Daesung had come from deep within the Pacific Ocean, so far down in the water that he'd only had a notion of what sunlight was as little as a hundred years ago. 

Apparently, then, some war - or wars - happened. Suddenly, not only are there bodies of shipwrecked sailors and their faulty wooden floaters to contend with, but sailors trapped in metal tubes with turbines that could easily slice a fish up if they weren't so deafening. The sounds that echoed deep within those evil tubes sounded horrible - constant yelling and the sounds of machinery within wrenching in effort - the fish almost felt bad for the dwellers within. 

"No such cramped space can be good for those accustomed to being surrounded by sky." An orca had once said, keening a little mournfully. "It would be like being trapped in a shallow pool on the Rock."

Daesung had pet her side sympathetically, his shimmering blue tail almost black at this depth. He'd never been to the surface himself, been warned against it by his parents before they were done raising him and went their separate ways, leaving him behind, but neither had he ever gotten incentive to go any further. 

Turtles would complain about this thing called plastic and how it looked so much like jellyfish, but didn't taste like jellyfish and would choke them. Dolphins had brought gossip from sea-faring winged ones that said the ocean was getting slimier and the fish more sickly. Not to mention that there were more and more rock dwellers who would send down their blinkless eyes or submerse themselves willingly in those terrifying cages or tubes. The very thought made him shudder. 

According to other fish, many of Daesung's own kind liked to live together - not in pods or schools, just sharing a territory. He'd never run across anyone other than his own parents here, and even them he hadn't seen since his maturity. Occasionally, he would wonder what happened to them, but was never particularly invested. He had been a Pacific Mer and she was a Siren from the Mediterranean visiting a friend when he had inconvenienced them with being concieved. 

That was fine. He preferred the company of the whales and turtles, or exploring the very depths of the ocean floors, finding great pleasure in napping on the warmth of a ready volcano. Their gentle rumbles were nice to ease him to sleep, especially the brand-new rock, still sizzling the water with heat. 

He didn't particularly care to stay in one place, as others of his kind were prone to, and travelled the waters freely, having been pseudo-adopted into many pods that would care for him if he would travel with them.

"Why do you keep me?" He'd once asked a podmate. 

"You have such a beautiful, ringing voice. It's like when you talk, you sing." The orca, Chanyeol, answered. "It's absolutely lovely to listen to your stories just to hear you talk. Your laugh echoes through the whole ocean. I don't think I've heard a stronger voice."

"It's magical." Another packmate, Baekhyun, had confirmed. "I think that's why everyone is so drawn to you. You're enchanting."

Daesung travelled with them to the end of a rock that the rock dwellers called Korea, though that was always changing. Had changed at least six times in the short four hundred years he'd been alive. He bid that pod, EXO-K, good luck and safe migration, waving at them as they swam off. It was soon after that he noticed a metal tube, this one eternally long it seemed and small enough that it wasn't even wide enough to encompass his shoulders. Ensnared by curiosity, he followed the tube - a pipe, if he recalled correctly - prodding at it when he came to a place were it looked like octopus ink was leaking. Was this a metal octopus?

As he approached it, he realized it was a plastic pipe leading away, no bigger than his bicep. He followed it, right up to the surface, eyes tracking it once he broke surface. It ran right to the beach, into an ugly structure that didn't look natural, like the instant-hardening lava, though it was just as black. He decided he didn't like it and swam the other direction. It wasn't long, though, before he came across more blackness, settling like an ooze on top of the water. He turned away from it, skittish, and swam north. Suddenly, there was the terrible screech of metal and a thick wave. 

As soon as the black substance touched him, he was repulsed, trying to get it off him as fast as possible, though it seemed resistent to water. Another wave and it was all over him, seeping into the gills on his neck and ribs and choking him. 

He thrashed like that for a long time, drowning in his own water and whatever toxin this darkness was. He swam away from it has hard as he could while flighting suffocation, eventually backing up into rock. He took his chances - getting captured by a Rock hunter be damned - and hauled himself up the short but sheer cliff-face. 

There were large-leafed plants there and thick rockweed there which seemed to take the blackness away, and he quickly used them to get it out of his gills. Once he could breathe, he could concentrate on being dirty.

"Hey, what the hell are you-?!"

Daesung turned around then, vomiting up the last of what he would come to understand was oil before he looked up to the face of a shocked dryad. He looked at the mess around him, unable to stop his last heave, vomiting up the last of the slick grease. "I'm sorry. I know this is a toxin, but this was the only place I could escape it."

The dryad was at his side immediately. "Oh, you poor thing. You're from the ocean, aren't you?"

He nodded, collapsing onto the solid ground to catch his breath, this deep lungs finally getting oxygen. "Yeah."

"But the looks of it, a tanker just hit a rock and is spilling again." He knelt down, gently moving plastered bangs out of his eyes. "Don't worry about the oil. My plants are very resistant. C'mon, let's get you cleaned up. My name's Seungri."