Far from the palace of Fairylantica, a young 17-year old mermaid swam up to look over the broken ruins of a sunken ship, her blue hair fluttering gracefully in the water around her. She smiled, seeing her target destination.

"Juvia!" a voice cried from behind her. "Wait for me!"

Juvia slightly rolled her eyes and turned to look at her best friend. She called out, "Lucy, hurry up!"

The yellow fish with blonde hair in question finally managed to catch up to her. She panted, "You know I can't swim that fast."

Pointing towards the sunken ship, Juvia gasped softly in excitement, "There it is. Isn't this amazing? A broken sunken ship means new stuff to collect!"

"Are you sure about this, Juvia?" Lucy asked nervously. "This place is giving me the creeps."

"Come on, Lucy," Juvia groaned. "You're not getting cold fins now, are you? You should lighten up and enjoy this a bit more." Flicking her dorsal fin, she began making her way to the ship.

Following Juvia, Lucy replied, "Wait, you're saying I'm getting cold fins? No way! It's just… I'm worried about you, and… It, uh… It looks damp in there. Yeah!" She then placed a fin on her forehead, "And I think I may be coming down with something. Yeah, I got this cough." She coughed, trying to convince Juvia, who was looking into the ship.

Juvia turned to Lucy and whispered, "Alright, I'm going inside. You can just stay here and watch for sharks."

"Oh," Lucy whispered back with a smile as Juvia slipped into the ship through a round hole of a window. "Yeah, you go. I'll stay and look out for…" Suddenly realizing what she just said, her face widened with shock. "What?! Sharks?! Juvia!"

Lucy swam straight into the hole, only to get stuck halfway through. She grunted, trying to wriggle her way through the hole, but was unable to get free. She cried, "Juvia… I can't… Juvia, help!"

Juvia turned and laughed when she saw Lucy stuck in the hole. She swam up to her and said, "Oh, Lucy."

Lucy asked whisperingly, "Juvia, do you really think there might be sharks around here?" Juvia grabbed Lucy's fins and began to pull her out, completely unaware of the shark swimming past right outside.

Juvia pouted, "Lucy, don't be such a guppy."

"I'm no guppy!" Lucy argued. With a final pull, Juvia was able to pull her out of the hole. "I'm just as brave as you are, if not braver! I may be a little fish, but I know how to handle myself. I'm not afraid of anything!"

"Really, now?" Juvia said skeptically. "Not even of sharks?"

"Nope!" Lucy shook her head, albeit trembling with fear. "Not even manta rays, jellyfish, or sea monsters!"

"Well, in that case, let's keep going," Juvia suggested, and she began swimming through the ship, her best friend following close behind.

Lucy did her best to appear excited, but she was actually kind of nervous. She mused, "This is great. I mean, I really love this. Excitement, adventure, danger lurking around every corn—" Lucy gave a terrified scream upon seeing a human skeleton, and swam backwards into a vertical beam which collapsed. "JUVIA!" She swam full speed ahead into Juvia, who grunted upon being knocked backwards. Juvia wrapped her arms around the petrified fish.

Juvia asked, "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, sure. No problem. I'm okay," Lucy shuddered, shaking uncontrollably.

Juvia shushed her, placing a finger to her lips. She swam from the bilge up to the lower deck. She looked around, before she spotted something. She exclaimed, "Oh, my gosh! Oh, my gosh!" Juvia eagerly swam towards the metal fork resting on the floor and picked it up. "Check it out, Lucy! Have you ever seen anything so wonderful in your entire life?"

Lucy swam up beside her and said, "It must be some sort of pointy stick. What do you think it is?"

"I don't know," Juvia shrugged, dropping the fork in her coral-pink bag she brought to put her findings in. "But I bet Happy will! He's the only friend we know up in the surface world who's a genius on human stuff."

Suddenly, Lucy heard the low rumble of a very large shark going past the ship. She swam to the large nearby window and asked nervously, "What was that? Did you hear something?"

Juvia swam towards the other side and picked up a brown pipe from the floor. She wondered, "Hmm… I wonder what this one is?"

"Juvia, I have a bad feeling about this," Lucy persisted, not realizing that the shark was right behind her, staring at her through the window.

"Lucy, will you relax?" Juvia insisted. "Nothing is going to happen."

Lucy turned around, finally seeing the shark. But it's not just any ordinary shark – it's an Eclipse Pisces Shark! Of all the sharks in existence, the Eclipse Pieces Shark was the most terrifying flesh-eating fish in the shark family. Brandishing its sharp jaws, the Eclipse Pisces Shark opened its mouth and crashed right through the window, breaking it.

"SHARK!" Lucy screamed, which caught Juvia's attention. "SHARK! WE'RE GONNA DIE!"

Juvia's eyes widened fearfully seeing the shark, and she quickly stuffed the pipe into her bag. Lucy desperately tried to keep away from the shark until she caught up to Juvia, who wrapped a protective arm around her as the Eclipse Pisces Shark swam after them, chomping right through any wood that got in its way. "Let's get outta here!" Juvia yelled.

Lucy and Juvia took off up to the mid-deck, searching for an escape route, when the Eclipse Pisces Shark came breaking through the floor right in front of them. Lucy screamed horrifyingly, narrowly missing getting caught in the Eclipse Pisces Shark's teeth. She and Juvia took off with the shark following close behind, chomping through the floor as it went. Realizing she dropped her bag of human treasures, Juvia stopped and looked behind her.

"My stuff!" Juvia gasped, and she went towards her bag, only just managing to rescue it in time. She and Lucy kept swimming, before they approached the spot where they entered the ship. Wasting no time, Lucy went first, and again, got stuck halfway through. Lucy grunted as Juvia managed to push her outside, before slipping easily through the hole. The Eclipse Pieces Shark followed them, crashing right through the side of the ship.

Lucy screamed as the Eclipse Pieces Shark continued chasing them. Juvia and Lucy swam over to a nearby shipwreck, and spiraled up the mast. Juvia swam over the mast, but Lucy crashed into it, knocking her almost unconscious and began to sink. Juvia charged towards her best friend, swam halfway through the loop of an old anchor and caught Lucy in her arms. The Eclipse Pieces Shark sped towards them, growling viciously. Lucy whimpered, and Juvia slipped back out of the anchor's loop, just in time to get away from the Eclipse Pieces Shark, who followed them through the loop, and of course, got its big head stuck. Juvia stooped down and picked up her bag, while Lucy turned to the stunned shark with an angry expression.

"You big bully!" Lucy shouted, before blowing a raspberry at the Eclipse Pieces Shark. The shark responded by opening its jaws and snapping them shut, barely missing Lucy's tongue. The yellow fish with blonde hair yelped in terror, before catching up with Juvia, who had begun swimming to the surface.

Juvia chuckled amusingly, "Lucy, you really are a guppy."

"I am not!" Lucy protested, trying to keep up with Juvia.

Up on the surface, sitting on a rock sticking up out of the water, a young blue Exceed named Happy sat inside a 'crow's nest' leaning against the rock, which was actually a broken part of some ship. The Exceed looked around the telescope he was holding with his paw, singing some kind of random gibbering to himself.

Happy: Hmm-hmm…
Fourteen-hundred and ninety-two
Dah-de-dum, dee-do-do
Rum-dim-dim, dee-do-dee-do…

"Happy!" Juvia called from not too far away. The Exceed jumped at the sound of his name, almost dropping his telescope. He caught the telescope and looked through the wrong end, making the mermaid seem much farther away.

"WHOA!" Happy yelled to the young girl right in front of him. "MERMAID OFF THE PORT BOW! HEY, JUVIA! HOW'RE YA DOING?!" He lowered to telescope to see Juvia right in front of him. "Wow, what a swim." Juvia and Lucy giggled in response. "Anyway, it's nice to see ya, Juvia. And you too, Lucy. What brings you up here on this fine day?" Happy asked, throwing the telescope aside.

"You wouldn't believe what we've found, Happy," Juvia replied. "More human stuff!"

"Yeah! We're in this sunken ship, and it was really creepy…" Lucy added.

"More human stuff, huh?" Happy asked curiously. "Let me see!" He stepped out of his crow's nest and landed down with his angel-like wings to where Juvia had placed her bag. The Exceed began rummaging through the bag.

"Wow… Would you look at this," Happy said cheerfully, pulling out the fork. "Definitely special. So very unusual. Heck, I used to use one on Carla all the time!"

"What? What is it?" Juvia asked eagerly, her eyes twinkling.

"It's a dinglehopper!" Happy replied, holding the fork up.

"A dinglehopper?" Lucy asked skeptically. "What's that supposed to do?"

Happy explained, "Dinglehoppers are one of the best tools in the shed, if not the sharpest. Humans use these little babies to comb their hair, or straighten their hair out, like a stylist! See this?" Happy demonstrated by sticking the 'dinglehopper' into the fur on his hear and twirled, before yanking it out. He continued, "Just a little twirl here, and viola!" The fur on his head now had a nice poufy fro. "What do you think of my new furstyle? Carla loved it when I gave her one. You've got in your hands an aesthetically pleasing configuration of hair that humans go nuts over!"

Happy passed the fork back to Juvia, who said to herself in amazement, "A dinglehopper."

"I can't believe how much you know about human stuff, Happy. How do you know so much without getting caught?" Lucy asked.

"Same way as always. My fellow Exceed brethren have always been sneaking around with their wings," Happy explained with a smile. "We Exceeds are masters of camouflage, flight, and disguise!"

Lucy then pointed to the brown pipe with her fin, "What about that one?"

"Wow…" Happy gasped, picking up the pipe. "I haven't seen this one in a while. This is amazing! It's the greatest invention of all… A banded, bulbous snarfblatt."

Juvia and Lucy looked at each other and exclaimed happily, "Oh! The snarfblatt!"

Happy dipped the 'snarfblatt' into the ocean, before lifting it out and pouring the water out. He explained, "The snarfblatt dates back to prehistorical times when humans used to sit around and stare at each other all day. Got very boring." He stared Lucy straight in the face, before sitting up. "So they invented this snarfblatt to make fine music. Allow me." Happy held the pipe to his mouth and blew into it, causing some kind of sea plant to spurt out, which made him start coughing. "It's stuck!"

"MUSIC?!" Juvia gasped, realizing that the word 'music' rang a bell. "The concert! Oh, my gosh! My father's gonna kill me!"

"Wait, the concert was today?" Lucy asked.

"Maybe if you blow it from the other end…" Happy said to himself, giving the pipe to Juvia, who frantically stuffed into her bag along with the fork.

"I'm sorry, but I gotta go!" Juvia cried. "Thank you, Happy!" She waved as she and Lucy dove back down underwater.

"Anytime, Juvia!" Happy called back. "Anytime!"

Juvia and Lucy began swimming as quickly as they could towards Fairylantica, completely unaware they were being watched…

"Yes… hurry home, Princess. We wouldn't want to miss old Daddy's celebration, now, would we?" a wicked female voice echoed from the shadows, watching the pair through her magic seeing bubble. It then scoffed, "Ha! Celebration, indeed. Oh, bah!"

"In my day, I was the Royal Wizard of Fairylantica," the woman reached over to grab one of the whimpering, trembling shrimp on the tray beside her. She continued, "We had exquisite concerts and fantastical feasts, when I lived in the palace." The woman opened her mouth, threw the shrimp in and swallowed it.

"And now, look at me!" the woman complained, emerging out of the hole of a big shell to reveal her appearance as a half-person, half octopus wearing an intricate white helmet with wing-like pieces of protruded hair covering the entirety of her face, save for her eyes and mouth. "Wasted away to practically nothing. Banished and exiled and practically starving, while he and his flimsy fish folk celebrate!" She floated from the shell and landed on the ground, and walked using her tentacles as legs. "Well, I'll give them something to celebrate soon enough." She turned to another corner and yelled, "Jackal! Franmalth!"

Her two eels quickly swam to her side, the first eel with blonde hair shaped like a jackal and a canine face, and the second eel with a single black eye and a cheerful grinning expression.

"It appears you've been in a moping mood for the thousandth time, Mistress Kyôka!" Franmalth commented. "How much does that cost, I wonder?"

Jackal sighed, "Why does a cost always have to go with everything, Franmalth?"

Franmalth explained, "Plain and simple, Jackal. Debt is the only absolute law in this world. Every action comes with an opposite reaction. Every action costs something! That why costs are important! But I wonder… how much will our chance at redemption by taking over Fairylantica cost us?"

"No, my dears, there is neither a greater cost nor a risk," Kyôka assured with a wicked smile. "This time, our revenge scheme will work without any cost. Soon, we'll be able to take down King Makarov and take over the throne. We'll be back on top, sipping seaweed wine, eating succulent seafood, and causing mass havoc in our wake. Remember, my pets, vengeance is a dish best served cold, and when the time is ripe, we'll have Makarov on a silver platter, poached with lemon wedge!" Jackal and Franmalth cheered in agreement.

Jackal remarked, "Mistress Kyôka, you're a genius!"

Franmalth added, "You truly live up to the nickname of Goddess of the Slave Ocean!"

"In the meantime, I want you two to keep an extra close watch on this pretty little daughter of his," Kyôka told them. "She may be the key to Makarov's undoing."