Chapter 2

Enter the Little Merman

In a ship wreck graveyard, a sixteen year old merman with brown spiky hair with a lighter layer on top, brown bangs hugging the sides of his face, and a white tail with black streaks around his waist, looking at the recently wrecked ship, wondering what could be waiting inside. Somewhere behind him, he heard a voice, "Jay, wait up!"

Slightly annoyed, Jaden looks over his shoulder and calls to his friend, "Sy, hurry your slow tail up!"

Swimming up to him, the pale blue haired merman with a dark blue tail with small red specks and glasses from one of their previous discoveries since he has bad eyesight finally came to a stop next to Jaden, exhausted from so much swimming. "You know I can't swim as fast as you can."

Pointing to the ship he is looking at, Jaden says, "That's the next ship we're going to explore." As Jaden became excited about exploring the recently sunken ship, Syrus became nervous and his nervous gulp did not go unnoticed. Taking a firm hold of his best friend's hand before he got a chance to chicken out like he usually does, Jaden says as he led him to the ship, "Come on Syrus, you're not giving off a cold fin now are you?"

"Me? Of course not, Jaden."

And so, knowing how Syrus will feel about being left outside to keep an eye out for sharks, Jaden continue to pull Syrus along with him until they were inside the ship. While Jaden keeps an eye out for anything they haven't seen before, Syrus began to shake like a seaweed being pushed around by the tides.

Then when they swam up to a higher level of the wrecked ship, something caught Jaden's eyes and he became even more excited; in a bust up chest was a pile of cards that look like the sea cards the merpeople use to duel and a bit off to the side away from the busted chest, there was some sort of a disk that looked similar to the duel disks that the merpeople use in a duel with their cards.

As Jaden examine the few things they had found that happen to be in surprisingly good condition since the ship sank, Syrus began to feel more uneasy. "Jaden, I think it's time for us to leave!"

Shaking his head for a moment with an eye roll, Jaden reply with his ever calm and collected tone, "Syrus, would you calm down. Nothing's going to happen."

However, Jaden was proven wrong when the two friends hear glass shatter behind them and see a huge great white shark dashing toward them, jaws chomping nonstop. Now deciding to go with Syrus' word about leaving, Jaden stuffs their discoveries into his sac, took the frozen-in-fear teen by the hand and quickly swam out of the ship through the busted window the shark made.

Outside with the shark still swimming after them, Jaden and Syrus swam around the ship's mast to try and confuse him or get him to run into something hard enough to knock him out. Instead, having to watch the shark behind him, Syrus didn't watch where he was going when he hit his head on the mast hard.

Dizzy from hitting the mast, Syrus started to flutter down like a feather. Seeing the shark swimming over to Syrus, Jaden dash after him to get his best friend before the shark could. Grabbing him through the loop on an anchor where a chain would connect the heavy metal onto the ship, Jaden pulls Syrus through just as the shark is closing in on the two, ending up getting stuck in the anchor instead.

After Jaden checks to be sure he didn't lose any of the cards and the disk, he went to swim up to the surface where they were going to meet a friend while Syrus said to the shark, "You big bully!" Sticking his tongue out at him, the shark snapped his large jaws at the pale blue head merteen, scarring him and Syrus quickly swam up to Jaden.

Laughing, Jaden said, "Sy, you really are a sea-chicken."

"Am not, Jay!" Even though Jaden does it just to tease him like his older brother Zane does from time to time, Syrus hates being called a sea-chicken.

Up on the surface, on a tiny speck of land, sat a black seagull. He was sitting on his perch, looking through a pair of binoculars that Jaden had given him at a few different angles, when he heard Jaden call his name. Taking the binoculars from his eyes and turning, he saw Jaden's huge smile and Syrus' shy wave.

"Hey guys. What you got to show me this time?" Chazz, the black seagull said with a dark, almost bored tone from being on his tiny island.

Taking out the sac, Jaden took out the cards and duel disk, laying them out on the land to let Chazz take a closer look at them. Coming down from his perch, Chazz first took a look at the cards. Flipping through the cards carefully, Chazz said, "Whoa, I do believe that the humans had gotten ideas for these from the merpeople's sea cards. The same for that disk there."

Surprised, Jaden and Syrus looked at each other with expressions of amazement. "Do you suppose humans use these like we do, Chazz?" Jaden asks.

Nodding, Chazz said as he held both the card pile and the duel disk. "Yup, I've seen humans with their versions and some would either do minor duels or even tournaments with huge prizes like that green stuff they call money or rare cards."

By the word 'tournament,' Jaden froze; he had just remembered the semi-finals and finals of the tournament Headmaster Sheppard and Duel Master Crowler had thrown at the academy. Seeing his expression of realization, Syrus said, "What's wrong, Jay?"

"Sy, it's the tournament! Damn it, the headmaster is going to kill me!" said Jaden as he snatch the cards and disk back into his sac.

"The tournament was today?" Syrus remembers his older brother Zane is one of the final four in the tournament. Now with the realization surging through his veins, he became a little scarred of what wrath they'll have to face back home.

"You should get going then." added Chazz.

"Okay. See you later Chazz!"

"See you around, Jaden." Chazz waves them off as Jaden and Syrus swam as fast as they could back to the Duel Academy.

However, as the two try to swim as fast as they could back to the Duel Academy, they were unaware that two pairs of eyes were watching them, especially Jaden. Hiding in the shadows of the coral reef and following them, two mermen, one with red spiky hair, glasses, a dark red tail with green streaks and one black merman with black hair and black tail with red, orange and yellow in a pattern to look like flames keep their eyes on Jaden.

Their sight is then seen through a crystal bubble in a dark grotto, where a certain banished mermaid sat, watching the two fast swimming friends, especially Jaden. "That's right, deear boy. Wouldn't want to to miss dear headmaster's tournament now, would we?" then the shadow figure let out a sarcastic laugh and spit at the word 'tournament.'

"Tournament, my tail! Why, when I lived in that academy, there were so many fun tournaments. But now look at me, wasting away into nothing. Banished into exile, practically starving while those carefree fools have their tournaments." Stepping into the light emitting from her cauldron, the mermaid was not a pleasant sight like she used to be; her dark blue hair had lost its shine and had refused to be manageable a long time ago, her once flawless skin started to be invaded by some small yet ugly moles, and her beautiful silver tail lost its sparkle so it's just a very dull gray.

"There has to be a way for me to get at Sheppard for doing this to me, even having my dearest turn against me." Turning toward the crystal bubble, the sea witch Blair yelled, "Adrian, Axel!"

By hearing the tone of her voice, the two mermen that were watching Jaden had bumped their heads on a sea cave ceiling. Rubbing their heads, they listened closely to Blair's words, "I want you two to keep an extra close eye on Jaden, Sheppard's star pupil. Maybe he will be the key to Sheppard's down fall." Blair said with a wicked grin and an evil look in her eyes with her hair swishing around like Medusa's snakes.