Chapter 13: Swimming

"Oh, thank all that's holy." Josh said as Kai poked his head out from the sub.

They had surfaced a few hundred feet from the ship, steered it over, and the crane with the giant magnet had descended and grabbed them before hoisting the tank up onto the ship deck.

Kai jumped down onto the deck as Joe pulled herself out.

"I was starting to really worry." he breathed a sigh of relief. "What happened?"

"Sweetie!" Ilia ran forward as Joe climbed down off the sub and slammed hard into her.

"Hey." Joe gasped as all the air was pushed out of her.

"Don't scare me like that!" Ilia told her fiercely, her eyes swimming with fear for her friend. "Not a word for hours! For hours! I was afraid you had gotten shot by a submarine or something!"

"We're fine, Ilia." Joe laughed as the fea let her go as the maintenance team descended on the waiting sub.

"We didn't want to risk radioing you in case someone was listening." Kai explained.

"Kai."

They turned as the captain approached.

Captain Hughes, with his marvelous mustache and bald head, cut a bit of a comical figure. However, his muscles diminished that affect a bit, especially when he was frowning as he did now.

"I would speak with you in my room. You and Joe both." he looked at her.

Wondering how she could possibly get in trouble for this, Joe followed Kai who followed Captain Hughes, looking unconcerned and indifferent.

Ten minutes later, the captain shut the door of his stateroom and turned to them.

"What the hell happened down there?" he demanded to know.

"It's not our fault." Joe said defensively. She had never liked being reprimanded as a child. And now, as an adult, it was worse than it had been before. "I forgot about the subs."

"You forgot." he grabbed at those words. "You, Joe, were sent because of your brain. You are supposed to keep everything and everybody safe from the unexpected by expecting it with that marvelous head of yours. So tell me, girl, how is it you forgot about submarines!"

"Don't be angry with Kyma." Kai said, his expression tightening a bit. "No one remembered them. It was an unforeseen event that we'll take precaution to avoid in the future."

"You damn well better." he snapped at the both of them. "I don't want to hear it from Jack because two of his people died under my care. And I sure as hell don't want to hear from Mr. Ozera because I lost an expensive deep sea submarine."

"It wont happen again." Joe assured him.

"Be sure it doesn't!"

XXXXXXXXX

"Got chewed out, huh?" Ilia asked.

They were in Joe's room.

Because of her mission, and the need for as few a people to know as possible, Joe recieved her own room. It was small, most ship rooms were, consisting only of a single wide bunk, that Ilia was lounging on, and a desk that Joe was seated at.

"Like teenagers in the principles office." Joe grumbled as she typed up a report for Jack on her laptop. "I hate being lectured."

"I love it." Ilia laughed surprising Joe.

"I was sure you would hate being lectured too." she said. "It doesn't seem like you to put up with a verbal flaying."

"Oh, it's not." Ilia assured her. "But as soon as who ever it is gets that lecture tone in their voice, I ask them if I've been naughty and need a spanking."

Joe paused, then turned to her friend. "What?"

"Yeah." Ilia laughed out loud. "Either way, it ends well for me."

"Either way?" Joe repeated, not sure she wanted to know.

Ilia nodded. "Either they take me up on the offer and we're all happy. Or they stare at me like they can't believe I said that."

"I can't...no, wait. Yes, I can." Joe shook her head as she turned back to the computer.

"I did it to Jack once." Ilia said. "Unfortunately, he just glared at me. I don't think he thought it was all that funny."

"Thank God for small favors." Joe said. "Or I'd never be able to look Jack in the eye again."

"He's married to his work." Ilia shrugged. "And speaking of people who are married to their work, what are you doing?"

"Reporting to Jack about the submarine." Joe said. "And trying to think of a new plan for diving."

"Oh, yeah?" Ilia blinked. "How's that going?"

"Badly." Joe sighed. "And I have to think of something quickly. That tracking beacon is only viable for 48 hours. If we don't get back down to it, we risk losing track of it for good."

"That sucks." Ilia said.

They fell silent.

"You need a break." Ilia said suddenly.

"What?" Joe blinked.

"Get up." Ilia stood. "We're going swimming."

XXXXXXX

"When you said 'swimming' I thought you meant the scuba pool!" Joe looked, a bit scared, over the rail into the ocean.

The 24 hour waiting period between dives meant they couldn't take the sub down today so Joe was relaxing.

However, swimming in the ocean seemed like a bit of a bad idea.

"It's perfectly safe." Ilia assured her. "There's always a few merpeople swimming around the ships to save you. And I happen to know that that is precisely where your favorite merperson is."

"Kai?" Joe asked, smiling a bit. "Kai's swimming today?"

Ilia nodded. "So go ahead, jump in. The water is great."

"Jumping off of a perfectly safe ship into the ocean just seams like a bad idea." Joe hesitated.

"Sweetie, people do it all the time." Ilia laughed. "See that hoist thing there? That's to pull you up."

Ilia pointed to something that looked remarkably like a scaffold on the side of the ship that went straight down to the water line. It would be very useful to bring in a man overboard, or for reloading the merfolk back onto the ship which, Joe was sure, was its intended purpose.

"O-kay." Joe said, feeling a bit trepaditious.

"It'll be fine!" Ilia said, grabbing her arm and leading her to the hoist.

She flipped a bar and pulled that section of railing open and moved aside so Joe could step onto it.

"Are you absolutely-AH!"

Ilia gave Joe one hard push, sending her toppling into the water.

Ilia peeked over the rail as she heard a splash.

A few seconds later, Joe's head peeked up from under the water.

"What's wrong with you!" she demanded to know as she pushed her hair out of her face.

"I would join you, sweetie, but I don't like swimming." Ilia laughed, leaning against the rail.

"You suck!" Joe called up to her, swimming away from the hull of the ship.

"Are you alright, Joe?"

Joe turned to see Adara swimming over to her. "Did you fall overboard?"

"No." Joe assured her knowing how it must have looked. She was still wearing her shorts and her shirt, which just had to be white, after all. "Someone pushed me in!" she raised her voice, glaring over at Ilia.

"It's for your own good, sweetie!" Ilia called back, smiling wide.

Adara paused. "I'm not so good with...talking. Let me...get Kai." she said slowly before popping back underwater before Joe could stop her.

Joe swam out a bit further from the ship. She knew that the propellers weren't on and that it was perfectly safe to swim around it, the merfolk did it all the time. But she didn't want to take any chances.

"Had to pick today to go without a bra." she mumbled to herself. "And wear a white shirt. Then some stupid fairy pushes me into the ocean."

There was something...weird about swimming in completely open water. It wasn't like swimming in the deep end at the pool. At the deep end, you knew that the floor was still only a few feet away, depending on how tall you were.

Swimming in the ocean, you were aware that there was miles and miles of water between you and any kind of bottom and that anything could be and probably was swimming in it with you. And if you faltered just a bit, you would find yourself drowning in it.

"You're doing great, sweetie!" Ilia told her.

"I'm never forgiving you for this!" Joe called back as she turned in the water to glare at her. The distance, and that fact that she had to look up about thirty feet, kind of dimmed the affect though.

Kai's head popped up beside her, startling her.

"Kyma, are you alright?" he asked. "Adara looked confused."

"Ilia pushed me into the water." Joe said, then realizing how bad that sounded, rushed to finish, "She didn't mean any harm. She just...I don't know. I think there's something wrong with her."

Kai tilted his head, regarding her curiously. "Do your eyes burn?"

"No. Why?" Joe asked, a bit confused at the change of subject.

"Water is going into them." he said. "I was told salt water burned human eyes."

"Oh." Joe reached up but her eyes felt fine. She had opened her eyes under salt water once, it burned like someone had started grating her eye balls with sandpaper. Even just opening them after you had surfaced, and water was still running down your face, it burned a bit. But her eyes felt perfect, just as good as on land. "I guess the CBI's are doing something after all."

"That is good news." Kai said swimming to her other side. "You should get back on the ship. You can swim just as easily in the scuba pool."

"It was Ilia's idea, not mine." Joe said. "Ilia! Lower the thing!"

"Aw!" Ilia grumbled but she hit the switch lowering it. She stopped it just as it hit the water surface.

Joe swam back as Kai went back under.

She thought he had gone back for good. Then she reached the platform and before she could figure out how to get on it, someone had grabbed her about her waist and sat her down on it.

Kai's head broke the surface again. He leaned his arms on the platform, keeping his fin and, more importantly, gills, underwater.

"Did you not get enough of deep water yesterday?" Joe asked him, smiling a bit. Ilia, she noticed, wasn't in any hurry to bring the platform back up.

"I was not actually doing any swimming yesterday." he told her.

Joe jumped as she heard a loud pop. "What was that?"

"My bones." he told her. "My tail is splitting."

"Ow." Joe flinched in sympathy pain. "That sounded like it hurt."

Kau shrugged. "You get used to it."

Even as Joe watched, she saw the fins on his forearms starting to shrink back into his skin as the webs between his fingers retracted.

"You don't have to come back up." Joe said. "You can stay down here."

"That's alright." he said flattening his palms on the platform. He hefted himself out of the water and turned, planting his now gill free body onto it.

But his tail was still splitting and, now that it was out of water, it sounded, and looked, extremely painful.

"My goodness..." Joe watched in fascination as the silvery scales smoothed and faded. Then she saw that every normal human organ was forming and she looked away, blushing. "Sorry. I didn't...that is...it was an accident."

"I am not body shy." Kai told her. "I didn't realize you were."

"I am human." Joe said. "We don't spend the majority of our lives naked. I don't even think we spend half of it naked. I am a bit body shy."

Kai decided not to point out that her wet shirt was extremely see through and plastered to her body like a second skin.

Joe was pointedly looking away when she suddenly felt his breath on her ear. "You can look, Kyma. I don't mind."

Joe blushed harder and felt her body heat up as he put his arm around her waist and began kissing the delicate flesh of her neck.

"Ilia..." she gasped out quietly.

"Has decided she has better things to do." Kai said, kissing his way down her shoulder and back up again.

Joe peeked up and, sure enough, her fea friend had disappeared. And there was, Joe noted belatedly, a switch right beside her on the platform clearly marked 'up'.

"Just a little bit." Joe gave in, leaning her head back against his shoulder, enjoying the feel of his lips dancing across the surface of her skin as the waves lapped about her waist.