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Territorial waters aside, no human countries had claimed the oceans. So Lucia wondered, why was it such a hassle to get them to recognize the seven seas as sovereign states? It wasn't like they'd have to give up part of their kingdoms. Some people had tried to explain it, but there were a lot of words in there Lucia couldn't follow. Poor Hippo was always hauling around a folder as big as himself, filled with information to remind her of protocols and names.
Other than him, she had no friends at her side. The other princesses had quickly returned to their own seas since these were crowding with boats now. She hoped the young Pink Princess would be able to handle things, she was still so young and made sure to call her every day. She didn't like that she often heard crying on the other end of the line.
Kaito had decided to do something about the chaos in a more direct way. He had unofficially joined the organization in traveling the globe and sticking up for magical victims. Along the way, he said, he was dropping by governments and talking to them. She didn't quite get it, why did she have to stay here and only give speeches? Kaito was powerful, but he had no songs that could bring out the best in people.
Granted, right now he was in Russia and she couldn't exactly help him there. She had a bit of a problem with turning ice to water. Not that she couldn't keep any boiling water tentacle away from innocent people, it just was that to get water in such a cold area, she needed to mess with the temperature of the area's water, and all living creatures just so happened to consists of sixty percent water.
So, she still was in America. Officially she stayed at the White House and spent her time talking with royal visitors and giving scripted speeches. Often she sat around apparently doing nothing, so she was happy when they got her a Visa, which for some reason allowed her to travel more freely and let talk shows invite her.
She had accepted any that her new schedule allowed and tonight was her first interview.
"Come on, Hippo, let's do our best." She took a deep breath and stepped onto the podium. She was used to performing, but this was no songstress act.
The podium was massive and brightly lit. She just heard the last words of the interviewer announcing her. She looked at the cameras and smiled at them, then remembered they had told her to not do that; she was to keep her eyes only on the interviewer.
The interviewer was an older man, whom Lucia didn't find particularly attractive, a bit like Taki. He sat on a bright red couch and held out his hand, she shook it and set aside of him. Hippo hopped in between them. Lucia hoped he wouldn't randomly change into human form, that might be awkward the magic that gave him clothing would falter here. They were rather far from the sea's magic, after all.
"So, your majesty ... or should I call you goddess?"
"Please call me just Lucia."
The interview started out fairly normal and Lucia felt relieved right up until he brought up why she had a pigtail hairstyle.
"What's wrong with my hairstyle?"
"Nothing, nothing. I mean no offense, Lucia. I was merely curious. You see, in our culture, twin pigtails are a style of little girls. They indicate an immature mind."
"Well, eh ... I just like it. It doesn't really mean anything below the surface."
"I thought so. Speaking of gender roles, are there any fashion differences between your men and women?"
"Oh, there are no mermen. Mermaids are born from their pearls. Kaito is from the Panthalassa Clan. They can live underwater, but don't grow tails. I haven't really met a lot of them, but his brother does like very different clothing than Kaito."
"How interesting. So you're not actually female."
"Excuse me?"
"Biologically speaking, you're only really female if you've actually got female reproductive organs. Something needs to produce ova. You know, egg cells, wombs, pregnancy? In mermaid form, you are therefore sexless."
Lucia involuntarily looked down at her bosom.
"Ah, those are just glorified sweat glands. They count as secondary sexual characteristics but are not reproductive organs."
"Hey, you don't talk like that to Lucia!" Hippo said. Lucia laid a hand on his head.
"It's alright, Hippo. Anyway, I actually wanted to talk about is the current hate crimes against magical creatures."
"Yes, that is a problem, isn't it? Let's discuss that. Did you know that half the of the world adheres to a religion that prohibits the worship of all gods save one and a rough twenty percent is irreligious?"
"I didn't know that, but what does that have to do with the hate crimes?"
"You shook up quite a bit of dust by stepping up as the goddess of the seas. There's not an awful lot of world views that your existence fits in."
"But I'm not asking for worship! I'm not a goddess like that!"
"It doesn't matter. Over the past few days, three cults have already been started for you, a few interpret you as a manifestation of their own deity and several religious denominations declared you a witch or worse."
Lucia had never thought about religion or worship. She'd met several creatures who had been considered gods across the world, but none of them really had the powers of gods and their stories had been greatly exaggerated. Many of them were undying, but not truly immortal.
What did make one a god anyway? Immortality? Magic? The Aqua Regina had not died, merely passed on her power and faded into the dreamlike layer of existence, much like the Ancients. They had not died either, only the Emperor Michel was truly gone. What did death mean anyway?
"Who created earth? What's right or wrong about the evolution theory? Is there an afterlife? What exactly are all the other creatures we've seen, spirits, demons, what? Those are pressing questions for many people right now. If you are indeed a goddess, shouldn't you have some answers?"
She didn't know any of that. A quick glance at the audience revealed a snickering, curiosity, doubt and a lot of skepticism that kept increasing along with her silence.
The interviewer laughed it off, or pretended to. From that point forth, he only asked her childish questions.
Lucia left the studio feeling humiliated.
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The old city of the Ancients had several large halls. At Michel's first visit only one had homed monsters, but now each and every one was filling up with monsters seeking asylum. A few recognized him, he asked them to keep quiet about who he was.
He was here for the Black Beauty Sisters. He couldn't exactly say he liked them, but they were the only ones here whom he had a rough idea what to expect from. Plus, there was a question he could only ask them.
The location he was directed towards surprised him. This had been a dance hall once, from what he understood of his clan's interior attitude. Now it was arranged at a rather human target practice hall. Marks were line up on one side of the hall, and shooting cabinets on the other.
The Black Beauty Sisters were the only ones here. When they saw him enter, he must have looked confused since Mimi said, "It's quicker and cleaner than the damage we cause by singing. Anyway, spit it out, we've got a schedule."
Michel looked around, detected nothing like security cameras — at least not magical ones — "How much does this organization really know about me?"
"Oh, you mean the world destruction thing? We didn't tell them. They just think you're yet another mystical species, one that Amagi happened to come across. They heard some stuff from the others about you potentially being a savior, but we had a chat with them already. They'll be quiet."
"Thank you."
"Don't mention it. If they found out what you really are, they might demand we capture you. We don't want to lose the job and we definitely don't wanna be eaten again," Sheshe said. She finished reloading a gun and handed it to Mimi.
"I don't eat people anymore," Michel said through gritted teeth.
"Keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better," Mimi giggled. "But it's in your nature to eat things. You're a predator, like us."
He glared at them, but Mimi just shrugged and fired the gun. While she aimed she started to hum softly, an increasing tone that suddenly reached a high shrieked right when she fired. Michel's ears barely had time to feel pain.
The target, a wooden doll, exploded. The Sisters grinned. "That's my girl," Sheshe said.
Michel knew of the destructive powers of these two, they could level a building with a song, but powering a bullet with a mere hum and get that? Interesting. It took less time and less power while achieving more. He'd have a word with Michal about this.
A machine detached from the wall and replaced the doll, this one a bit bigger. How long had they been at this already? They didn't look tired.
A sneaky thought in Michel's mind said that if he hadn't despised humans and their technology so much back then, then Fuku probably would have been handing out guns to him and his servants, telling them to just shoot the princesses and be done with it.
"Anything else?" Sheshe said, turning back to Michel.
"These people have been keeping check on Alala, from what I understand?"
"Yeah, and so have we. We did spend some time getting to know them, after all."
"How about Lady Bat?"
"He seems to have discovered his own nature before we met him. Let's just say it's pretty tough catching someone who has the power to make people forget they ever saw him and give them different memories in return. Only trace is mysteriously missing recordings."
"So it was this organization after all, with those vampires at the citadel?"
"Yep. They went in expecting B Movie vampires so they bared in, all threatening and making the wrong impression. We can only guess though, since the entire thing was forgotten by everyone and recordings were swiped. Only those at the headquarters remember it. We two are the ones who figured out Lady Bat was involved cause of the circumstances," Mimi said.
"The circumstances? Lady Bat isn't the only one who can steal memories. I can do it too and there's doubtlessly others."
"Yeah, but the local stories that brought attention to it in the first place described a batwinged vampire who nobody agreed on to be male or female. Memory theft powers aren't that common to make Batty an unsafe guess."
Great. Lady Bat had found a good place, apparently, only to be driven out by accident. That made all three of his family who'd ended up miserable. He felt that he owed them an apology for not making them think through the whole descent to earth thing better.
"Speaking of your family, gonna tell the other two what they are?" Sheshe said.
Michel shook his head. "It would only confuse them. I have another thing to ask you though ... "
"And that is?"
"How much will I have to pay you to stay in my favor even if something where to happen tips the scales against me?"
"Ah, I thought he'd never ask," Mimi said. She fired another shot. This doll burst into flames. "You better have a good offer though ... "
"I do. See, I suspect something is going to change on this planet and you'll want part of it ..."
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Michal stood before the door of Lucia's underwater palace. She had a lot of things she wanted to talk about, but talking to Lucia had always been rather fruitless when it involved things she had to use her head for. Right now though, it was worth the shot. She'd seen the interview, had a good guess why Lucia had retreated and an even better guess what would happen if she continued hiding now.
Lucia was in her throne hall, empty save for her and a set of papers drifting around in the currents. Michal had a hard time seeing her through the muddy water, even though a light at the ceiling lit the place. It even became harder to swim in here.
"Lucia, can you turn on the magic a bit?"
A sniffle. Michal couldn't help but wonder how Lucia managed to breathe below here. Perhaps it was just magic translating some other sound.
The water become less watery in composition and Michal swam forward till she saw Lucia.
"Where are all the others?"
"To their oceans, trying to keep things from turning to chaos. They've been getting lots of divers." Lucia sniffled again and looked up. "So?"
"So what?"
"The interview. Aren't you going to say something about it?"
"What could I say that you don't know already?" Michal said as she drifted to a nearby seat, not opposite of Lucia, and folded her legs. There was a statue that she had always liked opposite of her, so she decided to watch that for her duration here.
"Why did you call me here? I'm not good at comforting people."
"You know stuff." Lucia seemed to choke up, Michal noted from the corner of eye. She felt sorry for her, but didn't know what to do but wait for the question. "That man said I'm not really a girl."
"He is right insofar your mermaid form and reproductive abilities. Mermaids are born from pearls and given a guardian, rather than coming from a womb. I don't know about DNA yet. However, gender identity is not purely decided by having ovaries or even chromosomes. It is the consequence of various neurological functions and hormones."
Lucia was frowned a little.
"So am I ..."
"You think of yourself as female, right?"
"Yes."
"That's all you need to know. There's something related to this that I want to talk about though. Ever heard of Agamogenesis?"
"No. Is it some kind of book?"
"It's asexual reproduction. Parthenogenesis is the subgroup under which mermaids would fall."
"Huh?"
"Species that rely entirely on Parthenogenesis are either asexual or homosexual. Yet so far, every mermaid I met is heterosexual. What does that tell you?"
"This is genetic stuff, right?"
"Yes, but also neurological and hormonal. With humans, every person has a specific bundle of genetic and behavioral traits that they're attracted to, which is why the Westermarck Effect exists, to prevent people from falling for their closest matches : their siblings. Yet with mermaids, there is no sexual reproduction at all and you are technically all family. You don't fall for each other, you fall for human men. I'm saying there's a universal biological plan that requires you to fall in love with humans and reproduce with them. That would also explain why mermaids look so incredibly human, when logically you should all have gills, clammy skin, tangled hair and possibly seapocks. Nope, you're been perfectly designed to appeal to human men with magic that does anything from keeping your hair good looking to giving you legs and the parts upon transformation."
"Michal, are you going on on one of those autistic geeky rants ...?"
"I'm saying that the ancient traditions have been going about it the wrong way. While I think you totally did it the wrong way, you are right that humans and mermaids should coexist. And get busy in the sack. Nature says so. In fact, I dare say, it needs to happen."
"Why?"
"Lucia, are the Ancients nice people?"
"They seem to be ... "
"Planet Earth killed them all to make room for humans. Planet Earth doesn't care for whether someone is nice or not, it just makes room for new species at its whim. I theorize that the change it made relates to the oxygen levels in the air. The reason my blood was combined with that of the Ancient Emperor was because by basing the host body on a creature that could process both atmospheres, be it magical or ordinary, air or water. Just cloning the old emperor's DNA would just see him die from the same problem again."
Beat.
"Air and oxygen isn't the same thing?"
Michal had to remind herself that mermaids had no school system of their own and Lucia had only attended human school for one year, and she was used to everything being done by magic for her and ...
"The Ancients probably died by global choking," she finally said. "It would be a good idea to spread the genetic magic that makes future humans able to breathe everywhere. It's just that you broke the Masquerade in a very bad way."
"And your point is ..."
"Oh, wasn't that obvious? I'm proposing a way to get the human world to feel more at ease about this. See, mermaids are gorgeous so if you accent that, it might help. Right now, you kinda look like you're a rookie come to help the poor humans without having a clue what the real problem is ... try the Mars Needs Men approach. Sure, you'll be playing up the dumb blonde thing for a while, but you'll look less like Gaia's Reject."
"I-I don't want to be a dumb blonde."
"You're not very educated and don't have a knack for anything you can't visualize or idealize. Do you know anything about trade treaties, the passing of laws and all the government forms?"
Lucia shook her head.
"Then ham it up. Right now people want to see you as the all knowing goddess here to bring salvation. Make them see a supernatural pop star instead. Advertise. Perform some catchy songs. Hope people will be too distracted to realize your kingdoms don't stand a chance against submarines that know what to look for. You're going to meet a lot of people asking questions like I or that show host do. Those questions won't stop, but you can avoid people questioning your legitimacy by making them expect less."
Lucia looked like she was sighing, but no bubbles came from her mouth. "I guess I'll keep my pigtails for a little bit longer. So, do you really think Earth's going to change again?"
"I do. Something is going to change on this planet and we'll have to take our part of it, whether we want it or not."
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