Disclaimer: Don't own DP.

Hello, everyone! This story is a late Christmas gift for too enigmatic 2 b urs, who has been an awesome friend here on the site and wanted me to write a mermaid story. We were talking one day about mermaids and how they're often seen as ultimately beautiful and good, even though many of their original legends were about them drowning sailors. I have expanded the darker side of those merfolk legends here in hopes of creating my own spin on a recurrent Danny Phantom AU.

Summary: Samantha Manson is on an evening cruise with her parents. The ship unknowingly enters dangerous waters, where dark and hungry creatures await them. And the humans thought they'd killed them all. S/D, Mer!Danny.

Genre: Horror/Romance

Beyond the Depths

Chapter One: The Human Ones and Their Triumphant G.O.D.

"People, people," shouted the man on the television. On the pocket of his tailored military uniform was an acronym for his unit—the Global Oceanic Defense, or G.O.D. He was desperately attempting to speak over reporters, who swarmed like flies about the stand. "To answer your questions, yes! Yes, they're gone. They're all gone. The beasts who killed and cannibalized several hundreds of victims—we isolated their hordes and eradicated them. The oceans are clear again."

"And how do we know they won't come back, or attack more of us when our guard's down?" demanded one reporter. "How can you promise this to the American people? To the world?"

The man responded, voice lowering back into a calmer pattern, "We've fought two years to eradicate them, and we've bombed every coral nest of them we could find. We've combed the oceans and ensured that no signature of their…unique physiology remained. And now, we can take our lives and our oceans back. We can swim again. We can sail again. These beasts aren't coming back to haunt us."

A reporter pressed, "Sir, how many did your army encounter before the oceans were finally clear?"

"Thousands. They had been grouping for some time."

Another reporter shoved her way through the crowds, sticking a microphone in the man's face. "Sir, do you agree with the increasingly popular superstition that these humanoid beasts are in fact some remnant of people who—"

"—I won't be taking any more questions about the matter," the man interrupted, face steeling to hide a small blip of anxiety. "This conference was called to order to declare the War is over. Humanity is safe. If you have further questions regarding the origin or physiology of these beasts, the Global Oceanic Defense is currently employing local scientists to study the remains we've collected. But one thing I can tell you in confidence: our ancestors were wrong to romanticize these beasts in fairy tales. Call them merfolk, sirens, mermaids. Whatever. At the end of the day, they were very organized killing machines, and it doesn't matter what they really were or where they came from. It only matters that they're gone."

13 Years Later - Aboard U.S.S Titan

The bolted lamps in the open-air dining hall glittered with crystal inlays, and the sheer light of it hurt to look at. Seventeen-year-old Samantha Manson closed her eyes to rid her retinas of the searing imprints of sharp daggers. At some point, she had looked up in an attempt to avoid watching her parents, who were currently seducing various investors with potential stock returns. They pleasantly laughed and drank wine at the different tables on the dining deck, looking exactly like the perfect couple.

It was almost as sickening as the excessive grandeur surrounding her. But between induced blindness and seeing her parents financially whore themselves out, she would choose blindness every time.

She ran a finger along the crystal of her drinking glass, and she tried to focus on the soft wind of the air as the ship sailed. The newly-renovated evening cruise ship Titan was rich and excessive. It was a perfect rendezvous for any self-respecting Manson, as her parents had a natural talent for mixing business with pleasure—just as they had a natural talent for guilt-tripping their only daughter. We want to spend time with you, they had said. We hardly see you anymore. Why don't you come with us on a dinner cruise? It's just for one evening!

"Why did I let them convince me?" she groaned, feeling even worse now that she realized she was only a pawn to make her parents look like a classic American family. They'd spent all of five minutes with her since they'd boarded the cruise, running off the instant they smelled money lining the pockets of several other guests.

They'd point to her and wave from across the room, and their potential investors—old men, other classic American families, some foreigners—would look at their dark and sleek daughter and see an heir to carry on the Manson empire.

Her parents did not used to be that way, but the Manson family fortune had taken a large dive over a decade ago from the War. They had placed too many stocks in industries that suffered from the drop in ocean shipments. They were still trying to regain their losses.

Sam stared out the ship's glass siding at the blood-red sunset that had begun to sink beneath the horizon. Orange, wispy clouds—like fingers—streaked across the sky. She felt as if the clouds were claws bearing down on her, grabbing at her shoulders, her neck. It was suffocating.

She tried not to think about it.

Down below the deck, a group of technicians were monitoring the boilers and turbines of the small ship. Their leader, an older gentlemen with a scruffy appearance, asked, "How're those boilers, Jimmy?"

"Running smooth, sir."

"Good." The old man sat down slowly onto one of the steps that led up to the main galley. He grimaced a bit, rubbing at his legs. "I figured this old rust bucket would give us more trouble than this. Looks like we can relax a bit, boys. Why don't you go up to the galley and grab yourself something to eat?"

The other men cheered lightly, pulling off their headsets and standing up from their computer stations. They all passed by their leader, clapping him on the back. "Bring you back something?"

The old man raised a scruffy brow. "None of that cuisine crap—just a cup of coffee will do for me."

"Got it!"

And so they all disappeared up the steps. But one young technician, Jimmy, stayed behind. The old man stared at him, and Jimmy looked up in slight puzzlement. "Uh, sir? Not to raise any alarms, but I'm getting a weird echo on our radar. I wanted your opinion on it."

"Can you flip the switch so I can hear it?"

"Yes, sir." And the younger man flipped the switch. Immediately, the unearthly sound of clicks lowering down from the highest to the lowest octave echoed in the cabin.

The oldest looked a bit perturbed, but he said, "It could just be an echo off of the rocks. This is coral territory. We also get a lot of eddies through here that make weird sounds."

"Sir, you don't think it's…them do you?"

The old sailor laughed. "After thirteen years? We hunted them down and fished their food source out. The only creatures prowling around this cape are the turtles and the coral reefs."

Jimmy was not convinced. "Sir, if we have a viable threat, then we need to alert the crew now and turn back."

The older man lightly rapped on a riveted panel along the wall up the steps. "Those damn things only managed to take down small fishing boats. This ship weighs tons and is larger than all those victimized boats. Even if they were still around and tried to take us down, we're a tank." He waved Jimmy off. "Now go on, go get you something to eat and stop worrying."

Sam's parents returned to their table in a delightful mood. Their business conversations with local and foreign investors had gone well, with several meetings already set on their books. The sun had fully sunk beneath the horizon, and the darkness of the open night softened the deck lights into stars.

"Isn't this exciting?" Pamela Manson laughed as she clinked a glass with her husband and sat down beside her daughter. "We haven't been on a cruise in so long! It's just delightful that the cruise industry is finally stabilizing again."

"Yes, it's quite fascinating," Sam deadpanned, raising a brow.

Her mother pursed her lips at her. "You mean you're not enjoying this? Sammikins, we're swimming in luxury!"

She leaned her head on her hand, scrunching the white tablecloth with her elbow. "You're always swimming in luxury, mom. What makes this any different?"

"Because we haven't had a cruise like this since before the War. You've no idea how difficult it's been to rebuild everything up from ruins. No thanks to those…merfolk." Pamela said the word with a sniff, as the syllables upon her cherry lips were distasteful. "Nasty, disgusting creatures."

Thurston Manson nodded. "Their attacks dropped our coastal stocks by nearly sixty percent."

Sam tilted her head. "…You know," she said slowly, "just because they were hungry doesn't mean that they were inherently evil. Maybe they were just desperate."

"They were demons, Sammy," Pamela said haltingly. "Total, irrevocable trash. Some failing of evolution, perhaps."

Sam laughed, almost delighted by her mother's narrow-minded response. "Because being hungry makes us all angels."

Thurston gave his daughter a concerned look as he set down his glass cabernet. "This isn't a laughing matter," he said slowly. "Those things killed thousands of fishermen and swimmers and ate them. They were attacking us. Maybe they looked human from the waist up, but they weren't at all."

"And were we any better?" Sam pressed, raising a brow at her father. "We killed them all with no mercy."

"It had to be done," Thurston said, voice ringing with the dull thud of finality. "It is kill or be killed sometimes, as much as we don't want to admit it."

The Mer Massacres lasted for the entire final year of the War, during which panicking humans burnt captured merfolk alive. According to the Global Oceanic Defense, the brutal war against them, and the quick dispatch of the captured ones, had wiped out the species. Whatever merfolk were, they would not be coming back.

"Dad, I've seen the pictures," Sam said. "We strung them up and set them on fire, and we shot at them point-blank. We didn't even give them a chance to explain themselves."

"They did not have the ability to speak like us," Thurston sniffed. "They were simply animals with too much power."

"But they had emotions," Sam pressed. "In those pictures, some were crying. You call that inhuman?"

Pamela leaned forward, her smile a bit tight as her eyes roved to see if anyone was listening. "You're always so caring," she laughed. "Even for things that don't deserve it." She patted her daughter on the back, half in love and half in warning. "Just focus on all of the good things that came out of it! We have our oceans back." Then the woman lifted a shrimp into her mouth and nearly swooned at the taste. "Which means," she said with a muffled voice, daintily patting her red lips against a napkin as she swallowed the shrimp. "That we have full reign over seafood again."

Sam looked down at the fish on her plate and cringed, pushing it away. "I think I'll just stick with fruit," she said. "Something that doesn't have a face on it."

The lights on the ship flickered for but a second, and it cast strange shadows on everyone.

No one paid it much attention.

Sam eyed the fish, wondering for the millionth time what level of pain it could feel. Wondering what would it be like if their situations were reversed and she was flayed on a plate instead.

Her heart rose in indignation.

Deep within the waters, bellies scraped against sand and seaweed. Fingers grabbed at coral reefs to leverage the rest of their bodies. Long, shining tails erupted from beneath the ocean floor, and shadows shot up through the currents.

The thin, streamlined bodies grouped together. Flashing tails of dark colors—black, gray, silver—all glinted in the weak light of the sunset. Then the sun sank, and they became nothing more than black masses, indistinguishable from the darkness of the surrounding waters.

They were on the hunt, now that food was swimming into their waters.

The shadows trailed after the massive wake of the ship, remaining just behind the churning bubbles generated by the four large turbines. The creatures twisted and turned in the fizzled water, grouping together in sharp triangles. In their webbed hands were various tools: dismantled shark jaws, the nose of a sawfish (which looked like a bony chainsaw), and whale bone sharpened by teeth into sleek armor and clubs.

A high-pitched screech echoed across the waters, and they began to swim closer to the turbines, opening their maws with high-frequency sounds that bounced off the hull of the ship.

"Agh!" cried out the technician, pulling his headset off with in a blur. His whole head burned with the sound of sharp static—a horrible screech too inhuman. It almost sounded like a wail, but the pitch was too high. The radar blitzed, and the screen sparked strangely with a great wave of green light before it died.

His ears began to bleed as he looked in shock at his headset, broken on the floor. Then he held a shaking hand to his ear.

"Jim, hey—you alright, kid?"

"I don't know," the technician called out, voice shaky. His heart was pounding. "Something's wrong, man. Really wrong." When he looked back at the radar screen, he realized the screen had gone black. He tried to raise the sensitivity of the radar, but nothing happened. He hit it with a desperate fist.

"What's wrong, Jimmy?"

"Something's interfering with our radar. And our communications. It's like a…frequency is blocking ours. We're dead in the water."

The old man froze a bit, something jogging his memory. "That's how they said it would start. But that's impossible."

Jimmy became desperate. "Sir, can we get a radio down to the engines team? I think we have substantial evidence that this cove is still infested. We need to tell them that—"

Sam nearly fell out of her chair as the entire ship, once steaming along so smoothly, suddenly jerked to a stop, its bow nearly lifting out of the water at an alarming angle before crashing hard on its starboard side, sending waves of water gushing across the decks.

"What the—?" cried out several guests. They all tentatively managed to get on their feet. Many men and women cried indignantly at the spill of red wine upon their expensive clothes. For a time, the shock and surprise left them in a roar.

And then they all realized that the ship was rocking in place. It had stopped moving forward. The four powerful engines gave off an awful grinding sound, as if they were caught by something, and then the sound eventually dropped off into silence.

The lights flickered again, and died. People began to huddle in the total darkness, cries of fear and confusion rising above the anger.

"What's happening?"

"Did the whole ship lose power?"

The Mansons had stood up from their table and were now moving closer to the crowd grouping together in the center of the deck. Pamela was gasping in anger. "Why, I never," she said. "Everything was going so well! Thurston, I say we should positively sue for the lack of proper operational attention to this ship! They said that the renovations were perfectly—"

An awful, piercing sound suddenly echoed in the air, and Pamela's criticisms died out in her throat. Strange thumps pounded along the hull. Several guests began to grow uneasy.

Thurston grabbed for his wife and for Sam. "I hope that was just a pod of dolphins," he said slowly, eyes narrowing.

Pamela's eyes were wide and distant. "I don't think so," she whispered. "It's like a wail, dear. Oh, it's awful!"

The thumping sound and screeches increased, and they realized with increasing horror that something was climbing up the tall sides of the ship. The hisses grew louder, reverberating off the ship's angles in a cacophony of sound.

"Oh my god," breathed one of the passengers. "It's them. We're gonna die."

"G.O.D. said they killed them all!" A women cried helplessly, "It can't be them; it can't!"

Sam held on tighter to her father's vest, beginning to feel an odd sense of fear. She swallowed hard at thought of what would happen. "Dad," she said hesitantly, "Please tell me this isn't what I think it is."

He began backing them all away from the crowd. "We need to get inside. Now."

Sam huffed in fear. "Dad, seriously, you can't possibly think that these are—?"

Bang. A webbed hand clamped around the top railing, and a body hauled itself up. Powerful muscles heaved over the side of the ship, and people flinched, crying out in fear, backing away. In the dim moonlight, its body almost seemed to glow. It eyes were red, its skin green. On its almost-human face was a disturbing smile, its maw full of sharp teeth widening at the sight of them.

For a second, it did not move. Its seaweed-like dreadlocks fell upon its shoulders in matted waves, and its head tilted. It eyed them in a calculating way.

The humans froze in awe and horror.

All along the glass siding and rails appeared other creatures—both male and female. Each one looked different. One had blue skin, another almost a human, fleshy color. Many were young, some old. Their eyes glowed. And from the waist down were a plethora of different fins and tales and glimmering fish scales. Their clicks and hisses snapped from behind thin lips, their clawed hands raising sharp bone weapons.

Sam's eyes widened at the unnumbered group. Her knees weakened a bit—these were real. They were merfolk. Who ate humans. "Oh my god," she breathed shakily.

Everything felt horrifically surreal. How many times had she stared at old pictures of their burnt corpses, wishing to meet a live one?

Before anyone could move, the merfolk opened their mouths, and a piercing screech shattered every glass panel. The humans flinched and cried out. The creatures slammed hard onto the deck, their powerful arms and tail dragging them forward in snarls and a mindless, hunger frenzy.

People screamed and began to run.

The merfolk lunged after them.

A/N: Please leave me a review with your thoughts and comments! Thanks! :)