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perpetualexistence · 3 months

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Sea Monster AU: Chrefxposition

So, on the one hand, this part is a few days later than originally promised. On the other hand, it's twice as long. I could have arguably made this into two parts, but I've got no energy left to figure out where exactly it should be split. Turns out decent exposition can take a while!

In the eventual fanfic proper I'll be sure to spread/foreshadow some of this exposition earlier. With me writing as I'm going it with only an outline for certain events, the foreshadowing is going to be a bit splotchy, but I'll try my best.

Without further ado, time to watch Noah go darker yet darker still!

Content warnings: Mentions of eating people, death, blood, Alejandro being a manipulative bastard

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For the rest of spring break, Alejandro insists on hunting more than usual to build up an underwater cache for later. Noah has to work on overdrive to find enough ships to keep Alejandro happy. He goes to different parts of the lake in order to spread out the location of where the disappearances are happening. Also to keep them as far away from his hometown as possible. He knows this many disappearances so close to one another are going to draw attention from other humans. He doesn't comment on it for two reasons. One, because he'd rather not test Alejandro again even if the concern is practical and legitimate. And two, he wants the disappearances to get attention. He's got to figure out who's smart enough to notice, and vocal enough to try to do something about it.

Noah starts intentionally hanging out by the docks more. He knows it's safe because Alejandro never dares to get that close to civilization. Sailors will sometimes have odd jobs when they need an extra hand on deck or someone to help with loading/unloading. Since everyone knows everyone to some extent in his town, the Mudaliars have a reputation for picking up odd jobs in order to help pay off their debts. Noah's never done it before since he's had his poetry to provide income. But at the very least, it means he can have an excuse for why he's there. It also gives him an excuse for talking with sailors to see what their thoughts are on sea monsters. He doesn't bring up the disappearances himself, because that's inviting trouble. Instead, he lets sailors do what they like to do best: talk.

That's how he finds Chef, a loud ex-marine who found himself kicked from the marines and now works as a sailor taking odd jobs transporting things across the lake. Chef shares that the real reason he got booted out is because he started noticing a bunch of disappearances with other marines. He started hearing tales of beasts and went to go investigate it himself. Sure enough, it was a giant monster making easy pickings of his brothers in arms. His husband knew more about taking those slimy bastards down, so he went to him for help. Eventually they did win, but he lost men doing it, and the beast sunk to the bottom of the ocean, getting rid of their proof. He was tossed out for 'recklessly endangering lives'. (He sacrificed far more men than he truly needed to as a distraction, and didn't even let them know that was going to happen.)Now he's seeing all these disappearances happening and his gut is telling him this is happening again. He doesn't have the same firepower as before, but he and his husband are still preparing.

Noah's now very curious about this husband of his if he's the one who knew more about sea monsters. Chef immediately gets suspicious and wants to know why he cares so much about this. Noah hates having to give up information, but he knows if he's to get anywhere, he's going to have to. He says that he knows for a fact he saw something like a sea monster in the distance. He's just been keeping quiet because he doesn't know who would believe him. Which isn't technically a lie. It just doesn't reveal how much else he knows. It also won't really give Chef any new information since by the sound of it he was already going to prepare regardless of if he got any confirmation from someone else. It's enough to get Chef decide to take him in on his and Chris' monster hunting crusade.

Chris's family are among the humans that believe/know sea beasts exist and make it their job to hunt them, his most notable one being his cousin Jerd.

Chris though? Nah, he doesn't give a shit about hunting. He just cares about fame and fortune. He stole a random ass book that was supposed to have rituals to give him just that and booked it. The pouch around his neck is a result of that in that it's supposed to give him good luck. Someone else in the family made it for him as a rite of passage in being ready to join the family business.

He's pretty shitty at magic because he doesn't want to put in the time and effort to learn, he just wants the results. And this is why he'll forever be shitty at magic. Magic is about intertwining sentience with nature. For that, you need two things: Desire and Effort. The desire has to be focused, and it has to be what a person actually desires. If a person thinks they want one thing, but deep down they really want something else? The magic's either going to act based on the true desire or be fucked up as a result. That's the sentience part.

The nature part is effort. You can't get something for nothing. If you try, someone or something still ends up suffering along the line. There's balance in the ecosystem of the sea, even for those who are at the top of the food chain. It might not be fair to those on the bottom, but it is what it is. Whether you take time and effort in learning runes, or gathering ingredients, the point is that it's your work in a way that you truly know is giving it your all.

Chris has definitely got the desire, and it's why he was able to become famous thanks to his magic pouch. However, he wasn't willing to put any work into actually maintaining the pouch's components so his luck ran out. He keeps it mostly for sentimental reasons at this point. He can't really go back to his family because he stole the book, aka a family heirloom that he knows damn well is dangerous when it's in the wrong hands. (Little does he know his family would have been okay with him leaving the family business. Their problem was with how he did it, which is no one's fault but his own.) He doesn't even know how to read the damn thing because he never paid too much attention to his parents trying to teach him how. All he does know is that it's very powerful, has a mind of its own, and hates Chris because it loves to try to snap closed on him.

So now he's a washed up TV host stuck in this dingy little town. The only person who's still standing beside him is Chef. He runs a stupid little pawn shop in this tourist trap of a town to try to sell fake crap, plus some of his tv host memorabilia. He's trying to find a way out of this mess until what does he see? Evidence that there's a sea monster lurking about.

Chris realizes he could just expose sea monsters to get fame that way. Completely ignoring everything that his parents ever told him that it'd be a terrible idea. Sea monsters would have no reason to hide if they were public knowledge, so their fatality rate would grow exponentially. Still, that's not his problem, and his good luck will ensure that he and his husband will turn out alright.

Chris doesn't quite care for including this walking twig into this situation at first when Chef introduces the two. As far as he's concerned, Noah provides nothing and is a walking liability. Up until Noah reveals that he's able to hack.

His family has a whole library worth of information about sea monsters. In order to try to expand their reach in where they can defend against sea monsters, they've taken to digitizing the library. Thanks to Chris's less than stellar exit, he's been locked out of that information. But he knows how to find it, and Noah seems like he'll be perfect for actually getting in. And hey, the kid's volunteering to do all the boring research? All the better! Chris will focus on strategizing and seeing what this dumb book will do for him. Not that he tells or shows Noah the book. He's lazy, but he's not that dumb to let someone else touch that thing.

This is how Noah starts learning things about merfolk. Turns out they've been around for quite a long time. It turns out merfolk aren't naturally as big as Alejandro. They use magic to make themselves that big. Due to the amount of effort and food to maintain their size, they can't use any other kind of magic when large. Thanks to generations of not using any other kind of magic, they lost the ability to use magic to do anything except change their size over time. That's how they gained their own separate classification as sea monsters. The only exception to size magic they have is using lake/ocean currents to travel. It takes a lot of magic depending on the distance traveled.

Their first meeting is making a lot more sense to Noah.

It also presents an interesting idea. Maybe he doesn't have to kill Alejandro. Maybe he could just stop him from ever growing again.

He knows he should kill Alejandro. He'd never settle for being kept vulnerable for the rest of his life. Noah would have to become his keeper. He'd never get rid of him. And yet. Despite all the murder he's witnessed, helped with, and at least slightly enjoyed, he still hasn't taken a life himself. He really wants to believe he has standards. Killing Alejandro would cross one of those.

It doesn't help that despite how dangerous Alejandro is, and how clearly he's pushing the limits of their deal, Alejandro actually does listen to Noah. He hasn't knowingly gone after innocents. He hasn't physically hurt Noah.

If anything, Alejandro has been gentle. He'll snatch him up when faking his death for a crowd, but he never squeezed and always checked to make sure he was okay afterwards, even when he was trying not to make it too obvious. Alejandro had a horrible habit of messing with his hair yet despite his claws Noah never had a scratch on him. He'd put Noah on his shoulder to go for a swim without getting him wet.

To let him look down at the destruction he helped caused against people who spit and cursed at Noah. To help him feel above others and his actions. To somehow spoil him rotten with attention to practically beg for a reaction. Noah's dark humor as he watched bastards die was to cope, the smirk that grew on his face a coincidence. He felt nothing to hear Alejandro laugh as if they were just sharing a regular meal.

Alejandro had also caressed his throat with a claw the first chance he had power. He had felt a vice like grip when he dared to argue back. So long as Alejandro is huge, Noah is going to be relying on Alejandro's mercy. As recent events have shown, that can be a finite resource.

He'll just do more research to see if his idea is even a workable one. He'll figure what to do next after that.

Researching more about magic led to him learning about a new faction: sea witches. They were merfolk who were able to use magic for means aside from simply changing sizes. They made potions, used rituals, spoke chants. Their powers came primarily from the deals they made with others. There were rumors that deals like these could make magic accessible even to humans. Other rumors said that humans could learn to use magic independently.

Sea witches and sea monsters are naturally at odds with one another. One needs people to make deals, the other needs people to eat. Or at least, to stay as big as they do for as long as they do. Turns out sea monsters can in fact survive without eating humans. It's just that humans keep them bigger for longer. Figures that Alejandro would lie about having to eat people out of necessity.

As a result, sea witches did create defenses against sea monsters. Including spells that would strip them of their magic and force them into their smallest form. Bingo.

Unfortunately, while there are mentions of magic in the database, there don't seem to be any actual spells/rituals there. Something about sea magic not mixing well with technology. He's going to have to ask Chris directly to see if he'll be interested in shrinking Alejandro rather than killing him.

Chris is alright with this because hey, a small merfolk you can put in a tank sounds perfect for exposing and becoming famous! (Not that Noah will actually let Chris take Alejandro away, but he doesn't need to know that.) He'll just have to lie a little to his husband about plans to kill Alejandro, no big deal. And...ugh. He's going to have to actually try to read that magic book to find something about shrinking things. Noah's immediately interested in seeing that book for himself, but Chris shuts him down immediately. Chris will look at the magic shit, Noah will just be the one getting them whatever they need. A coffee would be a great start.

So Noah ends up becoming more like Chris's assistant. He gets used to getting Chris coffee or do the more boring research a lot. Chris uses Chef to get the more out there ingredients for this new ritual he's managed to find. And he starts sending Noah to carve out runes around town. Something about 'using the town's natural magic to siphon that of the sea beast'. Noah would prefer to know exactly what he's doing, but Chris keeps being cagey about Noah having to know things.

During all of this, Noah still has to meet with Alejandro to keep him happy. Thanks to overindulging during spring break, Alejandro's in a much better mood. However, he's being rather clingy with Noah. If Noah didn't know any better, he'd think Alejandro was trying to keep him from being able to have time for anyone else. It makes finding time to work with Chris and Chef a lot more difficult. He can't juggle stroking Alejandro's ego, Chris's ego, and going to classes all at the same time. So he decides to sacrifice going to classes. He'll help Chris and Chef during that time and Alejandro won't question him being away since he knows Noah needs to 'keep up appearances'.

It sucks because after the spring break party, he had actually been considering trying to know some of the others more. If only to take a break from Alejandro. There is one person who won't leave him alone though: Owen. Owen finds out through the grapevine about Noah not showing up to classes and immediately gets to texting to check on him. Noah makes up a lie about not feeling too well/needing to step back, and Owen buys it. Still, now that Noah's responded to one text, Owen takes to texting him throughout the day. Because he was pretty serious about trying to get to know Noah. And Noah would never admit it, but it's nice that someone else cares to check up on him. Plus, Owen is terrible with secrets, so he ends up blurting so much gossip about the others. Noah gets to make sarcastic remarks about them, and Owen just rolls with it. It's nice.

Eventually, Noah's suspicions about Chris outweigh his need to be cautious. So much so that he decides it would be better to try to break in to Chris's and Chef's place to see what exactly this spell book is saying to do rather than just take Chris's word for it.

It's written in a language he doesn't understand. He doesn't have the time to decipher it since he doesn't want Chris or Chef to know that he's in their house looking at it. He does manage to find the pages that Chris has been frequently using, though. They're the only ones that seem to be in English. He's not surprised to learn that Chris has been lying to him about the spell. He's horrified to discover to what extent.

Chris gives absolutely zero shits about this town. He wanted something that would help him take care of this sea monster problem, and he didn't really care how it was done. He practically had to fight the book to show him anything that wasn't in nonsense gibberish. But then, for once in his life, the decided to be book is on the same page as him. It showed him a ritual for mind controlling a sea monster that involves a rather brutal sacrifice of a whole town's worth of people. That sounds like a WAY better deal than regular fame and fortune!

Noah was already not happy when he found out about the mind control. As much as he's worried about his Alejandro, he doesn't know if Alejandro deserves that. Knowing him, he'd probably prefer death rather than being forced to obey someone else. Then Noah reads to the end and discovers the whole 'sacrifice a town' thing. That's what the runes around towns were for.

He'd been putting so much focus into trying to take down the literal monster, he'd forgotten all about how humans could be metaphorical monsters.

Noah knows how to take care of that. It's what he always does when he finds people that deserve to die.

He tells Alejandro about them.

He doesn't reveal the whole plot against Alejandro, of course. He just reveals that some sailors had been getting suspicious with the whole spring break binge eating. He infiltrated them to learn what they knew, and now they're getting too close. He's not sure how much of that Alejandro truly believes, but he does agree that if humans want to hunt him down, then they need to go first.

Noah first makes sure to screw up the ritual by fucking up his own carvings and scratching them out with the knife Chris let him use to do this in the first place. At this point he'd been using it so much it just became a force of habit to keep having it.

Then he goes on a ship with Chris and Chef who thinks that everything is going according to plan. Well, Chris's plan of mind controlling a sea monster, Chef's plan of killing one. What Noah had never told them was that Alejandro was an electric eel. He made sure to encourage Chef to use as much technology as he saw fit in order to leave them completely vulnerable.

Things would have been easier of course if Alejandro didn't decide to gloat about Noah being his loyal little pet when he shows up. Which bothers him both because it ruins the surprise and because it's condescending. This doesn't help things as Chris and Chef are quick to try to spring into action. Chef is trying to solo Alejandro, and Chris is coming at Noah pretty pissed because he's also just now realized that the ritual that should have automatically started taking action hasn't done that at all. Alejandro's occupied because Chef did still come with firepower, and Noah can recognize murder in Chris's eyes.

He's standing over Chris's body now. He knows it's a body because of the blood and the stab wounds. He knows he did it because he's gripping a knife in his hand he doesn't remember pulling out. Chef must be in Alejandro's stomach by now or else Noah would be dead. He can piece together what's happened, but he honestly can't remember the act itself. He knows he had to do it because Chris would have come to kill him first. He hadn't planned on crossing this line but seems like he did anyways.

He loves hates the pride in Alejandro's eyes. The promise that the first can be the hardest. But he's very grateful that Noah had chosen to live.

This isn't living. Rather than process, Noah points out that he's got to go back to Chris and Chef's house to get rid of any evidence that he knew them. After Alejandro takes care of Chris's body, he lets Noah go back to shore.

Noah dashes for the house, goes for the book, and hugs it like his new lifeline. Chris's book is now in Noah's possession. The book is rather content with its new owner. Because it felt Noah's desire to defend himself and his town, and willingness to put effort into doing it. It translated that ritual for Chris specifically to have something like this happen. It won't translate itself again, but if Noah's truly like the book thinks he is, that shouldn't be a problem.

Noah now has an unfiltered shot at evening the playing field with the book of a sea witch. Time to fight fire with fire.

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