AN: This chapter is the start of the battle.

"Emma?" Edmund glanced over at her with an expression that strongly implied he had an idea.

"Yes?" Emma wondered what he could have possibly come up with.

"Whatever happened to the key?" He asked.

"What key?" Emma looked confused.

"The one Charlotte threw into the water." Edmund reminded her. "The one we used to get the gate open to begin with."

"I don't know." Emma told him.

"You don't think it could still be at the bottom of the moon pool do you?" Edmund looked a little hopeful at the thought.

"I'll swim down and check." Emma dived into the water. After her tail formed she flapped it hard to get to the very bottom of the pool. Looking around she could find nothing but mud and sea sand. No signs of the key. Where could it have gotten off to?

Suddenly she saw a flash of silver from under the mud. Swimming towards it, Emma realized with dismay that it was on the other side of the gate, almost completely buried in the deepest part of the mud. It must have slipped in there when Edmund got shot and had to let go of both the lock and the gate itself. There was no hope of getting that key now.

She swam up and surfaced.

"Did you find it?" Edmund asked eager for her answer.

Emma shook her head and tried not to cry. She thought of telling him the truth. That she could see the key and that it was hopelessly out of her reach and served no real purpose other than to tease them with freedom they couldn't get to. But if she did that he might forget himself and jump in to find it. He might mess up his leg even more. He might cut himself or worse. and if the bandage got wet and fell off before the wound fully clotted, he might bleed all over the pool and the sharks might attack the gate.

"I'm just not sure this is right." Emma heard a strangely familiar voice say from the top of the cave entrance.

"What could be wrong? Harrison doesn't want to hurt them, it'll be like a wildlife preserve." This time the voice was male, the voice it was answering had been female.

"Well I still don't know what to make of all this." The female voice sighed. "I mean, 'Mermaids'? Honestly, when he first brought it up, I thought he'd lost his mind."

"Well, why don't we go and see for ourselves then?" The male voice suggested. There was the sound of jingling keys.

"Wont we get in trouble?" The female voice asked.

"We work for him and we are helping sponsor this, we have every right to see these said mermaids for ourselves." The male voice retorted.

"Mermaids?" The female voice said. "No dear, didn't you hear? Harrison lost three of them. There's only one left."

"Did they die?"

"No, no, the gate popped open and they got away, he'll find them and bring them back. Not that I'm fully convinced keeping such creatures locked up is a good idea."

"But what if they're dangerous?" The male voice pointed out. "Harrison says they are."

"Well I guess we'll see for ourselves wont we?"

They started to unlock the top gate.

Emma quickly ducked back under the water. Peering up through the ripples, she saw the very last people she would ever have expected. Her own parents.

They spotted Edmund right away.

"Who are you and what are you doing in here?" Mr. Gilbert demanded rather harshly.

"Oh stop it, can't you see he's hurt?" Mrs. Gilbert rushed to side, eyeing the bandaged wound anxiously. "Are you alright dear? How did you get in here?"

"It's a bit of a long story." Edmund shrugged. "But the short version is that your boss-the lovely Mr. Bennett-shot me in the leg and locked me in here."

"Mr. Bennett wouldn't do that." Mr. Gilbert protested.

Emma couldn't take it any longer. She came up to the surface and blurted out, "He's telling the truth, dad."

"Emma?" Mr. Gilbert ran over to the moon pool. "What on earth..."

Mrs. Gilbert noticed her tail. "Oh my god!"

"Wait, these are your parents?" Edmund's eyebrows shot up with deep surprise. "Your parents work for Harrison?"

"I know, I can't believe it either." Emma's voice was nearly a whisper. "Mum, Dad...how could you?"

"Sweetheart." Her mother stretched out her arms to her daughter. "We didn't know."

"But what if it wasn't me?" Emma started sobbing. She couldn't help it. "What if it was some other mermaid? you would have let Harrison hurt her? I had more faith in you than that, I really did."

"But how did this happen?" Mr. Gilbert reached for his daughter's hand but she pulled it away.

"It's the moon pool." Emma explained still looking betrayed and frightened. "I'm not sure how it works or why but it turned me into a mermaid. And it's not just me. Cleo, Rikki, and Susan are mermaids too. Charlotte used to be one. So did Miss Chatham."

"I can't believe this." Mr. Gilbert said, helping Edmund to his feet. "Let's get you both out of here."

"How do I know you wont hand me or my friends over to Mr. Bennett if he asks you to?" Emma wailed as her mother tried to help her out of the moon pool.

"You're our daughter and we love you, we wouldn't never do anything to hurt you." Mrs. Gilbert told her, tears coming into her own eyes now. "You should have told us. All this time, you've kept it to yourself...suffering alone..." She reached out and stroked the side of Emma's face. This time she didn't pull away.

"Mum..." She sobbed weakly.

"Come on, Emma." Edmund said softly. "Let's go, we can trust them. They aren't traitors, I should know."

Emma smiled a little through her tears and came out of the moon pool allowing her mother to dry her off with her sweater.

Her legs came back and they helped her and Edmund climb out.

"Do you hear shouting?" Mr. Gilbert asked as they stood blinking in the light of the setting sun.

"Yes, I do..." Mrs. Gilbert looked over at her husband with a puzzled expression. "What's going on?"

"Must be the battle." Emma said softly, more to herself, than to her parents.

"Battle?" Mr. Gilbert raised an eye brow at her.

"My friends and I are fighting to save Mako." Emma explained, feeling rather strange talking about this with her parents.

"You mean like a protest?" Mrs. Gilbert blinked in confusion.

"No, I mean a real fight." Emma felt her checks flush as she said it but knew it was time they learned the truth.

They walked closer and closer to the shouting until they came to where the battle was. Quickly the four of them ducked behind the tallest rocks they could find.

Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert could hardly believe their eyes. It was even a little shocking to Emma and Edmund who'd pretty much known something like this was bound to be happening.

Rikki was fighting some of Mr. Bennett's workers with her bow and arrows. Her arrows had mostly missed their marks and her quiver was empty so she was now in the process of clubbing anyone who came to close to her upside the head with the edge of the bow itself.

Charlotte was trying to kick Dr. Denman who'd gotten a grip on her ankle and wouldn't let go.

"Charlotte you belong on our side." Dr. Denman protested tightening her grip until Charlotte cringed in pain. "Don't you want revenge?"

"Revenge is over rated." Charlotte struggled to get away from her. Lewis ran over and pulled Charlotte away from Denman.

"Lewis...dear..." Denman tried to sound sweet. "I thought you wanted to be a real scientist. Don't you remember?"

"Get a life, Denman." Lewis told her as he helped Charlotte to her feet.

"Thanks Lewis." Charlotte smiled at him.

"What are friends for?" Lewis shrugged, smiling at her for the first time in a while.

"Friends? Really?" Charlotte asked, kicking a worker out of the way while she spoke.

"Yeah, but that's it. I mean it this time, friends. Just friends" Lewis said firmly.

"Can you please have the 'what are we' talk later?" Peter protested, running up to them and thrusting a bow and arrows into Charlotte's hands. "I don't think now's the best time."

"No, it's alright." Charlotte ignored Peter and went on. "I understand. You love Cleo, I don't like it, but there's nothing I can do about it."

"You'll find someone someday, Charlotte." Lewis said kindly.

"Only if she's actually alive to do so." Zane shouted at them. "Look behind you!"

"AH!" Charlotte screamed at the top of her lungs when she noticed someone was about to grab her waist. She grabbed one of the arrows Peter had handed her and smacked the man across the face with it. It did nothing but stun him long enough for her to get away and the only mark it left was a rather light one on his right brow and a couple of little cuts on the lower cheek.

"Someone has to teach her the difference between an arrow and a girl scout knife." Ash said to Rikki as he slapped someone with the flat of his sword.

"Right after they teach you the difference between a sword and a whacking stick." Rikki muttered, glancing at her empty quiver feeling rather at a lost.

"Rikki, catch!" Charlotte tossed her own quiver of arrows to her.

Rikki frowned. The last person she wanted the arrows from was Charlotte but there was no way around it now. She nodded at her gratefully if only for that moment, and start shooting off arrows again.

"Where's Cleo?" Ash asked suddenly realizing that she wasn't standing at her place on one of the rocks shooting her own arrows.

"Cleo?" Lewis called desperately looking for his girlfriend. "Cleo, where are you?"

"Cleo?" Charlotte called as she leapt out of the reached of Harrison himself and fell in the mud right on her butt.

Zane ran over and helped her to her feet before starting to call for Cleo himself. "Cleo?"

Susan stopped fighting and started calling for her as well. "Cleo?"

At that moment, Cleo was actually running away from one of Denman's workers and one of Bennett's workers who were both chasing her through the woods. She'd dropped her bow into a quicksand-like swamp by mistake and now had nothing to shoot her arrows with. And now she ran through the hardest bushes and brambles trying to loose them. Finally she managed to crawl into a rather large clearing.

She banged into someone.

It was without a doubt the strangest looking person she'd ever laid eyes one before. He had curly rather dark hair and two little horns sticking out of his head. Where his feet should have been where hoofs and his legs were furry and goat-like.

Of course being half fish a good amount of the time she knew she was hardly one to talk but he was still so bizarre that she couldn't help herself but scream and jump behind a tree.

The goat-man didn't seem any less frightened of her than she was of him. He screamed and hid too. He thought she was rather pretty and he liked the looks of her very much but he didn't know who this strange girl could be. She might work for Harrison and Denman for all he knew.

He peeked at her from behind his tree and then quickly hid his face again.

That simple act was so harmless and even child-like that Cleo no longer felt as scared of him as she'd been a moment ago. She took a step out from behind her own tree and started to approach him.

He cautiously starting walking towards her.

"Were you hiding from me?" Cleo laughed a little as she spoke.

"No, no." The man shook his head. "I just um...didn't want to scare you, that's all."

Cleo let out another friendly laugh. She liked this fellow quite a bit already. "What are you?" She eyed his legs.

"I'm a faun." He told her smiling his friendliest smile. "My name is Master Tumnus. I'm a trusted advisor to High King Peter and all the rest of them at Cair Paravel."

"I'm Cleo." Cleo reached out and shook his hand.

"Human, I presume?" Tumnus said.

"Only some of the time." Cleo told him. "I'm a mermaid whenever I touch water."

"Oh, you must be one of Charlotte's friends." Tumnus said,

"Not exactly." Cleo shrugged her shoulders. "It's complicated."

"Yes, I heard." He nodded, not knowing what else to say.

Cleo looked up at the sky it was almost dark now. The sun would be gone soon. "I'd better get back to the battle."

"Battle, Lady Cleo?" Tumnus asked looking very confused.

Cleo laughed at the thought of being called, 'Lady Cleo' by such a strange person. Then quickly sobered up and explained the situation to him. "We're not doing well." She admitted. "We might lose."

AN: Please review.