This was certainly something new.
Martyn watched their new arrival from the kitchen table, having pulled up the camera feed on his laptop. Jimmy and Scott were on the other side of the counter, attempting to fix up some semblance of a meal. Really, Scott was teasing Jimmy about how cute their new arrival was, while the mer made increasingly offended protests.
But it was taking Jimmy's mind off of the fight. If you could really call it that.
Martyn had been watching the whole thing through the cameras set up in the corners of the screened-in pool, and while there thankfully hadn't been any obvious scuffles or physical violence-- one of the last mers they'd snatched away from captivity had reacted quite poorly, leaving Jim with yet another scar-- the mer had yelled at Jimmy. It'd left him quite downtrodden, and doubting whether or not they'd been right to take action this time.
They'd decided to give everyone some time to cool off, and Martyn would go down with Jim. Bless him, but Jimmy wasn't the best at explaining things or holding his ground or-- well-- he was softhearted, despite everything he'd been through.
But for now, Martyn just watched as the mer did laps around the pool, probably stretching his fins properly for the first time in weeks.
It'd pissed Martyn off, seeing the little pond the marine rescue had put him in. At least they'd tended to his injures, and fed him. Martyn and Scott had done a cursory examination, to make sure there wasn't anything that needed immediate treatment or microchips or anything of the like. Lizzie would be dropping by to give a more expert opinion, especially about the broken wrist. It'd looked mostly healed, but Martyn wanted a professional to clear it before they thought about letting the mer back out into the open ocean.
He really was gorgeous, not to mention incredibly quick and nimble. Martyn had never seen a mer who looked so much like fire before. It was one thing to know that mer could look so different from each other; it was another thing entirely to see the diversity yourself.
The mer had refused to share his name with Jimmy, so Martyn had taken to calling him 'Firecracker' in his head. Just until they could get the mer's actual name. With the way he'd attacked Scott and lunged at Martyn when they'd been retrieving him-- and then picked an argument with Jimmy the moment he woke up? It fit well enough for the time being.
Martyn looked up when Scott set a plate of food down in front of him, closing the laptop with a soft 'snap.'
"Any changes?" Scott asked, turning to grab the glasses of water from the counter as Jimmy pushed his wheelchair up to the table.
It wasn't a perfect solution to Jimmy's limitations up here on land, but they made things work. At least it let the mer have some semblance of dignity and a great deal of autonomy, rather than having to get lugged around like a sack of potatoes everywhere.
"No. Not unless you count doing laps in the pool a change." Martyn moved the computer out of the way, "After we eat I'll take him some food, maybe try and get his name, or the names and descriptions of his pod members so we can start looking for them. If this mer ended up getting beached from a storm, who knows where his pod ended up."
"I dunno Martyn. He attacked you guys, right?" Jimmy's gaze flicked to the bandages on Scott's shoulder, before it went back to Martyn, "Maybe I should take him the food, he didn't hurt me. I don't know what he might do if you guys go in there."
"He's gonna have to get used to our faces at some point." Scott rolled his eyes, "I'll come with, and we'll bring some sedatives, just in case. At the very least, he might get bored enough to talk to us."
And that was that. Jimmy still insisted on coming too, and really, two people with gills were better than one if Firecracker did get hostile.
Martyn checked the cameras before the went out, wanting to know what the mer was doing before they tried talking to him.
He was still doing laps.
If Martyn didn't know better, Firecracker looked--- anxious? It reminded him of Jimmy, back when they'd first met, when Evo had first put him on Project Glaucus. The endless looping-- it set Martyn on edge. This was more then just stretching fins after being kept in a small recovery pool. It was something desperate.
But they still needed more information. And Firecracker needed food, if he was going to keep swimming in circles like that.
Martyn's suspicions were right.
When they walked out to the pool, the mer was talking to himself. Martyn couldn't understand any of it beyond the desperate tone. He struggled with understanding merspeak when it was anything beyond some of the more basic whistles. This was slurred beyond comprehension to his ears. But the concerned look Scott and Jimmy exchanged clued him in to anything else he needed to know.
Mer were anything but solitary, Matyn had seen firsthand what sort of a toll isolation took on them.
Martyn winced, as the chittering suddenly changed into a sharp screech-- before it went quiet. The mer had overshot, and walloped himself against the wall of the pool like a falcon into glass.
Oh shoot.
Thankfully-- if you could be thankful about someone knocking the sense out of themselves-- Firecracker had hit himself against the shallow end of the pool, where it was only up to Martyn's waist.
Scott crouched on the edge with Marytn, while Jimmy unbuckled from his wheelchair and slipped down to the edge of the pool, then in. The way the mer didn't respond to the disturbance of the water worried Martyn. So-- probably pretty unwisely-- he also slipped into the water when Scott did.
Hindsight was twenty-twenty, really.
Looking back, Martyn had seen the mer shake off the hit, and instantaneous flare of fins not even a second later when he realized who was in the water surrounding him. It wasn't the smartest idea to corner a disorientated and aggressive mer. He'd shoved off the wall in an explosion of movement-- straight at Martyn.
Martyn was just glad that he'd had some semblance of breath control training, and the clarity of mind to get a full lungful of air before he'd gotten yanked under.
What happened next was a flurry of mer-speak and bubbles, as he was dragged to the deepest corner of the pool, a pissed off and posturing mer holding him hostage in a headlock with one arm twisted so far up behind his back that it wouldn't take much more than one bad jostle to pop it out of it's socket.
Martyn was simply focused on holding his breath and trying to control his heartrate. The last thing he needed right now was to start drowning.
Oh, and he was slowly moving his free arm down to where there was an injector tucked into his waistband for easy access. He trusted Scott and Jimmy to keep the mer from ripping his throat out or noticing what he was doing.
It seemed like an hour passed, before Martyn felt the mer's grip loosen on his arm enough for him to dare retaliate.
Both the injector and his breath were knocked away from Martyn in the same moment, the later coming out in a rush of bubbles as Jimmy yanked Martyn away from Firecracker and up to the surface. Martyn saw a flash of blue as Scott tackled the other mer, keeping him from pursuing.
Martyn felt like he coughed up half the pool's contents-- and swallowed the rest of it-- by the time he'd caught his breath.
There was blood in the water.
He evidentially hadn't managed to get the full dose of sedatives into the mer, as he was still fighting against both Jimmy and Scott. All he could hear was an unholy shrieking, overlaid with other merspeak as the thrashing started to slow and Martyn could parse more of what was going on.
Jimmy was the one pinning the mer this time, canary yellow scales pressed to bright red as Jimmy held him shoved against the wall. Scott was the one bleeding. Again.
Martyn still couldn't understand what was being said.
It was quite frustrating, actually, being unable to know what was going on. Merspeak didn't travel too well from water to air, and Martyn was only semi-fluent. He'd never had to learn what those particular whistles meant, cause he'd never needed to before now.
But it looked like the situation was being handled at least. Martyn let himself flop back down to the concrete, a good arms-length from the pool so he couldn't be dragged back in easily. Everything else could be handled in a minute.
Right now he just needed a moment to breathe.
40 notes
·
View notes