Offshore, the spare atlantean boy still scouts the shallows. Somehow, he's still unaware that his homies are playing suicide volleyball with a quartet of gorgeous amazon babes...
Meet Maccus. As far as atlanteans go, he's more fish than human. He can't breathe air, and he can't walk. For that, he must scout the shallows on missions where all of his so-called "comrades" get to go ashore, and flirt with legged women. And those are some VERY nice bare legs, where developing femininity is concerned...
On top of not being able to walk or breathe air, he's also albino. Hence, he can only get so close to the surface before his epidermis starts acting like a painful solar panel.
As an atlantean, he can track other atlanteans. He can also pinpoint his own location in the whole ocean; hence, he's how these three boys got all the way out here. Likely, if he's not here when they get back, they'll be up the eye wall of a hurricane without their fins.
By now, Maccus should be used to it. And yet, now and then, reality pulls a stunt that makes him wonder just how independent he really is...
From very far away, he can sense some cute atlantean girls, playing with some penguins in some shallows. Maccus can't tell what species the penguins are, but he sure knows atlantean estrogen when he tracks it.
Ah, Maccus feels like swimming up to them, and hitting on them. Alas, his bros wouldn't take it very well, if they came back out here, and he was nowhere to be found. So, he MUST hold his strength, and listen to those babes have fun with penguins. Meanwhile, these shallows are probably more dangerous than they look. All Maccus has got to do is find the trouble...
Far away, he hears the atlantean girls scream. He feels them getting farther away, as they swim away in a panic. Around them, the penguins have too. Maccus can't tell; but the girls can, and that's how he knows.
Maccus hates it when danger taunts a girl. Without thinking, he abandons his mission, and swims, at super-speed, into the shallows where the girls panicked.
Once here, he looks around. He barely misses a few Magellanic penguins, as they swim past him in a hurry.
There's a carcass floating near the surface. On the upside, it's not one of the girls' corpses. It's a penguin's. This specimen appears to have more yellow on it than many of its brothers, that Maccus has seen...
Magellanic penguins are mostly black and white, with a little pink. There's seldom any yellow on them at all. And yet, it seems that all of this carcass's white parts have been transfigured yellow. And when Maccus gets a closer look, that yellow on the carcass looks like char marks; as if it was burned into the feathers...
Offshore, an algae bloom looms. And wherever there is algae, there is zooplankton.
A yellow wiggler swims among these creeps...and hunts them. She's tried plankton for a while, but... Life's just no fun when she's not scaring people. Hence, the zooplankton avoid her. Soon, when the sardine run gets here, she'll be having fun spooking the sardines. At her new size, THAT'LL be a catch worth living for...as long as it probably won't last...
From below, a giant approaches her. It's an atlantean. She senses his fear. It feels that the moment for her next transformation has come...
Maccus holds out his hand, barely cupping the yellow wiggler between his webbed fingers, and the sides of his hand. He's confused. Mosquitos usually don't breed in saltwater...let alone this far from land. As aquatic as they are in youth, most of their prey lives on land.
Spontaneously, the wiggler shines a bright yellow light, from her entire body, punching Maccus right in the retinas. It's here, in the security of his hand, that she commences her next transformation, as a new Yellow Lantern...
Maintaining her size, she becomes a hot black chick, in a yellow bikini. She sheds her hair, and keeps it cropped. One at a time, she sprouts six mosquito legs, from her back hips. Aloft and nearby, Maccus maintains his paranoia, while watching this tiny beauty transform...
She acknowledges him. Watching, his heart freezes in his chest. She admires his greatness, and his size.
She reaches out her hand, and surrounds him in a yellow halo. Behind him, Maccus can feel his tail turning into a pair of legs.
He soon breaches, and gasps his first gulp of air. He also relaxes, as how much the oceanic sun slowly stops hurting and burning him. His new mistress has sun-proofed him. In time, those will just be the basics...
She hangs from his ear, via her new mosquito legs. She waits, until she can tell her new steed/servant is more relaxed.
"There's a man, somewhere out here," she sneers, "who once paid me a great offense. You, my new Atlantean steed-and a VERY fine one, at that-will help me pay my debt to him."
"And what," Maccus asks, "about Atlantis?"
"NEVER fear for yesterday, my dear Maccus," she coaxes him. "Tomorrow has enough worries of its own...as do you, which will help you serve me well...as I GLADLY cater to those who fear me with reverence."
"I do," Maccus says, "my love. And by my anti-will, you WILL have your revenge."
"Good," she says, patting the inside of his ear. "Now...take me to Blackhawk Island."
With that, Maccus submerges, and super-swims in the direction he's been ordered to. If Listener was in danger before, it's just accumulated.