CHAPTER 2

Reaper's POV

The next night I showed up at the beach at around two-thirty. The ocean was inky black and crashing against the shore, sea foam occasionally sticking to the coarse sand. I parked my bike on the same sand dune before sitting down beside it. I waited for about fifteen minutes for the bus to arrive, but it never did.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, so I fished it out and typed in the passcode. It was a group text from an unknown number.

Hey, everybody! The turtles didn't hatch like I thought they would, so go ahead and stay home! Be sure to be awake at around this time tomorrow! – Hanji

Hanji. That made sense. She must have gotten our numbers from the school directory. Several texts from Armin and Reiner and Eren and Jean, among others, came in, responding to Hanji's original text. I didn't reply and tucked my phone back into the pocket of my sweatshirt.

I sighed. Of course I would get dragged out there for nothing. I was about to press on my knees and stand up, but something caught my eye out in the water.

It was the head, and those eyes were looking directly at me once again. The creature was in the same place it had been the previous night, though I had moved. I stared back for several seconds before blinking slowly. It blinked back.

I raised my hand slightly and waved. The creature or person or whatever ducked back down, the tail coming up again and disappearing down into the water after the head. I rubbed my eyes.

"I'm going crazy," I said to myself, pushing against the ground and getting myself standing. I picked my bike up and placed it on the pavement before going to straddle it. Just on a whim I looked back out to where the creature had been, and I wasn't disappointed. The head was back above the water and staring at me.

I blinked and it was gone.

"Definitely going crazy," I muttered half-heartedly.

Why was it so hard to believe that a water-swelling humanoid creature existed when I myself could turn into a water-dwelling humanoid creature? It wasn't.

I placed my feet on the pedals and pedaled away towards my house.

I showed up at the beach again on Sunday night. Or Monday morning, given that it was three a.m.. Hanji led my classmates and I down the beach to the place where we had released the turtles on Friday night, taking large, clumsy steps and kicking up sand as she went. My classmates were talking loudly, Eren and Mikasa seeming to be the only ones having a normal quiet conversation.

Eren and Mikasa were alone. That meant that Armin was…

"Hey, Reaper," he said from beside me. I jumped slightly but managed to calm myself down.

"Hey, Armin," I said. "What's going on?"

"Just wanted to say hi."

"Well, you've said it. Now what?"

He laughed quietly, looking down at his feet.

"I guess I'll just try to strike up a conversation, then," he said.

I looked out at the inky black ocean, probably looking for the head or the tail.

"What do you want to talk about?" Armin asked.

Do you believe in mermaids?

"I don't care," I said instead.

Armin took it upon himself to outline several essays he had recently read about the types of turtles we were releasing – loggerheads. He told me about South Carolina's efforts to help them and that they were omnivorous and that they could live from 47 to 67 years and other various facts that I didn't really care to remember, and I nodded after each addition. I loved the way his eyes lit up when he talked about the ocean. He just seemed so happy that I couldn't bear to make him stop.

"I'm still listening," I said as I took my eyes off of him and let my gaze wander back out to the ocean. He made a noise of recognition before going on about how loggerheads could weight up to 300 pounds when fully grown.

I scanned the surface of the water for the creature. It wasn't there and I felt my chest drop in disappointment.

Hanji suddenly called out and told us to stop, that we were going to release the turtles there. She placed the final cooler down in the sand and ordered us into walls, an order we quickly heeded. I knelt down at the back of one of the walls, far away from the waves, and watched as Hanji turned the cooler on its side to let the baby turtles free. Armin was, once again, in the water with a flashlight to guide them out to the water.

Once we were done Hanji told us to pack up and head back to the bus. I walked along with Armin – who continued on with his spiel on loggerheads – until I reached the dune where my bike was parked. I dug my phone from my pocket and sent Hanji a quick text that I'd see her at school, that I was going home on my bike. She called out and waved her hand, her thumb sticking straight up in the air. I took it as an "a-okay" and put my phone back in my pocket.

"You going home?" Armin asked from beside me. I nodded.

"Yeah," I said. "I might take the long way, but I'm going home."

"Well, see you tomorrow. Or later today, I guess."

I nodded again and he left, a large smile on his face as he ran to catch up with Eren and Mikasa. I stood there for a moment, watching my classmates clamor onto the bus, until I shook myself out of my trance and began climbing up the sand dune. Upon reaching the top of the large grassy dune the bus cranked up and began to roll away. I waved at everyone and only Armin and Hanji waved back.

Standing my bike up and placing it on the pavement, I straddled the seat and placed my feet on the pedals. I began to slowly pump my legs, forcing the chain to wrap around the gears and propel the bike forward.

I couldn't resist. I looked out at the sea again, looking at the surface to catch a glimpse of the creature. Instead I received an image of the dark water and the crashing waves and the coarse sand. Nothing out of the ordinary.

I sighed and pedaled faster until I reached the side street that would lead me back to my house. For some reason I felt the urge to look back out at the beach, and so I did, letting my gaze sweep over the surface of the water and the edge of the shore.

My eyes fell on a human figure half sticking out of the ocean, lying on its back and obviously unconscious.

"Just my fucking luck," I muttered, quickly hopping off my bike and letting it clang to the ground. I leapt on the edge of a dune and slid down its side until I was crouching on the main beach, and then I ran to the place where the person lay.

My shoes dug into the loose sand as I raced across the beach, my breath coming out a bit short and a bit sharp and a bit cold. Once I made it to the place where the person was I saw broad shoulders, short hair, a sculpted chest and abdomen, and what appeared to be a spear protruding from the side of the ribs. This person was very clearly male and very clearly injured. Dark red blood was quickly oozing from the wound and spilling onto the compacted sand.

My first instinct was to race over to him and pull the spear out, but I realized that a) pulling out the spear would only cause this guy to bleed out faster, and b) I couldn't get wet unless I wanted to become completely useless on land. My second instinct was to pull out my phone and call 911, something I was two digits into doing until I noticed a wave flip something out from under the water.

A tail fin.

A particularly large wave receded and took my breath with it, because below his hips weren't swim trunks or even a naked dick. No, beneath this man's stomach was an abundance of scales that looked all too similar to the ones I grew in the bath, to the ones I had in a permanent patch on my left arm, to the ones I knew were on the tail I had been seeing for the past two nights. Dragging my eyes lower I saw that he had a single appendage where his legs should be and a flipper at the bottom of it all.

He was like me.

I immediately deleted the "91" that I had tapped into my phone and replaced it with Hanji's number, pressing phone to my ear before my frazzled brain registered that I needed to press the call button first. I took the phone away from my face and tapped the icon, then put the device back to my ear and listened to it ring. I prayed to a god I didn't believe in that she would pick up.

She did, though it was on the fourth ring.

"Hanji Zoe, speaking!" she said cheerfully, though I knew she couldn't have gotten more than an hour of sleep the entire weekend.

"Hanji, it's Reaper," I said hurriedly. "Youwereamarineveterinarianbeforeyoustartedteachingatsina, right?"

"Slow down, girl," she said. "Repeat that?"

I swallowed and looked back down at the creature, the merman, the whatever the fuck he was. The blood was flowing more quickly.

"You were a marine veterinarian before you started teaching at Sina, right?" I asked.

"Yeah!" she exclaimed. "What's wrong? Is there a whale or a dolphin or-"

"You're not going to believe me unless you come and see for yourself."

"How am I supposed to know what to bring-"

"There's something with a spear in its ribs," I said. "Please come quickly. And bring Armin."

"How about I bring the whole team?"

"No," I said quickly. "Bad idea. This isn't… Just bring Armin. Please."

"What's going on over there, Reaper?"

"Please."

I heard a sigh from the other end of the line.

"Alright," she said. "I don't know how fast I can get there, though."

"Just get here as fast as you can."

"Okay. Okay."

A click, and the line went dead.

I sat down in the sand several feet from the dying creature. His breathing was labored, audible as his chest rose and fell. I clenched my fists and wished I weren't so useless, wished I could get in the water and help him, wished I had enough expertise to help him if I could get in the water.

Hanji soon arrived in her own car, Armin in tow. The blonde in question hopped out of the car, looking very confused and very stressed out at the same time. Hanji got out of the car shortly after and I waved my arms over my head to grab their attention. They both slid down a sand dune – Armin fell on his face when he reached the bottom and I would have laughed had it not been for the dying creature not ten feet away from me – and raced over to me.

"What's going on?" Armin asked when he got to me. Hanji held the same question in her eyes. I pointed behind me at the beached merman.

"Help him," I said hurriedly. "I don't think there's much time left."

"What-"

Hanji fell silent as she took in the sight. Armin followed soon after. They both looked back at me, Armin's eyes wide in shock and Hanji's wide in excitement.

"Help. Not capture and experiment on," I clarified harshly.

"Right on it," said Hanji, that same "I-could-kill-a-man" glare glinting off her glasses as she ran over to the unconscious merman and knelt down, hopefully getting to work.