It had taken him months of meticulous planning just to draw up the designs for his beautiful creation: the perfect logarithmic spiral of the buoyancy chambers, the complex system of levers that controlled the sinuous tentacles, not to mention the channels of for steam, and the conduits for oil, linked into the great pulsing boiler at the heart of the machine. It had taken longer still for him to breathe life into those flat sketches, one man painstakingly piecing together an idea, making his insubstantial vision in hard, clean bronze. The results, of course, had been worth it. They always were. His beautiful machines, obedient to his every command, were the manifestation of all his ambitions, the power of his mind made into physical might.
And now, with no concern for the backbreaking effort that had gone into its creation, the asinine, scruffy-haired street-rat was standing just inches from the lever that would re-route the steam channels, sending the whole thing to the ocean floor in pieces.
“S-stay away from that lever!”
Mechanikles heard his voice come out as a desperate squeak. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t going to see yet another invention ruined. Even that little wretch wouldn’t be stupid enough to destroy something whilst still inside it.
“Why?”
“That’s the lever that will destroy my precious invention!”
There was a moment’s silence. Then a smile twisted its way across the boy’s face, one that was all too easy to read. One that brought about a familiar sinking feeling in the pit of the stomach.
Mechanikles gave a sigh, and pulled a scroll from it’s hiding place within his tunic. His quill scratched irritably across the parchment.
“Never tell enemy which lever will destroy invention.”
And then a grimy hand was tightening around a smooth lever. A shudder ran through the floor of the great machine. There was a blast of heat from the great boiler, a savage hiss of steam and a terrible noise, of splintering gears and twisting metal, a sound that seemed to fill both the sea and the sky. The heat became searing, and for a moment, the world was filled with the incandescent brightness and thunderous noise of the dying engine.
Then cold, and darkness, and silence.
********
There was cold water pressing in on every inch of his skin. That was the first thing Mechanikles noticed, the thing that snapped him back into consciousness. The next thing that he noticed, as he flailed in the water, was that something was wrapped tightly around him, something thick, slimy, and resistant to his frantic struggles. The more he tried to prise the thing off, the tighter it’s grip became. He gave a silent scream, thrashing against the obstruction, a cloud of silvery bubbles rising from his mouth. Then, although it was admitting defeat, even though his logical mind might have rebelled at the thought, the urges of his body became too much, and he gulped a deep breath of saltwater.
His struggles stopped. He floated there for a moment, blinking the water out of his eyes, feeling the taste of salt on his tongue. He breathed out. And, in the interests of both science and his own survival, he breathed in again. He could feel, with horrible clarity, the water flowing down his throat, and into the soft, delicate membranes of his lungs. He could also feel the slimy grip around him tighten, and now that he looked down what it was that was trapping him, he felt revulsion rise in his throat.
The thing holding him was a tentacle. A tentacle belonging to an octopus larger than he was.
He stared at the octopus. The octopus stared back with huge, inhuman eyes. And, slowly, another tentacle was advancing, it’s thin tip snaking through the water, reaching towards his face. There was only one thing for a genius of his standing to do when faced with such a sight:
“AAAAAAHHHHH!!!”
He shrieked, a few last bubbles escaping, and flapped ineffectually at the slimy whip of flesh.
“Armond!”
Both octopus and inventor froze. Two pairs of eyes, one pair inhuman, one pair mismatched, turned to the source of the voice.
She floated in mid-water, her hair swishing around her head in a fat braid, an amused smiled on her face. It was a face that some might well have called beautiful, something that was of far less concern to Mechanikles to the fact that her body, from the waist down, tapered into a sleek, doubtlessly slimy tail.
“Armond, are you frightening our little guest?”
The…creature in front of him advanced with a swish of her fin, pointing an admonishing finger at the invertebrate. With a look in it’s eyes that was almost reluctant, the octopus loosened its grip, and crawled a few steps back. Satisfied, and with a frivolous flick of her hair, she twisted in the water to face the floating Greek.
“Awake, I see.” The amusement on her face was clear, and verging on sadistic. “None the worse for your little adventure.”
“Indeed.” Mechanikles shuddered. His voice, against all logic, came out as clear as it did in air, and he decided to take advantage of this fact.
“Madam, do you know who you I am? I am Mechanikles, greatest of the great Greek geniuses! I don’t know what you are, or what you are doing down here, but my schedule is currently immensely tight.” He reached into his tunic, withdrew his scroll, and unrolled it. He managed to unroll it into around fifty soggy little pieces.
The fish-woman wafted a lump of wet paper out of the way.
“Very tight, I see.” She coiled in the water, circling the scrawny inventor as he stared, horrified, at the remains of his to-do-list. “Well Mechanikles, greatest of the great, I am Saleen, daughter of the water, siren of the seven seas, and this is Armond, my little assistant. He’s great with hair. Frankly, yours could do with a little work.”
Mechanikles batted a tentacle away, as it reached for one of his twin braids.
“A siren, are you?” He squinted through his eyepiece. “Frankly, I was expecting someone with more feathers. Now, I can see it must be frightfully tedious down in this miserable little grotto, but I’ll thank you to finish messing my hair, and let me be on my way.” He gazed up through the blue, where lances of sunlight filtered through the water column, and nameless fishes weaved through the upper deep. It was dishearteningly far above.
A giggle from the so-called siren.
“Oh no. No, you’re not leaving anytime soon. Not without telling me where you get such wonderful toys.”
Even down in this dark undersea grottoe, even surrounded by countless and innumerable, undoubtedly filthy polypi, even floating between a mollusc capable of swallowing him whole, and a mer-woman who somehow unnerved him more, Mechanikles still bristled.
“Toys!? You dare to call my beautiful machines toys!?” Bubbles hissed from between his teeth. A hand reached into the secret recesses of his robe, and withdrew, with a flourish, a small and intricate beetle. “Do you know the love that goes into my creations? How long I spend at the drawing board? How many test I perform, how many refinements — Give it back, you filthy cephalopod!”
A tentacle took the beetle from his hand, held it to Armond’s huge eyes, and gave it a shake. The sharp little limbs moved limply in the current, but otherwise, nothing happened. With something that might have been called a shrug, the octopus passed the clockwork creature into Saleen’s hands.
A frown crossed her pretty face.
“It doesn’t work.”
“Of course it doesn’t work! I haven’t wound it up!”
The beetle was snatched back to it’s rightful owner, and given a few twists of an intricately decorated key. With a slightly crazed grin, he held it aloft.
“Behold!”
The beetle stirred into life: it’s wings beat at the water, and its metallic body rose. Then the rhythm slowed, the movements became jerky, and it sank like a stone, burying itself headfirst in the sand.
“Well of course, it wasn’t designed for underwater use.”
Saleen regarded the drowned beetle.
“Could it be?”
“Could it be? Could I, Mechanikles, design a machine for underwater use? Didn’t you see my Nautilus, you low-rate water-nymph? I can create devices equally at home on land, sea or sky!”
A slow grin spread itself over Saleen’s face. It was not exactly shark-like, as sharks on the whole didn’t quite possess the degree of malevolent glee that was slowly etching itself onto her face. It was the grin, not of a ravenous, primal killing-machine, but of something that knew exactly what it was doing, and was enjoying every minute. It was more like the grin of a sadistic dolphin.
“You can? Excellent! Then we have a deal: in exchange for me saving your life, you belong to me.”
Mechanikles froze. His eyes narrowed.
“Saving my life? Belong to you!? What deal?”
Saleen’s face became petulant, her eyes glinting and inhuman. The spiny fins around her waist bristled.
“The deal you made when you set foot in my oceans and tried to meddle with them.”
“Alright! What then? What if I accept? I can’t build down here, down in this wet, filthy little cave. I need my workshop, my blueprints, my…”
A cold finger on his lips cut him off, and made him gag.
“I don’t want you down here, making the place look untidy. No. I want your mind. I want your designs. I want them when I want, where I want. Go back to your workshop, and your toys. I’ll call you when I want you.” Then, to the octopus, she added: “Armond!”
Armond flowed forward in response, a tide of wet pink flesh. An icy tentacle snaked through the water and wrapped itself around Mechanikles’ left wrist, pulling his arm out and exposing the palm. As he tried to struggle, countless other tentacles entwined the rest of his body, holding him in a freezing grasp, his skin crawling at the touch of the creature’s skin.
“What are you-” A tentacle also found his mouth, cutting his protests short.
Saleen advanced, smirking and toying with her necklace, a starfish worn around her neck on a string. Now that she was close, he could see that the little creature was undoubtedly still alive: as she pulled it away from the string, its little tube-feet lost their grip one by one.
“Don’t worry.” She said, with equal parts false sympathy, equal parts enjoyment. “I’m just sealing the deal. It might sting a little.”
And with those words, she pressed the starfish down into the palm of his hand. For a moment, the feeling of its little feet sucking onto his skin was all Mechanikles could feel. Then the creature pulsed. A cold pinkish light lit it up from within, and at the same time, a sharp jolt of pain ran down his arm. He gave a muffled howl.
“There.” Saleen withdrew the starfish, replacing it around her neck. Armond released his grip, letting Mechanikles writhe. He stared down at his hand. There, glinting on his palm, was a small, shiny, star-shaped burn. He wriggled his fingers experimentally, and winced as the wound twinged again.
“It’ll never get better if you play with it, you know.” Her grin flashed white as she whirled around him. “That’s a special mark, you know. You’re lucky. I don’t give my mark to just anyone. That mark will tell me exactly where you are. That mark will let me find you again. With that mark, I control you.”
The pain in Mechanikles hand was abating, but the slowly building embarrassment and rage was not. He glared at her, one eye creased in fury, the other one magnified several times it’s normal size behind its lens.
“Control me? Control I, Mechanikles?! Well madam, you might have set your filthy enchinoderm on me, but mark my words, no-one controls Mechanikles! One day you will-”
Saleen nodded. And smiled her twisted smile.
“Tell me, Mechanikles, greatest of the great. You may be a genius, and you might be able to make pretty toys, but can you swim?”
Her question caught him mid-rant.
“Well of course. Well, a little. Not since I was younger, admittedly, but still, yes.” He frowned. “I don’t make a habit of sharing water with icky fish-things. He shuddered violently. “They don’t get out to relieve themselves…”
Another nod.
“Then swim, Mechanikles. I’m getting bored. Swim for your miserable life!”
Very suddenly, the inventor became aware of the water around. Very suddenly, it seemed to grow much colder, and its pressure weighing down on him much greater. The taste of salt in his mouth became revoltingly strong, all things of far less concern to him that the fact that he had just inhaled cold, wet, and distinctly un-breathable water.
Saleen was laughing. Her laughter did not abate for some time, not until the struggling inventor had flapped, clawed, and scraped his way to the surface. She looked up at the scrawny silhouette, floundering in the shimmering waters above, and turned to Armond.
“Of course he’ll make it back to land. I didn’t go to all the trouble of saving him just to drown him again. Silly Armond. It’s the oldest trick in the book. He’ll make it, don’t you worry. Not by much, but he’ll make it.”
She turned back, and pulled the broken beetle from the sand.
“Why? I’m sure he’ll come in handy. It gets so tiring smashing ships all by ourselves.” She fiddled with one of the intricate wings of the beetle. “Besides, he does delicate things too. Perhaps something pretty to put your hair-care products in?”
Something floated down from above, see-sawing through the water as it fell. Saleen and Armond watched it, as it fell into the sand, sending up a cloud of debris.
Saleen sighed. Gingerly, she picked up the object, a wet and battered sandal.
“Of course, when we do use him, we might need to find a way to improve that fashion sense…”
Steam by StarsSlug
Author's Notes:
I could give a perfectly good, somewhat sensible reason for writing this: namely, that I’m re-addressing an imbalance. Saleen got far too few episodes to herself, and Mechanikles, whilst getting his share of screen-time, doesn’t really have enough fanfic. But quite frankly, none of these reasons really compares to the fact that I’m a nerdy bio-geek who still remembers Saturday morning cartoon, loves mermaids as much as she loves mad scientists, and has way to much affection for arthropods and molluscs.
The whole sorry idea was sparked off by wondering just how Mechanikles escaped from his exploding machine at the end of “Plunder the sea”. As such, the prologue begins at the end of that episode. (For the continuity-curious, before Saleen ever meets Aladdin.)
Please forgive any nerdy jokes about marine biology, arthropods, or Greek mythology. Or little mermaid references. You have been warned.
Enjoy. Or the beetles come in the night.
The whole sorry idea was sparked off by wondering just how Mechanikles escaped from his exploding machine at the end of “Plunder the sea”. As such, the prologue begins at the end of that episode. (For the continuity-curious, before Saleen ever meets Aladdin.)
Please forgive any nerdy jokes about marine biology, arthropods, or Greek mythology. Or little mermaid references. You have been warned.
Enjoy. Or the beetles come in the night.