Chapter 1

Danny Fenton sat on the bench of his parents boat, staring with unseeing eyes into the water below the glass bottom that took up a good 3 feet of the middle of the little boat. It was hot, and the seagulls were loud and the cool water he was not allowed into was all around them, except for about 150 feet behind him, where there was land and his friends and his computer and a life.

So yes, Danny was miserable and his parents, like usual, were having none of it.

He wanted to tell them, there were most likely no such things as half the creatures down in the depths they kept going on about since he was old enough to remember. Mermaids, sea snakes, leviathans…fairy tales, Danny was pretty sure, just like his sister was.

Except…well it was really dark down there and the ocean went on forever so…

Alright, maybe mythical creature was more believable than, say, a ghost or something.

"….guys, can we please go back? It's almost 12….I promised Sam and Tucker I'd meet them at the Pier for lunch." What? It was true enough, he'd asked them if they could, and anyway he was allowed to add the slight whine to his voice.

"Oh son, we're almost there. Besides, this time we've got some solid information on the locations, this could be the jackpot!"

"So you didn't hear this one from a drunken sailor with a peg leg." Danny muttered into his palm, playing with a loose string on his swim trunks.

"Sweetie, there's some sandwiches in the icebox, oh and some apple juice too!"

"Actually he had two! Not sure how that worked out for him….ah well." Jack rambled on and on as he worked, and kept on muttering, making Danny slump over in his seat more and consider cracking his head on the glass. Maybe bleeding from the skull would convince them to turn around and this day could end…

That was when he saw a flash of bright shimmering silver, so quick that when he blinked in surprise it was gone into the depths. Woah.

"….Mom? Dad?" He said slowly, raising his tone as the figure flicked round them again, though nothing changed on his parent's equipment, and the boat didn't even rock once.

"Not now sweetie, we're trying to listen to the echolocation device!"

"But—" Danny didn't finish his sentence. He was too busy staring at the black thing darting under the boat, like it was chasing after something. He leaned over and with a long undulation of its body it was gone. It almost seemed to become invisible against the bottom of the ocean, that if Danny wasn't looking for it he'd never have seen the figure. By then his father had wandered closer and Danny finally found his voice.

"Hey, Dad, are there any fish that are uhm, like…long and black and silver?"

"…eh? Danny-son, that'd be an orca. Or a half man half orca, could be! ….but these aren't the waters for them. Unless ones lost. You know son one time…"

Danny zoned out on everything after that, raking his eyes through the nest of underwater plants and fish and starfish for that big black mass again.

Maybe ghost hunting wasn't such a bad idea, because that thing had looked huge.