DANG it's been a long time since I've even looked at a fanfic! Alright, so I owe y'all an apology. I am SO SORRY that I left everyone hanging for so long. There's no excuse. Anyway, this is actually a REPLACEMENT for the original chapter one. See, back in 2009, I was still in junior high and my writing...was not that great. SO. Now I've finished high school and I feel like I've improved a lot. That meant that if I wanted to continue this story, it needed some work. Enjoy! I'll eventually include some of the other things that were in the original, but I'm planning on having so much more content and detail now.

WITHOUT FURTHER ADO.

Coming Home

Chapter One: Captured

Athena had to retrieve the music box; she couldn't possibly let the humans—worse, pirate humans—get to it. The queen didn't think she would be able to live with herself if she lost the gift, but now she realized the depth of her foolishness.

"I'll never see my family again," she despaired as the ship's crew hauled her broken body—crushed by the stern of the offending boat—onto the deck.

King Triton believed his wife to be dead, as did the rest of Atlantica, the great underwater kingdom that they had once ruled together. The kingdom watched as the once loving and powerful merman fell into an unending sea of grief. While the merpeople mourned the loss of their beloved queen, their king handled his sadness in a very different way; he erased from the kingdom all traces of music, which was only a painful reminder of the past, for Athena had been an avid lover of song.

The wounded king did his best to raise the daughters that Athena had given him, but the hole in his heart prevented him from being the loving father his girls needed him to be. The seven sisters were raised in a strict environment following the loss of their dear mother; Triton took every possible precaution to ensure that none of his children would have the same fate as his wife. The older six—Attina, Alana, Adella, Aquata, Arista, and Andrina—became depressed and moody in the months that followed the scene in the cove. At first, even they did not question their father's ban on music.

It was the youngest, Ariel, who remained stubbornly pleasant. She, although only five years old, understood that her mother would wish for them to continue living as they had before she disappeared. Ariel always joined her family for meals with a joyful swish of her tail and a laugh bubbling at her lips. Eventually, the other girls realized that it was okay to be happy. Soon, they were playing and laughing like regular merchildren once again.

The king, however, was another story entirely.

Xoxo

After the ship hit her, Athena found it difficult to stay awake. Her body ached; especially the back of her head. She was dimly aware of a liquid that was not water trickling down her neck, but she barely registered the excited shouts of the sailors, or the net that was pulling her up the side of the vessel. She could focus only on the pain.

"Fancy catchin' a real mermaid!"

"…be bloomin' rich, I tell yer!"

Athena was the talk of the entire boat; these pirates rarely had such exciting news as a captured mermaid. While the crew should have been more concerned with the crushed state of the sea vessel—which had crashed against a rock while everyone was, once again, staring at Athena—the crowd that had formed around her frail body stubbornly refused to disperse.

"Aye, a siren, she is! Jus' look at the ship, mates. The Ruby be cursed by this she-devil! Once she be awake, she be sendin' the lot o' you o'erboard!" Said a short fellow with wrinkled, yellowing skin and a patch over his left eye. As he spoke, the man began to stuff his ears with a waxy substance, presumably to drown out the songs of the supposed siren.

Many on the deck began to laugh. From the center of the crowd came a declaration, "Rory, ye crazy ole' man!" But Rory could not hear them.

A sudden gunshot commanded immediate silence from everyone onboard—well, everyone whose ears were not clogged.

"Bah, ye unbelievers!" Rory shook his fist, unaware of the unnatural silence coming from the men who had been taunting him moments before. "Ye be sorry ye e'er crossed ole Rory!"

No one paid him any mind, except to wonder at his fate. For the crowd surrounding Athena both heard the warning shot and saw the captain exit his chambers, walking slowly and deliberately down the steps. Rory had his back turned to the captain, and so had not a clue that the imposing, calculating, vicious man was glaring coldly at him, daring him to continue his rampant speech.

"It be on yer heads if we be joinin' Davy Jones!" The crew collectively held their breath, waiting to see how badly Rory would suffer.

The captain walked until he was standing just behind Rory, who continued to spew threats. Lazily, he grabbed the wax that stuck out of Rory's ear, pulling it all the way out.

"Cap'n!" Rory turned and squeaked in surprise.

The captain dropped the wax and gave an almost jovial smile, showing off his blackened teeth, "What be me name, Rory?"

"Ye be Cap'n Crunch," Rory replied happily, thinking with relief that the captain wasn't angry with him.

Crunch's smile turned cynical. He drew a small hammer from his belt and stroked Rory's face with it, "An' how did I be gettin' me name?"

The smile slipped from Rory's face as he recalled past incidents where the angry captain's hammer had crunched the bones of his victims. Rory swallowed. "Ye…hammer."

"Aye, me hammer. Watch yerself, Rory. Ye be lucky we have bigger problems today." Crunch withdrew the cool metal from Rory's face and turned his attention to the rest of the gaping crew, "Avast! Ye best be fixin' th' damage on me ship."

Everyone sprang to action at that: the stern of the boat had taken a big hit. Soon, only the captain himself was around to watch the merwoman slip in and out of consciousness. He took in every inch of her broken body, from the tip of her scaly blue fin to the wavy red hair on the top of her head. He saw that she had likely broken a few ribs—do merfolk have ribs?—and there was that nasty gash on her head to consider. He contemplated putting her out of her misery, but wouldn't a live mermaid be worth more to him? Aye, he thought, I be needin' this one alive.

Xoxo

"Captain, you might want to see this." The young sailor—Geoffrey—called from across the deck, eager to prove his worth to the highly esteemed Captain Holmes.

"What is it, lad?" Holmes walked toward the newest member of his crew, scratching at the stubble on his chin. His boots clicked against the hard wood of the deck.

Geoffrey straightened his spine and held his telescope out to the stern captain, "I've spotted a ship. They're flying the Jolly Roger."

Interest piqued, Holmes snatched the scope from Geoffrey's outstretched hand and aimed it toward the ship in the rocks. He allowed himself a small smile, "Well, well, well. We've got a pirate ship to take down."

Don't expect me to update quickly. Sorry, but that's the truth. On the bright side...I did start writing the second chapter. So see you guys in 2018? Juuust kidding. But for real.