Chapter Text
“I’m just saying, we’ve never been fond of that guy, I don’t know why you want to pass on the opportunity to prove him wrong, Danny. He’ll finally leave you alone, y’know? So c’mon man! If you go and do what I said, it ought to earn you that respect finally and Dash wouldn't dream of making fun of you anymore.” A contemplative pause, “And, the rest of the town’ll think so too, you know that.”
Danny sighed, his hands dangling off the side of the shallow boat, fiddling with untangling a particularly stubborn knot of rope caught in the middle of the fishing net. It was too dark to make out the base of the mesh’s entanglement, and his hands were shaking far too much in the cold. As he continued to fiddle with it, Tucker tossed his own repaired segment out onto the waves. It bobbed a bit on the choppy surface, before quickly sinking below into the black.
“No, I don’t…um, look, Tucker. He has never liked me either, obviously, so I don’t see how rowing the whole distance to Amity Point and back in a- in a storm is going to change his mind on that.” Danny pointed out, giving up on untangling the mess, and opting instead to reach down and grab the tooth-knife he kept at his tunic’s belt. He transferred part of the rope between his teeth and sawed the tooth’s sharp edge against the net he now held taught below his chin.
Mumbling around the rope as he worked, he continued, “Besides, how do you think we would be able to prove to him that we actually did it? It hasn’t worked with anything else before, Dash still thinks I won’t amount to anything .” A pause, “everyone thinks that! Heck, even my parents think that too! You know that!”
He glanced at the third person in the small boat for assurance while cutting out the root of the tangled mesh. He spat out the rope once it was done, and after he returned the tooth knife to his belt, he began to repair the hole with slow, numb fingers.
“For once, I agree with Tucker, Danny. They’re all boneheads, Dash will definitely believe it…” Sam chuckled, some of the barbed linings of the traps they were checking shined and gleamed in her hands from the moonlight. It mischievously highlighted her, framing her heavy tunic and wild wind-blown hair in a way that unnerved him. Mainly now because he was the one faced with the brunt of it…2 against 1.
“There…why does it, um, sound like there’s an ‘if’ coming, Sam, because I…”
“ If ,” She confirmed, pausing for dramatics, holding it for a beat long enough for Danny to toss his patched net back into the sea. “we were to…I don’t know, row all the way around Amity Point like Tucker said, you can climb up the cliff face and grab the village flag! Y’know, if you’re actually able to bring back the village’s flag and show it to everyone, it would be plenty of proof that you can handle the pressure no one seems to think you can.” She shrugged, smirking evilly. “Plus, it would be really cool.”
She looked almost like one of the village hunting dogs in this light, eyes aglow with the idea.
Tucker laughed, jumping up and rocking the boat further against the choppy waves with his own barely-contained excitement. “That’s a great idea, Sam!” He fumbled around for the oars and practically threw the rest of the unchecked and unrepaired nets into the water just to shove one of the oars into Danny’s face.
He hadn’t had a choice in the matter, lest he wanted to take an impromptu swim, so Danny snatched it and tried in vain to steady the boat before it had a chance to flip.
“Isn’t the flag up there for like, a reason , Sam? I’m pretty sure it’s up there for a reason!”
“Oh, c’mon dude, you believe the shoddy legend crap your parents keep telling everyone? About that weird war with weird fish people?” Tucker paused fumbling with his own oar to raise an eyebrow. “Really? You believe some story that has an ancient man-eating fish king? That he had a knight that rode on a giant sea snake and pillaged Amity every other week? C’mon dude, that didn’t happen. Your parents are reading too far into myth.”
“Look, I’m all for mysterious unknown creatures as much as the next gothic, but Danny, really? While as much as a huge fight that had been building up for who knows how long ending with some flag being hung up to seal the ‘sea monsters’ away into the ocean sounds super cool , I just don’t think that’s all that practical. Do you?”
“No, of course not! I mean, well, maybe?” Danny shook his head to clear it and finished putting his netting supplies into the side compartments of the small boat. He picked back up the oar Tucker had thrown at him, “look, whatever, I’m not having this argument. The flag’s there either way, whether it marks the end of some stupid old war or not.”
“Dude, chill, all we’re saying is if you go take it and bring it home, there’s no way anyone in town will think you can’t handle anything, clumsy twig or not! You’ll be popular!” Tucker shouted, his mirth once again growing, making Danny flinch from the sudden loudness and how Tucker knowingly called him a twig. Right after they both called him delusional for maybe perhaps minimally indulging the fantasies of his parents and the town’s supposed war history with the sea creatures that may or may not still exist. Real uplifting stuff right there.
He secured the oar in its rigging with a jagged and sharp motion as Tucker continued, but Danny wasn’t really fully listening to what his friend was saying. “That thing’s crazy far up, and I’m pretty sure the stories say it took a whole fishing boat worth of villagers to put it there originally. Imagine if just one guy like you were able to get it. C’mon, buddy, think about it. It’s a win-win situation if you ask me.”
No, not if you asked Danny . He didn’t quite think doing something reckless was going to magically get him free from ridicule or suddenly make him popular. Proof didn’t mean it would make certain that anyone would listen to him right away.
But, then again… maybe it would.
If his parents saw him wearing the flag, maybe they’d be thrilled to think he believed in the stories or perhaps thrilled to find that the sea monsters and the old war didn’t actually exist when nothing comes of the flag’s removal.
No more being the disappointing offspring of the village chieftains.
So, maybe getting the flag would help, after all. An act of rebellion in return for a bit of respect?
If there was a chance to hear his parents say that they were proud of him, and to see them look at him with something other than contempt, maybe they should try. Okay, perhaps he was being dramatic, but that didn’t change the way it felt.
And now that he was thinking about it, wouldn’t it be cool? To go farther than any other teen in the village and make it back with a prize to boot? He had his friends with him too, should anything go wrong. Even if the rocks were slippery. Even if the wind and rolling thunder…
No. He could do it. He would do it.
Well, in any case, any attempt at steering the boat back to shore would be a waste of effort at this point anyway. So, Danny simply shuddered with the wind and joined his friends in rowing further out into the fog, with his mind set on the goal.
They headed right towards the dark mountainous half-circle of towering rocks that marked and protected the edge of their village’s territory from the dangers of the world outside. It looked like an imposing predator’s jaws, outstretched to snare anything that dared get too close.
“And what about how upset they’ll be that someone else has to come out and bring it back , huh?” Danny protested weakly between strokes, half a heart actually into the argument. “The whole village will probably make me go put it back.” Maybe he needed to convince himself that doing this, in a storm no less, was a bad idea.
“See! They’ll trust you to put it back. Now shut up and keep rowing, we got a flag to steal!”
And shut up, he had. It would soon grow to be hard to talk anyway as rowing became steadily more difficult. The waves grew hungrier as they lapped up and caught on the oars trying to sweep across the top. It bucked and crabbed sending sharp movements through his cold bones, the wood from the oar cutting up his blistered hands.
The clouds had shifted too. More gathered and condensed in dark rumbling clusters laden with rain that snuffed out the rest of their moonlight. The lamp, too, had grown dim. Rain slogged down on their forms, quickly filling the small boat.
By the time they got near Amity point, Tucker had switched from rowing to bailing buckets full of rainwater out of the boat. The storm was much, much, worse than any of them had thought it was going to be…but then again it had looked much safer from the protection of the cove. Where they were supposed to be.
At this point though, it would be safer to hide in the craggy inlet of the Amity Point’s rock face rather than risk the trek back.
But, someone had to secure the boat and lead it into the protected alcove to wait out this burst of the storm. And Danny had something to prove, now. If there was anything a Fenton was, it was stubborn. He was no exception to the family tendency.
Danny launched himself out of the boat as soon as the vessel got close enough to a flat enough rock he could maneuver to, securing the docking rope around his thin arms until he got a purchase. His friends were shouting at his reckless behavior, but he ignored them until he had led the three of them into a cave-like alcove within the craggy, and anchored the vessel down to a sturdy enough spire.
He brushed his hands down to his belt to do inventory and grabbed some extra fishing rope that had survived the bumpy ride over and tucked it underneath one of his arms.
It was stupid to continue, to actually climb the rock, he knew that. But…he also knew that as soon as the storm cleared enough to grant safe enough access back, they would have to leave Amity Point quickly before the storm would inevitably pick right back up. Perhaps even rougher than before. He wouldn’t have time to go get the flag and row back in the calm if he waited.
If he was going to get this flag, he was going to get it now . They didn’t come all the way over here for nothing. He didn’t really have much of an option. At least he didn’t now . Now that they were already out at the cliffs.
“You two, please stay here, I’ll be right back, okay? And then we’ll…we’ll just wait out the storm a bit, and then we can…we’ll go back then, I promise! I promise.” He shrugged off their opposition and rushed out of the cave before he could chicken out, or have their words convince him otherwise. “Don’t worry!”
What an embarrassment that would be…to make it all the way out in a storm like this one, only to turn back at the last minute. The whole village would only look down on him further, once they got word of this. His parents would be disappointed, and his sister would be even more disappointed in him. Ugh, he would never get a break if he didn’t take this risk.
And there he found himself, staring straight up the slick rock face, an intimidating form leering over him. A lump was forming in his throat behind his chattering teeth as he tied the rope into a knot and launched it up the wall until it hooked on something. When it held his weight safely with some experimental tugs, he started his scary ascent, trying hard to clear his mind and simply focus on the task.
‘Get the flag, get the flag, ’ rang like a mantra in his head, while he tried to ignore the rain slicking him back, and the muffled cries from his friends.
And when he snapped back into the world around him, he was there. He hadn’t even noticed the true extent of his climb, so focused on the goal as he was. Dimly, he’s surprised he didn’t snag on a loose rock and fall, knowing his luck.
But there it was. The flag, just within his grasp maybe 150 feet up off the surface of the churning ocean and the maw of sharp rocks. The cloth and pole were much bigger than he thought they would be, somehow. Bright red, maybe 3 times as big as his whole slim frame, adorned with the depiction of Amity’s past ‘victory’ as ancient slayers of sea monsters.
It was almost funny, Danny thinks, that the last thing he saw, tied around his hand, was a glorified depiction of war. A freeze-frame moment of human victory over one of the sea’s supposed nastiest predators patterned with a blood-red backdrop. Highlighted by the flash from the stormy sky around him.
It was silly that he only just figured out why the flag was out there in the first place, whether or not the stories were true or not. It was a warning, not a boast. A warning to the people of Amity to beware of the sea monsters, and a warning to those same monsters from the deep too, to stay in their prison where they belonged.
It was a warning to not do exactly what Danny just did .
The flag should have stayed where it was- dormant like the history it hid, and dormant like the barrier that was created to save Amity.
Danny should have stayed in the boat with his friends.
He was able to just barely wrap his hands into the flag’s fabric, tearing it with him just as he was struck by the sky itself. Angry lightning flowed around him and the ripped flag tangled like a stream of fire as he flew off the cliff, careening down into the ocean. If he’d even make it that far.
He hoped, as he fell, that the loud crack of lightning had left Sam and Tucker alone where they sat still waiting in the craggy. It hit him , not them. They were safe from the sparks scattering in the rain with his descent.
But at least he had the flag, right? His friends could just tell his parents of his bravery and that would have to be enough.