📚The centennial festival for lunar rabbits; A magical mermaid melody

A 2 part carnival catastrophe. Was originally going to be 3 parts until artfight prep crept up on me orz

For Coelune June prompt; Carwheel carnival

Characters: Chantal/Laura

Warnings: None

Wordcount: 2,166

Vibe: uh. its weird thats all i got

AN:

this is straight up not revised sorry lol

February 16th, 2023 revision:

This oneshot is to be considered retconned/noncanon silliness

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It had been 3 months.
3 months since…

“Chantal? Are you out there?” a familiar voice called out from the bathroom.

Nevermind.

Chantal just sighed and got off her phone, picking herself off the couch and heading towards the bathroom.

There, Laura was waiting in the makeshift tank Dina had set up – which was really just a conversion of the existing showertub.

“Hey Chanty! So I was wondering if-” Laura started to go on, though she quickly picked up Chantal’s troubled expression.
“Hey… what’s up?”

At this point, it was ready to boil over.

“It’s just…” Chantal said, until ultimately letting out a frustrated groan.
“I want things to go back to normal! I miss my friends, I miss my job, I miss Dina, because god knows if she’s even still alive! I’m scared and I’m tired of being a fugitive.”

At this point, Chantal had completely broken down, and there was nothing Laura could do, separated by the glass of her tank.

There was a moment of silence between the two, only broken by Chantal’s crying.
It took an uncertain amount of time, but even through just the energy of being in the same room, Chantal was able to calm back down.

“It’s just the small things, too…” she mumbled.

“Like what?” Laura asked, tilting her head.
“If it’s something small, I’m sure we could do something.”

“I don’t think so.” Chantal said with a sigh.
“This time of year, there’s usually a big carnival that coelunes from all over visit. I was looking forward to going this year, but…”

“You really think they’d have snitches there? At a carnival?”

“I mean, it’s usually a gathering of peace, but I’m just… worried. Plus, I wouldn’t want to leave you here.”

“Hmm…” Laura hummed, tilting her head again as she thought.
“Didn’t Miss Abzu have some kind of tank with wheels? The one she lent us during the escape?”

“I guess… but wouldn’t that be a bit clunky to just wheel you around in a giant tank, all in the middle of a crowded carnival?”

The two of them both thought some more, which resulted in a period of silence for quite some time.
Until Laura got an idea.

“What if… we were at the carnival… but we weren’t a part of the crowd?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I’ve never been to a carnival before, but I’ve heard about them! They’ve gotta have performances, right?” Laura said, her enthusiasm building.
“We could perform together! I think it’d be amazing!”

Chantal just chuckled a little.

“Yea, sure. What would we even do? Much less the fact that doing that would probably be too high-profile.”

“I dunno! Maybe I could just swim around and look cool – ooh! Or we could be a comedy duo!!” Laura replied, visibly getting more excited about her idea.
“Besides – I don’t think there’s any harm, especially if it’s a coelune cultural event – they’re not the ones looking for us.”

“Right, right… I’d doubt they’d even release pictures of you, too, considering they wanted to keep you a secret. I guess I can just tie up my ears and put on a mask and hope for the best.” Chantal said with a lighter sigh – and though she’d finally given in to Laura’s idea, her mood seemed to have lightened.

So, with Laura’s encouragement, Chantal checked out the Cartwheel Carnival’s website – though she wasn’t too optimistic they’d still have performance timeslots available. Though, if it were just her luck, there was a small, bright red banner pinned to the top of the sign-up page.

ANNOUNCEMENT: The 10:30pm timeslot tomorrow has been urgently opened due to a drop-out. Due to there being less than 24h until this time, we will be taking in amatuer talent on a first come, first serve basis.

“You’ve gotta be kidding, right?” Chantal mumbled to herself, but she quickly clicked the link and filled out information for Laura and herself.

Upon having to figure out a name, Chantal paused – but not for too long. She entered the first thing that came to mind, which was ‘A magical mermaid melody’.
Clicking submit, the page loaded for a lot longer than normal, before displaying a confirmation message – detailing the time to show up, and a map to the location.

“Wait, hold on!?” Chantal said to herself in shock, as she truly hadn’t anticipated being the first to sign up.

“WHAT IS IT?” Laura yelled from the bathroom, as Chantal had her laptop set up in the main room of the suite they were staying in.

“Give me a second!”

For the next 3 or so hours, Chantal sat on the bathroom floor next to Laura’s tank, as the two plotted their imminent performance.
While Laura had originally suggested a comedy duo, the name that Chantal quickly came up with gave her an idea.

“Why don’t we do a dance?” she proposed, twirling in the water.

“I don’t think I can dance well… plus, you don’t even have legs.”

“Yea, but I got a tail! I bet I can do cool and unique things with that!” Laura huffed.
“Besides, if all else fails, I think I got a backup!”

Chantal nodded.

“Alright. I guess… we should pick a song? And outfits. But I’m not even sure where to start…” she said, thinking.
“I mean, I used to study popular culture from the Outside World, but there’s just so much, and…”

“Britney?” Laura suggested with a smile.

“…Yea, I was thinking Britney too.”

–

It was the night of the performance, and Chantal had barely slept.
She’d been practicing all night, trying to get the routine together… and while Laura seemed raring to go, Chantal’s nerves were getting to her.

Thanks to Abzu’s generosity, Chantal had obtained not only the oversized wheeled fish tank, but outfits that were reminiscent of the music video for Britney Spear’s ‘Oops, I did it again’. But unlike Laura, who was questioning why Abzu had these things, Chantal was losing her mind.

As the two were waiting backstage Laura was able to pick up on Chantal’s discomfort.

“Are you sure you’re ok doing this, Chanty? If we bail now I don’t think they can do anything.”

“Mm…” Chantal mumbled.
“It’s just… this is a lot bigger than anything I’ve done before.”

“Chanty, you literally broke me out of one of the most heavily locked-down facilities there is! If I were you, I’d feel like I could do anything!”

“Shhh! Don’t say that out loud!” Chantal hushed, then sighed.
“Still, even for that I had help… I’m not sure.”

Laura sat in thought for a second, before sighing as she came to her conclusion.

“Remember when I said… I had a backup?”

“Oh yeah, I forgot to ask about that. What did you mean by that?”

“I’m not sure if Dina told you, but… I do have a special… ‘ability’.” Laura said, though her voice slightly trailed off into a mumble.
“Because of the experiment, I, uh, can make the same neurotoxin that the parasitic jellyfish from above make.”

“How… how would that help at all??” Chantal replied, in complete and utter confusion.

“It allows me to take control of someone else’s body for a short period. I was… told it was dangerous to do unless instructed to, but…” Laura said, twiddling her fingers in her hair.
“If you’re really anxious, and you trust me, I could try it out.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?! Besides, how on earth would you control my legs? I trust you, but…”

“If it’s only a bit, you can still retain control over the bottom half of your body. After Dina disappeared, I ended up reading over her research – I trust she knows more than I do.”

“Mm… okay. Let’s… let’s do this!” Chantal huffed, with a nervous but determined look.
“I guess, weird question… it’s not through like, venomous stingers or whatever, right? I’ve always hated needles.”

The serious atmosphere was broken by a laugh from Laura.

“Haha, of course not! Here, just climb on something to get to the top of the tank and uncover it.”

Chantal was a bit confused, but nodded and grabbed a folded chair from a stack leaning against the wall. She opened the top of Laura’s tank, and…

Peck!

Laura just barely broke the water in order to kiss Chantal on the lips. While Chantal was certainly surprised, she made an attempt to lean in to the kiss – only for Laura to break away all too soon.

“Hey!! If you’re gonna do that, at least do it for a bit longer!!” Chantal huffed, all flustered.

Laura giggled a bit.

“Later! I wanted to keep it quick so the effects of the neurotoxin weren’t too bad, but still let me wave your arms around for a bit.”

Chantel smiled, and suddenly, the announcer’s bubbly voice rang out.

“Alriiiiiight! That was ‘Tequila karaoke’, up next we have… ‘A magical mermaid melody!’” echoed through the performance hall.
“These are our fill-in amateurs, so please give them your warmest welcome!”
“Well, that’s a great way to descri- augh…” Chantal started to say, when a wave of overwhelming dizziness hit her.
Her upper body started to feel impossibly heavy, and it felt almost like half her mind went blank. Suddenly, without her input, Chantal’s arm started waving around.

“Oh wow, that… worked?” Laura said, surprised.

But her voice was muffled to Chantal, who could only control her legs at best.
She figured she’d have to work in sync with Laura, doing the legwork while she did the armwork. It felt daunting, or at least, it would – but Chantal’s feelings seemed to be numbed just enough that it wasn’t paralyzing.

Chantal wheeled the tank out onto the main stage, as she quickly learned how to work with Laura as her co-pilot.
While Laura did the introduction, it was too fuzzy to Chantal’s ears to make out. However, when the music turned on, Chantal was able to clearly make out the familiar tune of Britney – and while Laura had the upper-body choreography nailed down for both of them, Chantal let the music guide her legs to the beat.

When Chantal came to, the heavy feeling in her upper body lifting and granting her movement again, her hearing cleared up as well. And suddenly, the muffled sea of noise cleared up to be… clapping?
Her vision became clear again too, and Chantal could see the rather large crowd applauding their performance.

Immediately becoming flustered at such attention, Chantal quickly bowed along with a smiling Laura, then hurriedly walked off stage.

Once the two had exited, Laura did a happy twirl and pressed her face against the glass; a massive, overjoyed smile on her face.

“Chanty!! We did it!! You were sick, it was hard to not glance over and look at you!”

“I’m glad, but, uh, what did I do? It’s all a bit fuzzy.” Chantal replied, rubbing her temples as she felt a headache coming on.

“Oh, I don’t even know how to begin describing it! You nailed the leg movement perfectly – you did a backflip at one point and the audience went crazy for that!”

“Oh wow, kinda wish I remembered then, haha!”

“Mm… I feel a bit bad that the neurotoxin caused it to get blacked out… this was supposed to be for the both of us.” Laura mumbled.

“Hey, it stopped me from having a total nervous breakdown in front of a huge audience, so I’ll take that as a win!” Chantal said with a chuckle.

Laura was about to respond, but quickly perked up and pointed upon seeing some figures emerge from the crowd.
Chantal turned on Laura’s cue and was just about as shocked as Laura was.

It was Tiamat, Abzu, and… Dina, who hadn’t been heard from for the past 3 months.

“Dina!” Chantal cried out, quickly overwhelmed by emotion. She ran in for a hug, but was stopped in her tracks by Dina’s hand.

“I appreciate the gesture, but I am not keen on hugs.” she said with a lighthearted laugh.

Dina and Chantal were having their reunion, and while Laura was waiting her turn, she was approached by Abzu – who was doing an impressed, small clap.

“That was impressive – the two of you seemed to move perfectly in sync!” they said, smiling – though something seemed off about their expression.
“I’ve heard a lot about you, Laura. I believe we should get to know each other, sometime.”