AN: I'm not entirely happy with this chapter. Something is definitely lost with Kirishima being quite as out of it as he is. But hopefully you will enjoy some insight in Kirishima's background before it all comes out further down the road.
And some Bakugou talking in his native tongue.
Eijirou dreamed.
He knew it was a dream because he had never been so afraid of the shallow water, not since that very first time. But he was. He was afraid. He could almost feel his heart pounding in his chest like a caged animal trying to break free. The sides of the too-tiny tank pressed against him, the lack of anything softer the only thing assuring him that he wasn't reliving the last time the shallow water had encased him.
Almost as soon as it had started, the movement of the water around him stopped. The truck he was on must have stopped. He confirmed it as the curtain was pulled back and a blurred person appeared, half red and half white.
No, not one person. Mr Gentle and La Brava. The white haired man and the red-pink woman. Yes. His second owners. He willed himself to relax as a voice that didn't sound quite right, didn't sound animated enough to be Mr Gentle's, washed over him unintelligibly.
Someone stabbed something into his arm. He felt the sharp sting.
Everything faded then.
The next thing his eyes opened to was a pair of piercing red eyes staring at him. Mitsuki. He saw her again now like he was seeing her that very first time, only this time his awe and confusion was tainted by something the squeezed at his insides.
He closed his eyes. He didn't think about that. He didn't want to. She was here now; that was what counted. He opened his eyes and let himself believe.
Bakugou Mitsuki's crimson eyes widened and she waved from the tank next door, grinning wolfishly. In this moment, he'd never seen anything quite like her.
"Hey kid!" she said, "You awake now?"
She turned. She looked like one of the dancing women, surrounded by vibrant silks of red and orange and gold. Except that the women had to wear the silks but Mitsuki's trailed from her skin and caught the light when she moved, highlighting shimmering colours that Eijirou had never seen before. They flowed from her forearms around to her back, swirled like skirts around her tail and trailed behind her.
His own mother had been brown and red and white. So had his siblings. Mitsuki was as strange as she was breath-taking and in that moment, he hadn't known how to respond to her.
"Masaru!" she called.
A different kind of merman rose from the bottom of the tank. Somehow, the sight of him was calming. He was brown, much like Eijirou's mother had been, but with accents of green splashed across his tail and forearms. He too had frills, which none of the Kirishima clan had been born with, but they were smaller and fewer. He had a kind smile and approached carefully.
"Are you alright?" said Masaru, softly. The sound had been muffled by the glass Eijirou remembered having to swim closer to understand him, yet somehow this time, it sounded perfectly clear. "It must be scary moving somewhere new. My name is Masaru and this is Mitsuki. Could you tell me yours?"
He did. Masaru and Mitsuki had rested by the glass for hours talking to him about this and that – most of which he couldn't remember anymore. It floated past him a strange haze. But he did remember wanting to swim through the glass and cuddle up to them, even though they weren't his family.
Masaru and Mitsuki knew a lot about the humans. They both spoke the human language and Masaru could even read the human letters they posted outside of their tanks. Eijirou remembered pointing to the sign outside of his tank when it had arrived a week after he had.
"Kirishima Eijirou," said Masaru. "It's so that the visitors know what your name is."
"My name? But Kirishima is where I came from," said Eijirou in a voice that sounded so removed from his own that it made him wince.
"It's your type, kid," said Mitsuki, lazily flipping over.
Masaru shot her a look that Eijirou hadn't understood at the time. "It's sort of like the humans have their family names. Everyone who looks similar to you from the place you come from, everyone in your family, they have the same family name. Even if they're barely related to you anymore."
"Oh," said Eijirou, thoughtfully, staring into the squiggles pasted to the side of his tank. There was a line between two separate collections of squiggles and Eijirou couldn't tell at the time, which squiggle was which. "Then what does your one say?"
At this, Masaru's eyes seemed mist over. His and Mitsuki's faces both became blank for a moment, before Mitsuki made a tight loop, whacking Masaru in the face with one of her long flowing fins.
"It says Bakugou," she said gruffly, jabbing her thumb in that direction. "Bakugou Mitsuki and Masaru."
When she started talking about speaking the human language, it hadn't seemed like she'd been deflecting from anything at the time. Eijirou had grabbed onto the new concept with two hands and before long, the three of them were reaching over the short wall that separated their water.
They had been good teachers. Mitsuki was harsh and would bop him on the head when he couldn't make the sounds she was showing him, but Masaru was kind and slow and gentle. They taught him how to say important things. They taught him why he should say those things to the visitors. And they taught him that the shallow water wasn't to be feared.
The shallow water came for Mitsuki a lot. People would come with it in black and white uniforms that deflated when they got wet. The white haired man would come too. The first time it happened, Eijirou had been screaming, throwing himself at the glass; the shallow water only came to take someone away.
Masaru had calmed him down.
"She has to work," he'd said softly as Eijirou's tiny body had heaved with the flaring of his gills. "You will someday. Don't worry; she's coming back."
"Work?" Eijirou had asked.
"Yes," said Masaru. "You've seen the people who come here in the coloured clothes?"
Eijirou nodded. He had. They came to look at them when they were in their tanks sometimes, just like the white-haired man and the pink haired girl had come to look at him, then put him in the shallow water and take him away.
"They are visitors," he'd said. "They come here to look at us and enjoy themselves. It's our job to make sure that they have a good time. That's why you're here as well."
It was, wasn't it? That was why he was here.
The shallow water jolted and Eijirou's back knocked into something hard. Masaru vanished in front of him like he'd never been there at all. He called out for him feverishly, but it was dark now. It had been dark then too – the last time.
"We're going somewhere better, with lots of tanks, bigger tanks where they can teach you to do flips and shit."
He could hear Mitsuki's voice again but she was far away and he knew that was wrong. Mr Gentle had put them all in the same water. Mitsuki and Masaru had held him between them and the rocking and shifting hadn't seemed so bad.
But that was so long ago and they had, hadn't they? Gang Orca had taught him. And Fourth Kind. And – his stomach did a flip then even though nobody was with him. Even though you could only do flips in the big water. Even though Orca wasn't there because he'd been ripped away from them – or Eijirou had been torn away from him.
The shallow water had been too shallow. The air burned his gills. The water slapped his face. He could hear Mitsuki screaming and Orca shouting but the noises all merged together in a cacophony of wailing and banging.
But he wasn't there. There was water here. He could breathe again, even though it was hard and his chest felt tight as panic seized him.
Then he saw her.
The single lightbulb in the room flickered dimly between the four tanks. The water was dark and murky. Through the gloom, all her colours looked pale and muted but Mitsuki was still there in the tank next door.
He called to her. She didn't respond.
Her body hung limply towards the top of the tank, her tail hanging down, motionless, her face just barely an inch above the water. He could see her chest fluttering weakly.
He called to her again, clawing at the barred lid above him. His tail slammed against the glass. His fist followed. He screamed at Fourth Kind, who rested at the bottom of the tank, eyes open but blank. Nobody moved. Nobody did anything.
Why wasn't anybody doing anything? Where was Mr Gentle?
He called her name again, but Mitsuki was entirely still.
Nothing was right when Eijirou woke. Everything was sluggish and heavy like he was being trained for tricks with the weights on. Except there were weights on his eyelids. His chest burned. His fingers didn't seem to belong to him.
He forced his eyes open to find that everything was suddenly bright and blue and white. There were no bars above him, only open water, and he wondered very briefly if he was dead now – or back at Mr Gentle's. But that was stupid because he had never been any place like this. And dead people didn't hurt.
The vibrations seemed to hit him before the sound. His head turned automatically, pulled towards the source of the sound with neither his knowledge nor permission.
He wasn't alone. It wasn't dark. He could see a figure in the tank next door and another looming over them, green and blue and dark. He blinked once, twice.
The body hung limply in the centre of the tank. Bright light reflected from a motionless tail with layers of red, orange, black and gold trailing down like forgotten silks. Blonde hair, fanned around the mermaid's head like a golden explosion as they held their face just above the water.
Mistuki.
His heart leapt into his mouth and with it went all of the lethargy, all of the pain. All that remained was fear, rage, relief and the desperate need to move, do something, save her.
It didn't matter that her arms were bare and her colours were darker and the chest that fluttered as she panted for breath was flat and bare and exposed. It didn't matter that Orca wasn't there, that Fourth Kind was gone too. It didn't matter that everything was different.
The human figure loomed over the figure of the merman who wasn't Mitsuki but was obviously family. More of them came bursting from some doors to the right.
"Kacchan!" an alarmed human voice shouted.
He had to act. The bars above him were gone. Nobody could jump as high as Eijirou could. He could do it. He could get to them.
He didn't think; he just did. He jumped.
Wide red eyes met his as he breached the water. Mitsuki's face – but not Mitsuki's, a Bakugou's – stared up at him in shock and horror. Both of the merman's hands grasped the human's forearm and pulled.
If he could just get the human away then Mits-not Mitsuki, would be free.
Eijirou's thick tail hit the human in the back. The merman who wasn't Mitsuki didn't move even as the human began to fall.
"M-" he began, calling out to the other to move. No. "Bakugou!"
The human hit the water before Eijirou did.
For a moment, he wasn't able to see through the bubbles and the thrashing. Something hit him in the shoulder. The human. He rolled, coiling in on himself, ready to launch as the bubbles ceased.
Mits- Not Mitsuki, Bakugou had his arms wrapped around the human's legs, pushing him up and out of the water. That wasn't good enough. Eijirou could see the others with long sticks rushing up the steps. They would grab him, grab them both, and then…
He surged forwards, grabbing Bakugou around his waist and pulling him back.
"Come on!" he shouted a little too loudly in the other's ear.
Bakugou's entire body stiffened. An elbow smashed into his nose as the other merman's body twisted in his grip. Furious crimson eyes met his own.
"Get the fuck away from me," Bakugou hissed through bared teeth. His eyes were wild, his chest heaving. His face was flushed.
He looked terrible and furious and much too beautiful to be taken away and trapped in an algae, disease and death filled cage. Eijirou grabbed him by the arm and pulled him deeper, shielding his smaller frame with his own.
"They won't get us," he said softly, even though he didn't believe it. His heart hammered in his chest.
Bakugou struggled in his grip, sharp nails raking his shoulders. "What the fuck - is your problem? Let me-"
Eijirou saw the sharp stick coming from the corner of his eye. He loosened his grip on Bakugou to grasp at it with one hand and yank it violently from the human's grip. Underneath him, Bakugou flicked his tail, throwing him off balance enough to let him slip free. Immediately, another sharp stick came from the right towards him.
Eijirou couldn't grab this one, couldn't move fast enough to pull Bakugou out of the way. So he didn't. With a powerful sweep of his tail, he barrelled into the other merman and felt the needle pierce his shoulder and lodge itself there before the pair of them could hit the glass.
Roaring, he tried to dig it out, remembering belatedly that his nails were gone.
The last thing he saw was the face that wasn't Mitsuki's, incredulous, confused. And the shadow of another stick descending on them both.
As the last of his strength failed him, he curled around the other merman, praying it was enough to protect him from harm.
AN: Thanks for reading! Next chapter will deal with the aftermath of all of this and return to a more reliable narrative voice.
As always, reviews bring life to these old bones.