Just Add Water

Chapter 11

Lucy was at the beach sun tanning on a towel by the sand. Watching her was Chelia, waiting for Lucy to go into the ocean and get wet, exposing her tail. After an hour of waiting, she saw Lucy stand up, check to see if anyone was around, and walk toward the ocean. Her foot was just about to make contact with the sea water when Lucy's cellphone rang. She went back to her towel and took out her phone from her beach bag. 

"Hello?" She answered the phone. "Oh hi Erza what's up?...Wendy? What did she tell you?....They did what?! Are you sure? Okay I'll be right over!"

Lucy hung up her phone and immediately went to meet Erza, Juvia, and Gray at her house. Chelia tried to follow her but Lucy, sensing that she was being followed managed to give her the slipping through a crowd of people.

"Where did she go?" Chelia wondered. 

"Chelia!" Romeo called following after her. "Chelia! Wait!"

"Romeo what are you doing here? Did you get anything on Juvia?"

"No I couldn't find her but I need to talk to you."

"About what?"

"About this whole mermaid thing."

"Yopu don't believe me?"

"Right now I don't know waht to believe but I have to tell you that you've over looked something."

"What?"

"If Juvia and her friends are mermaids, should we really expose them?"

"What do you mean? Of course we have to. Otherwise no one will believe us."

"But have you thought about what'll happen if you expose them? They could be taken away or locked up or worse."

"They're not human Romeo."

"You don't know that for sure and even if they weren't, we've known Juvia and Lucy forever. They're family and they've always looked out for us. Human or not, can you really do something that might end up with the two of them getting hurt? After all they've done for us?"

It wasn't until now that Chelia realized what she was really doing. She had known both Juvia and Lucy since she was four years old, they were like sisters to her and even though she didn't really know Erza she knew how much Wendy loved her. She also remembered watching movies about science ficition and modern fantasy, how once those paranormal creatures were exposed to the world the government did horrible things to them. If her theory about the girls being mermaids turned out to be true and she exposed them then she would be putting them in danger.

"You're right Romeo." She said feeling instant guilt. "I wasn't thinking about that."

"So are you going to give up on this?" 

"I still wanna know if they're mermaids or not but I won't tell anyone."

Back at Lucy's house, it turns out Juvia and Gray suspected that Romeo knew their secret so they called up Erza. Wendy overheard their conversation on the phone and she decided to confess to what she, Romeo, and Chelia were up to. That was when she called Lucy telling her everything.

"How could you keep a diary about our secret?" Lucy asked Juvia.

"I'm sorry but this whole mermiad thing is very stressful and I have no one to talk to about it. I need some outlet for my emotions."

"You can always tell me." Gray said.

"Gray you never want to listen to my feelings. Every time I've tried to tell you how I feel about something you always make up some excuse on why you can't listen to me at the moment."