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bakerstreet2025-05-25 02:43 am
paintbrush) wrote in bakerstreet2025-05-25 02:43 am
Mermay!
Time for mermaids, sirens and other water creatures! Comment with your merfolk characters, or make your very own AU. Splash around in the waters or try to drown someone. I'm not judging.
IDEAS
Merfolk
Longing to see the surface and all it offers?
Trapped in a net! Are you facing your kidnappers or a savior?
Long travels with your pod, to explore new waters?
Hurt or sick, and taken to a mer facility to be healed - but they actually nice, or will the experiment on you?
Taken from your pod, you've ended up as a sideshow, a circus act or any other form of entertainment.
It's mating season! Try to impress your future mate, even if you might come from different worlds!
Humans
Is that an actual mermaid???
Fallen into the water and saved by a person with fins!
Lured to the waters by siren songs, you're risking an early death by drowning...
How do you kiss? Is it going to be wet and salty?
Finding an injured merfolk, and dragging them home to your bathtub to heal?
A little merfolk child needs your help to find their guardian. Hopefully they won't get the wrong idea.
You really want to be a mermaid, too. Is there any way your new friend can help?
no subject
"I'm pretty good at being a friend, though. My name's John Sheppard. Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard."
He smiles, a genuine one, and maybe even more stupidly, begins to wade out a little into the shallows. He doesn't seem to care he's getting wet, his pants are now soaked up to the knees, but he holds out a hand.
no subject
He had a rank. He wasn’t just an explorer, he was a fighter too.
Then Sheppard was wading out to him. Even in a little over a couple feet of water he had a great advantage over the biped. Instinct made him tense and dig his claws in the sand, ready for anything, to slash a leg and tackle him-but then he was holding out…an empty hand?
He looked it over then down in the water, thinking perhaps he’d dropped something but saw nothing. He looked back up at Sheppard and cocked his head. “I…don’t understand.”
Would you like to meet a Mer-John?
"It's how my people say hello. Or at least, the people that are from a certain area in--never mind."
"We shake hands. I guess it shows that we trust each other or something."
Do you trust him, buddy?
Even as he's saying this, a wave of dizziness hits. It's nothing too bad, but just, kinda weird. He doesn't notice that the ocean water has soaked up his skin pretty good, and he doesn't care, and right now the two things don't seem related at all. He shakes his head, clearing it. It's fine.
Go for it!
For a moment it seems like he’s about to mimic Sheppard, swishing his hand in the water to rid it of sand and lifting it just above the surface, droplets of seawater dripping from his claws when the human appears none too steady on his feet.
“Are you ill?” He asks
o7
"...okay, maybe not so fine." It's like he's hot and cold, and he takes his hand back, scrubbing at his face.
And then quite suddenly his legs give way completely. He goes down in the water with a large splash, hitting the sand in the shallows, rolling over into the surf. He can't think all of a sudden, it's just pain.
It's awful and unrelenting, sharp and incomprehensible. There's the sound of cloth tearing, one boot bobs away and then another, and it would have been baffling if he had not been yelling and confused and in pain.
"Ahh! What the hell!?"
It's sputtering in the surf, flailing really, and it's like something has grabbed his legs and held them fast. He thinks he's tangled in something, maybe, or maybe he miscalculated and his new buddy is holding him down and is finally attacking. What John doesn't realize, is that where his legs were, is now what can only be described as a mer-tail. A deep, rich blue and silver, scales flashing in the sun.
no subject
He growled and withdrew, surprise and confusion deepening as he caught sight of where Sheppard's legs used to be.
"You are a Lantean!" he snarls, backing up into the shallows, ready to bolt as far and deep as he could, mind racing as betrayal set in.
no subject
Except he can’t kick out. Or at least, the way he was used to. What’s “kicking out” instead is a large tail. John catches sight of it, immediately assessing it as either his new buddy or he’s fighting on a third front and some giant fish attacked him. But as seconds pass and he’s not seeing his feet, he realizes he’s on much shallower shore, practically beached, and he’s seeing the trail of scales runs under his now drenched shirt and jacket.
You are a Lantean the Wraith has snarled at him, and John is baffled because what the hell does him attacking him and some third fish getting inexplicably and improbably involved have to do with his ancestry and what did that even mean—
“What the hell-what are you doing, I’m not Lantean, I’m human—“
But he’s no longer being touched or held down. And he’s staring to have a literal sinking feeling about this.
He looks down.
There’s a beat.
That’s not human.
He throws off his jacket onto the sand, and takes off his shirt, realizing his pants have long been lost and so have his boots (he did like those boots, it’s a shame, but right now he’s not entirely sure he will ever wear boots again)—and when the shirt comes off, he sees that the scales have trailed quite far up his torso, his “tail” (he has a tail, he has a tail) which has a couple of fins along the sides and a large, shiny dark blue and silver one at the end, there are lines on his ribs that are moving, gills maybe, and he doesn’t feel cold.
He goes very still. His mouth opens and closes.
“I have no idea what just happened.”
is he an whale mermaid or shark one like todd?
That wasn't the look of a man who knew what he was.
He scanned him over from fin to head. He had the genes, related though distantly as he was to Lanteans apparently enough was still in him to trigger their transformation that they retained.
He remained wary but he was inclined to believe that Sheppard was not tricking him.
I was thinking more like the Lantean whales in Echoes so gills but whale like appearance
John stays perfectly still out of sheer shock (or at least as still as one can be half-beached in the surf) as his brain tries desperately to keep up with what’s happened.
“Okay. Okay, that’s—weird. That’s so weird.” He lifts his tail, marveling in both wonder and horror at being able to use it.
He’s also slowly realizing he has either scared or put off his new friend and he holds his hands up, noticing the thin webbing between his fingers, too. Because of course. Of course he’d get webbed hands.
“I can assure you, I’m just as surprised as you are. This has certainly never happened to me before…”
sounds good!
That transformation certainly couldn't been an act, the Lanteans he'd encountered transformed with far more grace and knowledge than this flopping fish.
So he appeared to be telling the truth. But then that begged the question, why now?
"Perhaps you ought to call your people" he said, ready to make himself scarce if he did.
no subject
He makes no move to call them. Or to do anything else but sit there in the surf staring at his tail.
He looks quite lost and bewildered, just sitting here in the surf.
“You…didn’t do this to me?”
It was obvious that he didn’t, what with the Wraith’s clear shock and alarm, but the words tumble out anyway. He’s not sure what he’s saying. He what he could say, what he should say. His mind is reeling, trying to figure it out. Okay, the ATA gene clearly had extra surprises that Carson either didn’t know or tell him about. Likely the former. Which meant that this was either environmental—something in this water, this ocean did something to his DNA, or he had been infected or exposed to, to something. He thinks back at all the Ancient artifacts they’ve encountered recently and the spheres that glowed but didn’t do anything stay in his mind.
“Crap. Maybe I touched something I shouldn’t have…”
no subject
He looks around at the strewn clothing before finding the radio then back to Sheppard. "Ah, something they left behind perhaps?"
Who knew what the Lanteans had left in the city. He was honestly surprised it wasn't trapped in case his kin ever got inside but apparently something had been left to either trigger Sheppard's long buried ancestors, or had turned him.
He held out the walkie to him.
no subject
He pauses, webbed hand on the radio.
It’s gonna suck. He knows that, knows it’s going to be infirmary time, testing, probably being stuck in a tank like someone’s goldfish, and the thought of it makes him bristle. Maybe it’s instincts, maybe it’s just John Sheppard being John Sheppard, but he doesn’t call.
“You know what? Maybe I’ll take a tour first before I call it in.”
He gestures at the Wraith.
“Want to show me around your neighborhood?”
…he realizes the Wraith probably doesn’t know what a neighborhood is.
“I mean, your, uh. Ocean. Home. This…general area.”
no subject
The wraith starts to slide back into the water, prepared to leave him so his people could come get him. But he doesn't call.
He pauses, cocking his head, then nods slowly. He thinks about what he could show Sheppard without causing a stir among his kin and an area comes to mind.
"Very well, let's see your first swim" he said, slipping beneath the waves with a flick of his tail, and waiting for Sheppard to join him.
no subject
Obviously. He moves--crawls, really, over to a small rocky outcropping, putting the radio on a dry ledge, before sort of...crawling back.
Yeah, taking a tour involved swimming. And right now it feels weird, like his feet and legs are tied together (but he has no feet nor legs).
"I'm a pretty good swimmer. At least, before I was."
He scoots down the sandy shallows, until his tail can find more leverage. He tentatively pushes out into the deeper water. John is actually quite graceful, but he's still not quite trusting his gills yet, and seems to be holding his breath as he starts to try to use his tail for propulsion.
no subject
He took to the water well. Not too surprising considering his ancestry but it was his first time with fins.
Follow he said once again in his head before heading off into a bit deeper water. He didn't sprint, not wanting to leave the man behind, but he also wasn't going to treat him as a child and swim beside him.