Marvelous funneled his consciousness into the physical. His heartbeat, the snap and swing of his legs and hips, the weight of the saber in his hand, pointed awareness of these things and more could keep him upright and balanced and moving.
His lungs burned – considering the humidity, maybe they boiled. Even transformed, keeping his footing and his breath at a full sprint proved difficult. He'd need sleep soon, real sleep. Not that he hadn't been trying.
There was no point pausing to investigate or confront the pounding and crashing trailing behind him. If he'd managed to draw some of those wriggling freaks away from the others, all the better. He could handle it. If he kept his mind in his body and not in his brain, he could handle it. Duck the branches, launch over the mossy hulks of long-dead trees, leap streams. If he could do these things, he could handle this.
He didn't count on a frontal assault. They sprang out from the underbrush, rising up like unfurling fern fronds, the instant he touched down on the bank of the sluggish stream. Because his mind was in his body, he bounded forward and swung out with his saber. They were flimsy as moldering bread; he had no reason to hesitate.
One of the nearest things dispelled that notion with a simple touch. Its lanky fingers folded over his shoulder, springy fingertips digging in and bruising the flesh underneath his suit. The touch pulled his mind out of his body and sent it rocketing back home.
'And just what are you doing in here, sneakthief?'
Marvelous didn't make a sound. His throat sealed itself, an ingrained defense mechanism. The same mechanisms couldn't keep him from sinking to his knees; he'd already diverted his limited energy stores to smothering the scream. That he held his transformation on the way to the ground was a miracle.
He curled in. His mind reeled too fast to process any single thought individually. They all whirled together, hot and clinging and blinding bright. His heart beat faster than his lungs could pull in oxygen. His head swam. Long hands scrabbled at his back, pawed at his arms, tried to drag him. He couldn't make his limbs cooperate to slash or kick them away.
How far did they drag him before Gai came blazing in? He was wet and sore and shaking, still, when the flash of Gai's spear cut through the dark of his eyelids and called him to open his eyes. Half the monsters juddered and staggered back, uncoiling and falling to nothing. The others forgot Marvelous and lunged for Gai, only to be cut down on the second arcing pass of the spear.
The last one took hold of Gai's neck and Gai, unaffected, gutted it.
And Marvelous was still shaking.
Gai left the last monster to unspool itself to death – or what counted for death – and came to crouch on one knee beside Marvelous. The forest around them was quiet again. "You okay?"
"I'm fine." Marvelous wished he could see Gai's eyes, wished he could get a better read on just how much pity he only imagined in his voice. "Why'd you follow? Where are the others?"
"Joe-san sent me." Gai said. He looped an arm gingerly under Marvelous' and tugged up on him. "You don't look fine."
Marvelous straightened up and slipped his arm free. "I'm tired. Forget it."
"Are you sur-"
Marvelous mashed his open palm into the face of Gai's helmet. "I'm sure. I'm fine."
Even if his head swam and his stomach churned, he had no real choice but to be fine.
"Do you hear that?" In his sleep-deprived state, Marvelous had forgot that a hand on his helmet wouldn't prevent Gai from talking. Not that much could.
Marvelous listened. When the haze around his brain cleared he could make out a distant sonorous tone out of place in the deep forest.
"You hear it, right? I'm not going bonkers?"
Marvelous nodded. "Yeah." He swung his saber and started off at a jog. "Care to investigate?"
"You bet!"
Neither realized they'd fallen into following the path marked out on the map until Marvelous found himself with no ground to run on. He went skidding down the rocky lip of the massive sinkhole that the trees and underbrush had obscured, then toppling down in the open air. He let out a shout that rang off the far walls, spinning head over feet once before Gai, who'd leaped in after him, caught him up in his arms and legs and made sure that they both cannonballed their way to the surface of the water below.
They hit the water with a smack that resounded through the cavernous space. The impact knocked all the air out of Marvelous. Gai dredged him up by the collar of his coat before he could cough and replace it with water.
Gai spewed out a long arc of water and grinned at him. If having his transformation knocked out bothered him, he was doing a good job of hiding it. "You almost sleepwalked yourself off the plank, captain!"
"Shaddup." Marvelous pushed him away and tried to find the bottom with his feet. The water was deep and cold and smelled of minerals he couldn't identify. It shone a lustrous green in the harsh sunlight streaming down from the sinkhole's gaping mouth. Craning his head around, he noted that the sheer stone walls would present a significant challenge if they meant to reach the surface again. Luka had the climbing stuff.
A warm tone – many voices raised, harmonious – rolled into the chamber. They both whipped around. The sound, subdued compared to the chorus in the forest, issued from an opening in the rock. The surface may have to wait.
Gai got to swimming first. "So, investigate?"
"Yeah." Marvelous kicked after him, smiling his mad smile. It was easier to be fine with a mystery at hand and the dangling promise of Zangyack heads to crack. Gai's presence didn't hurt. He had a certain buoying quality even at his most aggravating, and his hero worship – as much as time and close quarters had mellowed it – was adequate incentive to keep it together.
They crept low and slow through the tunnel, feeling along with their hands to the walls when they lost the residual light from the sinkhole. They walked abreast, toward the sound, into the sound. It flowed around them like the deep, opaque water in the sinkhole. It was a straight shot, and after many minutes of blind shuffling they sighted fresh light ahead. It flashed, flickered, and finally solidified at the far end of the tunnel, burning sulfur flame blue.
The droning chant ceased and Marvelous threw and arm out to still Gai, and Gai created a wet splat walking into his back instead.
"Watch it," Marvelous hissed. "And listen."
"-resurrection of our glorious Empire. It is to this end that we call upon you!" A single voice, old and worn and all but swallowed by the caves, rose where the chanting had died.
They moved again, toward the light and the voice. Marvelous' heart pounded. He didn't have to tell Gai to be quiet. They were both listening to that voice.
"I hear you in my mind; I hear you and you demand an equal trade for your assistance. We offer only everything. We can take you from this empty place and lay the universe at your feet."
Gai nudged him, and in the gathering light Marvelous could see worry creasing his face. He offered his own mad grin as a silent reassurance.
The sight that awaited them at the tunnel's end was no average meeting of imperial conspirators. Scores of the writhing things from the forest milled around the vast, vaulted limestone chamber only yards from the tunnel opening from which the pirates observed, pressed flat to the tunnel's wall. The things mingled with imperial officers and Gormin alike. Whatever was going down, it needed serious security.
The main attraction, though, rose above the rabble at the farthest end of the cavern. Steps cut into the stone terminated in a flat slab, like an altar, under which the blue flames that painted the room lashed and licked in unnatural silence. Their light wrapped dully around the gathered officers and flashed off the hard, glossy skin of the looming figure at the center of the platform.
It was tall and hunched and twisted, too thin and too long in every way. It had the same lanky fingers and twisted appearance as the grasping forest things, but its skin glinted like black glass splintered at its joints. Its empty face reflected the light like a looking glass, throwing the beam around as it swayed and rocked on its sinuous legs.
The light fell on them and its swiveling head stilled.
The droning man at the foot of the stairs went silent. Sound died for a full second, and in the next instant the whole security force came down on them. The flash of Gai's transformation washed the blue out of the room for an instant, but Marvelous instinctively recoiled when the things reached for him. He felt sick at himself and tried to wind that up into anger, into action, but he couldn't.
Instead, he watched Gai stand as a whirling sentry at the mouth of the tunnel. Their touch did nothing and they fell easily, but Gai was only one man.
"Come on, Marvelous!"
He stood, even with the ground pulling at him. Not in years had he been so keenly aware of gravity. The sick feeling swam in a pipeline between his head and his guts and he wavered on his feet. The world gnashed and swirled around him. He recognized the process distantly. His body was trying to crash. Only barked words from the altar held his head above the metaphorical water.
"Forget the empty fool, he's worthless! Bring the little red one!"
Before Marvelous could react, two sets of pawing arms darted through Gai's defenses and brought him tearing and hollering out of the tunnel. Their comrades made a wall around him as they dragged him through the assembled Zangyack loyalists. Marvelous thrashed and tore at them, trying in vain to get both hands free fast enough to transform. Their touch didn't affect them as it had the first time, but fatigue and panic could be just as debilitating.
"Marvelous-san!"
Gai's voice cut through the clamor, and Marvelous didn't need his voice ringing through the cavern to explain the looks of smug recognition he caught on the faces of officers they passed on their way up to the steps.
On the altar, Marvelous played the indignant prisoner, smirking even as the attendant Gormin guards shoved him onto his knees. The gnarled thing creaked when it bent to his level, its black mirror face swiveling and jerking on a boneless neck. It offered a dim, desaturated reflection of his bedraggled face.
"Does this one satisfy you?" the officer who spoke to and for the thing called from his place at the foot of the stairs. "Is this one useful?"
That featureless face loomed nearer and the reflection of Marvelous' face flickered away. It turned dull, swallowing the light instead of reflecting it.
Marvelous smirked. "I'd say you're real ugly, but you haven't got a fa-"
It swung a heavy hand up from where it dragged on the floor and grasped his throat. The splintered glass tips of its fingers threatened to break the skin over the bend in his jaw. He stilled and waited for the panic to come again. It didn't. Instead, it was as if something bled out of him where the thing's cold, plated flesh met his. Fatigue flowed into the spaces it left behind. His body started to slump, and the thing began to change.
It crumpled in on itself, folding down smaller and smaller, crackling and throwing glittering splinters to chatter on the stone below.
It pulled more, draining him like a deep wound. What it took, it rearranged into a smaller, suppler body that stooped rather than loomed over him.
Limbs rippled and smoothed in the light, the reflections no longer harsh. The finger pads on Marvelous' jaw were soft, though they dug in just as hard.
His body slumped, his gaze dropped to the floor. He couldn't bear to look up. The panic bloomed in him again. His breath was hot on pale, chilled lips.
Voices raised all around them as the battle picked up. Gai must have been doing well, but Marvelous could hardly parse the sounds. Half of him was elsewhere.
Fingers caught his chin again and jerked his head around. He would be made to look.
"What a shame. I'd thought you would surprise me by getting taller again." A smirk on a face too despised and familiar to be mistaken. The fingers curled in and tucked nails into his skin. "Marvey."
A hail of rounds fired from the other end of the cavern peppered the altar. The percussive startle tore Marvelous' mind away from those fingers and that face and threw it hard into the core of his body. He tore away and went staggering back – one step, two steps, then tipping violently backward onto-
"Idiot!"
Marvelous didn't have to see Joe's eyes behind the helmet to know he was good and mad. Those same eyes wouldn't be directed at him anyway. Gokai Blue looked forward and up. His gloved fingers dug into Marvelous' arms and his entire body was a taut line of unreleased tension.
Where Marvelous was afraid, Joe was furious.
Fury couldn't override practicality. Marvelous, with no choice left in his drained body, let Joe dash down the stairs with him half dragged behind once he tore his attention away from-
From the thing at the top of the stairs. That's all it was. That's all it could be.
Still-
"Gai, fall back! We have to get Marvelous out of here."
Clangor and clamor swallowed Gai's reply and fatigue muddled their flight into the tunnel. When they cleared the blue light and found darkness again, Marvelous tried to stand. Joe let him stagger along beside him while Gai brought up the rear, ready for any pursuit. None came. They reached the rocky subterranean shore – and the sunlight and the Galleon hovering above – far quicker than expected.
Marvelous collapsed.