Underwater rescue! (Aqualad, open)

[Katie Hearth]

-Flashback, five years ago-

“I hate water. I hate boats. And I hate fishes!,” the eight year old exclaimed. Whining, though potentially lethal, had no strong effect on the mood that day. The preparations had been made weeks in advance, and as she said this, all she could do was see her father’s plan come together. He had requested a weekend off and for the first time, in a long, long, while they were finally making an effort to gather the family together for a ‘unforgettable adventure‘. At least, that‘s what her sister would call it. Becky had as much enthusiasm as a dead rat. When her older sister wasn’t flipping through an old Cosmo magazine, chewing on a gum that lost its flavors two gas stations ago, she would curl next to the car door blasting music from her headphones. Katie could only hope the ‘unforgettable’ part was true.

The docks reeked of dead fishes. She couldn’t cover her nose with her pudgy fingers without feeling like it penetrated through every grove of her hand and then there was all that noise. The lapping of the waves was alright. It was the sharp docking horns that annoyed her, and those stupid birds that squawked over food. Her brothers found it entertaining to dump crumbs on her puffy red hair and the reaction was instantaneous. She had a whole school of birds teaming up against her. It took getting into the car to avoid further pecking. Scratch that, if the trip served for anything, it was to push one of them into the ocean and leave them stranded there. She contended to just glaring, her cheeks turned a shade of red under the sun, and she simply glared in her poka dotted swim suit. She wouldn’t be half as upset as she was then if they actually listened to her. It wasn’t like she could swim. Charlie, Sheen and Samuel - even her dad- could. But what about her mother? Katie hugged her mom’s hand as her face crinkled.

“But, what if we drawn,” she insisted.

They had both watched as the men went to work. Her three brother’s rummaged through the family van, picking out fishing equipment and buckets- hoisting everything they could onto their rented boat ‘Scavenger’. Charlie, the one closest to her age, glanced at her from within the backseat of the vehicle, his cream colored hat slopping down on both sides of his face. He had pocketed his hand held videogames and gave her a reassuring smile, “Don‘t worry, Catnip, if you drawn, I’ll save you.” Yeah, right. She gave him a look.

“Or at the very least use you for bait.”

“Moooommm!”

“Now stop it you two! Or you‘re both going to be in big trouble when we get back.”

Katie would not have known it then but the two hour trip just to sit on a boat was a walk on the park, it was getting used to the constant motion of the sea that would hamper her day. When they docked out, the first thing she did was keep herself close to the center of the boat, refusing to participate in any activity requiring getting near the railings. They had bounded off towards the horizon hoping to catch bait, or, at the minimum enjoy nature, neither of which she found productive.

“Come on sourpuss, it’s not that bad,” Sheen leaned on the railings, his sandy blond hair rustled against a passing sea breeze. Katie edged closer, only because she trusted him more than she did Charlie and a lot less Sam. She clutched onto his hand and held it tightly.

“See, not so bad, huh?” She shook her head.

“Hey! I think I see something!” She leaned on the railing, her head ducked down when she saw the white reflection of a dolphin passing by and then- she squinted her eyes- was that a…

“Sheen! I think I see a boy drowning!”

“Where, I don’t see anything? Katie, that’s not funny.”

“No, I swear, I saw him!”

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[Aqualad]

"No! Wait! Come back-!" Aqualad yelled in his mind, squinting his eyes in the direction of his fleeing dolphin friend and willing his thoughts to cross the expanding distance between them. But no, the white mammal flicked its wide tail in his direction a couple more times and then disappeared out of sight, leaving behind only the clicking of a sonar that the boy was sure sounded suspiciously like mocking laughter.

He stopped in place, simply floating, and crossed his arms.
"Gah!" He cried in mental frustration. When he had convinced Aquaman to teach him aquapathy, he had no idea it was going to be this difficult. His newly acquired mentor made it look so easy. Then again, Aquaman had to be at least thirty-something, and Aqualad was only twelve (almost thirteen!). He was missing out on a lot of practice.

Whatever the case, just when Garth had thought he had managed to lock onto mental wavelengths with that dolphin, it had plunged him into a game of chase, led him way out of the boundaries of the city, and then taken off without so much as a murmur of farewell.

Staring out in the direction the dolphin had escaped in, the boy gritted his teeth and renewed his determination. It wouldn't be easy, but he would get it. He--

Was distracted then by the large object that was sitting on the surface of the water above him and slightly to the left. It was big, and it groaned and clunked threateningly, but apart from bobbing slightly, it wasn't moving anywhere.

He turned his body toward it with a little motion, unfolding his arms, and looked up curiously to try and fathom what it could be. It could be dangerous. He grew up in the ocean surrounded by aquatic life, and he knew when he saw something that didn't belong here. But it was so big and dark and faceless that he couldn't for the life of him tell exactly what it was, and it provoked his curiosity. Maybe if he were to peek out from the surface of the water...

He could see the sunlight filtering through directly above him, playing on the surface of the waves and shining down to illuminate the first few feet of the sea. It was a calming, mesmerizing effect - he had always thought so. Even as he told himself that he shouldn't - that he should turn back and go and inform someone about this, whatever it was - he found himself drifting slowly up toward that shining surface of light. And then he was squeezing his eyes shut, bracing himself for the crashing of sunlight on his vision.

His head broke the surface of the water. And it was cold. It was cold, and bright. Even with his eyes shut, the blackness of his vision turned red in the unfiltered sunlight, and it took him a few long seconds to slowly blink them open.
Air. He had read about it, and heard about it, but he wasn't prepared for it. It was biting and rough on his wet skin and it hurt his throat a bit. He resisted the urge to cough because he knew it wouldn't make a difference.

Dazed and confused, the head that poked out of the water, with its black eyes and ears that he hadn't quite grown into yet, turned up to look at the boat.

Yes, that's what it was. A boat. A crude vehicle that surface-dwellers used to traverse the ocean without getting wet (without getting wet! What a ridiculous idea!). And where there was a boat, there would undoubtedly be...

Humans. Two of them. One was taller, the other appeared to be female, a few years younger than him, and with alarmingly colored hair.

Now, he had heard conflicting tales, and plenty of them, about the nature of humans. Everyone he had grown up around had raved of stories about the brutality of these surface-dwellers, the way they pollute the ocean and try to kill its spirit. But for some reason, Aquaman would defend them fiercely. Until now, Garth had been sitting on the fence about the issue, not having enough information to decide for himself. This, and the bizarre appearance of the human child, was enough to keep him in place, blinking up at her and waiting for her to... he didn't know... talk? Perhaps pull out a weapon and attack him? He had no idea what to expect, so he blinked, and waited...

[Katie Hearth]

“No! Look, he’s right there,” Katie clutched his hand with both of hers. Her look was desperate when she noticed that the boy, (you could hardly see him unless you squinted really hard), would not break through the surface. He was drowning! And he was there, Katie could barely see him against the ocean blue but she had noticed his eyes, it had to be human? “Sheen! Sheen! Look!”

“Alright,” he pressed himself against the metal bars as far as he could without falling over, his eyes searching the surface of the water, “hey, I think I see it,” There was a ripple in the water and then a loud splash. Sheen drew away when the large body of a pale dolphin skimmed, shimmy, and then jumped from the surface of the water and back into that endless body, leaving in its wake a large splash. “Cute,” her older brother wiped the water out of his face.

“Sheen, come over here and give me a hand!”

“Please, don’t go,” Katie buried her face in his khaki shorts.

“Come on squirt, I’ll be back in a bit,” he ruffled her hair affectionately, “don’t play too close to the water, I’ll be keeping a close watch.” Katie stared as he walked off, now a mess of damped clothes and plastered hair. Towards the front nozzle, all the guys were gathered. She could hear Charlie laughing at him- to which Sheen’s only reaction was to wrestle him into a headlock. There were a series of laughter and some more chattering among her family. Her mother was sitting on a plastic folding chair, she beckoned her to her lap but Katie shook her head. She focused her attention towards the lapping waves and their lolling motion, her green eyes darted where she last seen the person- the boy. It had to have been human. It had a face. She looked doubtfully towards the waves, her little hands laced around the metal bars. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t find what she was looking for, she had about given up when she heard the disturbance in the water.

Eagerly, she skimmed the top layer. A gasp escaped her parted lips and she fell backwards when she saw-- a head! It was a boy. No, that wasn’t quite right. He had stark pale skin reminiscent of a dolphin, and dark black hair. His eyes were the strangest things she'd ever seen. Katie couldn’t distinguish him well underneath the water, but there were hues of blues and blacks, and moving limbs that kept him a float. A mermaid! She scrambled up and clutched tightly to the only lifeline between her and the sea to study him closely. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t even move. Maybe- maybe he couldn’t speak human? Neither could Ariel, not until she made a deal with Ursula.

Tentatively, she lifted her hand and waved at him.

“Hi!”

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[Aqualad]

The taller of the two humans seemed to leave the side of the boat, so that only the girl with the hair remained. That wasn't a bad thing. If he remembered correctly, it was the males in human culture who traditionally did the hunting for the pack, so that one had been the bigger threat. Not that he was scared, he told himself. He could take them. Easy.

Even so, as the human girl finally caught sight of him and clutched onto the metal part of the boat in order to crane down and examine him as best she could, he couldn't help but ready himself for a quick exit. He would be able to duck down out of sight and be fifty feet out of harm's way in seconds, he was sure of that much at least.

She spoke at him. A greeting. That wasn't hostile, he was pretty sure 'Hi' meant the same thing in all cultures.

He opened his mouth tentatively to reply, but instead he sucked in a lungful of stinging air and winced and shut it again. Instinctively, he dipped the lower half of his face back below the water's surface, feeling the flow of water on his gills and just continuing to stare at the human with his eyes until he was ready to come back up into the air again. It wasn't as bad this time. But it was still pretty cold.

He opened his mouth, ready to try again.
"Hello." He responded quietly, for some reason expecting his voice to sound different above water than it did below. It was quite the same.
He decided to ask what they were doing here, if they were polluting the ocean or trying to kill fish or something else equally evil. Instead he managed to stutter
"Y-you're human... aren't you?"
And he felt pretty stupid for that. He asked the one thing he was already just about perfectly sure of. 'Nice one, Garth.'

[Katie Hearth]

What happened? Katie leaned in on the railing, almost loosing her footing. The mermaid ducked his exposed neck and mouth towards the water, leaving the dark abyss of his eyes to linger on her. ‘No, don’t go’, she had wanted to say, but the young boy did not skitter off into the deep unknown. Instead, he lingered and Katie couldn’t help but smile in relief. The best way she could describe it was that he ‘gulped’ water and thought it silly for him to do so. It must have tasted funny. It was contaminated with fishes and the water tasted salty but then she thought about Mrs. Peckerson and how she explained the ecosystem of aquatic creatures and how most, if not all, breathed underwater. She watched him curiously, unsure and hesitant to do anything to startle the majestic mermaid- and then he spoke in a human voice.

Oh, no! He must have made a deal with Ursula, too.

That one question, the ’did you make a deal with the evil witch’, burned in her mind but was quickly pushed asides because just as she parted her lips, alarmed, his own question was posed in a stammer and she was greatly taken aback by what she thought must have been the obvious. Did she not look like a human? It didn’t occur to her that perhaps he’d never seen one up close. In her mind, she pictured a school of mermaids venturing towards the surface to bask in the sun. He was right there, right in front of her.

Her brows knitted together and she pushed away the hair that fell in her line of vision before nodding. “um-” she looked around to see if anyone was near by. Her parents were off the other side entertained by something in the distance. She turned to him, all hushed and careful, “are you a mermaid?” Her fingers curled around the steel, and she kneeled down to get a better view of him.

“You look like a mermaid but cooler.”

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[Aqualad]

So his assumption had been correct - he was indeed addressing a human. But he had already known that! He knew nothing new! And apparently it was the girl's turn to pose a question. She seemed to be as curious as he was of her, by the way she leaned down to get as close as possible so that she could stare at him. He supposed that not many humans had seen an Atlantean in reality. It was mind-bending to think that he was the oddity here.

Unfortunately, he wasn't able to answer the human's question as easily as she had his. His first reaction was to lower his dark eyebrows in a confused frown. He didn't know what a 'mermaid' was, but he had never been called one before.

"I don't think so..." He responded, still keeping his voice low, and keeping his white-dotted eyes peeled for the signs of the other human's return. "I'm an Atlantean." He added, wondering if perhaps 'mermaid' was some sort of nickname given to his people by surface-dwellers. He was going to add that he was 'You know, from Atlantis?' but then thought the better of it. He should avoid giving away any information about where he was from if possible, especially until he knew if this human was a real threat or not. He worried that he had said too much already. Still, he could hardly expect the girl to answer any of his many questions if he didn't offer his own answers in return.

Whatever a 'mermaid' was, apparently he looked like a cold one. That was believable, although he noticed now that the worst of the cold had passed, and now the most irritating thing about the air surrounding his head was that it was drying his skin very quickly. Aquaman was able to stay out of water for days if he needed to, or so he had heard. Yet another area he would have the joy of practising in. For now he would have to content himself with quickly ducking his head in and out of the water when the dryness got too much.

Finding the courage to ask the original question he had, he cleared his throat a little before speaking again.
"What are you doing here? If... if you're polluting the ocean, I'll... well, I'll... uh..." His black eyes widened and the white dots darted here and there, looking for a threat to make, "I'll... tell?"
He almost just gave up on himself then and there and sunk back below the depths in shame, but he had started this strange conversation with this odd being, and he told himself that he might as well finish it.

[Katie Hearth]

“An Atlantean? She craned her head, testing the word for herself. It did not sound familiar- surely she would have remembered it if she had heard it in passing, so she echoed the name, listening to it in her own words, “At-lan-tean. At-lan-tean”. Katie smiled. It sounded pretty. She stored that information in the back of her mind where she thought it to be precious enough not be forgotten but truly, the words would have faded in the short time it took for her to go to sleep that day.

A part of her, the one that wanted to share the oddity of her day, questioned whether she should head back to the warm embrace of her mother and tell her exactly what she had seen. It was a point of interest that needed questioning and with enough persuasion, she was sure she could drag her from her seat. The fear of losing him in her leave, however; was greater and so she linger. When this Atlantean posed his question, punctuated by a weak threat, Katie looked around convinced that there was some weight in his words and that‘s when she saw it in the distance. Her eyes widen. “You’re going to tell the seagulls?”

Her head turned towards the offensive creatures, only a short distance away. It seemed a little--strange. Katie pulled away and she turned to the pack of red-heads, “my family’s just fishing, I don’t think you need to tell on them,” she mused, and then pointed to the one specific bird that poked its head in the water, “I think they’re fishing, too.”

Katie’s face brightened up, ignoring whatever reaction the Atlantean would have to her words. She climbed onto the railings with much difficulty, until she heaved herself up, balancing rather awkwardly. “Come,” her hand stretched forward, “my parents would love to see you!”

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[Aqualad]

The seagulls? What was this kid talking about? He couldn't help but look at the white birds that were skimming the water a little way off and ponder the logic - if there was any - behind her allocation of threat to these creatures. In actuality, his idea of 'telling' was maybe going and getting Aquaman, he would know what to do. Or one of his teachers, if he could find them. But he guessed the seagull thing worked too...

"Sure." He replied defensively, crossing his arms and maintaining his stern and serious expression. "Me and the seagulls have an... understanding!" Well, it wasn't like he could tell the fish. He'd already seen today how well that would work out for him...

The next thing the human said was to explain that her family was fishing, and to defend them by pointing out that the seagulls they were apparently focusing on were doing the same thing. Had he been so inclined, the boy was ready to throw back an argument that birds were part of the ecosystem, but that humans were greedy and used evil machines to rip life out of the ocean in great numbers. That was just one of the rumors he'd heard, anyway. He didn't put this forth, however. He was keen to get off of the rather strange topic of the birds, and was much too fascinated with the surface-dweller to provoke an argument (though he was sure he would win it).

Garth busied himself with splashing water on his face as nonchalantly as possible to try and keep his skin hydrated (he was starting to feel like it was going to fall off), and when he blinked back up at the girl again, she was balancing precariously on the railings of her boat, stretching a hand out to him, asking that he see her parents.

He kicked very slightly and moved a little further away from her, keeping his hands pointedly to himself.
"I... don't think so." He responded, keeping his suspicious eyes on her. If her parents were fishing, the last thing he wanted to do was go and present himself to them - the biggest and rarest catch they were likely to get all day. It would be suicide. There was a reason Atlantis was a secret.

This talk of meeting older and probably more dangerous humans was making him uncomfortable enough that the instinct to flee was starting to overcome the curiosity that led him to stay, and with a subtle movement of his limbs he began to turn away from the girl.
"I think I'd better leave now." He told her. Yes, if he left her now without being seen by anyone else, the adult humans would doubtless think she was just making up stories to amuse herself if she told them about him. "Goodbye, human girl." He added as he turned away, and with a slick motion, he had dived back into the deep blue.

[Katie Hearth]

“No, don‘t--- go!”

Katie did not understand what went wrong. Had she insulted him? Was there some pressing matter that he needed to attend to? No, that wasn’t quite right. The mysterious boy left when she extended her invitation to him. In that moment, she could not comprehend that she had tried to invite a predominately fish friendly guest onboard a fishing boat. It wasn’t a winning combination. Had she known better, (and she would have given enough time to contemplate), Katie would have done it differently. She would have been satisfied with sitting on the railings and talking about- whatever it was fishes do underwater even if the idea of talking was slightly overrated for her active mind. Feeling herself drawn by the mysterious boy, Katie made an attempt that could have just as easily been erased by the passing wind and the constant chattering of birds near by.

“Come back! I have candy and I’ll give you my friendship, ple--ase!” She promised- as silently as possible. She was fortunate that her sister had brought her laptop. The music, with whatever bit of battery it had left, blared to life with old music tracks, and her siblings, she was sure to have been fighting over something irrelevant. It was safe for her to try and coax the boy back and so she persisted. She brought out the big guns- a complex combo that consisted of lip quivering and big glistened doe eyes. She even whistled, all gap tooth and awkward, in hopes that her antics would draw his attention.

Katie looked out longingly at the water, saddened by his disappearance. So much for that. What were the chances that he would even come back? She dismounted from the rails, and looked around the boat in dismay. Everyone’s attention had been drawn by the sea at the opposite end, and here she was with a piece of information that would have topped the biggest catch of that day- unless, of course, that catch happened to be that Atlantean mermaid that she had talked to. She would have given up to the mercy of her father’s boring trip but something in that boat caught her attention and she was instantly propelled by a brilliant idea.

Three minutes later Katie was back on the edge of the boat, this time accompanied by a lifesaver. She had made sure to beeline around the boat so that her parents were aware that she was there. There was something about popping in on them in order to restart some mental watch of theirs that would otherwise go off after a certain amount of time being absent.

The next plan of action was simple, maybe even brilliant by her account. She would plop in the water, swim for a bit, and then go back to the ladders that connected to the boat before anyone noticed. The boat wasn’t in motion yet, and wouldn’t be until the sun set. She judged that a good eight minutes would do. Feeling confident, she descended down the ladder until she felt the cold water on her toe- and then, her leg, and before she knew it, her whole body followed suit.

The water was a sheet of ice against her warm skin.

Katie turned to look at her lifeline. It would only be eight minutes. She hugged the lifesaver and kicked awkwardly to keep afloat- now where was he?

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[Aqualad]

Garth's exit hadn't been perhaps quite as final as it had looked from above. While he had slipped back beneath the welcoming waves, he had only descended back into the sea a couple of meters - deep enough so that he couldn't be seen from above the surface any more, but near enough that he could still hear the girl was talking, though he couldn't figure out what she was saying.

He was still turned away from the direction of the boat, and he folded his arms again, frowning this time at himself, and wondering if he was being a coward for fleeing from such an intriguing opportunity. Or maybe swimming away was the smart thing to do. Was be being wise or cowardly? He didn't know! He would ask his mentor or his mother, but there was every chance they would be mad at him for even interacting with a human! This was such a moral gray area, and it made the whole thing rather frustrating.

His ears twitched as he realized that the minute sounds of the girl's voice had finally stopped, and Garth sagged his shoulders in an expression of both relief and defeat. Well, that was the end of that. If he was lucky the human had just gotten bored and moved away. If not, she had gone to tell her parents, but they wouldn't believe her anyway. Hopefully.

Just then, the relative silence that was beginning to creep back into his underwater world was shattered with the sound of something hitting the water behind him, and even if he somehow hadn't heard that, he could feel the vibrating of the water as it was erratically swished about. It made him jump and he spun around immediately to see... a body. Headless and armless, and hovering up near the surface of the sea beside the form of the boat.

He brought a hand up to his face and exasperation. What was that girl doing now? Was she seriously attempting to pursue an Atlantean in his natural environment? Maybe humans were as dense as he had heard. It wasn't like she would be able to breathe down here, so if he were to turn away and plummet, there was nothing she would be able to do to stop him. And he almost did... but a sense of responsibility compelled him to linger. He knew that humans couldn't swim as well as they could, and he expected that younger ones had even less experience. If this girl - as bizarre and dangerous as she might be - were to drown because he was too afraid to stay and chat for a while... well, he would never be able to forget that. Maybe the little human had been counting on that. If so, humans were apparently evil geniuses at a young age.

Reluctantly, he drifted back over to where the girl was thrashing idiotically in the water above. Her movements reminded him of a baby sea turtle he had once seen trapped under a rock. But it was less endearing on a human.

Coming up closer, but staying safely out of arm's reach, Garth ascended for the second time and his eyes peered out from the water again. His eyebrows lowered in a confused expression as he observed the object the human was clinging to. It was... he had no idea what it was. Some kind of miniature boat? How... impractical.

"What are you doing?" He inquired, only a slight hint of irritation in his voice as he raised his mouth over the surface of the waves to speak, "You know you can't follow me to Atlantis, don't you?" He asked, and then cringed when he realized he had done what he had specifically planned not to do and told her where he was from. The damage done, he opened his eyes again and looked at her expectantly, not sure what else this unpredictable creature could possibly do to surprise him.

[Katie Hearth]

It was hard to say what would come next out of her sporadic decision. Katie, first of all, was not expecting to see the strange little mermaid, not right away, and second, her bountiful courage was beginning to waver in the daunting water. At that point in time, not even a minute had rolled by when she felt her heart hammering loudly against her rib cage, and her skin crawling with gooseflesh. Being in the water felt uncomfortable and foreign to her. It wasn’t like taking a shower or jumping inside a pool. This was a living, breathing, monster! Things lived inside of it. Things that would surely eat her should she linger long enough. It housed a number of fishy lives and the scary unknown. This little realization wrapped itself around her head, effectively pushing the comfortable boundaries when she realized she couldn’t see the bottom of the ocean. In fact, it was hard enough to catch sight of her tiny toes unless she lifted her leg- and that alone was a challenge. Her arms pressed tightly against the donut, and her legs kept moving just because it felt natural for her to do so. It made her feel safe.

The dark head that emerged from the water was enough to get her to kick away with two startled eyes being poised towards dots of black.

He was back!

Katie’s surprise expression melted into one of relief with dimpled cheeks and a gap grin- not only had he emerged from the blue, but he had also acknowledged her with a question that didn’t reach her attention, not right away. She was momentarily stunned by the close appearance of the strange creature. He looked like a boy, somewhere around her brother’s age but there were little telltale signs that said otherwise. It was odd to see something so out of place in her little world. Her siblings had always bumped mermaids next to tooth fairies and unicorns. Seeing this piece of fictitious treasure-trove made her question the possibilities of magical creatures.

She remembered that he had opened his mouth- opening what he may not have realized then to be dangerous lines of communication. “I’m just--swimming...” She ducked her head into the water, mimicking his own odd mannerisms, her hands still clasped tightly onto the rim of the lifesaver, before emerging.

“like a fish.”

She would no doubt repeat the motion assuming it was common courtesy among his fishy friends to do so when puncturing a sentence. But then she paused. Her bright green eyes looked at him questionably when he brought up Atlantis.

“Atlantis? What‘s that? Is it where you live?” She peered quizzically at the ocean, where she thought his tail must have been but found it hard to see.

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[O.O.C: I keep thinking an eight year old would so not act like this. >_<]

[Aqualad]

What was it about this girl? Every word that came out of her mouth made her seem stranger - though this time it was her mannerisms that baffled him. What was that? Dipping her face into the water... was she... mocking him? He didn't think so, somehow. This human was many confusing things, but in her defense she did seem to be quiet innocent, at least as far as Garth could see. That was the main reason why, when she told him she was 'just swimming', he could actually believe her. Besides, it wasn't like she could follow him. As to whether she was swimming 'like a fish' on the other hand... well... he could raise a few objections to that point. He for one had never seen any kind of fish rely on a strange, brightly colored disc.

Then the girl started peering around at the water that surrounded them.
"Yes it is." He responded to her question, "And you won't find it by looking like that. It's hidden deep beneath the ocean, so humans can't find it. So don't even try." He realized that he might have been coming off as needlessly abrasive, but as innocent as this human appeared to be, he couldn't even imagine how guilty he would feel if his interaction with this girl somehow brought human attention to Atlantis. It wasn't worth even thinking about. Banishment would be the least of his worries if something like that ever came to pass.

Still, he felt bad and a part of his mind - the part that had enticed him into talking to the human in the first place - nudged at him to be civilized. This was a rare human-Atlantean meeting, even if the human was just a child. It was part of his duty, he decided, to at least try and be approachable. She hadn't done anything even remotely threatening so far.

He examined her suspiciously for a moment longer with his alien-like eyes, before visibly relaxing a little.
"I'm Aqualad." He told her, choosing to use the new codename he had thought of for himself since meeting his mentor (though he hadn't shared it with said other yet - this seemed like a good situation for a test run) "Do you have a name?".

[Katie Hearth]

“Oo-h’, she mouthed out quietly, surprised by his insightful answer. She squinted her eyes harder, hoping that, in doing so, she would find a little dot of lights illuminated from a distant underwater castle. Assuming that this Atlantis he spoke about was a magnificent carbon copy of Ariel’s world. With no luck, Katie found herself looking at her own reflection. Anything else was but pitch darkness- until she saw something moving, flickering even, and she gasped, pointing excitedly.

“I think I see it! Is it that over there?” She exclaimed and then frowned. The light she was pointing to shifted, and it took her an awkward moment to realize she was staring at a light source that bounced off from the water. She looked harder. Now more than ever determined to find this mysterious Atlantis. There was lots of pointing on her part, a full on scouting included, where she would paddle around, every time a little farther away from the boat, and, in her juvenile excitement, she would declare Atlantis ‘found’. This was very rarely pursued by fact. Fluttering sea particles, a passing fish, lights from above, all these things were the results of her search and in the end Katie gave up. She crossed her arms and ‘hmphed!’ with this definitive air.

Katie returned her attention towards the boy, surprised. Aqualad sounded weird. Like, it didn’t belong to a person, it belonged to a household product, or a cartoon character. Then again, he did live underwater, in a place called Atlantis. Aqualad would be forgiven. For that matter, when he did say his name, something in her little mind clicked. She took this as an extension of friendship. This opened doors.

“My name’s Katie Hearth.” She grinned.

“Where is Atlantis? Are you related to dolphins? What do you eat? Do you have a tail?

Most importantly the pipe hole connected between her unfiltered mouth and brain.

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[Aqualad]

Patience, apparently, was going to be the key thing in dealing with this kid. Even though he'd already told her not to bother looking for Atlantis, the girl seemed obsessed with doing so. He crossed his arms again and controlled his breathing (which took some doing in itself with the massive influx of oxygen he was currently receiving directly into his lungs) and didn't say anything as she paddled awkwardly about trying to find his home. To be fair, children were not so different from this under the sea. Just as filled with curiosity and excitement. He supposed that he must have been the same at some point (though he certainly couldn't recall it), and it was this supposition that lent him the patience he needed to continue to deal with her.

Eventually she gave up looking for Atlantis herself and simply decided to interrogate him directly. She also offered him her name in exchange for his. Katie Hearth. It was a strange name, but one that he was sure he wasn't going to forget any time soon, not after this encounter.

He sighed at her questions before attempting a response. He was always more responsible than other kids, and all the grown-ups said he was thoughtful and intelligent, but at this point he had never felt more like an adult in comparison to another child. It wasn't such a bad feeling to be the wiser one, though he still wasn't going to just give away the secrets of his people. Not that legs were a particularly big secret.

"It's hidden, like I said." Was the first answer he gave, before listing off the others, counting them on his fingers as he did so, "Only in the way you're related to gorillas, I eat food, and..." He tilted back a little in the water and popped a black foot out of the water between them, "No, I have legs."

He removed it again, taking the opportunity to duck his head in the water to rehydrate again before coming back up. He was getting more used to this 'air' business now, but it was still very uncomfortable.
"Now I get to ask a question." He declared, in an attempt to force some semblance of order into this conversation. He paused for a moment, thinking about what to ask unlike his new acquaintance. "Do humans go to school like Atlanteans? Do you have teachers? And what do they teach you, if not about the ocean?" He had already found out that they had parents and siblings, but that much he had assumed - lots of animals had families. Not so many had an education system, and that was what intrigued him at the moment.

[Katie Hearth]

“I am not related to gorillas,” she had humph, indignantly. Not that he had accused her of being some distant cousin, thrice removed from a family of gorillas. It merely sounded like that to the eight year old, whose temperament was quickly extinguished when he showed his black clad foot. Just like a human. Only, he didn’t quite have toes and, from her angle, she couldn’t tell if what he had showed her was a booted leg of some tight skin material. Katie waddled closer for further inspection. The water’s added to motion, lapping in longer waves and dragging her bright orange lifesaver towards the open sea. She pitched a nod that was rather enthusiastic.

“I’m a second grader,” she gushed with an air of pride and then enlightened him further about her teachers with much animation from her moving limbs. “Mrs. Birch has a mustache but she’s really nice and she taught me how to do math. I have two teachers though, one of them is a teacher aid and she has been reading to us about cat in the hat and all those doctor Seuss books- I still have to work on my homework,” she thought pensively, but then added a dismissive ’nah.’

“I don’t know, I just want to cook and become a- watchacallit?- a cooker,” she rambled on. There was a splash in the distance, one that Katie had not paid close attention to. She had already launched on another topic relative to her school’s curriculum, how to read and write, and how she’s friends with this girl named Brittney- her antics of dipping her face into the water was long forgotten. How her sisters and brother’s were a pain in the butt and how after this exhilarating experience, she was going to buy a pet fish and name him Aqualad. By normal standards, the rubbish would have bored the grown ups to an early retirement in their activities. She had every enthusiastic bone in her body to think that Aqualad was different. Unlike her school companions, he was pretty cool- like the older kid, with the swept bangs, and the loner air- kind of cool. Like the cool that belonged at the bottom of a cereal box- cool. Katie kicked her legs, trying to keep herself afloat but, much to her annoyance, there was a soft echoing of pain from worn out limbs that were not used to the strain of constant motion, and she kept shifting her arms to ease the pressure from her hold on the lifesaver. The signs on her tiny hands revealed deep imbedded grooves but the last thing she wanted to do- and it was quite obvious as she neither made any indications of her distress- was to go back to her little world.

“What do you do in Atlantis?” She didn’t notice that the seagulls that had a good distance away disappeared. She didn’t notice small traces of blood that dissipated in the water, that, in her single minded attempt to hold a conversation with an Atlantean, she was beginning to get further away from the comforting distance of the boat. Katie didn’t notice a lot of things, she was already fireshooting him another question, this one, she thought, was perhaps more important.

“Do you speak fish?”