"Too bad, YOU, will die!"
- Sindel, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation
Neon ambiance reflected on the ceiling of the chamber like ripples of sunlight seen from under an unnatural sea. Long wispy white clouds wafted upward, highlighting the dark lines of curled, fully matured female forms stirring weakly and hovering by means not immediately apparent near the ceiling.
The neon sheen rippled through the Shrine of Transmissals in directions that shouldn't have existed. Everything in the massive vaulted chamber was pitch black and glowed eerily at the same time. The dim radiance flowed over the walls to show the strange silhouettes of giant, sluggish, deep ocean beings lounging in the room's margins. The wispy smoke that squalidly permeated every inch of the room and breezed up around the body features of the hovering women in particular came from large urchin shell hookah pipes seated near the fat laps of the slug creatures. Alice would have steered clear of this Wonderland.
The three who had been called the Gullwings on the mortal surface were in more than a bit of trouble. A half-living and half-mechanical cephalopod Sphere Jockey had brought them down into its den with the others of its eerie kind. Its body mostly consisted of giant metal tentacles that stretched over the hazy floor of the chamber and stuck to the expansive ceiling. It all converged into a central processing torso that sat over a ledge near the floor. It could shift its spot by hoisting its spiraling limbs and lifting itself into the dry crumbling temple grounds on the surface above, as the Gullwings had encountered it when they mistook it for just a common abandoned temple guardian and engaged it in battle. But it could also drag its stunned prey down in this bizarre shrine, where neon lights acted like it was underwater, gravity acted like it was on another planet, and nothing was ever completely distinct.
The Sphere Jockey's limbs held its captives side by side up in the air in harnesses around their underarms and legs. The wires kept them reclined with their backs at a slight angle and their heads drooping limply forward, while their knees were supported in a bent and open position. Dense black bubbles were sealed over their disoriented faces to keep their frail mortal bodies alive inside the Shrine's environment and mute whatever noises they made in their semi-sleep. They each tried to struggle in frail, dazed confusion, wiggling like drowsy worms dangling on giant hydraulic hooks. Electronic discs rested against the backs of their heads in the coincidental shape of halos. Whatever religion these dreary beings of the deep subscribed to, nothing would make them think of a trio of small curved lumps of mammalian organs as angels.
Yuna, Paine, and Rikku were conscious in a way, but their hypothetical HP bars all lingered at 1 point after the failed boss battle in the sunny treasure room above. This was all something like a dream to them, where their spinning minds only had a foggy grasp of what was going on in the darkness around them, and they wouldn't remember a thing when they woke up.
They were gradually reeled downward and held with their waists suspended at camera level with the Sphere Jockey's wide retinal visor. There was no discernible reason why these mammal creatures felt the need to leave themselves half-naked, but it made things simpler for the ceremony that had already begun.
The fleshy tendons holding the Jockey's torso together spread apart and exposed a small mechanical ramp built into its body. The ramp whirred to life on a conveyor belt, allowing the Primeval Spore to leave the Jockey and roll into the basin sitting at the ramp.
The Spore was slightly larger than a marble and had millions of intricate quartz circuits designed within its smooth glass casing. The simple but otherworldly artifact contained all the culture and infinite knowledge of these undersea beings and concentrated it into a single rare bead. It worked in a pair with someone called the Primaiden.
When a Primaiden was safeguarding the Primeval Spore within her natural clockwork, it sent information on everywhere she went and everything she did secretly back to the Sphere Jockey. She was effectively a living recording instrument and served as the only link between the surface world and the strangers of the deep. That's the only thing that made curved lumps of mammalian organs useful.
The role of Primaiden was cyclical and a new one was meant to be appointed in the Shrine of Transmissals every 4,000 years. According to the Sphere Jockey's memory banks, they were about 20,000 years overdue for choosing the next one. There was no telling how much longer they could have been waiting if these three hadn't accidentally stumbled on the Jockey and mistaken him for a simple guardian in the bright temple ruins above. They fought well for birds evolved from monkey genes, but their bodies were too intriguing to just leave lying unconscious in the temple once the entire party was defeated.
It was totally by chance that the Sphere Jockey reeled in three different candidates who all met the requirements for a Primeval. But that created a complication: Only one Primeval Spore was generated for every cycle. The complexity and the resources required made it impossible to produce them faster.
It was time to compare options.
The Sphere Jockey had already exposed its cybernetic Spore Conveyor, so the Gullwings had to expose their fully organic Primeval Receptacles as well. Their metal tentacle harnesses kept their legs curled up to their reclined waists as several smaller clamps and manipulators shuffled their Dressphere equipment around. Metal jingled and fabric shuffled as Yuna's Gunner shorts were unbuckled and came down and up to her ankles. Rikku's skirt was taken off and hung over a tentacle line next to her hip before a smaller set of robotic clamps delicately brushed away the string on her Thief thong. Paine's belt flair hiked up to her navel while her shorts and stockings rolled down to her knees.
The Spore Jockey looked toward the regions of the Gullwings' bodies hovering ten feet away from its visor and scanned in a slow horizontal fashion. The black void behind the women illuminated with tower-sized views of their thighs and female terminals that lined up evenly with each other and ended on a sunny parakeet who was good with a razor. They would have felt undignified and embarrassed if they weren't drifting in a sedated stupor.
Archaic numbers and letters were superimposed on the three magnified views while the Jockey used its optic filters to extensively cross-measure and cross-reference the dimensions and climate of each Gullwing's ceremonial offerings. It was calculating the most habitual body for the Primeval Sphere to reside in, holding the strange artifact outward on a tiny lever so it could be inserted as soon the data was all processed. The faceless sea beasts in the Shrine's hazy galleries cast their own ballots by blowing their hookah smoke toward whoever they preferred the most.
The bald eagle who fought with the sharpest talons was chosen as the most worthy candidate. The hen's body involuntarily shuddered under her feathers as an unexpected egg rolled several inches into her nest, while the bodies of the two others next to her remained mostly still. She let her head droop and fell back into her dazed state a second later, making no further complaint.
As the Primaiden, she would be the messenger for whatever these dingy sea slugs were planning. She would be the eyes and ears for their entire race, and she wouldn't even realize it. If the time ever came for her to stop being a passive observer and become an oracle of change, the Sphere Jockey would remotely activate Primeval Spore's full functions and assume control of her completely. Her body would be a puppet and she would do anything the sea beings instructed. She would even kill her two fluffy friends without hesitating if it ever became necessary.
The three disc halos supporting the Gullwings' heads flickered intensely like plasma globes as the final clean-up process was initiated. Yuna's shorts were slipped up to her waist and cinched back together with her hunting equipment. Rikku's thong was carefully set back in place before her hips were covered again by her skirt. Paine's shorts were fitted back up to normal while her belt flair was stretched back down.
Energy pulses from the discs behind their heads were washing over their minds and wiping out specific memories with empty nulls. They would have to forget everything from the past hour or so. They'd forget the route they had traveled through in the temple ruins on the surface, the guardian they had fought, and the bizarre chamber they had been brought to. None of them would know about the Primeval Spore's existence, and they would never know which one of them was the Primaiden.
The discs cooled down from their hot neon glow. The three women were limp and motionless in their wire harnesses. The Sphere Jockey extended its octopus limbs upward and let its prey return back to the surface, following the trails of the rising wispy smoke.
Rikku saw bright white as the glaring sun shined through her eyelids. She rolled groggily to the side and blinked her sleepy eyes. The first thing that filled her vision was a sideways view of Yuna's big bubbly blue butt.
Yuna was lying belly-down on the carved basalt ground and weakly pushed herself up like a seal with her arms. Paine was already sitting up shaking her head.
Stars filled their eyes and deep aching pangs rang in the back of their heads. There were writhing out of their sleep and struggling to get over their daze with weak "mmm"s and "aaa"s. They felt like three beach babes who got a little too much sun, and their minds were full of fuzzy blank spots.
"Do you guys remember how we got here?" Yuna blinked in confusion, still stretched on her belly.
"Religious monument. Probably Middle Paleospira, from the look of it," Paine said from scholarly recollection as she struggled to focus her thinking. They were surrounded by crumbling pillars on a cracked floor with nothing but the bright blue sky hanging over their heads. The island they were on was only about a mile all around and dead in the middle of the ocean. The structures they could see were already half sunken from changing water levels and collapsing foundations after millennia of being abandoned. It looked just like countless other unimposing, uninteresting, and unprofitable ruins sitting in the middle of nowhere.
"Some jokers probably rigged Ether bombs all over this place when they were looting it before us. Those things almost blacked us out the last time we went after one of Leblanc's morons," Paine finished saying.
"Man, this is cowabogus," Rikku grumbled from her sprawled side as she was trying to shake the ache out of her head. "Did ants get in my ears when I was sleeping or something?"
Her Al Bhed senses gave her a slight perceptive edge over the other two girls. In the back of her mind, she was wondering if her imagination was going nuts or if Yuna smelled a little like burnt up plant leaves.
"Think we should keep looking around? We could be more careful," Yuna suggested, dealing with her mental haziness a little more gracefully.
"I say we head back to the airship. This wasn't a priority site anyway," Paine replied in disinterest. She hated inefficiency, but right now she felt she just wanted to take a nap.
The Gullwings all agreed on calling it another uneventful day and heading home. They never thought twice about trying to explore these particular ruins again.
Author's note: Get it? Jaeger means hunter, and they're Sphere Hunters? And they get "mastered" by weird undersea alien robot things? See what I did there?
Author's note 2: The Primeval Spore is basically Nadia's tribal microchip necklace, except it's constructed more like a pearl and it's worn in a funky place.