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Ranboo didn’t remember a lot.
He knew that wasn’t normal. He knew that most mers knew where they came from, who their parents were, what they had done the day before and the day before that.
Ranboo didn’t know any of that. He knew his name, he knew how to hide in the tangles of kelp forests, but other than that… his home, his parents, his past was a huge blank space in his head.
He used to have a pod, though. He was pretty sure of that. He could - however vaguely - remember careful hands braiding his hair, someone holding him close, feeling loved and wanted.
Not anymore, though. Somewhere between then and now, something had happened, and now Ranboo was alone.
He didn’t like being alone.
Someone else must have taken care of hunting, back somewhere in his past, because he didn’t remember being hungry, then. He was hungry now.
He was always hungry.
Hunting was hard, Ranboo had learned, Ranboo relearned every time he had to go out and find food. The little kelp forest he had found was full of options, luckily, but nothing kept him full for very long except fish, and those were hard to catch.
Ranboo just hoped he would get better at it before he starved.
He swam slowly through the kelp, tracking the fish he was chasing by the way the strands moved. He was close to it, he was pretty sure.
There.
A flicker of scales through the green.
Ranboo forced his fins flat and kept his head down as he swam; he couldn’t risk drawing attention to himself. He had to be invisible until it was time to pounce.
Finally, finally, he got a good glimpse of the fish. It was big enough to give him pause, just for a second. Bigger than him, almost. It was a risky hunt, but it was big enough to feed him for days, if he managed to kill it.
Desperation made the decision for him.
He crept closer, one tiny flick of his tail at a time. Then, finally, he was close enough to dart forward and latch on with his claws.
The fish bucked, wriggling and trying desperately to swim away from him.
Ranboo hissed, digging his claws in deeper, biting as deep as he could into its neck with his tiny little teeth.
It wasn’t enough.
The fish slammed him into the sand below them, then darted away as Ranboo tried to get back his bearings.
No!
Ranboo warbled in angry disappointment, allowing himself just a second of self-pity, then swam over to a large rock so he could look over any injuries he’d gotten.
He had a scrape along his shoulder from the sand, and his breathing felt a little funny still from the impact, but other than that the hunt hadn’t hurt him. Thank goodness. He was still dealing with the last injury he’d gotten, he couldn’t handle another one so soon afterward.
He was still hungry, though, which meant it was time to look for backup sources of food.
Suddenly, a long, low rumble rippled through the water.
Ranboo froze.
That was another mer.
Other mers were dangerous. They were usually a lot bigger than him, and a lone pup infringing on their territory was easy prey.
Another rumble, from the opposite side.
Two other mers. Two adult mers, from the sound of it.
Ranboo slipped off of the rock and swam for his just-for-now nest, his fins tucked in tight. He had to be quick and quiet and he could not be seen.
That was his only chance.
Phil was getting hungry.
It had been a while since he and Techno had last stopped to hunt, and as much as he loved traveling, he was about ready for a break. This was about the area they usually stopped, anyway; Bad and Skeppy had territory nearby, and Techno was eager to see his friend again.
He sent out a low rumble, checking Techno’s location. Techno rumbled back, a warm click-trill tacked onto the end of it. So he’d caught something, then.
Phil spread his wings and swam toward his podmate.
He saw the flash of pinkish scales first, glinting through the kelp. Phil stayed out of the greenery, personally - Techno may have the dexterity and sleek tail to move through kelp, but Phil decidedly did not. He was far more suited to swimming through reefs and open water. He clicked to get Techno’s attention.
Techno noticed him and swam up, a dead grouper under one arm and something orangey-pink cradled carefully in his hand.
Phil frowned, swimming down to meet him. “What’s that, mate?”
“An anemone,” Techno told him, holding out the orange-pink thing. Sure enough, it looked like a typical kelp forest anemone, except all of the tentacles had been bitten off. “We’ve got company.”
There was only one type of creature Phil knew of that ate anemones like that. He frowned, leaning in to take a better look at the thing. “There can’t be a clownfish mer pod out here, we would have seen them already.”
Techno shrugged, handing the anemone to Phil so he could hold up the grouper. It wasn’t an overly large fish, more of a snack than a meal if they were splitting it, but there were more marks on it than Techno usually left on his prey. “I don’t think it’s a pod.”
Wordlessly, Phil took the grouper as well, squinting at the wounds. They were fairly fresh, and he would almost have thought Techno had just been sloppy with his catch, except… those tooth marks were too small to have been made by Techno’s mouth.
They were too small to be made by any clownfish mer, too.
The wounds were sloppy, he realized, like the hunter had been fighting with everything they had to take down this one fish. And failed.
It was all adding up to a very, very unsettling picture.
“You don’t think… ?” Phil glanced up at his podmate, the question breaking off into a worried trill.
Techno rumbled softly. “Yeah. It looks like a pup on their own.”
“But Techno, a lone pup…”
“I know,” Techno said, easing Phil’s claws away from the grouper and the anemone - his grip had been tightening without him realizing. “I know, Phil.”
Phil had always been the more sociable of them, but Techno had a soft heart for creatures in need or in distress, and the desire to protect the young was hardwired into mers. Not everyone listened to that instinct, of course, especially if the pup was part of a rival pod, but a baby all alone?
“Something must have happened,” Phil hummed, flaring his fins. “They won’t survive on their own, not for long.”
“You want us to hunt down one pup, smaller than this grouper, in this whole forest?” Techno asked with a flick of his tail.
Phil flicked his right back and waited.
“… Only because you’ll never stop poutin’ at me if we leave them,” Techno sighed, turning back toward the kelp. Anyone else might have been convinced by the show of reluctance, but not Phil. He knew Techno was just as eager as he was to find and help the poor thing.
“I’ll keep an eye out overhead!” Phil called after him, swimming up above the kelp. There were still a few strands that he had to push through, but nowhere near as bad as it would have been closer to the sea floor.
Techno chirped in acknowledgement, and the hunt began.
Tides and currents tides and currents they were hunting.
Ranboo hadn’t made it back to his nest. He was curled up in a tiny dip at the base of a rock, his fins pinned down as tightly as they could possibly be, shaking slightly.
He could hear the adult mers chirping and clicking at each other as they swept back and forth over the floor of the kelp forest. It sounded like one was close and one was further away, probably to catch him - or any other prey - if they made it past the first mer.
Ranboo wasn’t big enough to fight them. He knew that. They were big, very big, one of their shadows had passed over him and he’d counted at least five lengths. They were huge and they were hunting.
He bit back a terrified little whining chirp.
There were no second chances on this. If he was caught, he would die, no question.
The question was, was it better to stay put and hope that they didn’t find him, or head for the safety of his den and risk them seeing him move?
Unfortunately for Ranboo, the decision was made for him.
There was a click directly above him, and Ranboo heard the swish of a large tail. He watched in horror as one of the mers swam straight over his hiding place, giving him his first good look at who was hunting him.
He was huge. Ranboo’s full length was maybe the size of this mer’s chest. And, while Ranboo had never seen this type of mer in the kelp forest before, somehow he knew that this was a shark. A predator.
A soft little squeak was out of his mouth before he could stop it.
The shark froze, then turned back with a rumble so deep it shook the water around them.
He made eye contact with Ranboo.
Ranboo bolted.
The shark swore, darting after him. He was so fast.
A little warbling wail tore out of Ranboo’s throat without his permission, and he forced down any other sound that wanted to escape with it. He had to be silent now as he swam as fast as he possibly could, weaving through the kelp in the hopes that the shark would lose sight of him. If he couldn’t see Ranboo, that might give him a little bit more time to get away.
Ranboo’s just-for-now den was nestled down in a tiny cave he’d found. It was basically just a hole in a rock deep enough to hide in, and in theory, the shark wouldn’t be able to reach him in there, just like the rest of the predators nearby couldn’t reach him. If he could get there, he would be safe.
He had to be.
The shark was much, much faster than him; that big tail let him move much faster than Ranboo could, and Ranboo wasn’t built for speed, anyway. He was pretty good at darting around rocks and kelp, though, so he stayed as low to the sand as he could, trying to stay out of sight.
A trill, high above him.
Ranboo glanced up and froze, just for a second, staring with an open mouth up at the second mer.
He had wings. They were like… like nothing Ranboo had ever seen before, like the biggest fins he could imagine, and the mer looked so graceful swimming up above the kelp.
Then there was an answering trill from behind him, and he snapped back into the moment so hard it was almost painful. Right. Swimming for his life.
He was so close. He caught sight of his den and swam as hard as he could.
The shark was right behind him, though, and his hands closed on empty air as Ranboo darted down into the den. He let out a frustrated growl, and Ranboo curled at the very bottom of his den, as flat as he could go.
That should be it. That was it, right? Ranboo had made it to the den. The den was safe. The shark would try to reach him, wouldn’t be able to, and would go away.
Except he didn’t. The shark peered into the den with his bright red eyes and made that low rumbling noise again, softer this time. It made Ranboo’s bones feel all loose, like jelly, and he had to stop himself from trilling back a few times.
There was a questioning chirp.
The shark leaned back from the entrance of Ranboo’s den to click at his friend with wings.
The second mer joined the shark at the den entrance, making the same rumble. “Are you alright, little one?”
… What?
Ranboo curled tighter and didn’t answer. He couldn’t figure out a reason for the mer to ask that, except maybe… wanting to know how easy it would be to catch him? How much he would fight? Yeah, yeah that had to be it.
The mer cooed at him. “It’s okay, we aren’t going to hurt you.”
Okay, that was just a lie. He didn’t think Ranboo was stupid, did he? Because Ranboo might not be very smart, and might not know a lot, but he wasn’t stupid, because stupid mers didn’t survive. He had. So he wasn’t stupid.
“Are you hungry?” asked the shark, and wow his voice was deep. It shook the water slightly even without the rumble.
The second mer held up a dead fish.
A soft warble fell out of Ranboo’s mouth. That was his fish! The one that got away! They must have caught it right after it swam away from him.
The mer cooed back at him, and started to shred the fish with his big, sharp claws. He could cut right through fish scales without any problem at all, like Ranboo’s claws would eventually be able to do.
Ranboo’s scales weren’t much thicker than the fish’s. He shuddered and pushed further back into the den.
The shark grabbed a shred of fish and dropped it down into the crack between the rocks.
Ranboo watched, startled, as the meat hit the sand next to him. Why would they just… share food like that? They were the ones who had killed the fish, so why… ?
“You helped hunt it, you should get some,” the shark said matter-of-factly, in a tone that Ranboo didn’t even want to try arguing with.
He stared at the piece of fish. It was… it was his now, it was in his den, so… he didn’t necessarily have to eat it. He didn’t have to give these two adults what they wanted.
… But he was hungry.
Very tentatively, he reached out to grab the fish meat, watching the adults for any sign that they weren’t okay with this after all.
The shark had already turned back to the fish, and the other one just gave him an encouraging little trill.
Ranboo decided that was good enough and started to eat.
When he finished the first piece, the second mer dropped another piece down to him, and he ate that one, too. At one point, the shark left, but the other one stayed, giving Ranboo bits of fish one at a time and eating a few himself. He even gave Ranboo some of the bones to chew on.
Ranboo had no idea what was going on, but he was hungry enough that he didn’t question it. He just ate the fish.
Finally, when he felt full for the first time in a very long time and the exhaustion of swimming that fast for that long was starting to catch up to him, he set down the piece of fish he’d been gnawing on.
“Are you finished eating?” the mer asked gently.
Ranboo was too full and sleepy to keep wondering why the two of them were doing this, so he just nodded.
“That’s alright, little one, you can just stay in there for as long as you need to, okay?”
That didn’t seem right. That wasn’t what adult mers did with pups like Ranboo. But he was trapped in his den, and they had fed him, so… okay. It was better to just go along with it, right?
Suddenly, he smelled blood in the water.
Ranboo squeaked and shrank back again, suddenly a little more awake, as the shark reappeared at the entrance.
“It’s alright, little one, it’s alright,” the other mer soothed, and the shark let out another soft rumble that made Ranboo’s bones feel like jellyfish again. “Techno just brought back more food, that’s all.”
“We aren’t as small as you,” the shark - Techno, was his name Techno? - said with an amused little warble.
Ranboo watched as they split a few more fish, swallowing them in massive bites, quicker than Ranboo could have eaten even one fish. It was a bit scary, since they could probably eat him that fast, too, but they hadn’t been mean yet.
He was too sleepy to think that hard.
“Oh,” the other mer said softly, and Ranboo blinked his eyes open (when had he closed them?) to see him smiling down into Ranboo’s cave. “Tired, little one?”
Ranboo hummed, closing his eyes again and curling into a better sleeping position.
A soft, low rumble shook the water around him, but it wasn’t scary. It felt safe. It felt like he could fall asleep right here and nothing could hurt him.
Then he was being gently scooped up by a massive, scarred hand, and he made a little whining, grumbling chirp, but then he was held against a chest that was vibrating with the force of the rumbles, so he begrudgingly settled into it.
“That’s it, that’s it. Just go to sleep,” the other mer said softly, and Ranboo made some sort of sleepy, longing noise as claws began to gently work through his hair. “You’re safe now. We’ve got you.”
Ranboo didn’t know if that was right, but it was hard to remember why. He felt safe, held close to the rumbling, his belly full of fish he hadn’t had to catch. So he let himself fall asleep, choosing to believe that nothing would hurt him.