"I don't think this is a good idea!"

"Stop being such a 'fraidy fish, Kyungsoo, the ship wreck isn't going to bite!"

"It's more what's inside the ship that'll bite us, Baekhyun! And I'm not a 'fraidy fish!"

Chanyeol rolled his eyes good naturedly at his best friend's bickering. He flicked his tail cheekily, a burst of frothy bubbles hitting them square in their faces.

"If you two keep arguing like a couple of old clams, Taeyeon noona's guards will hear us before we can even get there!"

"She's your sister, so aren't they technically your guards, too?" Baekhyun asked with just a touch too much innocence, a hand clamped firmly over Kyungsoo's mouth. The younger glared witheringly at him.

"Do I look like I'm queen of the ocean, Baekhyunnie?" Baekhyun opened his mouth to answer but Chanyeol just flicked him in the face with bubbles again, right into his open trap, "Don't answer that! Let's just go already!"

The three young mermen took off from their hiding place behind a large coral bank, tails swishing through the water at an alarming rate. They three were among the fastest swimmers in the capital; or rather, Chanyeol and Baekhyun were among the fastest, and poor Kyungsoo was forced to keep up or be left behind.

After what seemed (at least to Kyungsoo) an age of swimming, the water began to darken and the ridge began to slope down into a deep drop off. Chanyeol glanced back at his friends, amused by the sight of Kyungsoo, eyes wide as oyster shells and clinging so tightly to Baekhyun's arm he thought it might fall off.

"We're almost there," he announced as the sea floor fell away completely and the deep trench was plunged into darkness, "Baekhyun, light it up!"

Baekhyun raised his free arm, rays of pure white light seeping from his very pores, curling up and around his hand, forming a glowing ball of energy and illuminating the darkness, revealing a valley filled to the brim with sunken human ships.

"Whoa," Baekhyun gasped in awe, swimming up next to Chanyeol, Kyungsoo's nails biting into his upper arm like the pincers of a crab, "how many are there?"

"Who knows? Hundreds, maybe thousands!" Chanyeol breathed excitedly. He was grinning madly, tail fin twitching with anticipation.

"A-are you sure this is safe?" Kyungsoo stuttered, "It looks awfully dark down there!"

"That's why we brought Baekhyun!" Baekhyun feigned a hurt expression.

"Not because I'm your very best friend that you can't possibly live without?" Chanyeol snickered, swiping at his very best friend's head playfully.

"You're about as funny as my scaly behind, you know that, right?" Baekhyun ducked the blow, lashing back with his tail. Chanyeol dodged, laughing and snorting obnoxiously. The pair kept at it, eventually swinging so wildly that Kyungsoo was thrown off of Baekhyun's arm with a gasp, his head spinning.

"Last one in is rotten kelp!"

"You're on, light boy!"

"Guys, wait!" Kyungsoo cried as his friends sped off into the rapidly growing darkness, rushing to catch up despite Chanyeol and Baekhyun's combined speed, "THIS IS NOT HOW FRIENDS STICK TOGETHER!"

Huffing and puffing from exhaustion, the wide-eyed young merman eventually caught up to his friends near the broken, fungus covered hull of a huge, upturned ship. The wood was warped and soft looking; it must have been there a long time. Chanyeol peeked in through a round hole in the side. He beckoned them over.

"This one is big enough to swim through!" Baekhyun held his light up to the hole. It bounced off the far wall to a wider hole punched through the inside of the hull, creating a tunnel to the upper part of the ship.

"We're not actually going in there, are we?" Chanyeol sighed.

"Kyunggie, you're either coming with us, or you're staying watch out here, in the dark, by yourself." There was an obvious moment of hesitant contemplation in Kyungsoo's eyes.

"Just come on, guppy!" With a sharp tug and some forceful pushing on Baekhyun and Chanyeol's part, the three mermen slid through the hole into the ship. Using Baekhyun's light as a guide, his other arm firmly trapped in Kyungsoo's vice like grip once again, they swam up through the hull and into the tunnel.

At first glance there wasn't much to see. The space was large and mostly empty, corals, seaweed and moss dangling like greenish brown curtains from what was once the bottom most part of the ship. Chanyeol brushed the weed away from his face as he swam up through the tunnel, followed closely by Baekhyun and Kyungsoo.

"Oh gross, there's moss in my face!" The latter moaned, batting frantically at the curling, fuzzy tendrils. The light curled in his hand bounced erratically off the walls, casting a strange pattern of shadows over the warping wood. Something, a sharp glint no bigger than a baby starfish, buried under mounds of green at the far end of the ship caught Chanyeol's eye.

"Argh get it off me! Wha-Chanyeol let go of my arm! What are you doing!?" Chanyeol had grabbed hold of Baekhyun's free arm - the one not pinned down by his new Kyungsoo barnacle - pointing his glowing hand in the general direction of the strange glimmer.

"Stop flailing! I thought I saw something!" Baekhyun was intent on protesting even further as he struggled for control of his own limbs, when the strange glimmer returned, focused and bright as it reflected his light. Chanyeol sped towards it, drawn like a minnow to an angler's lamp.

"Chanyeol, be careful!" Kyungsoo called out to his friend, voice laced with motherly worry. The merprince didn't appear to hear him.

Chanyeol gently brushed away the layers of dead coral, dirt and weed that covered his prize. He gasped, transfixed by the beautiful thing now clutched gingerly in his pale hand. A round stone, shimmering orange with swirls of gold and red, set in curly yellow metal. A long string of little, round circles made of the same yellow metal looped through another smaller circle at the top of the stone.

“Did you find anything?” Chanyeol started, hastily tucking the stone into the little woven pouch slung across his body. The thick screens of weed obscured him enough from view that he was sure his friends wouldn't be able to see him.

“N-no, it was just some coral and shells and stuff,” he called back. Luckily there were some quite pretty shells laying conveniently nearby, so he shovelled them into his pouch, completely covering his treasure. He didn't know why, but something was telling him to keep this to himself for now.

“Do you wanna keep looking around?” Chanyeol asked, swimming lazily back to his friends.

“Uh, guys...” Kyungsoo began. Nobody seemed to hear.

“I don't know, maybe,” Baekhyun replied, “The ship is pretty old, I'm pretty sure the rest of it is just weed and coral forests.”

“Guys, seriously...I think....”

“We could go check out another sh-”

“GUYS!” Kyungsoo yelled insistently, “Do you hear that!?”

Far in the distance, a sound, shrill, almost ear piercing.

“What is that?” Baekhyun frowned, light dimming as his concentration shifted. The sound grew steadily louder, coming closer and closer at a tremendously fast rate. Three sets of eyes snapped wide in sudden realisation.

“SIRENS!”

“Everybody scramble!!”

Chanyeol shot back down through the tunnel, Baekhyun close at his fins. Kyungsoo, in sheer panic, used his gift of insane strength, ironic considering his timid nature, to crash right through the wood of the hull, just as the others raced through the port hole.

The shriek of the sirens was practically on top of them.

Clutching the bag at his side, Chanyeol pushed through the water, away from the valley of ship wrecks and up towards the surface without a second thought. The sun shone brightly on the water, calling him up, up, up. Mockingly close but still so far away.

With nothing but the swish of his tail and the thud of his own heart in his ears, he swam faster, higher, closer than he'd ever gotten to surface before, until -

“GOTCHA!” The siren slammed into his back, the two tangled and tumbling wildly through the water.

“No-o! Not fair, Bommie noona!” Chanyeol whined in defeat.  The red haired siren named Bom giggled jubilantly, the sound moving through the water in rippling waves. She had her arms wrapped around his shoulders, an act of both affection and restraint.

“Good to see you, too, Chanyeollie! You had me for a second, there! I actually thought you were going to out swim me this time!" Chanyeol cringed sheepishly as she began to drag him back down towards the sea floor.

“Yeah, we wouldn’t want Taeyeon noona to find out I was actually having fun, would we?”

“Chanyeollie, it isn’t polite to talk about Taeyeon-sshi like that!” He bit back the sarcastic remarks resting on the tip of his tongue. He knew Bom was right; he shouldn’t talk about his sister, their queen, in such a disrespectful way.

“Look what I found, unnie!” A smile erupted onto Chanyeol’s face as he burst into another round of obnoxious laughter. He had finally spotted Baekhyun, hanging upside from the pearly white hand of the scary siren leader Chaerin, or CL as she preferred to be called, and boy did he not look amused.

“I find this to be both demeaning and humiliating.” CL smirked, brushing a lock of hair away from her face.

“It’s better than the alternative.” Baekhyun raised an eyebrow, crossing his arms and steadfastly ignoring his supposed best friend’s gratingly over enthusiastic laughter.

“Which is?”

“Me.” Chanyeol’s laughter cut off abruptly, stomach dropping lower than the Mariana Trench at the horribly familiar voice. He looked up, eyes focusing first on the apologetic face of Kyungsoo, his arms held by the two sirens Dara and Minzy who floated resolute behind the last person in the oceans that Chanyeol wanted to see.

Taeyeon.

Oh gods, he was in for it.

Hey guys! So that was the first chapter! Don't forget to comment and sub if you want to, and stay tuned for chapter two! I have a few plans for the future, and if all goes accordingly you should have an update within the next week or so. Constructive criticism is always welcome!

~ Saranghaeyo! *bows* <3