"What?!! Has it been 3 hours already?!?" Dirk asked.
"Do you honestly think I'd be freaking out if it wasn't?!??" Jake retorted.
Jade began to panic. "Oh my god, what do we do?! The beach is on the other side of the city!!"
"Isn't it obvious?" Karkat shouted. "WE RUN!!!"
The teenagers began to run through the streets, Karkat leading them through the traffic and pedestrians.
"So," He asked, panting heavily as they ran, "what exactly happens if you guys run out of time before we reach the beach?"
"You know, I'm not entirely sure," Dave replied. "We might turn into mermen immediately, or maybe we stay humans forever."
"Would you guys want to stay human forever?"
Dirk scoffed, "Without saying goodbye? Hell no! I mean, we're not Cronus!"
"Excuse you!"
"That was uncalled for," Kankri muttered under his breath.
Jake glanced at his phone again and let out a small noise of distress. "We only have one minute left!! We're never going to make it!!!"
"I guess it's a good thing we're not going to the beach then," Karkat said nonchalantly.
"What? Why? Where are we going then?"
"The beach is a 10 minute walk from here, 5 if you're running. There's no way we're gonna get there in time. We're going to my house; there's a pool, which should buy us some time in terms of keeping these dweebs mermen."
Jade asked nervously, "But won't the pool chemicals hurt them or something?"
Rolling his eyes, Karkat replied, "It's a saltwater pool. It doesn't use chemicals. They'll be fine. Take a right here."
Karkat sharply changed directions, with Kankri and Cronus hot on his heels, while the Striders and Harley-Englishes skidded to a stop and ran into each other before regaining their balance and following the others.
Karkat bolted for a mint green house surrounded by a white picket fence with a locked gate. He jumped over the fence and quickly unlocked it. "Let's move people!!" He screeched. "You're almost there!!!" Everyone raced through the open gate and darted around the side of the house to the back yard.
In the backyard, there was a round in-ground pool, with sparkling blue water. Without hesitation, Dirk and Dave jumped into the pool, not giving a shit about their clothes.
The moment their bodies hit the water, a blinding flash of white light surrounded the entire backyard.
A few seconds later, once the light had faded and everyone was no longer blind, their eyes were Bareilly drawn to the Striders.
They were still wearing their new shirts but orange and red tails floated out of one of their shorts legs, and their flip-flops floated on the water's surface.
"Well," Jake started, "that could've gone a hell of a lot worse."
There was a pause.
"So what do we do now?"
Another pause.
Karkat broke the silence. "I don't know, but now that the Stridorks are in the pool, I figured we could come up with a plan that won't kill them or get them caught and experimented on or something."
The humans walked to the edge of the pool and sat down, their legs hanging over the edge, the Striders, struggling to remove the shorts from their tails, not far away.
A/N; Okay so here's the thing: I have a really shitty case of writers block and I don't know how the Striders should get back to the ocean without dying. So, I've decided I'm going to release this chapter in two parts (cuz I've been holding out on an update for too long and this is significantly shorter than my other ones.) Maybe I could bring Equius back into this....? Idk. Let me know what you guys think. See you when I have ideas. See you (hopefully) soon, nerds.
-CC
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Wait...Humans Need Air, Right? (Merstuck! DirkJake Fanfic)
FanfictionWhen 16 year old Jake English moves from his small island to a small beach on the west coast, he expects nothing but boredom and less adventure than he'd like. But after being saved from drowning by a mysterious person, he learns that there's a bigg...
