Book 3 - The Merchant from the Depths: Chapter 27; Singing Some Praise

The screen turns on as the chapter title plays "Chapter - 27; Singing Some Praise".

The first-year group had gone back to Coral Sea and made it all the way to the Atlantica Memorial Museum.

But then they all saw and read a sign which made them all shocked and shout "It's closed?!"

Jack complained "Are you kidding? What awful timing."

Deuce puts a hand to his head as he thinks for a second before commenting "Is that why the Leech brothers haven't harassed us at all today? Because they knew?" Ace crosses his arms as he says "I dunno about that."

Jack essentially growls out "Are we really turning tail and going back empty-handed after coming all this way?"

Ace then tells them "Hold up! I've got an idea." before he started to swim away with the rest following after him.

They are then spying on the merfolk guards as Grim comments "Mragh! Guess I shouldn't be surprised that merfolk society would have merfolk security guards." Deuce shrugs as he says "I mean, duh."

Ace tells them "Okay. I'm gonna distract the guard. In the meantime, you guys sneak in behind him and borrow the photo."

Jack is slightly worried as he asks Ace "Are you sure you can handle this by yourself?"

Ace explains his thinking for why he's doing the distracting "You're honest to a fault, and Deuce would give himself away within minutes. Then Yuu is about as knowledgeable as a clamshell down here and Grim is a monster. Don't worry. I got this."

Ace then swims out near enough to a guard as he pretends to have just read the sign and shouts "Awww, MAN! For realsies?!"

What seems like an older merman guard swims up asking Ace "Hm? Is something the matter?" Ace tells the merman guard "Is the museum really closed today? I can't believe this. I was super pumped for this visit…"

The merman guard then takes a closer look at him as he asks "Why. that's an odd tailfin you've got. Are you a land-dweller? Did you come all the way here by yourself?" Ace answers with extreme faked enthusiasm "Yes, sir! I've always admired merfolk society, ever since I was a kid! I scrimped and saved, got myself a magic potion, and now I've finally made it here!"

He then fakes fanboying "Duuude, a real live merman! This is SO COOL! Can I touch your fins? Can I have your autograph?!"

The merman guard is now totally distracted as he asks Ace "U-um, sure. Would you like to see my dorsal fin, too?" Ace nods with faked excitement as he motions with his head for the others to get going and steal that painting.

Grim says "That guy can lie like nobody's business. He ain't even battin' an eye!"

Deuce takes notice of Ace's signaling as well as the guard's distraction as he tells the others "The guard's totally distracted. Let's move!"

The others then cautiously swim past the distracted guard and lying Ace.

Once inside there is a bit of a hallway or rather entrance hall before it opens out more. The walls are purple and rocky, with a bunch of pictures hanging off of it rather hap-hazierdly.

Jack asked "This is the place Azul mentioned, right?" Which got nods from both Yuu and Deuce.

But then Yuu ended up swimming into the museum a little bit more to see what the main part looks like.

Even though they were underwater she could still see what looked like a pond for some of the flooring in the main entrance area. At first she was confused, well that was until she remembered that salter water will form its own puddle even in a bunch of regular water. As salt water is denser than normal water it will sink to the bottom and due to the high salt it won't mix in with the regular water. They're called brine lakes.

The whole place also seemed to be just using the natural grooves and holes, it was less building and more just using nature in the best ways for their purposes. She could see some shelves with artifacts although due to how far she was, they weren't clear. But then she set her eyes on the main center-piece. It was a statue of a rather merman with a crown with a long beard and hair holding a trident with a wave crashing up against him. Once she saw him she could actually recognize him as he was that merman king that the sea witch was trying to make a deal with.

But just then Deuce swam over, calling her name softly before bringing her back over to where the other two were looking for the picture Azul wanted.

Jack was reading what each of the pictures were as he looked at them "Here's a photo commemorating the visit of Horatio XII, court musician… Here's one of a fourth princess…"

Jack looks over at the others as he states "There sure are a lot of these. I can see why he said nobody would notice if we borrowed one."

Deuce also started to look at the pictures as he said "Where's that commemorative photo of Prince Rielle from ten years ago…?"

The others started looking again for a little bit before Deuce called them over asking "Ah, here we go. This is it, right?" As he pointed to a picture and read the caption "A visit from Prince Rielle and his schoolmates…"

The others had made their way over as Deuce commented "Looks like a photo of an elementary school field trip." Grim states "There's a bunch of tiny merfolk in this pic." Jack then asks "Of all the pictures here, why would he ask for this one specifically?"

Deuce answers with some pep-in-his-step "I couldn't say… But once we bring it back, I can say goodbye to this sea anemone on my head!"

He then looked to Yuu as he told her "Just grab it and let's go already."

Yuu then rather carefully takes it off the wall and they all flinch back for a second, waiting to see if there was going to be some alarm sounded or something when they took it off the wall.

After a second Jack says "Huh. It's not even rigged with an alarm. I guess it really is just a commemorative photo. This is kinda underwhelming."

Just then a merman guard from inside the museum swims past and sees them, photo in hand, and shouts at them "Hm? HEY! What are you doing there?!"

Grim shouts "Myah?! Uh-oh! It's another guard!" Jack tells the guard as well as the others "I don't like this one bit, but we've got no choice. Sorry, buddy. You need to take a little nap!"

Before he squares up to fight with this merman, with the others following up rather quickly after.

…

They manage to beat the guard and knock him out, as they quickly swim out of the museum after, not wanting to have to fight or be caught again.

The screen then fades to black as "To be continued" plays before it fully turns off.