Hola, my readers! I'm sorry for the late update and I hope this makes up for it. Junior year is hectic, trying to get ready for Senior year, scholarships for college, and more.

ENJOY!

Previously...

Laguna was losing it, as Brendan would say.

...

Laguna was walking around the outdoor deck of the cafe, watching the costumers enjoy their meals during the sunny day as well as hearing the joy and laughter on the beach. The breeze was warm and crisp and the smell of sea-salt and food was in the air.

But then, she suddenly felt a breeze of dark aura from behind her. Frowning, she turned around to see Charlotte standing behind her.

But her look made Laguna do an overview, twice.

She was dressed in all black, a dress with a blazer over it, and a choker around her neck.

...

Laguna eyed the teenage mermaid worryingly before taking the letter and opening it. However, after reading the context, Laguna harshly threw the letter to the floor and looked at Charlotte as if she had two heads and destroyed the beach!

"What is this? A resignation letter!?" Laguna screeched. What did this girl think she was playing?

But Charlotte just shrugged. As if she the glaring daggers her boss/teacher was throwing at her didn't seem to bother her at all.

Or perhaps she spent so much time with her that she's gone immune with it.

"Laguna, you and your family have been a tremendous help over the last few months, but I think it's time we parted paths," Charlotte stated, "besides, I'm beginning to think your staff feels you're playing favorites."

...

"You did and you tried. But then, I started asking myself: Why is it the girls were always mermaids by the time they created their designated storm or natural disaster?" Charlotte asked, walking in front of Laguna as if to lecture her, "but then, I theorized, that at some point, each girl had to have been at the moon pool at some point in their lives. Maybe in a mountain range somewhere, on the cliff of an island, or maybe on a beach! But somehow, you never could catch them in time!"

By then, the tension in the room had now grown thick enough anyone could start to see it. The two separate generations of mermaids stared at each other, not knowing what to say

But now, Charlotte had to leave.

"Thank you, Laguna Cove. It's been a pleasure learning from you."

And with that, she walked out the doorway and out of the cafe.

...

It's not when two people, no, two teenagers enter the cafe, ready to go at it like a battle royale.

And when they were fighting, LOUDLY, that said so much more when the customers started to leave.

And when the customers started leaving, that meant you had an agitated Jonathan and a majorly pissed-off Laguna on your hands.

...

"How about you start with admitting that this is ALL YOUR FAULT!" Riley exclaimed, pointing at her, "She would still be the same girl if you hadn't gone and stabbed her in the back!"

"Fine then! You want to hear it: I screwed up! There! You happy now!? I screwed over the only damn person who gave an actual damn about me and now she's gone!" Alaine screamed.

"No, I'm not happy. I'm thankful that you admitted your faults and wrongdoings towards her, but that's not enough! She's been different ever since you broke her heart and now, she's pretty much has a temper and personality that could put Disney's sea-witch, Ursula, to shame!" Riley exclaimed.

...

"Listen," Laguna started, "I can't speak for you that you made a mistake. That is self-evident. But what I can say is that you have the choice to fix your relationship. Beg on your knees, yell until you're blue in the face, even come to her house every day if you had to! If you want to fix your friendship with Charlotte, you need to take action and make it happen. So many young people don't take that chance and regret it for the rest of their lives. You have time to fix this and make it count! Do you understand me? Make her understand that you truly want this friendship!"

...

"Well, it started during school and Charlotte... Charlotte was more, dark. Darker than she ever was these past few weeks. I know I'm responsible for that, but still. Anyways, this group of girls I left had locked her in the locker room and left the water on, completely flooding it.

I swear, I tried to talk them out of it, but the deed was done. Soon enough, water was everywhere, steam was catching in and those girl...they just watched. Then, I heard a scream. I remembered that there was a busted pipe and it was FILLED with hot water...and I watched as she got burned," Alaine admitted, tears streaming from her eyes.

...

"She...walked out?" Laguna asked. That couldn't possibly be right.

Alaine nodded. "Yeah, her clothes were drenched, her makeup was running and her hair looked like it had been through a washer. She just glared at us and suddenly, the sprinklers went off. After that all the girls ran off, some horrified by her. But then, she looked at me as if she could see through my soul and walked away."

Before Laguna realized what she was doing, she hugged Alaine and comforted her. As much as it equally disturbed her that Charlotte managed to get wet without revealing her tail, she left quite a scare on her former friend and it just won't do.

...

"I know Charlotte, or at least I know as much as she was willing to tell me. But I sure as Hell know that Charlotte has Chocolate-Brown eyes, not a shade of blue as deep as the ocean's abyss."

...

Marana.

Later that day...

At the Cove's Residence...

3rd POV

"So, let me get this straight: Marana is controlling Charlotte!?" Karen exclaimed.

Everything had changed when Laguna had gotten home that evening. Her daughter noticed how pale and sick looking her mother was and was caught completely off -guard by how red her eyes were. Before she could even question her, Laguna barked orders to go to the sitting room for a "Family Meeting".

And when Laguna discusses mermaid issues outside of the grotto, it doesn't mean anything good.

Like telling your family that the reincarnated mermaid they've been caring has been completely taken over by a psycho mermaid!

Laguna shook her head. "No, it's more, bigger, than I ever thought possible. Controlling her would be implying that Marana is whispering in her ear, telling her what to do and she's going along with it! HA! That was the same thing she pulled on Ane'lie the first time. But this?

No, she's not controlling Charlotte. She is Charlotte! Kind of like those movies and TV shows Brendan likes to watch where the humans are taken over by some kind of dark spirit. A demonic possession, if you will. They have no idea they were possessed until either they die or the spirit leaves them. Other times, it's like watching through a TV screen. The humans see the actions their body is committing, but they can't do anything about it. And from what I've figured out, Marana has taken Charlotte's body as a host."

And the fact that Charlotte might be screaming in her head somewhere was enough to send chills down everyone's spine.

It suddenly felt as if the room dropped a few degrees below normal room temperature.

"Mother, this...This...I don't even know what to say." Karen stammered. The shock was taking a while to wear off, but then Jonathan asked her question for her.

"I think what my dear wife is trying to say is: How the Hell is this even possible?" Jonathan asked.

Laguna looked at her family, as clueless as she's ever been willing to admit out loud. Out of all of Ane'lie's reincarnations, Charlotte...

She was the most damaged one of them all.

To say she's been through a lot would have been putting it mildly. The memories Charlotte experienced and Laguna had seen held would be enough to make even the most emotionless man cry.

"I wish I knew. Marana has sent a lot of evil things towards the reincarnations, but this? I could have never conceived the idea of actual Bodily Possession being a possibility," Laguna explained, "I noticed the day Charlotte quit that she was wearing dark clothes, despite the warm, sunny day, and her hands were unnaturally cold. I didn't piece it together until Alaine Williams, Charlotte's friend, told me of a crude incident that happened at her school?"

"What happened?" Brendan asked.

Laguna hesitated for a moment. Thinking back to it, the whole incident, as Charlotte been herself, would have been a dreaded moment for any mermaid living on land.

"Some girls locked her in a room completely flooding in water and she got burned by a busted pipe filled with hot water. And, according to her, the door burst open and what should have been hot water turned cold and doused the girls. Then, she walked out. Not lying on the ground in her tail. Simply walked out in wet clothes. It wasn't until Miss Williams mentioned the change of Charlotte's eye color, Marana's eyes, that I realized Marana has taken over her body physically," Laguna concluded.

Karen looked at her mother as if she suddenly decided she hated humans and wanted to annihilate them all.

She shook her head. "No, this is Marana's doing. No one, and I mean, NO ONE, part-time nor full-time mermaid, has ever gotten full-control over changing between forms. I've heard of spells powerful enough to cause a mermaid to lose their tail or keep them from gaining one, which is easily fixed with a visit to the moon pool. But full control? Not possible."

"Well, clearly the Sea Witch found a way. I mean, can't you just conjure up something and kick her out?" Brendan asked.

"Please, if that were simple, I would have found a way, gone to Charlotte's help, and did the...what is it called?" Laguna asked.

"Exorcism," he stated.

Laguna nodded. "Yes, I would have performed that immediately the moment she opened the front door! But no mermaid has ever gotten close to even doing what she's done. And from a dear friend of mine, "Even the Dark Arts are troubled with control." I can't see Marana because Charlotte has my ability plus I can't even pinpoint where in the Seven Seas that Marana is hiding! From what I'm seeing, Marana is a Wolf in Sheep's Skin!"

"No!" Brendan jumped up, surprising everyone, " I won't take that! I-I-I need to apologize to her! If I hadn't said those things to her, then maybe-"

But his grandmother shut him down, knowing where his train of thought was going. Laguna grasped both his shoulders and made him look directly at her.

"Brendan, there couldn't have been anything you could have done to prevent this. We all knew that Marana could have waited a hundred years to wait for the right moment to get to her," Laguna said seriously.

"But-" Brendan started.

"No buts, Brendan! The girl already has enough skeletons in the closet that-"

And suddenly, it struck her like lightning. And it emitted a light strong enough to see the answers right in front of her.

"Mother, are you okay?" Karen asked. Seeing her mother space out wasn't a first, but she hadn't done that since she met Charlotte.

Coming out of her trance, she looks at their faces, surprising them with her somber facade.

"She's hurting," Laguna concluded.

Karen, Jonathan, and Brendan looked at Laguna, confused. But the answer couldn't have been any simpler.

Hell! She had the goddamn girl's memories for Pete's sake!

"Come again?" Jonathan asked. He must have missed something.

"Think of what Riley and Miss Williams have told us. Everything Charlotte has refused to fight against, Marana is acting on her desires. One Charlotte would rather keep in a small, dark place in her head than act on. You see, it wasn't until I realized that Charlotte has been wearing a mask in front of us the entire time. Granted, we knew it was there. But behind it was a girl so sad and miserable, she couldn't be allowed to be seen. So Charlotte put up a front. One that could be held in day by day," Laguna explained, "Her experience in Queensland, Australia left her heartbroken in more ways than one can describe. More ways that I didn't understand until now. She lost her self-confidence, her ability to trust others with her feelings, her ability to fall in love, and her sense of security. In Australia, she was rejected multiple times, unwanted, humiliated, and just plain-right denounced from the world her grandmother left behind. But she, as if she wasn't broken enough, in Atlanta, Georgia, that's where she was really, and nearly, lost to the world."

Laguna proceeded, for the first time, in telling exactly what Charlotte went through in Atlanta and all the events that led to her near-suicidal actions.

"Back in Atlanta, Charlotte allowed herself to get bullied and harassed cruelly because she felt it was a fit punishment from above for all her misdeeds in Australia," she said before turning to Jonathan, "Jon, you of all people should know that even humans are capable of worst acts than any supernatural we know. What happened there was the shattering of her soul."

Jonathan just nodded in understanding. He knew where she was getting at.

"So, in the process, it just got so violent enough that she started sporting bruises and she hid them from her mother. And Karen, you know how brutal girls in high school are. After that, in the unrequited romance field...she was left to walk home in the middle of the night, covered in mud. That's a story I'd happily erase from her mind if I had the choice. But overall, Charlotte's practically suffering from Depression. She tried to kill herself unknowingly after coming home from school and had her mother not got there in time..." Laguna trailed. Charlotte was as close to insanity as anyone could get and her humanity was wearing thin from the moment she learned Magic was real. And it was hard to remember the incident and think about, much more speak out aloud.

But to say the remaining Coves were disgusted would be an understatement.

Karen started crying, trying to figure out how someone as young as Charlotte could go through so much hurt and pain. Her mother was right: High School girls were brutal. Back in her day, fitting in was hard enough, but add in the fact that her tail came in, she practically decided to be invisible. The only attention she ever got was from Brendan's father and after that ended catastrophically, it took a hell of a long time to let Jonathan in afterward.

Jonathan held a stoic expression as usual, but his eyes darkened with fury and sadness over the girl he judged with ease. Perhaps they were more alike than he thought. He grew up in a poor family and hated those who threw their wealth in his face or showed him pity. And it was by not showing emotion that he worked his butt off to support himself and his family that he even met Karen Cove. She was a broken soul and would never take back his time with her.

But being apathetic didn't help someone like Charlotte, who was trying to recover from traumatic experiences, but now the damage was done.

Brendan was distraught the most. Finding out Charlotte's body was taken over by an evil mermaid was bad enough. But after the entire incident over the war games, his mom set him straight and told him what Charlotte saw. To see a darker version of yourself succeeding in your biggest regret was harsh enough. Since then, he was filled with guilt and had been meaning to apologize to her. But then she quit and now this? Like this Alaine girl, learning he had inadvertently pushed Charlotte into Marana's clutches made his stomach drop.

Jonathan looked up at his mother in law. "So how do we bring her back?"

Heads snapped towards him. Jonathan wanted to help Charlotte?

"Excuse me? You hated her for months and now you want to save her?!" Brendan asked in shock. Had the man lost his marbles or was he possessed by Marana too?

Then Jonathan turned to him, and for the first time, offering a genuine smile. Almost like watching a Bulldog display its canines for the first time.

His step-son was officially terrified.

"I never hated her. I just didn't trust her. And judging from the last time we saw her, perhaps it's time we all make amends that went unspoken," he stated, still smiling. And the world was not safe with an evil mermaid walking among them.

Freaked out at this new side of his step-father, Brendan quickly hid behind his 9-month, pregnant mother, who couldn't help but giggle at their antics, despite the somber mood and tension in the room. Karen knew that this side of her husband existed, but it hurt her slightly for this particular occasion could bring it out.

Laguna could only give a half-smile.

Judging by the last time she spoke with "Charlotte", she doubted Marana was going to let her body go without a fight. Especially now that she was figured out. And she knew Marana would know that she was too.

But maybe it's time someone fought for Charlotte for once. No one dared realize that evil was made with a purpose just as much as redemption. But the road was going to be a rocky start.

But leave it to her grandson to point out the real, underlining question in all of this.

"Alright, so Operation: Save Charlotte is a Go, but here's the thing," Brendan pointed out, "if Marana has taken over Charlotte's body, where's the real Charlotte?"

In an unknown mindscape...

? POV

Freedom.

That was the first thing that popped into my mind as I was swimming underwater, visiting the coral reef with a small fishnet in my hand. The sea was warm and the blazing sun lit up the cerulean underwater world as if it had room to see right through it all.

I took in the ocean air and sighed in happiness as the warm air went through me. It was a nice, sunny day on the surface and I planned to relax to the beach afterward.

Hm, I wonder if everyone would mind meeting up there, or would they prefer heading to the cafe later?

Shrugging, I kept searching around until I found myself in a vast area of seashells and sea urchins and more living off of them. Who knows, maybe they won't mind sharing and letting me have a few.

Spotting a few starfish and hesitated before grabbing a small, older one and placing it in my net, I swam and started collecting a few more shells when I suddenly felt a chill go down my spine. I quickly spun around but saw nothing.

Shaking my head, I flicked my tail and started speed-swimming away towards the beach. I hated that feeling. It was like I was being watched and last I checked, that feeling should be reserved for when I'm close to a hungry shark.

I couldn't help but smirk as I started loop-de-loops and spirals through the water before diving into a trench at my fastest and coming back up. I was owed a rematch later today and I was NOT going to come out a sore loser like last week!

Eventually, I was on my way up towards the surface when I came across a few dolphins and noticed a familiar golden-orange-copper tail amongst them. Curious, I swam towards them and saw it was Emma. And she must had felt me watching her, since she turned her head and smiled at me.

I decided to join her.

I noticed she was swimming along on one of the dorsal fins and I grabbed onto one and swam alongside her until I pointed her towards the beach. She nodded and together, we let go of the perspective dolphins we were riding and swam to the surface to find a spot of sand. One where people were most likely not come across two mermaids drying off their tails.

Once we broke the surface, I and Emma swam towards a bunch of rocks that thankfully went dry and led straight to land. I helped Emma up onto them and I raised my hand into a fist over my and Emma's tails.

And a few minutes later, the two golden tail was gone and replaced with 2 pairs of human legs.

"Thanks," Emma said, helping me up, "Fancy seeing you around here."

"Yeah, me too, " I said, "I was surprised to see you swimming around. Aren't you supposed to be helping Lewis with some project on the moon pool or something?"

"Actually, for some reason, Cleo had him postpone it because...Oh!" she exclaimed, slapping herself on the forehead, "That's why I out swimming: Looking for you. Cleo wanted me to look for you and bring you to the cafe!"

"Oh, is it urgent?" I asked worriedly.

She shook her head. "No, not really. I think. She just said to find you and bring you there."

"If that's the case, why were you in the sea? Couldn't find me on land?" I asked teasingly.

"That," she said, "and I got splashed and had to hide fast. I was on the beach and then I found you."

"Don't you mean I found you?" I asked jokingly.

Emma snorted. "Same difference. Ready to go?"

I nodded and we started walking off the beach and onto the concrete. Looks like it's to the cafe after all.

A few minutes later, we arrived at Rikki's. I still couldn't believe that Zane had brought the old cafe and named it after the mermaid herself. But I guess Love does that to you.

We walked in and I couldn't help but say "Alright, I know I didn't mess with Nate again. And it seems like no one needs to be dried off. So, what's this mermaid in for this time?"

I couldn't help but laugh as Emma elbowed me softly and the two other mermaids, Cleo and Rikki gave me a look from their table booth. Cleo just gave me a mock glare and you could tell she was keeping herself from laughing. And Rikki just rolled her eyes and tried her best to keep her grin down.

They were used to my not-so-subtle antics by now.

"Nice to know you've been good for a while," Cleo said, walking over to me, "but that's not the case. You see, do you know what day it is?"

I racked my head for a minute and nodded. "October 21st. Why?"

"Well, you see, do you remember what happened a week from now last year?" she asked.

This surprised me and I now knew what she was talking about. "You mean..."

"Yep," Rikki said sarcastically, "it's been nearly one year since you decided to get a tail. Oh, how did we function so long with you?"

I laughed. Yep, It's been nearly a year since I became a mermaid. How could I forget?

"And for that, we're gonna celebrate on Mako. We do our little beach tradition with the guys and we swim from there," Emma said.

"Oh, you guys...We don't have to celebrate. It's not a big deal," I stated.

I almost laughed as Cleo wrapped her arms around me and I returned the hug.

"Well, of course, we have to celebrate this moment!" Cleo exclaimed excitingly before whispering in my ear, "After all, you're one of us...Charlotte."

Marana's POV

I pulled myself back into reality and smirked.

Everything was going according to plan.