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Not a single ray of light penetrates the dark clouds above. Rain pours from them in endless cascades, hailing down like whiplashes on anyone brave or foolish enough to face it. Grey waves crash against the small ship, the water encroaching on it as if it's trying to catch it in its grasp – the vessel reduced to a mere toy at the mercy of the ocean’s whims. Despite seemingly endless storms lining the horizon like a foreboding omen, the entire team of researchers was called to gather on deck, forcing them to brave the onslaught of elements.
Sachi clings to the railing as if her life depends on it, her knuckles stark white against her tan skin where she desperately clings to the freezing metal. She knew what she signed up for when she joined the team after finishing her degree in marine biology magna cum laude – but actually experiencing the weather conditions this far out at sea for the first time is a different story. She clutches her raincoat tighter – as if she isn’t already drenched from head to toe. A meager comfort, but it serves its purpose of keeping her nerves calm and her dinner in her stomach.
Someone, somewhere, shouts something, but the words are lost to the howling wind. A person to her right shouts something back, and Sachi picks up on the words ‘fin’ and ‘tracker’.
Ah. Have they finally found it…?
A net is pushed into her hands, a net made for this exact moment, this exact purpose. Thick titanium mesh, reinforced with carbon fiber and attached to an industrial crane that could lift a whale if it comes down to it. A setup crafted to be able to restrain even a leviathan class mer.
The mer they have come to study isn’t even classified as a leviathan, which makes the implications of their countless precautions all the more terrifying.
Sachi hears someone scream to her left – or was it from the right again? Multiple people are pointing at something in the waters now, mouths open in shock and awe. She lets her eyes follow to where they point, spotting a faint, blue glow in the waters – her breath stutters, and so does her heart. One blink and it’s gone, just to reappear again. It’s closer to the boat now, the glow having doubled in intensity. With a shaky breath, Sachi closes and opens her eyes again.
It's right in front of her now.
No, not It.
Him.
Glowing blue eyes right below the water's surface lock with hers. A predator homing in on its prey. The water surface breaks, a humanoid head emerges, brilliant blue framed by snow-white strands, wet and clinging to his face. Rows of sharp razors are twisted into the facsimile of a smile, as if he was copying the way a human grin, without understanding the meaning behind the expression. His gaze never breaks, and paranoia washes over her. The creeping feeling that there are eyes all around her, watching her, tracking her; she fully understands how the codename Six Eyes came to be.
She suddenly feels trapped on this tiny ship, with nowhere to run or hide. It fills her with dread, her heart threatening to lurch out of her chest – she hadn’t even noticed her pulse go up until it was already thundering in her ear. She’s heaving now, bitterness backed up in the back of her throat. For a second her mind wanders, wonders - Can he smell her fear? She can’t look away. He’s going to eat her if she does. She’s cold. Don’t look away. She wants to go home. Don’t look away- Don’t look away don’t look away d o n ‘ t l o o k a w a y-
Sachi blinks. He’s gone.
She doesn’t know if she can breathe a breath of relief yet, holding on to it for a few more seconds when suddenly a loud thump makes the whole boat jump. The aftershock of the impact makes it quake, the metal hull groaning like a wounded beast in pain.
She feels a tug on the net, people at the ready to throw it at the creature that so easily turned the tables from being hunted into being the hunter. Someone pushes in-between her and the person next to her; team leader Kanegawa, she recognizes. He has a shock-harpoon mounted on his shoulder, a tool they had brought to hopefully slow the creature down. Barbaric, desperate.
A pale dorsal fin splits the waters apart, shimmering in the sparse light like a ghost coming to haunt them. Multiple people take aim with their harpoons. Sachi closes her eyes. She faintly hears the electrified hooks whirring through the air, but there is no sign of them hitting their mark when she opens her eyes again.
“Shit.” Kanegawa curses next to her before the ship violently shakes again. A white silhouette appears in the murky water, emerging from underneath them, and her eyes widen at the scale of the beast. It’s larger than any orca mer she has ever seen, gliding through the waters like the ocean’s wrath given a specter's shape. Pale death with fins and claws. Dangerous, Lethal. Mesmerizing.
It all happens so fast; Kanegawa shouts a command and in a desperate attempt, they all collectively throw the net into the water the second the beast has to slow down for a turn. The pale shadow fades into the dark depths, followed by the net sinking deeper and deeper, until the rope attached to the crane is pulled taut. The crew holds a collective breath, waiting for a sign of their success - or even failure - any reaction from below.
Suddenly, the rope starts moving erratically. Perhaps it is only a fiction of Sachi’s tired mind, but it looks like the crane itself was bowing its head to the sheer force fighting against its pull, somewhere deep down in the waters below.
There is barely any time for them to catch their breaths; immediately, new commands are issued, filled with renewed morale. The crane screams in agony as it reels in their catch. A dorsal fin breaks the water, followed by arms with sharp claws trying to rip through the mesh, to no avail. The fins attached to the elbows have become entangled in the net, keeping them restrained in an awkward angle. The tail, bent into a curve, angrily slams against its unrelenting confines. The smile was gone, replaced by a raw, feral snarl, a silent threat for any that dare come closer.
Kanegawa raises an arm, a person takes aim with a tranquilizer gun. It was nothing short of a miracle that they actually managed to capture the Six Eyes, the fact that the object of their studies is now basically in their grasp still a surreal feeling. A tracker and a few blood samples – what was a routine for other cases has turned into six months of playing cat and mouse with a creature that some people believed to be a mere legend.
But here it is, a legend given flesh, so very real and corporeal, suspended in the air right in front of them. Muscles rippling under pale skin, wild, untamed, dangerous, beautiful.
Sachi can’t take her eyes off of the mer, only stares in wonder, eyes sliding down its massive, writhing size and – what is that?
Something so small it is almost entirely hidden away by the orca mer’s size wriggles free. Flippers and a trail of short, pink fur riding up a small figure's back. The tiny creature looks ruffled, shivering and clinging to the much bigger mer. Is that… a leopard seal mer? Perhaps Six Eyes had been hunting the seal prior to their encounter, and the poor thing had simply been unfortunate enough to get caught up in their attempts at restraining him. A victim of the circumstances, one could say.
It looks young, a juvenile that has just barely outgrown the tufts of baby fur, darker spots sprouting on its back. But it’s face betrays its age – jaded and littered with scars, the most prominent ones being one in the corner of its mouth and one right through one of its eyebrows.
Sachi was too caught up with its presence, too preoccupied with how it even got there in the first place to notice the shift in its expression. The instantaneous change from flight to fight, the shivers mistaken as a sign of fear when in reality, it was adrenaline-fueled aggression, barely contained by its small frame.
Sachi feels the bite before she can see it. Sharp teeth dig into her skin, ripping out a chunk of flesh as if it was sawblades cutting through it. Blood trickles down her hand, the tiny beast having bitten into her lower arm. It doesn’t stick to her for long, already lunging at its next victim; a flurry of peach-blossom pink and carnage indiscriminately attacking anything on sight.
One by one, the entire crew is forced to back off, lest they risk getting hurt or hurting the small seal on accident.
Time seemingly stands still. The mer has fought itself to the through the deck, leaving as good as none of the crew members unharmed. The lucky ones tend to their bleeding wounds, a crimson trail painted on the ground where they are standing, swaying. But the few less fortunate ones are curled up on the ground in a pool of their own blood, fighting for each breath they take as the warmth seeps from their arteries laid bare in a bed of mangled, torn flesh.
The seal mer has built itself up right in front of where the Orca now lays still in its confines and silently watches. Its small body is shaking from how violently it growls, bloody teeth bared as a warning that it will finish what it has started if pushed any further. For it to attack them so viciously, to fight so desperately, as if it was...
She gasps, and judging from the quiet reactions all around it seem that many others have come to the same conclusion. Out of the corner of her eye Sachi sees Kanegawa raise his arms in surrender. Blood slowly trickles down from his temple, where the creatures’ claws left behind fissures that will surely scar. After a few seconds he quietly gestures for everyone to drop their weapons.
“We don’t want to harm you.” He says with a calm voice, each word articulated slowly, clearly.
The mer did not stop snarling, but the subtle twitch of its ears implied that it understood their words - though to what degree it is capable of doing so is unclear.
“Not your enemy.” He tries again, using even simpler words. He moves a step closer, flinching when the snarling turns into an aggressive hiss, a final warning. Kanegawa looks around, looks at the wounded and the uncertainty in their eyes. The unposed question in the air is met with the shaking of multiple heads; There is no way they can continue operations as is, the seal mer too much of an uncalculated risk to them and itself.
“We’ll set Six Eyes- We’ll set your friend free. You can go.”
The seal mer doesn’t relax in the slightest, body tense like a spring that is about to snap. Suddenly, a low rumble fills the air. Six Eyes had propped himself up, his intense gaze fixed on the tiny mer. To the crew members it was a display of dominance, one that commands respect and makes them buckle their knees on instinct; but to the little seal, it has the opposite effect, its tiny body visibly relaxing. It’s still snarling, but in a volume and intensity that leaves room for reasoning.
Kanegawa hesitantly nods towards the person standing closest to the crane. Said man audibly gulps, the noise impossibly loud against the winds trying to swallow it. He moves towards the control panel, causing the growling to flare up again.
“No hurting. We’ll free him.” Kanegawa quickly intercepts, before the seal can decide to resume its murderous spree. It works, at least to the degree that the small creature becomes dead silent, though its wary eyes never straying from the man.
With sweaty hands, the man pushes a few buttons on the control panel, causing the crane to stir again, the net rapidly lowering into the water with a whirr. With another encouraging nod from Kanegawa he pushes one last button, a blade cutting the rope, finalizing their attempt at capturing their subject ultimately as a failure.
In the blink of an eye, the seal mer is gone, diving after its friend without sparing the crew any more attention. Sachi staggers to the railing, hoping to catch one last glimpse at the strange duo, which has already disappeared into the depths.
“Was it really the right decision to let him go…?” She asks under her breath. Kanegawa joins her, gaze cast at the sea.
“We might not have been able to achieve what we came for, but this encounter just opened up a whole new area in our studies.”
Sachi is inclined to agree. She can’t wait to document this strange and new interspecies interaction, already laying out theories in her head.
Satoru huffs. It must have been hours since their encounter with the humans, but Yuji has refused to let go of him ever since they had untangled him from their net. They had retreated into a small cove they have long since claimed for themselves, hidden away by a rock formation and the every-changing scenery of ice drifting by.
Satoru had cradled Yuji in his arms, pulling him on top of a rock with him and comforting him by running his claws through the still-bloody fur on his back. The pup had leaned into the comfort, but at this rate he might dig a hole into the bigger mer’s abdomen from how insistent he is on nuzzling into it.
“Yuji… It’s okay now.” He murmurs, pressing his nose into the pink fluff of hair. Yuji doesn’t reply, only whimpers, nuzzling even deeper.
“I won’t ever let them bully you again…”
His promise is quiet, muffled. But it reaches Satoru’s ears.
“It’s my fault I got careless-“
“No.” Yuji interrupts him vehemently. “No! They weren’t playing fair! They shouldn’t come to play with you if they don’t play by the rules!”
He looks up at him with big, brown eyes, his round face pulled into a pout. Satoru pets his hair, sighing. What a troublesome child. He wouldn’t trade it for anything else, even if it sometimes feels like Yuji makes it hard for Satoru not to devour him on purpose…
Hunger has never been an issue for an apex predator like himself. Even among his kind he is considered an anomaly, from the tips of his snow-white hair to the tip of ghostly pale tail; every fiber of him was designed by nature to be different, to be shunned, to be feared.
An unrivaled hunter, the strongest.
So no, hunger is not a concept familiar to him. Instead, he is a being consumed by ravenous appetite.
It dominates his nature, his body and mind. Even this little creature he now soothingly rocks back and forth in his lap is merely a result born from his selfish whims.
He had been hunting on that day, as he did on any day of his life, driven by the desire to feast.
It doesn’t take long for him to spot his next target, a kingly banquet served on a silver platter; a small group of young leopard seal mer resting atop a big ice floe, most of them still covered in soft baby-fur and guarded by a single adult. They have the luxury of feeling safe - when it comes to these waters, leopard seals are second only to orcas after all. Small apex predators in their own right, shaped by nature to turn every inch of their tiny bodies into effective killing machines.
Luckily for him they haven’t noticed him yet, unaware of death encroaching on their little respite. Fat and lazy, they rub their bellies, just recently having sated themselves on a school of fish. Satoru’s jaw unhinges itself at the mere thought of ripping the warm, chubby flesh off of them.
When he strikes, it’s like thunder splitting the skies in two. What usually takes a pod of orcas, Satoru does alone; a single lash of his tail creating a subsurface wave that breaks the ice into pieces, startling the seals from what was supposed to be a well-earned rest. Immediately, the mother of the pack herds the young together, urging them towards the water in a desperate attempt at an escape.
Satoru watches them run with a smug grin – he loves a good chase! – when something caught his eyes. An unusual color, a splotch of pink he had mistaken for the blood of their prey spilled on the ice. But a blood spill would not be trying to scramble away.
He lurks closer with only his eyes sticking out above the water, already paying no mind to the rest of the group escaping him. The pink shape sharpens into what could only be another seal pup, albeit one with an unusual color. Like him. But where he has been able to use his traits to perfect his hunting technique amidst ice and snow, this creature could only be considered a mistake by evolution, dyed in a color unfit for hiding or stalking, destined to die sooner rather than later.
He pulls himself atop the ice. The pup doesn’t appear to notice him, despite the ice floe tilting under his weight. It has curled up into a shivering ball, and even as Satoru gets close enough to basically breathe down its neck, it doesn’t seem to even try to run. It’s as if it doesn’t have a spark of self-preservation in its body, a pitiful heap of misery, cowering with its hands over its head.
Satoru picks it up by the scruff of its neck, and only then did some life return to the tiny thing, limbs spurring into desperate motion with a high-pitched wail. It tries to kick up a fight, a futile attempt given that its not-yet developed claws uselessly bounce off Satoru’s tough hide without leaving even a single scratch. How boring.
He opens his maw, ready to put a quick end to its struggle. But instead of getting even more desperate, its attempts at freeing itself die down. Faced with its inescapable end, the young pup has decided not to fight any more, and yet something burns in its eyes, ferocious and unbending, challenging the much bigger mer with its defiant glare. It reminds Satoru of something from the past. A fragment of a much younger him. Outcast. Driven by spite. The will to live, the will to grow stronger.
An unfamiliar feeling takes hold of Satoru. Curiosity. The overwhelming desire to know overtaking the ravenous desire to feed. A little bundle of pink, a color so counterproductive for survival, left behind by its own pod, neither claws nor fangs to fend for itself. As if nature itself has forsaken its existence.
He grabs the pup by the chin, noticing how he could reach around its neck with one hand. He feels the searing pulse racing under his fingers. Warm and alive. He turns its head from one side to the other, and although its eyes never break contact with his, it lets him. Dangling, in his grasp, at his mercy.
Satoru’s hand slams down, the ice cracking like a spiderweb where the pup crashes into it. The impact forces all the air out of its small lungs in sputtered, broken-up gasps. And still it looks back at him, eyes just barely spotted with shock, but otherwise unharmed. Satoru doesn’t intend to give it any time to catch its breath, slamming it into the ground again. And again. And again and again and again until dark spots bloom on its fur and a streak of red soaks its face. The blood suits it, Satoru hazily notices, high on the thrill of violence. No matter how much Satoru tries to hurt it, and he really did try, it came out practically unscathed. Like a durable little plaything for him to enjoy.
The pitiful thing is trembling in his hold, a bodily reaction that betrays the fire in its eyes - A sense of dignity at such a young age. Satoru brings his face closer to the pup’s, noticing how it flinches away when his sharpened teeth part. But instead of closing them around the seal’s neck, his tongue darts out, dragging across its bloodied face. The rich, tangy taste of copper, snow and fear on his tongue is addicting, making him dip down his head again to sample more of it.
As meticulously as a mother grooming its child, Satoru finishes cleaning the pup of any proof of its beat up state from before. It looks even cleaner now compared to before he got to it, although its fur has been tousled into an unruly mess. The fire in its eyes has been reduced to smoldering embers, eyebrows furrowed in surprise as if this was the unfamiliar with the act of grooming.
Satoru hums contemplatively, the seal answers with a chirp. He is taken aback by how innocent of a noise it was, the kind that he would expect from a child calling for its mother. Small hands cup Satoru’s face, making his heart skip a beat. The touch was careful, tender, trusting, and so utterly foreign of a sensation to a creature like Satoru that has only known fear and violence. Foreign, but not unpleasant. Like finding a piece of himself that he didn’t know he had been missing.
His mind makes a decision that his heart had already been decided on.
“You. What’s your name.”
The pup blinks at him, and for a good few seconds Satoru suspects that it might have been shunned by its peers to the point of being unable to understand neither words nor the concept of names.
“Yuji” it squeaks, almost too quiet for Satoru to hear.
“Yuji…” Satoru repeats louder, trying the name on his tongue and rejoicing at how pleasant it feels. “Yuji, Yuji…!”
He presses the tiny bundle to his chest, hoping it can feel the swell of his heart beneath his skin and nuzzling his face into the mop of pink hair.
“My name is Satoru.” He inhales deeply, taking in the underlying scent of youthful innocence.
“And from today on we’ll always be together” He whispers, a promise.
Satoru drowsily blinks the sleep from his eyes. Somewhere in-between cuddling and cooing words of comfort to Yuji, he must have fallen asleep. Faintly, he remembers having dreamt about the past.
Yuji lies curled up on top of him, his small body rising and falling in long, even breaths. He too must have fallen asleep.
For a few moments, Satoru just lies there, not wanting to wake him up. But as if he had sensed the bigger mer’s inner conflict, the tiny bundle chirps softly, stretching his body with a sleepy yawn. Ever so gently, not to startle him awake with a shock, Satoru cards his fingers through Yuji’s soft, pink hair, watching as he blinks just as drowsily as Satoru had done just earlier. The second he’s fully awake his attention snaps to Satoru, brown eyes fixed on him as if he might disappear if he looks away.
“Good morning sleepy head” Satoru coos while brushing an unruly pink strand of hair from his face. “Had a nice nap?”
The question must have struck a nerve, because suddenly, Yuji’s face turns into a sour pout. “I had a dream where they took you away from me…”
‘They’…? Ah, he must refer to the humans on the ship. An unfortunate situation born from a moment of inattentiveness. Satoru had been curious about what they are up to, so he didn’t immediately rip their flimsy net to shreds. But Yuji didn't realize that he had never been in any real danger, making him panic for nothing. Poor thing – Satoru feels just a tiny bit bad for what happened. Although… Witnessing Yuji’s rampage might have been worth it. Hiss sweet, innocent Yuji, covered in blood and feral to the core. So utterly different from his usual self, almost as if he was possessed by a demon. A face of his that is usually kept inside; pent up rage and savage violence, crawling beneath his skin.
He chuckles, pressing his lips on the seal mer’s small forehead. As if he cares what is hiding inside of him; he’s beautiful as he is. His Yuji, his little mate.
Satoru nuzzles his nose into his hair. Faintly, he can still smell the blood on it.
“As if I would ever let them separate us. I told you, didn’t I? We’ll always be together.”