mermaid!au

494w.

"So, like... you just swim around and eat seaweed, or?"

"What? Ugh, no, seaweed? Is that what you humans eat?" the merman retorts, maroon scales glimmering underwater with every flick of his tail.

Amber backs a bit, arms up in playful surrender. "Hey, just a question! Don't bite me." She scoots closer once more, hands and knees dipped into the seawater to rest on the sand underneath beside the young merman, swimming shorts drenched. "Can I touch, Henry?"

Henry's eyebrows raise. "My tail? Go ahead."

With a hesitant hand, Amber dips a palm over the grooves of the scales, the bright color reflecting back sunlight as it moves. It's not anything like a fish's scales, but a mix between a dolphin's rubbery hide and some kind of roughness that leaves a lingering feeling on her fingerpads. "Hey, you're not slimy."

The blonde sputters when the merman scoffs and flicks his tail up, salty water splashing her face. Truth be told, when she stumbled upon the sea creature with the end of his tail stuck in some forlorn plastic bag, she thought that it was some kind of mirage she was seeing, or maybe she was tripping on acid she didn't even know she took. Cut to five minutes later, and not only has she acquainted herself with the merman with the clean cut, but has even discovered that he's some distant cousin of the Crown Prince's.

Henry assures her that if she was a mermaid, she would've been given some kind of reward from the monarchy, but seeing as she's a human, he says that the next time he returns he'll make her a shell necklace. Amber ignores the happy twinge she feels from the supposed second meeting after a few minutes of knowing the guy.

The human yelps when her feet are pulled out from underneath her by strong arms, and her arms fall back to brace her fall, sandy seawater soaking her tank. "What are you doing?" she questions through gritted teeth, her limbs jerking from the feeling of fingers lightly running against her toes.

"It's so strange," Henry says in an enamored tone, turning both feet this way and that in his hands before settling his focus on her left foot and setting down the other in the water. "How you can just... walk on these everywhere."

He momentarily leans close to place the side of his face against her foot, lips softly brushing against the sensitive arch, before she yanks her foot away with a somewhat-horrified expression.

"Dude! You don't do that with feet!" she berates, pausing to shudder at the weird sensation lingering. "Ugh, someone's gonna think you have a foot !"

Henry's eyebrows raise, and he wades closer in the shallow waters to lean over the young woman's legs. "And what's that?"

His companion tiredly sighs. "It is way too early in the morning for me to be explaining anything about the human world to you right now."

—

bones!au

932w.

"Come on! You can't be saying that Henry gets to run all his experiments while I just sit around, Dr. Ha!" the intern complains, hot on her boss' heels. "I clean the bones, figure out cause of death -- and he gets to run- run rampant with no one stopping him?"

Her boss stops, turning to face her with a stern look, and immediately Amber swallows down the rest of her words. "Ms. Liu," the head forensic anthropologist begins. "Might I remind you that the last time I allowed you to run an experiment, you caused the facility to go into an emergency lock down?"

Amber focuses intensely on the woman's pocket badge, bolded words HA JI WON similar to her own badge. "I didn't take into account the viscosity of the unknown liquid and how quick its state changes are from a liquid to a gas," she mutters abashedly, resuming her gait when the older turns to continue her strides.

"This is why you are only allowed to experiment under supervision, Ms. Liu, and we won't be having this conversation again." Amber deflates as her boss swipes her access card through the slot along the side of the open frame, and walks up the stairs to the platform, the slot beeping in acceptance.

The intern does the same as her superior, the head scientist slipping on gloves to examine the cadaver on top of the metal table in the center of the platform, illuminated by tall lights overhead. "Now, what have you all discovered so far?" the doctor questions to the few people standing around the corpse.

"Female, late-twenties, Asian," a forensic scientist named Soohyun begins, black bangs heavily contrasting the standard blue Jeffersonian robe all employees wear. "Postmortem fractures to the distal phalanges and the lower two ribs, from the lack of staining." He gestures to these on the victim, flayed and tattered, an unbearable stench filling the air. "I can't give you cause of death or anything else until we clean the bones; the victim was covered in some sort of plastic that melted and adhered to the bones, so."

"Well, you'll be able to quite soon, Soohyun," another scientist by the name of Hyoyeon murmurs, using forceps to pick delicately at the body. "I'm taking hair and tissue samples right now to see if she ingested any toxins or anything else." She hurries down the stairs with her samples just as Ha Ji Won turns expectantly to the last scientist, their forensic sketch artist.

"Her nasal cavity's been destroyed, and with some of the teeth and occipital missing, I'm not sure if I can get an accurate facial reconstruction or identification," Ailee mutters, sketchpad in hand. When Dr. Ha gives her furrowed brows and Amber looks quite desperately at her so as to not antagonize the anthropologist, the young woman changes her tune. "I, uh, I can try though! I'll just... run the head scans through the national database then..."

She leaves the two alone on the platform with the body as she runs to her own office, and when Dr. Ha bends down to take a closer inspection of the grotesque remains, Amber opens to try her luck once more.

The blonde doesn't get far, however. "Hey, Dr. Ha!" a peppy voice calls out, causing the doctor to lift her head and the intern to mentally curse the owner of the voice. There's the sound of the gateway slot beeping before steps resound against the metal stairs, and a head of beige locks pops up. "You're not gonna believe what I already found from the remains."

"That's funny, I already don't believe you," Amber bites out, but she shrinks when her boss gives her the stink eye.

Henry wiggles his eyebrows at the other intern playfully before picking up the remote to the inspection screen and switching it to his findings. "Patience, dear llama. That red powder that the victim was covered in? It contained traces of sugar, corn syrup, wax, and confectioner's glaze."

"Which means...?" The head scientist asks, trailing off.

Amber frowns in thought. "All those things can be found in soft candy."

"Not just any regular soft candy," Henry says with a grin. He taps a button on the remote to bring up a colorful logo of a company. "Just Birthed Confectionery in Boston has a specific type of carnauba wax engineered by their food scientists there. I did a small check online of anyone reported missing from the company, and..." The intern presses another button, and the face of a stern-looking woman pops up.

"Hello there, Fernanda Ly," Dr. Ha greets, looking at the photo id of the woman. "Former front desk worker. I guess we can call Ms. Lee back from reconstructing the face, then. Excellent work, Mr. Lau."

The forensic anthropologist takes off her gloves and disposes of them as she exits the platform, leaving Amber to fume as Henry eyes her smugly.

"You didn't tell me last time about your findings being inconclusive for the gel, and now Dr. Ha won't even let me hold a flask myself without supervision!" Amber hisses, stepping close to jab Henry in the chest and ribs several times.

Henry visibly winces from the harsh pokes, but he manages to smile and hoarsely whisper out a soft "I'm King of the Lab" before Amber holds up a hand threateningly, and he scurries off, arms wrapped around his midriff to protect himself from further harm.

—

twd!au

476w.

It's been three weeks since society has crumbled and the remnants of humanity has withered away into a feeble nothing, but it feels like years have passed between cotton-candy Disney summers and the fear-gripping reality that the undead controls.

A tongue peeks out behind cracked lips to wet them in concentration. The young woman furrows her eyebrows before letting go over the elastic, arrow whistling through the air and embedding itself into the skull of one of the walking. She climbs down from the ledge and into the alleyway to retrieve it, blood and brain matter squelching in protest, and clicks her tongue as a signal.

A few moments later, a young man cautiously descends down the same path the other did earlier, a Glock secure in his hands. His clothes match hers in the condition they're in: torn, dirty, thin. Unable to last the coming winter that will inevitably pass through the area once summer comes to a close.

"There's a pharmacy on the corner up ahead two blocks," she mutters to her partner, stony eyes scanning for any of the walkers in the area.

"How much do we have left in the pack, Amber?" the young man asks, glancing at her.

Amber sighs. "A few granola bars and maybe enough water to last us the trip out of the city. There's not enough, Henry; we don't have pills and fresh bandages, either."

Henry chews on his lower lip. "I don't know. We can't see if there are any in the store or not, much less if there's an alarm that can be tripped."

"There are no other stores that haven't been raided already. We have to try," she finalizes, turning to look at him with tired eyes. The past three weeks of avoiding the bitten-and-eaten fate have taken a toll on both of the former university students, and even Henry can't deny that he hasn't felt this worn down fighting for his survival before. She strolls up to him, a pleading expression on her face. "We have to try," she repeats in a hoarse whisper, body heat radiating between the two from how close they are.

There's a palpable tension as they stare each other down, faces close enough to be interpreted as intimate. "Let's try, then," Henry agrees quietly, lips grazing hers as he speaks before he raises his Glock and aims to fire behind her.

A walker slumps to the alley ground, the ringing of the shot muffled by the silencer fitted over the nozzle of the gun, and without missing a beat Amber turns to notch an arrow and shoot at the arriving horde. "I'll cover you -- get to the pharmacy and see if you can get in before they overrun us."

"Will do, Hawkeye," he sarcastically remarks, pushing the personal moment aside to focus on the task of staying alive.

—

a/n: :----)) i vl vl ove mermaid au and i think i got 3 on all my ap ex ams i hope i got 4/5

but i have 1 more exam to go  so . .o ..o  . o . . . #apenglishgg