Chapter Text
Chapter 1: A Glorified Fishbowl
Work is inspired by the following:
The Bonds That Break by Dracoria_Nebulae
Abyssal Lights by Dracoria_Nebulae
Sirens Are Assholes by SirenSays6
Lured By The Siren's Charm by SugarBonBon
These Diamond Waters by CayCanWrite
Ship In A Bottle by resurge for syst3m_of_3rr0rs
She lives in the the colder seas, deep in the depths but not too deep to be considered a deep sea siren.
She is black and white and survives hunting anything that dares to move.
Anything and everything except maybe the flying creatures who live above the waves.
She's heard they are called birds by the coastline pods; they are more feathers than an actual meal... so not really worth her time in effort for a hunt.
Well except if you want a feather not that they taste very good.
Once many seasons before, she had a pod of her own.
Right now she's what's called a dispersal Female.
Some seasons earlier she made the decision to leave the protection of her birth pod and striked out alone.
For Sirens it's quite common but moreso often alone with males, because females don't leave their pods unless they are in a same gendered pair ready to adventure or with a strong mate.
Males wander for awhile and hunt around local and even distant pods to display their hunting skills, trade, and attract a mate.
Sometimes they even display courting behavior by bringing gifts to their candidate mates; often Shiney, useful, or tough things that are not easily broken.
A favorite are stings of pearls on human fishing wire; handmade and even human jewelry, and smooth chunks of vibrant coral and sea glass.
This is a tradition that keeps siren subspecies from interbreeding too often and this is also how sirens eventually find their mates and form new pods.
She has a somewhat extended family in her birth pod.
Her mother is the matriarch, and her younger siblings are like her lieutenants doing her bidding, even her uncles, their mates and her little cousins travel together as one all around the world.
Just swiming wherever the food swam, but eventually she felt the call like most sirens do.
The infamous call from her light deep inside her chest- in her very bones.
The same call that happens to all sirens and mer folk, the same call her mother once followed to search and meet her eventual mates.
Although in truth it wasnt much of an inner light call and instead just residual instincts to mate and raise offspring like most sirens did at around the same time and same season.
But it could also be a chance to bond using her light.
Its a rare phenomenon which sirens followed since the weakening of naturally occuring 'lights' in the environment to find their other halfs.Â
So she traved her own path, swimming far away into different but still chilly waters waiting... watching.
In the days that pass her by she sometimes claws her way up above the ice floats to hunt.
She likes to watch as the flightless morsels and splash back into the water periodically to keep wet enough.
She also likes to sing as she waits, to look at the bright lights up above in the dark expanse which were so alike and yet very different from what she knows is deep in the depths below.
Earlier the same day she had Gorged herself on a fat freshly if you could call it that killed whale carcass.
It had already been dead for a long time by then, and judging from the slugishly leaking wounds in the thick blubber something big must've killed it or it got away but still died and it floated up top.
Probably a giant squid since those left wounds like that in the aftermath and fit the big meals murderer's description.
The carcass was being torn into by a wild pod of her own likeness, although they werent sirens themselves but instead the species she took after in well almost everything but her upper half.
There was more then enough to go around so they didnt attempt to drive her off for it.
Not that they could so easily if they wanted to try.
She was easily half a tail length longer then any single one of them.
Although they had her in sheer thickness to an extent; her mouth full of razor sharp teeth and the long taloned claws tipping each of her webbed fingers... well she was sure to do alot of damage, more then the pod individually or not was willing to risk.
So for the night she was already sated.
The lights as always were beautiful but in her mind she couldnt help but think of her future, of a mate or mates, and that too brought thoughts of the stories... of the journeys her mother and her mother's mother and all those sirens before her had passed down, atleast it was in song form.
She thought of the humans, the humans she had saw didnt have what she had.
The light inside that shown bright in a mimicry to the lights above in the sky and even those down deep below from the deep ones.
What was Beautiful and important seemed to be missing from inside them, it was too small or too dull to catch her attention.
In the stories her kind, 'sirens' would mate with the humans or others that were landwalkers.
In the stories those landwalkers possessed that brilliant light inside, that light that pulsed and dimmed with every thought and every feeling.
Of course it had been over a thousand years since that other breed of inner light wielding land walkers roamed so maybe it was the same as humans and their tall tales.
Sirens had changed too in body, SOUL, and literal voice- they no longer could speak with pure intent like they used to.
Confusing a tall talking hairless ape with something that could be fantastic, sure some of the humans used to have brilliant lights too... they called themselves the magi or mages to sirens that lured them beneath the seafoam.
A colorful culmination of every being and yet humans didn't seem to possess lights like the ones in the stories, not anymore.
Like she said... if they even did it was too small or too dim... too compressed for her notice.
So she didnt put too much belief in the stories, she didn't think that she would mate with a land Walker anyway.
To gain the ability to walk on two legs like them or give them a tail to swim forever with her.
Sure, apparently with a little determination and churning of her light she could do exactly just that. although that would be very exhausting from what she could understand.
Afterall Her mother did it.
She found a Sailor she grew to like floating alone almost dead on an orange puffy thing.
Like a brightly bloated dead fish wasted and uneaten.
Maybe it was poisonous but according to her mother the male floating in it who was somehow still alive attracted her to him with his brilliant inner light.
Her inner light called to him and his own sang joyfully back much like legends of the call- his light was beautiful to her.
So she stayed nearby watching as he floated along.
According to her mother it was both his curious antics that kept her coming back after every hunt, and the fact that her season was soon due.
Since mother was already looking for a mate at the time and she was too lazy to swim too far to find a proper siren mate she eventually sang him her sweet songs.
Instead of finding a born siren she decided to make the male she found change.
She sang luring him away off his little float and caught, and kept him giving him a long filling bite through the collar bone shoving her light into him and witnissing his change as a result.
Eventually because Sirens have notoriously low fertility rates many many seasons later full of courting and traveling the seas.
Full of fighting other sirens because females were a rarity and as mothers mate he would fight to keep her they eventually had her.
Then one day he died in a fight or her.
Mother killed the challenging male afterwards in grief.
As a 'guppy' She didnt have the chance to make many memories with and of him.
But.. she still remembers his kind seaweed eyes, she inheritied those eyes herself afterall.
Hers just were more of a freshly green kelpy in color.
Looking at the sky she cant help but wonder what her tomorrow will be like, how her endless search will change her light inside herself.
Its an odd thought for sure blinking slowly at the bleached pearl in the expanse surrounded by shining dapples of glinting sand or treasures.
Treasures like the ones she hoards after curious searches in her new ice berg cave she made into a home for the season.
 Half submerged in the salty blue she dreams sweet dreams of what could be true, unaware  of how close it really was from coming true.
The next morning like always she goes out to hunt again surveying the whale carcass only to find that it had already sunk too deep to be worth the dive.
She keeps swimming and comes upon a small pod of fat seals.
Watching from behind a smaller float downwind the seals dive from a series of thicker ice floates into a nearby school of fish.
The seals are hunting, eating the fish and grooming eachother.
Its a good spot, that pod of orcas from before are also in the area too.
There are alot of seals and theres fish too if she happened to want to eat something else, enough to share so she does.
She immediately careens forward forward almost like black lightning under the water and with a few powerful swings of her tail she catches a seal in one clawed hand and two moments later another in the other.
Farther away on three specialized ships and a couple speedboats are humans.
They are preparing to capture an orca or three from the wild pod to sell.
One of the older females had been shot with a tracker a week before and the fishermen were as ready as they could be for the hunt.
Hoping for the best and prepared for worse with their cranes, nets, harpoons, and tranquilizer guns and drugs to put the struggling marine animals asleep.
Although to be honest they didnt expect what they would catch, and neither did the siren in question expect to be caught.
It was the loud seal bombs fault and all that loud noise.
Already having eaten one seal and half of the other when the sound rings out in her shock she dives in into the water away from the loud noise.
They drop more of the bombs and the pod and siren panic.
She cant escape and its too loud, her song like the pods that is coming closer to her to flee, maybe to band together against the threat even though she is a Predator herself.
They are screaming, she is screaming... it hurts.
Eventually all sides the net is let down and they are in the middle together trapped.
Thats when they see her, A Siren!
Sirens are a Rarity, dangerous apex predators of the sea, from the surface, to the middle, and especially the depths... even the beautiful ones poisonously lounging half emerged in reefs.
Sirens as a whole are always a threat.
If not by their teeth or their claws or their sheer size, it can even be by poison or toxins on some subspecies spines.
One thing they all share togethter is their deadly songs; and its true for once what all the stories spout about them.
So seductive even if there isn't anything sexual about the songs, cat calling and luring anyone and everyone to their beautiful violent deaths.
They are often compared to their cousin species the mer or mermaids who are dramatically less carnivorous, their songs don't have the same dangerous pull, and they don't eat humans.
As an orca siren she would be prized, as a female she would be the crown prize not that they knew it just yet.
There would be no freedome for her, they would try to breed her and she woudnt be left alone.
Never alone until her death and even then they would watch behind the glass recording to catch her last breaths.
The point is they would make alot of money off of her, twice the price of the whole pod of orcas behind her and even then that was a lower end of the estimation.
They already had one orca on the decks heavily sedated an inch over a pool suspended by various nets, the orca letting out almost drunken crys for help from his pod aswell as crys to be let go.
The minute they start shooting the tranqs at her, the things she understands by example which exhausts whatever was shot... shes angry and she does the one thing she knows... she fights.
Its utter carnage, the ones too close listening to her song willingly step over the rails and drop off their ships and drown themselves.
If isn't the waves or her own stong tail, or her claws and teeth they die and something gets them first.
Eventually she cant power on and continue fighting after being shot too many times...The truth is she eventually couldnt last any longer and blacks out.
Its important to note that it wasnt her will that gave out, it was her flesh that gave out first.
Dispite all the blood in the water, the human blood, all the bodies laying practically everywhere, floating among the waves, they are a sacrifice that brought her down.
They cover the sirens body in nets and chains, sheer weight, anything to hold her down and lay her in one of the pool so her body cant dry out, the pool also acts as a second method to sedate her with the other powdery soup they immediately mixed in.
The last thing she hears are the cheers.
When she wakes up shes suspended inside another of a pool of salty water, its pleasantly cool but shes exhausted and so tired, shes trapped.
Its like when she was shot with those things and her light inside was... tired.
Every day gets worse, the aquarium that bought her from her kidnappers display her in that big tank, when the aquarium reveals there is a new resident shes immediatly a sensation and humans flock to see her.
Sometimes she panics but must of the time its exhausted bitter aggression that has her ramming the glass full bodily.
When she cracks the glass the first time they panic and tranq her again, the ensued panic makes them shut down the aquarium for the day, she wakes up under the vets care she screams busting eardrums and shes so loud the techs are bleeding internally from blood vessels popping.
It isn't the last time it cracks... They thickens the glass and inch for every attempt.
While shes flailing she snags her too sharp claws on body or two.
Shes too strong and she eviscerates the vets on calls assistant from collarbone to belly spilling guts everywhere, and theres blood everywhere.
The head Veterinarian had an aneurysm on the spot from her screams and only a lucky few escape in time if you could call the life they live after lucky.
They add new Clauses in the contract and cover up the death, 'because shes a dangerous animal' and 'the techs mustve made a mistake with the anesthetics'.
It isnt the first or the last time she takes a life still strapped down and drugged to high hell on the table.
Eventually they learn to pump her with so many drugs she can barely blink and hardly think, her heartbeat so slow the machine thinks she flat lines.
She flatlines too many times but her heart... its still beating.
The flesh may be weak but her spark, her light inside her body is strong.
They eventually make sure to have a pump installed to filter her tank and inject even more of the tranquilizer at all times into her tank.
They dont feed her during visiting hours and instead drop blood or chum to keep her moving an intresting as the prime attraction of the aquarium.
The other main reason is because she pulls anyone she can get her claws on into the tank and procedes to rips them apart screaming and if she happens to be hungry at the time she mauls them, eating what she can before the tranqs they shoot at her knock her out again.
It's a vicious cycle.
It's one she isn't willing to lose.Â
It goes on like this for a couple years, as a Siren, an Orca Siren she still remains extremely popular as always.
It was only natural that they tried to breed her.
Afterall shes an animal... an Expensive/Lucrative animal. .
Thats what happens to endangered species.
Sirens are already rare as it is.
They try to breed her with other sirens in captivity first but after deeming them unworthy for whatever reason as usual she attacked them.
She attacks everyone who steps into her space and tries to kill them.
Insemination doesn't work no matter the many times they try not that they stop.
The idea of a never before seen baby orca siren is just too good to let go.
Sure males will breed with females in captivity but its almost never successful for whatever reason.Â
Scientists and the lead researchers seem to believe there's a prerequisite ritual or just something the captive ones are just missing.Â
Like a missing piece of a puzzle.
Its insanity honestly- to do the same thing over and over again expecting something different and yet they continue.
...
In recent years they had even tried to keep her unconscious long enough for it to 'stick' but even unaware subconsciously her light refuses to support a little one.
No passed genetic material is retrieved.
That's what's missing from their data- sure breeding could be fun and all but no siren wants to raise a calf in a tank.
A tank where calves would be cut off from important rituals like the first hunt, diving, and exploring the surface and even the foul tasting flyer 'gulls'.
Why would any siren want to be a parent in such an environment?
Much less under circumstances where the land walkers would take the new light away like they did to others who were captured and bred.
In her fourth year in captivity something absolutely amazing happens... the barrier in mount ebbot shatters and out pours a legion of equally amazing and terrifying monsters.
Its not that they all look evil or anything but its the seed of thought that's scary, the threat.
Eventually of course after a long hard won bureaucratic battle monsters gained their rights and citizenship on the surface.
There is still prejudice and the occasional racist, hate crimes here and there, and even 'justified' calls to dust every monster anywhere but things somehow workout.
However it happened- between the smart little cookie that is the monster ambassador a human child- which was a definite shock, or even the Ex Queen of monsters still retaining her royal Authority.
The point is everyone can clearly see how kind the goat monster truly is.
Two and a half years later a machine in the suburbs of lower ebbot explodes once, twice, too many times to just ignore and out pours a gaggle of skeletons.
The new arrivals are unique for sure, the pairs are also ultimately alternate pairs of the same pair of brothers from different universes entirely so I guess kudos to the Multiverse Theory.
An endangered monster species aka a certain family of two becomes 14.
Ebbot city which grew in the past two and a half years after the barrier broke, which in response the population practically became a ghost town and months later a tourist trap because monster were definitely something to gawk at.
Another wonder of the world is what ebbot becomes, and while monsters were now free from ebbot they still didnt tend to move much out of city much less the state.
Although many did travel the world as soon as they could monsters seemed to like to stay close to home.
With all of the new gold in circulation there was alot of money lying around and with the budget so damn big as a gift to monster kind they built an extensive Aquarium.
Since alot of monsters weren't able to touch the water, as a gift to the cities new inhabitants Ebbot brought the sea and all its captured wonderd to them.
Because the aquarium was such a big success another whole wing was constructed and built to house an even bigger tank In order to hold an amazing specimen... The Famous Orca Siren.
It took a few months to get the transfer all together but a month before the siren was flew in by helicopter the aquarium hired alot of newbies.
The new hires were to play as tour guides and a bunch of other roles like janitors for cleaning duty, scrubbing shit from glass and stalls and generally being helpful labor, even feeding some of the animals and working in the giftshops and food court.
This is where sans and his... 'Cousins' come in. The work in E.A is good, while the gold they had coming out of the underground was pretty decent with their new family size housing themselves eventually could become a problem.
Not even thinking about food they all knew what's left of the gold wouldn't last forever so they all needed jobs, temp jobs at least until they could square away surface certificates to prove their education for whatever they wanted to really do.
E.A or Ebbot Aquarium happened to pay really well compared to all the other temp jobs nearby and readily available.
Plus the new attraction, Sirens were pretty damn interesting.
According to stories before the barrier from the monster side and even the humans and their folk tales sirens were closest thing to monsters still on the surface.
Humans were also very adamant that sirens weren't sentient- not in the ways that mattered like a human or now a monster too.
Sirens according to 'proven' public knowledge had the intelligence of a particularly smart pet, a small child, or even in some cases an ape but not human in the ways that matter.
They couldn't or to be frank just didn't talk to humans, they were predators. Apex predators that evolved according to science to hunt humans and any landwalker, sirens even practiced cannibalism on their own kind when given no other option.
Sirens were in songs and like the legends they really did lure anyone too close to their death, into their open maws.
Some Sirens happened to look humanoid, legends say that they mated with humans (and monsters) sometimes but that couldn't be true, there was no proof.
Sirens may seem human, almost human but they weren't, according to Media they were different in all the ways scientists said mattered.
Like magic, until monsters it was unproven and thus considered fake... how wrong they were.