I'm surprised that people actually want me to continue this. Please keep these reviews coming. I can feel my self-esteem rising every time you do.

Enjoy!


Chapter 2

Two Worlds

Sam ran back to Masters Manor with her gift in one hand, her pail and shovel in the other. She was happy that she made a new friend, even though he wasn't exactly human. She definitely wasn't going to tell her parents about him. And she definitely was going to make sure Mr. Masters doesn't find out. If it was he who found Danny instead of her…let's just say it would have been something out of an R-rated horror movie and leave it at that.

"Samantha! What are you doing with that disgusting old bottle?" Jeremy asked as he eyed Sam's treasure bottle in her hand.

Sam held the bottle close to her. "I found it on the beach today, Dad. It has treasure inside. Please let me keep it," she pleaded, giving her father a puppy-dog pout.

Unfortunately, both parents became immune to the pout when she turned eight. "No," they said to their daughter.

"Oh, for heaven's sake!" cried Grandma Manson. "Haven't you two ever heard the phrase, 'One man's trash is another man's treasure'?"

"Mother, that thing is full of dirty salt water," Jeremy argued.

"So what? This is coming from the same boy who used to drink from the toilet."

"I was three, Mother! I didn't know any better!"

While the adults were arguing, Sam stealthily sneaked away to her guest room and locked the door. She ran into the bathroom, shut the door and locked it too. She hopped onto the counter and sat next to sink. She plugged the sink drain, opened the bottle and spilled its contents out. Besides the seawater pennies, nickels and dimes fell out of the bottle. She looked into it and saw that something was blocking the rest of the little treasures in the bottle. She stuck her finger in it and after a few tries, managed to get two Yu-Gi-Oh cards and a little note that said, "My name is Danny" out of it. Sam shook the bottle again and three shell casings fell out along with the most beautiful pearl Sam had ever laid eyes on.

She picked it up and held it in her hand to get a closer look. It was white, almost as white as Danny's hair. When she held it up to the light, streaks of green and purple could be seen on the pearl's glossy surface.

A knock on the bedroom door interrupted her work. "Sammy-kins! I don't hear running water!" Pamela's voice shouted.

Sam rolled her eyes and put her treasures back in the bottle. "It's Sam," she mumbled as she got out of her bathing suit and turned on the water.

~0~0~0~

Danny swam back home as quickly as he could. That was the most fascinating and the most terrifying experience of his life. Sam was the first human he'd ever met and she wasn't as scary as he thought. However, after she told him that not all humans were like her, Danny would have to be careful not to be seen by anyone else.

"I'm home!" Danny announced as he entered his house. To his surprise, his parents were waiting for him. Their arms were crossed across their chests and they were not happy to see him.

"You're in big trouble, young man," Danny's father, Jack said. Jack was rather large in size. He had salt-and-pepper hair and midnight blue eyes. His tail fin was bright orange and he had matching fins on his arms and fin-like ears.

"We saw you swimming toward the surface this morning," said Danny's mother, Maddie. She had short brown hair and purple eyes. Her tailfin was an aqua blue and had matching fins on her arms and fin-like ears. The bra she wore was lavender, which went well with her eyes.

"Haven't we told you enough times that going to the surface is forbidden?" Jack asked his son.

"No one saw me," Danny mumbled. He wasn't going to reveal his new secret friend to his parents.

"If someone did, do you have any idea what would happen to you?" Maddie asked.

Danny rolled his eyes. "I would be taken away and be locked away in a cage for humans to stare at me. Then the humans will come and capture the rest of us, thus endangering our entire race," he drawled. He'd heard this speech so many times he practically had it memorized.

Jack blinked. "Wow. And here I thought he was always toning us out whenever we told him that," he muttered.

Maddie sighed. "At least you've been listening to what we were saying."

~0~0~0~

That night, Sam decided to talk to the only person who could shed light on her new friend without endangering him: her grandmother. Agnes Manson was the wisest person Sam knew. Whenever Sam didn't understand something she didn't want to ask her parents about, she'd go to Agnes.

Sam knocked on Agnes's door. "Come in," she heard her grandmother say. Sam entered the room and saw her grandma sitting in bed reading a book. "Oh, Sammy. What brings you here at this hour?" she asked her granddaughter. Agnes was the only one who was allowed to call her Sammy. Sam thought it sounded better coming from her. The way her parents said it just annoyed her.

"Grandma, I have a question," Sam said as she closed the door.

"Ask away, Grasshopper. The Grandmother of All Knowledge is in," Grandma said jokingly.

"What do you know about…mermaids?" Sam asked as she hopped on the bed.

Agnes's eyebrows went up. "Why do you ask?"

"Because you know everything, Grandma. I can always count on you for anything," said Sam.

Agnes took off her reading glasses. "Well from what I read in books, they've been around for centuries. Remember when I told you the story of Odysseus and the Sirens?"

Sam nodded. "Yeah. Odysseus and his friends put wax in their ears so they wouldn't be hypnotized by the Sirens' singing."

"Smart girl. That's what mermaids were also known for. They'd hypnotize sailors into crashing their ships into rocks."

"Are mermaids and sirens the same?"

Grandma shook her head. "No. Sirens could fly. Mermaids swam. Totally different," she explained.

"Are there any mermen?" Sam asked.

Agnes sighed as she wracked her brain for what she knew. "Well, I'm not completely familiar with them but I do know that they are handsome, powerful, and some of them have a lot of magical powers," she recalled. "Their singing can be enchanting when they want it to be. They're also very wise and knowledgeable."

Sam frowned. "Are they…bad?"

Agnes shrugged. "Now that I do not know. I've never met one so I wouldn't know. Why are you asking me? Did your crackpot of a teacher move on from fairy godparents to mermaids?"

Little did the two of them know that Vlad Masters was listening in on them. So the girl met a mermaid? 'Drat! I've been searching for years for a specimen and that little brat found one before I did. Well, I won't be letting one slip out of my hands again next time.' Vlad would have to keep a closer eye on Samantha from now on.

~0~0~0~

Danny swam quickly to the surface the following afternoon. He brought a satchel filled with a variety of human relics. He figured Sam might know what some of the items would be and how they worked. When he reached the surface, he looked around and saw Sam sitting in the sand waiting patiently for him.

After checking to make sure the coast was clear, Danny swam to shore.

Sam looked up and her face lit up. "Danny! You're back!" she exclaimed.

Danny smiled back. "Glad you made it. I have so many questions about humans!" he said excitedly.

Sam giggled. "Ask away then. I'll answer your questions as best as I can."

Danny opened his satchel and pulled out Tucker's old game cartridge. "What's this thing?" he asked.

Sam took it to get a closer look. "Cool! This is Mario Party for the Nintendo 64! You can't find these in stores anymore!" she exclaimed.

Danny tilted his head. "What's a 'Mario Party'? What's a Nintendo 64?" he asked.

"'Mario Party' is a video game we humans play on the Nintendo 64. That's a game station we plug into the TV," Sam explained.

"What does the 64 mean?"

"I don't really know," said Sam, furrowing her eyebrows.

Danny was even more confused. "Video game? Game station? What does TV stand for?" he asked.

"TV stands for television," Sam explained. "I don't know how to describe what a video game and a game station are."

"What's a television?"

"A big black box with moving pictures."

"How does it work?"

"I don't know. I just know how change the channels."

Danny shrugged and pulled out the next relic. "What's this thing?"

Sam gasped. "Get rid of that!" she yelled as she swatted it out of his hand. "That's a gun! They kill people!"

Danny yelped and threw it aside. "Guns kill people? Why did humans invent them in the first place?" he asked exasperatedly.

"They're weapons. They're extremely dangerous," Sam explained. "I don't know why humans invented them."

"Okay. How about this strange disc?" Danny asked, pulling out the next item after calming himself down.

"That's a DVD."

"D…V…D?"

Sam nodded. "I think it stands for Digital Video Disc. I could be wrong."

Danny also nodded. "Okay. So what is a Goldfinger?"

"Oh! That's a James Bond movie. I've never seen it. Mom thinks it's too scary for me. I want to watch it so bad. It's rated PG for Pete's sake," said Sam.

"Who or what is James Bond?" asked Danny.

"He's a secret agent who saves the world."

"Interesting…"

"Now, I have some questions for you," said Sam.

Danny shrugged resignedly. "Okay."

"What's it like living under the sea?" the violet-eyed girl asked excitedly. "Does it have singing crabs and fish that play musical instruments like in the movies?"

"No. We have fiddler crabs but that's it. They're the only creatures that I know of that actually play a musical instrument," Danny explained.

Sam's eyes widened. "They actually play the fiddle?"

Danny nodded. "Yeah but they're not very good. They're more like pests for us."

"Oh," said Sam. "Okay, next question. Where do you live? In a house? In a cave?"

"It all depends on what's available to us. Some of us live in caves; some of us live in houses made of coral. Some of us even live in sunken ships."

"Sunken ships? Cool!" Sam exclaimed.

Danny tilted his head. "'Cool'? Are you cold?"

Sam giggled. "No, silly. It's human slang. It means 'interesting' or 'amazing' or something like that," she explained.

"Cool," Danny repeated. "Then when I say that the human world is 'cool'…"

"You're saying that the human world is interesting or amazing," Sam finished. "You get the idea. So, how do you get around? Do you actually swim everywhere to get from one ocean to the next?"

"No way!" laughed Danny. "That would be exhausting and it would take forever. Sometimes we use magic to get from one ocean to the next; sometimes we just ride the currents if it's a short distance away."

"Wow!"

Danny suddenly froze when he saw Vlad coming down the stairs to the beach. "I've gotta go," he said hurriedly.

Sam turned around to see what he was looking at and gasped. "Go. Take your stuff and go!" she said in a harsh whisper. Danny hurriedly gathered his stuff and dove into the water.

~0~0~0~

Vlad knew it. He knew that if he waited long enough, the merboy would appear. The boy looked up and noticed him. Next thing Vlad knew, the children were scrambling to get the boy's things together. 'You'll go nowhere.'

Vlad pulled out a remote and pressed a button. The merboy was already in the water. Luckily Vlad had droids under the water that could capture the creature.

As Danny swam as fast as he could to get to safety, some metal creatures began to chase him. He tried swimming in zigzags, loop-de-loops and a multitude of various angles but he couldn't lose them. One of the metal creatures fired a net at the white-haired boy, capturing him. Danny wiggled and squirmed as best as he could to escape but it was futile. He was getting too tangled up in the net as the metal creature dragged him back to shore.

Splashing was heard as Danny continued to struggle. A pair of hands picked up the net and out of the water.

"No!" Sam voice was heard as she tried to reason with the mysterious stranger. "Mr. Masters, please let him go!"

"Stand aside, girl. This is my private beach. Anything I find here belongs to me and this creature here belongs to me now," the evil human said.

"He belongs in the ocean with his mom and dad!" Sam argued. "He's my friend!"

"This creature does not make friends with humans like us!" Vlad exclaimed.

"Yes, he does! Now please let him go!" Sam pleaded, her eyes filling with tears.

While the two of them were arguing, Danny was using a ray of energy to burn through the ropes of the net. The net broke through and Danny fell into the water with a loud splash.

"NO!" Vlad yelled as his specimen escaped.

"GO DANNY! GET OUT OF HERE!" Sam yelled as she tugged on Vlad's shirt to stop him. Danny dove into the water and never looked back.

"I'll come back to you one day, Sam. I promise," Danny vowed.


Major time skip next chapter!

FYI: It's finals week. I won't be done till Thursday. You'll have to wait patiently for the next chapter till then. Keep reviewing! Followers, this means you!

And for my readers who are Jewish: Happy Hanukkah!