldiers wandering about, and who carries swords anymore? I'm probably the only guy around here who's seen a sword in the past week, and that's only 'cos I work in a damn museum."

"What's a museum?" Antonio asked, feeling like he was interrogating someone with all these questions. "And what do you mean no one has swords? How else do they fight?"

Antonio was still being given that look that considered him a complete idiot, and he wasn't sure why. This Italian boy really didn't know who he was, and was continuing to abuse him as if he was some ordinary guy off the street. "Are you retarded or something? A museum, you know, a place where they stick all the useless junk from the past so idiot tourists can gawk at it? The place you're standing in now? Jeez. And no one uses swords 'cos they're useless. Unlike guns, you can't hit someone in the brain from a hundred metres using a sword. Well, unless you're really good at lobbing them." He frowned and peered at Antonio curiously. "What is with you?"

Antonio, meanwhile, was struggling to take this particular blow to his mind. "Ehh? No one uses swords? But they're useful! Axes too! Guns are messy, and bulky and take ages to reload, and you can't store more than one bullet in one at once! And what do you mean 'the past'? I'm not in the past, I'm in the now!" Against all his famed pirate ideology, Antonio was really beginning to panic, and he didn't like it. He didn't usually panic about things, he usually just axed them until they stopped being scary. But you couldn't axe information – it wasn't solid. Axes didn't affect it. And he couldn't axe the young Italian, as he was the only person he knew now. But there was just far too much new information for him to comprehend here; he'd gone from knowing everything about the place he'd been in for ages, to knowing nothing about somewhere that made no sense. Everything seemed to be backwards, and he had no idea what was going on.

"Whoa, calm down!" The Italian's agitated voice brought him back to Earth, and Antonio realised that he'd begun swinging his axe around in his confusion, nearly taking out one of the crates he was standing among. The unpredictable motion of the razor-sharp weapon was clearly making his companion uncomfortable – he looked like he was about to bolt, and he was biting his quivering lip. Feeling slightly guilty, Antonio lowered the axe and sank to the floor, not trusting his knees to hold him up in this strange new world.

"What's going on?" he asked no one in particular, as if somehow he'd get an answer he understood. "What kind of a place is this?"

XxxxX

Lovino was beyond shocked, confused, or even stunned. He wasn't built to cope with instability, and this latest turn of events had less stability than a broken bridge balanced on a half-finished Jenga tower. One minute he'd been cleaning out antiques, and the next, a guy in a ludicrous pirate costume had appeared from nowhere and started swinging the world's deadliest axe about like it was a children's toy. A massive, metal toy with a razor-sharp blade, it seemed.

Lovino had never seen anything quite like this guy. The long scarlet coat cascading from his shoulders was rather impressive, complete with gold trimming and sharp black cuffs, but there were patches around the edges if you looked closer, and the clumsy stitching was quite clearly hand-done. In fact, his whole outfit looked handmade, from the ruffled white shirt that showed off his toned chest muscles to the scuffed brown boots on his feet – they all looked like they hadn't been within fifteen miles of a sewing machine, let alone a factory production line. Untamed brown curls fell slightly in front of his tanned, handsome face, with the rest tied back in a loose ponytail with a scruffy red ribbon, and his piercing eyes shone like otherworldly emeralds. And, most worrisome of all, he had that giant dual-bladed axe that cut through walls, and if given the chance probably Italians as well, like a hot knife through butter. He looked like he'd stepped out of either the sixteenth century, or a seriously overcompensating movie. But everything was too well-worn to be a costume; the guy looked like he'd seen battle. Real battle.

But said pirate-guy had just collapsed to the floor, releasing his grip on his weapon as he did so, which in turn released the pressure on Lovino's heart. His head, which he'd previously been holding high and proud, was now turned towards the ground. He looked like he was about to cry. Until this point, Lovino had been sure that whatever was going on was an elaborate trick by someone who wanted to freak him out, but the sorrow and bewilderment of the eccentric guy – Antonio, he said his name was – just seemed far too genuine for it to be a prank. Why would someone pretending to be a pirate just collapse onto the floor in despair?

And Lovino's conscience, the annoying little part of his brain which always reared its head at inopportune moments and prodded him into doing embarrassing things, was now making him feel guilty for upsetting the guy and not being more supportive towards whatever fucked-up situation this was supposed to be. Damn it all. Why does this bastard part of my mind have to do this to me now of all times? He cursed to himself, but knew himself well enough to know that he didn't have much of a choice.

Deciding to go with the tactic he very rarely chose to use, he wandered over to where Antonio was kneeling and cleared his throat awkwardly. "Hey…c'mon. Uhh…don't cry? It'll be ok?"

It sounded stilted, maybe even emotionless, but what Lovino didn't know that it was exactly what Antonio needed to hear. As a man and more importantly as a captain, it was a direct challenge to his pride. The show of any sort of emotion or uncertainty was seen as a weakness to him, and as weakness was not to be tolerated for fear of mutiny, his baser instincts promptly pulled him out of it. "Cry? I'm not crying," Antonio replied, looking up from the floor and back up at Lovino, his expression making an unconvincing attempt to be determined. "I'm just a bit confused is all. Nothing's really making much sense to me."

Lovino shrugged and sat down next to him, feeling altogether too tall and responsible standing up. Things were weird enough already, so he may as well just go along with it and see where it took him. If nothing else, it'd be an amusing story for his friends when it ended in a few minutes. "You're not making any sense either, you know. For starters, the fuck was up with the lamp? I rubbed it, and suddenly you appear from nowhere, complete with green mist and fucking sparkles. How'd you do that, a smoke machine?"

Antonio's expression morphed back from determination to panic, and he looked at Lovino desperately. "What's a machine? I don't speak Italian very well."

"You don't say," Lovino sighed, not really in the mood to play games. "Fine. You want me to talk in Spanish instead? I can do Spanish well enough."

The pirate nodded in relief and eagerly switched to his native language. "Yes please. I don't understand what you're on about half the time. Can you explain please?" He seemed to have calmed down a little bit at this, but Lovino could still see the confusion in his eyes.

Still, even in Spanish it was a strange, even old-fashioned, way of talking, and Lovino had to process it through to understand what the pirate was talking about. He refrained from rolling his eyes – a rare gesture, just to stop the guy from panicking again – and instead just asked, "Ok, just to make this clear; this isn't a joke now, is it? 'Cos if this turns out to be all some massive prank, I swear I'm gonna kick your ass into next Tuesday, axe or no axe." His paranoid side wasn't letting go of the idea quickly, and he had to ask, just to check.

"No! It's not a joke, really!" Antonio said quickly, waving his hands in surrender. "I just don't know what's going on." Again, he seemed close to breaking down, and Lovino decided to cut him some slack.

"Ok, fine." Lovino sighed again. "What do you want me to explain first?"

Antonio paused for a moment, thinking to himself. "The thing with the swords. You said no one uses them anymore."

"Well, yeah," Lovino agreed. "No one's bothered with swords in hundreds of years. Common knowledge."

This was obviously the wrong thing to say, as the pirate yelped and his eyes widened in fear. "What! Hundreds of years? But…but…" Antonio was close to losing it now. If things hadn't made sense before, now they were really confusing. Hundreds of years? How long have I been trapped in that lamp for? This was worse than if he'd died – now he was in the future, or the present, such as it was – and the world had moved on far without him. He wouldn't know anything, or anyone; in fact, everyone he knew would have died long ago. His breath came in sharp, irregular gasps and the room started to spin.

"Hey, calm down!" Lovino feeling like he was far out of his depth, and more confused than ever, cautiously reached out a hand and touched the pirate on the shoulder. He'd never been good at coping with upset people, and if the person was a madcap guy in fancy dress, it was all the more complicated. He didn't fancy getting axed for trying to help. That obituary would suck.

The contact seemed to reassure Antonio, who gulped back a sob and stared at Lovino desperately. "Have I really been in there for hundreds of years?"

"How am I supposed to know, damn it?!" This was just getting weirder and weirder, and it hadn't exactly been normal from the start. This guy couldn't really be from the past, could he? Lovino could feel his head start to hurt, and he wished for a lifeline, something he knew which he could grasp onto that would make everything get back in line. But there wasn't one, not that he could see, and all he could do now was keep trying in the hope something would straighten out. "What was the year that you, uh, came from?"

Antonio frowned uncertainly. "Don't know. Never paid attention to it, really. Wasn't important. All I know is that it was July, and a few months before that, I'd been told be a merchant that it was about the beginning of the third year of the reign of Philip the Second. What year was that?"

"What?" Lovino had never even heard of Philip the Second, much less where or when he ruled. But, if it showed one thing, it reinforced the opinion that this guy actually was from the past, as there weren't exactly calendars around a few hundred years ago, not to the regular populace at least. Either that or the guy had done his research. Luckily, he remembered that he could look it up easily, and pulled his smartphone out of his pocket, clicking onto the web browser and opening Google's search bar.

"Aieee!" Antonio yelped shrilly from next to him, and diving behind his back. "What is that and what are you doing?" He clung to Lovino's shoulders like a limpet, staring fearfully at the small black device as it loaded the required page.

Lovino cursed to himself. Showing fancy technology to a guy who was from the past, or so it seemed, was a clearly stupid idea, and he should have realised that Antonio would freak out. Out of a lack of other ideas, and to get the guy to calm down, Lovino resorted to using small words, like he would to a child. "It's…a little box which I can use to find information. It's, like, how we do things in the future…uh, the now." The screen flashed at him as it finished loading and Lovino glanced back down. "It says that Philip the Second was king of Spain, right?"

Antonio nodded, but seemed no less calm. "Uh-huh. It was the start of the third year of his rule."

Lovino frowned slightly, trying to run calculations in his head. "That means it was about, uh, 1568 when you were and so…" He jumped, realising the implications of that. "Holy shit! You're telling me you've been in that lamp for nearly four hundred and fifty years?!"

"Four hundred and fifty years!" Antonio wailed, burrowing his head into the side of Lovino's neck, knocking his large black hat off in the process.

"Damn it, get off me!" Out of habit, Lovino squirmed out of his grip and swivelled around to face him. "If you remember, I'm just as confused as you here! I've told you where you are, now you tell me why you are here when you should be back in fifteen-sixty-fucking-eight!" By now, he was pretty mad. When he came to work this evening, no one told him he had to deal with an emotionally unstable pirate from several centuries past, and he was really beginning to lose his temper with how little sense this made. Antonio may not have done anything wrong here, but damn it, Lovino wanted someone to shout at.

Antonio sniffed and picked up his three-pointed hat off the floor, fiddling nervously with the edge with long calloused fingers. "Don't yell. Please." He blinked large emerald eyes at Lovino, who was somewhat thrown off guard by how vulnerable a pirate captain could look when thrown irreversibly out out of his comfort zone. It wasn't natural. He'd always imagined pirates to be unstoppable, merciless, muscle-bound tyrants.

He sighed and for the second time that evening, gave into his conscience. That bastard better not make me get in the habit of this. "Sorry," he muttered quietly. "Why were you in a lamp, then?"

"Do you want the full story, or the brief?" Antonio asked.

"As brief as it takes to make sense," Lovino replied immediately. "My brain's taken enough of a beating this evening, damn it all."

Antonio nodded. "Ok. Well, I was out looking for legendary treasure, and so was Kirkland– he's another pirate captain and my sworn enemy. I beat him to the treasure, so it was going to be mine, and he was really mad about it, so instead of challenging me to a fight about it like a normal guy, he used his magical powers to seal me in the lamp, which was with the treasure. I've been in there ever since, until you let me out just now."

This was a strange sequence of events to say the least, not to mention unbelievable. Lovino's mind was beginning to hurt as he struggled to get events in order. "So…this Kirkland guy is a magician as well as a pirate?" Lovino asked.

"Yup. I don't know why, but he just likes it. He used to use it quite a bit in our fights if it looked like I was winning."

"Hmph. Bastard seems like a sore loser to me," Lovino muttered, and he noted Antonio's eyes light up at this. "Anyway, another question. Are you expecting me to believe that magic exists?"

Antonio peered at him. "You mean you don't think it does?"

"Nah. Only people who think they can do magic are either lying or mentally ill, in my opinion. It's impossible. It's what people believed in before there was science."

"Science?" Antonio asked.

"Explanations of how the world works," Lovino sighed, annoyed with the constant questions. "Do I have to explain every single thing to you? It's annoying, damn it."

Antonio nodded hopefully. "Yes please. I don't get what's going on otherwise."

Lovino growled. "I don't see how that's my problem."

To Lovino's annoyance, the Spaniard pouted. "Please?"

A scowl crossed the Italian's face. Pirates were not allowed to be adorable, that had to be a crime against nature, and the way it poked Lovino's conscience was seriously irritating. He was annoyed at the guy for screwing with his shift – he should be home in the warm with tomatoes by now. He was annoyed at circumstance for shoving this guy in his face. He was annoyed at his boss for setting him with this stupidly long task. He was pretty much just overall annoyed. Lovino did annoyed really well. It was one of the things he was known for.

But…if he just left the Spanish bastard – Antonio – by himself…what then? The poor guy would be stuck four and a half centuries in the future, not understanding anything around him, from the geography, to the language, to the mannerisms, to the technology. He was depending on Lovino for help. Not just help – everything. And Lovino didn't have the heart to leave the pirate stranded like he was.

Not to mention that giant axe he had…if Lovino didn't take it off him soon, or at least teach him it was not ok to use it, some unfortunate bastard would probably end up minus a head, or at least a large percentage of a limb. And quite probably most of their stuff too. Pirates, if stories were to be believed, didn't believe in any kind of possessive pronoun but 'mine'.

Lovino sighed quietly, rolling his eyes as the anger slowly left him. "Fine. But on two conditions. One, you do not use that axe on me, or anyone else. Or anything else. And two, no stealing, pillaging, plundering, robbing, thieving, or any other synonym. Got it?"

All he received was a blank stare. "What's synonym?"

"A word that means the same," Lovino snapped. "Now, d'you agree or not? If not, you're on your own, time-travel or no time-travel."

"No! I mean, yes, I agree! Just don't leave me with all the…what did you call them? The flashy screen things that know everything, even things from hundreds of years past? I don't know things from hundreds of years in the past – what magic do those things use? But don't leave me by myself please!" The pirate's eyes were wide and pleading, and, despite the four-foot crack gouged into the wall, Lovino no longer saw him as a threat. He was trusting him to keep him safe, and the least Lovino could do was to give him a chance to adapt.

So Lovino bit back a sarcastic reply and pulled himself to his feet, all the while silently wondering what he'd got himself into. For some reason he was fairly sure that it wouldn't be the first time he'd thought that.


Long chapter came out longer than expected. Ah well. Tis all good, considering I've not been writing much lately. Thank you, Temple Run 2. *rolls eyes*

And thank you everyone for the support on the first chapter! Seriously, I came back after labs and my email had about exploded. It's always great to know what people think of my work, and I hadn't expected this to be quite so popular~. So, big ups to all you guys :)