Hi guys! So, I know you probably hate me by now for disappearing for so long, but unfortunately, that was my only choice, as things really changed a lot around me.
I also couldn't update anything I'd done for my other stories, because my computer died (died died) and I lost everything I'd ever put into them...
Sad life notes aside, this brain worm came at me randomly, and I had to run with it before it abandoned me and made me lonely again...
This is, strangely enough, a Totally Spies Little Mermaid combination. Yup. I'm serious.
I was actually really shocked by how well it seemed to flow the further I got in, and it should only be between 2 and 5 'chapters', so I think I can actually really finish this!
Hope you guys enjoy! (Also, it's not a canon rehash, so don't worry about mashing square pegs into round holes! There should be some interesting twists coming up eventually after part 1).
Samanthalassa sighed as she let her emerald gaze search outside her coral window. Windows didn't actually mean much in her kingdom, as she could merely swim out of it and down to the sandy bottom with no consideration at all.
She twirled a loose strand of her floating orange-red hair, tangling it elegantly into her seashell crown. Her golden armbands and bracelets were in the right position, and she had the sheer golden skirtlet around her waist to match her gold-decorated seashell brassiere.
Normally, even high-class mernobility wore less adornments, but as princess of Atlantica, and secondary leader to WOOMP, she had an obligation to be properly dressed for her birthday ball.
There was a knock at the door, before her bestest friends Cloversa and Alexandrana swam in with wide smiles.
Cloversa's parents were still upset at the dishonor that came with her cutting her hair to reach her shoulders, while Alexandrana's had never held much on tradition. Personally, Sam cherished her long strands of red-gold hair, though she never dared to say it.
Both were wearing bronze armbands to denote their status in WOOMP, and some pretty earrings and coral beads to match their tails, but neither were as golden and shiny as she was. (Something that made both her and Cloversa jealous in opposite ways at times.)
"Are you ready, Sammie? The guests are getting a little impatient down there..." Clover seemed excited, but then again, she was probably eager to see Blaine, her newest crush.
"I-I don't know..." She took another glance at herself in the mirror, and felt herself doubting herself. Which unfortunately wasn't new.
"Oh Sammie, you look beautiful and you know it! Now let's go before Jerry gets antsy. You know how he gets!"
Sam laughed despite herself, and looped her arms with her friends, grinning as they swam to the ballroom, where their entrance was heralded, and she was motioned to swim over to her father.
"Crown Princess Samanthalassa Oceania the First, to her father, King Jeremy Oceanic the Protector!" Appalause rang out, and Sam kept a gentle smile on her face as her father's warm hand affectionately touched her shoulder.
There was a moment of silence for the deceased Queen Gabrielle, Sam's dearest mother, before the obligatory speech to commemorate WOOMP like every year on her birthday.
WOOMP, the World Organization of Mermanic Protection, was established by her father King Jeremy, known as 'Jerry' to his agents, after Sam's mother met her death by filthy pirating humans.
As such, the mermanic world was restricted to never visit the surface unless expressly permitted as part of the WOOMP protective guard to observe and ensure the fishing patterns of the filthy humans hadn't changed.
Her father was especially proud of her, Princess Samanthalassa, for having risen in the demise of her mother to be WOOMP's best agent, and secondary commander of its forces (though her father never allowed her to make any decisions herself). He also commended Cloversa, a daughter of Atlantica's mernobility, and Alexandrana, whose family had moved to Atlantica from another seastation, for being such great friends and companions as well as his other best agents accompanying his daughter.
Then, the performance began. Samanthalassa was expected to sing for all the partygoers gathered before them as she shared her mother's beauteous voice, something essential in a mermaid's skill-set.
My ocean's waves rise, my ocean's waves fall,
Atlantica's king protecting us all,
The tides change, the oceans rise,
One day may we lead to the humans' demise.
The sea is high, the sea is low,
Our kingdom is safe down far below.
Always the same words, as some kind of anthem, before tremendous applause and seeing her father smile proudly.
Then the party commenced and she and her friends greeted all the guests before having their swirl cards filled. And when finally the festivitites were through, the girls would be able to eat what remained of the feast.
It was a tried and true routine by now, but Samanthalassa was well-trained in keeping her silent boredom from reaching her face. She had a duty to her kingdom and her father, and she would not let them down.
Clover easily filled two swirl cards worth of partners, while Alex only shyly danced with a few mermen, only lighting up and opening up when asked about Coralball, her favorite sport.
Sam, of course found a few partners as well, but they never made her feel... anything.
Love was a human concept, but merpeople often felt a spark in their chest at touch, which meant they'd found the right merperson for them. (If you had a spark upon touching two merpeople, further investigation was required.)
But Sam never felt this spark. Never allowed herself to feel much of anything under her mask of obligation to her kingdom and her father.
Though all of that was about to change.
-/-|^|-\-
She couldn't sleep.
After the party celebrating her eighteenth year, Samanthalassa had said goodnight to Clover and Alex, and then been escorted to her room (safety was a big thing, though sometimes illogical considering the whole windows thing). After derobing of her finery, and putting on her favorite shimmery green clambra, Sam had tried to sleep. She really had.
But for her, the night was the one time that she could let go of the fancy expectations, and do what she wanted to do.
And considering that all the other WOOMP members were taken up to see the surface on their eighteenth birthday, that was her plan.
Honestly, even though Sam knew her father was only doing it to protect her, she thought it wasn't fair that he put her in charge, but never gave her any of the typical privileges that being in charge yielded. (Like actually being allowed to tell people what to do and make your own choices).
Her father tended to command merpeople to his throne room through whirlpools, and the one time she'd tried to bring up a trip to the surface, he'd whirlpooled her back to her room.
Sam was honest. Sam was dutiful. Sam was loyal to a fault.
But she was not a slave.
It was funny how these sentiments only came to her at night, when no one was around to hear her rant, and no one caught her leaving or lectured her.
She'd never even told Clover and Alex about her dream to see the surface world, or her secret studying of human texts, because she knew they wouldn't get it.
Clover's biggest problem was dealing with Mandra, and Alex's was Coralball. Neither of them shared her deep longing to explore, and more importantly, understand everything around her.
Why were the humans so cruel? Were really none of them redeemable? (That was like declaring all merpeople evil!)
How did those stick appendages they had instead of a tail work? (There was a word for them, something like leegs... She wasn't sure... Reading the different human languages was difficult, especially in the texts that didn't survive their trip under the surface. Which was most of them.)
No one would really notice she was missing.
"And where do you think you're going?" Sam jolted as Heptarus' deep baritone voice sounded behind her.
Sure enough, her best octopus friend and confidant was watching her from the ceiling.
"Out..." She hedged, blushing at being caught as Heptarus ejected from the ceiling, jetting closer to narrow his eyes at her.
"We both know out never means anything good, Princess."
"That's only your opinion, Heptarus. Besides, we were only almost eaten by a shark once!"
"I'm still scarred for life." He said flatly, jetting past her and out the window. "Since I can't dissuade you from whatever stupid thing you're about to do, let's just go and do it before we get caught and I get blown up."
Sam beamed at her truly best friend. "You're the best Heptarus!"
"And don't you forget it." With that said, Sam gathered her fishnet bag in case they found anything interesting on their excursion, and then sneakily swam out her window, and past the guards patrolling the coral palace.
Only a couple of minutes of a practiced routine later, they were home-free. Sam made sure to pass one of the taller coral shelfs out into a widely uninhabited region of ocean before beginning to swim upwards.
The ocean was truly deep, and the upward swim spanned a certain amount of time, despite her gifted fins propelling her far faster than a human could ever hope to swim.
During this time, Heptarus attached himself to her back (much like a human knapsack) to save himself the effort of trying to reach the surface, something that would take him far longer.
Samanthalassa spun as she torpedoed towards the barrier that seperated the ocean from where the strange light usually shone on the other side.
She was barely a foot away from it when she hastily swerved into a stop, staring at the barrier apprehensively. It was dark on the other side now.
Disobeying Father to explore shipwrecks was one thing, but breaking his express rule to never, ever go to the surface was another.
She couldn't be sure that humans wouldn't scoop her up the moment she surfaced, and cut off her tail and torture her.
All she had was faith.
And curiosity about the weird popping sounds she could faintly hear from this side.
The redhead took a deep, gasping breath, letting her gills calm her before carefully, slowly reaching her hand out to pierce the veil between her and a whole other world.
She didn't account for the continuously moving surface of the water, and suddenly found her hand exposed without warning to a strange vacuum.
The green mermaid gasped, hastily withdrawing her hand below the surface, before giggling.
That was strange.
Carefully, she reached her hand out again, kicking upward with her tail to slowly let her head gently pierce the surface as well.
It felt like a vortex. That was the only way Sam could reasonably explain this beautiful and strange new sensation upon her skin.
Once, when she was a child, her father had become angry with her after she'd wandered off, and put her at the center of a vortex, where all was calm, and her skin tingled because she couldn't feel the water. It'd scared her then, and she'd promised Daddy to never run off again.
But now it was exhilerating.
Sam let her torso meet the cool and crisp sensation as well, still keeping relatively low in the water to retreat should any threat emerge.
It tasted about the same to her gills, but thinner, and a certain element was missing.
"Air." Heptarus croaked from his forgotten position on her back.
"What?" Sam asked, intentively listening to whatever explanation Heptarus could have for this wonder.
"Air. This is what the humans breathe instead of water. I don't see what's so special about it though. This stuff is so thin that it can't protect them from anything!"
Samanthalassa giggled, amused and pleased at her friend's sagess.
"I think it's wonderful! Look at their barrier," She pointed up at the sky, "Do you think they can cross that barrier like I crossed the surface?" Heptarus shifted.
"I doubt it. Humans aren't very intelligent, Princess. They probably have never even thought about it."
"I wonder what those pinpricks of light are... We don't have anything like that except for the glowfish..." Sam trailed off, taking in the occasional rock protruding from the sea, and the endless expanse of sky that somehow seemed even wider than the barrier connecting sea and this newfound air.
The mermaid giggled again, pleased with herself and no longer as worried as she noticed that this air really was thinner. Her breasts seemed to have a weight to them they hadn't had in the ocean's protective embrace.
And the waves were so obvious up here, visible to the eye as they gently propelled her along despite the constant swish of her tail keeping her afloat.
Sam set her back to the water, letting herself float in the wide emptiness surrounded by the darkness.
Was the whole world like this? Lapping water against rocks, shrouded by a barrier with pinpricks of light?
If so, Sam found she really didn't mind.
But something hung at the edges of her mind. If this was so, then where were all the humans? If they were above the water, there must be something keeping them out of it.
Ships, She suddenly remembered from a WOOMP lesson. Humans live on ships that sporadically dot the surface, where greedy humans kidnap our fish and our comrades.
Were they constantly afloat?
Sam had too many questions that she just couldn't answer. She sighed, letting the questions go as she gently floated along the water's surface, Heptarus underwater and absolutely fine with it from his position on her back.
She was probably close to falling asleep with the lull of the water when she heard it again.
The pop sound. It seemed to crackle up here too, making her ears tingle in a funny way.
She jolted upwards, looking around herself quickly as her hair seemed to heavily stick to her exposed shoulders. She frowned at it, before lowering herself where only her neck protruded from the ocean.
Pop. Pop pop, pop pop. The sounds were always closely in succession of each other, and they sounded like they were coming from over there.
Samanthalassa looked at the sky, seeing some of the pinpricks change color, bouncing off of each other. Her eyes glowed with the light a moment as she ducked beneath the surface and swam towards the sound, occasionally pulling up above to check she was still going the right way.
It was after meeting a particularly large rock in the sea that she was rewarded.
These popping things weren't the same as the pinpricks like she originally thought. They were coming from the large blob floating on the water's surface.
A ship!
She couldn't understand why these humans were sending things to pop under the pinpricks. Maybe it was their way of marking the barrier, since air was too thin for them to swim up and observe like she had.
Maybe she should take a closer look?
Stop it Samanthalassa. You got your surface visit, and you were lucky you didn't get yourself killed or worse. You're just asking for trouble by getting any closer to that ship. Don't discredit your family and your kingdom!
But...
The what ifs swirled in her head with the curiousity, the desire to see these primitive creatures. To understand them.
The truth was that she was unsure if they were really as primitive as she'd been taught. (The artifacts she had hidden away spun a very different story!)
Maybe it was fate or destiny that propelled her towards this ship on this night. Or maybe it was merely a coincedence. Either way, it marked the official beginning of it all.
Sooooooo? What did you think? Leave me a review and let me know!
Also, Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! ;)