It was a glorious spring morning. While the morning before had been all reds and oranges, this one went right from black to gold to a sweet sugar blue, with little in between. It was the sort of morning you only get in the calm that follows a dreadful storm, when the whole world rouses itself from where it had hidden for the night, takes stock, and says, "Whew! Survived another one!"

Flotsam littered the battered beach, which was something of an oddity; the only ship in the cove had not been forced to jettison anything the night before. But of course, this was Neverland, and it was not unheard of for things to get washed ashore from places that shouldn’t, logically, have been within reach of its shores.

Things like the dark-skinned figure that began to painfully stir, groaning before it began coughing, then hacking, and then vomiting up a small amount of salt water mixed with an even smaller amount of the most recent meal. The individual groaned again and rolled over to study the cotton-candy sky, amazed to have survived, irritated that the ground refused to sit still.

To all appearances the marooned entity was a slight-built male somewhere in his mid twenties; His chocolate brown skin was topped by wavy black hair that would gleam like silver and flow like syrup on a good day, but on that day was ragged beyond recognition as seaweed, small splinters of wood, and other less recognizable substances tangled in the unruly mop. The eyes that studied the sky were coffee, and the face they were a part of, though presently marred by scratches and one jagged cut along the left cheek, was youthful and handsome in an almost-too-delicate way. The eyebrows fell just shy of being too arched, the lips were not quite too full, the nose strong, but barely strong enough. He wore clothing that marked him as a sailor; an unbleached canvas shirt with a medium sized collar was bound tightly at the neck by a simple leather string and tucked into a wide brown belt at the waist. Strips of white cloth around his forearms tamed sleeves that would otherwise have been long enough to get in the way. Over this he wore a simple brown vest, one shabby with years of use, with a number of slits cut in it that would be used to tie off or hang useful tools from under normal circumstances. His slightly baggy black pants tucked into a pair of sturdy working boots, brown because black boots are bad luck. Although this was not a person who let the old superstitions dictate his life, he didn’t tempt fate if it could be easily avoided. To this end he also wore a medium sized gold-hoop earring in his left ear, a charm against drowning that seemed to have done its job the night before. From his belt hung a sheath containing a blade too long to be called a knife, too short for a sword, one that probably would have been lost were it not for the leather strap looped around the handle, keeping it in place.

Finally the person gathered enough energy to stand unsteadily... and enough energy to wonder why he wasn’t in far worse condition for his ordeals. The first explanation that popped into his head was that supernatural forces were at work. He hoped not. Supernatural forces were so tricky, so unpredictable, so... supernatural. He tried to tell himself that he was just lucky, but that didn’t go down well either; a rational internal voice pointed out that luck, also, is a supernatural force.

"Well, hello, what’s this?" came a voice from behind him. The castaway spun around to see a brown haired boy in ragged brown clothing surrounded by a handful of other youths.

"He looks slightly like a pirate," began a blonde haired boy, the tallest of the group, "but I’ve never seen him around Neverland before!"

The stranger straightened. Or at least tried to, but due to his condition the best he could manage was a mildly more stable sway. "I am no pirate!" he snapped, the iron obvious beneath the velvet of his voice. "I am Azesh, born of Calormene soils and now an honorable sailor in the Royal Narnian Navy, a loyal servant of his Majesty, King Caspian (may he live forever), renowned for my seamanship and fighting pr-"

"Well, you look like a pirate," interrupted the first boy, who wasn’t very interested in hearing anyone beside himself bragging about their combat prowess, "and you say you’re a sailor, and here in Neverland, the only sailors are pirates, so I say that you must be one, too! Besides, everyone knows pirates always lie!"

Azesh fumed at the accusation, but even more at the rude interruption. Azesh had only been getting warmed up! Although the young man was a decent enough sort, he had never really had any patience with children, having never had a childhood himself. "Boy," he ground out, "one would think you were possessed of a perception beyond that of the normal senses, to distinguish so much about a person based on naught but the briefest of glances, save for one thing: you are wrong!"

"Hey!" exclaimed a tanned boy with curly black hair and a striped hat, "He talks like Captain Hook! He must be a pirate."

Azesh threw his hands up in frustration, an action that nearly unbalanced him enough to send him toppling to the sand. "By the talons of Tash, I give up." How ironic that, for once, he was telling the truth (well, mostly) and he was not believed. The chocolate sailor turned his back on the apparently insane children and began to stalk down the beach. At least, that was the intent, but due to his condition he was unable to do much better then a clumsy stumble.

"Hey!" shouted the lead boy. "Where do you think you’re going?!" The child flew swiftly and placed himself firmly in Azesh’s path, an action that brought the wobbly newcomer up short in shock. "Aren’t you going to fight me?!" Pan demanded.

The dark-skinned man blinked his large eyes rapidly, wondering if he had really witnessed what had just occurred, or if he was, in fact, imagining the whole scene. "Why should I wish to do that?" he asked, genuinely confused.

"Because you’re a pirate and I’m Peter Pan! I always fight pirates, and pirates always fight me and my Lost Boys! That’s the way things work! Everyone knows that!"

"But I’m not a pirate!" Azesh shouted, turning aside as quickly as he dared in an attempt to move off in yet another direction.

"Uhm, Peter," began a timid sounding voice, the source of which was a small, round boy in a panda eared hat. "Maybe he’s telling the truth! Maybe he really isn’t a pirate... I mean, we’ve never even seen him on the Jolly Roger before..."

"Nonsense!" countered the stubborn boy. "Of course he’s a pirate!" As he said this he zipped around to the front of Azesh once more.

By this point Azesh was becoming extremely frustrated. This frustration, when combined with his pain and exhaustion, brought him to the point where he was ready to either break down crying or do something rash, and he refused to cry before these foul mannered barbarians.

"You wish a fight, child? Then you shall have one!" He moved the restraining straps out of the way of his blade, drew the weapon and leapt - well, staggered - at the irritating youth.

"You see, Tootles? I told you he was a pirate!" Peter exclaimed as he moved easily out of the way of the sailor’s clumsy attacks.

"Yes, Peter," sighed the diminutive Lost Boy.

To his credit, Azesh managed to keep from falling face first as he lunged gracelessly past the flying child. "C’mon!" his youthful adversary taunted. "I know you can do better than that!"

Azesh turned and, rather than attempt another awkward lunge, took a moment to assess his foe. Peter Pan floated less than a foot above the ground, his dagger in his hand and held at the ready. This was not good. Azesh could tell by the way the lad held both himself and his weapon that he was a skilled and experienced fighter, while Azesh himself was weak, injured, and badly outnumbered. Perhaps he had bitten off more than he could chew, but the spirit of youth had hardly left him any choice in the matter.

Well, he had dedicated himself to this venture, and there was little left to do but see the situation through... or to batter a way out of it. Azesh lunged once more at his overconfident opponent, this time with a bit more control. As a reward for his caution he very nearly scored a hit on the boy’s left arm, missing by a mere hair’s breadth. As he passed by, however, his toe caught on a piece of wood that had been washed ashore the night before, and he went down hard. The young man tried to recover from his awkward position, groaning somewhat pathetically as he did so.

"Shesh!" complained the brown-haired youth as he moved closer to the downed stranger. "Just what kind of a pirate are you, anyway?"

"The kind," Azesh gasped unsteadily, "that isn’t," his voice grew in strength, "a pirate!" On the last word, Azesh threw a handful of sand into the child’s face before following up with a kick to the lad’s abdomen.

"Urgh!" grunted Pan, more out of surprise than pain, as Azesh used the distraction to pull himself back to his feet and take off down the beach at the best speed he could manage. "That’s cheating!" the startled child called after him.

"The kind that isn’t a pirate?" Curly asked the boy beside him. "Is that supposed to be some kind of riddle?" Nibs only shrugged.

Azesh barreled headlong down the beach and hoped against hope that the bizarre children had lost interest in him. He briefly considered ducking into the forest on his right, where the trees might provide coverage from flying pursuit, but then he realized that these boys were probably locals and therefore more familiar with the strange woods than he. Worse, Azesh’s land-based experiences had occurred mostly in the desert, a fact that would have put him at a distinct disadvantage in these temperate environs. So instead he plowed forward, turning only when the coastline forced him to, and taking turns blind when necessity forced it.

It was one such blind swerve that landed him in further trouble; he mowed right into a small group of men who were picking through the jetsam that had washed ashore in the hopes of finding something useful. Azesh smacked full-speed into a brown-haired, mustached man wearing a large black hat, knocking them both over and dropping Azesh’s blade onto the ground. As Azesh worked to pull himself out of the sand (again!) he looked around, noting that the man he had run into and his companions were all dressed in outfits that said "sailor", but that incorporated details that screamed "pirate." This was particularly true of their leader, a towering man with a thick mane of silver-white hair, dressed almost entirely in black, a large hat containing a variation of the crossed bones perched atop his head. As the large man strode over to inspect the stranger who had so unceremoniously interrupted the day’s work, Azesh noted that a curved metal hook replaced his right hand, explaining the hook-shape on one of the bones on the hat. Captain Hook, Azesh thought worriedly. The stripe-headed boy said I spoke like a "Captain Hook." This must be he.

The powerful-looking man reached down and entangled Azesh’s shirt in his claw, then lifted the newcomer off the ground, causing no small amount of panic in Azesh. He flailed a bit as the captain studied him menacingly and thought, ‘Oh Tash, dear Tash, please don’t let my shirt tear!’ The captain shook his hook sharply, causing Azesh’s panic to surge but ending his thrashings, and was about to open his mouth to begin questioning the castaway when a familiar voice rang out from above, "I told you he was a pirate! As soon as he got the chance, he went running right back to the rest of them. Besides, he fights dirty! Only pirates do that!"

Azesh groaned hopelessly. How could things get any worse?

"Pan!" shouted Hook. "I might have known you were behind this disruption! Cease your flitting about and come down here to face me, that I might split you stem to stern!"

Hook shook his hand at the airborne child, and his sudden movements put on even greater strain on Azesh’s shirt. The sound of the first few threads snapping forced Azesh to think quickly. Trying to appeal to the vanities of the one who had him in his mercy, the dark-skinned newcomer called out, "Mighty Captain, whose very name undoubtedly causes the blood of brave men to run like ice, I wish you the greatest of fortunes in your glorious crusade against the ill-mannered child-demon, but I beg of you! Mightn’t your battle go more smoothly if you were to first relinquish your hold on my shirt?"

The black-clad captain raised an eyebrow, both at Azesh’s choice of phrasing, and the fact that he’d been able to get everything out in a single breath while still being clear and understandable. "Very well," he replied evenly, dropping the other man to the ground before returning his full attention to his long time adversary. He barely registered that his recently released captive was scrambling furtively away from the approaching fight.

The battle went like most battles between pirates and Lost Boys did, with Hook and Pan locked in their dreadful dance, unheeding of the changing tides of the conflict around them until something happened to decide the outcome of the whole affair. Eventually, the Lost Boys manage to trip up, knock down, or otherwise incapacitate the Pirates. In the meantime, Hook himself had fallen because his foot had snagged against the weapon Azesh had been unable to retrieve in time. The end result was that the Lost Boys had flown off, laughing and taunting, while the pirates had been left to sort themselves out.

Captain Hook rose to his feet and, after recovering some measure of his usual grace and dignity, turned his angered attentions towards Azesh. In response, Azesh scrambled quickly to an unsteady standing position so that the captain would not have to pull him upright again. Despite fear so great that it set Azesh trembling, he returned the pirate’s gaze as steadily as his failing balance allowed him. The expression marking the younger man’s face was not one of defiance, however, but of that strange kind of serenity that sometimes hides in the depths of terror.

"And what have we here?" the larger man ground out threateningly. "You are dressed as a man of the sea, and yet the only ship anchored near this accursed island is naught other than my own vessel, the Jolly Roger. This, naturally, begs the question of who you are, and how you’ve come to walk upon these forsaken shores."

Azesh had taken his time during the battle to think through his situation, and had come to the conclusion that his best chance of surviving long enough to find a way back home would be to ally himself with these pirates. That having been said, he doubted they would react well to a member of the Royal Navy. Azesh took just a moment to silently thank Tash that he hadn’t been wearing the standard Narnian uniform when he was washed overboard and then nodded his head, breaking eye contact. "Mighty Captain Hook, whose gaze causes the very waves of the sea to tremble in abject terror, my name is Azesh of Calormen. Until just last night I served aboard the Joyous Occasion, under the dreaded and terrible Captain Taysir ben Marid, where I was much respected for my skills as both a seaman and a pirate. However, I regret that I cannot fully answer your second question, as I fail to understand myself how I came to be here. I was washed overboard in a terrible storm that had come up suddenly, but according to the charts there were no islands near enough for me to make way to! I woke down the beach from here and was almost immediately plagued by those demon children, who tried without just cause to engage me in battle. Due to my weakness and injuries," here he brushed his torn cheek, "I chose the better part of valor, which is how I came into your midst, alone and, apparently, very much in need of a new means of employment."

The other pirates looked over as he said this, most of them frowning suspiciously, and Mullins shook his head. Hook, for his part, narrowed his steely-blue eyes and stroked his chin thoughtfully with his hand. "The Joyous Occasion, you say? Can’t say I’ve heard of her..." her murmured. This startled Azesh, as he had chosen one of the most renowned vessels he could think of, one with a large enough crew that someone not part of it would be unlikely to know each member, and one that tended to be found in the general area where he had been washed overboard. "Still," the captain continued, "even I am forced to admit that I have been... somewhat out of touch with more recent events. Perhaps it’s a newer vessel." Now Hook paused to study Azesh, searching for some sort of hint, some indication in expression or body language that he had been lying. There was none; Azesh was, by now, too experienced in the ways of deceit. There was a long pause as the black-garbed man considered the situation. The Jolly Roger was badly undermanned, and it would be foolish to overlook a potentially useful new crewmember. Although he had yet to see any evidence supporting the stranger’s boasts in his own abilities, the lad’s not inconsequential intelligence was apparent, and he was well spoken enough, even if he had not yet learned that brevity was the soul of wit. So long as he could get the young man to shut up long enough to accomplish his tasks, the newcomer should prove useful. And if he wouldn’t shut up... well, never let it be said that James Hook was not without a few special means of motivation.

"Very well," Captain Hook said at last. "I will give you an opportunity to prove yourself." This startled the other pirates, and Starkey rolled his eyes. "But I warn you, Azesh of Calormen, step out of line with me just once, and you will find your punishment both immediate and painful."

"Aye, sir. I understand," Azesh got out before one of his knees almost gave out on him. He managed to recover his balance before falling over, but he silently cursed anyway, praying that this would not be enough to raise the larger man’s ire.

Hook grabbed rough hold of his new crewmembers' arm and quickly surveyed the rest of his men, trying to decide who was most useless and, therefore, who could most easily be spared to tend to Azesh’s condition. Billy? No... "Cookson!" he snapped. "Get over here and attend to this water-logged bilge rat before he collapses! The rest of you stop gawking and return your attentions to the task at hand!"

"Wonderful," murmured Starkey as the group returned to sorting through the rubbish. "Some fancy-tongued pretty-boy who seems to think he’s Poseidon’s gift to sailing vessels." Most of the others gave Starkey a rather odd look in response.

"Don’t worry," rumbled Mason. "We’ll have him straightened out, right soon enough." He chuckled menacingly, and Jukes shuddered, remembering all too well what it meant to be ‘straightened out’.

"That won’t matter much," rasped Mullins as he glanced back at the dark-skinned stranger. Cookson was rather ineptly trying to tend to the gash on Azesh’s cheek. "He just said he had fallen overboard his last ship... the sea’s got prior claim on ‘im. You mark my words... that’s a dead man walking, he just don’t know it yet."