ATLANTIS

A giant clam towed along the ocean floor by a team of oversized seahorses slid to a stop by the glass domes of the world's newest underwater city.

Princess Ariel timidly swam out behind her father. As they approached the city, she gave her hair a quick brush with her dinglehopper.

"Don't fuss with it. It wouldn't do to look nervous in front of our new neighbors."

Twelve guards flanked the front door. Her father swam up and waited.

"Well?" He asked. "Aren't they going to greet us?"

"Uh, sir? I don't believe they've seen us."

"Really? Did we not send them a missive announcing our royal visit?"

"We didn't, sir."

"And by whose authority did we not send a missive?"

"Yours, sir. We departed the second we received word of this city."

"And is that any excuse to have not sent a missive at least a week prior?"

"You have my sincerest apologies."

The door opened. "Ah, finally! They must have gotten our missive after all!"

"As you say."

"Come, daughter! Let us greet these newcomers to our ocean and see what tribute they may offer us."

As they entered the room, the water drained out. Ariel and her father flopped on the floor before a flick of Neptune's hands gave them legs.

"The nerve of them!" Neptune harrumphed. "Making us walk like a savage cave-dweller!"

Ariel felt wobbly on her new appendages. She gave the tiny squishy bits a wiggle.

When she looked up, fear ran through her. Sunken-eyed, hunchbacked fiends scrounged for scraps, chittering mechanical monstrosities spun barbed wire webs, and a groaning, lumbering brute with drills for hands trailed after a tiny robotic girl holding an oversized syringe.

"My word!" Neptune cried out.

"F-father?"

"This carpet!" He stomped on the threadbare, stained carpet. "It clashes horribly with the decor." He looked up. "By the trident! What are those monstrosities!"

He held up a plate of moldy hors d'oeuvres. "Is this what they call cuisine? I wouldn't feed this to our steeds!"

"Uh, father?"

"And these chairs! Do they expect us to sit in such ghastly, parasite-ridden sacks of cloth!"

"Father!"

"Yes, Ariel?"

Ariel pointed. A pasty-white, slender creature, its smooth face unfurling in a pair of giant mechanical fangs, asked in a rasping voice, "Would you like a balloon, Georgie?"

Neptune swallowed. "I do believe we have seen enough."

After making a dignified royal retreat, Neptune gasped for breath and shouted, "Send coordinates to the royal artillery!"

Back at Atlantis, an elaborate network of mirrors and lenses funneled sunlight into a concentrated tube. The hyper-condensed solar radiation leapt across the ocean like a lance.

A mirror sprang up in the light's path. Ariel watched as the light seared its way back through Atlantis.

"Uh, Daddy? Do we have to live there now?"

Neptune looked at I-Island. "In that cesspool? I'd sooner live in a cloud, like harpies."

"Wish granted."

As the two royal merfolk searched for the disembodied voice, another beam swept them into the stratosphere.

500

Me: I really should come up with new horrors to inflict upon I-Island. Robotic spiders and clowns are getting stale.

Also me: but what if mecha-Pennywise

Also also me: oh god, this cold is misery and I got at most five hours of sleep because my sore throat woke me up and I live in America which means I am obligated to ignore minor illness and do the capitalism