Chapter Text
Midnight moonlight was the only thing to guide him through the thick foliage. The cold enveloped him like an iron cage, but no matter how much his wrists cramped or his fingers went numb, Danny held fast to his precious cargo. He stepped over a root, desperately slowly so that the bucket in his hands didn’t spill the water within.
A tiny head covered in a mob of stringy white hair peeked over the edge of the bucket, braced by tiny hands gripping the rim.
He didn’t understand most of the big science words Uncle Vlad used in his reports, but he knew where Dani came from. She came from Danny. Uncle Vlad made her from him, and he was going to do horrible things to her. Without thinking, he scooped her up in a bucket and ran. He ran for the only place in the world he thought that could take care of her. He was just a kid too. He didn’t know how to take care of someone so small, so fragile.
After what felt like hours of walking, the bones in his feet aching and sore and his legs feeling like the might fall off, the forest cleared, making way for a vast, pristine beach. Beyond the shore shimmered huge towers of rock and coral, covered by limpets, moss and algae. The corals caught on the moon light and refracted and reflected it, casting a haunting glow over the water and creating lanky, sharp shadows that stretched all the way to the beach.
The bridge to the world of the sirens, to where Dani belonged. She might have been created by humans, but his parents and Uncle Vlad… Danny swallowed a lump in his throat. He didn’t know much about what his parents did, but he knew they hated sirens, and he knew they wanted to do bad things to them. Jazz had arguments with them about it all the time.
She was just a baby.
There was one siren he’d heard of, someone they said stalked the rivers and harbours, waiting for his prey. They said that if you were a bad child, he would come and pull you into the water, and you’d never be seen again. They said he was a monster who devoured children, siren and human alike.
But Jazz told him about how sometimes the things you here from other people are wrong, that they only say those things because they don’t know better, or they’re afraid. For a long time, Danny held onto hope that sirens weren’t all that bad, even if he never saw it for himself.
Then that news story came. Jazz showed it to him one night in their shared room. It was about the Bat attacking this fishing ship and sinking it. All the kids at school were talking about the big bad sea monster and its evil machinations, but Jazz pointed out that the Bat didn’t usually leave his home that often, but the fishing ship was dozens of miles away.
Then she pointed a grainy photo of a tiny siren kid in a cage.
Danny clung to that image, and hoped it meant his mission wouldn’t end in tragedy.
“We’re almost there, Dani,” he whispered. Dani made the tiniest little chirp back in response. Even at five years old, his hands were barely bigger than her entire body. She looked at him with so much affection and longing, it was like he’d hung up the moon.
“We’ll get you in some real water soon. Just a little longer.”
The sand was cold, the blazing sun’s head having left it long ago. The wild howled. The waves crashed and retreated. Every moment he was out in the open he turned around, as if seeing the wall of orange spandex coming would help him survive the storm. He’d be lucky if he just got grounded.
Didn’t one of the lines say something about changing human DNA to siren? He didn’t know the words to be sure, but he hoped he was wrong.
Danny’s feet stopped at the line where the shore touched the beach at its furthest. Dani clicked and crooned, letting out a longing, sad song. She looked up at him with trepidation, her fins drooping down.
“Look, Dani!” he tried to be cheerful, pointing out at the vast city of glowing rock and coral, ethereally illuminating the waters blackened by night. “It’s the sea. It’s where you belong. We just need to find the Bat, and he’ll take care of you.”
Dani crooned that same note again that he couldn’t understand. Steeling his breath, Danny rolled up the legs of his trousers, and stepped into the freezing cold water.
In truth, he hadn’t thought this far ahead. Part of him didn’t even think he’d make it this far. Surely he’d be caught by his parents by now, and subjected to hours of screaming and punishment. Instead, he was here, utterly unpunished.
“Uhm… Mr Bat?” he called out, voice carried away by the wind until all he could hear was its haunting whistle against his ears. “Mr Bat? Are you there? M-my name’s Danny, and I k-know I’m a human, but please don’t eat me. I-I come in peace!” That was what aliens said when they were meeting humans, right? Surely the Bat would take it to heart?
The lack of response stabbed needles of anxiety into his neck. The alarm bells that had been begging him to turn back since he left Uncle Vlad’s lab blared harder and harder the longer the silence went on, the longer the cold had to seep into his bones.
“Mr Bat? I… I know you’re not as bad as people say you are, or I hope at least,” he whispered in the last part. “And I-I’m really hoping you’re not, because I n-need your help.”
He extended the bucket with Dani in it out, as if the offering would summon the Bat to him. “Her name is Dani, and she’s so small. Please, c-can you take care of her? O-or maybe find someone who can? Please?”
He felt foolish, standing out here, shouting into the darkness. Maybe he should’ve brought one of those machines his parents had that could make sounds underwater, then he could talk into it and call the Bat much better.
Dani poked her head out of the water again, chirping. She leaned over the edge precariously. Danny quickly pulled the bucket closer to his chest, cupping the edge with one hand underneath her. It had the opposite effect of what he wanted, and Dani just started pulling herself out of the water, cheek nuzzling against his palm.
“No, no! You have to stay in the water, or you’ll get sick. Dani, no!” he pleaded, pushing her back in despite her attempts to latch onto his hand. Instead, he poked a pinky finger into the water, allowing her to snuggle around it.
A shiver went up his spine. Danny froze. Dani started swimming around in a frenzy, chirping and clicking rapidly in a slew of words he could never understand.
But he could understand her fear.
Danny gripped a rocky protrusion, staring down with terrified eyes at the water around him. Faintly illuminated by the ethereal glow of the coral was a sheet of inky black scales and a dorsal fin with spines as sharp as knives. His heartrate spiked. If he wasn’t so cold, he’d be sweating, or maybe he was and he didn’t even notice it.
The Bat had arrived. A low, predatory growl rumbled from the water, like the timbre of a house-sized bass guitar. The sound wasn’t just heard in the ear, but it sank into his bones and shook them from within like a rattle.
A head emerged from the water, only thick dark hair and eyes above the surface. The Bat’s scales were as black as a starless night, and his eyes were a predatory rectangle, narrowed and staring at him with a dangerous intelligence.
Danny’s heart pounded. Most people who got this close to the Bat were torn apart. That he still breathed was a miracle he could not waste. He looked at Dani, his sister, for one last time.
She stared back at him, pleading.
“T-this is it,” Danny whispered.
He looked to the Bat, meeting the massive siren’s unflinching gaze. “I-I’m not a hunter, I swear! T-this is Dani, and m-my parents… made her. But they’re not nice to sirens, so she needs a b-better home.”
He lowered the bucket and showed her to the Bat, whose eyes widened.
Dani trembled, swimming to the furthest edge from the massive siren, calling that repeated note again and again. Danny held as still as he could, each moment of silence from the Bat ratcheting his anxiety to greater heights.
Until, at last, the Bat let out another croon. This wasn’t like the predatory growl he had made earlier, one that spoke of his power and strength. Instead, it was softer, almost fatherly. The Bat reached out a webbed hand decorated with scales and scars in equal measure, and called that same note.
Dani looked back at Danny, then to the adult siren, and then back to Danny. Her eyes wobbled with trepidation. She let out a scared chirp.
“It’s ok,” he said. “He’ll take care of you.”
The Bat let out that same note, but in a harsher lower octave. It had some kind of effect on Dani, her fins going rigid for a brief second before she quickly clambered over the edge of the bucket and into the Bat’s hands.
Danny’s heart felt like he’d survived a war. The Bat held Dani like she was the most precious gem in the world, his eyes softening as he sang harmonious notes that Danny could only guess the meaning of.
Slowly, Danny crept back. The sirens chirped and whistled at each other, at first discordant, then they became closer and closer to a harmony. Danny turned back one last time, but the sight he saw might haunt him for the rest of his life.
Dani stared at him, her eyes welling up with tears, reaching out with her stubby arms and grasping at air with her hands.
The Bat’s gaze turned to him, his eyes narrowing. Danny took that as a cue to sprint back to shore, running until his feet found dry sand again. He didn’t look back again.
~~
The bulging metal pipes and support beams of his house loomed high. He just had to quietly sneak through the door, or maybe climb into a window. He needed to be quick to wash off the dirt and sand and sea salt crusting over his skin, and hope that none of the smell stuck too close to his clothes.
But he didn’t know how to wash off a smell from his clothes. Maybe Jazz could help. She always knew how to help.
The lights were out, windows dark. The house was quiet, devoid of its usually cacophony of hammered metal and torches. He kept each step as light as possible as he crept up the stairs, and opened the door.
The lights suddenly flicked on, flashing in his eyes. When his vision recovered, he was met with a sight every child regarded with fear.
His parents sat on the couch in the living room, with Uncle Vlad on the armchair to the side. Each adult wore an unhappy expression. Vlad with barely concealed rage, his dad with disappointment, and his mother looked sterner than he’d ever seen them.
Five years later…
“Alright, time for a bed time story. Any requests?” Daddy rumbled.
Dani immediately started clicking up a storm. “Tell me the one about my big brother, my big brother!”
“Oh, come on, we’ve heard that one a million times before,” Jason whined. Daddy shushed him, and scooped her up. He settled her beneath his chest, lying down on the sand. She rolled up into a little ball, surrounded by all her big siblings. There was Damian, who covered her with his big shiny tail fin, and Tim, who rested over Daddy with a sleepy expression. Then there was Duke and Cass braiding each other’s hair off to the side. Jason was currently underneath Daddy, smushed by his huge body, while Dickie formed a circle with Daddy, since he was the biggest, corralling the rest of the family inside.
“Alright, alright. Just for my smallest fry. It was a dark night, and the wind was howling, and it was very, very cold,” Daddy began.
“Come on, get to the good part!” Duke whined, his striped black and gold hair half-tied in a bun. Cass slapped him.
“I’d felt footsteps crossing into our realm. Immediately, I had all your big brothers and sister hide in the cave, leaving trusty Alfred to keep them safe. I went to the Moon Reef to see what human had come to threaten our home again. My keen nose and electric sense found them quickly. Humans are slow and weak in the water where we are strongest, after all. But when I came closer, it was not a hunter like I’d thought. It was a human guppy.”
Dani had heard this story a million times before, and she could hear it a million times more without getting bored. It was the story of her big brother, who rescued her and took her to Daddy. As Daddy got into the story, the chitters and chirps of her siblings quieted down as they listened to the tale. A tale of bravery, and selflessness. A tale of a little hero.
But as much as she loved the story, and would beg for it almost every night, she always hated the ending.
“I looked up from the fry, who was so small she couldn’t have been more than a week old, and I saw the human guppy. His eyes wobbled with fear, or was it sadness? He ran away, up to the land, and disappeared.”
“Why didn’t you take him too? Why didn’t you save him too, Daddy?”
“I was too slow, fry,” Daddy said, sending a rumbling purr into her, triggering the rest of her sleepy siblings to yawn and purr in return. “I was too… saddened when I saw you. I saw what the humans were willing to do to even the smallest fry. By the time I recovered, he was too far away.”
“You’ve lost your touch, old man,” Jason chirped. “Remember when you lassoed me in the neck with a seaweed rope and drowned me?”
“Yeah, and you stalked my parents’ ship for days before sinking it and turning me,” Tim clicked from his perch atop Daddy.
“The B I knew would’ve snatched that human kid up without a second thought,” Dickie crooned.
“You should have brought me, Father. I would have helped secure him.”
“You were four years old, Damian,” Daddy huffed.
“Can we get him now, Daddy?” Dani asked.
“Maybe, but only if we can find him. Now sleep. It’s getting late, and you all have school or training tomorrow.”
Before Dani could protest, Daddy picked her up by the scruff of her neck, and deposited her underneath his belly, right next to Jason. She cuddled up with her big brother’s warmth and warbled peacefully, taking in the purring of her family.
But it wouldn’t be complete without her first big brother.
“Daddy…?” she mumbled, half asleep.
“Yes, sweetie?”
“What’s big brother’s name?”
“I don’t know. He never told me.”
~~
In truth, ever since the first time Daddy had told her that story, Dani had been searching. She used to swim up and down the coast, gazing out at the humans who swam in the sea, or played on the beach, wondering if her brother was among them. Her nose could tell her who was her family and who wasn’t. She knew all the scents of her siblings and Daddy. They didn’t just smell like themselves. They smelled like family. Daddy said all fry can smell who was their family or not, even if they were adopted.
But none of these humans smelled like her brother. None of them were right.
She still kept searching anyway. Every week she’d sneak away from Daddy or Alfred’s careful watch, and lurked beneath the surface near the coast, because family never gave up on each other, no matter what. That was what Daddy taught her.
She was on another one of her little adventures, beginning at the Moon Reef. It was one of the places that humans usually steered clear from. It was where Daddy liked to guard and patrol, and the corals helped make his magic stronger. It was here where Daddy lured Jason and Duke to be turned, and humans knew people disappeared if they went near the Moon Reef.
That was why she was utterly shocked to see a whole bunch of humans on the beach. There was one really tall and big human woman, and rows of kids and teenagers in front of her. The boys were all shirtless, and the human lady was yelling something at them as they ran together in sync. Swimming a bit closer, she noticed the symbol on the buff lady’s uniform.
The siren hunter corps. Dani gulped water down, consciously willing her fins to stay still as she hid behind a rocky pillar. It looked like they were training. She spotted a big box off to the side, filled with pointy sticks and guns. The boys all wore the same cloth on their legs and had the same headbands. When the big lady yelled at them, they all stopped at the same time, or started at the same time.
All except for one. He was much smaller than the others, and much skinnier. He was always just one step out of sync, always a little too slow to start, or a little too quick to stop.
And he looked miserable, too. The other humans seemed to take delight in picking on him. The group ran in big laps around the beach, and whenever they were far enough away from the big lady, they started shoving the smaller boy and laughing at him. She knew she shouldn’t feel bad for a siren hunter, but part of her saw herself in him. The other guppies in school thought she was weird. They didn’t understand why she loved the stars so much, and when she talked too fast about things, the adults sometimes scolded her for blabbering. She was smaller than other guppies her age, too.
Instead of going on her normal patrol route, Dani stayed there, and watched. Once they finished running in laps, each of the human boys took a spear from the box, and they all started practising how to throw it under the big lady’s instructions. Here, the smallest human looked miserable as well. She almost thought he was going to cry at a certain point, but he didn’t.
And then, finally, they all finished. The older boys gathered together, laughing together in the obnoxious way humans did when they were in groups. They all left the smallest human behind as they ran off, leaving him alone on the empty beach.
Instead of running after them, the smallest human curled up on himself, and wept. His cries, strange and unnatural to her ears, still reached into her heart. For a siren hunter, he didn’t seem to be very happy. Maybe that was his problem. Siren hunting only made people sad, or dead, in the case of anyone who tried to fight Daddy.
Something inside her said to come closer. Daddy’s warnings to never talk to humans, or go close to them, or let them see her screamed in her mind. Her hackles raised at the perceived reprimand, but her heart told her to come closer.
She came as close to the beach as possible, close enough that she could barely swim. All the while, the boy wept, curling in on himself and burying his face into his shoulders. She pushed her head above the surface, allowing her gills to empty her lungs of water. Even as she took a shallow breath, the boy didn’t hear or notice her, still absorbed in his own sorrow.
And as she breathed in, Dani mind let up with what she was smelling. There were the scents of the other humans lingering in the air. Sweaty, musky and overall gross. She could smell the faded oak of the wooden spears and their metallic tips. She smelled the traces of the sweaty fabric of the humans’ clothes.
And above all else, Dani could smell the human boy sitting just a few feet away from him. He smelled of tears, of blood, of scarring and healing wounds. And… he smelled of warmth, of closeness and trust.
He smelled like family.
“Big brother?” she whispered.
Her big brother startled. Like a hermit crab caught without a shell he scrambled, quickly wiping away the tears and standing up again.
This close, she could see the scars that littered his soft skin, and the blue and purple spots on his cheek and arms. No other humans had marks like those, and the faint smell of blood coming from them gave her an uneasy feeling in her stomach.
“W-who are you? What are you doing here?!” her big brother asked. HIs legs trembled. He whipped his head to the left, then the right as if looking for something. “You shouldn’t be here. It’s not safe for sirens.”
Dani shook her head, chirruping petulantly. “No!” she cried out.
Her words caused his eyes to go wide. “Y-you can talk?”
“Yes! Of course I can talk! I need to talk so I can find you! Don’t you remember me?”
Her big brother’s face scrunched up with confusion. Dani huffed.
“It’s me, Dani! Your little sister. Daddy told me about how you rescued me from those mean humans. Do you remember now?”
Realisation dawned within her big brother. He gasped and his eyes went wide. Success! Dani tapped the surface of the water with her fins in excitement, inviting him to come with her.
“Why are you here? You’re supposed to be safe with your family! You’re supposed to be far away from humans.”
“I came back for you,” Dani said, crooning pleadingly. “You’re my family too.”
Her big brother froze, staring at her. She held her breath, each moment ratcheting her anxiousness up.
“No I’m not,” he almost growled out.
The shock had Dani floundering in the tide before she righted herself. Her words were frantic next. “What do you mean? Of course you are! I can smell it on you! Sirens can do that!”
“No they can’t. I’m a siren hunter.” Her big brother’s voice had risen to a scary yell, and Dani shrank back in fear. “And I’m gonna, I’m gonna take one of those spears and cut your fins off. You hear me?! I’m gonna take you to the humans, and they’ll lock you in a cage far away from the ocean, and you’ll never see your family again. You got that?! Get out of here and never come back!”
Dani couldn’t hear the rest through her own sobbing. She turned around and swam faster than she’d ever swam before, her tears littering the sea floor all the way back home.