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KonoSubnautica!
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Introduction
KonoSubnautica!
INTRODUCTION
Aqua finds herself stranded on an alien, otherworldly oceanic planet, far from the familiar comforts of the more standard fare beach resort. Nope. Instead, bioluminescent flora beckon to her from depths she dare not tread. A PDA Voice presses her for answers, inexplicably in Darkness' voice. It confirms her suspicions that Kazuma and Megumin got themselves swallowed up by a massive sea creature, and compels Aqua to go investigate. As if!
Throughout is this bizarre, perilous environment she dare not face alone. How is she to overcome treacherous challenges, evade predatory creatures, and unravel the mysteries of this underwater realm? Even the PDA will not clarify that much; it only cautions against producing loud noises which could attract even bigger predators, adding to her already overwhelming sense of dread.
Join in this aquatic adventure, as Aqua becomes the mortal summoned to a bleak and dangerous world, facing a unique form of hell. KonoSubnautica blends together the humor, survival aspects, and heady exploration afforded a crossover of the two, one that tests Aqua's resilience and wits.
The readership may recall that she has little thereof already.
PROLOGUE
There was a disquieting chime as the shipboard automated distress took on a different tone than what had been playing for countless hours. The extravagant crew with as much of their exploration equipment that could be loaded were still making for the myriad of remaining escape pods aboard the Aurora. A name carried over many years of humanity's exploration of the unknown, whether the centuries old nautical compass assisted by stars, or voyaging afar to see those pinpoints in full splendor. None were as capable, or purpose-built for the mission ahead, as this fine vessel, now aflame, dipping unerringly into an ocean world's gravity well.
Too loud the various klaxons and soon the rather unwelcoming cry of fauna in the shallows as the ship concluded its plunge and righted itself for a long, disquieting moment, less of a bob and more an acquiescence as sand banks subsumed the keel and soon with it, navigation subroutines, propulsion and fuel reserves.
It was enough for the illustrious band of adventurers Megumin, Kazuma, Darkness and of course the Tethyan Lady Aqua herself, to try processing this marooning on a remote planet. One with too much water and all of it unthinkably undrinkable.
Bracing themselves, hugging each other close, the party barely recognized the enthusiastic report as waters begin slowly engulfing the main decks.
[][] By the decree of the Great Arcane Codex, the mystical integration of realms is newly underway![][]
What filtered through soon after, as the ringing in their ears subsided, was the parting of launch bays and the telltale noshing of survivors by whomever roamed these unforgiving shallows.
Then, a marquee display went live on most of the zig-zag of halls facilitating each deck, the contents in plain English for what it's worth:
As if on cue, the waters instantly reached their level. The party began banging helplessly on a sealed bulkhead which was barring them from the escape pods. All except for Aqua, who in a rather octopus-like way flattened and popped her way to safety. Go figure.
She took the lead, working past a pounding headache as noxious fumes from the spent fuel reserves began leaking back aboard.
Then, without a second thought, she sealed up her escape pod and strapped in for whatever the ship's computer had been warning everybody about.
The light filtering through the escape hatch of her pod, plus the cry of gulls and steady blinking of a radio device registering multiple maydays, were first to accompany Aqua's senses as she slowly reopened her eyes.
Still half-unconscious, she leaned heavily against support straps digging into her underarms painfully tight, and nonetheless took extra long to at last unbuckle herself to announce despairingly as she flopped forward: "Crud, I forgot my swimgear, again!"
The radio drew her attention at last. She lumbered over to activate it, but the dang thing only began sparking and spouting nothing but screams amidst static.
"Hmm. Just terrific."
She sat back down in the crash seat, a pained expression dissolving from her features as her eyes focused on the immediate surrounds. There was the PDA ditched on the floor, the screen partly cracked but the controls still functional. She woke it up and, with a frustrated sigh, commanded airily: "Reestablish uplink."
"You took the words right outta my mouth!" quipped Darkness.
Aqua looked about, somewhat perturbed. "Darkness? Was that you just now?"
"Yessum."
"Ah. Much as I don't want to sound too concerned here, and yes, I can sort of understand you wanting to risk a ride in on the exterior... if that's your preference. Just, humor me for a second I don't quite have my balance neither does the pod. Umm, can you tap on the hull or something?"
"Did you hit your head dearie?"
"Thanks for reminding me. I think the PDA launched at my face as we descended."
"Well, I count your recovery within the upper 99.8 percentile of those who signed up for this operation. Just, try not to venture too close to the Aurora's wreck while you are still on the mend. We are low on emergency rations as it stands."
"And, why might that be? When I can command the very seas," Aqua leveled unerringly.
There was a riotous, ear-splitting crack from her 3 o' clock which rocked her escape pod and sent much of the nearby wildlife into a tizzy.
"Damn that Explosion girl. Of all times."
"No, that would be Aurora's reactor at last going critical."
"The hell it has. I don't even have protective layers."
"As much as it pains me to say," chirped Darkness' voice, now clearer and localized within the precise confines of the PDA Aqua was holding aloft, "the mission did not account for leviathan stomach acids."
"We...hah! You think you can play games with me, missy?" Aqua deflected, lowering the PDA and looking more carefully at the escape pod's exposed innards. With the radio on the fritz, hearing Darkness at all meant she had to be hiding somewhere. She could just visualize that masochist's visage pressed to the escape hatch beguilingly.
She rose with a flat-faced grimace, steadying against the gentle lull of the shallows on the escape pod's undercarriage. She scaled the ladder and, fortunate for the hatch opening to line of sight with the fresh bath of radiation emanating from a half klick or so to said 3 o'clock, she was okay to peer forth for a bit, despite the PDA's squawks of protest sitting idle near her crash harness down below.
Aqua quickly spotted one of the first physical signs of fellow survivors. Kazuma, or the pinprick of him as he only now completed swimming away from the crash site. She fetched and raised a plastic, disposable sightglass bolted to the ladder below.
Yes, there he was in fine form and apparently leaning Megumin gingerly on an exposed rock face. Oh, what's this? Perchance the fellow is debating whether to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation! But then Megumin at last stirred and sat up, glaring hotly at him.
"Well, Darkness, time to pack up our things and go see if they could use some help," Aqua declared midst chuckling. Sighing in relief, she angled herself to project her voice down the hatch better. There was a blur of motion, and a delayed, punctuated Kazuma-esque yelp along with freshly disturbed waves issuing from his perch. Kazuma and Megumin were nowhere to be seen.
"Great. Just great!"
Too loud the various klaxons and soon the rather unwelcoming cry of fauna in the shallows as the ship concluded its plunge and righted itself for a long, disquieting moment, less of a bob and more an acquiescence as sand banks subsumed the keel and soon with it, navigation subroutines, propulsion and fuel reserves.
It was enough for the illustrious band of adventurers Megumin, Kazuma, Darkness and of course the Tethyan Lady Aqua herself, to try processing this marooning on a remote planet. One with too much water and all of it unthinkably undrinkable.
Bracing themselves, hugging each other close, the party barely recognized the enthusiastic report as waters begin slowly engulfing the main decks.
[][] By the decree of the Great Arcane Codex, the mystical integration of realms is newly underway![][]
What filtered through soon after, as the ringing in their ears subsided, was the parting of launch bays and the telltale noshing of survivors by whomever roamed these unforgiving shallows.
Then, a marquee display went live on most of the zig-zag of halls facilitating each deck, the contents in plain English for what it's worth:
> Adventure Enacted. Crews please prepare for the dive... <
As if on cue, the waters instantly reached their level. The party began banging helplessly on a sealed bulkhead which was barring them from the escape pods. All except for Aqua, who in a rather octopus-like way flattened and popped her way to safety. Go figure.
She took the lead, working past a pounding headache as noxious fumes from the spent fuel reserves began leaking back aboard.
Then, without a second thought, she sealed up her escape pod and strapped in for whatever the ship's computer had been warning everybody about.
The light filtering through the escape hatch of her pod, plus the cry of gulls and steady blinking of a radio device registering multiple maydays, were first to accompany Aqua's senses as she slowly reopened her eyes.
Still half-unconscious, she leaned heavily against support straps digging into her underarms painfully tight, and nonetheless took extra long to at last unbuckle herself to announce despairingly as she flopped forward: "Crud, I forgot my swimgear, again!"
The radio drew her attention at last. She lumbered over to activate it, but the dang thing only began sparking and spouting nothing but screams amidst static.
"Hmm. Just terrific."
She sat back down in the crash seat, a pained expression dissolving from her features as her eyes focused on the immediate surrounds. There was the PDA ditched on the floor, the screen partly cracked but the controls still functional. She woke it up and, with a frustrated sigh, commanded airily: "Reestablish uplink."
"You took the words right outta my mouth!" quipped Darkness.
Aqua looked about, somewhat perturbed. "Darkness? Was that you just now?"
"Yessum."
"Ah. Much as I don't want to sound too concerned here, and yes, I can sort of understand you wanting to risk a ride in on the exterior... if that's your preference. Just, humor me for a second I don't quite have my balance neither does the pod. Umm, can you tap on the hull or something?"
"Did you hit your head dearie?"
"Thanks for reminding me. I think the PDA launched at my face as we descended."
"Well, I count your recovery within the upper 99.8 percentile of those who signed up for this operation. Just, try not to venture too close to the Aurora's wreck while you are still on the mend. We are low on emergency rations as it stands."
"And, why might that be? When I can command the very seas," Aqua leveled unerringly.
There was a riotous, ear-splitting crack from her 3 o' clock which rocked her escape pod and sent much of the nearby wildlife into a tizzy.
"Damn that Explosion girl. Of all times."
"No, that would be Aurora's reactor at last going critical."
"The hell it has. I don't even have protective layers."
"As much as it pains me to say," chirped Darkness' voice, now clearer and localized within the precise confines of the PDA Aqua was holding aloft, "the mission did not account for leviathan stomach acids."
"We...hah! You think you can play games with me, missy?" Aqua deflected, lowering the PDA and looking more carefully at the escape pod's exposed innards. With the radio on the fritz, hearing Darkness at all meant she had to be hiding somewhere. She could just visualize that masochist's visage pressed to the escape hatch beguilingly.
She rose with a flat-faced grimace, steadying against the gentle lull of the shallows on the escape pod's undercarriage. She scaled the ladder and, fortunate for the hatch opening to line of sight with the fresh bath of radiation emanating from a half klick or so to said 3 o'clock, she was okay to peer forth for a bit, despite the PDA's squawks of protest sitting idle near her crash harness down below.
Aqua quickly spotted one of the first physical signs of fellow survivors. Kazuma, or the pinprick of him as he only now completed swimming away from the crash site. She fetched and raised a plastic, disposable sightglass bolted to the ladder below.
Yes, there he was in fine form and apparently leaning Megumin gingerly on an exposed rock face. Oh, what's this? Perchance the fellow is debating whether to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation! But then Megumin at last stirred and sat up, glaring hotly at him.
"Well, Darkness, time to pack up our things and go see if they could use some help," Aqua declared midst chuckling. Sighing in relief, she angled herself to project her voice down the hatch better. There was a blur of motion, and a delayed, punctuated Kazuma-esque yelp along with freshly disturbed waves issuing from his perch. Kazuma and Megumin were nowhere to be seen.
"Great. Just great!"
Chapter One
Aqua paused for a bit, breathing heavily, which fogged up her diving visor extensively. She was tugging at barely a centimeter and a half per second, dragging the whole darn escape pod before it could reach further up the slope of a coral reef and anchor itself just enough for near-term use.
Groaning, she worked her arms and knelt by her pod, fingers slipping free of gloves and working diligently to smooth out the temporary patch-up, whereby she could identify the majority of breaches whether through bubbles whenever the tides caught the underside of the pod, or, as she brimmed with wicked intent, never mind all that.
While repairs were something she had hoped to make the whole party relatively familiar with... there was a catch: the entire shoreline within sight, whether immobile banks or those large, grazing sea beasts, was entirely out of goddamned copper. So, gone was that idea. In addition to increasing the scan range and other capabilities of her PDA, or so she gathered.
She could lie in wait, the pod itself set as a booby trap for whoever else was prowling these waters. The initial cracks upon landing had indeed become more like breaches and were not ideal for anybody trying to operate its interior modules. These were sparking and smoking at length, and Aqua knew full well what water plus electricity equaled.
It was quickly approaching nightfall already. Already some meteors streaked overhead, perhaps a chance to scrounge for rare material should they land near. Or, more morbidly, perhaps those were the initial, flimsiest bits of the Aurora which had flaked off at the first sign of trouble in upper orbit.
Her PDA kept squawking about bringing back aboard plenty more salvaged materials all the same, so she closed her toolkit and trained her eyes to the glowing minimap pinging with points of interest.
She turned the PDA over and gave it an experimental patting down. "Darkness, are you awake in there?"
"Hmph, I've been waiting to hear from you." What kind of tone was that?
Aqua rolled her eyes. This was going to be a long night, with little more hauled in than she had first anticipated. Well into the darkening hours, water still gently lapped at the pod's edges and began reflecting the bright moons in their slow procession overhead.
Somewhere in the vicinity, now just an ominous silhouette, was the Aurora's wreckage as it now lay partially submerged, the remnants of flames long extinguished, capitulating to ambient fog banks.
The PDA, clipped now to Aqua's belt, finished some impromptu self-diagnostics and quickly crackled back to life, Darkness's voice working over to her suit's own accessories in a somewhat tinny and unwelcome fashion. "Aqua-sama," Darkness cooed, her tone laden with contentment, "I'm just finishing up a refreshing shower... Mmm, the water feels so wonderful after being in that restrictive outfit."
"I bet it does," Aqua groaned, though Darkness' interpretative ASMR handiwork was thankfully muffled rather well by the surrounding water's own noisemaking. She tightened the last of a series of bolt on the pod's outer shell, trying to ignore the vivid mental image. "Darkness, focus. We need to get this thing operational," she all but muttered under her breath, though the PDA would easily pick it up. "...Darkness?"
The ambient noise of splashing water and soft humming continued unabated. Aqua wiped a strand of blue hair from her face and scanned the horizon, hoping to spot any sign of her companions. Instead: "What the! Oh, that's a big kahuna! Darkness! Get your circuits humming chica and alert me when these damn things are close next time!"
Her voice echoed slightly, caught up by the vast emptiness around her save for the surface of the malfunctioning escape pod, and newly the razor-sharp teeth of what the PDA flashed belatedly--as one was already chewing through her suit's dismally reinforced mesh liner--a boneshark.
She began trying to bash its head in with the PDA to ill effect as the cracks in its screen and the adjoining grip began lengthening.
The Boneshark, however, seemed to find the suit, or perhaps her exposed appendage, as utterly unappetizing as it detached, furiously beating its tailfin to pursue juicier propositions in the immediate vicinity: one of those cackling sea cows, or whatever the PDA called if it would bother working again. She tested it, not taking her eyes off the general direction of the boneshark's presumed lair. The PDA's cheerful bootup chime interrupted her thoughts. Then, before she could even ask: "Emergency! All standard communication channels are currently offline. Please reestablish uplink at the nearest terminal." This was a mechanical voice, standard issue and clearly indifferent to her predicament.
Aqua sighed and resumed her work, her mind racing with worries about the others. She had no idea where Kazuma, Megumin, or disembodied Darkness could be, or what dangers they might now be facing. It was bound to keep her up that night.
Just before sunrise, the pod's power reserves depleted and Aqua felt comfortable remodeling the interior a bit with all the exposed circuits still in the way.
There were some bioluminescent flora now serving as a welcome mat. These swayed bemusedly in the several Aquas deep waters directly below the pod's primary point of disembarkment. It served a dual purpose, for her to make out when swimming back on an errand farther afield, or, if she got the colors right, to speak of the unknown perils that awaited stalker or boneshark that bothered to lurk there.
She really could not be certain. Suddenly, at last, the PDA beeped, alerting her to an incoming transmission. Aqua quickly accessed the message, her heart skipping a beat. The signal was garbled, but she could make out snippets of what was clearly Kazuma's voice. "...stuck... weird fish... mincemeat..."
Relief and urgency surged through her. If Kazuma was sending a message, he had to be nearby. He had to have most if not all of his limbs still attached. And, she paused, flexing tired fingers through soggy gloves, she was utterly determined to forego sleep a bit longer if it meant finding him.
Aqua grabbed her kit, tightened the straps on her flippers and hurriedly set off through the shallow waters, careful to avoid the curious peepers and bladderfish that darted around her field of view.
Her journey was fraught with challenges—the PDA having a degree of difficulty identifying clusters of friendly versus not, the myriad of sea life. Though, it had little to do with the distance from the pod, itself powered down.
"Ah!" She winced, seizing her shoulder blade with a free hand before it cramped up on her. Immediately the PDA squawked, an icon flashing about stinging jellyfish, and whatever was lecherously lobbing cherry bombs at her. How exactly she was to spot either of those in time was beyond her.
Finally, she saw a familiar figure in the distance. The coordinates Kazuma had sent her were valid. He unhooked his mask, sucking air in greedily from a series of pipes funneling air to his choice of rock on the seabed. The bubbles had helped her spot him in the first place.
With his mask flopping free, it was easy to tell he was relieved to see her. "Aqua! Took you long enough. I've been fending off these weird fish and trying to get a better signal through to either of you. Any idea where Darkness and Megumin are?"
Aqua blinked, but shook her head. She glanced around the alien underwater world. This was her first time exploring anything on the edge of the Shallows. "I thought she was with you?"
"No. What I brought along was just some personal effects..." Kazuma allowed, sheepishly.
It was Darkness, via the PDA, who inferred for her colleague at last: "Somebody pranked Kaz-kun with a YunYun blowup doll in his luggage."
"Hey, what better life preserver? That really was the only thing going through my mind."
"I bet," Aqua begat dryly.
Groaning, she worked her arms and knelt by her pod, fingers slipping free of gloves and working diligently to smooth out the temporary patch-up, whereby she could identify the majority of breaches whether through bubbles whenever the tides caught the underside of the pod, or, as she brimmed with wicked intent, never mind all that.
While repairs were something she had hoped to make the whole party relatively familiar with... there was a catch: the entire shoreline within sight, whether immobile banks or those large, grazing sea beasts, was entirely out of goddamned copper. So, gone was that idea. In addition to increasing the scan range and other capabilities of her PDA, or so she gathered.
She could lie in wait, the pod itself set as a booby trap for whoever else was prowling these waters. The initial cracks upon landing had indeed become more like breaches and were not ideal for anybody trying to operate its interior modules. These were sparking and smoking at length, and Aqua knew full well what water plus electricity equaled.
It was quickly approaching nightfall already. Already some meteors streaked overhead, perhaps a chance to scrounge for rare material should they land near. Or, more morbidly, perhaps those were the initial, flimsiest bits of the Aurora which had flaked off at the first sign of trouble in upper orbit.
Her PDA kept squawking about bringing back aboard plenty more salvaged materials all the same, so she closed her toolkit and trained her eyes to the glowing minimap pinging with points of interest.
She turned the PDA over and gave it an experimental patting down. "Darkness, are you awake in there?"
"Hmph, I've been waiting to hear from you." What kind of tone was that?
Aqua rolled her eyes. This was going to be a long night, with little more hauled in than she had first anticipated. Well into the darkening hours, water still gently lapped at the pod's edges and began reflecting the bright moons in their slow procession overhead.
Somewhere in the vicinity, now just an ominous silhouette, was the Aurora's wreckage as it now lay partially submerged, the remnants of flames long extinguished, capitulating to ambient fog banks.
The PDA, clipped now to Aqua's belt, finished some impromptu self-diagnostics and quickly crackled back to life, Darkness's voice working over to her suit's own accessories in a somewhat tinny and unwelcome fashion. "Aqua-sama," Darkness cooed, her tone laden with contentment, "I'm just finishing up a refreshing shower... Mmm, the water feels so wonderful after being in that restrictive outfit."
"I bet it does," Aqua groaned, though Darkness' interpretative ASMR handiwork was thankfully muffled rather well by the surrounding water's own noisemaking. She tightened the last of a series of bolt on the pod's outer shell, trying to ignore the vivid mental image. "Darkness, focus. We need to get this thing operational," she all but muttered under her breath, though the PDA would easily pick it up. "...Darkness?"
The ambient noise of splashing water and soft humming continued unabated. Aqua wiped a strand of blue hair from her face and scanned the horizon, hoping to spot any sign of her companions. Instead: "What the! Oh, that's a big kahuna! Darkness! Get your circuits humming chica and alert me when these damn things are close next time!"
Her voice echoed slightly, caught up by the vast emptiness around her save for the surface of the malfunctioning escape pod, and newly the razor-sharp teeth of what the PDA flashed belatedly--as one was already chewing through her suit's dismally reinforced mesh liner--a boneshark.
She began trying to bash its head in with the PDA to ill effect as the cracks in its screen and the adjoining grip began lengthening.
The Boneshark, however, seemed to find the suit, or perhaps her exposed appendage, as utterly unappetizing as it detached, furiously beating its tailfin to pursue juicier propositions in the immediate vicinity: one of those cackling sea cows, or whatever the PDA called if it would bother working again. She tested it, not taking her eyes off the general direction of the boneshark's presumed lair. The PDA's cheerful bootup chime interrupted her thoughts. Then, before she could even ask: "Emergency! All standard communication channels are currently offline. Please reestablish uplink at the nearest terminal." This was a mechanical voice, standard issue and clearly indifferent to her predicament.
Aqua sighed and resumed her work, her mind racing with worries about the others. She had no idea where Kazuma, Megumin, or disembodied Darkness could be, or what dangers they might now be facing. It was bound to keep her up that night.
Just before sunrise, the pod's power reserves depleted and Aqua felt comfortable remodeling the interior a bit with all the exposed circuits still in the way.
There were some bioluminescent flora now serving as a welcome mat. These swayed bemusedly in the several Aquas deep waters directly below the pod's primary point of disembarkment. It served a dual purpose, for her to make out when swimming back on an errand farther afield, or, if she got the colors right, to speak of the unknown perils that awaited stalker or boneshark that bothered to lurk there.
She really could not be certain. Suddenly, at last, the PDA beeped, alerting her to an incoming transmission. Aqua quickly accessed the message, her heart skipping a beat. The signal was garbled, but she could make out snippets of what was clearly Kazuma's voice. "...stuck... weird fish... mincemeat..."
Relief and urgency surged through her. If Kazuma was sending a message, he had to be nearby. He had to have most if not all of his limbs still attached. And, she paused, flexing tired fingers through soggy gloves, she was utterly determined to forego sleep a bit longer if it meant finding him.
Aqua grabbed her kit, tightened the straps on her flippers and hurriedly set off through the shallow waters, careful to avoid the curious peepers and bladderfish that darted around her field of view.
Her journey was fraught with challenges—the PDA having a degree of difficulty identifying clusters of friendly versus not, the myriad of sea life. Though, it had little to do with the distance from the pod, itself powered down.
"Ah!" She winced, seizing her shoulder blade with a free hand before it cramped up on her. Immediately the PDA squawked, an icon flashing about stinging jellyfish, and whatever was lecherously lobbing cherry bombs at her. How exactly she was to spot either of those in time was beyond her.
Finally, she saw a familiar figure in the distance. The coordinates Kazuma had sent her were valid. He unhooked his mask, sucking air in greedily from a series of pipes funneling air to his choice of rock on the seabed. The bubbles had helped her spot him in the first place.
With his mask flopping free, it was easy to tell he was relieved to see her. "Aqua! Took you long enough. I've been fending off these weird fish and trying to get a better signal through to either of you. Any idea where Darkness and Megumin are?"
Aqua blinked, but shook her head. She glanced around the alien underwater world. This was her first time exploring anything on the edge of the Shallows. "I thought she was with you?"
"No. What I brought along was just some personal effects..." Kazuma allowed, sheepishly.
It was Darkness, via the PDA, who inferred for her colleague at last: "Somebody pranked Kaz-kun with a YunYun blowup doll in his luggage."
"Hey, what better life preserver? That really was the only thing going through my mind."
"I bet," Aqua begat dryly.
Chapter Two
Aqua quit glaring at Kazuma as a stream of bubbles caught her eye from nearby. "Blurrrb, bughhuuh!" She remembered to pop out her rebreather, to instead mouth and signal to Kazuma that they surface immediately.
As their flippered legs both began to kick, a harpoon shot across their recently utilized depth. The YunYun-esque blow up doll, taking too much time to refill and help with Kazuma's ascent, took the brunt of the projectile.
"What the heck was that?" Kazuma demanded, ditching the doll wide-eyed and whirling about at surface level, looking for Aqua as well as their attacker. "Why would other survivors turn--!?" It was his turn to shriek, as he spotted his friend being caught up in the wake of a fully staffed Cyclops as it surfaced, someone he couldn't quite recognize popping from the hatch to train binoculars on him.
Moderately sized metallic spheres were lobbed into the water and began sinking to either side of Kaz.
"Oh, on my list of things to do before I reinc-- HEY!" The spheres activated tethers, channeling beads of air and water hastily their way, and soon, with Aqua rolling and flailing in front of him, both were mercilessly whisked aboard the Cyclops for questioning.
The ship's commander introduced himself. It was no surprise of course for it to be tweedle dee himself.
"Mammon," spat Aqua, in between a lungful of seawater.
"I should have known you would be commanding the Devil King's forces this far out," Kazuma allowed, rising and wiping a bit of kelp from his rebreather before reseating it over his smug expression.
Mammon merely snorted, twirling a cape behind his beastly form as he pivoted to examine a report streaming through on the submersible's automated systems.
"Reaper, on fast approach," declared an underling.
The Cyclops, sturdy especially with the improvements the hellspawn had achieved in their own painstakingly bizarre ways, was still no match for the front prongs of Planet 4546B's more territorial breed of leviathan.
"Deploying countermeasures," quipped the ship's computer nonchalantly.
"Belay that," barked a general, eyeing and inferring from their superior's scowl. "Everybody man the harpoons. You, stowaways," he added, directing his eyestalks at Aqua and Kazuma twiddling their thumbs.
"Umm, you mean us? It was you who brought us aboard dangit!" Kaz tried.
"Prisoners," Mammon clarified darkly.
Promptly, the pair of them were packed like sardines into one of the lockers belowdecks. Aqua and Kazuma paused in the abject dark alone to themselves minus the muffled interactions with the Reaper some meters beyond the vessel's newly beleaguered outer hull.
"So, good thinking there, mister," Aqua surmised, conscientious about her breathing in his face.
"Wha--this? I don't know what you mean."
"I mean the leviathan, good job bringing it over to this side of the shipwreck."
"Well, you are most welcome. But, surely you can afford me some more room while we're at it?"
"Are you saying I'm bloated? I've hardly eaten a damn thing except nutrient bars, and those were stale!"
They started going into a fierce enough argument that it wasn't just a lone leviathan responding, but warpers. The defenses on the archdemon's Cyclops were simply no match. Crew went topside, casting nets to recover crew mysteriously dislocated from within the ship's inner compartments. Those bridging the gap to help draw in the nets were warped away as quietly and unpredictably.
"Huh, too bad Megumin isn't here to see this," Darkness inferred from within Aqua's diver's mesh.
"Oh, Darkness," Kaz acknowledged, his voice diminutive in the cramped conditions plus the chaos happening unseen around them.
After a moment, the Cyclops seemed to run out of options and began listing to one side, the depth indicator doing almost all the talking while none of the crew remained aboard, instead flailing haplessly in Reaper-infested waters.
Darkness was beside herself. "Yes, deeper! That pressure grabs at you, what starts as a mere caress squishes you! Ahhh..hhhaahaHAHA!"
The pressure change became enough, that only Darkness' distinct albeit digitized guffaws overtook the sound of Aqua's pulse throbbing its way through her temples.
When her eyes opened again, both she and Kazuma were safe, although quite soggy, reclining on the top of a Seamoth, the sun beating down on either of them.
"Huh?"
Sunburnt, dehydrated and famished, the two of them slowly processed the festive atmosphere sounding from the slopes leading inland. They were on some island. It seemed very little of it was natural shoreline with the bulk of the traversable bits owed to some ridiculous construction effort. Their eyes trained upward, taking in a bizarre static fixture, neither lighthouse, nor all that friendly looking for that matter.
"Aqua!" sounded a familiar voice.
The two of them glanced about, until spotting someone cresting the other side of the nearest sand dune, the smell of a barbecue wafting in alongside them. It was Megumin's younger sister Komekko. Her red eyes and bright smile were a welcome sight.
Without much insisting needed they began ambling for the source of the purported festivities. Their eyes prized upon sizzling foods, some cooking away in shiny full-service barbecues, others already circulating among hungry partakers, their heat leading to a number of surprised yelps, palms and fingers seeking the cool ocean currents.
Sure enough, it was most of the Crimson Demons that Aqua could bring to mind.
Kaz glanced back, wondering why she wasn't keeping pace, to find Aqua playfully stretching Komekko's facial muscles to taut before tugging the child into a protective, reassuring hug. "Hey, come on, Aqua. Let's eat!"
One of the Crimson Demons, distinct for his bright bowler hat and handlebar mustache, propel-cannoned a stack of dirty plates toward Kazuma's general direction.
"Huh!?"
"You the dishwasher we called over?"
"Ah, how gentlemanly of you, Kazuma," surmised Aqua, winking at him before tasking Komekko with taking the lead to the queue for BBQ.
---
The air was filled with cheerful banter long into the afternoon. Children ran around, chasing each other through the accessible parts of the island's furnishings, barely able to contain the fresh load of food calories. The adults stayed closer to the shoreline, chatting animatedly, sharing stories and laughter.
Somewhere, in the hubbub, was Megumin's oversized hat bobbing about, Aqua was sure of it.
Before she could seek their familiar out, Kazumin appeared, his hair dripping with soap suds. "Is there any food left?"
Aqua scowled at him momentarily. "Hey, don't look at me buster. The Crimson Demons have their own way of doing things. You probably have to earn some street cred before you get a spot in the queue, you feel me?" But, as she turned to train her voice in the direction Kaz was morosely ambling, she gawked. He had disappeared into the broad arms of Megumin's father.
"Welcome, son in law! Oh, and you brought some guests for the occasion! Please, please help yourselves to some freshly grilled crustaceans."
"They're all the rage," said YuiYui, holding back from their little gathering, tasked as she was with patting down scorch marks along the front of her chef's apron and shaking free the odd pucker fish from her waist-long hair.
Another Crimson Demon, conscripted to the same off world shenanigans, called the assembled revelers to order with a pan and spatula, advising matter-of-factly: "Oh, please, finish your plates. Don't mind the little Snapper Claws. They're a bit feisty, and don't leave much after being on the grill for a bit. But they are perfectly edible."
This only accelerated the number of plates now lining the dishwashing station.
---
Soon, with the smell of grilled crustaceans dissipating into the evening breezes, large wooden tables were set up around the little-known facility, their surfaces covered with checkered tablecloths and laden with flagons of various color and shape. Clearly Kazuma was still slaving away for his first bite and--was that the crack of a whip reporting? Aqua could not be certain. She was too immersed in the ocean's lull and the ceremonial clinking of glasses.
What a contrast to their initial bailing out from the mothership.
Komekko sat down beside her before long, toying with the cap of a bottle of Sunbeam. Apparently, a whole pack had been recovered from the crash site earlier that rotation.
Aqua glanced surreptitiously at Komekko's parents, before filling in rather monotonously: "Ah…you sure that is safe to consume, Komekko hun?"
Darkness, waking from idle, sized up the situation and chose to relay similar enough apprehensions. "That item has probably been irrad... irr-, eh. Decimated?"
Burping after taking a big swig, Komekko merely shrugged.
---
Some hours later, Megumin at last resurfaced, coated in the stomach juices of the one Reaper leviathan she hadn't spotted on the way down.
The less her party knew of this mishap, the better. She cleared her throat, arms crossed, foot tapping away. Only, somebody was hoarding the lone bar of soap recovered from the crash site. "Kazuma."
Kazuma, unfinished in his assigned chores, leaned against the dishwashing station, a soap bubble extruding and receding back into the same nostril with each subtle breath.
As their flippered legs both began to kick, a harpoon shot across their recently utilized depth. The YunYun-esque blow up doll, taking too much time to refill and help with Kazuma's ascent, took the brunt of the projectile.
"What the heck was that?" Kazuma demanded, ditching the doll wide-eyed and whirling about at surface level, looking for Aqua as well as their attacker. "Why would other survivors turn--!?" It was his turn to shriek, as he spotted his friend being caught up in the wake of a fully staffed Cyclops as it surfaced, someone he couldn't quite recognize popping from the hatch to train binoculars on him.
Moderately sized metallic spheres were lobbed into the water and began sinking to either side of Kaz.
"Oh, on my list of things to do before I reinc-- HEY!" The spheres activated tethers, channeling beads of air and water hastily their way, and soon, with Aqua rolling and flailing in front of him, both were mercilessly whisked aboard the Cyclops for questioning.
The ship's commander introduced himself. It was no surprise of course for it to be tweedle dee himself.
"Mammon," spat Aqua, in between a lungful of seawater.
"I should have known you would be commanding the Devil King's forces this far out," Kazuma allowed, rising and wiping a bit of kelp from his rebreather before reseating it over his smug expression.
Mammon merely snorted, twirling a cape behind his beastly form as he pivoted to examine a report streaming through on the submersible's automated systems.
"Reaper, on fast approach," declared an underling.
The Cyclops, sturdy especially with the improvements the hellspawn had achieved in their own painstakingly bizarre ways, was still no match for the front prongs of Planet 4546B's more territorial breed of leviathan.
"Deploying countermeasures," quipped the ship's computer nonchalantly.
"Belay that," barked a general, eyeing and inferring from their superior's scowl. "Everybody man the harpoons. You, stowaways," he added, directing his eyestalks at Aqua and Kazuma twiddling their thumbs.
"Umm, you mean us? It was you who brought us aboard dangit!" Kaz tried.
"Prisoners," Mammon clarified darkly.
Promptly, the pair of them were packed like sardines into one of the lockers belowdecks. Aqua and Kazuma paused in the abject dark alone to themselves minus the muffled interactions with the Reaper some meters beyond the vessel's newly beleaguered outer hull.
"So, good thinking there, mister," Aqua surmised, conscientious about her breathing in his face.
"Wha--this? I don't know what you mean."
"I mean the leviathan, good job bringing it over to this side of the shipwreck."
"Well, you are most welcome. But, surely you can afford me some more room while we're at it?"
"Are you saying I'm bloated? I've hardly eaten a damn thing except nutrient bars, and those were stale!"
They started going into a fierce enough argument that it wasn't just a lone leviathan responding, but warpers. The defenses on the archdemon's Cyclops were simply no match. Crew went topside, casting nets to recover crew mysteriously dislocated from within the ship's inner compartments. Those bridging the gap to help draw in the nets were warped away as quietly and unpredictably.
"Huh, too bad Megumin isn't here to see this," Darkness inferred from within Aqua's diver's mesh.
"Oh, Darkness," Kaz acknowledged, his voice diminutive in the cramped conditions plus the chaos happening unseen around them.
After a moment, the Cyclops seemed to run out of options and began listing to one side, the depth indicator doing almost all the talking while none of the crew remained aboard, instead flailing haplessly in Reaper-infested waters.
Darkness was beside herself. "Yes, deeper! That pressure grabs at you, what starts as a mere caress squishes you! Ahhh..hhhaahaHAHA!"
The pressure change became enough, that only Darkness' distinct albeit digitized guffaws overtook the sound of Aqua's pulse throbbing its way through her temples.
When her eyes opened again, both she and Kazuma were safe, although quite soggy, reclining on the top of a Seamoth, the sun beating down on either of them.
"Huh?"
Sunburnt, dehydrated and famished, the two of them slowly processed the festive atmosphere sounding from the slopes leading inland. They were on some island. It seemed very little of it was natural shoreline with the bulk of the traversable bits owed to some ridiculous construction effort. Their eyes trained upward, taking in a bizarre static fixture, neither lighthouse, nor all that friendly looking for that matter.
"Aqua!" sounded a familiar voice.
The two of them glanced about, until spotting someone cresting the other side of the nearest sand dune, the smell of a barbecue wafting in alongside them. It was Megumin's younger sister Komekko. Her red eyes and bright smile were a welcome sight.
Without much insisting needed they began ambling for the source of the purported festivities. Their eyes prized upon sizzling foods, some cooking away in shiny full-service barbecues, others already circulating among hungry partakers, their heat leading to a number of surprised yelps, palms and fingers seeking the cool ocean currents.
Sure enough, it was most of the Crimson Demons that Aqua could bring to mind.
Kaz glanced back, wondering why she wasn't keeping pace, to find Aqua playfully stretching Komekko's facial muscles to taut before tugging the child into a protective, reassuring hug. "Hey, come on, Aqua. Let's eat!"
One of the Crimson Demons, distinct for his bright bowler hat and handlebar mustache, propel-cannoned a stack of dirty plates toward Kazuma's general direction.
"Huh!?"
"You the dishwasher we called over?"
"Ah, how gentlemanly of you, Kazuma," surmised Aqua, winking at him before tasking Komekko with taking the lead to the queue for BBQ.
---
The air was filled with cheerful banter long into the afternoon. Children ran around, chasing each other through the accessible parts of the island's furnishings, barely able to contain the fresh load of food calories. The adults stayed closer to the shoreline, chatting animatedly, sharing stories and laughter.
Somewhere, in the hubbub, was Megumin's oversized hat bobbing about, Aqua was sure of it.
Before she could seek their familiar out, Kazumin appeared, his hair dripping with soap suds. "Is there any food left?"
Aqua scowled at him momentarily. "Hey, don't look at me buster. The Crimson Demons have their own way of doing things. You probably have to earn some street cred before you get a spot in the queue, you feel me?" But, as she turned to train her voice in the direction Kaz was morosely ambling, she gawked. He had disappeared into the broad arms of Megumin's father.
"Welcome, son in law! Oh, and you brought some guests for the occasion! Please, please help yourselves to some freshly grilled crustaceans."
"They're all the rage," said YuiYui, holding back from their little gathering, tasked as she was with patting down scorch marks along the front of her chef's apron and shaking free the odd pucker fish from her waist-long hair.
Another Crimson Demon, conscripted to the same off world shenanigans, called the assembled revelers to order with a pan and spatula, advising matter-of-factly: "Oh, please, finish your plates. Don't mind the little Snapper Claws. They're a bit feisty, and don't leave much after being on the grill for a bit. But they are perfectly edible."
This only accelerated the number of plates now lining the dishwashing station.
---
Soon, with the smell of grilled crustaceans dissipating into the evening breezes, large wooden tables were set up around the little-known facility, their surfaces covered with checkered tablecloths and laden with flagons of various color and shape. Clearly Kazuma was still slaving away for his first bite and--was that the crack of a whip reporting? Aqua could not be certain. She was too immersed in the ocean's lull and the ceremonial clinking of glasses.
What a contrast to their initial bailing out from the mothership.
Komekko sat down beside her before long, toying with the cap of a bottle of Sunbeam. Apparently, a whole pack had been recovered from the crash site earlier that rotation.
Aqua glanced surreptitiously at Komekko's parents, before filling in rather monotonously: "Ah…you sure that is safe to consume, Komekko hun?"
Darkness, waking from idle, sized up the situation and chose to relay similar enough apprehensions. "That item has probably been irrad... irr-, eh. Decimated?"
Burping after taking a big swig, Komekko merely shrugged.
---
Some hours later, Megumin at last resurfaced, coated in the stomach juices of the one Reaper leviathan she hadn't spotted on the way down.
The less her party knew of this mishap, the better. She cleared her throat, arms crossed, foot tapping away. Only, somebody was hoarding the lone bar of soap recovered from the crash site. "Kazuma."
Kazuma, unfinished in his assigned chores, leaned against the dishwashing station, a soap bubble extruding and receding back into the same nostril with each subtle breath.
Chapter Three
When Kazuma at last rose, he found himself in a seated position within somebody's—hopefully his own research team's—brand spanking new Moon Pool extension. Noises of active modules and the trickling of the occasional leak met his eardrums, yet any conversation indicating who was up and about that hour was too subdued.
Donning an extra layer over his diver mesh, Kazuma yawned and went to find the rest of his crew.
Aqua, in an adjacent multipurpose unit, was drumming her fingers on a table midst all the downtime. She glanced every now and again at Megumin, the latter scowling at being told again and again not to bother accessing their lone fabricator, its control interface taped over and service panel sealed by laser cutter.
"Darkness, I just want another Purple tablet, pretty please?" their junior explosives tech whined.
Aqua exchanged a look with Kazuma's deadpanned expression. He was probably wanting breakfast. "Ugh. Yo, Megumin? Instead of pestering the poor P.D.A., go warm up the Scanner Room and find us some fresh catch."
"Hoh..." Megumin begat, turning and finally spotting Kazuma. "Just how little sleep did you get on the voyage?"
"I'd rather not say," Kazuma deflected, hugging himself as his wakened state finally acknowledged their new base's rather cold interior.
Inferring, Aqua slid Kazuma her cup of coffee. "We'll get a suitable crew rotation sorted out before long, Kaz."
"Will that include food, mayhaps?"
"I dunno. But, wait a second, didn't you get to fill up like the rest of us at the Crimson team's BBQ?"
"Yesh, what gives," Darkness intoned mechanically, masterfully implying through some new ASMR downloads from the Aurora that she was talking with her mouth full.
Kazuma thought about for a second. "Nah, I was stuck with dish washing."
"Hmm. Go figure," Aqua remarked, rising and stepping into her pair of bunny slippers, her toes relishing the added insulation from the deck plating. They would get a handle of the pressure that far down before long. Though, the real issue with interior temperatures was owed to their parking over a thermal vent, one that initially seemed highly active and in an attractive location to boot.
It had gone idle the moment Megumin first got whiff of the fabricator's self-cleaning mode. Darkness, apparently, had on the sly coded the fabricator's beams to only produce a variant of the gas torps, without the usual durable housing. There went that whole section of the new base, plus the visible rim of the undersea vent they were borrowing more kilowatts than you could shake a stick at.
Aqua eyed the sparse stack of bins recovered from the Aurora's access bays—a feat done at great risk of exceeding their employer's ordinance for becquerels while on deployment. She knew the damage control of that first infraction of team safety was borderline a whole array of thermal generators in precious, painstakingly salvaged material. Nonetheless, she was still her bright sunny self, as she turned to call after Megumin's moody slouching as the latter sized up some ocean life passing by a connecting glass tube to the scanners. "Thanks to Kazuma's volunteering the last rotation, our team's allotment from HQ rose rather significantly. I don't know which of you put in a good word for us, but I am super grateful. It means we are not at risk of foreclosure to the fishes quite yet."
"I doubt the undersea environ has policies akin to terrestrial real estate bids," Darkness aired.
"No," agreed Kazuma, reaching to squeeze Aqua's shoulder appreciably as he thought over his first serious words to the rest of the detachment. First, curiosity got the better of him, as he borrowed Aqua's attention a moment further to park his brow against hers and confide quietly: "I was not expecting anyone to notice our contributions. Does that mean satellite uplink is restored so early into the op?"
Aqua smirked at his antics, before pulling away somberly. "I would like to think they have, yet there's still the matter of much of our expedition becoming food. I'd hate to think HQ was looking at this like some 21st century Squid Game when they wrote the latest checks. But, I'm no accountant."
"Well, what goes on up there is best left kept secret to the other survivors, should we run into them again," Kaz tried. "The last thing anybody needs is queueing up yet another internal review."
"How do you mean?" both Aqua and Darkness asked in more or less the same fashion.
Kazuma nodded, setting down the coffee pensively. "That is, this fiscal quarter is already fraught with ethics disputes. Ours might be among the soonest worth investigating for parsecs wide, but on the other hand, those scummy pirates and 4546B's own fauna seem eager to claim this caldera their own. The news I want to bring to our disparate expedition members is nothing short of getting them all a lifeline stat."
"Here, here," Aqua quipped, beaming.
Kazuma, a bit proud of himself, stood back with fists to his belt line, sighing comfortably. The shift in distributed weight on their section, midst slow-going repairs from Megumin's faux pas, was apparently enough to change that assessment on the fly.
Whole torrents of deeply colored, corrosive plumes from the myriad of vents lining the immediate undersea environment sought their section with gusto. Aqua's scream, Kazuma's response time, all of it became mired in impromptu cartwheeling consternation.
Yay physics.
Some hours later, Aqua, after an umpteenth blowing of her face and hair in the hand dryer, pushed open a bulkhead acting as the only real bit of privacy for her turn under the water filtration station turned showerhead. Still dripping, she hurriedly tried to regroup with her colleagues, frustration still evident. "Good, everybody is accounted for, I take it. Okay, let's recap. We've got the...Megumin, what are you holding?"
"Purple tablet," Kazuma assessed, while Megumin tried hiding it behind her smaller frame.
Aqua's eyebrows did a bit of an interpretive dance, as she began reminding everyone of the more pressing matters. Not only getting the darn P.D.A. to agree to removing any sabotage or other mischief from the dang fabricator. No: "We really need to finish patching up this base already. I can't even begin to list the number of environmental hazards brewing just outside our door."
"Oh, I've had a good solid look at them," Darkness enthused.
"Not now, Darkness," Aqua spat. Then she regarded their senior member aghast. "Kaz, I know that look. What's the scoop?"
"That SeaMoth? Umm, I think it's detached and embedded itself out of view, probably in one of those thermally conductive crags."
"Well, that's just too bad," Megumin grated, a bit inconsolable as Aqua and Kaz both tried getting a hold of the precious alien artifact. When either of them finally gave up, she further clarified disdainfully: "I didn't even get a chance to pilot the dang thing." Then she paused, eyeing Kazuma. "You said it descended where?"
"A moment," Darkness stated, borrowing the scanners for a long, disquieting spell perforated here and there with leaking, creaking, and reports from Kazuma's empty belly. "Well, how very bizarre even for that little trinket."
Aqua, trying to fix her hair after it had at last seen sufficient time to dry out, nearly dropped a clip held between her teeth as she sought: "How do you mean, Darkness?"
Kazuma and Megumin both nodded at needing to hear further explanation.
The group paused, all eyes following Megumin's astonished gaze to state the Moon Pool's one SeaMoth was in, yanked free and left to jostle about unpiloted in the thermally-induced currents.
Its own broadcasting beacon was the one thing drawing the team over in short order, as it lingered just outside the reach of their outpost's floodlights so trained in that direction.
It bore the abrasions of an impressive battle involving both trident-wielding scavengers, and those who swore fealty to the unsteady, manic gaze of an alien-infested survivor from a crewed expedition to 4546B or two.
That, at least, was all they could verify at first glance. More of it was owed still to the report the Moth's temporary new owner had supplied to a P.D.A. newly littering the terrain.
Aqua, glancing about bemusedly as she powered down a seaglide's built-in navigation lights, anxious about alerting passerby to their brief foray beyond the safe proximity of the outpost. "What I still cannot grasp are its travel logs. Did Alterra send us some spiffy prototype without telling us?"
"She means," Megumin inferred from nearby, "it's been on an extended tour through numerous an undersea biome in however short the time we spent repairing that last breach."
"You think the person who borrowed our SeaMoth for a bit was the cause of the outpost integrity giving out?" Kazuma sought.
Megumin ignored him, patting the SeaMoth on the bubble canopy. "Well, whatever it's been through, or whomever put it through its paces right under our noses like that, the SeaMoth is ours again!"
Aqua's eyes narrowed, as she motioned for everybody to clear a path between SeaMoth and their base, before wordlessly keying in autopiloting instructions for a return trip to the Moon Pool.
"Hey, let me be the one to drive it back!" Megumin demanded, power kicking to stall the craft's movement.
"Oh, gladly, for one suspiciously-procured Purple tablet," Aqua intoned levelly.
Just then, the deep, bone-chilling rattle of an imminent volcanic eruption reached their position. As the subtle glare from their base's floodlights swept well out of view, the rest of the base, according to the Seaglide's survey capabilities, was unceremoniously succumbing to their reckless, spur-of-the-moment plan to throw together a thermal vent power exchange.
Or, the previous borrower of the SeaMoth had their own misgivings at the vehicle newly under Aqua and her team's care.
"Darkness, sit rep if you please?" Aqua said after a moment, her breathing intensifying on the comms.
"Well, well," Darkness started, even going so far as to space apart her words with gleeful auditory emotes, bordering on robotic chuckles as she enunciated callously: "I see that we have had a minor glitch at our base. Nothing a little duct tape and a positive—Huh?"
Kazuma, all the while, had completed a brief swim down to the first P.D.A. he could find on the sea bottom, and went to town on it with a laser cutter.
"Kazuma, it appears you are a bit tense. Maybe a minor electric shock will clear that right...UP!"
The whole party seized up in terror as the SeaMoth unleashed a defensive electrostatic webbing.
"Oh, that's new," Megumin tried, before going limp against the business end of the Moth's emitter.
From behind a rock outcropping, a certain cunning subordinate of the archdemons who had furnished the latest Cyclops' tour of duty pivoted to a safe vantage from the SeaMoth emitter's range before radioing in to her commander. "Sylvia, you're not going to believe what just happened while I was scouring through some of the crap lining the impact trajectory of the Aurora."
"Do tell?"
"Send a salvage team. I'm talking three, make that four fresh meatbags and their gear."
"Perfect. I have been meaning to supply our administrators some good news."
"Okay! Just give me a bit and I'll try sending you the coordinates..." then, the underling closed the communication, pulling up a working map of the caldera under their charge. "Gwwehh hehehe!"
Donning an extra layer over his diver mesh, Kazuma yawned and went to find the rest of his crew.
Aqua, in an adjacent multipurpose unit, was drumming her fingers on a table midst all the downtime. She glanced every now and again at Megumin, the latter scowling at being told again and again not to bother accessing their lone fabricator, its control interface taped over and service panel sealed by laser cutter.
"Darkness, I just want another Purple tablet, pretty please?" their junior explosives tech whined.
Aqua exchanged a look with Kazuma's deadpanned expression. He was probably wanting breakfast. "Ugh. Yo, Megumin? Instead of pestering the poor P.D.A., go warm up the Scanner Room and find us some fresh catch."
"Hoh..." Megumin begat, turning and finally spotting Kazuma. "Just how little sleep did you get on the voyage?"
"I'd rather not say," Kazuma deflected, hugging himself as his wakened state finally acknowledged their new base's rather cold interior.
Inferring, Aqua slid Kazuma her cup of coffee. "We'll get a suitable crew rotation sorted out before long, Kaz."
"Will that include food, mayhaps?"
"I dunno. But, wait a second, didn't you get to fill up like the rest of us at the Crimson team's BBQ?"
"Yesh, what gives," Darkness intoned mechanically, masterfully implying through some new ASMR downloads from the Aurora that she was talking with her mouth full.
Kazuma thought about for a second. "Nah, I was stuck with dish washing."
"Hmm. Go figure," Aqua remarked, rising and stepping into her pair of bunny slippers, her toes relishing the added insulation from the deck plating. They would get a handle of the pressure that far down before long. Though, the real issue with interior temperatures was owed to their parking over a thermal vent, one that initially seemed highly active and in an attractive location to boot.
It had gone idle the moment Megumin first got whiff of the fabricator's self-cleaning mode. Darkness, apparently, had on the sly coded the fabricator's beams to only produce a variant of the gas torps, without the usual durable housing. There went that whole section of the new base, plus the visible rim of the undersea vent they were borrowing more kilowatts than you could shake a stick at.
Aqua eyed the sparse stack of bins recovered from the Aurora's access bays—a feat done at great risk of exceeding their employer's ordinance for becquerels while on deployment. She knew the damage control of that first infraction of team safety was borderline a whole array of thermal generators in precious, painstakingly salvaged material. Nonetheless, she was still her bright sunny self, as she turned to call after Megumin's moody slouching as the latter sized up some ocean life passing by a connecting glass tube to the scanners. "Thanks to Kazuma's volunteering the last rotation, our team's allotment from HQ rose rather significantly. I don't know which of you put in a good word for us, but I am super grateful. It means we are not at risk of foreclosure to the fishes quite yet."
"I doubt the undersea environ has policies akin to terrestrial real estate bids," Darkness aired.
"No," agreed Kazuma, reaching to squeeze Aqua's shoulder appreciably as he thought over his first serious words to the rest of the detachment. First, curiosity got the better of him, as he borrowed Aqua's attention a moment further to park his brow against hers and confide quietly: "I was not expecting anyone to notice our contributions. Does that mean satellite uplink is restored so early into the op?"
Aqua smirked at his antics, before pulling away somberly. "I would like to think they have, yet there's still the matter of much of our expedition becoming food. I'd hate to think HQ was looking at this like some 21st century Squid Game when they wrote the latest checks. But, I'm no accountant."
"Well, what goes on up there is best left kept secret to the other survivors, should we run into them again," Kaz tried. "The last thing anybody needs is queueing up yet another internal review."
"How do you mean?" both Aqua and Darkness asked in more or less the same fashion.
Kazuma nodded, setting down the coffee pensively. "That is, this fiscal quarter is already fraught with ethics disputes. Ours might be among the soonest worth investigating for parsecs wide, but on the other hand, those scummy pirates and 4546B's own fauna seem eager to claim this caldera their own. The news I want to bring to our disparate expedition members is nothing short of getting them all a lifeline stat."
"Here, here," Aqua quipped, beaming.
Kazuma, a bit proud of himself, stood back with fists to his belt line, sighing comfortably. The shift in distributed weight on their section, midst slow-going repairs from Megumin's faux pas, was apparently enough to change that assessment on the fly.
Whole torrents of deeply colored, corrosive plumes from the myriad of vents lining the immediate undersea environment sought their section with gusto. Aqua's scream, Kazuma's response time, all of it became mired in impromptu cartwheeling consternation.
Yay physics.
Some hours later, Aqua, after an umpteenth blowing of her face and hair in the hand dryer, pushed open a bulkhead acting as the only real bit of privacy for her turn under the water filtration station turned showerhead. Still dripping, she hurriedly tried to regroup with her colleagues, frustration still evident. "Good, everybody is accounted for, I take it. Okay, let's recap. We've got the...Megumin, what are you holding?"
"Purple tablet," Kazuma assessed, while Megumin tried hiding it behind her smaller frame.
Aqua's eyebrows did a bit of an interpretive dance, as she began reminding everyone of the more pressing matters. Not only getting the darn P.D.A. to agree to removing any sabotage or other mischief from the dang fabricator. No: "We really need to finish patching up this base already. I can't even begin to list the number of environmental hazards brewing just outside our door."
"Oh, I've had a good solid look at them," Darkness enthused.
"Not now, Darkness," Aqua spat. Then she regarded their senior member aghast. "Kaz, I know that look. What's the scoop?"
"That SeaMoth? Umm, I think it's detached and embedded itself out of view, probably in one of those thermally conductive crags."
"Well, that's just too bad," Megumin grated, a bit inconsolable as Aqua and Kaz both tried getting a hold of the precious alien artifact. When either of them finally gave up, she further clarified disdainfully: "I didn't even get a chance to pilot the dang thing." Then she paused, eyeing Kazuma. "You said it descended where?"
"A moment," Darkness stated, borrowing the scanners for a long, disquieting spell perforated here and there with leaking, creaking, and reports from Kazuma's empty belly. "Well, how very bizarre even for that little trinket."
Aqua, trying to fix her hair after it had at last seen sufficient time to dry out, nearly dropped a clip held between her teeth as she sought: "How do you mean, Darkness?"
Kazuma and Megumin both nodded at needing to hear further explanation.
The group paused, all eyes following Megumin's astonished gaze to state the Moon Pool's one SeaMoth was in, yanked free and left to jostle about unpiloted in the thermally-induced currents.
Its own broadcasting beacon was the one thing drawing the team over in short order, as it lingered just outside the reach of their outpost's floodlights so trained in that direction.
It bore the abrasions of an impressive battle involving both trident-wielding scavengers, and those who swore fealty to the unsteady, manic gaze of an alien-infested survivor from a crewed expedition to 4546B or two.
That, at least, was all they could verify at first glance. More of it was owed still to the report the Moth's temporary new owner had supplied to a P.D.A. newly littering the terrain.
Aqua, glancing about bemusedly as she powered down a seaglide's built-in navigation lights, anxious about alerting passerby to their brief foray beyond the safe proximity of the outpost. "What I still cannot grasp are its travel logs. Did Alterra send us some spiffy prototype without telling us?"
"She means," Megumin inferred from nearby, "it's been on an extended tour through numerous an undersea biome in however short the time we spent repairing that last breach."
"You think the person who borrowed our SeaMoth for a bit was the cause of the outpost integrity giving out?" Kazuma sought.
Megumin ignored him, patting the SeaMoth on the bubble canopy. "Well, whatever it's been through, or whomever put it through its paces right under our noses like that, the SeaMoth is ours again!"
Aqua's eyes narrowed, as she motioned for everybody to clear a path between SeaMoth and their base, before wordlessly keying in autopiloting instructions for a return trip to the Moon Pool.
"Hey, let me be the one to drive it back!" Megumin demanded, power kicking to stall the craft's movement.
"Oh, gladly, for one suspiciously-procured Purple tablet," Aqua intoned levelly.
Just then, the deep, bone-chilling rattle of an imminent volcanic eruption reached their position. As the subtle glare from their base's floodlights swept well out of view, the rest of the base, according to the Seaglide's survey capabilities, was unceremoniously succumbing to their reckless, spur-of-the-moment plan to throw together a thermal vent power exchange.
Or, the previous borrower of the SeaMoth had their own misgivings at the vehicle newly under Aqua and her team's care.
"Darkness, sit rep if you please?" Aqua said after a moment, her breathing intensifying on the comms.
"Well, well," Darkness started, even going so far as to space apart her words with gleeful auditory emotes, bordering on robotic chuckles as she enunciated callously: "I see that we have had a minor glitch at our base. Nothing a little duct tape and a positive—Huh?"
Kazuma, all the while, had completed a brief swim down to the first P.D.A. he could find on the sea bottom, and went to town on it with a laser cutter.
"Kazuma, it appears you are a bit tense. Maybe a minor electric shock will clear that right...UP!"
The whole party seized up in terror as the SeaMoth unleashed a defensive electrostatic webbing.
"Oh, that's new," Megumin tried, before going limp against the business end of the Moth's emitter.
From behind a rock outcropping, a certain cunning subordinate of the archdemons who had furnished the latest Cyclops' tour of duty pivoted to a safe vantage from the SeaMoth emitter's range before radioing in to her commander. "Sylvia, you're not going to believe what just happened while I was scouring through some of the crap lining the impact trajectory of the Aurora."
"Do tell?"
"Send a salvage team. I'm talking three, make that four fresh meatbags and their gear."
"Perfect. I have been meaning to supply our administrators some good news."
"Okay! Just give me a bit and I'll try sending you the coordinates..." then, the underling closed the communication, pulling up a working map of the caldera under their charge. "Gwwehh hehehe!"
Story Continues
Chapter Four
New
The latest makeshift habitat, shiny and resplendent amidst the sunlit coral banks, seemed about ready for use. Though, as Kazuma and Aqua fought to clear the portcullis and be the first aboard, there was Megumin sitting in the main hub, blithely flipping a company-issue pocket lighter. She appeared to be shivering a bit.
Aqua, working off the lingering electric shock from the SeaMoth, courtesy of Darkness, pushed forth to feel Megumin's forehead, which the junior tech allowed without fuss. "The power's out," Megumin affirmed despondently, eyes tracking the occasional glint of fauna flitting between the submerged sunbeams at roughly their level.
"Well, I just so happen to have some power cell--" Aqua paused, checking her inventory, her eyes widening a bit.
Everybody turned as one to find Darkness, via video feed, waving cheerily, as she finished recoloring the loaned SeaMoth, swapping in Aqua's personal stock of Power Cells, and took off with a celebratory 'yip'.
Sighing, Kazuma zipped up his diving gear and headed for the nearest hatch. "Guess I'll scrounge up some more copper ingots."
Megumin, knowing the great lengths they all went to secure the last load, smirked good-naturedly.
Above, as the twin moons shone bright across the surface of the ocean, barring full view of the usual smattering of stars stretched out like a velvet tapestry, a staunch counterpoint to the tranquility was playing out in the waters somewhat removed from the claustrophobic confines of their base.
Though, cleverly, it was operating a few decibels shy of the lurking horrors below, not keen on drawing that much attention. For all they knew, it was mating season.
Despite being out for that long, Kazuma hadn't the foggiest idea as he wrapped up his copper-hunting expedition and returned through the airtight threshold, mask already pulled down around his neck and seawater dripping from his hair in a rhythm that matched his exhausted breathing. "Three hours," he wheezed, dropping a pathetically small pile of copper ore onto the fabrication table. "Three hours in that kelp forest with those... those things watching me from the shadows, and this is all I could find."
Megumin glanced up from her meticulous arrangement of data cards, eyes gleaming with the particular brand of manic energy that typically preceded disaster. "You mean the Stalkers? I've been cataloging their hunting patterns. Did you know their teeth can be used as fabrication material? All we need to do is—"
"No," Kazuma interrupted, holding up a dripping hand. "Whatever scheme involving explosions and 'controlled chaos' you're about to suggest, just... no."
Aqua, who had been suspiciously quiet, suddenly emerged from the lower deck with an armful of salvaged wiring. Her hair was pulled back haphazardly with what appeared to be repurposed fiber mesh, and smudges of mechanical grease adorned her face like war paint.
"I think I can get the power running," she announced with uncharacteristic competence. "The base's power cells are completely drained, but I found a way to reroute energy from the thermal vent beneath us. It's just basic hydrothermody-whatsitz."
"You mean to tell us you jury-rigged the power relays?" Kazuma inferred, abruptly halting the fabricator for fear of the copper inputs being tasked for a redundant, recursive assignment.
"No, those are... still somewhere in the caldera," Aqua amended, pointedly averting her gaze. She could feel phantom sweat beading on her temples just thinking about the risks she took.
Kazuma and Megumin exchanged a long, searching look.
"What?" Aqua blinked, affronted. "I am a goddess. I assure you this other method is sound."
They kept staring, their skepticism palpable.
Feeling a bit flustered, Aqua rounded on them. "What, did you think I spent millennia just drinking and partying?"
"Yes," they replied in unison, the word hanging in the humid air.
One of the screens on the nearby wall flickered to life, Darkness' avatar appearing with a suspicious flush to her digital cheeks. "I've returned from my... exploratory mission," she purred, her digitized voice laden with barely contained excitement. "The SeaMoth sustained... sig-NIFICANT damage! From multiple collisions with underwater formations. The hull integrity was repeatedly compromised."
"You crashed it deliberately, didn't you?" Kazuma asked flatly, not even glancing over at the screen. Sighing, he gestured for Aqua to accompany him to the quieter end of the Multipurpose Room. It was clear something other than wrecked submersible was on his mind.
"The pressure at those depths was... intense," Darkness stated, clearly reliving the experience. "Every groan of the hull, every near-breach…pure ecstasy."
"Not now, Darkness," Aqua insisted, turning to follow Kaz, pointedly ignoring Darkness' ramblings.
There was little else said aloud for a spell, with eyes dully tracking over to the latest signs of activity outside their hab: a bustling school of bioluminescent fish scooting by the viewport.
Kazuma, arms crossed, nodded amicably at Aqua, or at least where she had been standing just a moment prior. He was forced to gawk unexpectedly as she reappeared directly behind him, clearing her throat as if that alone excused her sudden compulsion to vigorously wring water from his diving suit. "Leave off!" he shouted, backpedaling away from the surprisingly aggressive goddess.
"I should be telling you that!" Aqua, her face reddening, whirled to face the others, hands on her hips. "Crew, from this point on, everybody leaves wet diving gear at the airlock's designated stowage."
Megumin, tightening her hood about her bangs, glanced bemusedly at Darkness' avatar filling both the mounted overhead displays, and her own meticulously organized personal gear. She couldn't help but chuckle at how Darkness' avatar had shifted into the quaint, pixellated (>_>) emoticon.
Relenting, Aqua sighed and withdrew further argument, stepping away from Kazuma. Her foot brushed against something, and as she averted her gaze she was only mildly surprised that it was his discarded dive suit. "Really?"
Half-naked and with a sheepish look back at her, Kazuma retreated quietly for the vending machines.
That jerk really wasn't scoring any points with her, she figured, stooping to retrieve the suit. Wordlessly, with a bit of a pout, she made for the washing station to hang it up in the meager queue of spare suits. Those would have to wait, as plenty else was still running through the unit's sluggish yet stubborn cleaning cycles.
Well, working appliances surely had to count for something. Assuredly, Aqua figured, this prefabricated hideout was beginning to show signs of slow progress. Another viewport was patched, thanks to Kazuma's latest excursions. Even the salvaged fabricator from a base before was dutifully churning out interior refinements.
But, the air still hung thick with humidity, and the constant creaks of the ocean's pressure were a grim reminder of the long road ahead as far as base-building was concerned.
A pair of footsteps entered into earshot, drawing her from her reverie.
Aqua scowled. Their limited resources meant it was too easy to bump into Kazuma while she was keen on avoiding him. "Spare me the apologies. We really need to up the timetable here," she said at length, still not looking his way.
"Ah?"
"Hmm? I--" Aqua, an incredulous look flitting across her features, turned. She seemed eager to head off further confrontations.
Kazuma, smiling faintly, raised a hand to infer ahead of her: "We got off on the wrong foot. Now, as you may recall...?"
"Why, yes. You were needing me for something? Well, I'm all ears. Spit it out."
Kazuma, narrowing his eyes as he tried to dissect her tone, at last broke forth with: "So we have a base without properly installed reinforcements, not to mention the suspiciously janky hydrothermody-whatsitz power supply from a certain resident goddess with suspiciously convenient technical skills..."
"I have my moments."
"Hmm. Well, that, on top of our navigator being a bit off her rocker."
"That's just how she is sometimes."
"Who in their right mind--?"
"Digitized mind, remember?"
"Sure. But, ah speak of the Devil." Kazuma turned, whipping out his communicator. "Darkness. What exactly are you up to?"
Aqua sighed, turning to regard the visual disturbance outside their section of the hab.
But, it wasn't Darkness.
Sinusoidally, a silhouette of uncomfortable proportions passed over the habitat's observation window just then—until part of it at last caught upon the base floodlights. Massive, unmistakably predatory.
"Reaper Leviathan," Megumin whispered, eyes widening with a mixture of terror and inappropriate enthusiasm. Sticking out a thumb and forefinger, she gauged its proximity. "Darkness?"
"I see it, setting time-delayed gas torpedoes."
"Outstanding."
Kaz and Aqua both turned as Megumin, unexpectedly all business, took a seat within the SeaMoth.
Aqua, rolling up a sleeve, seemed of a mind to demand release of the Power Cells. But, she hesitated.
Megumin beamed, pressing her face against the SeaMoth's forward glass, causing it to fog up a bit. She released the SeaMoth in time for the Reaper to begin its next pass, its own twin beams sizing up the sea creature's forward pincers which were waggling with renewed gusto, as if resonating with the SeaMoth pair's own eagerness for a bit of fisticuffs.
"Leave them to their fun," Kazuma suggested, limping over a bit bedraggled. His dive suit was in the wash, so he was trying out the much heavier, lead-lined radiation-proofed suit to no avail.
Just then, their habitat's newly restored lights flickered ominously as the whole structure shook.
Figuring it was Darkness and Megumin's latest quarry bumping against the outer hull, Aqua reacted swiftly, grabbing a wrench and listening intently for signs of fresh leaks. Instead, her eyes hit upon their precious equipment, that which had been painstakingly scrounged from the previous, ill-fated build and left out on the upper exposed portions to dry for a while. There it now went, slipping free and twirling serenely into the abyss below.
This set her off. Gritting her teeth, Aqua dropped the wrench, quivering. "I'm supposed to be purifying water and performing party tricks, not staring down things that seem content with popping our base rebuilds open like a can opener!"
"Actually," Darkness interjected through the speakers, her voice dropping to a husky whisper as Megumin began improving her aim for another go, "that was probably us. Though, I should call to your attention what else is approaching from the thermal vent. It's... not a natural life form."
The entire habitat shuddered as another concussive wave rolled through the water, rattling loose storage containers and sending a cascade of tools clattering to the floor. Kazuma pressed his face against the viewport, squinting through the turbulent waters as flashes of light illuminated the darkness in rhythmic pulses.
"Darkness, you are confident in your aim?"
"When have I ever failed you?" she challenged dramatically.
Shaking his head, he motioned to Aqua. "You better come take a look at this."
Aqua, squinting, sized up the patch of ocean under scrutiny. Her eyes quickly began tracking the trajectory of what could only be torpedoes but certainly not standard-issue or civilian grade. "Hmm. Those definitely aren't ours."
Just then, the massive silhouette of the Reaper Leviathan shifted course, its bulk thrashing against the nearby outcrop of a sediment bank that seemed to envelope this patch of kelp forest in their midst. Was it twisting in pain or rage? It seemed, at the very least, to be abandoning the hunt.
Then, behind it, emerging from deeper waters, a masterwork of human engineering prowled and slowed to a halt, large beams of light and the ping of a high-powered sensor sweep. It was a Cyclops-class submarine, easily better equipped than their habitat. Yet, its reinforced hull was adorned with unfamiliar insignia.
"Are those... rescue teams from the Aurora?" Aqua asked, hope coloring her voice as she crowded beside Kazuma at the window.
Another torpedo burst illuminated the submarine's hull, revealing emblems Kazuma had hoped never to see again—stylized golden coins against a blood-red background, the unmistakable sigil of Mammon's faction.
"Not rescue," he said grimly. "Mammon's people."
The habitat's power flickered, emergency systems cycling as electromagnetic interference from the torpedo detonations disrupted their electronics. For a moment, they were plunged into darkness, the only illumination coming from the battle unfolding beyond their viewport.
Then, with a discordant squeal, the communication array crackled to life. A martial melody blared through the speakers, accompanied by a voice speaking in a language that made Megumin's eyes widen in recognition.
"What's it saying?" Kazuma demanded over Darkness' snickering (apparently she knew, being digitized).
Megumin: "Eh, it's really not all that special."
Aqua, rising intently: "Let's hear it!"
Megumin complied, cranking down the radio's volume as she recited from memory:
She trailed off with a shrug. "It goes on like that for another twelve verses. Typical propagandistic drivel about pillaging in the name of--"
"I catch the drift," Aqua surmised, shaking her head in dismay.
"You understand their language?" Kazuma asked, for the moment distracted.
Megumin's crimson eyes flickered with something like embarrassment. "The Crimson Demon Clan has ancient ties to many realms. We're required to study the linguistic patterns of potential allies and enemies alike."
"I could have used an ambassador at--" Darkness begat.
"Not now, Darkness," Aqua demanded, before stepping clear of the prying eyes of the visiting Cyclops to confer with Megumin quietly. "You never mentioned this before."
"Oh, I'm sure I had. But," Megumin paused, considering. "More importantly, mayhaps, I don't know how much of a bargaining chip we might possess."
"So, they mean to come aboard?"
"Why else?" Megumin aired with a shrug.
The habitat's external floodlights activated automatically as motion sensors detected approaching objects. Three sleek Seamoths circled their structure like sharks assessing prey, their hulls bearing the same Mammon insignia as the larger vessel. Behind them, the massive Cyclops hovered at a distance, its forward lights cutting through the murky water with clinical precision.
Soon enough, the communication array crackled afresh, the anthem fading as a more immediate transmission cut through. A voice, liquid and eerily familiar, rippled from the speakers.
"Attention, survivors of the Aurora. This is Captain Sylvia of the Mammon Vanguard vessel Calamitas. Your presence has been noted, cataloged, and deemed potentially useful. Stand by for visitation."
Darkness' digital avatar materialized on the nearest screen, her expression unusually serious. "Aqua, this is the first I've seen anyone single-handedly eliminate a Reaper-class threat."
"Be that as it may, let us await their delegation, shall we?" Kaz ventured, straightening his lounge wear.
"Visitation," Megumin echoed theatrically. "That's a pleasant euphemism for taking us all hostage."
Aqua had retreated to the fabricator, her hands moving with nervous energy as she assembled what appeared to be a makeshift weapon from salvaged parts. "Last time we encountered Mammon's people, you might recall, they tried to press us into the service. I'm not becoming anyone's conscript."
"Technically," Darkness corrected blandly, "they were as much at a loss in understanding how our abilities function in this reality's physical framework. It seemed more scrounging up living specimens. Nothing like earnest, spur of the moment research to awaken the senses."
"Not helping," Kazuma growled, reaching for his diving knife—a pathetically inadequate defense against whatever firepower the approaching swath of SeaMoths readily commanded.
"How much time do we have?" Aqua inquired.
"They're establishing a perimeter," Darkness observed, her voice carrying an undercurrent of excitement that Kazuma chose to ignore. "Standard containment protocol. They don't know if we're hostile."
"We're about to be," Kazuma muttered, tightening his grip on the knife.
The water directly in front of their main viewport rippled with distortion—not the natural movement of currents, but something more deliberate. A figure materialized from the turbulence, humanoid but wrong in subtle, unsettling ways. Webbed hands. Gill-like structures pulsing along an elongated neck. Eyes adapted for the deep, reflective and cold.
But the face—the face was unmistakable, despite its alterations.
"Sylvia," Megumin whispered, unconsciously stepping back from the viewport.
The transformed figure smiled, revealing teeth that had been modified for an omnivorous marine diet. In her arms was a cylindrical device that pulsed with familiar blue light—a habitat builder, the very technology they had been scavenging parts to repair.
With deliberate slowness, Sylvia gestured toward their airlock, then to the Reaper's retreating form, before pointing significantly to the device in her hands.
"I think," Kazuma said slowly, his mind racing through possibilities, none of them promising, "she wants to talk."
The habitat's external communication system activated, projecting Sylvia's voice through the water and into their sanctuary:
"Open your airlock, darlings. The depths are no place for old enemies to maintain their grudges. Not when there are greater threats lurking below."
As if summoned by her words, a massive shadow passed beneath the Cyclops, so vast that it momentarily eclipsed the submarine's running lights. Something ancient and patient moved in the abyss below—something that made even the Reaper Leviathan seem like a minor inconvenience.
Kazuma exchanged glances with his companions, reading in their expressions the same reluctant conclusion he had reached. They needed allies in this alien ocean. Even if those allies came with agendas of their own. "Darkness," he sighed, regretting his decision, "prepare the airlock for our... guest. I guess."
Aqua, working off the lingering electric shock from the SeaMoth, courtesy of Darkness, pushed forth to feel Megumin's forehead, which the junior tech allowed without fuss. "The power's out," Megumin affirmed despondently, eyes tracking the occasional glint of fauna flitting between the submerged sunbeams at roughly their level.
"Well, I just so happen to have some power cell--" Aqua paused, checking her inventory, her eyes widening a bit.
Everybody turned as one to find Darkness, via video feed, waving cheerily, as she finished recoloring the loaned SeaMoth, swapping in Aqua's personal stock of Power Cells, and took off with a celebratory 'yip'.
Sighing, Kazuma zipped up his diving gear and headed for the nearest hatch. "Guess I'll scrounge up some more copper ingots."
Megumin, knowing the great lengths they all went to secure the last load, smirked good-naturedly.
Above, as the twin moons shone bright across the surface of the ocean, barring full view of the usual smattering of stars stretched out like a velvet tapestry, a staunch counterpoint to the tranquility was playing out in the waters somewhat removed from the claustrophobic confines of their base.
Though, cleverly, it was operating a few decibels shy of the lurking horrors below, not keen on drawing that much attention. For all they knew, it was mating season.
Despite being out for that long, Kazuma hadn't the foggiest idea as he wrapped up his copper-hunting expedition and returned through the airtight threshold, mask already pulled down around his neck and seawater dripping from his hair in a rhythm that matched his exhausted breathing. "Three hours," he wheezed, dropping a pathetically small pile of copper ore onto the fabrication table. "Three hours in that kelp forest with those... those things watching me from the shadows, and this is all I could find."
Megumin glanced up from her meticulous arrangement of data cards, eyes gleaming with the particular brand of manic energy that typically preceded disaster. "You mean the Stalkers? I've been cataloging their hunting patterns. Did you know their teeth can be used as fabrication material? All we need to do is—"
"No," Kazuma interrupted, holding up a dripping hand. "Whatever scheme involving explosions and 'controlled chaos' you're about to suggest, just... no."
Aqua, who had been suspiciously quiet, suddenly emerged from the lower deck with an armful of salvaged wiring. Her hair was pulled back haphazardly with what appeared to be repurposed fiber mesh, and smudges of mechanical grease adorned her face like war paint.
"I think I can get the power running," she announced with uncharacteristic competence. "The base's power cells are completely drained, but I found a way to reroute energy from the thermal vent beneath us. It's just basic hydrothermody-whatsitz."
"You mean to tell us you jury-rigged the power relays?" Kazuma inferred, abruptly halting the fabricator for fear of the copper inputs being tasked for a redundant, recursive assignment.
"No, those are... still somewhere in the caldera," Aqua amended, pointedly averting her gaze. She could feel phantom sweat beading on her temples just thinking about the risks she took.
Kazuma and Megumin exchanged a long, searching look.
"What?" Aqua blinked, affronted. "I am a goddess. I assure you this other method is sound."
They kept staring, their skepticism palpable.
Feeling a bit flustered, Aqua rounded on them. "What, did you think I spent millennia just drinking and partying?"
"Yes," they replied in unison, the word hanging in the humid air.
One of the screens on the nearby wall flickered to life, Darkness' avatar appearing with a suspicious flush to her digital cheeks. "I've returned from my... exploratory mission," she purred, her digitized voice laden with barely contained excitement. "The SeaMoth sustained... sig-NIFICANT damage! From multiple collisions with underwater formations. The hull integrity was repeatedly compromised."
"You crashed it deliberately, didn't you?" Kazuma asked flatly, not even glancing over at the screen. Sighing, he gestured for Aqua to accompany him to the quieter end of the Multipurpose Room. It was clear something other than wrecked submersible was on his mind.
"The pressure at those depths was... intense," Darkness stated, clearly reliving the experience. "Every groan of the hull, every near-breach…pure ecstasy."
"Not now, Darkness," Aqua insisted, turning to follow Kaz, pointedly ignoring Darkness' ramblings.
There was little else said aloud for a spell, with eyes dully tracking over to the latest signs of activity outside their hab: a bustling school of bioluminescent fish scooting by the viewport.
Kazuma, arms crossed, nodded amicably at Aqua, or at least where she had been standing just a moment prior. He was forced to gawk unexpectedly as she reappeared directly behind him, clearing her throat as if that alone excused her sudden compulsion to vigorously wring water from his diving suit. "Leave off!" he shouted, backpedaling away from the surprisingly aggressive goddess.
"I should be telling you that!" Aqua, her face reddening, whirled to face the others, hands on her hips. "Crew, from this point on, everybody leaves wet diving gear at the airlock's designated stowage."
Megumin, tightening her hood about her bangs, glanced bemusedly at Darkness' avatar filling both the mounted overhead displays, and her own meticulously organized personal gear. She couldn't help but chuckle at how Darkness' avatar had shifted into the quaint, pixellated (>_>) emoticon.
Relenting, Aqua sighed and withdrew further argument, stepping away from Kazuma. Her foot brushed against something, and as she averted her gaze she was only mildly surprised that it was his discarded dive suit. "Really?"
Half-naked and with a sheepish look back at her, Kazuma retreated quietly for the vending machines.
That jerk really wasn't scoring any points with her, she figured, stooping to retrieve the suit. Wordlessly, with a bit of a pout, she made for the washing station to hang it up in the meager queue of spare suits. Those would have to wait, as plenty else was still running through the unit's sluggish yet stubborn cleaning cycles.
Well, working appliances surely had to count for something. Assuredly, Aqua figured, this prefabricated hideout was beginning to show signs of slow progress. Another viewport was patched, thanks to Kazuma's latest excursions. Even the salvaged fabricator from a base before was dutifully churning out interior refinements.
But, the air still hung thick with humidity, and the constant creaks of the ocean's pressure were a grim reminder of the long road ahead as far as base-building was concerned.
A pair of footsteps entered into earshot, drawing her from her reverie.
Aqua scowled. Their limited resources meant it was too easy to bump into Kazuma while she was keen on avoiding him. "Spare me the apologies. We really need to up the timetable here," she said at length, still not looking his way.
"Ah?"
"Hmm? I--" Aqua, an incredulous look flitting across her features, turned. She seemed eager to head off further confrontations.
Kazuma, smiling faintly, raised a hand to infer ahead of her: "We got off on the wrong foot. Now, as you may recall...?"
"Why, yes. You were needing me for something? Well, I'm all ears. Spit it out."
Kazuma, narrowing his eyes as he tried to dissect her tone, at last broke forth with: "So we have a base without properly installed reinforcements, not to mention the suspiciously janky hydrothermody-whatsitz power supply from a certain resident goddess with suspiciously convenient technical skills..."
"I have my moments."
"Hmm. Well, that, on top of our navigator being a bit off her rocker."
"That's just how she is sometimes."
"Who in their right mind--?"
"Digitized mind, remember?"
"Sure. But, ah speak of the Devil." Kazuma turned, whipping out his communicator. "Darkness. What exactly are you up to?"
Aqua sighed, turning to regard the visual disturbance outside their section of the hab.
But, it wasn't Darkness.
Sinusoidally, a silhouette of uncomfortable proportions passed over the habitat's observation window just then—until part of it at last caught upon the base floodlights. Massive, unmistakably predatory.
"Reaper Leviathan," Megumin whispered, eyes widening with a mixture of terror and inappropriate enthusiasm. Sticking out a thumb and forefinger, she gauged its proximity. "Darkness?"
"I see it, setting time-delayed gas torpedoes."
"Outstanding."
Kaz and Aqua both turned as Megumin, unexpectedly all business, took a seat within the SeaMoth.
Aqua, rolling up a sleeve, seemed of a mind to demand release of the Power Cells. But, she hesitated.
Megumin beamed, pressing her face against the SeaMoth's forward glass, causing it to fog up a bit. She released the SeaMoth in time for the Reaper to begin its next pass, its own twin beams sizing up the sea creature's forward pincers which were waggling with renewed gusto, as if resonating with the SeaMoth pair's own eagerness for a bit of fisticuffs.
"Leave them to their fun," Kazuma suggested, limping over a bit bedraggled. His dive suit was in the wash, so he was trying out the much heavier, lead-lined radiation-proofed suit to no avail.
Just then, their habitat's newly restored lights flickered ominously as the whole structure shook.
Figuring it was Darkness and Megumin's latest quarry bumping against the outer hull, Aqua reacted swiftly, grabbing a wrench and listening intently for signs of fresh leaks. Instead, her eyes hit upon their precious equipment, that which had been painstakingly scrounged from the previous, ill-fated build and left out on the upper exposed portions to dry for a while. There it now went, slipping free and twirling serenely into the abyss below.
This set her off. Gritting her teeth, Aqua dropped the wrench, quivering. "I'm supposed to be purifying water and performing party tricks, not staring down things that seem content with popping our base rebuilds open like a can opener!"
"Actually," Darkness interjected through the speakers, her voice dropping to a husky whisper as Megumin began improving her aim for another go, "that was probably us. Though, I should call to your attention what else is approaching from the thermal vent. It's... not a natural life form."
The entire habitat shuddered as another concussive wave rolled through the water, rattling loose storage containers and sending a cascade of tools clattering to the floor. Kazuma pressed his face against the viewport, squinting through the turbulent waters as flashes of light illuminated the darkness in rhythmic pulses.
"Darkness, you are confident in your aim?"
"When have I ever failed you?" she challenged dramatically.
Shaking his head, he motioned to Aqua. "You better come take a look at this."
Aqua, squinting, sized up the patch of ocean under scrutiny. Her eyes quickly began tracking the trajectory of what could only be torpedoes but certainly not standard-issue or civilian grade. "Hmm. Those definitely aren't ours."
Just then, the massive silhouette of the Reaper Leviathan shifted course, its bulk thrashing against the nearby outcrop of a sediment bank that seemed to envelope this patch of kelp forest in their midst. Was it twisting in pain or rage? It seemed, at the very least, to be abandoning the hunt.
Then, behind it, emerging from deeper waters, a masterwork of human engineering prowled and slowed to a halt, large beams of light and the ping of a high-powered sensor sweep. It was a Cyclops-class submarine, easily better equipped than their habitat. Yet, its reinforced hull was adorned with unfamiliar insignia.
"Are those... rescue teams from the Aurora?" Aqua asked, hope coloring her voice as she crowded beside Kazuma at the window.
Another torpedo burst illuminated the submarine's hull, revealing emblems Kazuma had hoped never to see again—stylized golden coins against a blood-red background, the unmistakable sigil of Mammon's faction.
"Not rescue," he said grimly. "Mammon's people."
The habitat's power flickered, emergency systems cycling as electromagnetic interference from the torpedo detonations disrupted their electronics. For a moment, they were plunged into darkness, the only illumination coming from the battle unfolding beyond their viewport.
Then, with a discordant squeal, the communication array crackled to life. A martial melody blared through the speakers, accompanied by a voice speaking in a language that made Megumin's eyes widen in recognition.
"What's it saying?" Kazuma demanded over Darkness' snickering (apparently she knew, being digitized).
Megumin: "Eh, it's really not all that special."
Aqua, rising intently: "Let's hear it!"
Megumin complied, cranking down the radio's volume as she recited from memory:
"How frowned upon like glaciers
Yet nobly proceed
to fill up the coffers--
in the name of Mammon's greed!
Our flotilla is like trophies
caught from wreck and shore alike,
yet none can contend
with the Vanguard's righteous strike!"
Yet nobly proceed
to fill up the coffers--
in the name of Mammon's greed!
Our flotilla is like trophies
caught from wreck and shore alike,
yet none can contend
with the Vanguard's righteous strike!"
She trailed off with a shrug. "It goes on like that for another twelve verses. Typical propagandistic drivel about pillaging in the name of--"
"I catch the drift," Aqua surmised, shaking her head in dismay.
"You understand their language?" Kazuma asked, for the moment distracted.
Megumin's crimson eyes flickered with something like embarrassment. "The Crimson Demon Clan has ancient ties to many realms. We're required to study the linguistic patterns of potential allies and enemies alike."
"I could have used an ambassador at--" Darkness begat.
"Not now, Darkness," Aqua demanded, before stepping clear of the prying eyes of the visiting Cyclops to confer with Megumin quietly. "You never mentioned this before."
"Oh, I'm sure I had. But," Megumin paused, considering. "More importantly, mayhaps, I don't know how much of a bargaining chip we might possess."
"So, they mean to come aboard?"
"Why else?" Megumin aired with a shrug.
The habitat's external floodlights activated automatically as motion sensors detected approaching objects. Three sleek Seamoths circled their structure like sharks assessing prey, their hulls bearing the same Mammon insignia as the larger vessel. Behind them, the massive Cyclops hovered at a distance, its forward lights cutting through the murky water with clinical precision.
Soon enough, the communication array crackled afresh, the anthem fading as a more immediate transmission cut through. A voice, liquid and eerily familiar, rippled from the speakers.
"Attention, survivors of the Aurora. This is Captain Sylvia of the Mammon Vanguard vessel Calamitas. Your presence has been noted, cataloged, and deemed potentially useful. Stand by for visitation."
Darkness' digital avatar materialized on the nearest screen, her expression unusually serious. "Aqua, this is the first I've seen anyone single-handedly eliminate a Reaper-class threat."
"Be that as it may, let us await their delegation, shall we?" Kaz ventured, straightening his lounge wear.
"Visitation," Megumin echoed theatrically. "That's a pleasant euphemism for taking us all hostage."
Aqua had retreated to the fabricator, her hands moving with nervous energy as she assembled what appeared to be a makeshift weapon from salvaged parts. "Last time we encountered Mammon's people, you might recall, they tried to press us into the service. I'm not becoming anyone's conscript."
"Technically," Darkness corrected blandly, "they were as much at a loss in understanding how our abilities function in this reality's physical framework. It seemed more scrounging up living specimens. Nothing like earnest, spur of the moment research to awaken the senses."
"Not helping," Kazuma growled, reaching for his diving knife—a pathetically inadequate defense against whatever firepower the approaching swath of SeaMoths readily commanded.
"How much time do we have?" Aqua inquired.
"They're establishing a perimeter," Darkness observed, her voice carrying an undercurrent of excitement that Kazuma chose to ignore. "Standard containment protocol. They don't know if we're hostile."
"We're about to be," Kazuma muttered, tightening his grip on the knife.
The water directly in front of their main viewport rippled with distortion—not the natural movement of currents, but something more deliberate. A figure materialized from the turbulence, humanoid but wrong in subtle, unsettling ways. Webbed hands. Gill-like structures pulsing along an elongated neck. Eyes adapted for the deep, reflective and cold.
But the face—the face was unmistakable, despite its alterations.
"Sylvia," Megumin whispered, unconsciously stepping back from the viewport.
The transformed figure smiled, revealing teeth that had been modified for an omnivorous marine diet. In her arms was a cylindrical device that pulsed with familiar blue light—a habitat builder, the very technology they had been scavenging parts to repair.
With deliberate slowness, Sylvia gestured toward their airlock, then to the Reaper's retreating form, before pointing significantly to the device in her hands.
"I think," Kazuma said slowly, his mind racing through possibilities, none of them promising, "she wants to talk."
The habitat's external communication system activated, projecting Sylvia's voice through the water and into their sanctuary:
"Open your airlock, darlings. The depths are no place for old enemies to maintain their grudges. Not when there are greater threats lurking below."
As if summoned by her words, a massive shadow passed beneath the Cyclops, so vast that it momentarily eclipsed the submarine's running lights. Something ancient and patient moved in the abyss below—something that made even the Reaper Leviathan seem like a minor inconvenience.
Kazuma exchanged glances with his companions, reading in their expressions the same reluctant conclusion he had reached. They needed allies in this alien ocean. Even if those allies came with agendas of their own. "Darkness," he sighed, regretting his decision, "prepare the airlock for our... guest. I guess."