In the middle of this aquarium sat a large, round enclosure. One that you can see in on all sides. The odd thing was that it looked empty. Completely empty. It was an odd sight, while every other enclosure was full of exotic fish!
A cluster of bubbles made its way to the surface from the bottom. There, sitting on a rock below, sat a humanoid creature. Human from the waist up, and a scale and fin covered appendage below the waist. The fabled mermaid. Which explained why she was completely alone in this tank.
Her skin was a lavender color, her long hair a dark navy, her scales for her TAIL a deep purple. The beautiful maiden sat combing through her hair, though it looked like silk. She looked sad, though. Though, what you expect from isolation?
The guests were gone, the gentle music was cut, the main staff was out and all that remained was a single other on-site biologist and a nighttime security guard that didn’t have enough to lose to decline feeding a carnivorous mermaid armed with enough toxin to kill three of him. He did, however, stand to gain a sizable pay raise and a shiny new office. Not that he’d need it.
“I know you signed the waiver and all, but are you sure you want to go in there? You know, off the record. You can tell me if you’re scared.” The biologist was looking a little shivery himself in his coat- although Jack was the one only armed in a pair of scuba shorts that made him feel particularly breezy.
“Still don’t get why you don’t feed her fish.”
“Her diet is highly specialized--”
“Alright, alright.” That whole, mermaids ate humans, deal. The contract to having an actual, live mermaid at the aquarium ran about as long and full of specifications as the state of Florida was long. “Don’t piss yourself if she bites. Your knees are shaking.”
With that, he bit down on the rebreather and slipped into the water. The sensation took a bit of getting used to, and staring down at the woman from above gave him some vertigo. The contacts in his eyes were specialized for the divers, the efforts to make them look smaller- ‘but not too small’ as he’d been told over and over.
Ah, yes, the reason he was in this 'experiment’. Out of the entire team of guards, biologists, staffers of the aquarium, and miscellaneous workers, only he was willing to dive into the mermaid’s tank. The aggressive mermaid’s tank. The aggressive nocturnal mermaid’s tank, while holding her food in the dead of night and wearing naught but the essentials- a pair of underwater lenses, a rebreather the size of a fist, scuba shorts, and a pair of long fins. Additionally, after signing a waiver a mile long reading, essentially, that the aquarium would clean up after his untimely demise and his corpse would be used for science.
What else was there to lose? At least if he lived, he got that pay raise and the office.
Looking down at her and holding her lunch, he decided ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’ and kicked downwards.
