Finding Andy (Curry)
Danny zips around the massive dark aquarium with a net carefully snatching up all sorts of colourful marine life before going up and gently depositing them in smaller tanks that Sam prepared.
"You do realise this is extremely illegal, right?"
"Taking these poor endangered fish from their homes is extremely illegal. We're righting a wrong here Danny, and you still owe me one"
Danny sighs and goes back down but keeps talking.
"I just don't want to be accused of stealing again"
"Tucker got us covered, we'll be fine. You just keep fishing Danny, I think we're almost done. "
Danny carefully goes through the dark depths of the aquarium again and it's then that he sees a much bigger shape dart away from him.
Sam said this entire thing was filled with poached endangered marine wildlife so everything in it needs to be retrieved. Aka, Danny goes in pursuit.
It takes some doing but eventually Danny gets a hold of it and it's worryingly little girl shaped.
He holds the little girl in front of him and just kinda looks for a second at this squirmy child that can apparently breathe underwater.
"Sam! Sam, holy Fffffffuudge"
"What!? What??"
"There is a baby in the aquarium!" He holds up the squealing little red head who has apparently decided what's happening now is funny actually.
"A baby!?"
"In the aquarium!" He points down at the water.
"Why is there a baby in the aquarium!!?"
"How am I supposed to know?! Maybe these weirdos accidentally fished up one of Aquaman's people?"
"Oh my god, we need to bring her back!"
"How the ff-frick-" the little girl giggles and goes, "Fik!" Making Danny wince, "-are we supposed to do that, I don't know where Atlantis is at Sam"
"Call the justice league?"
"Didn't they disband again not too long ago?"
"... shit, you're right"
Danny rushes to cover the little girls ears while hissing, "language" and Sam slaps a hand over her mouth.
"Sorry..."
Danny floats in a circle above the water bouncing the child who seems fascinated with his glowing white hair, "Okay, okay, here's an idea. Jazz has her drivers license. We'll do an impromptu road trip to the east coast"
"... yeah, sounds good, let's go"
Sam holds the little girl as Danny stacks up all the tanks filled with fish and they quickly leave the premises.
"Can I just say I love you hair little miss, Naturally dark red? if only I was that lucky."
The now empty tank is surrounded by a gaggle of awkwardly shifting henchmen.
"So who is gonna tell the boss we lost the princess?"
So far the road trip has been incredibly educational.
The gang has learned what a one year old eats, and how to change diapers.
They've also learned that there are a bunch of crazies out there that want to steal a baby atlantean.
By now Jazz has fought a guy who called himself Black Manta in the new and improved Fenton exoskeleton. That battle involved a lot of lazers going in various directions.
"I thought Aquaman was an idiot to entrust her protection to a group of teenagers. But I'm starting to see his logic. You lot prepare yourselves, next time it won't be so easy"
And he'd been gone before they could correct his assumptions.
Then there was the swamp witch that Sam Out magicked with her own plant abilities.
"Curse you children, that royal blood will be mine!"
"Is she talking about me?"
"I really doubt it Tuck..."
Now they've finally reached the east coast and some big crustacean looking guy got sand guardianed by Tucker. Aka he's stuck up to his neck in the sand of the beach.
"You're only delaying the inevitable! Ocean master will have the child!"
The group just looks at him rather annoyed.
Great, that means some other asshole is going to show up any moment now.
The up side to it all is that the little girl seems to love all the action. It would have really sucked if they had to soothe a crying child every time a fight happened.
Meanwhile, Arthur and Mera track their daughter to the aquarium she was being held captive at.
Unfortunately, the Amity Park group are way too good at hiding their tracks, so the trail soon goes cold again.
So now that they have reached the east coast the next step would be to…
…
“Anyone any ideas about how we’re gonna find a legendary underwater city to bring the little girl back to her parents?” Sam asks while checking over the fish tanks in the back of their vehicle.
“This would have been so much easier if we could contact Aquaman directly somehow… do they have wifi underwater?” Tucker frowns at his PDA, “do they need social media down there?”
“Careful Tuck, I’ve read that Aquaman gets agitated at those kinds of questions,” Danny carefully lets the little girl play with the sand, making sure not to take his eyes off her after Jazz harshly told him to make sure to not let her eat any of it.
“Babies will put anything in their mouths Danny, be careful!”
Jazz reappears after locking the vehicle down, that thing isn’t going anywhere, not with the anti-ghost defenses active. they are also quite good against car robbers.
“So no brilliant ideas on how to get her back to her parents just yet?”
“It’s really annoying how we keep coming across or getting tracked down by weirdo’s and we still have no idea how to reach her parents…”
Jazz holds her hands out to Danny who hands the girl over to his sister.
“Okay, in that case-”Starts Sam, “we’ll just load all these fish onto the Manson family yacht that’s docked a little over there, and we focus on getting the fish home first.”
“Maybe a helpful atlantean will come to see what we’re doing and we can ask for directions.”
The group agrees to this plan of action and gets to work.
"Buba!" the girl's little nickname for him was cute, but mostly a call for immediate attention.
Danny made another ice ball. It was the only thing that was currently stopping the child from crying. She was ill, with something, likely a human thing too, but they didn't know what it was, and Frostbite hadn't been able to get them quick results, they had tried letting ehr slash around, keeping her diet well roudned.
but she was sick, and there was no getting around that.
so hey started shift, Jazz's singing lasted abotu an hour before she got fussy again, Sam and Tucker had, combined, lasted all fo twenty minutes.
Danny was still gong strong at three hours.
"Can't we just call the Justice League?" he muttered, watching their charge suck on the mini globe of ice.
________________________________________________ "My king, my queen!" "Aqualad, why did you call us?" "I believe we may have information on the whereabouts of the princess." that caught their attention.
"Where?" Mera hissed.
"Well, there is satalite footage of Black Manta fighting some-sort of exo-suit in this area of the east coast." he stood in fornt of a screen manned by Red-Robin, who was reveiwing footage while looking utterly exhausted,Authur didn't undersatnd how Bruce could work his childrne this hard, or place expectation on them that made them work this hard, but he wasn't one to judge. Aqualad continued" we managed to find a part of the footage where the vehicle is in veiw. Red's been tracking it-" "Somewhere on North Carolina's coast."
"...they are somewhere in North Carolina."
"thank you Red Robin." "no prob."
Perhaps Authur owed that boy some coffee beans again. Maybe from Columbia....
Danny was struggling how was this child so... feisty. He was honestly getting tired from the overuse of his powers, so far he had kept her preoccupied for 6 hours before she fell asleep. He's tried calling Dani but she was 'busy in Korea.' When he asked which Korea she only said 'there's more than one?-' before her line went dead. And now he's tired. He didn't even want to call Vlad. Dan was off doing 'something'.
"Are we there yet?" Danny said already regretting speaking. He was still healing from the recent fight against the Ocean man guy combined with his extended use of his powers and he was drained.
"We should go south!" Sam protested cradling the now sleeping atlantian in her arms. "Are you serious Gotham is just a few states away!" Tucker said on his new mobile phone after his PDA died on him again.
This was going on for three hours now after the Mason yacht was blown up. Jazz wasn't much help and the child's sickness was getting worse. Heck they didn't have the money to bring her to the hospital and what would they say? 'Hey we found Aquamans child and the child is sick and we don't know what to do?' Yeah not the best option.
"Ok!" Danny said breaking the tension and most likely a rib. "Ok we are all currently in... very deep horse dung right now but we can't fight like this. Yes there are people after us. Yes we aren't at Atlantis. Yes we aren't that good at taking care of kids but we can't just allow all of that to cloud our reasoning."
Sam and Tucker calming down just looked defeated. Out of all of them Danny somehow suffered the most damage from the most recent fight. And Danny as of most days like these was right. The air once filled anger seemed almost depressing.
Sighing Danny turns to Tucker. "What's the lastest news story?" Tucker closes the map and opens up the news app. "Let's see uh lot's of stories... Uh oh. oh crap-" "Language." Danny hissed. "Sorry, but the news about the Justice League disbandment pretty old news appearently also apparently temporary... And looks like our digital foot print wasn't very discreet." "What do you mean 'temporary'? "
-------------------------------
Arthur was at his wits end how was four teens and a baby that hard to locate? He knew that surface searching wasn't like under water searching, his people had no real jurisdiction on land. But the Justice League had all hands on deck for this thing. And they were still spread thin as it is.
"I went to the last place the 5 were seen." Aqualad said coming in exhausted. "The local residents testimonies should help with finding her. " "Put... put it on screen."
The data did not lie the 5 were heading towards Atlantis just they were constantly getting stopped by villains who were trying to get his daughter.
"The data suggests they're heading south." Red Robin says sipping on his latest cappuccino. "No, they are going north." Aquaman says flatly. "He's right the latest finding suggests-" Aqualad says pulling a photo on screen. "They tried just GOING to Atlantis. But there's a destroyed boat in their way." "Not the right time for jokes dude."
---------------------
"Dude what flight goes to Atlantis?" Danny asks "Malaysia flight 370 if I remember correctly. " Tucker said before Danny smacked him upside the head. "I saw the meme Tuc not funny people died."
"Alright, let's head to Metropolis that's Superman's territory he might be able to help. In order to do that we need to head north. I'll drive." Danny said taking the Drivers seat. "Danny do you even know how to drive?" Sam responded. "I had to learn to drive the FGHFRV this isn't much different."
"Danny said he knew how to drive..." Tucker moans as he uses his power over sand to get the mud off of him while helping Sam with subduing the people currently attacking them. "In his defense, the gigantic water hand out of the lake caught us all off guard..."
Jazz in her ecto suit is surrounded by the ones she's taken out, currently holding up the one in charge, "you better start taking or I'll keep swinging."
She's giving him her best 'I'm disappointed in you' face.
The guy himself however is looking like he's about to throw up any moment now. Probably from all the swinging around she's already done to him.
"I'm simply following orders..."
"That's not good enough." She holds him up a little higher and the guy starts scrabbling at her armor clad arm.
"They say- they said, the one who controls the princess controls the king and the one who controls the king... Its- listen, listen just- please put me down."
Parts of the lake are frozen and even though that makes for a strange sight overall the lake itself now seems deceptively peaceful. That's until about five other men get thrown out of the water and land painfully onto land after which a rather angry looking Danny wades through the water and gradually walks onto the shore. With of course a happily giggling little girl in on his arm.
Tucker turns to him and asks, "What took you so long?"
"She's great at hide and seek, and there was a lot of kicked up muck down there helping her out."
Sam grins, she remembers what a hassle it was to get her out of the aquarium in the first place, "She looks better." Sam notes.
"It might be that Aqualady over here just needs to be in water more..." Danny sheepishly runs a hand through his hair.
"That would explain why we initially found her in the aquarium." Their relaxed musing is interrupted by a shout.
"What are you doing! you traitor! Are you betraying your own kind and actually giving in to this land dweller's demands!?"
"I would like my insides to remain inside!"
The other rogue Atlantean gets up enough to throw some kind of crystal at Jazz. The others react instantly and jump to push her out of the way while she's still holding the other guy. In a flash of light all of them vanish.
"You stupid idiot, now the princess is gone too!"
"Well at least I-"
A sudden rustling is followed by a green bloodhound running out of the bushes, he sniffs the air before saying, "Oh c'mon, You have got to be kidding me..."
Next thing the rogue Atlanteans know several other titans emerge out of the bush, some more elegantly than others. Raven closes her eyes in concentration, "I sense traces of teleportation magic."
"Yeah they were here literally a second ago, the scent I was following just vanished." Gar keeps snuffling around over the ground until he's at the exact spot team Phantom just stood.
"Where are they," growls Tempest while Nightwing has a hand on his chest. Meanwhile Donna and Starfire lift the busted car out of the lake.
"I bet our lord is absolutely losing it by now isn't he," is the only sneering reply he gets though. Dick has to use a lot more force to keep Garth back and he looks over at Donna who is already running their way.
Roy mutters to Gar, "does he want to have his teeth kicked in orrr...?"
Gar shifts into a bear, shrugs, and makes a 'idunno' noise. He'll gladly help Garth with the kicking though.
"I can trace the magic, Tempest." Raven's hands start glowing. And Garth finally let's himself get pushed back by his teammates muttering a soft apology to them that's tinged with frustration.
Dick takes him aside, "Garth I don't want to do this, but if you can't keep your head cool-"
"No, I'm fine, just," he pinches the bridge of his nose, "they were so close, that's all, I'm..." a long exhale.
"Raven is tracing them, we'll know soon. Take a moment, we'll handle these idiots."
Sam glares at the rogue Atlantean (who is sweating bullets while sitting on the ground.) And bounces little Andrina in her arms.
Jazz is a little off to the side calling her parents "Hey mom, dad, uhm.. just wondering, how much pressure can the Fenton ecto-exo-skeleton handle? ... yeah- like water pressure... uhuh, oh okay, hm? Oh, no, just curious you know, no reason. Hmhm... Danny is with his friends right now so he can't come to the phone, sorry. I'll tell him to call you guys back later, yeah. Okay. Love you too bye."
She hangs up and walks to Danny who is busy freezing a layer of impenetrable ice outside of his ecto shield bubble. Right now the bubble is the only thing keeping them from drowning and getting crushed under an ungodly amount of water.
"Mom told me that their trip got extended, so I guess that's something we won't have to worry about for a while longer. You doing okay Danny?"
"Yeah, don't worry, I'm just thinking about how I'm gonna get you guys out of here safely..."
"Well, I'll be fine in the suit apparently, it's made so I can bust ghosts even down in the marina trench." She says mimicking their dad's enthusiasm.
"What."
"Let's not think about it too hard."
Danny pauses anyway and then says, "...Seas' haunted"
Jazz does a fake gasp, "The Flying Dutchman."
"I'll get you Davy Jones!"
Tucker is busy fiddling with his phone in the meantime, "Okay so I'm done trying to triangulate exactly where we are on my phone and... we are very, very deep."
"Yeah no kidding, I could have told you that... but where deep." Sam sets the little girl down who finds the nearest sandy puddle to splash in.
"That's harder to say..." Tucker's phone simply can't get a good signal from any satellite for that kind of stuff what with them being this deep, and he wouldn't be surprised if more magical stuff is messing things up as well. The little girl holds a handful of watery sea sand near Tucker and the water just quickly glides out of it leaving desert dry sand in her hands instead, she giggles.
"Maybe our new friend can shed some light?"
Their 'new friend' would much rather just stay ignored.
His eyes glide over the four teens, fully aware what they are capable of now.
Sea plants are already curling around Sam's ankles unprompted, a good chunk of Jazz's suit is still keeping her protected and he's seen how smoothly and quickly the rest of it can latch back on to her again. Water seems to recoil from Tucker as more and more bone dry sand surrounds him and the impromptu ice dome is handling incredible amounts of water pressure without so much as a groan or a creak.
Yeah he knows he's out of his league here, the princess is incredibly well protected, as expected from their king really. He should have known better, they all should've.
"We're somewhere between the city Tritonis and Xebel."
Suddenly Andy gets fussy and for a moment the guy thinks he's fucked up until Jazz picks the little girl up and takes a little pot of mashed fruit for babies out of her bag.
"So that's not really as helpful as you might think it is, appreciate the clear answers though, Go on," Sam urges. In the background Tucker goes, "so there are like a bunch of cities down here then?" to which Danny responds with a, "Not now Tuck."
"Uh, this was meant as a pick up point, get the princess and-" "No you misunderstand, what I meant-" "Sam I think he's been living his entire life underwater, he might not know the names we use for parts of the oceans." "…hrm, maybe a map would help, Tucker can you pull up a map on your phone?"
Before they can put that plan into action however the icy walls around them rumbles as something latches onto the it, a something that looks like a big mechanical manta ray. It starts drilling into the ice wall with what appears to be some kind of laser powered apparatus.
Now Danny probably could just reinforce his ice and just not let them through… However~
He grins, "guys, I think our new ride just arrived." The others of team Phantom also get a dangerous look in their eyes and the Atlantean guy knows enough to shuffle backwards until he's pressed on the other side of the dome in hopes of avoided most of what is about to come.
