Now that life has settled down a little, I'm trying to get through the Atlantis Arc so I can bring Rapunzel back into the story. You guys seem to like Eris, though...

So, tiny explanation… according to my (very) limited research, Eris originally comes from the Greek mythology. Since Disney has their Hercules movie, rather than rack my brain to come up with an original star system, I decided to just use that, so there's the Greece Star System, with each planet named for one of the Grecian city states. None of this is really important to the story, but in case you were wondering…

Chapter 25

The smell of salt water, dead fish and ship grease was inescapable no matter which street Jack turned down as he made his way through the streets of the space port city. And amongst those was the undeniable taint of cheap alcohol. They all hung heavy in the air and clung to the back of his throat a little more with each breath he took. By the time he got to the market, the smell of rotting produce was just insult to injury.

A cool breeze blew off the ocean, nipping at his bare arms; though it wasn't strong enough to clear away the smell. It seemed to linger on his skin, seeping a little deeper with each passing moments. It didn't bother him, but he could still feel it.

He made his way into the city, following the directions he had gotten from one of the mechanics back at the landing bay.

Atlantis' surface was ninety percent water; the only landmasses consisted of islands and small continents. It was capable of supporting human life – provided said humans weren't opposed to copious amounts of sea food. Even now it functioned as a space port, it central location making it an ideal refueling stop, there was still more seafood options than anything else.

That the oceans on Atlantis were home to life was irrefutable. It was evident from the fish the hung suspended from hooks in the window of every butcher shop he passed, and in the ice filled baskets of street merchants.

The debate was on just how intelligent that life was.

Rumors about mermaids living in the seas extended as far back as the planet's history. But there was no definite proof – only a few accounts that couldn't be proved, and a few things that couldn't really be explained.

So, there were pictures and images of mermaids everywhere. But if there were mermaids, they did an excellent job of hiding.

The first shop Jack stopped in said they didn't have a set of disks… but it was so disorganized Jack doubted they would be able to find the disks even if they had them.

The second offered to order them… at an exorbitant shipping charge on top of an already ridiculous retail price. Jack had glared at the young woman behind the counter, wondering if she had any idea about ship engines. She shrugged, and Jack wished it had been possible to slam the door on the way out. That was probably why the owners had gone to the trouble and expense of installing an automatic sliding door.

He headed in search of another shop, the air taking on a decided drop in temperature. For a moment he thought it was tied to his annoyance. But then he remembered that he wasn't on Warren. Clearly all this thought of mermaids had him mentally confused about where he was.

His left hand flexed, fingers itching. But the bitter sea air didn't make any move in response. Rather, it seemed to ignore him completely as it continued its meandering way around the city. The movement had been so stupid he shoved his hand into the pocket of his vest, rolling his eyes at his own lapse. He tried not to feel too rejected by the wind as it seemed to blow right through him.

He shook his head to clear those thoughts as he started walking again.

He had just turned back onto the main avenue when a boy shouldered into his right side – the side where his hand wasn't in his pocket. It was sloppy, and obvious. Jack's hand jerked up, where he caught the boy's wrist just as it started to snake it way out of his vest.

Jack's annoyance doubled as he looked at the dark haired boy currently trying to wriggle out of his grip. The boy couldn't have been more than eight of nine, and his brown eyes returned Jack's blue glare, but not quite in equal measures.

"Really?' Jack asked, unable to keep the edge out of his voice. His hand tightened around the skinny wrist. "Was it no obvious I'm already having a bad day?"

"I didn't get anything!" The boy snapped. He flexed his fingers, emphasizing that his hand had come away empty.

Jack had had enough experience with pickpockets on Pallash I that he'd started keeping his wallet in an inside pocket. It was what North had taught him to do – but like a stubborn teenager it had taken the loss of his wallet on one of his trips into the city before he was willing to heed the older man's advice.

"How does that change the fact your hand was in my pocket?"

The boy just glared… then his eyes widened as Jack twisted the skinny arm, debating if he should try Hiccup's earlier trick and twist the boy's wrist back over his shoulder.

"Word to the wise – people who are already annoyed are the work people to try and steal from. Eventually you're going to mess with someone who can fight back, and they won't be in the mood to hold back."

"Like you, Freak?" the boy challenged, with a pointed glance at Jack's windswept white hair.

"You have no idea," Jack muttered.

Jack kept his left hand poised in case the boy tried to scream. The fact he didn't make any motion to do so told Jack the boy had a history with the authorities, and they wouldn't believe him even if he tried to twist the situation to his advantage. That was something Jack could use to his advantage.

"You're going to get cut down eventually, but I'm really not in the mood right now. So just tell me where I can buy ship parts, and I won't hand you over to the authorities."

When the boy didn't answer, Jack rolled his eyes. "How is that not in appealing option?"

"Silver's," the boy said. "Two blocks down, take a right."

Jack let go, but not without a final twist of the boy's wrist for emphasis. He was fairly sure he hadn't been this vicious before his time in the Academy. And that left a bad taste in his mouth. With it came a twinge of guilt in the put of his stomach as the boy ran off, and Jack knew it wasn't just the lingering discord Eris had left him with.

The boy's "freak" comment made him pause to pull up the hood of the shirt he wore under his vest, covering his white hair. Some places people barely glanced at his hair. Others they stared, and occasionally names were hurled. So he covered his hair, save for the end of his bangs, which stuck out below the hem.

As he followed the directions he'd been given (keeping an eye out just in case), he wished he were on any planet. Because he highly doubted this would get any better, and he didn't want to see what it might bring out in him.

Two blocks down, on the corner, sat a small shot that advertised itself as Silver's Ship Supplies. Jack wondered if the alliteration was supposed to be clever, and it didn't reassure him in the slighted. The chipped paint on the sign, and grime on the edges of the front window set him on edge. But his instincts had calmed down since his encounter with Eris, so he trusted them when they said he wasn't walking right into a death trap.

A small bell over the door chimed to announce his entrance in a cheerful voice as he pushed the door open and stepped from the salty air into the durasteel and grease scent of the shop. If the smell was any indication, at least the workers would have some idea what they were doing. Even if they didn't, he was just relieved to step into a scent he enjoyed, and away from one that threatened to make him sick.

The grease was accented by the thick scent of wood polish; which was explained by the fact that the shop was made of mostly wood. Structurally, as well as all the shelves, cabinets and the front counter. An open bottle of polish sat on the counter, while a young man wiped a rag over the surface in circular motions under the watchful eye of a heavy set older man.

If the rest of the shop was any indication, it looked as though the young man had been slaving around the shop in a similar manner for weeks.

"Ya got t' take pride in yer work, Jimbo. It—Ah, look, a customer!" The man turned to Jack just as the young man rolled his eyes in exasperation. I'm Long John Silver, at yer service. How can we help ye, lad?"

Jack did his best to repress the shiver that ran down his spine as the man turned to look at him with a glowing red cybernetic eye. The man's deep voice was almost too cheerful, and Jack was tempted to check that his wallet was still in the inside chest pocket of his vest.

The young man glanced at Jack with a near glare before he went back to polishing the counter.

The corner of Jack's mouth twitched in a grin, recognizing that expression from all the times North and Bunnymund had assigned him chores they claimed were "character building". When he'd complained, occasionally making comments about slave labor, they had laughed and spouted off some words of wisdom he hadn't been in a position to appreciate at the time; usually lines about the value of hard work. And somehow he had actually learned. Or at least stopped complaining after listening to the cadets showed him just how obnoxious it was.

"I'm looking for reset disks for a Berk Nadder 10-21 computer."

"A Berk Nadder, eh?" Silver raised his eyebrow. "Don't see many o' those round these parts."

Jack doubted that.

"Think ye can help him, Jim?" Silver asked, looking to his assistant.

"They're in back," Jim said, gesturing to the door behind the counter. "Come on."

#

"Dare I ask how you managed to ruin a Berk computer?" Jim asked, as he began to rifle through shelves filled with carious engine and computer parts. "I mean, aren't they supposed to be foolproof or something?"

"Someone who shouldn't have been in my cockpit," Jack said. "I'm developing a dislike of redheads."

"They're a handful," Jim said, shaking his head.

"You, too?"

"I only know one red head," Jim shrugged. "And she's a handful." He put back the first box.

'Handful' wasn't exactly the word Jack would use for Merida. 'Handful' would be a polite version of what he had in mind.

Jim pulled down a box from a shelf at about his eye level, and propped it between his hip and a lower shelf as he began to go through the contents.

Jack took the opportunity to glance around the storage room. More shelves and boxes covered most of the walls, with a few larger boxes stacked in one corner. At one of the few open spaces on the wall was a long work table strewn with spare parts, tools, and a few sheets of paper covered in what looked to be hand drawn designs.

A model solar sailor (a recreational vehicle Jack was only vaguely familiar with) hung from the shelf above the table, while at one end was a 3D star map over a black holo projector. Instinct from his time at the Academy made him glance over the planets, with their small labels, in search of Warren. There was Burgess (a planet he hesitated to say he actually remembered as anything more than a name). But Warren was absent – just as it should be.

"It's Jim, right?" he asked.

"Jim Hawkins, yeah," he said, pushing his angled brown bangs out of his face as he reached for another box.

"Jack Frost." Just to keep them on equal footing. Jim seemed like the kind of person who would appreciate that. "Do you know anything about mermaids?"

Crash

Jack spun on his heel to see that Jim had dropped the box he had just been pulling down off the shelf. Its contents now lay scattered across the wooden floor. "You okay?"

"Yeah. Fine." But the answer was too quick. And just in case Jack wasn't already suspicious, he kept his head ducked as he crouched down and began to pick up the fallen contents of the box. "Why do you ask?"

"What?"

"About the mermaids."

Jack shrugged, keeping his tone easy. "Curiosity."

Actually, his list of reasons kept growing. First Eris comment about a mermaid being part of the brewing situation, now Jim's reaction to just the mention of the mermaids. And, if he was being honesty, the way he caught himself spinning his ring made him wonder if maybe it wasn't also that he was looking for a piece of home.

Jim's mouth pursed as he put the box back on the shelf, and began going through another, a little faster than he had been before.

The air stretched with tension, thickening and weighing down on Jack he rubbed his forehead and tried to think of something to say that would alleviate it. He was spared having to come up with something when his commlink beeped on his belt, and he sighed a "thank you" under his breath as he pulled it out.

"Hiccup?"

There was a hesitation, which included a long exhale. "I'm running out of patience."

Jack snorted as he leaned back against one of the shelves. "Don't worry. You're still a better man than I am."

"Do you have the disks?"

"Not—"

"Got 'em."

Jack glanced over to see Jim holding up a set of data disks, each in white paper holders with the Berk Engineering logo blazed across the front in red and black.

"Yes." He exhaled every bit of oxygen in his lungs, relieved to have something go right.

"Well, glad something's going right," Hiccup said. "It's too late to start – we might as well find a place to stay for the night."

"We're not going to stay on the ship?"

"I'm pretty sure you've reached your limit of nights in an enclosed space," Hiccup said, a dry chuckle entering his voice. "Besides, exposing Merida to the culture seems like a good idea."

"Are you trying to send her running for the ship?"

"Very funny," Hiccup muttered. "Any idea where we can stay?"

"Hey," Jim said, waving a hand to get Jack's attention.

Jack glanced over at the young man. "Hang on, Hiccup. Yeah?"

Jim sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. "My mom owns an inn near the beach, if you need a room. The Benbow Inn."

Jack quirked an eyebrow as he turned back to the commlink. "Did you get that?"

"Got it," Hiccup said. "We'll meet you there?"

"If you insist on bringing her."

"Jack," Hiccup cautioned.

"I'll meet you there," Jack repeated, and cut off the link before turning back to Jim. "What's the damage for the disks?"

#

It took a bit of haggling, but eventually Jack talked Silver down to a price that didn't make him sick to his stomach as he handed over Hiccup's card and watched the man slide it. The price was still on the high side, but within reason for the most part.

As Silver handed over the bag Jim had put the disks into, he smiled with all the sincerity of a man who knew he was getting away with highway robbery. "If ya need anything else, ye know where t' find us, Lad."

"Right." Jack grit his teeth to keep from scowling as he took the bag with more force than necessary. "Thanks."

Toothiana had always told him it didn't cost anything to be nice. At the moment, he would have begged to differ. Of course, seeing as the fairy queen was a warrior in her own right, Jack had never been in the habit of questioning her. Not to her face, at least.

He pushed the door open with his shoulder, the cheery voice of the bell adding insult to injury.

Remembering his run in with the pickpocket, he kept a firm grip on the bag as he started in the direction of the beach Him had directed him to.

The air still smell like salt water and dead fish, but his mood seemed to make it more acute.

"Hey!"

Glancing back, he saw Jim coming toward him down the sidewalk. He stopped and waited for the young man to catch up.

"I'm headed home for lunch," Jim said. "I can show you the way."

Jack was fairly sure he could find the inn without trouble on his own, but there also wasn't a reason not to accept. With the disks in his right hand, he slid his left into a pocket of his vest as he fell into step with Jim.

"So, you own a Nadder?" Jim asked.

Jack didn't miss the enthusiasm, and wasn't surprised. It certainly explained why Jim slaved away in a part's shop for a man like Silver.

"It's not mine," Jack said. "I'm just the pilot."

Technically he and Hiccup were equal (or at least almost equal) shareholders in their enterprises, for lack of a better word. But that was a nuance.

"That's still a pretty good position," Jim said. "As long as the red head isn't your boss, or something."

"That's too horrific to think about."

Jim chuckled, though Jack didn't see anything humorous in the thought of Merida as his boss. It was the stuff of nightmares, actually.

"So, why were you asking about mermaids?" Jim asked. "I mean, it doesn't seem like the kind of thing a spacer would be interested in. Fairytales, ya know?"

Jack glanced over at the hitch in Jim's voice at the word 'fairytale'. The young man wasn't trained at faking nonchalance, and that one move of his voice told Jack he knew more than he was letting on – and clearly had a reason for not letting on.

Jack shrugged. "I've seen a lot of things in the galaxy. I don't believe anything is just a fairytale."

Warren, a planet where nearly anything was possible, had trained him well.

Jim didn't respond, and when Jack glanced over he saw that he was frowning, clearly trying to get his head around what Jack had just said. That wasn't surprising either, since most people didn't grow up on a planet with fairies, abominable snowmen and talking wolves, and a north wind that responded to their commands. Jack couldn't expect most people to understand.

The rest of the walk, only a few minutes more, was wordless save for Jim's "up there" when the Benbo came into view when they rounded one of the bluffs.

It was a quaint, woken building. The inside was clean (though "well maintained" would have been a bit of an over statement, Jack though, eyeing a patch of chipped paint in the hallway), but the price was reasonable and it included meals. That wasn't something he could say no to.

Sarah Hawkins was visibly haggard, but her greeting was friendly, and the food she cooked was good.

"You couldn't wait?" Hiccup asked, as he and Merida approached the table where Jack was already half done with his lunch. The brunet didn't look upset, though – more amused, once you looked past the telltale signs of stress and exhaustion.

"I was hungry," Jack shrugged. He glanced at Merida, who was uncharacteristically quiet, looking down at the good grain of the table as though hoping it held the secrets of the universe if she could just figure out how to read them.

"I didn't know how long you would take," Jack added, looking back at Hiccup as he took a long drink of water. "Any good news?"

Hiccup shook his head, and Merida still didn't look up.

Taking another drink of water, Jack looked between them. He was fairly sure there was a "right thing" to say at the moment, but he didn't know what it was. So he went back to the only thing he could think to do: eating his meal. He had never been good at knowing what to say.

A few minutes later, after Sarah had taken the newcomers' orders, Hiccup turned to Jack.

"Now will you tell me what's up with you?"

Jack's finer motor functions lapsed for a moment, and his fork hit the plate with a violent clink as he looked up.

"What do you mean?" But it was too fast even to his own ears.

Hiccup rolled his eyes. "I haven't spent the last six months with you and learned nothing. Something's been bothering since we dropped out of hyperspace."

"Slightly after that," Jack said. "Nagging suspicion, mostly."

"Ya think somethin's wrong?" Aside from telling Sarah what she wanted to eat, it was the first thing Merida had said since she and Hiccup arrived back at the Benbow.

He took advantage of having to chew his food to give himself a chance to think over the right way to word his response. He still didn't feel like mentioning Eris – but he figured her might have to.

"Ye can sense it too," Merida said, eyes narrowing ever so slightly as she looked at him.

Jack nodded, looking up to meet her gaze. He recognized her expression – she understood intuition, and she had instincts like his. Maybe not as fine-tuned, since she probably hadn't been exposed to the same situations. But he could appreciate having someone to compare notes with for the first time since he had left Warren. "You?"

Merida hummed an affirmative as she nodded.

Fingering a piece of bread crust on the edge of his plate, Jack asked: "Have you ever heard of Eris?"

Merida shook her head, but Hiccup (shot on instincts but long on knowledge) asked: "Isn't she the goddess of chaos on Athens or something?" Hiccup asked.

"The entire Grecian system," Jack corrected. "But the Greeks are always looking for something new to worship. Most of their deities are nothing of the sort. Eris is an entity, though I'm not sure how to explain what she is. She drifts through the galaxy, drawn to wherever the largest source of chaos is. There's more to it, since I doubt Gothel's fits are ever the largest source of chaos in a galaxy this big. But trying to get a straight answer from her is trying to get blood from a stone."

"You've met her?" Hiccup asked.

"She was on the ship," Merida guessed. "That's what I felt just after we came out of hyperspace, wasn't it?"

Jack nodded. "She's here on Atlantis. Well, close enough. She can't enter a planet's atmosphere. I've had several run-ins with her. All she would tell me this time is that a mermaid's involved somehow."

Merida balked visibly. "Mermaids? Frost, they're just myths."

"Hang on." Jack held up a hand, and swallowed the bite of food he had just taken. "You accept that I had a visit from Eris – who most people, of the few who have ever heard of her, regard as a myth. But you can't accept there are mermaids?"

Merida started to reply, but paused as Sarah brought her and Hiccup's food. When she had returned the kitchen, Merida turned back to Jack.

"Last I heard, mermaids on Atlantis had been disproved as the cabin fever crazed delusions of sailors who saw manatees sunning' on the rocks before Atlantis moved up t' space travel," Merida said.

"That's actually impressive." Picking up the piece of braid that was the remainder of his lunch, Jack leaned his chair onto its back legs, pulling off a strip of the crisp crust. "My guess, though, is that that whole thing is that someone couldn't find the mermaids and tried to come up with a logical explanation, or really did see manatees and assumed that's what all the others had seen. Hiccup – do you think it's possible there are mermaids here on Atlantis?"

Hiccup set his fork down, pressing his knuckles to his mouth as he looked down at his half full plate, his green eyes out of focus as he mentally analyzed whatever information he had stored in his mind to come up with a logical answer.

As he waited, Jack fingered the crust of bread in his hand, pressing all the air out of the soft white inside that had clung to the crust when he tore it off. Absently he took a bite of the crust, chewing while he waited for Hiccup's thorough mental process.

"We have dragons on Berk," Hiccup said, with a small smile as he leaned back in his seat. "Not as many as we did, since we killed so many of them off before we gained the b rain capability to build starships – how we managed that is a mystery to me, since most Vikings are still more interested in smashing things than they are in building."

"Remind me not t' go there any time soon," Merida muttered.

"Took the words out of my mouth," Jack said.

Hiccup rolled his eyes. "My point is: if there are dragons, why can't there be mermaids?"

"Have ye soon a dragon?" Merida asked.

A shadow passed over Hiccup's expression as he looked down at his plate again, fingers tightening around his fork with tension that turned his knuckles white.

"Yeah," he said, in a tight whisper that sounded close to breaking. "Yeah, I have."

Jack took a bite from the bread crust and did his best to hide his smirk. But Merida turned on him like a predator going in for the kill.

"Aright, fine: There be dragons on Berk." Merida waved a hand as though dismissing the possibility that was somehow evidence in Jack's case. "But have ye ever seen a mermaid?"

"On Atlantis, no," Jack said.

Merida smirked.

"But on my homeworld I have."

Her smirk slipped, but not fully. "They have mermaids on Burgess?"

Lowering his chair back to an upright position, he picked used what was left of the bread crust to swab up the streaks of sauce that were the last remnants of his meal. "Not Burgess. Warren."

"You're from Warren?" Merida's eyes widened again. "Is there anything about your life that isn't straight out o' myth?"

Jack just shrugged and took a bite of the bread crust that was now saturated with the sauce.

Still, that argument only stopped Merida in her tracks for a moment. "Ye've actually seen the mermaids?"

Pulling off the ring from his left middle finger, Jack held it out to her.

She frowned before taking it, holding it up to the light so she could examine the ring. The band was platinum, but the part that made it unique was small, oblong disk on the front. For a moment she turned it, examining the way the light caught the disk and turned it from blue to green. Finally she looked up at him. "What is it?"

"It's from a mermaid scale," he said. "It was a thank you gift."

"So, because there're mermaids on Warren, a place most people don't believe exists in the first place, you're convinced there are mermaids on Atlantis, though the only proof you've got is the word of a chaos obsessed alien with delusions of grandeur." She gave the ring one final look over and offered it back to him.

"You're more observant that I gave you credit." Jack took the ring back and returned it to its place on his finger. He flexed his fingers. He had barely taken it off since he was sixteen, and he hadn't realized his hand would feel naked without it.

"So we have to run the reset disks, discover a mythological species, and find out whatever is happening that would draw Eris," Hiccup said. "Am I missing anything?"

Jack shook his head.

"And here I thought I gave up questing when I left Berk." Hiccup raised his glass in a mock toast, and Jack returned it with a smirk.

Merida rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to her meal.