Empires SMP Halloween prompt oneshots

Day 20 - Half-Monster

            "Lizzie?" Jimmy called as he swam around her ocean empire, looking for his older sister. "Lizzie, where are you?" He couldn't find Lizzie anywhere and assumed she was probably visiting her husband. Eh, he could let the cute couple have their date or whatever it was they were doing. Jimmy didn't necessarily need Lizzie right then and there anyway.

            He swam down deeper into the ocean, holding his breath as his water breathing potion finally ran out. It was so annoying. His empire was water based and his sister's empire was even more water based and yet unlike Lizzie the blue axolotl Jimmy couldn't naturally breathe underwater. He really wished he could though. It was so inconvenient otherwise.

          Jimmy suddenly realized that he'd been holding his breath for too long and his lungs were starting to burn. Oh cod he was down too deep to swim to the surface. Inwardly jimmy cursed for being hatched from a slightly damaged egg and his addled head and looked around. Thankfully Lizzie's underwater shipwreck grotto was right there so he made a beeline for it instead. There was an air bubble inside he could use to catch his breath.

         Jimmy let out a shaky exhale of relief while also gulping down fresh oxygen as soon as his head breached air. It was really so inconvenient. He ruled codfish and yet he was all too human. Whereas Lizzie and her axolotls matched. It was just so unfair.

          Then Jimmy noticed something new in the Ocean Queen's secret underwater grotto. It had been a while since he'd been there so it was natural that Lizzie would update her collection of weird things that she had found just washed up onto her shores, but something about this new item drew Jimmy closer to it.

          It looked like a large pearl with ocean blue and sea green swirls dotting its silky surface. Jimmy slowly approached it. It was so pretty and so... familiar? Jimmy suddenly remembered what he'd heard from Lizzie and Scott. Apparently they'd made a trade down here while singing and Lizzie had given away a pair of frostwalker diamond boots to Scott for this strange ball, which was called the ocean orb if he recalled correctly. It was what had turned Lizzie into the blue axolotl.

          A half baked idea suddenly struck Jimmy and before he could really think about it he was reaching out to grab the ocean orb. Touching it was how it had turned Lizzie, right? And besides, the seablings deserved to have matching water forms. So Jimmy confidently picked up the magic ball as it started to glow and change him.

           It was a strange experience. It half felt like it should be natural but at the same time an unnatural sense of wrongness crawled down Jimmy's spine as gills slit the sides of his neck and a cod tail sprouted out from his bottom. His hands that clutched the orb were likewise turning scaly and grew webs between the fingers.

            Jimmy's transformation was soon complete and he put the ocean orb down to examine his reflection in the water, but as soon as the orb had left his touch and stopped glowing his new fishy form started to reverse and before he knew it he was just an ordinary human again. How come Lizzie's transformation was permanent whereas Jimmy's wasn't?

           Sooner or later he figured out that maybe he was too attached to the land. This was the ocean orb, after all, but Jimmy ruled a swamp empire that was mostly muddy islands and he was the god of fresh water, which was surrounded by land. So the ocean orb affected Lizzie more because her whole thing was being the Ocean Queen and the goddess of salt water.

            Jimmy sighed. So he wasn't going to get a fishy form like his sister. At least not a permanent one... he glanced back at the orb. It would keep him transformed as long as he touched it, right? So what if he... eh, Lizzie wouldn't mind that much, would she?

           Joel was tired enough to just plop down on the edge of his dock as the sun set in the distance and the evening sea breeze blew all around him. His week had been rather confusing and exhausting. His wife had turned out to be a giant ten foot tall fish goddess and Joel still loved her regardless, of course, but it was still a shock and he would have to get used to it.

            Something in the water stirred and Joel glanced down to see if it was Lizzie. Instead he saw what looked an awful lot like a pale scaly sea monster covered in dripping algae and slime with a strange orb hanging around its neck on a chain rise out of the water and look straight at him.

           Joel shrieked and scrambled to his feet. It had been dark enough that he didn't notice the sea monster's confused expression until it spoke. "Uh, Joel?" He said, and Joel stopped. That voice was familiar. "Jimmy?!" He yelped. "What in the world happened to you?!"

           Jimmy chuckled and pointed at the orb around his neck. "Uh, do me a favor and don't tell Lizzie that I've borrowed this." He said. "Tell me what?" The Ocean Queen asked in a stern voice as she rose out of the water on the other side of the dock, looking very annoyed about something.

            Both Joel and Jimmy gulped. Okay, Joel thought he was scared when Jimmy had startled him earlier, but he was definitely scared now. "Jimmy stole something and I have nothing to do with it!" He shouted at once. "Joel!"