Spring Hunt updates Mondays.
It's always exciting to post new chapters of this! And this week I get to do it a little early! (Monday will be so very busy for me I'm doing this Sunday Night.) Whoopy!
As always, I love hearing from you, so please drop me a line with questions, suggestions, and comments below, or through my Twitter or . It always makes my day!
Speaking of your comments...
CoopBro writes:
Perhaps the sinking ship is a metaphor for the sinking ship of Fox and Neo's ship being interrupted by people wanting to kill them. Will they survive to meet up again?
Bookah replies
They do seem to have a lot of people shoot at them, don't they? Perhaps they're not fans like you and I are? Well, we shall certainly see how well they do at scuttling the ship! I suspect Neo might have a thing or two to say about their trying though...
GrimmKaiju writes:
And things go even farther south as the situation grows more dangerous. Fox can only hold out for so long until he gets help but CFVY and Neo will have their hands full if everyone on the ship is trying to kill them. Things are looking a little "grimm" for CFVY and Neo if something doesn't happen soon. I look forward to seeing how it all plays out.
Bookah replies
I see what you did there... XD
Believe me, things have only just started! Thank goodness none of them are channeling Han Solo. "I've got a bad feeling about this..."
Anima Straits
Coco hissed as cold water rushed past her bare feet. She splashed forward quickly to where Yatsuhashi stood at a T intersection looking slightly abashed. Water ran down off his skin, and he shook his face to get some of the drips off of it.
"I think I broke the boat," Yatsuhashi muttered.
Coco glanced into the passageway the water was flowing out of. Pipe junctions were showering the place with water at a rate of gallons per second, and the wall against which the staircase should have been mounted had sprung, with water flowing out of it at an even greater rate.
"Is that the ocean flowing in?"
"Maybe? That's not the outer hull. Maybe some sort of tank?"
Velvet splashed up beside the pair. "I hope the pumps can keep up. Where's the bad guy?"
Yatsuhashi gestured to where the man he'd been chasing was groaning and attempting to pull himself upward using the tilted wreckage of the staircase. Blood was dripping into the water from a messy wound in his leg. "I think a snapped bolt got him."
Suddenly, an alarm began ringing throughout the spaces surrounding them, echoing off the bulkheads and causing Velvet to wince. "Flooding in compartment 12. Flooding in compartment 12. All hands to damage control stations."
The three turned to look at one another for a moment, then Coco shrugged. "Time to go. Leave him. I'm more worried about uninjured White Fang." She turned and began splashing her way down the passageway towards the nearest set of intact stairs. She could hear the other two following.
The water running down the deck made movement tricky. Though the surface of the deck had been coated with some sort of no slip substance, the momentum of the water kept trying to push her feet out from under her. She kept a good grip on her bag with one hand and used the other to grasp at anything that offered itself in order to maintain an extra bit of traction to keep her stable.
"The water's coming from this way!"
Hearing the shout, Coco immediately jerked a door open and darted inside. Velvet and Yatsuhashi quickly followed her, diving into the dark. As soon as he cleared the hatch, Yatsuhashi put his weight behind the door, pushing it against the water that was flowing in. He couldn't shut the door properly, but he could, at least, make it appear closed to eyes that had more pressing concerns.
Seconds later, grunts of exertion and splashes marked the passing of several people, headed towards the source of the flooding. "What do you think?"
"It's not bad enough to sink us. But it's gonna make a mess."
"Great place for it. Why the Straits of all places?"
"Don't call for problems we don't need! Bad enough we've sprung a leak."
"Sorry."
The sounds faded, leaving behind only the splashing of the slowly rising water in the compartment, and Yatsuhashi let the door push open under the force of it. Coco stuck her head out, quickly evaluating the passageway, then stepped out, leading the way once more.
"The stairway is just ahead. We'll go for the deck. At this point I really doubt we can hide any longer."
"You think?"
Coco grinned at Yatsuhashi's wry response to her comment. "The only thing to be done now is to take down all of the White Fang, and hope the crew decides to let it go."
"And if they don't?" Velvet asked.
"It's going to be a long voyage."
Coco threw herself around the corner to the starecase heading to the upper decks, only to feel herself bounce off of something. She landed with a splash, spluttering as water rained down on her face, and she thrashed about to stand upright.
Once the water cleared from her eyes, she saw Yatsuhashi wrestling around with a sailor nearly as large as himself. The two slammed into a bulkhead, leaving room for Velvet to leap past and land thighs first on the head of a second sailor, taking him to the deck. With a splash the pair landed and, without pause, Velvet leapt up and slammed her foot into the back of Yatsuhashi's opponent's head. The man went down like a sack, landing on top of Velvet's first victim.
"Was that really necessary?" Coco asked.
Velvet was already pulling the smaller man out from under the larger, propping him upright against the bulkhead to keep his face out of the water. "As soon as he saw Yatsuhashi he went for a wrench on his belt."
Coco sighed. "Bad idea on his part. Let's go."
The trio launched themselves upwards, spiraling from one deck to the next, racing for open air. A sudden clanging filled the space around them, and Coco turned to watch Velvet's face curl into a snarl, though the hare faunus didn't slow in her climbing.
"All hands to arms. Stowaways are attempting to sabotage the ship. Deadly force is authorized."
Coco snarled. "Well, this just got complicated." She threw herself up a final set of steps, then blasted through a door at the top, sliding to a pause. Yatsuhashi almost piled into her from behind, barely stopping in time, only for a brown dart to somehow squeeze past the both of them.
Before Coco had quite finished figuring out what was happening, a gun was discharging into the roof of the hallway, a female cry of pain accompanying the sound. Velvet had spun with the kick that had sent the gun spiraling out of the crew member's hand and immediately applied a second blow to the woman, this time striking the side of the woman's head. The woman flopped over onto the deck.
"Coco!"
She jerked her head to look further down the passageway, just in time to see Fox get hit, hard, by one of the White Fang members they'd been told about. The ram had struck Fox from behind while he was distracted, and was continuing to race down the passage with a stunned Fox in his arms like a shield.
She began to convert her handbag to its gun form, but quickly changed her mind. There would, quite simply, be no room for her to use it in the narrow space, even if doing so wouldn't have hit Fox. She cursed, uncertain what to do, when a large form stepped past her.
Yatsuhashi interrupted the ram faunus with the simple expedient of throwing a haymaker right past Fox to slam into the assailant's face. Fox rocketed forward to tumble to the floor next to Coco, while the ram was stopped dead in his tracks, shaking his head.
Yatsuhashi didn't let the man have time to recover. Dropping his sword from his other hand, he immediately seized the ram by both horns. The White Fang member's hands shot up, grappling Yatsuhashi's wrists and squeezing, causing Yatsuhashi to grunt, but he didn't let go. Instead, he jerked the ram's head downward, bringing his knee up to meet it, smashing the man's nose with a spray of blood.
"Watch out!" Coco jerked as Fox shouted from where he was rising beside her. "Snake!" She watched as a small, highly flexible woman leapt into the air beyond Yatsuhashi, flying over the top of the ram's head. The woman was aimed straight for Yatsuhashi, whose hands were still being held by his opponent.
"Nope!" Coco stepped forward and reached up, grabbing the woman just as she would have landed on Yatsuhashi's face. With a heave, Coco jerked her to the side, then threw her further down the passageway. The woman spun around in mid air, then landed in a crouch, hissing, and Coco frowned at the sight of clearly venomous fangs in the woman's overly-open mouth.
"They're this way!"
Coco cursed at the shouts coming from around the corner behind the snake faunus, and she immediately deployed her rotary cannon. She might not have been able to use it in a close in fight in such a space, but with no one in front of her she cared about, that same narrowness now became a choke point for her to control. She grinned with malice and squeezed the trigger.
The dust laced rounds blasted away from her looking more like a solid beam than individual rounds. The snake woman whipped away with shocking agility, diving around the corner at the end of the hall as shouts of alarm greeted the sudden destruction to the bulkhead in front of Coco. With a curse, Coco let up on the trigger and watched as the once solid wall fragmented, bits falling away to reveal a starlit night beyond.
"Velvet!" she shouted, and a brown blur shot past her, racing around the corner and after the faunus. "Fox!" A second, not quite as fast streak rocketed after the two faunus, and Coco turned around to evaluate Yatsuhashi's situation.
The wrestling match was nearly over. Yatsuhashi had his arms around the ram's neck in a choke hold. The ram was struggling as best he could, trying to beat Yatsuhashi with his fists, but lacked the leverage to do enough damage to dissuade the giant. He was purpling as he began running out of oxygen, but Coco was not satisfied with waiting it out. Unable to spin her cannon in the narrow space, she simply jerked it backwards, running the back end of it directly into the ram's stomach with all of her might.
The ram spasmed, then fell into a stupor.
Even feeling the man go limp, Yatsuhashi didn't let the man out of the hold. He jerked his head to the wall near Coco. "Fire hose."
Nodding, Coco turned and smashed the glass box holding a coiled fire hose and began dragging it out. Starting at the ankles she proceeded to wrap the man up like a mummy, keeping the loops as tight as she possibly could. Only when the man was wrapped up almost to his shoulders, the end of the hose woven through lower down and knotted off to prevent any slipping, did Yatsuhashi let go.
Coco sighed. "Okay. One down, and one injured somewhere below. That leaves three. Fox and Velve are after the snake. That leaves the one with the feathers and the boss."
Yatsuhashi grunted. "Any idea where they might have gotten off to?"
"Same place as Neo?"
The sudden harsh roaring of a chainsaw came to them from the opening Coco had made in the ship's superstructure. Yatsuhashi jerked his head that way, then frowned. "I think I know where Neo is."
"And the boss, too. Go."
Yatsuhashi snatched his sword up off the floor and raced towards the bent and twisted metal at the end of the passageway. Without slowing he smashed through it, finishing the work Coco had begun, then began racing forward towards the ship's bow. Coco began racing after him, only to stop as a colorful flash streaked back in through the hole.
The feathered faunus dropped to the floor, glancing at Coco, then smirking. "Oops. I bet that gun is pretty worthless inside."
Coco glanced back down at her canon, then shrugged. "Ish," she admitted.
"Perfect! Then you won't be a problem at all." He tossed her a wink, then darted towards her, jerking at the last minute to avoid the gunfire she'd immediately replied to the move with. His twisting motion threw him into a hatch to the side, and she dashed after him, catching up against a railing and jerking her head downward to see him practically flying down the stairway leading back down into the ship.
"See you, human!" he shouted.
She whipped her cannon over the rail and cut loose, letting a spray of bullets chase after him futilely. She could hear his laughter over the sound of the rotary gun firing and the sound of metal shredding, and with a snarl she brought the gun back up. She hesitated a moment, then screamed in frustration, throwing herself down the stairs in pursuit.
