Tidepool
Danny doesn't talk to me much about it, but he does know the mers that live in the waters off the coast.
Danny, Sam, and Tucker were out early in the morning, exploring the tide pools, (and I mean stupid early) gathering what they wanted Danny to use for their respective necklaces. And it was all going so well too when Danny noticed they were getting just a bit too close to his tide pool.
"Hey guys, let's head back. You're pretty far out." He yelled from his spot on the rocks closer to the shore. Whereas his friends were almost out to the reef.
"Woah," he heard Sam breath out. "Hold up!" She yelled back, "I think I found something."
Danny muttered an 'oh shit' under his breath before running forward, not caring that his shoes and feet were getting wet and scales were rapidly growing up his legs underneath his pants.
He came to a running halt next to his friends, just before the tide pools reached the reef, the water to his knees.
"Geez Danny, you couldn't even take off your shoes?" Tucker laughed. The waves from the increasing tide hit him in the back, soaking him. "Nevermind."
"Oh my gosh…" Sam said. She was staring intently into a wide deep tide pool, and on the side of the pool's rock walls something reflected light back at them. "Is that what I think it is?" She asked.
"Looks like nothing to me, so get away from it" Danny bit. His tone sharp with a level of defensiveness that seemed animal.
Sam ignored him. "It looks like a book, some shells and… are those gold coins?"
"No," Danny said, gripping her arm. "Let's go." He growled.
She batted Danny away, and without a thought, she dove in.
The only thing he felt was panic, those were his treasures! Coins from old shipwrecks, special shells, and rocks, rare pearls, raw gold were just some of the contents, to which the items equaled several hundreds of thousands of dollars. Other things like photos of him and other mers, pictures of his other family. And most dangerously…
"Check this out guys!" Sam said as she burst from the water, scaring Danny out of his panic attack.
She set a few colorful shells down on the rocks at her feet, and in her hand, a very special book.
His journal.
It was a gift from someone whom he considered a father, someone that wasn't Jack Fenton. It's cover sparkled in the early light as it was bound with pure abalone, the pages were a light pink made from red seaweed. The ink that graced its pages was pure octopus ink, it didn't fade or smear when it got wet. All of it bound together, by magic.
It had every secret, every name, every place, and every detail about the mers. And about Danny.
The waves splashed again, this time at his back, and he could feel his gills appearing, and his dorsal fin under his shirt. The water now to mid thigh, his legs were itching to fuse.
"Woah, how is it not like… I don't know, dissolved?" Tucker asked.
"I don't know? But look at the cover, I wonder what it is?" Sam said. She opened the book and saw maps, drawings, directions, then Danny ripped it from her hand, going head first and arm length deep in the water to get the rest of the items Sam had set down.
"It's abalone and it's mine!" He hissed, and bared his fangs, his now white bangs plastered to his face.
"Holy SHEIT!" Tucker cried.
"What the actual fuck Danny?!" Sam screached, getting out of the tide pool and scrambling next to Tucker.
"Dude, do you, uh, need to see a dentist?" Tucker tried to hide his literal shaking behind Sam.
"No! I need you guys to not touch my stuff." He threw his journal and the shells back into the tide pool, and jumped in after.
He made quick work of his shoes and socks, ripped off his pants, then struggled out of the skin tight rash guard shirt he was wearing, all as he sank to the bottom of the tidepool. He looked up to see his friends looking down on him from above. Only then did he realize the huge mistake he had just made.
He scrambled for options then did the only thing he could do with his primal brain being in control.
He grabbed everything he could and swam to the top right as another huge wave crashed down over Sam and Tucker. He took that as his chance to get away. And the last thing they saw was Danny disappearing into the reef.
"Uhhhhh… go to Jazz?" Tucker said.
"Go to Jazz." Sam confirmed.
The two of them booked it back to the Fenton's back porch and burst inside the house, seeing Jazz sitting at the table reading a psychology book with a cup of coffee. She turned to look at them, both soaked head to toe, and laughed.
"What happened to you guys, it looks like you got hit with ten waves."
"Uh Jazz…" Sam said. "Danny… he's uh…"
"FIsh?" Tucker added unhelpfully.
Jazz quickly lost her happy morning person tone and swore. "That little shit. What happened?"
"We were just looking around the tidepools for some shells, then I saw a big tide pool with some really shiny stuff in it so I dove in to look at it and I found this really cool book, I think it was his journal…" She would have continued but was cut off by a screeching Jazz.
"You found his horde! Oh my gods I've been looking everywhere for his horde! Of course it's in the tidepools! Now I feel stupid, how did I not think to look there!"
"Uhhhh, care to explain?" Sam said, hip cocked.
"Oh uhhh… sorry. Yeah, keep going with what you were saying."
"He grabbed the book, his hair turned white he had fangs and he hissed at us, then he threw the book back in the water, and dove in after it."
"Then he stripped," Tucker added, unhelpfully.
"Then he stripped," Sam repeated. "Not… what I was expecting."
"Then what? Where's Danny?"
"He swam away." They said in unison.
"Oookaaayyy, so we won't see him for a few days. He's probably going to sulk with the other mers, or go to Hawaii."
"Other Mers?" Sam asked.
"Hawaii?" Tucker asked with a stupid grin on his face. Both girls looked at him with flat expressions before returning to the conversation.
"What do you mean, other mers?" Sam reiterated her question.
"There's a tribe about ehhh 275 miles away from the coast, so he'll be there in about an hour and a half. Unless he was mad, which he probably was, I give it an hour."
"Woah woah woah woah, you're saying he can swim at 275mph?" Tucker said, jaw nearly on the floor.
"Yeah, actually. I was impressed too when I found out he could outswim a speedboat."
"Hold up." Sam retook control of the conversation. "We're ignoring one fact though. Danny is a merman?!"
"He eats raw fish, swim's more than professional swimmers do, drinks enough water to drown someone, and is an expert in marine biology and this is coming as a surprise to you guys?"
They sat quietly in thought at her declaration and thought about where Danny was now.
Danny hid his items in the reef and watched his friends run back to his house, presumably to talk to Jazz, hopefully. Because if they were talking to his parents, he was screwed.
He then took the next hour swimming at his top speed to get to _ once he got there he found his friends in their grotto.
"Woah, look who decided to show up for the first time in a month," a light grey/blue female with a shark tail mocked. She looked down on him with an upturned chin.
Danny bared his fangs at her and flared his fins. "Back off Dory, I'm not in the mood."
She bared her teeth right back at him.
A colorful male with teal and coral coloring and a very flowing tail much like a betta fishes', swam over to Danny. Eli had blonde hair, teal eyes, and a silver collar-like necklace showing that he was engaged, much to Danny's ire. It didn't matter though, he was Danny's best friend in the sea.
"What's got you so upset Danny?" He came over and ruffled the boy's hair. "Your fins are flared, your tail is twitchy and you're all slouchy," he said with a pouty face.
A slender redheaded female with a matching tail was examining Danny a little too closely for human standards, but just being friendly for mer standards, spoke. "Your spines are out too, so be careful not to cut anyone," Ruby said.
"My spines?" Danny said. He examined his forearm fins and found his barbed spines were in fact, flared out. He took a deep breath and relaxed his fins, retracting his spines.
"What happened?" Eli asked, with a concerned tone, he put his hands and Danny's face, causing the boy to blush.
"Some humans found my horde and I accidentally showed myself."
"Accidentally?" Dory asked.
"Okay, it was on purpose, but not really!" He whined.
"It's alright," Ruby said. "We know what you mean. How long has it been?"
"About an hour, just long enough to get here."
"So, what are we waiting for?" Dory asked. "Let's go to Undergrowths' "
Danny tilted his head. "Undergrowth? The potion maker? What's he going to do?"
"He's got memory potions dumbass," Dory said. Swimming out of the grotto.
"Oh."
"Com'on Danny, I know you're smarter than that," Ruby said, following Dory.
"It's just because you're so stressed," Eli said, brushing tails with Danny before the black mer followed.
The group swam together, talking until they reached Undergrowth's lair.
"Oh joy, the dark mer and his friends have graced me with their presence," he said sarcastically. "What do you want?"
"Danny-boy over here let some humans see him…"
Danny cut Dory off. "They found my horde! What was I supposed to do?"
"Anyways," Eli continued. "We need a memory potion."
The colorful mer gave a soft smile to the grumpy, mossy looking potion maker. He had a green tail, and wore a seaweed sash that had small bottles strewn throughout the leaves. His hair and facial hair looked like they were covered in moss.
He turned his back and searched his shelves, things falling to the floor in a slow, exaggerated state as they fell through the water. He looked back at 'the dark mer' and gave a deep sigh. He tossed the bottle to Danny. "Just don't go around saying I never did nothin' for ya."
Danny pulled the bottle to him in a sense, with hydrokinesis, gave a mock salute. "Wouldn't think of it!" Danny said, him and his friends all laughed before swimming away. They all made their way towards the shore near 300 miles away.
The plan was that Danny would go back to his horde and try to find the humans… Well, that was the plan he came up with Eli and his friends. What really was going to happen, was he was going to go get Jazz to get his friends out on a boat, his mer friends would see that they're out on the water, and go to his horde to tell Danny, then he'd give them the potion. That was the part of the plan they were at now.
Danny held the potion tightly between his palms when Dory tail slapped him in the back of the head.
"They're not going to stay there forever, go do it!"
He glanced at Eli, who gave him an enthusiastic thumbs up. Danny returned it with a weak smile before swimming up to the boat, then once near the surface, powerfully propelling himself into the air and into the boat, it was a rough landing, but he managed it.
Tucker and Sam jumped when they saw him, only calming down when he verbally expressed that it was him, Danny.
"Gods Danny! Where have you been! And why didn't you tell us?" Sam yelled.
They helped Danny sit up straight against the wall of the fentons lab/boat. "Dude, you're a fish," Tucker snickered.
After rolling his eyes, he smirked. "You know, it's not like I hide it all that well. Besides, It's not my choice, it's Jazz's. And she's not wrong to have me hide it either."
"But dude, come' on, we're best friends!"
"Yeah," Danny shrugged, "That's why I need you to drink this," he held up the potion, a vibrant lavender color.
"What is it?"
"We're not drinking that."
He scoffed as he uncapped it. "Never said it would be by choice."
He poured it over his hand and it formed a floating orb of liquid, which then split into two. Extending his arm, each orb shot through the air and into their gaping mouths, and down their throats.
Danny shook off his hand as the other two gagged and yelled. "Gah! What was that?"
"How'd you do that?" Tucker coughed.
"Hydrokinesis," he said.
"Never *cough* do that again," Sam said.
Danny laughed, "Wouldn't matter, you won't remember."
"What?" They both said drowsily.
"It's a memory potion, you won't remember anything from the last 12 hours or so."
"Why would you…" Sam started, but didn't have the energy to finish as she slowly helped herself to the bottom of the boat, Tucker doing the same, and they fell asleep.
He hauled himself out of the boat, and back into the water with a clumsy splash. Back to his friends.
"Simple and done," Danny said. "Hydrokinesis is a blessing," he flexed is fingers in and out of a fist.
"Lucky you got it," Dory huffed.
"I think he Deserves it," Eli chimed in.
Ruby spoke up, "You're getting better at using it too!"
Nodding, he spoke. "Yeah, I've been working really hard on it too!"
"You guys wanna head back and catch some fish?" Dory asked.
All were in agreement except for Danny, who stayed behind to make sure 'the humans didn't remember anything'. Which was true, only he was going to do it in human form.
After they'd all left, he once again propelled himself into the boat, and dried off. Nude as ever, he found some spare clothes in the boat before waking Sam and Tucker.
"Are you guys alright?" He asked.
"What happened?" They asked.
"I turned the boat a bit too hard, you slipped, and hit your heads. Guess I knocked you both out?"
Tucker held a hand to his head, muttering about a headache, Sam doing the same. "Yeah, you were always a terrible driver," She laughed.
"Hey!"
Danny waved goodbye to Sam and tucker from the front of the house, before going back inside and slouching against the front door. Jazz gave him a worried look from the dinner table with their parents.
He sighed and sat down at the table, scooting closer to Jazz while their parents discussed something enthusiastically. Whispering, he spoke. "Memory potion."
"Good," Jazz said. Then slapped him upside the head. "What were you thinking?"
"My horde," Danny silently mouthed with his fangs out.
Jazz raised her hands in defeat. Nothing left to say. They finished the day like normal.