Authors note: Man, I got to say you guys who read the previous chapter are awesome; especially if you're from another country, I just cannot help but appreciate that, I would love to see a mer-motif on Power Rangers and I'm happy I might not be the only one.
The walls of the Mariana Trench were dark despite the fish that glowed as brightly as they could in service of the lobster tailed merfolk, but despite their best efforts they couldn't dissipate the gloom.
The chief sat on a pile of rocks and seashells as her hateful eyes followed two oversized frogs with sharp underbites as they brought a handsome young prisoner before her. "Kind of you to come at my summons."
"My pleasure." The prisoner's words soaked in sarcasm, his dark brown Moray tail twitching in an unbridled anger. "Pardon my rudeness, but…" He glared at the kappa-guards.
"Release him, you fools!" Atargatis's words sounding numb, the foot-soldiers did as they were told.
"You wanted to see me, Atargatis?" He dipped his head in an exaggerated bow.
"Just something I need you to do for me." Atargatis, the chief spoke.
"And what would that be?" The merman said.
"For a mother who lost her child, my sister doesn't seem to be grieving at all. This makes me think she's hiding Natalia; that'll be where you come in, naiad." Atargatis explained.
The naiad nodded, his angular jaw clenched. "Should I have noticed? Maybe… if I wasn't locked up!" The naiad said.
Ignoring the naiad's snide remark and the kappa's snickering, she continued. "Twenty years ago, she and Natalia went to where the ocean ends, she returned without her child, I want you to swim there and find her daughter."
"Twenty years, ehh, why should I?" The naiad mused aloud.
"Perhaps I've gone too soft on my prisoners," Atargatis hissed. "first you find her, Palaemon, then I'll send the kappa."
"As you have told us before, the sentence for disobedience is destruction!" The naiad said.
"Yes, I expect you to deliver." Atargatis turned and commanded, "Take him..." her foot soldiers grabbed the naiad's arms and pinned him to the ground, "take him to the eastern edge of our territory, fools."
The naiad nodded with a sad expression on his face. "And I will deliver." The naiad bowed and turned to swim away. Or I'll warn her about what's going on, we both know what good successors do to their corrupt predecessors, he thought as he lead the
kappa-guards up the trench.
"Palaemon!" A feminine voice called, he saw his twin sister imprisoned behind the ribcage of a whale carcass.
"Pearlie, I'll be right back." Palaemon said, surprised. "I promise."
The training room was big enough to be a dojo, it even had all the equipment and scents a dojo would have.
Stalky Toru and swimmers-built Rien were up first, they both took a step back and sunk into fighting stances, Rien tried to punch Toru in the chest, but he did an L-shaped block.
"So you've got them committed to this?" Eddie curiously asked, watching Toru grab Rien's wrist and twist until he knelt.
"I could compare my children's lives to that of any ancient martial artist." Kirk explained to Eddie, watching the training session.
"This might be a good thing, there are rumors throughout my shoal about three merfolk being raised by humans, but there's no telling how many more pods have rumors like this swirling." Eddie thought out loud.
Meanwhile, on a bench in the sidelines…
Bridget tried her best to Bundle fussy Talia's champagne ringlets into a bun. "Come on, Bridget; I'll make do with a ponytail." Talia complained.
"Talia, the hair-tie could break, I just want to make sure this thick hair of yours doesn't blind you." Bridget explained.
"Talia, Bridget; you're up." They heard Kirk say, Bridget's hands flew off of her work as a sigh of relief escaped Talia's rose-gold lips and they both got up off their rumps.
"I can finally get onto the battlefield," Talia said. that spring in her step telling Kirk to stop allowing Bridget to do her hair before training.
Talia and Bridget bowed before stepping into the ring, the girls faced each other at the ring's center, bowed, took a step back and sunk into a guarding stance.
"You coming at me or am I coming at you?" Talia asked, but Bridget answered with a vertical knife-hand, to which Talia used a rising-block.
"Ouch!" Bridget yelled, when Talia's block knifed pain through her wrist. "I think you broke it!" She held it with her other hand and looked at it.
Kirk stepped into the ring to take a look.
"I should take you to your mother and have her take a look at your wrist." Kirk said.
"That's never happened before." Talia sounded shocked, watching Bridget and her father leave to tend to her injury.
"Hence why I'll be right back with a cinderblock." His voice sounded curious.
"Oh, just punch the first brick wall we can find." Toru joked, earning dirty looks from everyone left in the training room.
She saw the only visible brick wall in the training room, walked up to it and punched.
"Whoa, what…?" they heard a male voice gasp from the other side of the wall.
"What happened here?" a female voice followed.
When the dust cleared, Eddie's electric green eyes, Talia's cherry red stare and Toru's amber glance scanned the hole.
"What just happened?" Rien asked in a startled tone jogging to the scene.
"I punched the wall." Talia answered, feeling awkward.
"You?" Rien asked taking her hands to look at them. "No swelling, no purple, not even a single hangnail."
"What? You mean to tell me I'm like a mantis-shrimp Now?" Talia asked in exasperation.
The sky looked like cotton candy flavored ice cream, the sands looked like graham cracker crumbs and the sun looked like a giant lemon-drop.
Ice-cream themed descriptions of the sunset aside, the beach-goers looked like they were just packing up to go home.
Talia thought if there was anything she wanted to do, she better do it before anyone noticed her.
"A pre-nightfall swim in the ocean is just what I need right now." Talia told herself, walking along the beach before finding a suitable sneaker-wave to pierce like a threaded needle through a piece of fabric.
She popped her head through the surface and saw the rusty buoy as clear as day, she dove down, willed her legs to turn into her tail and sped to the buoy as fast as her tail would push her.
Once she made her way to that old barnacle-riddled floatation device that might as well have been purely made of rust, she gripped the handle as she turned her tail into legs to climb up and stare at the shore for a few minutes.
The beach looked like an ant farm from as far out to sea as she was. Talia felt a contented look grow on her face as her train of thought derailed for a moment.
Suddenly, Talia felt like she was being watched; it wasn't a random seagull like it usually was, this seemed like some entirely different creature. She heard a splash from behind her. Her head turned and her eyes scanned the waves for any sign of
the culprit.
"What was that?" She whispered, it sounded like it was getting closer, the buoy rocked and she changed her legs back into her tail as she slid back into the water with a splash of her own.
She quickly turned around at the sound of laughter and saw a stranger with a chiseled build, hair as black as ink and an eel-like tail.
"Please wake up, Self." Talia thought swearing that she was dreaming, she stared down this hot fudge sundae the universe found it funny to present to her. "You have a tail too!"
"Natalia?" A soft gasp escaped the merman's lips.
Talia and the merman had bobbed to the surface allowing her to notice the night sky.
"No, just Talia," she muttered confused. "And you are…?"
The merman's black eyes looked into her red ones, she found it hypnotic; but this wasn't love at first sight… or was it?
"None of your business, siren," the merman snapped as he dove down with a flick of his shimmery tail, splashing Talia in the face.
"Is everyone rude where you come from?" Talia slapped the water in frustration, she dove down and looked for him in the murk, but he was gone.
When Talia reached the island, she looked out to sea just to make sure the merman didn't change his mind and follow her before finding a cave.
Inside this man-made cave or Souterrian, there were lights shaped like stalactites and stalagmites that glowed a blood red.
"He also called me Natalia." Talia thought out loud when she reached the shallow end, she deeply inhaled as she turned her tail into legs, she exhaled as she stepped out of the water and walked over to a door that was at the other side. "I'll ask
Eddie tomorrow." she, ever so delicately, reached for the knob to open the door.
She sneaked through the tiled hallways and to a rose-gold door, opened the door to the room she and Bridget's shared, there Bridget slept in a bed that acted like a canopy over a pool the shape and size of a bed.
Talia had to sleep in the bed-sized pool below due to being a mermaid.
She had her questions about the earlier events and yet it all somehow lulled her into a restless sleep.
The next morning…
The sun streamed into Kirk and Melanie's bedroom and into their awaking eyes.
"Okay, that's holes in our retinas!" Melanie said rubbing her eyelids.
"We really need to get ourselves eye-masks." Kirk groaned and crammed his pillow over his eyes. "Someone should've closed the blinds."
"Someone? Why couldn't you have done it?" Melanie laughed, earning a muffled moan from her husband.
Kirk's phone chirped for a second on the nightstand at his bedside, startling Melanie. "Um, Kirk; it's your phone."
"It can continue to go off unless you can close the blinds." Kirk moaned, earning an eye-roll from Melanie as she got up, closed the blinds and got back in bed.
"Another RSVP?" Melanie asked laying on her side to watch her husband unplug his phone and take it off the nightstand to read the push-notification.
"No, it's Bridget; she and the others are at the spa on the mainland." Kirk replied, looking at the expression on his wife's face, wonderment with a hint of sadness, nostalgic if you will. "Must seem like only yesterday you were dragging them to the
spa, now it's Bridget who is taking them." He chuckled and wrapped his arm around Melanie.
"I just hope no one needs a waxing." Melanie said, leaning her head on his shoulder.
"They'd get a good laugh if so." Kirk said and chuckled.
"I'm guessing that's how Bridget gets them to go." Melanie giggled. "They do get a kick out of that."
"I think they like it when someone screams in pain." Kirk sighed. "Not so funny when it's something of theirs that needs a waxing."
There was silence for a minute, then his phone screeched repeatedly until he answered. "Hello…? eh, long time and not one indirect word out of you… couldn't you have RSVP'd online… you do…? Aah, I'll meet you there and see if there's room… okay bye."
He spoke before hanging up and getting out of bed.
"Who was that?" Melanie asked watching her husband drape a robe over himself.
"Someone from the million-dollar-science club and it's for the secret exhibit." Kirk answered, walking to the door. "The one about what Eddie calls 'the destroyers of wars'."
"Is that what they call them underwater?" Melanie asked confused.
"Well if you think about it, ever since these 'destroyers of wars' came, the only war we have had was the cold war." Kirk said. "Not a single worldly dictator has declared war since." Halfway out the door, he blew a kiss to his wife.
"I'll see you tonight, Hon." Melanie called, watching her husband exit.
But then, she heard a siren's song coming from underneath her pillow, she lifted the cushion and found her phone ringing.
"Bridget, honey…? You know we've only known Eddie for twenty-four hours, right…? Okay… okay, see how that works out for you… thank you, bye." Melanie sighed before hanging up, hoping Bridget knew what she was doing.
I may or may not need your help (not just for the sake of getting comments); this being a Power Rangers fanfiction, I'm trying to figure out what to name the morphers, what the suits should look like, even the sequence where they morph is a visual
mystery to me; though I do know that because these rangers are merfolk, I want it all to reflect it.
Please read, Review, share with everyone you know and forgive me for taking so long.
