Rare Catch

Alice snoozed as she drifted down the river in her lone, donut decorated inflatable tube. She had been going down the river for the last few hours, contending with rapids and canoers and men alike. All she had was herself, her tube, and her glasses, and that was all she needed. In between her various naps in the quiet stretches of river, Alice would hum various marine tunes. She tended to favor whaler and siren songs, their haunting tunes thrilling to her. They also conveyed the right message, if the ones on the receiving end would acknowledge her. 

While Alice did enjoy her winding ride along the river, with her pale, pasty skin, such long exposures in the sun would do her no favors in the coming days. However, she was here for a reason, and if she left the river before accomplishing her task, it would take her months to build up the motivation to come back. So Alice waited.

After several hours and what was swiftly becoming a third degree burn, Alice finally got the response that she was waiting for, but not the one that she had expected. One moment she was being slow roasted, like a rotisserie chicken, and the next she had been violently flipped off of her pink donut tube into the frigid water. From there, chilled hands dragged her far under the river and into the lake that the water emptied itself into. Alice was dragged into the dark depths of the lake, her lungs aching for the shallow breath that she had taken. She lost her vision as the water became cooler and darker, not being able to see anything. As her lungs began to burn, and Alice began to think that this was her last breath, her legs scraped against rock beneath her, cutting shallow divots into her skin. When she no longer felt the rock, those holding her began ascending into light waters until Alice’s head crested the water.

Alice’s desperate breath burned as her lungs filled with much needed air. Wisps of hair that had fallen out of her pony-tail clung like limp noodles to her face, and still without access to her hands she was unable to wipe her hair out of her eyes to look at her surroundings and kidnappers. Without notice, Alice was launched up and out of the water, landing heavily onto solid stone, bruising her already torched skin. With her hands finally free Alice was able to wipe her hair out of her eyes.

She found herself in a hidden cove, surrounded by towering stacks of red rocks. She laid on the only stone above water, save for the mountain surrounding them. ‘Them’ being the mermaids that were bobbing in and out of the shimmering water. Trying to shield her eyes from the blinding water with her hand, Alice looked closer at her kidnappers. In front of her sprawled a woman with a fish tail as red as the rock beneath her, half submerged in her underwater seat. None of the mers looked all too happy to see Alice.

“You’re quite the audacious human, aren’t you? All day you have traveled our river, taunting us with our songs, with nothing but a flimsy tube and strips of cloth that barely cover anything. We have been tested enough by you humans of late, and you specifically have given all of us boundless headaches. Anything to say before we gut you and set you floating off down the river?” The red-tailed mer spoke to Alice with hatred in her eyes and a sneer on her lips. The other mers growled along with her and raised various sharp-looking instruments from beneath the water. Alice felt nothing less than insulted.

“Human? You think I am a human? I think you people have been stuck in this river for far too long if you think that!” Alice scoffed at them, but then froze when a sharpened bone

found itself beneath her left eye. A testy man with green scales glared at her from the water. She wiggled her finger in between the blade and her eye, forcing some distance, which had the unfortunate side effect of cutting her finger. Alice maintained eye contact with the mer as the blade began to sizzle and smoke where her blood had accumulated. He tried to drag his knife away, but she grabbed onto it, the sharpened ridges digging into the palm of her hand had her blood covering the rest of the blade. The sizzling turned into crackles and the smoke blackened around her hand. The mer released his grip on the blade and swam away from her, his eyes glued to her hand. Soon enough the bone fractured in her grip and she sprinkled the fragments into the water. The water evaporated wherever her blood had made contract. Alice looked pacifly at her hand, blood slowly seeping down her arm, dripping onto the rock beneath her, which swifty brightened with heat and color. When the skin of her hand began to stitch itself back up, Alice turned her blank expression back to the leader. Alice scoffed before rearranging herself into a more comfortable position on the rock.

“Well, this is not at all how I imagined this would go,” Alice muttered, dumping her chin into her uninjured hand.

“And how was this supposed to go?” The leader asked, eyeing her warily.

“Well for starters, I am here to help, not threaten,” scoffs and snorts surrounded Alice in surround sound. “Seriously! If I came here for the purpose of violence, would I show up in a skimpy bikini, burnt to a crisp, riding an inflatable donut? I really was going for the least threatening look I could muster!” Alice huffed in exasperation.

“You said you are here to help. With what do you intend to help with?” A deep voice drew Alice’s attention to her left where a man with steely scale swam up to her platform. Alice grinned widely at him.

“I heard recently in certain circles that mers had been acquired for sale, and that they originated from these very waters. I assume that these acquisitions are not consensual, so I came to offer myself up as bait!” Alice said.

“Bait?” Another mer spoke up.

“Yup! I am a shifter, and could easily transform myself into a mer and get myself caught by these kidnappers, and in turn catch them in the act!” She spoke cheerfully. Alice sensed that many of the mers were put off with her display, but even more disliked her violent act.

“And what makes you think that this will work?” The mer whose blade she destroyed asked, glaring at her from underneath thick eyebrows. Alice in turn raised her eyebrows and looked at him with her own doe eyes.

“Well, as you just saw, I am quite capable of defending myself. And even if they somehow got past my defenses, I’m even harder to kill. On top of all of that, should I still fail to succeed, I have some fairly powerful allies that I can call upon. And if all of that fails, if I am caught and sold, not only will I make them the wealthiest traffickers in the world, but I would be so much of a problem that they would never hunt in these waters again, or even desire to hunt anything after me!” Alice made eye contact with every mer that would meet her eyes as she spoke.

“And the cherry on the cake would be, you all would not lose anything! Whether I catch them or they catch me, none of your people will be caught in the crossfire, and I can guarantee that you and yours will be left alone from here on out. What do you say?” She grinned at the group.

“And who's to say that you aren’t one of the traffickers?” One of the younger mers spoke out, Another hit them on the back of their head, shushing them.

“It’s a little late to make that decision not, isn’t it,” Alice shot back, shrugging her shoulders at the kid. She turned back to the lead.

“What do you say?”

It took Alice thirty-seven hours to learn how to fish, and fish well enough that she could swim upstream to the mouth of the river. Deep-voiced, steel-scaled mer, named Daton was the mer that coached her. The traffickers only came at night to avoid the human crowds, and so she would need to be a bright and shiny fish in order to catch their attention in the black waters. Her scales were a liquid silver, and she had a bright red stripe racing down both of her sides. Alice brought her tail up to her head, marvelling at her new-found flexibility.

“Look! It matches my hair!” She squealed with glee as she held the red stripe to her curls that were floating ambiently in the water. Daton rolled his eyes at her, but she saw a corner of his lips quark, and she counted it as a win.

In much of the same way that it had taken Alice most of the day to catch the attention of the mers, it would also take her most of the night to catch the eyes of the traffickers. As she made her way down the river once again, Alice swam as close to the surface of the water as she dared to without alerting the hunters that she was there on purpose. She splished and splashed in order to make as much noise and disturbance as possible, winding herself along the length of the river. It was only after she made it through one of the rapids, far bloodier this time in the water than she had been above it, did she finally catch a hint of her prey.

It was a smart move on their part, Alice had to admit. The poachers waited a ways down the river in a calm, though relatively shallow stretch of water. Right after one of the more brutal of the rapids in the river, this spot was perfect for catching tired and injured mers who had little in the way for escape.

It was as she was checking over her newly acquired tail, probing at the bleeding pieces of flesh that where now missing her shimmering scales, that she felt swift movement around her. She failed to react fast enough to escape the steel net that wrapped her up and launched her out of the water. As Alice was airborne, trying to reorient herself, she heard cheering and jeering as she was hauled aboard the small ship. She landed heavily on the deck of the ship and tried to peer through the thick steel ropes at her captors at the motley crew beyond.

“What a pretty little fishy we got ladies and gents!” One voice called out at her.

“I told you we could catch pretty ones inland. And easier too! There’s a lot less chance of ‘em getting away than if they were ocean fishies!” another voice cackled. A hand snuck its way into the net to try to grab hold of Alice’s face. She tried snapping at the offending limb but the ropes hindered her movements too much. The hand withdrew without her being able to draw even a droplet of blood.

“Fucking bitch!” Hand man spat at her, slapping her with enough force that her head hit the deck and bounced. Alice’s vision swam and her ears began to ring. She shut her eyes. A muffled hit and groan spiked pain in her head.

“Are a fucking idiot? Do you want to present the boss with damaged goods? Do you think we’d get paid if you bashed her brains out?” A new voice rang out above the others.

“She tried to bite me, Cap’n!” Hand man attempted to defend himself. Through the fuzziness in her head, Alice thought he sounded like he was trying to talk through a busted lip.

“I don’t care if she tore off your whole fucking limb! Fish like her cost more than it does to keep this dump of a ship running for ten years, she could damn well pay for your fucking robot arm!” Thumping steps reverberated through the steel deck and through Alice’s skull as they made their way closer to her. She felt the ropes give way from around her. Knees hit the deck by her head and she groaned. Hands rolled limp body onto her back before cradling her head in their hands prodding at her sensitive scalp.

“Miss, can you hear me?” A softer voice spoke above her. Thick fingers pried her eyes open to shine a flashlight into her pupils. Alice lurched back from the invading light, but the movement jostled her and she curled up as much as she could while still tangled up in the ropes.

“Hurt,” a weak groan was all Alice was able to force out.

“Yes, you seem to have a concussion. Luckily though, you're not bleeding, just have some superficial swelling.” He laid her head back onto the deck and turned away from her.

“Bring the stretcher over, yeah, right there. I’ll keep her head stable while you lift her torse. One, two, three;” Alice felt herself being lifted up and placed on tout fabric. Her tail hung limply in the air as the stretcher was lifted up and Alice sunk into the blackness of her mind.

Alice woke to bright white lights and sterile water. She was floating ambiently in a small tank that was just large enough that she didn’t need to touch any of the glass that surrounded her. Alice blinked her bleary eyes until she could fully make out her surroundings beyond the glass. At least two dozen other tanks also held mers within them, all of the stack next to one another, with about a foot between each tank. Rapid movement caught the side of Alice’s eye. When she turned she saw another mer, one with pale lime green scales with an overly large grin waving at her.

“Hello! So glad to see you awake finally! You're the last one to wake up, where are you from?” The mer flung each word out of their mouth as if it was a race. Alice shook her head a few times before she was able to respond.

“The, uh, the Colorado river. Where are we? Why was I asleep for so long?” She shot back. The mer looked positively giddy.

“No wonder! A river mer like you probably isn’t used to super cold temperatures that these traffickers like to transport us in. Now me, I’m from the arctic, so the cold doesn’t make me as sleepy as the rest of you guys. As for where we are, I don’t know the exact details, but I’m pretty sure that we are at an auction. If you listen closely you can actually hear the bidding wars going on. They're bidding on a box jelly right now.” Alice started at the mer, amazed by his ability to simply not breath.

“Why are you so giddy?” Alice asked.

“It’s to cover up for the sheer terror that is coursing through my veins right now,” the mer’s giggles bordered on hysterical. “I’m Aubin bytheway.”

“Alice.”

“Fancy meeting you Alice. I sincerely doubt we will ever see another mer again, let alone one another,” he grinned at her.

“You never know, some owners like the ideas of mates,” Alice taunted. She felt bad though, when Aubin’s eyes widened even more and his unhinged grin dropped.

“There is that,” he mumbled back at her. It twinged at her heartstrings, and so Alice decided that it was finally time to get shit done.

Alice rapped her knuckles against the glass cage, testing the thickness of it, before thumping her powerful tail against it. With a resounding crack the glass shattered, spitting gallons of water and Alice onto the ground. Bits of glass stuck themselves in Alice’s tail and hands, but they were of no consequence. With a single thought, Alice shed her mer form and donned her normal, human-esque body. Unfortunately, with no clothes.

“It’s Tits-Out-Tuesday I suppose,” she threw over her shoulder at a very stunned Aubin, as well as several other trapped mers. She got to her feet, and with a flick of her wrist was clothed and barreling through the red curtains.

Beyond was the box jelly and an auditorium full of people who clearly had never paid taxes. Alice felt a feral grin spread across her face.

“What a fascinating group of people, I must say,” she taunted them. Many sprung out of their seats and made mad dashes towards the exits, which had just suddenly been sealed shut by strange glowing red magic that wrapped themselves around Alice.

“Not so fast, darlings. All is fair in love and war, and I declare war.”

It was a swift battle, those rich fucks rarely knew how to fight, and the few guards that they had were like annoying moths to Alice. When everyone was properly subdued, Alice made a long distance call and pulled a memory stick loose from her pockets. 

“Daddy!” Alice chirped into the phone as the plugged into the computers. “You would not believe the time that I am having at the moment. Yeah, yeah, people are trying to sell me on the black market! Fucked up I know! Yeah, so I'm just getting the organization's info, and then I’ll send it to you and Papa, let you guys do the heavy lifting. I’ve done the main part! I’ve got most of their merchandise here at the auction, and both the buyers and the sellers. All you guys have to do is make sure the whole operation goes kapooie. You’re welcome. I love you, Byebye!” Alice hung up the phone and watched as files copied themselves.