The Little Undine [please read warnings first], (who did not know how to shut up) Options

[Feral Phoenix]

This was actually a school assignment, believe it or not... (we had to do a fractured fairy tale and I got assigned The Little Mermaid) Anyway, warnings include bitchy Ness-chan, a slightly AUish wish fulfillment version of the ending, some Ness spoilers, and one of my pairings that may make you go "wait... WUT?" (but never fear, it's not a major part of the story, just on the sidelines, so you can ignore it if you want to).

But then again, if you haven't beat the second-to-last BF, you may not want to read too closely due to Ness spoilers. So...

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The Little Undine
(who did not know how to shut up)

DISCLAIMER: I don’t own Yggdra-chan and company. Don’t sue me plz kthx.

Everyone here, I presume, knows the story of the Little Mermaid. Cute aquatic heroine obsesses over humans. Fish-girl saves land boy. Fish-girl falls in love with land boy. Land boy goes off to do land boy things, leaving fish-girl heartbroken. Fish-girl goes to witch, who offers to give her legs and make her human except she has to give up her voice. Fish-girl agrees and turns human. Then, former fish-girl tries to get land boy back, but land boy decides to go with the witch instead. Former fish-girl cries. Depending on which version you go by, either that’s all or we get a miraculous happy ending. Right?

…Well, sorry to bust your bubble, but that’s not quite the way I remember it. Actually that’s not at all the way I remember it. There was never a human boy, and never an evil witch either. Just me and one really talkative kid and nobody else home because of a stupid shopping trip… trust Walt Disney to mess everything up for the sake of drama.

Let’s get one thing straight first: My name is Nessiah. Not Ursula. I am not a witch. I am not a sea hag. I am not female. I am an archmagus of Asgard, thank you very much, and not a babysitter.

What do I mean, you ask? Maybe I ought to start from the beginning…

- - -

We were on vacation at a summer resort that year, I recall. I guess the queen and the emperor just wanted a break from the stress of ruling their respective countries, as they’d finally managed to hammer out an alliance between their forces—no easy task, considering the ugly war they’d barely put an end to. Either that or they wanted some privacy to get all lovey-dovey. Whatever the case, both of them decided to grab their closest friends from their armies and come to a secluded hot-spring resort to get some well-deserved R&R.

Now, I am not the biggest fan of summer. I get tired easily and irritated fast in extreme heat, bright light is painful to my weak eyes, and the heavy chains that have bound me for most of my life get really, really hot and uncomfortable after they’ve been in the sun for ten minutes or so. I would have preferred to stay indoors the entire time. But I was on Emperor Gulcasa’s invitee list, and I swear, the guy just doesn’t know how to take “no” for an answer. So I was dragged, unwilling, to this old wooden ex-shrine out in the sticks, absolutely certain this whole thing was going to be the most miserable so-called vacation of my life.

I was right.

My brilliant companions decided to throw out the staff for the duration of the stay for reasons of their own (I’m telling you, the emperor and the queen just wanted as few interruptions as possible). And because of that, within a few days of our arrival, we managed to clean out the pantry entirely.

Someone—I’m not entirely sure who—suggested that they make a trip to the local open market together. The idea caught on, and pretty soon almost everybody was ready to go. I, of course, declined. However, I wasn’t alone.

One of the members of the queen’s entourage was a twelve-year-old Undine by the name of Nietzsche. From a distance, sure, she’s a cute kid: Big eyes, bright smile, pale hair pinned up in the heat. But close up, she never fails to get on my nerves—even when I’m in the best of moods. Because she just doesn’t get the meaning of restraint, especially when it comes to conversation. Therefore, I try to avoid her as best as I can.

However, that day was especially hot, and Undines don’t like heat any more than I do—their scales dry out and itch or something like that. So Nietzsche decided that she would rather stay inside, in the water, than go out with her friends.

I, of course, was unaware of this. As soon as the others had begun their talk of “Let’s go shopping!”, I had retreated into one of the bathing springs with a book, gotten into a corner of the pool, and sat there to read where a few shafts of sunlight could illuminate the pages for me. Due to an injury I received when I was younger, I’m nearly blind, and so books—my favorite thing in this otherwise useless and annoying world—can be difficult to decipher unless I have the proper balance of light (on the pages) and darkness (on me). The springs themselves were the one of the few places in the resort where I could actually settle down with a good page-turner, so naturally, that’s where I went.

I was right at the good part of the latest novel I’d picked up when the door banged open and in came Nietzsche.

Normally, her entering a room meant me leaving it. However, I was sitting in the spring at the time. Meaning that my things were lying on the bank, and I was wearing nothing but my chains. And there was no way, as in Absolutely No Way, that I was going to get up and run away butt-naked in front of a girl. So I was pretty much stuck.

“Hi, Ness-chan!”

I groaned and headslumped into my book. I really hated it when people I wasn’t friendly with called me that. “Go away.”

She splashed into the water as if she hadn’t even heard me. “Nietzsche hasn’t seen much of you yet this vacation! This means we get to talk!”

“Please. Go away. I am trying to read.” I held the book up and wiggled it in the air for her benefit.

“But that’s all you’ve done since we got here, Ness-chan!” Nietzsche flapped her tail fin in the water, sending it splashing all over the place. I moved my book out of the way. Why, oh, why did I have to spend my precious alone time babysitting this annoying kid? “Are books that interesting? What’s that one about? Nietzsche can’t read human writing. It’s hard! Maybe you can show Nietzsche some human writing sometime so Nietzsche can try to learn.”

“If you’re so interested in human things, go bother Queen Yggdra when she gets back. For the last time, go away. I’m trying to read.”

But did our oblivious little Undine take notice of the fact that she wasn’t wanted? Oh, of course not. She just kept chattering on at a thousand miles an hour.

I tried to ignore her and keep reading. Really, I did. Considering the stress and annoyance I was already under, my efforts to rise above my temper were nothing short of martyrdom. But after ten minutes of hearing her drone on and on and on, I couldn’t take it anymore.

I dog-eared my page, laid my book down, and pulled my spellbook out from under my clothes, flipping through it to find the appropriate incantations. It took a few minutes—even with the help of the sunlight I could bear, I still had to squint and run through each section line by line—but at last, I found it.

“Look, you,” I told Nietzsche. “I suppose if you won’t go away, there’s nothing I can do to make you leave. But as long as you’re going to be in here, you’re going to have to be quiet.” I pointed at her with my left hand, laying my right fingers on the spell itself.

Nietzsche frowned at me. She tried to say something—maybe ask what I was doing—but although her mouth moved, she didn’t make any sound.

I sighed, sinking blissfully into the gods-blessed silence.

Nietzsche, of course, wasn’t happy. She flailed and tried to yell and splashed water all over the room, but eventually, she gave up and left.

Well, it was her own fault for not being able to control that motormouth of hers for half a second.

I finished my book, then my bath, and left for my room to get some well-deserved sleep.

- - -

I was rudely awakened that evening by someone pounding on my door.

The “someone” turned out to be a not-very-happy Emperor Gulcasa, finally back from shopping, who told me off for hexing Nietzsche and ordered me to give her voice back. I, of course, protested my innocence and tried to explain myself. He didn’t want to hear it, and marched me down to the room where a very sulky little Undine was sitting silently and pouting. I took off the hex.

Nietzsche was even more annoying than ever after that, but thankfully, everyone else decided that it wasn’t a good idea to leave us alone after that.

The vacation ended after a few more weeks of torment. We went back to our respective countries—with the exception of the emperor and the queen, who decided that they wanted to elope instead—and lived life normally until the happy couple came back from their honeymoon.

A traveler from the Undines’ nation arrived to greet them in the emperor’s castle with congratulations and an interesting story.

“Did you hear? One of the Undine girls has been telling everyone the saddest story. They say she was cursed by an evil magician, and that if a brave hero hadn’t saved her, she would never have been able to speak again…”

From where I sat at the side of the audience hall, I thought about correcting the man, but refrained from commenting. Stories grow through rumor, after all, and I would probably just get him even more confused. It would really be better for the truth to go unspoken, or so I believed at the time.

A few thousand years later, Disney bought the rights to the story and fiddled with it even more.

The rest, as they say, is history.

:owari (XD):

[Dr Strum]

Nessy is

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a fallen angel, not an Archmagus.

Not to mention, there is no Undine nation.

[Rune_Ocarina]

I like the way you poked at Disney for screwing up the original story, nice touch. Nice read, but I didn't get that 'annoying' vibe Nessiah was picking up from Nietzsche, but maybe he gets annoyed a lot easier than me, *laughs*, who knows.

I've never seen The Little Mermaid, (or any Disney movie for that fact,) so this could be the original to me. (*^.^*)

[Greifer]

Interesting...

It's well thought out, and humorous. A winner is you.

[Feral Phoenix]

Nessy is

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a fallen angel, not an Archmagus.

Not to mention, there is no Undine nation.

Embellia. (Even if the monarchy is a little fried right now.)

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Ness is in a bad mood, therefore he's introducing himself by his old occupation. He doesn't want to go into the whole, "YES, I got kicked out, NO I won't tell you why, SHUT UP AND STOP BEING MEAN" thing right now. And also going into all of that would probably have confused the class. :D

Thanks Rune and Rzul for the praise though. ^_~

[Dr Strum]

Embellia doesn't exist.

Spoilers for end of game.

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Embellia was crushed in BF7, and, as Yggdra said around the time they took/were taking/about to take Flarewerk, after Bronquia fell, all countries would be united under Yggdra's rule; there are no more nations.

And Nessy was never that.

[Feral Phoenix]

The place still exists, even if the monarchy does not.

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Yggdra says that she's the onlymonarch left in the world. Not that Fantasinia is the only country left.

[Dr Strum]

You misread, if that's what you read.

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The nation is gone. The land exists, but there is no nation.

[Raijinili]

As someone from the East, your use of our suffixes offends me. My language wasn't made for you to use like a cigarette, just so you could express yourself.

[Megaolix]

Funny and good.

It was for school? I wonder how those who read it reacted...

[level]

it was long but is worth it =)

[Feral Phoenix]

You misread, if that's what you read.

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

The nation is gone. The land exists, but there is no nation

Elise may have been razed, but there are still Undine and human villages in Embellia. Otherwise Nietzsche would have no point in wanting to find the Transmigragem.

Anyway, I'm getting to that fight again, so when I get to Yggdra's quote I'll write it down.

As someone from the East, your use of our suffixes offends me. My language wasn't made for you to use like a cigarette, just so you could express yourself.

How strange, your elitist attitude and the fact that you only posted here to complain offend me, so I guess we're even. ^_^ I don't post this stuff just for you to whine and try to tear it down. Have some respect for other people's work, please. If you have an issue with me, PM me so this doesn't turn into an argument thread.

It was for school? I wonder how those who read it reacted...

Yeah, it was. Most people in the class haven't played YU, so I don't know how many of them got the jokes. But it was fun to get up and read it in front of everyone.

it was long but is worth it =)

*laughs* If you think THIS is long, then some of the stuff I've written would probably scare you. ^_^ TLU was only three pages!

[Dr Strum]

Elise may have been razed, but there are still Undine and human villages in Embellia.

And no form of government; it's not a nation.

Otherwise Nietzsche would have no point in wanting to find the Transmigragem.

Yeah, I mean, she can still reincarnate without it. ... Right?

Have some respect for other people's work, please.

Anything you post is open territory for attack, complaint, etc.

[Rhiannon]

Have some respect for other people's work, please.

Have some respect for other languages, please.

[Feral Phoenix]

Attack/complain in private. Or is common courtesy entirely extinct?

Also, I am TRYING to have respect for the ORIGINAL culture Riviera and Yggdra came from. It's not like I'm one of the people who goes around going "lol hey japs suk!!!1!!" all the time. We owe the East a lot for coming out with games that we can enjoy, so it's best to at least acknowledge their original background.

Does it offend the purist types that nowadays some anime and games contain suffixes and relationship-related nicknames untranslated, too?