Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There is something in the waters outside the base. You only noticed it recently. The first time had been an accident; you’d dropped a thermos of tea and spun around to grab it as it rolled away. Something moved in the corner of your vision, and all you caught was a blur. But it was big. Bigger than the creatures that normally lived around the plain the research facility was located on. Bigger than the juvenile goblin shark you saw on camera last week. Bigger than you.

You had not been scared, not at first. It was something you prided yourself on, something your coworkers would confide in you during the darker days, when the isolation from the rest of the world was too much to ignore. You always remained steadfast and rational, no matter what malfunctions or misplaced data sheets life threw at you. Your first thought had been that you and the creature - if it was one - had been moving in opposite directions and your swift turn had stretched it out. Your second thought had been an adult goblin shark; perhaps it had come to investigate the strange structure and found nothing of interest, leaving swiftly thereafter. Your third thought was that it was either part of a carcass or a piece of debris.

So, no. In that first week, you had not been worried. In fact, you nearly forgot about the incident.

Nearly, being the key word here. Because then it happened again.

You were walking down that same hallway, water bottle firmly clasped in your hand, a clasp envelope under your arm. The door to Aria’s (nicknamed Jack-O’ due to her love of Halloween) office was only a few feet away. 

Something moved out of the corner of your eye. You only caught a glimpse, but it was large.

You stop dead in your tracks, slowly turning towards the window. You see a hand.

Your water bottle crashes to the ground, an apocalyptic clang! that echoes down the suddenly too-quiet hall. 

Jack-O’ pokes her head out of her office, a worried frown on her face. The hand is gone.

It was just a trick of the eye. Something that looked similar enough to a human hand as it moved that your brain thought it was one. That is what you tell yourself, at one in the morning, dry eyes heavy but refusing to close.

The base’s walls and windows were thick; had to be, in order to withstand the pressure of the bathypelagic zone’s deepest depths. Nothing could get in, not on purpose, anyway. Even the dock - where the facility’s submarines and drones were housed - would only open to the open ocean when something left or returned. The team before you never made any mention of a possible new species, and nothing had occurred during your last tour here. You were safe.

The stack of books sitting on your desk - which had seemed like a good, if ironic choice at the time - told a different story.

In space, no one can hear you scream. The same can be said for the ocean floor.

Your coworkers notice almost immediately, of course. There’s only a handful of you here, and your workstations in the main observation room are nearly on top of one another.

Dizzy approaches you first, compassionate soul that she is. “Good morning, Daryl! How are you doing?”

“Good morning,” you raise your mug in greeting, finding the fabric flowers on your desk suddenly very interesting. “Well enough, I suppose. How’s your family?”

“Oh, wonderful!” she smiles, knowing full well you’re deflecting. Frederick (often called Sol for reasons you aren’t quite sure of; it can’t be his personality, unless they mean his temper) and Zappa politely pretend not to listen. “I spoke to them last night. Sin’s always so excited to learn about everything we’ve found. Ky says it’s nearly impossible to get him to bed on time afterwards,” she giggles.

Dizzy sets down a small stack of photos on your desk, taken from the perimeter cameras. They’re spaced out in 100 meter intervals, circling the base. It takes all of your willpower to not frantically scan for any large creatures caught in them.

“Here are the photos you requested. I’m sorry it took so long; Faust needed my help in the labs earlier.”

“Oh, it’s fine, Dizzy. Thank you.”

She looks you over, the tiniest of frowns growing. “Are you sure everything’s alright, Daryl? You look exhausted…”

“I assure you, it’s nothing serious,” you laugh. Not yet, at least. “I simply didn’t sleep well last night. It probably wasn’t a good idea to read those horror books right before bed.”

Dizzy laughs along with you, and thankfully drops the matter.

You have been here for 3 weeks out of your 6 month station here. Your only hope at this point is to return alive.

Later, you’re in the observation room alone. The only lights currently on are the low, red ones near the floor; enough light to get around while disrupting the natural environment as little as possible. 

You lean against one of the worktables, arms folded across your chest, staring out of the large window that takes up nearly the entirety of the southern wall and part of the ceiling. For a few minutes, a sense of calm washes over you, as it always has when you look out into the ocean. Where others saw a mostly-barren hellscape of giant creatures that will gleefully hunt a human down, you saw the planet’s lifeline. Where others conspired about still-living megalodons or world-ending kaiju, you pondered what delightful lifeforms were still out there to be discovered.

Earth was 70% water, and thus far they had only mapped out about 25% of the ocean’s floor. It wasn’t impossible that…

You shake your head, then shake it harder to dispel the memory of the trench a kilometer away from the base. It was deep, and reached far into the abyss; perhaps even to the hadal zone, but no one was sure yet. Only a few of their drones were durable enough to make the trip, but their battery lives were very short. The caves along the trench’s walls would remain unexplored- for now.

Something large swims by the window right in front of you. Your heart stops. Against your better judgement, you look up.

The bottom half of the creature looks like a Greenland shark drawn after a game of telephone, rich navy blue scales with white spots. Its torso was thick and uncannily human, with more white spots clustered around the shoulders. The creature’s arms ended in webbed hands with more joints than a human’s, and short, sharp claws on the tips of its fingers. It had two odd, short nubs protruding from its forehead, almost like horns (the biologist in you was kicking up a fuss; what were they for?! ), and what appeared to be silver hair.

It was a mermaid. And it was staring right at you with dull gold eyes.

You find yourself glued to the spot; no matter how fervently you command your legs to move, they remain locked in place. The creature presses its hands to the glass, tilting its head in what you would nearly call fascination, those flat eyes lighting up as it takes you in.

It removes one of its hands from the glass, and waves. Its mouth stretches wide as it bares its teeth. Was it trying to smile?!

Your legs unlock, and you nearly fall flat on your face as you rush to the door, slamming it shut behind you. In that moment you do not care that the sound will be heard throughout the base. Your vision tunnels as you race towards your quarters. Your hands shake violently, and you nearly drop your keycard three times trying to unlock the door. 

You squeeze yourself under your bed, your only consolation the boxcutter that, at this point, has hardly seen any use. You clench it between your hands in a white-knuckled grip, brandishing it before you like a priest would a crucifix.

Oh god! Oh god! Oh god!

Time blurs around you. You try to slow down your breathing, and mostly succeed. Jack-O’ knocks on your door. You do not move. A few minutes later, she places a tray with tonight’s dinner - bigos, your favorite - outside your door. You think she lingers for a few more minutes, waiting to see if you’ll emerge. 

Eventually, the fear recedes and exhaustion takes its place. You crawl out from under your bed, and to the door. You’re too tired to be embarrassed, and no one’s watching anyway. You crack open the door, thankful, for perhaps the first time, that your hallway doesn’t have any windows. Dragging the tray inside, you lean against the door, taking a slow breath in. It wheezes out.

You take a small spoonful of the bigos. It’s cold. You nearly cry with relief at the familiar flavors bursting across your tongue. Pork and poultry, sauerkraut, fresh cabbage and onions, allspice, bay leaves, paprika. You tear into the dish with a reawakened hunger, using the slices of rye bread Jack-O’ probably had to fight for to soak up every last drop.

You place the tray on your desk to return later, and toss your dust-covered clothes into the hamper. The dregs of your earlier panic still cling to your joints, but fed and clean, you feel better.

You do not sleep at all that night.

Surprisingly, it is Sol who walks up to you first tomorrow. Despite your poor mood yesterday, the way you dashed to your room and refused to leave, it is your avoidance of windows - especially the one in the observation room - that damns you. You always have your gaze focused on some distant, unseen horizon, full of curiosity as to what lies beyond. To shy away from it? To duck and hide like an injured animal? That, above all else, is what raises your coworkers’ concern.

“So. Did you like it?” Sol asks, leaning against your desk.

You startle. “What?”

“The bigos. Did you like it?”

“Oh, yes, I did. Did you make it?”

“Yeah.”

Sol’s gaze burns you, his eyes dragging over you in what few would recognize as worry. Though his attitude would better suit a pirate ship, Sol did care about the people around him. He was just so damn quiet about it you wouldn’t be able to tell until after the fact.

He seems to weigh his next words- something so rare you nearly leap from your seat and activate the base’s alarm system, because it surely meant the end was nigh. Eventually, he settles on, “Went out earlier. One of the security cameras died, so I had to fix it. On my way back I noticed some scratch marks on one of the hatches. Looks like something was trying to bite at the wheel. Or maybe turn it.”

Your stomach drops for about the 5th time in the past 12 hours.

Sol leans down, looking you dead in the eye. “Be honest. Are we in danger?”

Your first instinct is to say yes. You bite it down.

Because even though you’re scared out of your wits, you’re still a marine biologist. You’re still a scientist. And what kind of scientist would you be if you provided a conclusion with insufficient evidence to back your claims?

You take a deep breath. You think of the mercreature. Obviously, it had been watching the base for some time, enough to understand and copy their mannerisms. The base was 2 years old and no one had gone missing. If humans were on the menu, it would have done something by now.

You exhale. “No,” you say with conviction. “But if that changes, you’ll be the first to know, Sol.”

Sol nods. “Good.”

In the following weeks, you remain in the base. Though it earns you more concern, Dizzy takes up your monthly supply run with only a sympathetic look.

You do what you do best; bury yourself in work.

Every now and then, you catch glimpses of the creature, either in the cameras or outside the windows. But never more than that; sometimes you begin to question whether you saw it that night. At least until you see a webbed hand curiously poke at the casing of a camera, or Sol quietly tells you about new scratches near the base’s entry points.

The creature may have realized it scared you, if its recent avoidance of being caught after it so overtly presented itself to you is anything to go by. Perhaps it has been trying to arrange another meeting? Its continued attempts to break in may be bids to establish contact, one where you had the advantage. To show you it meant no harm? To further understand the strange beings in its home?

The only way to find out was to meet with it. Alone.

At the beginning of your third month at the base, you take the supply run back from Dizzy, thanking her profusely. You start up the one-man submersible, anxiety roiling in your gut, but you refuse to give up. If nothing else, you need to know if your coworkers’ lives are in danger.

As you begin the ascent to the drop off zone, doubt begins to set in. The creature obviously lived in the benthic zone, perhaps even originating from the trench near the facility. Would it be able to survive closer to the surface? Blobfishes were the most well-known examples of what would happen to a deep-sea fish when depressurised. They would swell up and die from the low pressure as their decompressed organs ruptured. Would that happen to the creature as well? 

Your trip remains uneventful as you breach the surface and load up this month’s supplies, exchanging light conversation and completed reports with Baiken. The sunlight feels almost foreign on your face. You dawdle. You watch Baiken steer away and slowly shrink as she nears the horizon. You take some photos to show Faust later. You pick at some seaweed stuck to the roof of the submersible. You sigh, climbing back inside, checking over the crates one last time as you start the engine.

You move all of 2 meters when something bumps against the submersible.

You kill the engine immediately, eyes darting around, searching for whatever, or who ever hit the vehicle. You almost begin to think you accidentally whacked a fish when a blue arm comes into view, pointing upwards.

Nerves claw at your throat as you climb the ladder, nearly hitting your head on the hatch. You squint at the light as you reemerge. You sit on the edge of the hatch, feet on the ladder, ready to dive back inside if things go south.

Water laps the half-emerged roof of the submersible as a dark shape rises to the surface. You ball your hands into fists, scrunching the fabric of your diving suit.

The creature’s head pokes out of the water, only its eyes visible. Its silver hair floats with the current, some of the shorter strands clinging to its forehead. At your lack of reaction, more of the body follows as it tentatively swims closer, grabbing on to the submersible almost delicately. 

It looks up at you with those tarnished gold eyes, and for the first time you realize that both of you are baring your throats.

You steel yourself.

Holding out your hand, you say, “Hello there. My name is Daryl. What’s yours?”

The mercreature takes your hand. It’s larger than yours. Its jagged claws catch on your glove. The creature looks at your joined hands, trying to remember what it had watched you do, and shakes them once.

A voice as rough and old as time itself replies, “Chaos.”

Chapter Text

There is something in your hunting grounds. You had not noticed its construction, nor its first year of operation. You had been asleep in your den at the bottom of the world, dreaming of futures and pasts unseen. You didn’t mean to sleep for so long; you only meant to lie down for a short nap. But sleep dug its claws deep within your soul, and you’re awoken two and a half years later by a shock of electricity.

You grumble and lazily swipe at the direction the shock came from.

Asuka, your foundling, tuts. “I should’ve known.”

You crack open an eye. Asuka’s face, the most opaque part of his body, is perfectly blank, arms loosely folded. “You should be glad it was my turn, Teacher. Raven said we should drag you up to the surface, and I-No said that only an erupting volcano would work.”

The markings on your chest and arms, normally invisible to the naked eye, light up in dull orange. You launch yourself forward with a speed rarely seen in your species, wrapping your pseudo-son up in your arms, chittering, “Aw, you do care about lil’ old me!” Yikes, was your voice rough. Had you really been out that long?

Asuka goes stiff in surprise for a moment, before tentatively returning the embrace, arms and tentacles loosely wrapping around you. Still so shy, even after all these years. Of your clanmates, only Raven came close to you in size, and he was still several hands smaller than you. Asuka and I-No were nearly half your size. The lights on the tips of Asuka’s hair change with each blink until they match the color of your markings. 

“...It’s nice to see you finally awake, Teacher,” he mutters into your chest.

“It’s nice to be awake. Sorry I was gone for so long, kiddie. Now c’mon, let’s go find your friends and you can all tell me all about what I’ve missed.”

Asuka pulls away, and you follow him out of your den. The trench your clan called home was large, a messy incision cut into the earth, caves carved by both nature and magic lining its walls. Your den was the closest to the bottom, as the guardian of The Cave, decorated with shells, stolen human trinkets, and glowing algae taken from all corners of the world. I-No called you a hoarder. You couldn’t really disagree, but at least the items you took from humans actually worked underwater.

Change so far away from the sun’s light was slow and often hard to see, harder still to feel. Not much had occurred in your absence, for which you are simultaneously grateful and annoyed about. Grateful, because you hadn’t missed the unfolding of a grand story. Annoyed, because you would’ve liked to wake up to a change in the script. The waters are, as they always have and will be, comfortably cold and dark, alive with the sound of sluggish currents and fish. Paradise could be quite boring some days, but it was yours. At times you missed the frozen waters of your birth, but in the distant, hazy-filtered way all living beings missed the simplicity of youth. Had you stayed, you would have long since been returned to seafoam. 

You allow the thought to drift away. Another you enjoyed that life, but you are not him. He has lived his life, and you will live yours.

“There’s a whale approaching,” Asuka explains as you meet up with your other children near the trench’s opening. “Old, and injured. I know it’s been a while since we last hunted one together, so we figured…”

“And?” you interrupt.

“I know you like eating them,” Asuka says with a straight face, but he can’t hide anything from you.

“And?”

Asuka’s eyes dart away, luminescent organs lighting up like falling stars. “...And I wanted to study its decomposition.”

“That’s my boy!”

You click at I-No and Raven in greeting, playfully tugging at the ends of their hair where you were least likely to send a symbiote flying. For all that the clan was yours, it was Asuka and his inexplicable gravity that brought everyone together. You thought you were content in your solitude; you thought many things in those early days after you emerged from The Cave foreign to yourself. Then you found him, too pathetic to ignore, and suddenly the silence wasn’t good enough anymore. 

Raven relays the whale’s last location, and you lead the way forward, gliding through the waters with unnatural speed. You remain close to the ocean floor for most of the journey, and only begin to ascend when you catch the scent of the whale’s blood in the water. You’re honestly surprised it’s made it this far.

If Asuka is right - and he normally is - and the whale is old, then you’ll have to be more careful than normal. It might’ve encountered their kind before, and knew to flee at the sound of their voices. Four pairs of hands flash as they hang in the water below their unsuspecting prey, forming a plan. 

You send I-No and Asuka first, to hide in the blind spots along the whale’s sides. You swim above it, trailing alongside its dorsal fin and slowly working your way to the head, and Raven takes his place at the underbelly. 

You click once, a nearly inaudible sound. The plan unfolds so perfectly you would’ve sighed in disappointment if you had air in your primary lungs.

The whale’s fins glow green with Raven’s slow fields. It begins to thrash weakly and so slowly it almost feels like you’re dreaming again. I-No and Asuka dart forwards to take out the whale’s eyes, hooking their claws into the skin around them and dragging it down. You dig your claws into the whale’s head, following a vein to its brain, feeding your magic into it, ancient and inescapable as the sea.

You’ve done well, you tell it. Now it’s time for you to rest. Return to Mother, and say hello for me, won’t you?

The whale falls limp as it begins to sink. Occasionally, you pull on the body, guiding its descent into the darkness, ensuring it lands well within your territory. As one life ends, many more will begin and thrive, feeding off the carcass for decades. Your clan will not go hungry for a very long time, and pride wells in your chest as your children dig in to their feast.

Your clan was often away from their home, searching, exploring, learning. Where Asuka went, I-No and Raven followed, no matter how hare-brained the idea. Sometimes you joined them, others you didn’t. You were sure your little menagerie has caused quite the stir in some shallow reef, sticking out like horseshoe crabs in a freshwater swamp. But no matter how far they strayed, they returned in due time, bringing with them refreshing perspectives on stories you already know. 

You spend the next few days reacquainting yourself with your territory, looking for anything your kin might have missed during their travels. Though there are only four of you, your territory stretches on for miles around, so you can’t really be blamed for not noticing the humans until you nearly bump into them.

You had returned to the carcass, intending to fetch a flipper bone for Asuka. You were not the first to arrive, and your all-seeing eyes light up in wonder as you take in the sight.

Humans have been exploring the waters they left long ago for as long as they’ve been alive, leaving the safety of the land in rafts for new horizons. Rafts became boats, boats became ships, and in the blink of an eye those ships became metal and some of them were able to dive into the deep. You’ve encountered the deep-diving ships before, with increasing frequency. They seemed to be split into two categories: long ships and short ships. The long ships were the size of whales, and had thick metal armor with barely any glass, the insides burning with radioactivity. The short ships had more variety; some of them were large and had a group of humans inside, and others were small, with recording devices on their fronts like giant eyes. You would explore the ones that broke down, ripping them open to try and figure out how they worked, your clan at your back throwing in their own ideas.

You know many things from your long life, and knew everything else from The Cave, but theory and practice were two different worlds. Just because you knew what the humans could do didn’t mean you understood how or why.

There were two humans and a short ship, lights floating in the water illuminating the whale carcass. The larger human was holding something that resembled a recording device, while the smaller human was cutting away small pieces of the whale and putting them into little glass containers. They were likely studying it, the same as your clan was. The thought of everything you could learn, all the stories they can tell, makes you giddy.

You can’t help yourself. You swim forward, imagining yourself floating in the water, and imagine that you are not there, impossible to find like a single grain of sand. Magic washes over you, hiding you from all eyes but the planet’s. 

You run your hands over the deep-diving ship, colored in rich reds and deep grays, highlighted with strips of white. The seams where the metal connects are nearly invisible, making it look like one single sheet molded to perfection. You can hear the idle rumble of its thrusters, keeping it in place, the hum of electricity lighting up the inside. There’s a handle on the back, likely leading to the cabin, but you can’t figure out how to open it. You try pulling on it, but it won’t move. The humans had probably locked it to keep this very thing from happening.

You shrug, and move on. There was an open box the humans had left on the sand, the shiny white material gleaming in the light, calling to you like a siren. You roll around a glass container in your hand, a copy of the ones the smaller human was using. You slip a finger inside, having to repress a pleased chitter at how nice and smooth the glass is. Even Sharon couldn’t make glass as uniform as this. You try to pull your finger out and— dang it. You frantically tug at the tube, hoping the humans won’t turn around and see their equipment dancing in the air. It comes free after you shrink your finger, and you drop it back into the box. 

(This is not your most embarrassing moment. No, that title would be taken by an incident a few years prior, the last time you interacted with a human. You’d been just as surprised to see her as she was to see you as she tipped over the edge of the railing. The two of you introduced yourselves with a forehead-to-forehead collision, and as you fell back into the water, some of your blood got into her mouth. The human fell unconscious for several reasons, including, but not limited to: the aforementioned collision, the low temperature of the water, the shock of seeing a merman, and the fact that only you were built to withstand all the information in your mind. You used your magic to safely lift her back onto the deck and alert her crewmates that she was in trouble, before turning tail and fleeing.

She was famous now, for making… something, and currently in the midst of a midlife crisis. Asuka would never let you live it down if he knew.)

You pick up another tool, this one a small but wickedly sharp blade with a long handle. It cuts cleanly through the skin of your palm when you test it. One thing you’ve observed in humans is that they seem to have two constants across all cultures: sharp objects and fermented things. You accidently bump into the box as you move closer to get a better look at another tool, but pay it no mind.

Until the small human shines their light in your direction. 

You’ve been rumbled. Slowly, so as to not disturb the water, you swim to your left. The humans sign to each other before approaching the box, probably trying to figure out why everything had been moved. It only occurs to you now that it probably would’ve been a good idea to put the humans’ tools back where you found them.

Your magic was heavy. Dark. It was too big for you, and some days you had to hide away in your den and resist the urge to claw your skin off to relieve the pressure. You can’t remember what it was like before the universe whispered all its dirty secrets to you in The Cave. You had to learn, through trial and error, how to tuck it away, fold it up so it didn’t weigh down on everything around you, hurting your clan and frightening the fish. 

Your focus also wasn’t the best, especially when you were excited or multitasking. Like now.

It slips free for only a moment, but the scavengers tearing into the carcass flee, an ancient, unspeakable terror injecting adrenaline into their veins. The humans don’t notice the commotion, so they likely can’t hear in those full-body clothes of theirs. When they turn back around, they do notice the sudden absence at what should be a never-ending party.

As if struck by lightning, the humans burst into movement, frantically finishing their earlier work and stuffing their equipment back into its boxes. Both humans keep looking over their shoulders, trying to see what predator had scared the scavengers away. They’re never going to find it, and you hang upside down making faces at them. Only the larger human looks anywhere close to your direction, but something was different with them.

Magic didn’t come as naturally to humans as it did to your kind. They had mastered a form of it, in their manipulation of electricity and sound waves, but everything else remained in their stories. They did not believe it was real, and so to them it wasn’t. In most cases, the human just wouldn’t notice magic being used unless it was being used on them. But sometimes, a few would, either believing it was real in some form or descended from a magic wielder. They would prick up like crabs, a feeling of wrongness crawling down their backs like parasites, searching out the disturbance.

(A third option, that you had not considered because you did not realize you were the last to know about the humans, was that the human had been given magic. Not much, barely a drop, but enough to get it running through the veins, letting the body learn about it, recognize its use. Had you focused, had you looked closer, you would’ve noticed the human’s left eye had threads of gold in it, like a coin.)

The humans pile into their short ship, and you follow after them. Where there were one or two humans, there were always more. That was a guarantee, you told a young Asuka. There wasn’t much you worried about, but the thought of harm coming to him was too much to bear. He had been so small, then, barely able to wrap his tentacles fully around your waist as you carried him around. Ah, they grow up so fast!

You shake your head to get yourself back on topic.

Humans traveled in groups, and the larger the ship, the larger the crew. They tasted awful, you stressed. And it was always a big production if a mer got spotted. The one who saw you would start screaming, so you pull him into the water to shut him up, but then his friends notice and start screaming too, so you had to deal with them as well. Then more humans would come to figure out what had happened to the last group, and it was one big old drama that wasn’t even worth it, because you’d dropped your new favorite pocket watch in the commotion and you couldn’t go back to get it because of the ships scouring the water trying to find you and kill you—

Anyway. That had been a few centuries ago. They were probably friendlier now, if they were coming down here willingly. 

The ship was fast, but with your magic, you were easily able to keep up with it, your markings warming from its continued use. It travels straight north, into a field of electricity, pockets connected by cables and wires like one big nervous system. And then it came into view.

Another thing about humans is that they never stayed very long. The cables and pipes they laid across the sea floor were abandoned upon their completion and even the structures they built above the waves were soon emptied. But this… this looks like a home. And a home is where humans stayed.

A set of lights flick on, and you block your eyes with your arm, ending your pursuit. The ship vanishes under a piece of the home, but that doesn’t matter now. That was just one krill, and now you’ve found the whole school.

A joyful chitter bubbles out of your chest, and you circle the home in tight circuits to get the excited energy out. It wouldn’t do if the larger human came out and tried to chase you off because you couldn’t keep your magic in check. But it wasn’t really a home, was it? A home was, by definition, where something lived; your den, a bird’s nest, a human’s house, all places where they lay down to rest, all unique. This place was not built like a house, couldn’t if it was meant to survive down here. Human housing tended to not have laboratories and medical bays, unless the trends had changed. 

The facility was built almost entirely in shades of gray with splashes of black and white. Good for camouflage, but still, how drab! The only spots of color outside were the orange wheels on what you assumed to be the entrances, and twilight-blue lettering on the side of the dock. You light up your fingertips, hovering over the letters, and they glow purple in the light. The humans hadn’t entirely lost their sense of taste then, good.

Dynamene Underwater Research Facility. You think you met her one time.

You swim up to one of the rooms with a long window, peering inside. The walls were foamy white and the floor was a speckled blue, like they’d been throwing around globs of dye. There were more signs of life here, each human that lived within leaving a trail behind, proving to the world that they were here, that they existed. More blocky letters were painted on the walls, directions it seems, and on the doors as well. But there were strings of light on those walls too, papers with text too small for you to read pinned to them. One of the doors had been painted with round, orange shapes that you were pretty sure are vegetables with angular faces. A human tradition, perhaps? Like how surface mers decorated shells at the beginning of the cold months to ward off bad fortune.

There wasn’t anyone in the room, and you couldn’t see any recording devices nearby, so you let your invisibility drop. You spend a few minutes squinting at the papers on the walls, trying to read them. From the few that have larger text, they appear to be… short stories? Not grand adventures or heart-to-hearts, more like Slayer’s haiku. How dandy!

A human walks into the room, carrying a matte purple container. Purple bag, purple clothes, purple studs in their ears, you were sensing a theme. Cute! The human fumbles their container, and you swiftly swim out of sight as they spin around to catch it. You peer over the edge of the roof, invisible once more. The human is staring out the window where you once were, blinking in confusion.

You’ve found your new protagonist.

You exit your den, and swim downwards, then to the left. Dead branches form an arch around a cave opening, ropes with shells hanging from them, inscribed with every word and symbol they know for danger, stay away. You stare at the entrance to The Cave, and its pitch black waters stare back.

You head inside.

Even for you, the guardian, the chosen vessel of the world’s knowledge, the pressure sits heavy on your chest, squeezing your bones. The tunnel leading to The Cave is long and winding, so dark you can feel it, thick and cloying as it clings to your scales. The darkness does not want you here, but it also doesn’t want you to leave. Your symbiotes curl close around your roots, knowing that they will never find you again if they lose their grip. You cannot see, and so let your magic guide you forward, following the thread from your broken heart to the heart of The Cave.

You pass an unseen threshold, and light bursts to life all around you. Transparent flowers bloom as you swim past them, long and crinkled petals dancing in a breeze they will never see. Algae sparkles in all colors like I-No’s combs, racing out like it was rolling out the moss for your arrival. You pluck a glowing berry from a vine on the ceiling, taking a curious bite. Yep, still gross. You feed it to your symbiotes.

You curl around a stalagmite, pressing your horns to the cold rock.

I’m here.

The lights pulse, and Mother sends a current to brush against your cheek. The pressure on your chest lessens, songs in countless languages whispering past your ear fins.

It would be so easy to never leave. But you think of your clan, and of the humans and all you can learn from them, and find the will to resist.

You hold your hands in front of you, palms facing each other, and curl your fingers in a wave-like motion. A bubble of oxygen builds between your hands. You bring it over your head, and slowly drag your hands down, stretching the bubble to your torso. You lean over to the side, coughing out the water in your primary lungs.

You take a breath of fresh air for the first time in a decade.

“Hey there,” you try, and it sounds like two plates grinding against each other at a transform boundary. You’re going to need more practice. “I’m…”

What would be an adequate translation? What words in English could possibly convey the meaning of your name? You send out a thought, and The Cave presses one into your mind, squirming and free, always changing.

Ooh, that’s good.

You test out how it feels to speak. “Happy Chaos.”

You like it.

Raven finds you there, hours later, still working on how to introduce yourself. It was rare for him to come down here; he must’ve been looking for you for a while.

With the bubble, you two can’t hear each other all that well, so you sign, ‘Need something?’

‘Can you teach me?’

You blink. An odd request from him, but you were never one to turn down your children when they wanted to learn something from you. Half the time they were trying to avoid your lessons. Maybe Raven’s finally made a friend?

You throw out your hands, and the bubble expands. I-No drags you out two days later.

You do not need to eat as often as your clanmates, so you spend much of your time observing the base, watching the humans’ day to day work, and making heart eyes at your protagonist. Each human has a different job, a different focus; there’s no singular goal they’re working towards. A very tall human (with… a bag over their head? Human fashion trends are weird ) studies live fish while a blue haired one studies small containers of seawater. Your human spends much of their day watching a machine or making notes on glossy papers.

Unlike the large human, yours does not leave the facility often. You’re at a bit of a loss on how to establish communications with them. Cornering them while they’re alone might frighten them, but so would randomly appearing in the window. You’ve let yourself be seen in glimpses, darting out of view of the windows, and so far they haven’t rallied the troops, so you figure they aren’t very scared of you. If they are, it’s because they don’t know who you are or what you’re after.

You lay yourself on the roof of a room on the southern side of the facility. The southern wall and part of the roof had been replaced with glass, tall enough that you could touch the tip of your tail to the bottom and your head wouldn’t reach the top. You press your ear fin to the metal, and imagine that it extended through to the other side. The room was mostly quiet, save for the scratch of pen on paper and the clicks and whirrs of the machines. You wait with a rare patience for the other humans to leave, trickling out one by one until your protagonist is alone. You hear their footsteps approach the window.

You crawl down the side of the building invisibly, righting yourself once you reach the bottom. The human had their arms folded across their chest, gazing out into the dark sea longingly. Your heart is pounding, and you feel like you’ve plunged from the surface to the sea floor while holding your breath.

You were never one to think things through, were you?

Your invisibility falls away from the top down, and you take care to make sure your markings are hidden. Don’t want to overwhelm them. You flick your tail, centering yourself in the window. The human’s eyes snap up to you.

You press your hands to the glass, chittering, eyes hungrily roving over their body. They were even prettier up close, and had a little dot near their left eye, like one of your spots. They can’t hear you, so you wave a hand in greeting, and attempt a smile. You didn’t quite understand why humans saw baring one’s teeth as friendly, but when in an atoll, as they say.

The human trips over their feet and runs for the door.

You look through every window of the facility, making several laps, but your protagonist is nowhere to be found. A red haired human walks into the heart of the facility, where you assume the dens are, but there are no windows there for you to follow. The other humans look very concerned when they return alone. The redhead ventures out again, this time holding a large plate of food, and that concern morphs into dejection when they return empty handed again.

You have to fix this. How? Maybe if you just explain...

You first attempt to get inside the dock. You can hear water inside when you press your ear fin to it, so you won’t have to worry about drying out. However, the metal was completely smooth, with no easily discernible means to open it from the outside, which seems like an oversight on the humans’ part.

You then try one of the entrances with the orange wheels. You’ve seen some wheels that have to be pulled out first before they turn, so you tug at it with your hands, and then your teeth. It doesn’t budge. You awkwardly brace your tail on the underside of the wheel and pull on the right side, and mostly succeed in nearly yanking your arms from their sockets. You try the left side. How strong were these humans?! You run your hands over the flat metal, looking for any hidden buttons or levers, and find none. 

You could use your magic to rip the darn thing open, but for once you don’t follow that impulse. It would only scare them further. The waters are freezing, and for once it doesn’t comfort you.

Your protagonist does not leave the facility that week, or the week after, or the one after that. They keep their head low to the ground and jump at every shadow passing by the windows. It makes your heart ache.

You keep your ear fins pressed to the metal, listening, learning. In the rare times you aren’t stalking the facility you’re in your den or The Cave, sanding down the briney edges of your voice into something more human-like. You obsess over the way they shape their words, harsh and round, smooth and sharp. 

When even that fails to keep your attention, you investigate their recording devices and the other machines outside the facility. You try to sneak in a few more times, but the wheels refuse to turn, and you wouldn’t know how to open the dock’s doors if they closed behind you.

You must look like a poison-drunk dolphin to your clanmates right now. You’re pretty sure Asuka’s started to follow you, but you can never be too sure. He’s always been the best at hiding, even without taking advantage of his transparency. You had to ban hide and seek because he’d never be found unless he wanted to be, and you lost count of the times you swam around in a panic, thinking you lost him.

You do your best to keep out of sight, waiting for the anchor to drop, but it never does. It seems your protagonist hasn’t told anyone about you, and it gives you a sliver of hope that you hadn’t mucked everything up. 

A few days after the beginning of a new moon cycle, you’re on your way to the facility when Asuka meets you halfway.

“Hey, kiddie. What’cha doin’ out here?” you ask. Honestly, you were expecting to see him out here sooner, elbows deep in a machine to figure out how it worked, trying to replicate its effect with magic.

“One of the short ships appears to be heading to the surface. Would you follow it for me, Teacher? I’d do it myself, but I promised I-No I would help her with something later.”

This is a distraction if you’ve ever seen one. Your birthday has already passed, so you figure there’s a celebration you forgot about coming up.

“Eh, why not?” you shrug. “Had nothin’ else planned, anyhow.”

You part ways, and head up, easily finding the short ship. It was rather large, nearing a halfway point between the long ships and short ships you’ve seen. Oddly, there was only one human inside, which was—

Oh, that little stinker. You can’t believe you forgot about your clan’s matchmaking attempts a century back.

You trail behind the short ship at a fair distance as it slowly ascends. Riding the current, which seems oddly insistent on pushing you forward, you squint as sunlight begins to pierce the water. Blech. There was a reason you didn’t come up here often.

You pop your head up once the ship breaches the surface, only to dive right back down. Your distant cousin Baiken was here, on an above-water ship, and your last meeting had not gone well. She had sacrificed her eye to live on land, and the envy had nearly turned your scales green. Mother loved each and every one of her creations, and was reluctant to let any of them go, but she wouldn’t keep them somewhere they didn’t want to be. It was an option you would never have, changed by The Cave as you were.

You don’t think you can speak to her yet. You hope that wind spirit of hers is treating her well.

Baiken passes several crates to your protagonist, and they hand her smaller boxes in turn. An exchange of supplies? Humans ate a lot, but they never hunted the fish near the facility, so you suppose their food had to come from somewhere.

Once Baiken leaves, you wait until she nears the horizon before you move closer to the short ship again. You create a bubble of oxygen, expelling the water in your lungs. You take a deep breath of air and nearly choke it right back out when the short ship begins to move.

You hold your breath, smacking the side of the ship with your tail. It stops, and you thrust your arm into view of the window, pointing up. The ship rises once more, but you find yourself unable to follow it. What if…?

The current pushes you. Go.  

Geez, everyone was sticking their noses into your love life now.

Your eyes poke out of the water. You rescind your earlier distaste for sunlight; your human was gorgeous in the afternoon light. They don’t move, watching you warily, hands clutching their clothes in a white-knuckled grip. You swim forward, slowly, carefully, like you did when Asuka was still a pup, watching them right back. They were unarmed. They were alone. So were you.

You grab onto the short ship, pulling your mouth above the water. Your protagonist straightens their spine, and holds out a hand. “Hello there,” they say. Their voice was pretty too. “My name is Daryl. What’s yours?”

You take their hand. It’s almost comically smaller than yours. Your claws catch on the scratchy material of their glove. You should probably trim them soon, they were getting kinda long anyway. You stare at your joined hands. What were you supposed to do again? You shake Daryl’s hand once, remembering what you had seen them and a brown haired human do.

“Chaos,” you rasp. Daryl smiles at you, and you smile back. This time, they stay.