#pods

Fig 78. Seeds or fruits. Chapters in popular natural history. 1883.

@loriannah :

"Here's more close up and personal slow motion footage taken of yesterday's Common dolphin megapod. Some just feet away, splashing us as they swam along side. These cetaceans were seen coming in hot, catching us while we were whale watching off the coast of San Clemente, California. Suddenly they sped up and the HUGE stampede began.

I've seen a lot of megapods yet never as large as this group!

It was insane!

The tank was huge. It was 347 feet long, 259 feet wide, and 45 feet deep. It's one of the largest aquarium tanks in the world and it's one of Bruce’s greatest achievements.

The tank has several passageways leading to smaller tanks private caves, and a handful of alcoves.

Rays, smaller sharks, groupers, eels, and almost 70 species of fish fill the vibrant tank. But as pretty as the fish are, they aren't the main attraction in this particular tank.

No, that belongs to Bruce’s other greatest achievement. His mers.

He has one of the largest medical rehabilitation centers in the world. The outside is treated like a normal aquarium, with people coming from all over to see the beautiful creatures, but behind the scenes are people going out of their way to rescue and research the mers.

Bruce picked it up from his father. It was a silly dream that the man had had before his parent's murder. Bruce has dedicated his entire life to bringing that dream to life.

He has helped many, hundreds, even, of mermaids and mermen through his facility. Each mer is helped back into ocean life, save for the ones that are too injured or sickly to go back, though, even those mers are free to leave should they choose. Some mers will come back frequently just to say hi are get free check up when they are ill or pregnant or want to show off there progress as thanks.

There are a few smaller tanks that are meant for things like pod training mers who have been alone since pups and don’t know how to handle society, or feral mers that are being retrained to not be violent. There are habitat based tanks as well, made for mers that live in extreme climates, such as selkies that are used to freezing waters or more sensitive tropical fish that can’t acclimate to anything other than their usual warmer waters.

Of all of the mers though, there are a handful that stay for far different reason than that of the sickly or disabled.

It’s a running joke in the community that Bruce is keeping his own orphanage. But if you ask him, he will tell you flat out that the mers are his family or his pod.

He found Dick early on in his endeavors. The mer is a beautiful Betta. An omega orphaned when his pod was tragically killed in a different aquarium. Bruce took him in immediately. Dick ended up being a very clingy pup, and seemed to see Bruce as a form of parent. The betta was flashy, always one to perform and show off his beautiful bluish greenish fins to any curious humans that passed him by.

Bruce stumbled upon Jason on accident. He’s been out at sea one day, enjoying a relaxing summer day in his newest boat when his fishing pole, and all of his bait suddenly disappeared without a trace. A few minutes of frantic looking later, a small, wriggling body floated up to the surface. A merpup had somehow managed to steal all his bait and his pole when he wasn’t looking, but it seemed the poor pup had gotten himself tangled in the fishing line.

Jason is an outcast. His parents were from differing species, making Jason a ‘mutt’. He was shunned by both his species, and his mother was shunned for breeding with a species outside of her own. So of course Bruce took him in. Jason is half grey reef shark and half snapper, leaving him with a red, shiny shark tail. The alpha is every bit territorial as his species would lead him to be, but he’s calmed down a ton since his vicious teen days.

Tim was harder to get than any of Bruce’s other mers. The omega mer was bred in captivity and was quickly taken from his mother almost as soon as he was born. The Drakes were known for their interests in amazing things. They had many statues, precious gems, antique armors and books and anything else they either find on their digs or buy on the black market. One day they decided to add a rare mer to their collection: a crossbreed between a cuttlefish mer and a betta mer. Tim’s tail resembles Dick’s in shape, but his is naturally a red and black ombré, with short and soft fins that decorate his body. It changes colors often though, thanks to his cuttlefish father.

As beautiful and amazing as Tim is, the crossbreeding of his two species has left him with many health complications in his life. A small cut can lead to deadly infections, he is very frail and his scales are much softer/more vulnerable than most other mers. But the worst of it is his omegan side.

The Drakes were ignorant to Tim’s needs growing up. Sure, he had a large tank, food every day, and plenty of puzzles and toys to keep him occupied. But as he grew, the tank stayed the same size, and the puzzles and toys were only fun the first few times you played with them. Bordem sets in quickly, but so does loneliness. Tim very quickly grew depressed in his lonely tank. His heat cycle was thrown off, his instincts were dull, he never had a pod to teach him to be an omega. When Bruce found him, he was like a lifeless doll.

The Drakes managed to avoid jail time with all their money, but rumors spread quickly of the abuse and soon their empire fell.

It took Bruce months to get Tim to warm up to his new podmates, and even longer for him to learn basic omega behaviors. Even now he will still ignore them and his pod still have to remind him to do things like scent his podmates or nest when he's in preheat. Things that should've been ingrained in him since was a pup. Even a pup out on his own, like Jason was, will still have the instincts for these things, but Tim was trapped and left to rot in a cage, his mind never had the chance to develop those needs.

Damien was conceived in the facility. Bruce had wanted to attempt an experiment with a mer that he had become close friends with, Talia. Talia, actually, was the one that brought up the idea. The mermaid loved Bruce dearly and had asked him to be her Sire. Bruce agreed. He loved Talia, but not as mates, and Talia was perfectly fine with that. She mostly saw Bruce as a worthy father for her pups, one that would breed a strong youngling. Bruce artificially inseminated one of Talia's eggs. Half mers were rare. You found them mostly on the black market, offsprings of a trafficked mer, being sold for half price. A mistake caught too late. Some mers and humans fall in love, and have a child of their own will, but that's even rarer.

It’s very hard to find a mer that is compatible with humans. The mer’s DNA needs to have certain traits to be able to conceive. Talia happened to have those traits.

Talia disappeared not long after the insemination. They never even found out if it caught or not before she left. But 9 years later, a half merpup was dropped off at the ocean entrance of the facility.

Damien was half barracuda, half human. Bruce Wayne's only blood son. The pup was aggressive and knew very little English having been born in the Arabian Gulf.

Talia was still nowhere to be seen, though it appeared she was the one who brought Damian the Wayne Center.

Dick, being the caring and loving omega he was, took to Damian like he was his mother. He nursed the pup and raised him. Jason helped teach the pup to control his predatory and alpha instincts. And Bruce did all he could to take care of his son from where he was on land. And Tim.. Tim hid from Damian.

Damian hated Tim. That much was apparent.

Tim, who had never known real love for the first half of his life and had slowly been making progress in understanding and excepting his new family regressed severely when Damain arrived, having been sent spiraling mentally.

Damian came in, teeth bared and ready to fight for his place as Bruce’s son, targeted Tim for being cared for by Bruce the most.

Jason ended up being the one to step up, though. When Tim had first arrived, Jason thought he was being replaced. He went from being the baby, the one that was cooed and coddled by Bruce and Dick, to suddenly being pushed aside for this random omega with no discernable scent that he's being forced to share a tank with. Jason attacked Tim, going straight for the throat. Dick managed to get Jason off of Tim in time to save his life. Bruce quickly had Jason sedated and moved into isolation while Tim was given life-saving procedures. Luckily, somehow, the but didn't get infected, but it left a nasty scar on his throat.

When Jason finally accepted Tim as pack, a year later, he cried for hours, apologizing over and over for the way he had treated the younger.

Tim forgave him easily and the two had grown closer since the incident.

Damien attempted to kill Tim. Tim was still being precariously cared for by Bruce and Dick. With his sicknesses and his tendency to neglect himself, the older two would seemingly give Tim more attention than the young alpha, and Damian hated Tim for it.