Reef-Sanity!

Story 1-2: "Destiny, Bailey, and Those Freaky Fridays"

Dory suddenly woke up.

"Huh? What happened?" she muttered.

Looking around, she saw that she was behind her house.

"Hmm…I don't remember being by my house…but I don't remember lots of things anyway," said Dory.

Then suddenly, she realized something. There was something very off about her right now. For one thing, she felt as though her mouth had moved several feet down her face!

Dory looked down at herself. No longer did she see her usual blue self. Instead she saw sprawling orange tentacles.

"Wow! That's new and…different," Dory exclaimed as she held her newfound tentacles up to her face. Then she realized that her voice was completely different.

"Hey…I sound like Hank…I look like Hank…I have seven arms and I'm bigger than my own house…" Dory said, "Wow! I really am Hank! Wow! This is…this is kinda weird actually, and kinda spooky, but pretty funny at the same time!"

Dory waved her tentacles around.

"Hey! That means I can do what Hank always does when he wants to hide!" Dory realized.

Immediately, she closed her eyes and attempted to camouflage against the ground. Opening them back up, she saw that she was the same color as the ground, albeit not camouflaged perfectly.

"Oh well, I bet it took Hank years to master this, too," Dory said, "I can't wait to show everyone else! I wonder where Marlin and Nemo and everyone else are!"

She immediately made her way to Marlin and Nemo's anemone. It was weird locomoting on seven tentacles instead of using fins, but Dory, managing to remember how Hank usually walked, got used to it pretty fast.

Upon getting to the anemone, Dory saw that neither of them were home. However, when she looked to her right, she could see Marlin off in the distance talking with Sheldon's dad. Dory vaguely remembered Marlin mentioning wanting to speak with Sheldon's dad the night before, so she assumed that was what he was currently doing. She also remembered that Nemo was at school.

Noticing that Marlin appeared to be wrapping up his conversation, Dory was about to go over to talk to them. However, she got the idea to exploit Hank's camouflaging abilities to pull a prank on Marlin. Unable to resist doing so, she immediately blended into the ground as best as she could and waited for Marlin to arrive.

"Dory? Honey, are you ok?"

Hank thought he heard Jenny calling for Dory. He figured that she and Charlie had come and found them after that blasted locket nearly killed them. It had certainly looked like one of those lockets he had seen in the Marine Life Institute's gift shop.

"Dory, wake up," Hank heard Jenny again, and now he felt someone gently shaking him.

Hank immediately woke up and looked around.

"Hmm?" Hank grunted, "What's going on?"

"There was a strange message in front of our house," said Jenny, "did you leave it?"

"I don't-" Hank started to say, but before he did, he realized something was very wrong. Immediately, he realized that he was short five tentacles…actually, technically all of them, as he only had fins now! Two very yellow, very familiar looking fins.

"What…what happened to me? Where are my arms?" he muttered.

"Dory?"

"But I'm not-" Hank started to say before examining himself more closely. Seeing her all too familiar blue and black body, Hank realized that he was indeed now Dory!

"What the…?" he cried, swimming out of the house in a hurry. He quickly came across the message left by Destiny and Bailey telling Jenny and Charlie about what had happened to Hank and Dory.

"Hank…is…Dory?" Hank read, "I'm Dory? Oh no…I must still be dreaming."

"Dory? Are you okay?" Jenny and Charlie had come out of their house and were looking at Hank with concern.

"Jenny, Charlie, it's me: Hank!" Hank protested. "I'm Dory…somehow?"

Jenny and Charlie looked at each other in confusion.

Hank looked back down at the kelp on the ground. It was then that he noticed the rest of the note: "Dory is Hank."

"If I'm Dory, does that mean Dory is me?" Hank thought.

"Oh no…" Hank said, horrified at what Dory must be doing as him. Immediately, he dashed off to go and find Dory.

"Dory? Where are you going?" Jenny asked.

"I'm going to find Dory!" he said.

"But you're Dory…"

"Not right now I am!" Hank protested as he continued on, "Dory's me, and I'm her! I need to find her before she makes me look ridiculous!"

Jenny and Charlie could only look at each other in confusion.

Meanwhile, Marlin was now making his way back to his anemone, having finished his conversation with Sheldon's dad. Upon arriving there, he saw that a small piece of coral had broken off the coral formations above and into the anemone. Without a word, Marlin brushed it off onto the ground.

Suddenly, Marlin noticed out of the corner of his eye that the ground where the coral landed had wiggled, causing it to fall down. Marlin did a double-take.

"What…?"

Suddenly, a pair of eyes appeared from it as well!

"Augh!" Marlin yelled.

"Surprise!" said Dory, still as Hank.

"Hank, don't ever do that again!" Marlin said.

"Hank? I'm not Hank…" said Dory, "wait a minute, yes I am! Marlin, look at this! I became Hank and now I can camouflage like him!"

"Um…." Marlin was very confused.

"It's me! Dory!" Dory said.

"Hank, do I look like I'm in the mood for more pranks right now?" Marlin said, not buying it.

"No, Marlin! I'm really Dory!" Dory insisted, "I just woke up and…and I was Hank! Look at how many fins I have!"

Marlin looked around, expecting everyone he knew to jump out and laugh at him.

"Hank, you've already gotten me once, you can drop the prank now," Marlin said, getting rather annoyed.

"But Marlin, it really is me!" Dory said, starting to get desperate.

"No, it's not," Marlin said, "I have things to do."

At this point, Marlin turned and went into his anemone. Dory tried to go after him, but of course she got shocked by the anemone when she tried to go in.

"Marli- ow!" she yelped.

Dory shook her head and turned to go.

"I didn't think Marlin wouldn't recognize me," she said somewhat despondantly.

All of a sudden, something ran straight into her head. Startled, Dory yelped and…

"Whoops…" she said. Black ink started surrounding the general area. She wasn't sure if she wanted or needed to experience this part of Hank.

"Oh no, not again…" Dory was surprised to hear her own voice. She spun around and, to her even greater surprise, saw herself floating in front of her.

"Dory? Is that you?" Her apparent doppelganger asked.

"Um…yes and no," said Dory, "who are you?"

"It's Hank," said Hank, "I'm you!"

"You are?" Dory said, "don't be ridiculous, I'm Dory…except not...not body-wise."

"Dory! We've turned into each other! This is not a funny matter!" Hank yelled.

"Oh no…" Marlin said, reemerging from the anemone, "you've got Dory in on this, too?"

"Marlin, I'm Dory, and Dory's me! This is not some joke we're pulling on you!" Hank barked.

Startled by how harsh who he thought was Dory sounded, Marlin actually started believe them.

"Wait, so you really are Hank, Dory?" Marlin asked.

"Yep," said Dory, "I became Hank…somehow."

"Not somehow, I have a good theory for what happened," said Hank, "it was that locket Destiny and Bailey had."

"I thought you said it was just something you saw at the Marine Life Institute's gift shop or something," said Dory, managing to remember that from before this happened.

"I thought so too until you touched it," said Hank.

"Well, um, what was it really, then? Do you know?" Dory asked.

"That's what I want to find out," said Hank, "come on, Dory, we're going to find Destiny and Bailey and see if they have any idea what was up with that locket."

"Okay," Dory said, "which way do we go?"

"We'll check to see if they're still around the school assembly first," said Hank, "if they aren't there, we'll play it by ear. Let's go."

"Ok!" said Dory, beginning to swim in the first direction she could think of. Hank swam ahead of her.

"I still have no idea what's going on…" Marlin muttered as Dory and Hank set off to find Destiny and Bailey.

Bailey and Destiny, meanwhile, were still trying adjust to being in each other's bodies as Destiny hid the locket under a large shell that was within her place of residence.

"I'm still not used to your tailfin!" said Destiny as she hid the locket, "it's just so weird swimming by moving it up and down instead of side-to-side."

"And you think I'm having a better time?" Bailey shot back, "Besides having the opposite problem you have with your tailfin, I can barely see five fathoms in front of myself and I've swum into things five times already! Furthermore, I'm still taken aback whenever I open my mouth and hear your voice coming out of it!"

"Well, that's what happens when you become a female whale shark, like I'm supposed to be…" Destiny moaned.

They eventually ceased expressing their displeasure of being each other (which they had been doing for the past five minutes) and decided that now would be a good time to figure out if they (as well as Dory and Hank) could switch back before Nemo and his class returned from their field trip. Given the usual length of Mr. Ray's field trips, this only gave them about ninety minutes.

"You know, I wonder what the 'certain conditions' that locket mentioned are," Destiny muttered.

"It sure would be nice if we could figure out what they were before I have to go up in front of those kids!" said Bailey, "If I have to tell them what I know about beluga whales while I'm you, I'm going to make myself, and by that I mean you, as me, look like an idiot."

"Well, maybe that doesn't have to happen if we find out what those conditions are," said Destiny, "Maybe the locket says something else!"

Destiny rushed back into her home, took the locket from under the shell and looked it over.

"There aren't any buttons or anything!" Destiny said after examining it. She tapped it on the ground. It began giving the same "certain conditions" spiel it gave before when they attempted to switch back earlier but otherwise did nothing else.

"It's useless!" Destiny sighed.

"I guess we just have to find out for ourselves, eh, Destiny?" said Bailey.

"I guess you're right," Destiny said, "but what could it be?"

"Maybe…" Bailey started, "…maybe we just need to hug it out or something."

"At this point I'll try anything!" said Destiny.

They somewhat reluctantly brought it in and hugged each other.

"Ugh! Eep!" Destiny squeaked, losing her breath.

"Destiny?" Bailey asked, "What's wrong? Are we switching back?"

"No…" she gasped, breaking out of Bailey's embrace and hurriedly shutting her blowhole, "You just hug really tight! I never realized my body could hug that tight until now when I'm the one being hugged by it."

"Doesn't look like it worked anyway," said Bailey, "What should we try next?"

After a moment of thought, Bailey felt that he had another idea.

"I know! Try using my echolocation," Bailey suggested, "Maybe it can somehow switch us back if you do it hard enough."

"Ok," Destiny sighed, reluctantly putting her flippers up to her melon, "I've seen you do this all the time, you put your flippers on your head, close your eyes and go 'ooooooooooh', right?" Destiny tried it out just for the heck of it.

"Oooooooooohhh…" she said, "hey, this is actually kind of cool! I can see you…now I can see Nemo and Marlin's house…now I can see three sharks in some sort of meeting…"

"Focus, Destiny!" said Bailey, "now put your head against mine and echolocate again while I do it too. Maybe if we both do it very hard at the same exact time, we can get our normal bodies back!"

"Whatever you say…" said Destiny.

They then both put their heads together, put their fins/flippers to their heads, and began 'ooooohhh'ing.

"Oooooooh…is it working?" Destiny asked.

"I don't know, keep doing it!" said Bailey.

They kept at it for about a minute before they stopped to see if anything had happened. Alas, Bailey and Destiny still saw their own respective bodies in front of them.

"Aww…!" moaned Destiny, "still didn't work."

"What should we try next?" Bailey asked.

Before Destiny could make another suggestion, they suddenly realized that their seemingly strange antics had attracted the attention of other fish passing by, who were treading water in front of them staring silently. One mother fish was even trying (and failing) to cover her young son's eyes.

"Great," Destiny whispered to Bailey, "not only are our methods not working, we're making ourselves look crazy!"

"I say we go where people can't see us," said Bailey, "Maybe we should even take the locket with us so nobody else can touch it. We've had enough fish (and whales) becoming other fish today already!"

"Good idea," said Destiny.

Destiny grabbed the locket and they high-tailed it out of there toward somewhere with less fish to gawk at them.

"You know, Bailey," Destiny said as they swam on, "aside looking absolutely ridiculous while doing it, being able to see stuff just by closing your eyes and yelling was kind of fun. It must be a really cool ability to have."

"Well, it helped us plus Dory back at the Marine Life Institute, so yes, it is pretty cool isn't it?" Bailey said, "I can't wait until I'm able to use my beautiful gift again!"

They made their way out of the reef and into a more open part of the ocean with fewer fish around and less things for Bailey-as-Destiny to swim into.

"Okay, Bailey," said Destiny, setting the locket on the ground beside a rock, "what should we try next?"

"Maybe we could wish very hard that we were back in our own bodies…?" Bailey suggested.

"Bailey, that's a stupid idea," said Destiny, "We might as well hold fins while we're doing it."

"Well, what ideas have you come up with?" Bailey retorted.

"Well…um…" Destiny muttered, "We could swim into each other as hard as we can? Maybe the shock will switch us back!"

"That's any less stupid?" Bailey said, shaking his head. Nevertheless, he began swimming a fair distance away from Destiny.

"I swear, if this doesn't work, I don't know what I'll do," he groaned.

Soon, he was about fifty yards away from Destiny and turned around.

"Okay, are you ready, Bailey?" asked Destiny.

"All right," said Bailey, "I see a white blob ahead of me, and that must be you. As me, of course."

"Ok, one, two, three!" Destiny said. With that, the two of them bolted toward each other as fast as they could.

Bailey desperately tried to stay focused on the white blob that was Destiny in his body, while Destiny tried to stay in line with Bailey's head. Finally, the two of them collided.

Smack!

Upon colliding, Destiny flew backwards and into the rock, still in Bailey's body. Bailey realized that he now had a very bad headache. (And of course, he was still in Destiny's body as well.)

"I told you that was a stupid idea!" said Bailey, rubbing his head.

Destiny didn't answer. Bailey looked up to see Destiny trying to hold her breath and failing. The breath had been completely knocked out of her, and, currently being a whale with lungs, began choking on the water surrounding her.

"Auuugh! Destiny!" Bailey shrieked, grabbing her, "Swim to the surface! Swim to the surface!"

Destiny turned to try swimming up to the surface, but she only got but so far before she suddenly passed out. Bailey screamed again, grabbed Destiny and bolted for the surface as fast as Destiny's tail fin could take him.

Upon reaching the surface, he practically threw her headfirst out of the water. Peeping out of the water beside her, he watched desperately hoping to see water come shooting out of his blowhole.

To his relief, a stream of water did shoot out of it, followed by several smaller streams. Destiny came to a moment later.

"Okay, that was a very, very bad idea…" she said hoarsely.

"That was so close!" Bailey said, hugging Destiny, more gently this time, "If you had just died right then, I don't know what I would have done!"

"Well, it's a good thing we didn't! Thanks for helping me out there, Bailey," said Destiny. Then she frowned.

"Wait, wait if I had drowned right then? What would have happened to you?" she asked, "would you be trapped in my body forever?"

"I…" Bailey started to say, but then he stopped. The idea of having to assume Destiny's identity and form because the real Destiny had died in his own, or even vice versa, was a very scary thought. Not only would have to get used to having gills instead of lungs and a blowhole, but he would have to get used to everyone calling him "Destiny" and even calling himself "Destiny". He wondered if he would have eventually forgotten he was originally a male beluga whale named Bailey and act as though he had been his female whale shark friend all his life. And on top of all that, he would have to deal with Destiny's terrible eyesight forever.

"Bailey!" Destiny said suddenly, snapping Bailey back to reality, "someone's by the rock where I left the locket! Two someones, in fact!"

"What?" Bailey cried, looking down. With Destiny's eyesight, it was difficult to make out, but he could tell that there were two fish by the rock in question.

"We gotta keep them from finding the locket!" Destiny cried, "Come on!"

She bolted back toward the ocean floor with Bailey following behind.

Upon getting closer, Destiny recognized the two fish.

"Hey, Bailey," she said, "I think those are some of the sharks I saw with your echolocation earlier."

"Really?" Bailey said.

"Yes!" she said, then her heart sank as she realized that the two sharks, one of them skinny and the other a hammerhead, (and of course being Anchor and Chum, two sharks whom Marlin and Dory were familiar with) seemed to have already touched the locket as they were both gesticulating and gesturing toward each other wildly.

"But your eyes are so far apart!" Chum-now-Anchor was saying as Destiny and Bailey arrived, "It's throwin' me off!"

"Hey! You two!" Destiny said.

The two sharks turned to them.

"Bloomin' heck, mate," said Anchor-now-Chum, "it's a flippin' dolphin!"

"Ya wanna bounce a ball on ya nose, mate?" Chum snickered as they both began laughing.

"Excuse me?" said Bailey indignantly, "I am not a dolphin! I am a beluga whale! Haven't you even seen one before?"

Of course, he then realized that he was saying this as Destiny and not as his usual beluga self, and that of course they hadn't since belugas were uncommon in this part of the ocean.

"What are ya talkin' about? He's the dolphin, er, sorry, whale, sis," said Anchor, "unless you're like us and got turned into each other."

"You got it," said Destiny.

"Oh, okay…so how do ya like being the pretty shark lady, dolphin?" Anchor smirked at Bailey.

"Yeah, you know we're both single right, mate?" Chum snickered, "Ya wanna go on an outing with us?"

"Will you quit that?!" Bailey yelled, beginning to get really steamed.

"Guys! Calm down!" said Destiny, "So, you two both touched a strange locket and that's when you became each other, right? Because that's what happened to us."

"Yeah, we were with our leader, Bruce, see, and we saw you both over here," said Anchor, "we thought you were both havin' a fight or something. Then you both took off. We went over to see what you were fighting over, and that's when we found the locket. Me mate Chum picked it up, and I tried to take it from him. The next thing we know, I'm him and he's me."

"And your head makes me feel so heavy in front, mate!" Chum said.

"So…where's the locket now?" Bailey asked, afraid of how the two sharks would answer considering the absence of both the locket and their leader Bruce.

"Oh, once Bruce figured out what happened, he took the locket and decided that to fully know what it's like to be preyed by sharks like us, he decided to go find some small fish to turn into," Anchor explained, "I think he wanted go find one of these two particular fish to see how it works. We know them pretty well, but neither of you mates probably don't."

"Oh no, please tell me their names aren't either Marlin, Dory, or Nemo," said Destiny.

"Well, ya got the first two right," said Chum.

"We can't anymore of these body switches occurring!" Bailey cried, "On top of all four of us, we inadvertently caused Dory to switch with her friend Hank! If Bruce takes the locket back into the reef, who knows what more messes could happen! Before we know it, we'll have kids becoming their parents! Whales becoming clams! I could become Dory's mother!"

"Well, gee, mate, what's wrong with that?" asked Chum.

"The reef could get thrown into utter chaos with everyone constantly switching bodies thanks to that locket," said Bailey, "Everyone could forget who they really are after switching with so many others! You don't want to end up becoming a clam, do you?"

"Erm, no…" said Chum.

"Great, now that we're on the same page, let's stop Bruce before he takes that locket back into the reef," said Destiny, "maybe we can find Dory and Hank while we're at it. They've probably woken up by now."

"Come on!" said Bailey.

With that, Destiny and Bailey began swimming back towards the reef with the confused Anchor and Chum following behind…