Out of My Element [Castle]

[Oathkeeper Emi]

July 14, 2010
--

Emi slept straight through the entire journey. It wasn't a satisfying sleep though. Nightmares, and she would wake up and not know where she was and panic a bit before going back to sleep seconds later. This time however, she woke up and stayed up. Somebody was banging on the door. She growled, stirred and sat up.

"We better have arrived at our destination, Castle, or I'm coming out there and ripping your head off,[/color]" she warned, rolling off the bed and onto her feet. Not much to be done about her post-sleep appearance; she pulled on her coat, ran a hand through her hair and pulled on the one shoe she seemed to have lost during the night.

She reached over, and slapped her hand against the wall until she found the light switch. The overhead light came on, causing Emi to flinch at the sudden brightness. It took a minute for her to get used to the light. She hesitated for a moment, the light reminding her of the dream she'd been having. A nightmare, really.

In her dream, she'd been floating down, down, down in a bottomless sea... staring up at the sun through the water until she got too deep to see it. Bubbles stole her precious oxygen and floated to the surface to join the sun until everything went black... and she woke up.

Needless to say, it put her in a bad mood but then again, what didn't?

[Castle]

"Uh, yeah, we're here all right," Castle responded, taking another glance out the window.

Minutes earlier, there had only been blackness and stars on the other side of the glass. Now, there was a vast expanse of flat blue sky, littered with a few wispy clouds. Beneath that expanse was its mirror image, though this one twisted and morphed with every churn of the tides. Castle had dozed off in the pilot's chair and awakened when the auto-pilot informed him that they were approaching another world, and because he didn't know how to work that particular control, he had no choice but to let it take them down to the world's... surface.

Emi seemed to be back to her usual, cheerful self after that somber episode yesterday. But, no matter how happy she was to have him wake her up (he swore he could still feel where she'd yanked his demon horns, even though they were long gone), she couldn't sleep forever and just leave him to stare out the window all day, and he had a wild guess that this wasn't exactly a worthwhile place to be. He would've taken control of the gummi ship himself if he knew how to disable the auto-pilot. Sure he'd never actually flown one before, but he could probably figure it out.

"I'm not sure where we are, but we're definitely by an ocean," he reported.

[Oathkeeper Emi]

I hear immersion therapy is pretty good, but this isn't what I had in mind.
--

Emi opened the door a crack, just enough to peer out at him with narrowed eyes. "An ocean?[/color]" she hissed. She almost closed the door again and demanded they go somewhere else... but she didn't. Castle had said 'by an ocean'... maybe that a nice seaside town or something, with a place she could hide and not stare at the water. It would be different from the island. So, she opened the door all the way and apprehensively came out of the room. "Well, let's get this done and over with,[/color]" she sighed, crossing her arms. "You know the drill. Look around, ask questions and if it doesn't look like Arc has been around, he leave. Got it?[/color]"

She said all this as she walked across to the door lead outside the ship, waving her hand in the air. She wrenched open the door and then froze. Her eyes went wide as she looked down and only saw miles and miles of ocean as far as she could see.

Obviously, she panicked... going from frozen solid and gaping at the water to shrieking at the top of her lungs and trying to run away. She grabbed hold of Castle and he didn't do much good. In her panic, she managed to stumble, pulling Castle down with her. The displacement of weight sent them both tumbling out of the ship and down, down, down into the sea.

Emi screamed all the way down. This was her worst nightmare.

Also, her leather jacket couldn't get wet.

[Castle]

I can't swim. I can't swim. Oh my gosh I can't freaking swim.

That was all Castle could think as he and Emi plummeted to the dark waters below. It pretty much summed up all of his fears into one repeated statement. He could not swim, and therefore he wouldn't be able to help Emi (who, judging by her reaction, couldn't swim either), and moreover...

I am going to die.

A split second after that break in the repetition, they hit water. The harsh slap of the surface on his body was actually less painful than the gut-wrenching fall, but he must have lost his senses almost immediately, because after that, there was the odd sensation of waking up, and they were already deeply submerged.

Castle gasped.

Wait, he gasped?

Yes. Not only did he gasp, but he was breathing fast now. "Am I dead?" he asked out loud, tentatively, and was surprised to hear his own voice.

Oh, good lord. He was dead. And now his ghost would be underwater forever, right here, beside... Emi?

[Oathkeeper Emi]

... ... ... .... ...
--

She wasn't afraid of falling. It was what lay at the bottom of the fall that terrified her. She was afraid of drowning, being caught up in a current and kept under water. Somewhere, maybe in science class years and years ago, she remembered learning that you don't drown because you don't breathe. Your brain will force your body to breathe, and that is when you drown... when you breathe in water, and not air.

She hit the water back first. She wasn't sure what hurt worse: the panic, the cold water, or the actual impact. Her first instinct hitting the water was to gasp, her breath being knocked right out of her lungs. She did so, knowing that she really had no choice. She was dead either way. She couldn't swim, couldn't get back to the surface in time to breathe. To her surprise, the gasp satisfied her lungs... and another breath, and another breath. She opened her eyes and it was déjà vu. Just like in her dream, she was looking up at the sun through the water. But unlike her dream, she could breathe. She was still frozen in fear, it wouldn't let up and it wouldn't let her relax.

Earlier, she had been hoping for a world without a stupid transformation but it seemed this time, it saved her life. She was too tense with fear to look down at herself, but if she had, she probably wouldn't be too happy. It was better than a demonic Christmas elf, at least. And she didn't have to ruining her leather jacket... it was gone, as were the rest of her clothes, but fear not, she wasn't naked... at least not completely, though her seashell top wasn't much more modest than underwear. Not that she had much to show off. The only reason her wild hair wasn't getting tangled in the current was the fact it was pulled back into low ponytail. And to top it all off, she had... a tail. A mermaid tail, purple in color.

But if someone didn't snap her out of it, she was probably going to lay at the bottom of the ocean until she died of starvation or something.

[Castle]

It took him a minute or so to fully register what was going on. He wasn't dead. Their appearances were altered by the world again. They were able to breathe under water. Emi was a mermaid now (and was hardly wearing anything, which Castle would have found very interesting if it wasn't so dang bizarre). So... what about him?

He tried to lift his arms, to look down and find out exactly what happened to him. However, his body just wouldn't move that way. In fact, it didn't move properly at all. He made an anxious, uncomfortable noise as he writhed around, trying to catch a glimpse of himself. What he saw were spindly, crustacean arms. And legs. Lots of legs.

Castle was a shrimp.

More accurately, he was a shrimp with his regular human head. The grayish-pinkish crustacean body was obviously a lot larger than that of a normal shrimp, but it still left him at the size of a several month old human infant, maybe a bit longer to the tip of his tail. Needless to say, when he figured out what he had turned into, it was probably the most horrifying moment of his life.

"What the hell?!" he cried, "What is this?!"

Completely flustered, he flailed his spindly shrimp legs, which succeeded only in flipping him upside down. He remained in that position as he sank slowly through the water.

[Oathkeeper Emi]

XD
--

Castle's exclamations brought Emi out of her stupor, somewhat. She still floated lazily, but she opened her mouth and a few bubbles, remnants of her last breath of air, obscured her vision for a moment. She was pretty sure she wasn't dead, and pretty sure she hadn't drowned. Maybe this was a dream, or... she blinked a few times, looked down at herself and reality came back to her. Sanity, logic, reason.

Slowly, she righted herself. Looked around and saw... Castle.
And burst into laughter. It was nice to laugh, a good burst of endorphins to drown out the adrenaline that was making her heart pound. And she laughed and laughed and laughed, until her stomach hurt and she couldn't breath. The not being able to breath triggered another few moments of raw panic but she quickly calmed herself by gulping down a few breaths (she supposed it was breathing, but maybe it was like a fish and she was taking water in and getting to oxygen out of it) to remind herself she could in fact, still breath.

"That.... is the funniest thing I think I've seen in my whole life. I haven't laughed that hard since I was little. Hahaha![/color]"

[Castle]

Castle wanted desperately to hide his burning face, but his arms weren't long enough. He gritted his teeth to suppress a whimper and worked on getting himself right-side up.

"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up," he growled, which was the best comeback he could think of at the moment. His lack of witty remarks really didn't help his ego. In fact, it felt as though nothing could help his ego at this point.

After some flailing, he managed to flip himself over, but other than that he had no control. He just kept his legs moving and hoped it would keep him from drifting away.

"Let's just get back to the gummi ship already. Your dragon guy wouldn't be here, would he? Let's just go... back... up..." The last few words were under some strain as he tried, in vain, to swim up. It didn't work, and the surface looked so very far away.

He didn't even care that Arc might have been here anyway, maybe as some sort of dragon-fish-guy-thing. He just wanted to leave before his day could get any worse. But even if he managed that, he had a sinking feeling that his life was officially over anyway.

"Why is this happening?" he mumbled despairingly. Maybe he really did die, and this was Hell.

[Oathkeeper Emi]

Maybe this isn't so bad.
--

Emi ignored the plight of her shrimpy friend and took a moment to process her own transformation, finally. She couldn't say she was entirely pleased. She was fine with her normal appearance, sort of, but she didn't really want worlds going on and changing it for her without her permission. Oh well. "Suck it up and come on,[/color]" Emi said. "I don't like it either, but at least you aren't drowning. Let's go ask around and then we can leave.[/color]"

Of course, she wasn't entirely sure how they were going to get back to the gummi ship but there wasn't a chance she was going to tell Castle that.

She was trying very hard to quell the panic from being underwater, so the foremost thing in her mind right now was to figure out how to move. At the moment, she was just kind of letting the current take her wherever. She didn't know how to swim, for obvious reasons, but she feared the current carrying her off into some dark underwater cave more than she feared looking retarded trying to swim when she didn't know how. Besides, hadn't she seen people swimming before... somewhere? On TV, or maybe in gym class back at school before she failed for refusing a swim test. She just needed to think back on that and see if she could apply it.

It took a few minutes but she finally figured out the basics and it was enough to get where she needed to go. She grinned for a split second, quite proud of herself and called back to castle, quite cockily "Let's get a move on, shrimpy.[/color]"

She took a deep breath, calmed her pounding heart and decided that finding Arc was more important than her phobia of water.

[Castle]

No sympathy from Emi, as was to be expected. Castle was hoping that she'd want to get out of here as fast as he did, but she didn't seem to mind the water now that she was in it (a huge change, he noted with some puzzlement) and her own transformation was apparently no bother. Figures they would have to stay because she wanted to, unlike when they practically fled from that other world after she got jumped by a practical joke.

He grumbled to himself in the few minutes it took her to get the hang of moving around. Castle tried to get his own movement under control, but his little legs weren't very good for swimming at all. He ended up sinking down to the top of a rocky formation and teaching himself to scuttle, which, after tripping a few times on his many limbs, he eventually got the hang of. Finally, Emi called him over.

"That's easy for you to say!" he said, scuttling toward her, "I don't exactly have fins, y'know!"

He tried to climb over a bump in the rock, slipped, and tried awkwardly to catch himself. As he did, his body contracted a little, and a second later he was rocketing backwards. He yelped loudly and flailed until he sank to the rock again.

"I hate this place," he grumbled, in a terrible mood now.

[Oathkeeper Emi]

Spoke too soon.
--

It wasn't easy for her to say. She may have looked calm on the outside, but maybe Castle couldn't see her shaking hands and couldn't hear her heart pounding. She was still trying not to to bolt and the only reason she wasn't is because a shred of logic in her mind told her there wasn't anywhere to do. So, she concentrated as hard as she could on the path ahead of her. She settled into a rhythm and concentrated on that. Swimming, she found, was kind of like drumming, in abstract kind of way. A set rhythm she could lose herself in, with changes depending on what the situation called for.

Their surrounding environment was interesting to Emi but only in the sense that she realized it was a lot like being on land except with water instead of air. And being able to swim, which she guess would have been like be able to fly on land. They were swimming, however awkwardly, through a series of caverns and tunnels. "Okay, we're cool. We're good,[/color]" Emi said shakily, with a nervous chuckle. Maybe she would make it out of this without too much mental scarring. Just as she thought this though, the two of them swam a bit too close to one of the strong currents in the tunnels.

She shrieked, sounding a lot more like a five year old than an almost eighteen year old, as they were sucked through the tunnel. She didn't fight the current, not that she could have won. She had been dragged kicking and screaming back into a fright. When they were spit out on the other end of the tunnel, she just kind of hung there with her eyes wide, slowly floating back down to the ocean floor.

[Castle]

Grudgingly, Castle found himself scuttling after Emi, down into a crevice that took them to a series of underwater tunnels and caverns. Emi wasn't swimming especially fast, but it was still hard for him to keep up. On top of that, he felt like they were being watched, and he kept seeing eyes in his peripheral vision. He didn't realize that there was plenty of wildlife here to observe the new arrivals, though the cautious residents kept their distance.

He finally figured out that he could coordinate that weird "rocketing" movement he discovered by accident a few minutes earlier. Unfortunately, utilizing this also forced him to swim backwards. He had to take a moment each time to look around and see if he was still going in the right direction, but it was faster than just scuttling.

Suddenly, as he was going backwards through the water, a strong current ripped him and Emi into another tunnel. He heard her scream all the way through, and he did the same. When the current finally spat them out in a new location, he was thoroughly dizzy. Castle took a moment to wait for the world to stop spinning before he noticed Emi sinking down to the sandy ocean floor, a disturbed look on her face.

"Still think staying here's a good idea?" he sneered, not realizing how terrified she really was, "If you ask me, which you probably never will, I'd say that we should just swim on up to the gummi ship and get the hell out. That is, if we can even reach it the way we are!"

The realization sent a chill through him. How were they going to get back up there? He knew that as a human, he could jump ten feet if he tried hard enough, but as a shrimp?

"That is a fine predicament, I must say," spoke an unfamiliar voice.

Castle spun around as fast as he could underwater, nearly tipping over as he did so. The new voice belonged to, of course, a talking fish, who swam lazily a few feet away. His silver-blue scales glittered in the minimal sunlight from high above, and the ridges on his fins looked kind of sharp.

"Who the hell are you?" Castle demanded immediately. The last thing he wanted was to be bothered by some smooth-talking fish guy of all things.

"Well, that's rather rude. Do they not have manners where you come from?" the fish asked. Castle opened his mouth to retort, but the fish cut him off, "Don't bother lying. I know you two aren't of this world. I watched you come in. And, I think I can help you get back out."

[Oathkeeper Emi]

I don't think immersion therapy is going to help after all.
--

Emi didn't hear Castle's question, or any words following that. His conversation with this slimy- not in the usual way that adjective is used for a fish, but meaning immoral or dishonest- fish included. She had settled on her back into the sediment at the bottom of the ocean, still frozen and staring wide eyed up at the surface. Who knew what was going through her mind?

Maybe she, like many with phobias, was envisioning just one hundreds of way this could go wrong, the end result always being her drowning... being eaten by sharks... trapped in an underwater cave and dying in the darkness, alone and letting the scavengers of the underwater world eat her corpse. Basically, one of hundreds of ways she could die alone underwater. She had a very morbid mind on her best days and it was even worse without the buffer of her logical mind.

The currents, though much weaker than the one that had sucked her and Castle through the tunnel, moved her around a bit. Even though she was a deadweight, it didn't matter much since she was underwater and the result was that she was tumbled around a bit like a leaf on a fall day. She floated back and forth behind Castle, making no effort to stop it.

[Castle]

Castle glanced back with the hope of getting Emi's opinion of this guy. Unfortunately, what he saw was a bizarre scene of Emi floating around in the current like a piece of paper on the breeze. What the hell was she doing? She didn't look like she was unconscious. He felt the fish's eyes on the back of his head and turned around to face him again. It seemed he was on his own with this. Whatever.

"Okay, why would you want to help us?" he questioned, raising a skeptical eyebrow.

The fish smiled with its weird, fishy lips and chuckled. Castle suppressed a shudder.

"Ever the suspicious, rude one, aren't we? I just want to help. And honestly, you look like you need all the help you can get." As he spoke, his grin faded a little and his gaze flickered to Emi. Guess Castle wasn't the only one who was weirded out by that.

"So you're just a good samaritan, huh?" Castle replied. If he didn't have a shrimp body, he would have crossed his arms.

The fish glanced around. "All right, fine, I'll make this brief," he said in a hushed tone, moving closer to Castle, "There's a grotto over yonder that used to house a very powerful witch. The witch got killed in a fight about a year ago, and no one's been in there since. There's bound to be a ton of magic potions and spells in there. One of them could be your ticket out of here."

"Okay, so, what's the catch?" Castle asked flatly.

"Look, I just want to know if that place is really... If it still has all that stuff in there or not. All that magic sittin' around, you know?"

"So you want us to go in there and look because you're too scared to do it yourself," he guessed with a smirk.

The fish scowled, but quickly covered it up with a smile. "I'm just a cautious person. I only want to know what it's like inside. If you don't give me that much, I simply won't lead you there. It's your choice."

Castle glared at him for a moment, and then turned back toward Emi's general direction.
"Hey, Emi! Should we go with this guy or what?" he called, more to get her attention than to actually ask a question.

[Oathkeeper Emi]

Wait, what?
--

Emi came to a stop, face down in the sand. The shock of not being able to breath anything, not even water, due to her face being buried in sand was enough to get her up, though she lay there flailing and suffocating for a few moments. She came up spitting sand. "What guy?[/color]" she muttered, wiping off her tongue with her fingers. "All I see are stupid fish and stupid plants and stupid rocks... and a lot of stupid sand.[/color]"

That's when she realized Castle must be talking about about the "stupid fish" next to him. What? It was a fish. That was ridiculous. Then again. She was a mermaid, Castle had the body of a shrimp and they were looking for an anthropomorphic dragon. What the hell, fish could talk. She threw her hands to the sky. Or however the saying goes if you live underwater.

"What does he want us to do? Take my word for it, if he wants you to come into a dark alley with him and brings a jar of bees, run,[/color]" she warned. The worst part was, she wasn't joking.