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It’s a distant memory, now. But Momo clings to it like it’s her lifeline. She was only eight years old, and she had fallen off the luxury ship her parents had decided to take her on for a vacation. Right in the middle of the ocean, in famously shark-infested waters. Momo had been rightly terrified by the arrangement, kicking and screaming for someone, anyone, to help. She’s pretty sure she punched a shark in the nose.
A small pink… thing had grabbed her wrist as she flailed in the water. Momo stopped struggling, gasping as she suddenly zoomed across the water. Her eyes widened in shock… it was a mer. With a shimmery pink tail, pink tinted skin, and fluffy pink hair with horns protruding from her head. The mer clicked at her—it took Momo a few seconds to translate it.
Are you bleeding?
Momo coughs, flinching as sea water splashes onto her cold face. “No… I think I punched one, though…” The mer lets out a burst of trills—it sounds like laughter. You’re really pretty, she says. Also pretty smart, if you can speak mer.
“Thanks for asking if I was okay—and for helping me,” Momo says. “I probably would’ve died if you hadn’t done anything,” Momo confesses.
The mer lets out a happy chirp. Happy to help, landlover! Now, where should I leave you?
Momo’s content to just stay on the mer’s back as she is taken across the ocean back to the beach she knows like the back of her hand.
Being a part of a shark mer pod meant in order to prove yourself, you had to fight.
There are many different breeds of mers—not too far from where the shark pod lives, some dolphin mers reside. Dolphin mers are softer, though, nowhere near as hard as shark mers. Shark mers—once they turn twenty winters old, must kill a large sea beast and bring back its spoils. Once the kill has been approved of by the elders, then a that generation of of mers was considered grown up.
Dolphin mers were nothing like that.
Mina screeches, her clicks blasting through the ocean as the Megalodon circles around her and her friend. “Come on!” she groans, spitting out acid from behind her teeth and pulling back her arm, aiming her spear at the Megalodon’s tail.
One of her friends from childhood—Eijirou—smirks as he makes a deep dive in the water and uses his unnaturally sharp teeth to make a bite mark in the Megalodon’s side. This was a runt, which meant it was nowhere near as huge, but a Megalodon was a Megalodon. It had to be dealt with immediately. The Megalodon let out a roar as Eijirou’s sharp teeth pierces its side. Mina immediately aimed for the tender area, spitting on her spear’s tip and throwing it with all her might.
It flew through the water, her aim true, and it struck, hitting deep. Mina blew a kiss towards the Megalodon, and grinned as her acid-dipped spear began to burn its flesh.
“Damn,” Eijirou breathes. “Your mer ability is so cool, Mina!”
“So is yours,” she responds, slightly winded. “I spit acid from weird glands behind my teeth, and you have abnormally hard teeth and a permanent armor of scales. Now, with those teeth of yours, go for its chest. Then I hit, and we split the spoils and we can go back to the pod.”
Eijirou nods, and swishes his tail in the water. “Okay, okay, you got this,” he mutters to himself. “This is going to be epic!”
And so, he charges towards the Megalodon, teeth bared. Eijirou slams into the creature’s chest as hard as he can, and grins wickedly when he sees the rough skin go tender. Eijirou gnashes the skin with his teeth, blood dripping out of the wound. The Megalodon thrashes in pain, and Eijirou is wiping his mouth like mad as he swims back towards Mina.
She pulls out another spear, spits on it, and throws as hard and straight as she can. The spear whizzes through, and hits. A roar echoes through the the sea, and the two podlings watch as the Megalodon slowly dies.
“Pound it,” Eijirou says under his breath. “We’re about to get promoted!”
Mina laughs, and flicks her tail at Eijirou. “We have to wait for it to finish dying. Then we can go back home.”
“I call dibs on the skin!”
The map that was currently on the desk in the Captain’s Quarters essentially serve zero purpose to the group surrounding it. Tenya just finished marking areas near the western shore, and Momo frowns at the blue ink.
“Tenya, why are those there?”
The tallest of the three in Captain’s Quarters—Momo herself, Iida Tenya; the son of a different family of shallow pirates, and Todoroki Shouto; the captain himself—grins like he was just asked a question that would give him access to a chest of gems. His eye glass glistens in the moonlight, and he clasped his hands together.
“You see, Momo,” he began, back straightening and voice going completely professional. “Poacher pirates raided a village in the west just last week. The captain and I have reason to believe this particular set is after a pod of dolphin mers near it. If we stop at these ports, and only a few hours for each,” Tenya pauses for effect. “Then we will reach the dolphin mers before they will.”
Shouto nods, drumming his fingers against the table. “Poacher pirates always head back to the south after a raid.”
Momo sat back, and looked at the map one more time, humming to herself. “Alright,” she says. “Let’s do it. I’ll send a message through the waters. Give me the aquaphone,” she stands from her seat, and looks at the two men before her. Momo rolls her eyes. “Come on, you both know I’m fluent in mer speech.”
The tallest of the three coughs into his hand. “Momo, human’s can’t amplify their speech the same way mers can,” he says. “It will carry, yes, but not very far.”
She pursed her lips. “Fine,” she sighs, resigned. She turns to look at Shouto sharply. “Do your thing, captain,” she crosses her arms. The two men share glances at each other, and nod.
“Alright,” Shouto says, monotone. He steps out onto the dock, and his legs shimmer as they are replaced with a tail of a harbor porpoise. Porpoise mers were rare, and Captain Enji of the ship Endeavor managed to get his hands on one. And through experimentation… constant experimentation… Shouto was born.
He dives into the water, and Momo hears the clicks and hums that he sings into the ocean. Shouto, being a mer, was capable of fully functional mer speech. The language that mers spoke was simply not possible for humans to use. Half-bloods like Shouto, while rare, were the only humans that could speak it perfectly.
Through the hum of the ship, Momo manages to somehow hear Shouto’s clicks, chirps, trills and high-pitched noises of communication, quickly translating them in her mind. Beware of the western shore these upcoming days! Poachers are on the prowl! Warn the pod of dolphin mers!
For some reason, that makes Momo pause. “The pod of dolphin mers” —that implies there were other pods of other mers in the area. She purses her lips; should she say something? Perhaps tell Shouto to extend the message to all pods, instead of just the dolphin one?
A flash of pink scales and horns enter her memory before she blinks.
Momo blinks in shock for a few seconds, before shaking her head, as if to empty it. No, she reasons. Shouto is the captain. He knows what he’s doing. Of course he does—she’s a fool for thinking otherwise. She shakes her head to herself.
Shouto’s tail shimmers before parting into two legs. He climbs onto the ship, the scars where his gills are glimmering until they shut.
“Let’s go,” he says evenly.
Who is Momo to disobey her captain?
The leader of the shark mer pod is a mer named Kan. Most mer pods were the targets of sharks, but being a shark mer pod themselves meant sharks tolerated them. With Kan as their leader, sharks avoided them. He was that threatening.
“Mina, Eijirou,” he rumbles. His red eyes consider the two mers with interest. “I deem you as worthy adults. Your kill of the Megalodon proves your worth to me. You are permitted to leave and create your own pod.” He swims over to them, his gray tail shimmering as the sunlight hits it hazily. With his hand, he forms a lazy L, and presses it to both Mina and Eijirou’s forehead.
Everything is silent, until cheers echo as the two bow to their pod leader. The crowd around dissipates, and both Mina and Eijirou grin at each other.
“I am so going to see Denki,” Eijirou says. Mina giggles.
“That’s the electric eel mer you gotta crush on, huh?” she teases, bumping her hips into his. His face flushes red, before nodding sharply. She laughs out louder. “That’s so cute! You gonna look for abandoned podders and watch out for ‘em?” she inquires. The practice was common for mers who courted the same gender. Abandoned podders were also common; they were runts left to wear by themselves. Mers that wouldn’t develop mer abilities, and remain a relative small size weren’t all that common—around twenty percent of mers were runts—but they were all treated rather horribly.
Mina clicks her tongue. It was always a possibility a baby mer would end up as a runt. Mers who abandoned their children for being smaller and not having powers were monsters and Mina promised herself she would save as many as she could. Mixed pods were more accepted readily now more than ever, anyway.
“That’s the plan,” Eijirou admits softly. “Denki’s pod lives close to a ridge where a lot of them live with each other. It’s kind of sad, I think. They’re just… smaller. And they don’t have mer abilities. It doesn’t make them useless. Having one doesn’t always mean things are great, either,” he grumbles. “A mer ability isn’t going to help you shoot a spear, unless it’s like, honing.”
Mina flutters her tail. Mer abilities were unique but, in the end of the day, they really didn’t make the mer. “I want to find a place, I think. Just a place to chill until a few other mers from the pod also get their kill.”
The two stare at each other, before they rush towards each other, arms wrapping around bodies and squeezing the everloving life out of each other.
“I’m going to miss you, Eiji,” Mina murmurs into Eijirou’s shoulder. Eijirou mumbles a small I’m gonna miss you, too and the two separate, looking at each other one final time before they turn away from each other and swim into the blue unknown.
Mina feels dryness seeping into her eyes, air pockets—bubbles, really—leaking out of her black eyes. The pod was her home for the past seventeen, almost eighteen years of her life, and now she was leaving. She wipes at her air tears, sniffling quietly. She surges further, her tail swishing with her as she swims and cries.
She’s been wiping at the air pockets from her eyes for a good ten minutes. However, she’s due to her crying, she’s distracted from the looming shadow above her.
A zoom whizzes by her ear, interrupting her from her crying. She looks up, and gasps in horror as a large ship teeters on the water. Panicking, she shrieks with all her might: “Poachers! Poachers! Help! Near the leopard shark pod and striped dolphin pods!” she screams, spitting out acid as she swims as fast she can away from the ship. Her voice echoes out in the water, and she knows Eijirou heard her. If he’d come, they could probably get away—
Something—a net?—falls from the ship, and Mina hisses: how DARE they? Obviously they didn’t know her mer ability, and she curls her lip in disdain, spitting out acid as it net gets closer and watching as the net dissolved before it touches her. She swims downward, where it’s darker and the poacher pirates won’t be able to see her. She swims off in the direction Eijirou went, and keeps on shouting: “Stay away from open water, stay with your pods! Poachers near the pods!”
She swims as fast as she can, until all she can see of the ship is the bottom that teeters on the open ocean.
A flash of red zooms by her, and she lets out a sob of relief. “Eiji!” she screams. The mer turns around frantically, and swims right into her, arms wrapping around her tightly.
“Fuck, Mina,” Eijirou says, wheezing. “I heard you—are you okay?”
Mina lets out another sob before wiping her eyes of the air bubbles and spilling out what happened. “I, I wasn’t paying attention, and they tried to shoot me. With a harpoon. And then they tried to catch me with a net, but I spit on it and it dissolved. Then I screamed and swam where it was too dark for them to see. I-I could have died tonight, and that would’ve sucked,” Mina breathes. A few more bubbles trickle from her eyes, but after that, they stop.
Eijirou and Mina hug for a good three minutes, basking in each other’s warmth. Mina opens her eyes, and lets go. She swims back, arms tucked behind her back and she’s taking slow breaths to calm herself down.
A blur of yellow catches her attention, and Mina’s teasing smile returns—albeit watery—and she hip bumps Eijirou. “Is that Denki?” Eijirou nods, and Mina launches herself towards the electric eel mer, back facing where the ship was. “Hey! I’m Mina, and I’ve heard so much about yo—”
A scream interrupts Mina’s introduction, and the world goes black and she’s slumping forward and the last thing Mina hears is the furious clicks that she’s only heard Eijirou make yelling out to stay away from open waters.
Momo is leaning slightly on the edge of the ship, the moon reflecting on the sea beautifully. Taking everything into consideration, she’d gladly give up her life of riches over and over again if it meant being here, where the water is open and the stars sparkle above.
She falls onto the floor when something hits the front of the ship hard. Momo quickly gets back up. She looks down—and gasps. It’s a mer, one with electric blond hair and gold eyes. Their skin is tinted gray, and webbed ears are lined in gold. Sparks of electricity seap off of their body, and their eyes seem almost unhealthily dry. Help, the mer clicks desperately. Poachers. They have my friends!
“Poachers?” she clicks back. Her mer speech isn’t perfect, but she can speak it fluently. The mer looks shocked before nodding fretfully. I know where they are. I can take you to them.
“I need to notify the captain,” she says stiffly. “What’s your name?”
Denki, they respond. Please help.
Momo runs to Captain’s Quarters, and bangs on the door as loud as she can. “Shouto! Poachers have taken mers!”
A loud crash follows, and next thing she knows Shouto and Tenya are exiting the Captain’s Quarters. She raises an eyebrow at them both, but their expressions are carefully controlled. There is absolutely no evidence of anything happening—except the tiniest of marks on Shouto’s neck. Momo has to stifle a laugh, before she remembers how dire this situation is.
“The—they said a ship of poachers took mers,” Momo relays back to Shouto. “Denki!” she calls to the mer. “What kind of mers were they?”
My friends are leopard shark mers, Denki trills back. Eij—one of them said there were two striped dolphin mers on the ship before I stopped being able to hear him. Please help me save them, there’s four. Please, Denki says, head dipping back underwater and swimming as fast they can. Shouto has a hard expression on his face, and sighs.
“We miscalculated. Four mers, dammit! Follow them!” Shouto shouts, and Tenya is already at the wheel, steering where Denki is swimming. It’s hard to miss them—sparks are still coming off of them like beacons to the night. It’s especially hard to miss the trills of Eiji, I’m coming! and Please be safe being choked out of the mer’s throat.
Before long, a ship comes into a view. Momo shouts as loud as she can: “Denki, stand down! We don’t want you get caught as well!”
Shouto’s ship—known as the Iceberg is nearing the ship of poacher pirates. Momo gasps when she sees the helm—it’s the corpse of a mer. “Shit,” she hears Shouto mutter. “It’s the Stain. We need to take them down!” Shouto raises his voice as loud as possible. “Ready the cannons!”
“Shouto, no!” Momo shrieks. “There are mers in there!”
Shouto looks taken aback by her scream, but complies. “Never mind! Don’t shoot!”
The closer the Iceberg gets, the more Momo understands that the mers onboard the Stain don’t need their help as much as they thought..
There are tons of holes dotting where it touches the water, seeping inside and sinking the ship. Denki trills in relief at the sight of red, and at first Momo thinks it’s blood—no, it’s a mer. This one was black hair and a scar over his eye, and he’s muscley. But the way he hugs Denki makes Momo understand—this was more than a friend.
Mina and the dolphins are still inside! The red mer trills out, a desperate screech. She made all the holes, but one of the dolphins is a runt! He’s been bleeding for a long time—he’ll die! The other’s been keeping himself alive by using his mer ability, but he’s going to tire himself out at this rate. We need to save them. Shouto looks resolute, and shimmers into his mer body, diving into the water and swimming as fast as he can. Momo grabs her bow and quiver of arrows, locking on the rope that holds the sails and shoots.
The Stain is a fourth down when a pair of knives whiz by Momo’s head, one nicking her on the ear. She yelps, moving her bow and aiming where the knives came from. She catches a sight of blonde hair, and she narrows her eyes. Momo pulls back an arrow, and aims for the hand she can barely see. She releases, and sighs in relief when it hits its mark. The owner of the hand hisses out curses, and Momo smirks. She pulls back another arrow, preparing for another strike—
“Momo!” Shouto interrupts her shot, and she lets go on impulse, the arrow hitting the wooden ship with a thunk. “He—He’s not stable!”
She moves to the edge, and winces at the sight. A mer—smaller than Denki and the red mer—was in Shouto’s arms. He had scars covered with still-wet blood trailing his arms, and his tail had a small chunk of it near the tip missing. “We need to stop the bleeding. Momo, where’s Tenya?”
“He’s—” she cuts herself off. She catches sight of him on the sinking ship, having a sword battle with what looks like the captain. The captain—Captain Chizome—was known for killing shallow pirates left and right. He often captured mers to lure in these self-proclaimed heroes. Hitoshi! the wounded mer screeches desperately. Hitoshi needs help! He’s going to pass out! And—and the Shallow Killer is going to hurt the landwalker over there! There’s another one!
“How are you still conscious?” Shouto mutters. “Just—just get him some elixirs to heal up. Tenya and I will take care of the Shallow Killer.”
The wounded mer looks ready to argue, but sighs. Fine. Only because I’m injured, he relents. Momo takes the mer from Shouto, placing him on the deck. The mer looks impatient and worried. He lets out a soft chirp— be careful, Shouto! Shouto nods, before diving back in the water and quickly shimmering back into his human form to climb inside the ship. Momo tears her eyes from the scene, and looks down on the mer. She runs to grab a healing potion, coming back as fast as she can. Clearly, this mer was important to Shouto, so...
“You know him?” Momo asks, baffled. The mer flushes green. He’s, ah, my partner! he says. We met a while ago. It’s a long story. When Momo looks back—this mer before her is the very reason Shouto singled out the dolphin pod. His boyfriend was in the dolphin pod. “And Tenya?” Momo asks, wrapping the mer’s arm in bandages. “Do you…” she hesitates. “Know him?” She hopes Shouto isn’t cheating. She hopes this just one big misunderstanding—
Tenya is also my partner, the mer says, flushing harder. Like I said… it’s a long story.
Momo gapes at the mer. My name is Izuku, by the way! You’re Momo, right?
She nods slowly. Izuku beams at her, and takes the elixir she had grabbed. He sips it tentatively, scrunching up his nose at the taste but smiling as his wounds slowly close and the lost piece of his tail regenerates. That kind of elixir took a very long time to make, so Momo prays it was worth it. You should help out the shark mer, Izuku says. She got hit with the knife girl’s blades. I think she’s on the ocean floor, but I can’t be sure. Momo’s eyes widen. “A mer got hit by her knives?”
Shark mer...
Yes, Izuku murmurs, interrupting her from her thoughts. Two mers, in fact. It’s how I got these scars. You should help her, he repeats, before flushing again. The mer! The mer, not the knife girl. Knife girl is beyond help at this point.
That makes Momo laugh. She glances at Izuku, who’s still lying on the deck innocently, before she grabs her underwater goggles and dives. She almost misses the blur of green that jumps off of the boat and into the water above her. Momo almost lets out a gasp, before remembering she’s underwater and can’t afford to waste her breath like that. She ignores the commotion going on above her, and tries her best to see what she can beneath the water.
Something… no, someone pink catches her eye and is swimming quickly towards her. Move!
A mer. A pink mer with horns and a very pretty face. It’s familiar—it’s;
It’s her.
Time seems to slow, even if it’s just a second, because to Momo, it feels like an hour. This mer—beneath the water, Momo can see that she’s pink from head to toe. Shimmery scales glimmer in the moonlight, and she’s fit; Momo can see the ripples of abdominal muscles and it makes her feel funny. This mer has very pretty eyes, black where a human’s is white and gold where the iris should be. It’s very distracting, and it makes Momo feel very illiterate. And it’s the same mer that saved Momo from what would’ve been death.
“Um,” Momo says eloquently. She shakes it off, and smiles at the mer with horns barely trailing the surface. “Are you bleeding?”
No, the mer chirps. I dissolved the knives before they could touch me. You humans shouldn’t treat all mers the same, she huffs. Shark mers and dolphin mers are very different, you know. Anyways! I’m Mina, the mer introduced, shooting Momo a knowing smile. The sight makes Momo smile back.
“And I’m Momo. It’s nice to meet you. Again. Do you, uh, happen to know—”
Momo is promptly interrupted by Izuku launching a very familiar Captain Chizome overboard into the open ocean. Izuku barrels into the water, grinning like a madman. I did it! he yelps, pumping his fist in the air. Shouto, Tenya, send a signal flare! Tenya fumbles with one, but quickly shoots it up and the bright explosion of color.
Hey, pretty lady, Mina trills, the bright flair coloring her pink skin a nice blue, even if only briefly. Momo can only imagine she looks the same. Thanks for asking if I was okay. You’re really nice. You’re also smart, considering you speak Mer.
A flush begins to form on Momo’s face, and the mer smirks and connects her human hands to Mina’s own webbed ones. I think I’d like to see you again, if that’s okay. Momo stares at the hands, one pink and the other not, both wet and both callused. A smile creeps up Momo’s face, and stays there.
“That’s more than okay,” Momo responds, squeezing Mina’s hand.