Chapter 1 -- A Fateful Trip

[Lorpius Prime]

There is a ship leaving the dock at Hartlepool. It is night, and the ship creeps slowly into the bay. It is a small freighter, and its rusty metal finish proclaims its age. The lights of the city play against the black water's surface and reflect onto the quietly crawling hull. It flies a Norweigan flag and it is called the M/V Piper.

Apart from the dock's bored controllers, only a single human watches the Piper's departure. She is a young and beautiful woman, and a few strands of her auburn hair catch and dance behind her in the cold breeze of the North Sea. Sitting on the shoulder of her luxurious fur coat is a monkey, its silky golden fur moves in ripples to the wind.

Two sets of cold and unforgiving eyes follow the Piper as it slips away into the dark. The woman turns and walks away, she has much work still to do.



Within the metal walls Piper itself is a large compartment, part of the ship's modified storage hold. Inside the compartment are children, they number ten. The children have been napping, but the rocking of their vessel upon the sea is causing them to stir and wake, and soon it will cause some of them to be very ill.

Some of these children miss their homes, some of them have no homes. But for most there is an unease about this place where they now find themselves, about its differentness, the metal box and its unseen gentle rocking.

The children are not sure why they are here. Many recall the kind woman of exceptional beauty that led them to this place, but if she explained the reason, its memory has been lost to her overpowering charm. A child's skepticism, and indeed the skepticism of many who are no longer children, is no match for her subtle magic. The children had come, kidnapped by trust. Now they are on a unfamiliar boat sailing an unfamiliar sea to an unfamiliar North, and the woman is gone.

Poor substitute is the old man sitting guard by the single heavy hatchway to the compartment. He is a kind and gentle man, but he too, is unfamiliar. He sits on a wooden stool by the hatch, and his eyes watch the children from beneath the weatherbeaten wrinkles of his face.

The cold metal deck is covered with a dozen scattered cotton mats and pillows where the children have been sleeping, still in the clothes they were wearing when they were led away.

Two children, Nolan and Kelley Plaskett, brother and sister, share a single mat, and watch their surroundings warily. The other children are alone on this ship. Another boy, his name is Crispin Perce, is punching Ana Milagros Santiago as she lies on her mat.

BEGIN CHAPTER 1

Good luck! Have fun! I'll be watching.

[Demonic Neko]

As the first blow jarred her out of her sleep, Ana Milagros' first thought was 'Coño Carajo! Cesar is soo gonna die' When she popped an eye, she saw that her attacker was in fact not her younger brother, but some idiot gringo, who was whacking her for no reason. As he hit her again, Millie fully awakened, her lips pulling into a scowl. Stupid boy thinks he can hit me cuz I'm smaller? Well I'll show him! She had younger brothers, most of which were taller than she was. And from them she learned how to brawl with them to keep them in line. This kid would soon learn that picking on Ana Milagros Santiago was a big mistake.

The boy was knelt over her and her leg was just in the perfect spot to... Millie smiled sweetly at the kid just as he was rearing back to hit her once more and raised her leg to hit him hard, right in the crotch.

[Lorpius Prime]

Crispin doubled over in pain from the unexpected blow, letting out a whimper as he fell away from the girl he'd been hitting. Even so, he managed the strength to snarl back at Millie, and the glare from his teary eyes was one of pure hatred.

Metal groaned as the ship rolled to port, sending mattresses and children sliding across the deck. The weathered sailor by the hatch took the movement in stride, however, and fished in his coat for a pipe.

[sapphiredragon]

The slow, rocking motion of the ship did little to rouse the boy from his sleep. No, it was the griping, grunting, whimpering, snapping..the sound of a fist against flesh and a breath sharply exhaling as a result of a swift and harsh reprocussion.

"Nmh... can you two.. bloody cut it out?!" The boy lifted his head and glared at them through one open eye, the other eye primarily covered by his long, unruly bangs. Not that it was open, anyway. He was too lethargic and annoyed to be afraid of his situation. Although he could hazily remember a beautiful young woman speaking to him...and despite his rebellious and tough attitude his engraved chivalry was compelled to emerge and drive him towards assisting her in any way he could.

...but how did that assistance lead him here? Kevin couldn't remember anymore.

Slowly, realization was beginning to dawn on him that he had no idea where he was, who he was with or what was going on. It felt like his control was just pulled out from underneath him, and that bothered him immensely.

"What.. the.." He looked around, his blue eyes focusing on the other children individually as if searching for a familiar face, before switching to look upon the interior of the ship. "Where are we?!"

[Mlle Bienvenu]

Will was already half awake by the time the ship listed to the side, but he thought he was still dreaming.

He was a little boy again, and a woman with a golden monkey (or was it his mother? His mind's eye seemed to think so) held him in her arms and rocked him. She spoke to him, but he could never quite remember what it was she had told him.

And then, in this dream, he was on a ship, it seemed, bound for somewhere far away from the woman with the golden monkey, and then someone fell on his legs, and the ship pitched and a mat slid into the space he was occupying and pushed him aside, and he sat up groggily.

"What'sgoingon. . .?" he muttered, blinking in the dim light and unfamiliar surroundings. At almost the same time, someone else wondered the same thing.

[Demonic Neko]

Millie ignored the voices of the other children, her attention completly focus on the prone idiot in front of her. She moved quickly, grabbing his arm and twisting it behind his back. She used her free hand to grab his ear, twisting it hard as she leaned close to whisper in his ear.

"Don't you ever, EVER, touch me again, cabron." she hissed. "If you do, next time I'll tear them off instead of kick them." She gave him a push to send him tumbling away from her mat. Finally, now that her anger was mostly spent, she looked around, taking in her surroundings. "Que en carajo....?"

[Lolua]

((Kathleen Blair))

A few pallets away. Kathleen awakened slowly, and later she would not be able to tell when sleep had ended and her waking dream had begun. For her, that line had always been a bit fuzzy. This latest adventure had begun with a strong sensation of hunger, and Kathleen fancied that her stomach's cries for sustenance had been answered by the beautiful woman with a cloud of auburn hair that might as well have been a red-gold crown. This woman, whom Kathleen naturally supposed must be the Queen of the Tea Things, had given her a chocolate cake and then adjusted the odd-looking fur stole that hung from one shoulder... a fur stole with eyes...

Kathleen looked around, her eyes soaking in the details of her surroundings but her mind editing the unpleasant bits. Paying no heed to the fight that had broken out, she saw only the smooth metal walls of the bucking ship, an old man wrinkled like a great big sultana, and row upon row of wakening children covered in woolen blankets the color of breadcrusts.

Her eyes grew round with interest at the oh-so-logical conclusion Kathleen had just drawn.

"It's the world's biggest lunch box," she whispered, awestruck.

SPOILER: Click to show

Uh... in the interest of maintaining Britishness, I have used the words "cake" and "sultana" where Americans might say "cupcake" and "golden (yellow) raisin"... just so no one gets confused. XD

[Mlle Bienvenu]

"Ouch! Watch it!" Sleep cleared from his head pretty quickly after being stepped on by a younger boy.

He found himself to be one among many other kids in what seemed to be a real ship and he felt a pang of dis-ease settle upon him suddenly. This wasn't a dream, this was real.

He surveyed the hold; (he seemed to remember that that was what the storage area of a ship was called) it was all a jumble of other kids, pallets, blankets, and all of it lit by dim lighting. There were no exits except for the hatch, and to get there, you had to go through a wrinkly old man.

His eyes made their way back to where he had started. At he boy who had awoken him by falling on top of him, and the girl who seemed to have started the fight that ruined his slumber and his ignorance of the situation he now found himself.

"You two knock it off!" he growled at them with an icy blue glance. In truth, it was less about the fight and more about the frightening position he now found himself, although he didn't realise it then. And even if he did realise it, he didn't want to admit it.

[Demonic Neko]

"He started it!" It was Millie's natural response whenever some one yelled at her for brawling. And it was true. Ana Milagros never started a fight, but she usually finished it. Her eyes scanned the crown for any familiar faces. Nope. No one she knew here. Next step, find an adult. She noticed the old man by the hatch. She marched right over to him, determined to find out what was going on. She paused when she stopped before him, remembering what her papi had taught her about respecting her elders.

"Excuse me, sir?Where are we and why are we here?"

[Lorpius Prime]

Evan, as the old sailor was known, looked at stern little girl addressing him. He hesitated, glancing between her and the pipe he'd drawn out of his heavy raincoat, as if trying to make a decision. After a moment, he put the pipe between his teeth and spoke out of the corner of his mouth,

"And what's your name, young miss?"




Towards the center of the cluster of children, Nolan Plaskett was trying to keep his little sister, clinging to his arm, from crying. He leaned over and nudged Kevin with his elbow,

"Hey, where d'ya think there taking us?"

[Demonic Neko]

Millie drew herself up straight and eyed the old man suspiciously for a moment before responding.
"My name is Ana Milagros Santiago," she stated simply. "What's your name?"

[sapphiredragon]

Kevin watched his surroundings carefully, but his mind was still in a little bit of a haze from having just woken up. That, and he was a bit of a slow thinker sometimes. More in the sense that it would occasionally take awhile for the information to seep through enough for him to develop any deep thought on the matter.

He gave a quick, tense shrug when he was elbowed, eyeing the boy and his potentially crying sister as if in annoyance, not intending to answer him. But the annoyance was simply to mask the fear of the fact that he did not know the answer to that simple question.

Kevin gave a sigh. From what he could see, no one seemed to know where they were. Finally, he replied, "I dunno... she says we're in a lunch box."

He pointed at the girl who had originally made the claim. "So maybe we're on our way to a reaaaaally big lunchroom or something.."

[Lorpius Prime]

The sailor chuckled as he lit his pipe and shook out the match. He contemplated for a while amid a couple puffs of the harsh tobacco smoke.

"I suppose you'd call me Mr. Burr, Miss Ana." He eyed her for a moment, "Spanish, are ye'?"





Nolan gave the larger boy a funny look, something halfway between disgust and disbelief, and he put himself between Kevin and his sobbing sister.

"We're floating somewhere... I hope it's not too far, we 'ent supposed to be out past dark. Told her that. Mum'd worry."

[Lolua]

((Kathleen Blair))

"We are in a lunchbox," Kathleen repeated emphatically, as if the evidence presented left no room for doubt. While the fight was breaking up, Kathleen had considered the matter as carefully as a nine-year-old can consider things, and she had come to realize that the hawing and rolling of the floor beneath her feet came from the swaying to and fro of the giant lunchbox as it was carried to some unknown destination.

Because she did not feel any different --certainly not as if she had shrunken to cocktail-olive size -- Kathleen concluded that she herself was her normal size but that the lunchbox was indeed enormous. Therefore, the person carrying the lunchbox must be of truly phenomenal proportions...

[Mlle Bienvenu]

Will followed the rabblerousing girl with his eyes, watching as she picked her way through the nest of blankets and pallets until she reached the sole adult in the room. It seemed as though she would talk with him. Trying to look as though he wasn't about to do what he was about to do, he, as casually as he could, clambored over the sea of shifting bodies until he was within earshot of the old man and the girl with the funny accent.

He listened in; 'My name is Ana Milagros Santiago, " She was saying, " What's your name?"

The wizened sailor (Will was convinced they were in a sailing vessel at this point) seemed to consider for a moment before replying, "I suppose you'd call me Mr. Burr, Miss Ana, Spanish are ye?"

[Demonic Neko]

Millie, frowned. Of course she was spanish, she was about to snap, but bit her tongue and took a deep breath. The earlier fight had put her nerves on edge, but that was no excuse to be rude to an adult.

"Yes sir, I am. Can you please tell me where we are, how we got here and when we can go home? My mami and Papi don't like me out to late."

[Lorpius Prime]

The sailor raised an eyebrow at the little girl. She was a talkative one, bold too. Evan Burr liked kids, and it was this feeling that caused him to frown and glance briefly at the hatch. But he banished whatever thought it was that troubled him quickly.

"Didn't you come here with Mrs. Boreal? You remember, right? She's hard to forget, that one."

[Demonic Neko]

Millie's brow furrowing slightly as she tried to recall. She remebered a beatiful lady with chocolates... But everything else was sort of blur. Alarms went off in her head as she realized the danger of the situation she was in.

"Ummm.. yes.." she stammered slightly, as she felt a weight form in the pit of her stomach. "Well.. Stll, when can we get off? I need to go home now," a note of urgency entered her voice. "Please. I really need to get back."

[sapphiredragon]

Kevin's lips twitched downwards into a frown when all the children around him started whining about going back home to their parents, how they were going to be in trouble or that their parents were going to be worried when they didn't get back home before dark. This annoyed him. After having a fall out, he had run away from home a long time ago (at least, a long time ago in terms of how a child his age would think). And he didn't care whether his parents were worried or not.

As he thought about this, it made him faintly sad. He had no home to yearn for, anymore. But that sadness made him angry. It was a quick conversion he had long since learned. Crying on the streets was just a beacon for others to come and take advantage. They were the beacons of a newbie, a weakling who wasn't cut out for the real world.

Kevin got up slowly, ignoring everyone else as he made his way around their enclosed area to survey their surroundings. Well, that was the impression he was giving. In reality, his legs were itching and he had to move around to try and calm his frayed nerves. Not having any clue as to where they were going and only hazy recollections of how they got there was threatening to send the boy into a panic. And that was something else he had learned to keep under wraps.

Finally, after a bit of walking, he made his way closer to the Spanish girl and the adult, resting his slightly large hand against the rocking wall. "...how close are we to where we're goin'..?"

[Lorpius Prime]

There was a certain sadness in the sailors eyes as he gazed at the two children, the boisterous little girl and now the tall boy that had joined her. They were making him consider thoughts that he would rather push away, asking questions he could not answer. The sigh he gave was decisive and curt.

"We've a ways to go yet. You children should go back to sleep."

He set his pipe back between his teeth and leaned back in the chair, determined not to look at the pair of kids.

[Lolua]

((Kathleen Blair))

Still looking around at her surroundings, Kathleen was assigning sandwich fillings to the other children. The brown blankets and pallets were all about the same shade, and so the only difference lay with the shapes and colors of the other children's clothing. She had begun with herself; because she was wearing a faded pink-and-white dress, Kathleen had decided that she must be ham salad. Children in orange shirts were marmalade, and those in green were either cucumber or watercress, depending on the shade. She was not particularly worried about anyone being eaten, however; she had once been talked out of eating it by her liverwurst-and-onion sandwich, and so Kathleen was sure she could convince any large sandwich-eating creature that she wouldn't taste very good.

During this task, the wave of anxiety that the dark-haired girl had set off lapped at Kathleen's toes. Her reflections on the different types and colors of sandwich fillings turned to thoughts of what her mother would be doing at this time of day, back at the laundromat the family owned --

No, not the laundromat... Today Kathleen had decided it was really a bank, a bank that belonged to a country where clothes were money. People came in, deposited their dirty underclothes, socks, and t-shirts, then waited for the bank to process and return them. Kathleen had noticed that money from the normal bank arrived as neat piles with colored bands around them before being stuffed into the cash register, unlike the limp sacks full of wrinkled bills and ill-assorted coins that went back to the bank every evening... so it was an easy enough thing for Kathleen to reimagine the drab laundromat as a bustling bank.

If Kathleen's mind had been operating in reality instead of in her own imagined world, she might have pictured her mother leaning listlessly against the counter next to the register, a half-smoked cigarette hanging from her mouth as her small eyes focused on the television unit up in the corner above the change machine. On the screen would be the flashing lights of a game show or the melodrama of a soap opera, and the plastic and steel surfaces of the laundromat would echo with the absurd stream of foul language and uncovered lies that was characteristic of both courtroom programmes and daytime talk shows.

But Kathleen now worried for her mother; not because she knew the woman was rotting her brain with bad television, but because she imagined that the glowing screen had become blank and white, and yet her mother was still staring, fish-like, at the nothingness of the day's broadcast...

"Mummy..." Kathleen whimpered softly.

[Demonic Neko]

"Sleep?" Was this old gringo absoluly loco? "How can I sleep?" Millie stamped her small foot as a scowl spread across her face. "I want to go home. Let me off. Now."

[Mlle Bienvenu]

Will's frown deepend. The girl named Ana was right, of course. There was no way they would sleep now. He took a deep breath and let it out forcefully. He had to do something, but he didn't know what. Dealing with kids, he could handle, dealing with teachers, sure, but this situation was so unlike anything he'd ever experienced, he didn't know how to respond.

"I think I should be able to sleep if I knew where we were headed," Will said, losing all pretences of not paying attention. Will's eyes flicked over to the girl Ana, and back again.

He was trying to sound cool and unconcerned, but it was difficult. . .. there was a girl whimpering for her mummy close by, and it took all of Will's concentration to block her and his own growing feelings of loss and dread out.

[sapphiredragon]

Kevin scowled. No one told him what to do or how to do it. No one was going to tell him to sleep in this scary, mysterious place. When he didn't know where he was, how he got there or where he was going. Growling, he stepped forward and glared up at the old man, baring his teeth like a territorial dog. "Hey! Turn this thing around and take us all home! Right now!"

[Lorpius Prime]

The old sailor looked down at this new voice. His eyes filled with pity at this child, and for the others, that did not understand the impossibility of their situation. A child's innocence was so endearing, and yet so sad at times.

He took the pipe out his mouth to speak, he couldn't really keep up the facade of indifference, his heart was too kind for it.

"You have to--"

But the sentence would not be finished. It was interrupted by a great sharp crack, like thunder, but impossibly loud even deep within the steel hull of the Piper.

Nor was it a noise alone. The freighter tumbled, and not with the rolling motion of ocean waves that it had been built for, the great ship shook and twisted as if struck by an enormous hammer. It rolled all the way onto its side, and then further, spinning entirely out of control. For a few brief moments, everything within the Piper's hold felt the strange sensation of free-fall.

And then it all came to a very sudden stop.

Evan, the old man, instinctively grabbed for the nearest child to him, but missed and cried out as he toppled hard onto the chair he'd been sitting upon. Metal shrieked and a large bit of machinery, some piece from the ship's engines, tore through bulkheads and consumed the rear half of the compartment, along with most of the captive children. Others were slammed into what used to be the ceiling, knocked senseless. After a few minutes of vibration the ship finally settled with a groan of tortured steel.

The Motor Vessel Piper, hull number 343 in the United Kingdom Shipping Register, had come in to port for the last time.

END OF CHAPTER 1