Chapter 2 -
With the prospect of high adventure fully in mind the two ningyo, led by Konan, dove deeper into the dark blue of their beloved bay. Laughing the whole while, the female wove her way through the swaying gardens of kelp and upset tiny clusters of brine shrimp which took to the open waters in a tiny pink cloud. The distance to the shipwreck was terribly long, the boat having sunk towards the mouth of the bay where the waters above became rougher and cooler. Along the way, the merfolk paused beside a great rocky outcrop to pry oysters from the undersea crags. They spent a short interlude pulling the mollusks apart using their hardened claws and scraping the muscular flesh from the inside with their adapted fangs.
With full bellies the pair were back onto the trail in no time, finding their destination poking out of the teal sand about three miles offshore. It was a great and marvelous ship, something built for shipping vast quantities of goods along the coast. Unfortunately, all that remained now was the skeletal remains of what had once been a noble arc, lying on the bottom of the ocean like the bones of a dead whale. Soft, plumy sea-moss had sprouted from nearly every inch of exposed wood, and barnacles clung to the metal beams that served to reinforce the strength of the joints.
Squealing happily and propelling herself down into the exposed cavity of the ship's hull, Konan wasted no time in stirring up what crabs and eels had been hiding in the shelter. With gleeful squeaks like the sounds made by dolphins, the mermaid caught the wriggling tail of a slippery moray before grasping the creature behind the gills with her free hand. Holding up the squirming eel like a prize, the female rushed to present the captured animal to her friend who she found petting the waving moss growing from the bow of the boat.
"Look Deidara-kun! I've caught one!" She suddenly wrapped the terrified, slimy beast around the blonde's throat, coating his gills with eel mucus and making him choke for a moment. The red slits on the sides of his neck flared and flapped frantically to clean the goo away so that he could regain his ability to breathe. Once he had recovered, the merman whipped around and turned on his friend with pursed lips. The glare didn't last long as suddenly he grinned and with a low growl in his throat, snatched the panicked creature from Konan's grasp, holding the slippery fish between his teeth and swimming away a few meters. Giving the girl a high-pitched whistle, Deidara waved his tail in a kind of silent banter, egging her on to try and take the eel back from him.
When his companion finally gave into chase, Deidara gave a gleeful squeal and darted away, keeping the prey in his mouth and just out of Konan's grasp. The pair darted all around the bones of the drowned ship, the blonde buzzing and whistling happily with his mouthful of eel while the wrasse tail shouted her protests after him, only barely managing to keep up. After nearly a half hour of a very one-sided game of 'getaway chase,' the ningyo grew bored of the play. To signify that the sport had finished, Deidara made quick work of their toy, biting the dead eel in half and swallowing the end with the head whole, leaving the softer tail for his counterpart.
When again their stomachs had been filled, the pair gradually took to exploring the vessel, taking their time to allow their eyes to adjust to the lack of light below deck. Using the ends of their tails, the merfolk fanned away the layer of silt that had settled on what of the ship's cargo that wasn't buried in the sand. There were several spice jars, long since ruined by the strong salt in the bay, their wax-paper lids having been corroded away allowing the spices to be spoiled by the sea. There were some bones that were still strung on wires from what was left of the support beams, all the meat having long since been eaten away. All in all there was not much worth mentioning amongst the wreckage, anything that could have been taken away from the boat's carcass had long since deteriorated into worthlessness.
The one thing Deidara had been able to salvage as his prize was an algae covered bolt of silk that after a lot of waving and dragging against the ocean floor was cleaned of most of its dingy green slime and renewed to its former red hue. Konan had been able to pick only a pair of silver coins from the sand, but insisted that the rest must be buried in the sand with the majority of the cargo. With their treasures in hand, the pair began to make their way back into the warmer waters of their home near the cliffs of the bay.
The actual underwater bluffs were alive with merfolk, all males as tribes pods tended to be. Due to their longevity and lack of natural predators, the species had grown to be self-regulating; males outnumbering females nine to one. A mermaid would lay a single spawn every hundred years or so, which would send the males in her clan into a status referred to as must in which mermen compete physically over the right to fertilize the egg. Similar to other pack animals, there will typically be a dominant ningyo male who claims the ova for his own fertilization. In the event that a pod lacks a dominant male, all of the tribe males will swarm over the spawn, each releasing his milt in hopes of fertilizing the egg. In order to prevent inbreeding, no matter the gender of the offspring, once the new ningyo reached reproductive maturity, it was chased off by the existing clan males.
The Akatsuki pod was no exception to the rule. Every member of the clan was male aside from Konan, who in turn had been claimed by the Alpha ningyo, Pein. The leader of the pack had received his reputation, not from general toughness of viciousness or even overprotectiveness, but in the fact that even in a state of must, none of his pod would dare swarm over the ova with Pein in the mix. Like Hidan, the fishlike appendage attached to the alpha's lower body was identifiable under the category of scorpionfish, but differently, the leader's tail was rough, thick, dark brown with a bright orange speckle pattern. Although any unknowledgeable observer might point out that the rounded dorsal and tailfins gave no indication of venom, at the tip of every tube of cartilage was a potent spine filled with venom equivocal to that in the fangs of a cobra. Where the venom of the lionfish found in Hidan's flashy fins caused pain and occasional suffocation due to inflammation, the venom of the stonefish in Pein's rust-colored spines was nearly ten times more toxic.
Aside from Deidara, Konan, Pein and Hidan, the pod consisted of five other males. Kisame was a ningyo nomad from northern waters with a pale gray tint to his rough skin, short-medium length navy blue hair and a tail most closely resembling that of a tiger shark. Itachi was a pale merman with long raven hair and the long, elegant speckled tail of the spotted gar; he had been dependent on Kisame for visual guidance and they had entered into the Akatsuki as a pair. Kakuzu was a dark-skinned male with shoulder length jet-black hair and the tailfin of a coelacanth; oldest in the tribe, Kakuzu had not forgotten the days when ningyo were hunted for food, the many scars on his body showing the countless attempts humans had made to capture him. Sasori was a fiery redhead with a predisposition towards the study of venoms given his innate immunity to the sting of fire corals due to his tail being that of a coral hawkfish. Sasori had been born into a migrating pod which had chased him out as they passed by the Sagami bay during southward migration; finding the waters in the bay temperate, the redhead joined the Akatsuki more or less of his own accord. Finally Zetsu was a total mystery to all other members of the pod. His skin was half black as night and half white as sand and instead of a standard tail that provided for increased mobility in the water, his lower body flowed with the green, leafy tendrils of the seadragon. Not only was it strange for such a creature to be found outside of the tropical waters of Oceania, but stranger still was it that a ningyo had evolved with such a trait.
Returning to their home among the cliffs, Konan and Deidara greeted their clan mates with relatively chipper attitudes as they flaunted their new treasures. Of course finding no use for the glittering human coins, the mermaid eventually passed them off to Kakuzu who had a quirk for hoarding similar treasures valued by men. The blonde used the bolt of silk to line the narrow cave in which he rested at night, finding the fabric to be soft, slick and pleasing to the touch. Once satisfied with his new bedding, Deidara informed his wrasse tailed friend that he was returning to the shallows to watch the waves crash before the sun sunk too low in the sky.
With Konan's eventual consent, the youngest member of the pod slipped off again to watch 50 meters from the beach as the waves roared ashore. Gradually the tide was going out, revealing more and more rocks poking up through the sand as the shadows began to stretch longer and longer towards the east. The heat of the day had mostly subsided, though there was still a couple hours before sunset, making Deidara's observation of the exploding surf all the more enjoyable.
He had been watching the ocean beat against the shore for at least twenty minutes when he was interrupted by a sharp tug on his tailfin. Deidara hardly had time to react, only a quick yelp escaping his lips as he was dragged downward, away from the pleasant view of the waves. Of course there was no worry of drowning, he was a fish after all, but the prospect of the last few hours of enjoying the waves being snatched from him was infuriating. Looking over his shoulder as still he sank, Deidara caught sight of Hidan's ornate tailfin beating a hasty retreat into the less-than-clear brine. Looking down, all the young ningyo could see was a rope tied securely around the end of his tail, doubtlessly then tied to a weight that pulled him still lower into the water. Hissing in frustration, the koi tail elected to wait until he had reached the bottom so that he could undo the loop around his fin and return to the surface for the last watch of the day.
When finally the stone about his tail came to a rest, Deidara bent his spine to untie the binding, but before he could get his fingers around the slimy old rope, a sudden current pulled the stone and its prisoner sideways. Caught up in a vicious undertow, the blonde shouted for the aid of his clan, but not soon enough as the currents of an enormous wave yanked him head over fin and tossed him in a violent, sandy, churning mess onto a large, porous rock half sunken into the beach. Without water, Deidara's gills flared, searching desperately for a drop of moisture such that would allow him a breath, but no such luck as already the tide was licking further and further down the beach. His next reaction was to quickly untie the rock around his tail and make a mad scramble back towards the receding surf, but with his flexible spine contorted over the boulder, there was no possible way his arms could reach the end of his long tail. Desperately, the ningyo gasped and choked on air, praying that perhaps another monstrous wave would suck him back out into the bay, but no such luck as the tide merely lapped at the sand-filled ends of his tresses while he dried in the fading sun.