A mass moved overhead, temporarily covering the light peeking through the holes in the ceiling. Expecting some type of big fish or whale of some sort - and hoping it wasn't something more menacing - Adrien tore his eyes away from his latest ship find - a soft, pink something - and looked up. His eyes did a double-take before widening.
It wasn't a fish, or any type of underwater life. The details of the whatever-it-was was swallowed in shadow, but the way it cut through the water instead of gliding with the flow of it, leaving a massive trail in its wake, gave it a decidedly inorganic feeling. Plagg joined his side, glancing in the direction Adrien was silently staring. His whiskers twitched.
"Is that…?" Adrien asked his companion, words so quiet in pent-up excitement they were nearly lost to the current. His grip tightened around his coral-colored find, his tail propelling him upward to peer at the dark shape through the hole.
"A ship?" Plagg responded. Adrien nodded. "Yeah, that's a ship."
A ship. A real ship!
A million questions raced around Adrien's brain. Looking to Plagg, the start of his sure-to-be-lengthy interrogation on the tip of his tongue, Adrien faltered. For one thing, Plagg's answers were sure to be short and unhelpful. The way Plagg moved now, twitched his body and whiskers and gazing at the fleeing ship only backed his theory. Whether the overgrown fish would simply be unresponsive - or in mild distress - if asked any questions about it, Adrien didn't know. But there wasn't time to debate about asking or not. Before the dark bulk could leave his vision, Adrien darted after it.
Until a hard slap on his tail caused him to flip around.
Plagg looked serious for the first time since Adrien had known him. His wide lips were tight, his body seeming to curl up on himself and back again in clear agitation. The stance caused Adrien to float back down to his friend, though he continued to glance back wistfully toward the ship's direction.
"They're humans."
Adrien turned to look Plagg straight on.
"What?"
"Humans. They look like merpeople, but they don't have tails. They have no fins of any sort, nor scales." He wiggled his own flippers briefly to accentuate the point.
The description left much to be desired, the mental picture it painted enough to cause an uneasy sick feeling in the merboy's stomach.
How could someone with half a body even survive!?
"B-But how - ?" Adrien wondered aloud, twirling his forgotten find around in his hands. "H-How do they swim?"
Plagg's whiskers twitched again, though Adrien couldn't quite read his expression (slightly understandable, since it was just a wide blubbery mass).
"They don't," Plagg spoke flatly.
"Don't - ?"
"They don't swim, 'kid. There's no water up there to swim in." Plagg swam in a circle out of the hold, gesticulating with his tail as he came back to Adrien, belly facing the light.
It was a concept that, as a merperson, Adrien was, quite literally, unable to understand.
Plagg "laughed", a short sputtering snort he seemed to reserve for when Adrien looked or did or said something particularly stupid. The merboy was about to reprimand him, but Plagg, with a flash of his eyes, spun around Adrien and took off suddenly, moving faster than Adrien would have believed possible. With only a moment of surprised hesitation, Adrien, with his "treasure" still gripped in his hand, darted after Plagg.
(Where had this speed been when they were chased by a shark just a few days ago!?)
Plagg dove into the collection of jagged rocks that lay next to the open space where the ships were. There was a brasher rushing in the ocean here than Adrien had ever heard before. The countless currents pushed and pulled, tugging at everything that passed through. It was difficult to muscle through, a task made harder by the flighty light of the sun. At times the sun shone brighter, and in other parts, its light was doused completely. At those times, Adrien struggled to get his eyes to adjust fast enough to see where Plagg had gone. It was an irony he didn't find funny at all; having lived in darkness his entire life, Adrien's eyes still struggled to readjust to it after being somewhere lighter.
After a long while, Plagg finally slowed, almost to a stop, and Adrien swam passed him with a yelp before spinning in the water and backtracking. He wanted to say something, wanted to reprimand Plagg for doing this, but his gills at the side of his neck were sucking in water too strongly to eke out any sound. Plagg, who, despite being constantly lazy, hadn't any trouble from the ferocious swim, spoke instead.
"Adrien," Plagg started, voice low and tight. "This is the most important thing to remember: humans can be dangerous." Plagg had been noticeably more agitated this trip than on any other. The subject, and perhaps where they were (wherever this was) seemed to exacerbate the black creature's emotions. His forked tail whipped so hard and fast after his admission to Adrien, it made a loud snap! in the water. Adrien startled at the sound.
"They eat fish."
The disturbing depiction Adrien had painted in his mind from earlier now had a few added rows of shark teeth.
Adrien had no doubt he would have nightmares the next time he slept.
"Plagg…" So many questions, so many things he wanted to know, and Adrien didn't seem to be able to articulate anything. One question, though, had continuously nagged at the back of his mind since their first meeting, and seemed to be the only thing he could ask now.
"Plagg, why are you sharing all this with me?"
All at once, Plagg paused in his movements. He obviously hadn't been expecting this question, but the catfish's lip turned up in the corner a bit. It was almost his signature smile, but the sadness there, the hardness in his blank eyes, made Adrien wonder, not for the first time, not only how old Plagg was, but all the experiences that he had been privy to.
"Because your people have lived in darkness for too long, merprince."
Merprince.
That wasn't actually a word, but Adrien didn't say anything. Plagg had to know that, using it to show Adrien that he, at some point or another, had found out who he really was…or perhaps that he had known all along. Adrien let this realization, and Plagg's confession, sink in, along with its obvious implications.
Like that the merpeople were, or would be, Adrien's responsibility.
And that the prince was meant to bring the light back to them all.
It was something that Adrien had mused over through the years. The plans to do so ranged from daring to secretive, from bringing Plagg in to meet his father, or bringing pieces of the ships to show the merpeople. Every plan, no matter how dumb it sounded, or how well-thought out it was, all ended when Adrien would come face-to-face with his father.
Gabriel was made king years before Adrien was born. No one really knew how old he was. After his victory over the great oppressor, Hawkmoth, Gabriel was granted a trident from Neptune himself, or so the stories went. Among other magical powers, the object seemed to also grant immortality. The new king, upon reviewing their world to be corrupt and dangerous, moved the entire civilization from their previous home of Atlantis - a legend in its own right - to Ferro Papilio, a place buried deep in the mountain regions of the open ocean. It was where they had lived ever since.
It was here, though years later, he had met Adrien's mother, the first woman in his long reign he had ever fallen for.
Adrien was born soon after their marriage, and, according to his private tutor, the kingdom had rejoiced to have a prince. Though he acknowledged his role as a father, Gabriel never seemed to take a real liking to Adrien. Nothing spoke from him of admiration or acceptance, but where Gabriel failed, Emilie, his mother, picked up the slack. From her he learned the value of a soul, of making others happy, or helping others feel loved. Though Adrien was often kept at home for weeks at a time, his mother was there with him, and he really couldn't find a fault in his little world because of it.
Mere weeks before Adrien's 13th birthday, however, his mother died, the love and comfort in Adrien's world perishing along with her.
There were no real threats to them in Ferro Papilio, Gabriel always drawled on. But their protected city didn't stop Adrien from feeling incredibly vulnerable that day. He had wanted to escape, wanted to see something rather than everything here that reminded him of his mother. But Adrien was never let out of the house after that, and never knew why. When trying to talk to his father about it, the merman would never want to see him. The only companion he was left with was a small crab named Nathalie, who, he learned quickly, was more into spilling his secrets to Gabriel than being a confidant. In was in this stretch of time when Adrien had finally seen his home for what it was. Although living in Ferro Papilio kept them safe, it also left the merpeople in endless darkness, figuratively and literally, and they had no idea.
There was one time Adrien had, after a particularly heart-wrenching day feeling the ghost of his mother's love and fearing he would never feel happiness again, went directly to his father to touch on the subject of what was out there. Adrien was looking for hope. But while the suffering merboy had only asked, in his love-starved state, what was beyond the borders Gabriel had raged at Adrien with a maniacal ferocity that made him retch for days. Unable to stand the mention of Adrien any more, Gabriel had sent him out to join the school. It was the first day that Adrien had been out of the house in weeks, and was, perhaps not so coincidentally, when he felt the warmth, when he met Plagg.
It was, perhaps, why he had so willingly followed.
How would he ever succeed the task now laid before him?
Adrien wasn't sure. But he would never give up trying.
The feel of something hard within the smooth texture of his stolen treasure from the ship suddenly caught Adrien's attention. Turning the billowing bulk through the water in front of him, Adrien let it flutter out fully to really look at it while feeling for the hard part that had passed his fingers a moment before. It moved softly in the current, mimicking a jelly-fish in some ways. While their colors were certainly similar, the feel of it resembled a dolphin's sleek body, smooth to the touch. He could see the small bulge now. Something was hidden in a pocket - like a seahorse's - on the side of his treasure. With tentative fingers, Adrien pulled it out, wondering what it was.
It was smooth and round, made out of a shiny substance that Adrien thought he had seen before, though covered with flecked of black and red. The color of this was unmarred, though a subtle pattern seemed etched into its surface: a wonky circle with four smaller circles on the top or bottom, depending on which way he looked at it.
Plagg's voice at his shoulder made Adrien suddenly jump.
"It's a ring. Put it on your finger."
At the same moment Adrien slipped the ring on, another mass passed over their heads. This time, when Adrien started upward, Plagg nodded his encouragement.
Neither saw the eels that had followed them. Nor the bright purple that glowed from their eyes.
[[ A/N: I add in more author’s notes and stuff on my ff.net and ao3 stories, just fyi. Thanks for reading!! :3 ]]
Marinette's boots felt heavier than normal, her feet seeming to drag under her as if feeding off the reluctance set in her bones. They had done good work here, her and her crew. But instead of the usual want to return home pressing on her heart, Marinette instead felt all the dread she had suppressed their entire journey crashing down on her in one mighty wave.
For, though it warmed her heart just thinking of returning home to see the loving faces of her parents, Marinette would pass a certain benchmark while on her crossing of the sea: her 18th birthday.
When she returned home this time, there would be no more seafaring.
Marinette would be expected to marry.
A wet pressure suddenly touched her hand, pulling Marinette's attention downward. As if sensing her sudden cold feet (ha…a little early for that, isn't it?), Tikki, in all her red, long-haired glory, had nosed her hand. Marinette bent down and started rubbing her fingers vigorously through Tikki's tresses that seemed to be constantly damp, the action causing a burning in her heart that eased her pain in an almost physical way. Tikki pushed into Marinette further, causing the girl to fall over in unbridled laughter. It only spurned Tikki to keep at it, however, and the canine companion was soon lying on top of the young girl, licking heartily at her face.
Tikki always seemed to have a way of transforming Marinette into something brighter.
The cold of the sea rushed around Adrien, the icy feeling tingling his skin in a way that was no longer foreign to him. For nearly his entire life, he had been unfamiliar to sensations like hot and cold, wet and dry, light and dark. In fact, his people lived the entirety of their lives in this same ignorance, never venturing far enough to really feel a difference, never even realizing that there could be something else out there they were missing out on.
But Adrien knew. And because of it, every day he craved more.
Adrien's dark tail flicked behind him, propelling him through the water faster as his mind wandered back to his first time feeling something…different.
Warmth.
It was a subtle current, one he barely felt on the tip of the fin on one of his arms. The class he had been following went on without him, his fellow students never realizing he was gone as they listened to their instructor drone on about things like squid and their tentacular appendages. Drawing a hand through the moving water, Adrien was frozen in pure wonder. He could feel whatever it was stir around his fingers like a piece of seaweed or anemone, swirling and moving with the sea as though it was an entity of its own. The path it cut through the water was easy enough to follow; though the curiosity to do so caused Adrien to almost shake with want, still he hesitated. Its path moved without thought to any direction, except it being away from Adrien's home, away from Atlantis, and, most importantly, away from his father's protective eyes. If he followed the current, it would be going against all of his father's wishes.
Which, admittedly, to a 13-year-old, wasn't an unattractive idea.
A sudden, more forceful stirring in the ocean caused Adrien to dart backward in the water. A mass, unafraid of its surroundings - though, as Adrien watched, was undoubtedly out of place in this part of the ocean - moved leisurely passed Adrien. A flick of its whiskered face, something resembling a lopsided smile, made the black fish look as if he was laughing at Adrien's predicament, though having no previous knowledge of the merman's inner musings. As it passed, Adrien realized it was lazily floating through the route he himself had been debating on. Once more, as the giant catfish turned back and look at Adrien through his beady eyes, that tilted grin appeared on his elongated mouth before turning on his way again.
Something of a smile appeared on Adrien's face then, but not one that he was used to. It seemed to mimic the mocking catfish; instead of the feeling of his eyes crinkling in the corners, or his cheeks raising up in just the right way - like Father liked it - Adrien felt just one side of his cheek edge upward, his lip curling to meet it, and eyes glancing to the side in a way that could possibly be considered sneaky, watching his class swim farther and farther away.
(Through the years, Adrien, though not having a true name for this particular facial feat (though in his mind, always calling it "catfish-like"), would become ever familiar with it, especially when he was thinking about doing something particularly naughty.)
There was no more deliberation.
Adrien swam into the unknown.
It would be years later when Plagg, the black catfish who was as huge as he was misplaced in the open ocean, would take Adrien closer to his original home than ever before. Here, the water held more 'warmth', as Adrien learned to call the once-mysterious sensation. It also was shallower, lighter. Though Adrien had never beheld the source of the brightness yet, per Plagg's guidance, Adrien reveled in the way his eyes could soak in more of the world around him all at once.
It only made him feel more loathed to return home.
Adrien sighed before startling in the sight now before him. Great masses that seemed like ghosts of things once alive started to appear all around. They looked like underwater buildings, but constructed with a strange element. Instead of jagged rock, or movement from coral or anemones, the structures laid completely still. It didn't feel…natural. And though the picture they painted all together was breathtaking and eerily beautiful in its way, the place held a heavy feeling of death and destruction.
"What are they?" Adrien asked his companion.
"Ships," Plagg answered simply, as was his way. He seemed to be as knowledgeable as he was unhelpful, usually talking in detail about "food" that was dropped into the ocean (loving especially certain round things that smelled bad enough no other sea creatures would touch them, sometimes even filled with holes) while offering only one- or two-word answers to things Adrien was actually interested in.
"Ships?" Adrien pressed, swimming closer to one of the large things before looking back to Plagg expectantly.
"They built them."
"Who?" Who could create something like this? And why would they break it and leave it abandoned? As was part of the ocean, it was, as Adrien could clearly see, being repurposed from its original design. All manner of creatures lurked in and around the 'ships', as Plagg had called them, though all lurked in relative silence and stillness. It was if they, as Adrien did, felt the despair that tainted the water here.
As Adrien mused, he came to the sudden realization that his companion had stopped, and was now looking at him with that crooked grin that Adrien had come to associate with only him.
Dunno if anyone is gonna see this - or care, haha! - but I just want y’all to know that I’m...trying? Heh.
Like I literally have four notebooks full of everything I have written for these stories and then none of it’s good enough so I redo it while I type it out, and then I spend 20 minutes debating whether I should sleep or reply to any comments I’ve received, and by the time I’ve decided, I find myself suddenly sucked into a "How To" for speaking dolphin, looking for references.
Like, k’khree eeeeehhr ckheeeee.
Know what I’m saying?
Thanks, for whoever reads this, for supporting me. <3
