Author's Note: My continued apologies as to the lack of recent updates. Between my job and some personal health issues, I've stayed pretty swamped the past few months.

In this chapter, we see how our friends beneath the sea are coping, and what they discover when they return to Seabrook. I wish you all peace and happiness this holiday season. Again, I live for your likes and reviews! Thanks for reading!

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Bree Brighten had always considered herself to be a fairly ordinary person.

Sure, she had what some might call a tragic past, due to the untimely loss of her little sister. She also happened to have been born into a very wealthy family. And of course, she had an unusual assortment of friends, who made her life rich in ways money never could.

But Bree herself? Absolutely, completely and utterly ordinary.

Now, she stared down in shock at the place where her feet used to be as Addison, Eliza and Wyatt spoke frantically with words she was too distracted to absorb.

The tail, her tail, shimmered beautifully with silver and bubblegum pink scales. Hesitantly, she flexed the joints where her feet should be. Immediately, the tail sparkled with movement as the gossamer fin rippled gracefully up and down. It was, despite the weirdness of it all, quite breathtaking. She felt a slight smile break across her face.

Framing her vision were swirling, loose locks of silver hair. Her hair, she realized after a moment as she reached up to gently grasp a loose strand. The silvery tresses glittered dimly about her head as she took in her drastically changed appearance.

She certainly didn't look ordinary anymore.

"Holy brains!"

Bree jumped, shaken from her internal reverie as she heard Eliza's shrill yelp.

"Oh my gosh!" Eliza cried, gesturing quite unnecessarily down at her own shimmery, jade-green fin. "What happened!? What did we—Oh my gosh!"

Bree had never seen Eliza panic, but she looked like was doing a good job of it at the moment. Eliza's hair, she noted, was now silver as well, as was Addy's and Wyatt's.

"I—" Addison gasped, reaching out to gently grasp Eliza's arm. "I don't know! A minute ago, we were all on the boat. And then, I… I think the moonstone exploded."

They all turned instantly and looked at her, shock evident on each face.

"Oh. Oh no." Bree said in dull horror. The last thing she could remember was sitting in the small control room of the boat, steering it away from Seabrook as fast as its engine could go. She had hoped against all hope that Eliza, Addy and Wyatt would have been able to stop whatever Charon had planned.

But, as she could clearly see, something had obviously gone terribly awry. Bree hoped desperately that the boat had been far enough from Seabrook that no one else had been hurt or affected by whatever had happened.

Bonzo.

Her heart clenched painfully.

He and the others had to be okay. They just had to.

"Addison," Wyatt said, clearly trying his best to be the voice of reason despite looking equally shaken. "What happened to Charon? How did we get here?"

His tail, Bree noted amidst the chaos, was a combination of silver and a deep, royal purple color. She turned to face Addison, who was staring down at her own cornflower blue tail.

At Wyatt's question, Addison looked up at met his eyes.

"He… he stuck up behind us after we found the moonstone, and he knocked you out with a crowbar."

At this, Wyatt seemed to instinctively rub the back of his head, but apparently didn't feel any such injury. Whatever else the moonstone had done to them, it had apparently healed his head wound, as well. Addison continued to speak.

"He told Eliza and I that his plan was never to kill everyone in Seabrook." Addison said, looking over to Bree as she spoke. "He was planning on using the moonstone to change everyone in Seabrook, into some kind of new species."

Eliza and Wyatt didn't look surprised, but Bree felt her mouth drop open.

"We all tried to fight him, but he was too strong. He had the detonator in his hand, and he pushed it. And then… Then the next thing I remember is waking up here."

At this, they all seemed to look around and truly take in their surroundings.

The seabed was a lovely landscape of jagged rocks, coral formations, and low, rolling hills. Bree was pretty certain that, under normal circumstances, it would be quite dark here. But to her new eyes, it was as bright as twilight. Colorful fish swam about amongst them like little stars in a watery blue galaxy.

Whatever she had become, the ocean floor was a vibrant kaleidoscope of beauty to her now. Not to mention, she was breathing underwater.

"So…" Eliza said, taking a slow, deep breath to calm herself. "So the moonstone exploded. It must have taken the boat down, and us with it."

She gestured to her right, and in the distance, Bree could make out the shapes. The ocean floor was covered in twisted sections of what had once been a large white vessel. As Eliza's hand moved, Bree glanced at her friend's Z-band, and felt her eyes grow wide.

Eliza's Z-band was off, which meant that Eliza should have been completely zombied-out right now. But, aside from the obvious differences in her appearance, she looked completely normal.

Because she's not a zombie anymore. Bree's mind said, and Bree shuddered.

"And when the moonstone exploded," Wyatt said, looking from the wreckage back to the faces of each of the others "It changed all of us into…" He gestured down at his purple fin, at an apparent loss for words.

"Mermaids." Addison said resolutely, with wide eyes that stared out into the endless ocean.

They all turned their heads to look at her.

There was a tense moment of silence.

"Hey," Wyatt said, "I prefer the term 'mer-MAN', thank you very much." He flashed his trademark grin, which was now missing the fangs that had always been present before.

None of them laughed at his attempt at humor.

"That's impossible." Eliza said, waving her left hand dismissively. "I'm not a freaking mermaid. I'm a zom—"

She stopped mid sentence, apparently noticing the dark screen of her now-inactive Z-band. Her large eyes grew even bigger as she examined the device.

"…Zombie." Eliza finished weakly, she voice wobbling slightly at the end of the word.

For another moment, they all remained quiet as they glanced from one another to their own altered appearances.

"But, guys, if we're all here… Where's Charon?" Addison asked.

Everyone had a stunned appearance as they looked from side to side, as though he might pop out from behind a rock or sand dune. But nothing happened. He wasn't there.

"Where could he have gone?" Wyatt wondered allowed, frowning as he sniffed at the space around him.

"Maybe…" Eliza cut in. "Maybe he didn't make it. He was closest to the detonator, after all."

"Not that much closer." Addison disagreed, her own brows dipping down.

"Look," Bree said, tearing her own eyes away from her bubblegum pink tail and fin. "We can figure out what happened to him later. Wherever he is, he's not here. Right now, we need to make sure that everyone at home is okay."

After a short pause, Addison nodded firmly.

"Bree's right." Addison said. "We have to get back to Seabrook."

Bree watched as her best friend rubbed at her left ring finger, where her engagement ring from Zed somehow still rested against her skin.

Wyatt and Eliza nodded as well.

"If we were moving as fast as I think we were, I'm almost certain that we were far enough away that everyone else will be okay." Eliza said, which Bree found comforting. Eliza was good at calculating things.

"But in any case," Addison cut in. "They've got to be worried sick about us. Who knows how long we've been down here. It could have been a whole day, for all we know."

Bree chewed nervously at her lower lip. She hadn't even considered that, but she was sure Eliza was right. She thought of Bonzo, waiting for her back in Zombietown. And her poor parents! They would be worried sick!

Everyone might even think they were dead! That would be horrible.

"But how do we get home?" Bree wondered aloud. "We don't even know where we are."

"Not to mention," Eliza added, "We can't exactly just walk into town." She gestured down at her fin. "What are we going to do?"

"First things first." Addison said, nodding resolutely. "We have to figure out which direction to swim. We'll figure out the rest once we make it to the beach. Maybe we can signal someone, somehow."

Looking to her, the others nodded.

Bree looked dubiously down at her tail. She wasn't even sure she'd be able to figure out how to swim in the first place. How was she supposed to do that with no legs?

"I think we should go that way." Wyatt said, pointing in the direction of the boat.

"Why do you say that?" Eliza asked, cocking her head to the side and brushing away the swirl of silver hair that instantly obscured her face.

"It just… feels right." He said, shrugging as he frowned again in thought. "It feels like there is land in that direction."

Bree was quiet for a moment. Then, she could feel it too. The instinctive desire to head in the opposite direction, into deeper waters, where there was safety. She shook her head, ridding herself of the intrusive worries. They couldn't stay down here. She had to get home to Bonzo and her family, and the sooner the better.

"Then let's get going." Eliza said, looking towards the direction of the boat with trepidation. "I need to make sure Willa is okay."

In unison, they all glanced down at their tails, and then attempted to move forward. Bree instantly swerved sideways, bumping into Wyatt, who floated backwards and landed softly into a small hill of sand. Eliza instantly face planted, and Addison managed to swim in a small circle before running into a rock.

As they all laid sprawled on the soft ground, Bree heard everyone groan collectively.

"This might take a minute." Wyatt said.

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Actually, it took them about two hours to get the hang of swimming in their new, extremely unfamiliar bodies.

Wyatt was exhausted, and they hadn't even gotten past the wreckage of the boat yet. He looked down with slight contempt at his purple fin, willing it to transform back into two feet, but of course nothing happened. And at this depth in the ocean, it was probably for the best, since he very much planned on remaining alive.

The fin wasn't the only change to his physical appearance, either. His hair, formerly a deep brown with its trademark white streak, was now a glittering, silvery gray color. His canines were no longer lengthened and sharp, as they always had been, and the tips of his ears were now rounded like a humans rather than pointed.

Perhaps most upsetting was the fact that his moonstone necklace was missing. Addison's, they had quickly discovered, was gone as well. He wasn't sure if they had been destroyed in the explosion, or if they were simply lost somewhere on the ocean floor. Either way, his moonstone necklace was gone, though he kept grasping at the place where it had always rested on his neck out of habit.

There wasn't time to think about it, but a small part of Wyatt was inwardly panicking as the group finally made their way towards the boat.

Would this change be permanent? Would he ever be a werewolf again?

Being a wolf was such a large and integral part of who he was, and he couldn't imagine a life where he was anything else. If he wasn't Wyatt the wolf, then who was he?

Wyatt felt like a fish out of water, no pun intended.

After about ten minutes of clumsy swimming, they reached what was left of the boat.

"Any sign of Charon?" Addison asked.

He hadn't been with them when they'd woken up, and the villainous Lunite seemed to have disappeared into thin air. Well, thin water.

"No," Bree said, delicately lifting up a section of the hull and moving it aside. She was clearly stronger now than she had been as a human. "I don't see anything at all."

"Me neither." Eliza said, popping her head up over the side of what had once been the back end of the boat.

"Maybe the explosion did kill him." Addison said, doubtfully. "Like Eliza said, he was closer to the detonator than any of us."

Wyatt doubted it, somehow. The guy seemed to be impossible to get rid of.

But they didn't have time to search for Charon right now. They had to get back home. He needed to see his beautiful Mayar, and make sure that Willa and Wynter and the rest of the pack were all alright. Not to mention Zed and the others. He was even a little worried about Bucky.

"We'll have to worry about Charon later," Wyatt said. "Besides, the moonstone is destroyed. Even if he is alive, he's in no position to hurt anyone anymore."

They all glanced at one another, floating together a few feet above the wrecked boat.

"You're right," Addison finally conceded. "He's not our priority right now. We need to get back home."

They were exhausted, but determined to make it back to Seabrook.

They swam together in the direction that their instincts told them was right. Wyatt had always trusted his wolf instincts before. Now, he was just going to have to trust these new ones, too.

After about two hours, it was clear that they had been heading in the right direction. The land was sloping gradually upward, and the water was growing gradually lighter.

But something else was strange, too. At first, it was so gradual that he didn't notice. As they approached the shore, the color of the sand was gradually changing.

The sand had shifted from it's normal tan color into a glittering silver shade, that matched the color of their silver hair. It was both beautiful and bizarre.

"What is this stuff?" Bree asked. She reached a hand down as she swam, letting the sparkling sand run through her fingertips and glitter back onto the seabed.

"I don't know," Addison said. "Maybe it's some kind of side affect from the moonstone exploding in the water?"

"Well, it certainly did a number on us," Wyatt added dryly. "Why not the sand, too?"

Gradually, the surface above them grew increasingly close as they swam towards shallower water.

By the time that they approached the beach, the entire shore looked like a disco ball. Had the moonstone explosion really caused this, somehow? Wyatt couldn't think of any better explanation.

He looked upwards towards the surface of the water. Although his eyes could see fine, he could tell that it was night time outside. Stars twinkled distantly down at them, shimmering brightly as waves lapped gently along the surface of the water.

Wyatt's new instincts were telling him to use caution, that the surface meant danger. They were all staring up, unsure how to proceed. Would they even be able to breath up there? Let alone walk or leave the safety of the water.

"What do we do?" Bree said.

The others looked equally nervous, and he was sure that they were thinking the same thoughts as he.

Then, Eliza sighed and cracked her knuckles, as though steeling herself for action.

"I'll go first." She said, nodding to no one in particular.

They all looked at her with surprise, but she was already swimming upward, towards the brilliant night sky. Wyatt watched tensely as he watched her approach.

"Be careful, Eliza!" Addison cautioned.

They were clearly able to breathe normally in the water, but he and the others had no idea how their new forms would react to oxygen. He gulped, swimming closer himself in case Eliza needed someone to help her somehow. The others were right beside him.

Eliza stopped at the space where water met air, hesitating. She gingerly reached up a hand, lifting it up and out of the water.

He could see her fingers wiggling up at the sky, with no apparent ill affect. She looked back down at them, appearing a little relieved.

"Okay," She said, looking back up. "Here we go."

At that, she popped upward, her head and upper torso splashing out into the waiting air.

Instantly, Wyatt could see her fin beginning to change, and heard Addison and Bree yelp in reaction to the sight. The long, gossamer green tail was warping quickly, seeming to split from the bottom of the tail as toes began to wriggle and grow out.

He looked away quickly, using his hand to avert his gaze. He realized, belatedly, that while they all still had on their shirts, they were, of course, no longer wearing any clothing below the waist.

Well, that was going to be awkward.

"Come on," Addison said, "Let's go."

With that, he, Addison and Bree all swam quickly up and out, bursting out of the sea and into bitingly cold night air.

Wyatt gasped, breathing in a lungful of cold air and the coughing out a large mouthful of salty water. He instantly felt his own tail changing in response to the oxygen now burning into his lungs.

He felt his tail splitting into two different sections, though it wasn't painful. He felt his toes growing back and sprouting out into feet, which he wiggled gratefully.

It worked! They could breathe up here! And even better, the introduction of oxygen apparently allowed them to change into… well, he wasn't exactly sure, yet. But something that could clearly survive on land. He wouldn't be stuck in the ocean for the rest of his life.

Looking to the girls, he attempted to let out a howl of joy.

Except… No sound came out. He tried again. Nothing.

His brows dipped down.

Addison was looking at him, her silver hair plastered messily against her head. She mouthed something at him, but he couldn't hear anything she was saying. Then it clicked.

Their vocal cords were designed to work in water, now. They may have been able to breathe up here, but apparently, they couldn't speak.

Oh, crap.

The girls all seemed to be realizing the same thing, as they cast wide eyed looks towards one another.

This was definitely unsettling. But Wyatt's first concern, now that they were back on land, was to find Mayar and the others. He'd worry about his communication abilities, or lack thereof, later.

They all began swimming through the light waves towards the beach.

It looked clean and peaceful as it sparkled, though the many umbrellas and chairs that normally dotted the beach throughout most of the year seemed to be missing. As they approached the shore, they all resolutely seemed to avoid looking at one another, instead staring forward. They were going to have to find some sort of clothing, and soon.

Wyatt pointed up at the lifeguard's shack. Maybe there would be uniforms or something in there that they could wear. The girls nodded, and they began to walk up onto the shore. They all tripped and stumbled multiple times, no longer used to walking on two legs.

It was bitterly cold, and Wyatt felt his teeth knocking together as he watched his breath come out in little puffs of steam.

Why was it so cold? Maybe this new body was always cold above the water, though he'd felt perfectly comfortable in the sea.

Reaching the shack, Wyatt clumsily climbed up the wooden stairs as the girls averted their eyes politely. It was weird doing all of this without verbal communication.

The door was unlocked, and he quickly slipped inside. The little room was filled with first aid supplies, a fridge, and several floatation devices. It looked like no one had been in here recently, which was a bit weird.

Letting out a relieved sigh, he almost instantly saw a line of pink and white uniforms for both males and females against the side wall. He rapidly grabbed up four large white shirts, and four sets of pink shorts. The metal hangers clanged together noisily as he turned to leave the little shack.

They would still be cold, but at least they would have clothes on. He quickly slid on the board shorts and white shirt, and stumbled back out into the cold night air.

The girls were facing away from him, looking inland. He approached them, a little more steady on his feet, and held out the bundle of clothes. Addison turned to look at him with wide eyes.

Confused, he followed their gaze. Further inland, closer to solid ground, was some kind of statue that hadn't been there this morning when they'd gotten onto the boat.

The statue consisted of four figures, all holding hands and looking outwards and towards the sea. He felt a chill run up his back as he examined them closer.

The figures looked an awful lot like… them. Eliza, Addison, Bree and himself stared serenely back at him, looking as though they were posing as heroes on a comic book. The placque below the statue had four words etched into it in large, legible print.

"THE HEROES OF SEABROOK"

He hadn't realized it, but together, he and the girls had been gradually walking forward, until they were all standing before what appeared to be a huge statue of themselves.

Even more disturbingly, the bronze sculpture seemed to be partially covered in a thick dusting of snow. The metal showed signs of slight aging and weathering. This statue may not have been old, but it wasn't brand new, either. He glanced back behind the statue, noticing for the first time the thin layer of snow on the distant pine trees and buildings.

The four friends met one another's eyes, each one mirroring back the dull horror he felt building in his gut. If he could have screamed, he might have done so.

How long had they been gone?