Prince of the Sea (Manaphy Tf)

Should I start with my name? I suppose it’s a good place to start. My name is...or was...or still is...Ah, anyway! My name is Tyler and I didn’t used to be here. In fact, I was far, far away from here.

You see, it had just been a normal night walking along the beach. Now you may ask why do you want to walk along a beach, sand getting in your toes and the threat of the tide always there, in the dark, cold, lonely night? Would it be fair to say because I do? No? Ok, I‘ll explain. They say that the sea is more magical at night, when the moon rises, and I wanted to feel that. I often came for a walk at this time, this place, just to feel the power of the sea.

I’d had an endless fascination with the sea, probably stemming from my parents. My father owned a trawler and my mother was a conservationist. How two unlikely people had found love, don’t ask me. They both had very different ideas of the sea: my father saw it as a goldmine just waiting to be found, a whole host of fish waiting to be sold and eaten, while my mother saw it as a place of calm, peace and life, a whole world of its own. Both had argued quite passionately about their views, but always accepted their differing views in the end.  Their passions ad been passed onto me, and living in a seaside community also helped. Things had been going well: dad’s business was great, mum was on a break through with changes to government legislation concerning protected areas in the sea and I had lots of friends. Then, my dad went fishing one day...

...He came back in one of those air rescue helicopters. I later learnt that an accident at sea had caused one of his arms to be trapped within a mechanical pulley and it had to amputated. To suddenly go from a job you love to nothing at all was difficult to put it mildly. Mum also had bad luck in that the government agreed only 2 new areas compared to the 7 she wanted. This set back was just what dad needed as he and my mother plunged into renewed planning, speeches and so on. I didn’t mind, but they soon spent more time on charity than me and money was scarce.

The other thing that changed were my friends and I. They all had dreams of leaving this small coastal village and doing what I considered menial jobs. Lawyers, accountants, consultants...seriously? I believed that if you were going to do something in the world, it had to have meaning. It had to change the world somehow. It had to be responsible to so many people, to have an impact. It had to be important. The closest I got with that mindset was a politician, but politics had never interested me. So my friends left upon getting their grades, going to universities, while I and a couple of others stayed here with no direction.

I suppose I hoped that this night would give me that sense of direction. There was quite a nip in the air that I remember, causing me to pull my long sleeved blue T-shirt with a shark on it closer to me, my legs clicking together frantically underneath my thin grey three-quarter length trousers. I wore sandals that night, but nothing else. The wind rustled up my brown hair and my blue eyes watched the crescent moon wearily. I wondered when life would really begin for me...

THOMP! My foot had hit something. Looking down, I gasped as I tried to comprehend it. I picked it up gently. It felt fragile, delicate, light...it looked like some sort of egg. Yet what sort of egg is large and blue? Was is a fossil then of some extinct bird or something? Then it began glowing, my eyes lit up wide...

SWOOSH! It shot into my heart. That’s right, INTO! I grimaced a little, more in shock than in pain. The glow of the egg was still there, surrounding my chest. Was this real? Was this really happening?

For a long time, I wasn’t really aware of anything, just watching my body glow in incomprehension. I kept telling myself that this must be the craziest dream I ever had, but if so, why did the sand feel so real? In fact, why did it seem to be getting...OH NO! I began panicking then, only for this to increase as my head became sucked into my T-shirt and my three quarter length trousers were becoming loose around my middle. When they fell down, I tried covering myself up, noticing numbly that my sleeves were now way too long. I eventually decided it was a little stupid of me to remain in my clothes so took them off, and then noticed well and truly how small I had become. I think I was about 30cm. Heck, there were stones around me bigger than I was now and if a large dog had been on the beach, I would have made a tasty meal. The blue glow was still over me and now it seemed stronger, as if what I had picked up was fusing with me.

This was quickly confirmed as blue began to radiate across my skin. My body, chest and organs began compacting themselves against one another as my rib cage grew narrower while my tummy swelled outwards. Meanwhile, on the surface, a light blue sheen, almost teal coloured, covered my previous light skin. It still felt like skin, only a little more slippery and sleeker. As if I could move through water really well. Maybe I was water? Actually, now that I touched my skin, I felt rather bloated. My insides felt like they were swirling, with something swimming through my bloodstream. I know people are made up of 65% water approximately, but I felt like I had more than that in me despite my small size. I snapped to attention when a small red gem appeared where my rib cage joined, about where I think my heart now was and a small yellow mark appeared slightly below it.

My arms and legs had also turned blue, but it was the arms that next had the physical changes. Strangely enough, they remained at roughly the same thickness, in proportion to my new size, as my previous arms but then it grew outwards like a sail before hitting my elbows and gradually thinning out as it reached my wrists. All of my fingers merged, the bones in them seeming to melt away, forming...I don’t know, were they paws or something?

It didn’t matter, because then my legs clicked and I fell head first into the sand. As I coughed up mouthfuls of the gritty stuff, I realised that my pelvis had clicked upwards, and my legs...my legs were becoming shorter. I was already short! I willed them not to go but...but they wouldn’t. Eventually, they were forced into my blobby body, leaving only my feet. Like my fingers, all the toes merged but this time they made round yet slightly pointed ends, at least that’s what it looked like when I turned around. Not for long though as my neck twisted me back to facing towards the sea and began sucking into my shoulder blades. Wait, the sea!

The sea was calling out to me, stronger than before. I had an insane urge to go to it, so I did. I kind of wobbled on my legs as I strutted frantically across the sand before falling down again and pushing myself using my hands until I reached the tide line. In the broken waves, I saw my reflection. My head was, amazingly, still the same apart from a blue sheen that covered it, but everything else was alien. Yet it also felt wonderful. I mean, I know I’ve always liked the sea, but it was like I was seeing it from a new perspective. Up close and personal.

It was this feeling that only increased as, upon seeing my reflection, my mind began rushing through waves of information. What I had stumbled upon was in fact a Manaphy egg, a beast of legend that I vaguely remembered from the games I used to play. I could swim; I could swim really well for long distances. I needed to be with the sea, as I was susceptible to the environment. I wanted to bond with something like never before and I wanted to show others what I saw and what others saw. All my mother’s charity work rushed to the fore, only in a more personal way as I was a Manaphy, or at least would be soon. It was going to be my responsibility to take care of the deeps below. My responsibility. My pride. I was going to be the prince of the sea.

No, I thought, I am the Prince! As this declaration rang through my mind, I felt the features of my head now change. My head ballooned, making up for my lost height in my legs. I watched in the waters as I saw my head grow to the shape of an onion, before my nose and ears were lost (but I could hear, how did that work? Didn’t matter, I had better things to think about). My hair twisted together before shooting out as two long blue antennae, a bit like ponytails really. My mouth became smaller and, I must say, cuter, while my eyes widened. My eyelashes joined into three before fusing with my skin to make three lines, each soon having a yellow dot at the top while the area around my eyes also turned to yellow. My blue eyes remained blue, only deeper as my pupils took up the whole of the area. Now I truly was a ruler of the sea.

I thought briefly about my parents, my friends, but I knew things had been difficult for a long time. I’m sure they wouldn’t miss me for long...I had a big job to do now...then I heard voices. A man and a woman. I looked up the beach and saw they were some distance away, but strangely enough I could make out robes, one white and one black.

“He’ll do a good job. I just wish it didn’t have to be so soon.”

“Ah, if wishes were fishes. Anyway, looks like our culprit isn’t here to view our handy work, so let’s check elsewhere.”

I didn’t want to be caught here, even if I didn’t know what they were on about. I had an insane urge to just go somewhere, somewhere that I knew but had never visited. I dived into the sea and swam. A white portal opened before me and I accidentally propelled myself through it, the currents helping with this. I was met with more sea, only this time with strange creatures swimming in it. Luvdiscs, Mantine, Magikarps...Wait, I must be...Yes! I kept swimming.

Thus I now find myself here, in the birthplace of the egg, watching over the sea. So, all I need to make this perfect, is an apprentice. I wonder if I’ll get one of those...maybe from you?