Disclaimer: I do not own any of the Disney characters featured in this story.

A/N: I'm pretty sure I'm going to regret this and delete it, but I thought I would go ahead and publish what started out as tapping out nonsense on my phone in the middle of the night and quickly spiraled out of control. After writing about thirty pages it seemed like the opportune thing to do, chop it up into chapters, package it and sell it, but...heh. There's a lot of ridiculous semi-adult nonsense in here? It's really embarrassing.

At any rate, if you follow my deviantArt, you know that I've drawn angel!Mickey and mermaid!Minnie together a lot. I've often explored the story with my best friend, but this is my first time writing it with this particular set-up and in this format. I have no idea how far it will go or where it will even go. And for those of you not familiar with mice fandom and how Mickey and Minnie are plunked down into crazy themes and situations all the time...I don't know what to tell you, heh.

I'll just leave this here, the first of what will be a few chapters I have ready to go. En...joy?


Now that he was looking right at it, Mickey could see what the fuss was about. Sort of. Okay, not exactly. But a little? Mermaid Lagoon had its share of interesting characters, he would grant it that. Merfolk of all sorts lived beneath the waves of the sapphire seas, but Mermaid Lagoon was the hangout of the more youthful crowd. Teens and young adults gathered to sun on the rocks, play games, make music, craft, socialize with the landfolk, and above all else, show off. That last was what attracted so many more creatures to the lagoon from inland, people of all shapes and forms and species who thought talking to a shapely mermaid or ogling a muscular merman was worth their time.

Merfolk were not like the landfolk, for they never wished to move an inch from their territory. Despite the island being rich with bacchanals and celebrations that ran for days amongst the centaurs, satyrs, nymphs, minotaurs, and other such land creatures, mermaids and mermen never participated, even when offered accommodations. No, they never left their lagoon or their ocean, never even swimming up the mouths of rivers. If you wanted to see a mermaid, you had to come to them.

Some argued that they were afraid to venture from the sea. Others insisted that it was a matter of arrogance or perhaps something more coy in their nature. All merfolk at that age, after all, basked in attention and frivolity, before growing older and wiser and returning to the ocean to be more elusive like their parents. This was probably closest to the truth. It wasn't so much the sun or the rocks they treasured, but the open stage. And most creatures were happy to oblige if it meant having some spicy fling or a change of pace in terms of recreation. Merparties were their own spectacle, even if they always happened in the same place.

Angels, on the other hand, preferred to merely observe from on high, the way they observed everything else from a lofty distance. But while land creatures were constantly allies and even friends of the winged people, angels seldom if ever interacted with the merfolk. Too many centuries of war over who could even remember anymore, too many differences in demeanor and culture. And where they were similar, it was only fuel for more tension. Mixing two races that both had an elitist outlook, had a superiority complex, and did not like to share attention was only asking for trouble. And like merfolk, angels were show-offs and socialites when they were young, and then over time they flew higher and higher up into their mountains, having had their fill of the land creatures and their parties, and now striving for quiet.

So it was from the trees that Mickey sat with a few of his angel pals, or more accurately, companions that happened to be his age. Usually Mickey preferred his clique of assorted species such as Donald and his girl Daisy, Horace and his girl Clarabelle, Goofy, and so on. But his fellow angels were alright, if a little insensitive sometimes. Mickey was with them now because although his closer friends visited Mermaid Lagoon quite often, angels were not very welcome. At most, they might make their presence known with jeering and tossing nuts from where the merfolk couldn't reach for a laugh, but that was it. And although Mickey didn't have a personal investment in seeing Mermaid Lagoon itself, it was essentially high time he actually look upon the merfolk in person. They were, after all, ancient rivals. And secretly, Mickey had always wanted to know why the landfolk found them so interesting.

The angels he sat with up in the thick branches of a tree that snaked halfway over the lagoon all had different opinions about the fish folk below. Mickey had drawn some of his own conclusions pretty fast, that yes while fair in face and fit in body, the merpeople were no more attractive than anybody else (then again, Mickey had never taken much interest in romance, so what did he know), and that they seemed too vain for his tastes. He watched as various mermaids beamed at their own reflections, trying on a multitude of accessories, doing up their hair. A good number of them were singing but in the way that seemed less like they felt like it and more like they simply wanted someone to hear them doing it. While some were directly giggly and flirty with this centaur or that fairy, others seemed to be concentrating on looking like they didn't know they were being gawked at while putting on a show anyway, glancing over their shoulders to make sure someone or something was watching. The mermen were just regular old boys that thought they were tough, swimming and splashing and diving and wrestling and being generally loud as they played their games and made their not-so-clever jests.

Yet Mickey's companions were constantly pointing out features on each mermaid (when they weren't having a laugh at everyone else) that they found attractive (as far as mermaids went, because after all, no angel would ever settle for a fish). These comments confused Mickey. Because when someone pointed out golden locks or tantalizing waistlines or deliciously plump hips or cute freckles or kissable lips or big purple eyes, Mickey could only squint, try to see what they saw in whichever her they were looking at, and shrug. Yeah, they could be pretty. But none of them were -

Beautiful. Mickey's eyes had finally found something, and now that they had, they wouldn't be able to let it - her - go any time soon.

There she sat, all alone on her own little thin column of rock, marooned by water all around her. A dainty, delicate thing made strictly of curves and soft, sweeping contours the likes of which Mickey had ever seen. She had large, sparkling, intense brown eyes that seemed to gaze inland and yet see nothing, like she was too deep in thought to truly notice the things going on around her. Mickey had heard of deep eyes before, but he'd never truly seen them, and from this distance it felt as though he were going to drown. Those entrancing eyes were framed by long, dark lashes, a pale face like a pearl, a pert nose, pink cheeks. Earlier when someone had mentioned kissable lips on another girl, Mickey had snorted at the phrase, and now he found himself looking at this girl's lips and thinking that if anyone ever looked like she deserved to be kissed and then kissed well for the rest of her life, it was this sweet, exotic creature.

And she was a mermaid. Mickey was almost alarmed at how little that seemed to affect her beauty. In fact, whereas the others had looked kinda funny before, he found himself suddenly understanding just how and why mermaids had come to be known as so unquestionably desirable. For starters, her tail was an iridescent, colorful wonder. At its core it was silvery-white, pearl-like, and yet from each and every one of those scales seemed to flash a different color. A good number of those merpeople had flashy tails, but this girl's seemed to sparkle with the elegance of stardust. The fins were long and transparent, looking like flower petals on a breeze as she idly swished the end of her tail slowly back and forth, the tips sometimes grazing the water's surface and leaving little ripples.

The tail alone was graceful and appealing, yet what really made it was how it flowed with the rest of the girl's body. At some point very low on her hips the scales began to fade into the dark, creamy skin that made up the upper half of her body, emphasizing incredibly curvy hips for such a slender thing. Her waist curved in beautifully, and then, Mickey noticed with a bit of a blush, that she had a nice chest too. Not horribly busty like the others, but something just right, all perky and delicate and soft like the rest of her. He'd noticed that the mermaids wore various things on their chests, and this one in particular wore a little bra of two starfish united by the presence of a few tiny sea flowers woven together. Between her breasts started a couple strings of pearls that draped loosely across her chest and around and over her arms, emphasizing the fact that her shoulders were bare. Of course, everything else was; even her bust did little hiding behind those starfish and flowers. Mickey especially found that if those scales had been any lower she wouldn't have been fit for public consumption, at least by angel standards.

And then there was the matter of her hair. Long, sweeping, dark waves that looked silky and so soft that one could run their fingers through and never meet a tangle. Though this hair was free in that it trailed down behind her, there were still more flowers woven into it and even a few more pearl strands that pulled back the hair just a little bit so that some of those curls could separate and stand alone against her cheeks. There was so much of it though that it folded all around her anyway, even when pulled slightly back.

She was a mermaid, yet Mickey had never seen a more perfect specimen in his life, and he doubted he ever would. He had been staring at her for a long time, analyzing every detail, to the point that even the other angel boys couldn't help but notice. One of them, by the name of Hawk, was prodding him until he finally hit Mickey with his wing. "Hey, Mickey, what's gotten into y - ?"

"Wh-who's that?" Mickey interrupted. He hadn't realized that that was possible, being able to ask such a question, but now that he realized it was, he discovered that he wouldn't be satisfied until he knew.

"Who?" Hawk asked obliviously.

"H-her." Mickey barely twitched, nudging his chin in the direction of the lonesome mermaid. All at once, the angels followed his line of vision.

"Crimony! What a knockout," was the immediate opinion of Westwind who shielded his eyes from the sun despite being under the shade, like this would grant him better vision. Corvid offered up a wolf whistle in agreement, and Volt was giving Mickey a nudge, uttering, "Now that's what I call a catch of the day!"

Instantly, Mickey was sorry he'd pointed her out. Of course, given that the boys were already laughing, they might have been playing up their reactions to tease him, but Mickey and his reddening cheeks were not so sure. Only Zephyr had said nothing, but now he piped up, gray wings opening up in an epiphany.

"Say, I heard a that fish! S'gotta be her, nobody else around here's got a diamond dust tail like that." Mickey finally tore his eyes away from the mermaid for a few seconds to glance at Zephyr, assessing the sincerity in this statement, before he was looking back at her with new urgency. She of course was perfectly lost in her own little world, swishing that tail and braiding a little strand of hair, but not in a showy way any other mermaid might have, but in a reflective, almost pensive manner.

"Y-ya have...?" Mickey asked apprehensively, swallowing.

"Sure! The Morose Mermaid. Sometimes I hear the gals call her Mopey." Zephyr laughed and the others chimed in. Mickey shot him a glare before he could help it, because if he wasn't going to take this seriously...

Zephyr held out his hands though, showing he meant no offense. He was on the level. After all, he was sort of an expert on these things. "Honest to Zeus! But it's just 'cause they're jealous, see? That dame's so popular with the fellas that she's turned down half the island and everybody under it, the way I hear it. At this point nobody really bothers with her because she's just gonna turn 'em down. Probably a real snob. All by herself because she thinks she's too good, just like a typical mermaid..."

Mickey hadn't known what to think of that business of her receiving a lot of male attention, but he knew what he thought of that last part. "You don't know that," he blurted out a little too passionately, when he remembered who and what he was. He amended this with a shrug, rubbing his neck and trying to not look at the mermaid so straightforwardly. "I'mean, maybe she's just fed up with all these other 'maids. They all seem kinda..." He wrinkled his nose in thought, not sure what to call them.

Zephyr, never one to accept being wrong on any topic, even the ones he had little concern for, shook his head. "Here, I'll prove it!" Before Mickey or anyone could stop him, Zephyr was plucking a nut from the trees branches and was tossing it down, skipping it across the water with a little whistle to disturb a nearby trio of mermaids who had been gossiping and combing their hair. The other angel boys flinched as the girls gasped and looked straight at the flock in the trees, but nobody reprimanded Zephyr because after all, he was pretty popular, and therefore probably knew what he was doing. And to their surprise, after their initial shock the trio of mermaids were looking at one another and giggling like they'd never seen anything funnier. Mickey noticed that they seemed rather pleased with themselves for having attracted the attention of even their sworn rivals.

The mermaid with the purple and green tail cleared her throat and sat up straight, putting on quite the show to compose herself and turn heavy, cool eyes up at Zephyr. "Yes? Can we help you?"

"Afternoon, ladies!" Zephyr greeted. Clearly, he'd done this before, because there wasn't a note of apprehension in his voice. "Yeah, sure, you can help us!"

The mermaid with the pink and yellow tail giggled and made an interested splash with her fins. "Ohhh, and just what can we 'help' you with, birdie?"

"Yes, let us know," chimed in the third coy mermaid whose tail ran three different shades of blue and turquoise.

"It ain't a big deal, just this one - " Zephyr jabbed a thumb in Mickey's direction and all at once the latter angel wanted to fly off like any spooked bird, but he stayed where he was all the same, just blushing worse off than before. " - was wonderin' all about THAT one..." Zephyr shamelessly pointed in the direction of the solitary mermaid with the stardust tail. Mickey thought killing Zephyr might be in order, because the last thing he needed was to be the center of this kind of attention (Mickey liked to show off, not BE showed off, paraded around like some idiot). But before he could punch Zephyr in the arm, the mermaids had all looked in the direction he was pointing and collectively scoffed.

"Oh, her?" the blue one asked derisively. "Don't even bother, she isn't worth the trouble..."

"If you want someone to play with, angel boy, you ought to try someone else..." the pink one cooed, changing her tone to one of thick flirtatious beckoning. She was looking straight at Mickey, flexing her arms over her head and trying to draw his attention to certain features. Oh, he really wanted to kill Zephyr.

"Minnie doesn't cut any boy a break," the purple one finally offered, folding her arms. This did draw Mickey's attention. So her name was Minnie, how interesting. "Oh, they fling themselves at her anyway but it's always 'no thank you' in that honey-sweet voice..." Clearly the purple mermaid found this annoying. "And she's not one for making many friends either. Even when she comes to the lagoon because us girls invite her..."

"She always ends up leaving the rest of us to go sit on that rock or whatever," blue finished. "And today we even helped her dress up. That's gratitude for you." Mickey wondered at how a mermaid 'dressed up' when they wore so little, but he supposed that strings of pearls weren't practical for swimming, and when he looked again, he realized that those starfish weren't even dead. W-well, anyone ought to be a stick in the mud with something clinging on so tight, let alone two of them, let alone there. Was that normal for a mermaid?

"She is sweet though," the pink mermaid relented, and to be fair, none of the three mermaids looked entirely mean themselves, just a little jealous. "She has a beautiful singing voice, and her garden is so pretty, oh, and she can dance so gracefully..." The pink mermaid almost looked admiring then, clasping her hands together and gazing in Minnie's direction like she were some kind of idol. "And that tail...she is fun to dress up, isn't she, girls? Oh, the most fun..." Mickey had found some relief in what this mermaid was saying up until that point. Did...was she like a doll or some kind of plaything for them? He'd noticed the mermaids having fun doting on one other, preening each other now that he bothered to think about it. They were weird, he decided instantly. Angel girls had fun playing dress-up, sure, but dressing each other up, well...seemed different somehow.

"Yes," the purple one couldn't help but agree wistfully, her tail scooping water with her fin. "She's the tiniest, it's so cute, and I swear she can wear anything. Not every girl can pull off starfish..."

"She squealed when we put them on her though," blue one pointed out, smirking in a way that indicated some haughty pleasure from this. "But she's sensitive about everything. Comes with being so small." The blue one rolled her eyes. "She doesn't just turn down men either, but girls too. And not just romantically speaking, I mean we just want to dress her up and play with her..."

"And listen to her sing and watch her garden and dance with her," the pink one mourned with a starry-eyed gaze. Now Mickey was sure beyond a doubt that mermaids had the oddest fixation on beauty to the point that they seemed to be objectifying the prettiest in their midst because they didn't just want to mimic her, but actually actively watch her be beautiful. He'd heard that mermaids were amorous creatures, but this seemed to be something different altogether. And as he looked out at her, at this Minnie, he realized that he understood completely why she'd want to escape. She didn't seem to be the attention-craving type. The other girls in the lagoon seemed positively thrilled at being treated like dolls, yet this one looked like she had more on her mind than that. In fact he caught her shifting uncomfortably, her fingers unconsciously dancing up to one of those clinging starfish. He found himself pitying the poor thing.

"Can't say I blame ya," Westwind suddenly teased, making Mickey jump because the angels had all been silently listening up to that point. "Who wouldn't wanna play with that?" A couple of the other angels laughed. That was the new generation for you, less concerned with the boundaries of their ancestors, more eager to break some rules. Ten years ago angels had never even set foot in the lagoon, and now look at them all chatting them up.

"Well good luck finding her," the purple one retorted, flinging the water she'd been balancing on her fin. "When we haven't caught her and dragged her here she's off somewhere else. Nobody knows where she goes or why."

"Or why for so long!" the pink one breathed.

That was rather intriguing, but just as Mickey had been opening his mouth, about to ask after this to see if she really was the exploring type, he noticed with alarm a familiar, loathed face. "M-Mortimer!" he balked. "What's he doin' here?"

The other angels looked and all groaned when they laid eyes on the centaur. He was without a doubt most hated by Mickey, as the two had a bit of a history in trying to one-up one another, but Mortimer didn't have any angel fans either. He was always followed behind by a pack of centaurs, and this was because he was the prince of one of their clans. Of course, every clan had a prince, none more important than the other, and someday when the king of the centaurs was dead all of his bastard sons would have to kill each other for his position. Of all the centaur princes though, Mortimer had deemed himself to be incredibly important, constantly chatting about the father he didn't know and lying about his heroic feats. Maybe that was a part of playing the game in trying to become heir, but Mickey despised the centaur's arrogant, narcissistic, and downright cowardly behavior.

And to his grand horror, the centaur was plowing right through the water, up onto the rocks, making a beeline for the little mermaid Mickey so admired. Before he could demand why, the purple one was answering his question.

"Oh, the centaur prince? Why, he's here for Minnie, of course."

"Most of the boys have given up, but not Mortimer. Whenever he hears Minnie's on the surface he gallops right on over," the blue one explained. She was now looking rather disinterested in the conversation, examining her nails instead. "At least he brings his herd with him. They can be fun sometimes. But it's gotten so old, I wish she'd just give him what he wants already..."

What he wants. Mickey didn't like the sound of that. He watched as Mortimer greeted Minnie, and she turned, looking discouraged to see him but not entirely surprised. She must have known he'd be coming. Starfish and centaurs. Again, no wonder why she was so miserable. And being the coward that he was, Mortimer was flanked by some of his centaur cronies, the ones who weren't flirting with mermaids and nymphs and having unrelated fun. Minnie looked so small on that rock, but she looked like she was trying to make herself smaller. She wasn't glaring as she exchanged words with Mortimer that Mickey couldn't hear, but her eyes reflected certain displeasure. Mortimer looked entirely undeterred, flashing his teeth in a smile, even reaching out to take her hand and kiss it.

"It's awfully romantic, isn't it?" the pink one sighed, smiling at the scene which made Mickey want to shout or something. "He just won't give up on her. To think, having a centaur prince fall deeply in love with you..."

"And carry you inland?" the blue one asked with a cluck of laughter. "No thanks!"

"Love will find a way," the pink one insisted. "You know there's lots of rumors that he wants to marry her, and still more rumors about how he plans to make it work..."

"She won't agree to it," the purple one pointed out knowledgeably. "We're talking about Minnie here. They say she turned down Poseidon himself."

"I thought it was Zeus," the pink one said, squinting in confusion.

"Hmm. Or maybe it was Apollo," the purple one reconsidered.

The blue one laughed. "You're both thick. If a god ever wants his way with you there's nothing you can do to stop him. If Minnie said no to Poseidon or Zeus or even Bacchus she'd have paid dearly for it."

The pink one conceded to this with a laugh. "If not by the will of a god..."

"...then by a furiously jealous goddess!" finished the purple one, and then they were all laughing, even some of the angels. By now, Mickey was so tired of the conversation that he would have liked nothing better than to fly off and leave the inconsiderate mermaids, his inconsiderate angel pals who were now taking over the conversation while Mickey tuned them out, and the inconsiderate centaurs who did nothing to stop Mortimer as he flirted shamelessly with Minnie.

But Mickey couldn't just leave because he was watching that go on, watching with a certain protectiveness in his heart. Maybe she really wasn't as kind or as smart as he was hoping she was, but he'd already decided that whatever was going on, it wasn't right for everyone else to treat her the way they did. And when Minnie finally seemed to excuse herself, she was leaping off the rock, slipping into the water with agile elegance, and as her fin came down, she splashed so hard that water hit Mortimer square in the face. Mickey found himself swelling with pride over that, the sight of his soggy rival stomping off, embarrassed.

Huh. He'd never known Mortimer had a thing for anybody. He was a bit of a flirt with any girl and an extreme idiot, but he looked genuinely put off, almost obsessed. Just another reason to hate the centaur, Mickey supposed.

He sat there in silence, thinking. The mermaids and the angels had forgotten about Minnie and were chatting about other things, then the two groups were ignoring each other again and gossiping amongst themselves. Mickey didn't listen, just thought about Minnie.

She came back sooner than he'd expected she might. She rose quietly from beneath the water after a time, looking this way and that to see that Mortimer was gone. When she saw that he was, to Mickey's amazement and intense admiration, she broke into a sly, saucy little smile. Instead of resuming her old perch, she merely rested her upper body on the rocks, her tail sometimes dipping in and out of the water. Mickey watched, chin in his hand, as she sparkled under the sun, wet and dripping and somehow even more beautiful than before. She continued to smile, her shoulders scrunched up, even as she remained in her own little world. He watched as she spotted a hermit crab looking for a new shell, spied on her as she started collecting it a few choices for a home, holding them up to the crab for size, then setting them down in a row. He saw the hermit crab wave its legs in eagerness over one of the shells she offered, and Mickey actually saw her giggle even if he couldn't hear it. He watched her help the little creature crawl into its new home, watched her wave it goodbye, and decided instantly that she must have been kind after all, just misunderstood.

He could have watched her forever, but the angels were all pressuring him to leave, not understanding why he was still staring in Minnie's direction. Eventually, he found he had no choice. She'd laid her head on her arms and was napping in the sun, fins happily swaying back and forth as they poked out of the water. He had to leave, hoping that he'd get the chance to see her again. But maybe next time, he'd actually say hello.