Hi!
So this is a really random idea that if I'm being completely honest about, I came up with and wrote all in a couple of hours because I'm sick and bored XD. I wrote this very quickly so there's probably quite a few mistakes but I hope you'll forgive me. It's inspired by 'Silence on the line' purely because I had the idea whilst rereading it so thanks to Griffin Stone for writing that absolute gem! :)
It's probably set sometime soon after 'Mermaids' but before 'Finn comes aboard' if you wanted to put a timeline on it but there's not really a need to be too specific with it.
Hope you enjoy my randomness!
Will was confused.
Kaiko was confused.
Fontaine seemed fairly neutral, not really expressing any surprise or any emotion at all for that matter.
Ant, once he had moved past his shock, was fixing Fontaine with a steely, furious glare which she seemed intent on avoiding - okay so clearly he knew something Kaiko and Will didn't.
The Nektons had encountered the Dark Orca pirates yet again on one of their missions, this time attempting to recover sunken artefacts from a ship wreck in a WOA protected area without acquiring a salvage permit (not that they would have been granted one even if they had applied).
That wasn't the surprising or confusing part, despite the vast size of the ocean, they seemed to regularly come across Hammerhead and his crew.
As per usual, the family of four had all gotten ready to swim out to speak with the pirates as the Dark Orca's comm system was down (a rare but certainly not uncommon occurrence).
Ant, Will and Kaiko all in their knights while Fontaine took the rover (she had had more than enough knight experience as of late due to the mimic knight experiment, which Professor Fiction had assured her was now fixed although she still wanted to do further testing before taking it out on a mission).
Hammerhead, Mad Madeline, Danny Boy and the rest of the Dark Orca crew, excluding Finn, all swam out to tread water just in front of the Nektons.
The most shocking part had come when Finn had appeared, coming from the Dark Orca's moon pool, to join his father, sister and crew, donned in a remarkably stable-looking, pirate-attempted effort of a knight.
It definitely wasn't anywhere even remotely close to the types of knights Professor Fiction made for the Nektons, it was still incredibly clunky, jerky, and heavy-looking. But even so, Finn had been in the water for close to a minute now and it was still in one piece, not even appearing to have sprung a leak.
Hey, what do you know - this thing was more stable than the Dark Orca!
The minute Finn had emerged in his new suit, the Nektons were shocked, well, most of them. Fontaine didn't really have a reaction at all, simply raising a disapproving eyebrow when Finn caught sight of her and waved, sending her his trademark grin on greeting. As soon as he saw Finn, Ant had immediately began attempting to bore a hole through Fontaine's skull using his mind, fury infecting his facial features.
"Oh, hello, Nektons!" Hammerhead crowed out as the two families approached each other, "do yer like me new knight?"
Ant finally tore his deathly gaze from Fontaine and turned to his parents as his mother swam forward a little to face Hammerhead.
"Hammerhead, return the artefacts you've stolen from the wreck now and we can both get out of here peacefully,"
Confused and shocked as she was about the knight, Kaiko refused to let herself be distracted from what she and her family actually needed to do.
Hammerhead let out a chuckle, "Stolen? We haven' stolen anythin', have we? Yer know the rules, Nekton, finders keepers! "
Ant then spoke up with, "That's not a rule! Like anywhere, that is not a rule, it's the definition of stealing!"
" Arrr! No it ain't, we found the treasure, the treasure is ours! I don' see a sign sayin' 'Property of Nektons', we've got it, so tha' means it's ours! Arrr! " Mad Madeline swam forward, unable to miss the opportunity to argue with her rival.
"Hammerhead, hand it over and we can just go our separate ways, or if you'd rather wait around here arguing, we can do that and you can speak to the World Oceans Authority about your definition of theft," Will spoke up, swimming forward to float beside Kaiko.
Hammerhead paused to think at hearing this. The Nektons always won against the pirates but they never sent the WOA after them since they really had no need to - because they always won. They hadn't really recovered anything big from the wreck, just a few bits of pottery which were mostly chipped or broken, eroded from years spent underwater, it wouldn't really hurt to let it go and just let the Nektons have this one.
"I- it ain't even real treasure anyway, we don' need it, in fact, yer can have it, we don' wan' it," Hammerhead declared, proudly, handing over the crate of ceramic quickly, " we're goin' ter get out of 'ere and to get ourselves some real treasure, "
"Okay, thank you, you're making the right decision, Hammerhead," Will told him, " now, we should probably get -"
"Hey!" Ant yelled suddenly, interrupting his dad.
"Ant? What's-" as Kaiko turned around, she saw what her son was looking at, Fontaine and Finn, who had been surprisingly absent for the entirety of the encounter had been slowly edging closer together throughout the entire discussion and negotiation process and were now floating side-by-side discussing something unknown as they were both on a different comm frequency to the rest of their families.
Before any of the adults could say anything more, Ant and Madeline had both swam forward, heading in their older siblings' direction as though they had been thinking the same thing. Upon reaching the rover, Ant banged on the glass canopy, drawing his sisters attention, just as Madeline also did the same on the glass window of her brother's new knight.
Upon realising all attention was on them, Finn and Fontaine switched their comm frequencies back to the one being used by their families, both blushing slightly at being noticed.
"What on Earth was that?" Ant yelled suddenly, again before any adults got the chance to speak, "You absolute traitor, Fontaine,"
" What do you mean? " Fontaine asked, "I'm not a traitor! We were just talking, you lot," she gestured to her family and the Dark Orca crew, "got to arguing again and when that happens, you do it for a long time, Finn and I were just passing the time,"
" On a private comm frequency, Fontaine? " Kaiko asked, "You have to admit, that is a little strange, "
"We were just talking! " Fontaine protested.
"We didn't want to interrupt, you guys can get pretty invested in some of your arguments, and they can go on for a long time," Finn added.
"What were yer talkin' about?" Madeline asked, " Spillin' all our pirate secrets to the Nektons? "
"I was just asking about the new knight," Fontaine answered.
The two youngest siblings snorted in laughter at that, then shared a furious glare at the fact they had reacted so similarly.
"What was the laugh for?" Will asked, he was so confused, Ant and Madeline seemed to know a lot more about this whole situation than they were letting on.
"Well, it's just, why?" Ant answered, still sounding highly amused.
"Why would yer need to ask?" Madeline clarified, " About the knight, "
"I don't know what you're talking about," Fontaine replied, her eyes wide and meaningful as she stared at Ant as though she were either trying to communicate with him telepathically or explode his brain to make him stop talking.
"Ant, Fontaine, what's going on?" Kaiko asked.
Fontaine shook her head slightly yet urgently at Ant but the moment she saw the look on his face, she knew it was all over, he was going to tell everything.
"Fontaine was the one who pretty much planned, designed and all but built that knight, " Ant revealed, smugly, "She arranged it all over her secret phone and video calls with Finn,"
"Nah, she helped build it to," Madeline pitched in, "She came in a couple o' weeks ago to help Finn work on it, I saw 'er crawling in the vents,"
Ant appeared confused for a moment before turning back to Fontaine with a glare of renewed fury.
"Hey, you told me you were hanging out with Jess on land and you were taking a jet ski for a few hours. I covered for you! For Jess! Not so you could hang out with Pirate Boy! " Ant yelled at his sister.
" Fontaine, is this true? " Kaiko asked, both she and Will looking at their daughter expectantly.
"I just wanted to help," Fontaine protested, shooting a glare at Ant for getting her into this whole situation in the first place.
"Help the enemy, " Ant muttered.
"What do you mean?" Will asked and everyone turned to Fontaine to hear her response, even Finn turning to look at her with interest to hear her answer.
"Well- I- Hammerhead's knight that he had Fiction build was awful, it nearly got him killed, he would have died if we hadn't saved him, plus, I have first hand experience of how badly knights can go wrong, even when built with proper equipment and a fully trained professor building them, " Fontaine replied, "I thought it would be okay after Hammerhead's knight failed so badly and he'd just give up but then Finn told me on one of our calls that he was planning on building another one, only this time he wanted Finn to use it because he was lighter so it was less likely to sink,"
Kaiko glared at Hammerhead furiously at hearing that.
" I knew they were going to build a knight regardless of what I did but I thought if I helped, there was much less of a chance of Finn dying at the bottom of the ocean after sinking in a steel box, so I started planning and designing, like Ant said, and Finn and I called more so I could teach Finn more about how to build a knight, he got better but I still didn't feel comfortable letting him go out in a knight he had build himself without at least checking it in person first, so I told Ant to cover for me while I went out on land with Jess, instead I went to the Dark Orca, swam in to the moon pool, which is unlocked a lot of the time by the way, and then crawled through the vents to get to where Finn was and help him finish building the knight and check everything was working properly, at least to the point of it not being as much of a death trap as Hammerhead's knight, then came back to the Aronnax, " Fontaine finished.
There was silence for a moment as everyone, both pirate and Nekton, attempted to process everything Fontaine had said, before Finn finally broke the silence with:
"Awww, so you did it because you cared about me,"
" Mmm, I don't know about that, I wouldn't go that far, " Fontaine replied.
"You were still worried about me,"
"Just because you're a pirate doesn't mean I want you to die in a metal death trap at the bottom of the ocean, Finn, "
Finn just shrugged at that.
"Fontaine, you know you're not supposed to leave the Aronnax without telling your father or I, especially not to go to the Dark Orca, however, I can see why you did and I, for one, am very proud you would do that to help someone, even if we are in a sort of unofficial feud with his family, " Kaiko said, Will nodding along in agreement as she spoke.
"Uh, Cap'n," came Danny Boy's voice all of a sudden as the pirate gestured to the vague shadow of WOA vessels in the near distance.
" Come on! " Hammerhead declared upon seeing the submarines, turning instantly and swimming quickly towards the Dark Orca, closely followed by Danny Boy and the rest of his crew.
Madeline turned to Ant and said, " See you later, no-good do-gooder, " before quickly darting away in the direction of the Dark Orca's moon pool.
Finn turned to Fontaine, "Thanks for all the help, Fontaine, and for the good chat, " with that he winked at her before quickly swimming away, calling, "Until next time, Nektons! "
"Wait, what were you actually talking about?" Ant asked.
" Huh? "
"Well, you obviously weren't asking about where he got his knight from, we've already established that, so what were you talking about on that private comm frequency? "
Fontaine just blinked at her brother before rapidly manoeuvring the rover and quickly reaching the Aronnax's moon pool - escaping all his questions for now.
So yeah, that's it, I hope you liked it!
I definitely enjoyed writing it and I just love the idea of Finn having his own knight (a safe one, obviously, NOT a pirate-made death trap).
I have this idea that Finn and Fontaine call each other quite regularly because they're really the only people they know of similar ages to each other (I know Fontaine has Jess but she doesn't live in a submarine so she doesn't really get the isolation the same as Fontaine does while Finn definitely does) so while they have this whole secret, phone call friendship going on, thinking it's a total secret from everyone, Ant and Madeline know all about it and they can (sort of) bond over how hilarious it is that their parents haven't found out yet and Finn and Fontaine think they don't know about it either.
Also, I just want to say, I promise none of my other fics are abandoned, I had to take a break from writing them for a while when I got some bad news but I'm just now I getting back to it and I promise they are NOT abandoned. I wouldn't do that to you guys, you mean the world to me :D.
So yeah, this was just the product of a combination of boredom, insomnia and over thinking so I hope you liked it.
I can't thank you enough for reading!
Until next time! :D