Relic from the seas

By

Dr Facer

-11-

The area where the sunken ship that carried Eve-Y's capsule had been found was empty now. True, Doctor Cossack did say his company had recovered everything around the wreckage because of its historical value, but she had wanted to see it herself and asked him for the coordinates to go and look around on her own. She hoped clues about him were still down there somewhere and besides, doing this was helping her to stop thinking about Mega Man X, who had yet to return from the Orbital Observatory. She really hoped he was fine, as he had been gone for twelve hours already and she had yet to get news about him.

Doing her best to convince herself X was alright, she forced her mind to focus on the task at hand, which was exploring the deep, cold waters of the Siberian sea.

Light was absent here in the deep and freezing waters, except for the ones provided by the dim lanterns of the few mechaniloid fish charged with supervising changes in temperature, pollution levels and underwater seismic activity that occasionally swam past her. She didn't actually need light, since her sonar continuously feed her information about her surroundings and allowed her to navigate the dark waters perfectly, and she was now considering using said sonar to swipe the surrounding terrain.

Splash Woman sat on her trident and sang a series of notes that soon bounced back and were received by the ornament on her helmet, which translated the resonance into data. The information she got was not encouraging, however. Refusing to give up, she moved further south from where the wreckage had been and tried again with the same result.

"Well, this is becoming a waste of time," she thought. "But half a kilometer south… there was something faint over there. It's almost out of range so I can't tell what it is, I better go take a look."

It didn't take her long to find the area where she had detected that strange thing that caught her attention. She used her sonar again and this time obtained a much better reading. Twenty five meters below her, under the sand, there was something small, round, metallic. The Robot reached up and touched a button on the base of her neck, which turned on the lantern inside her helmet's crystal, providing her with a potent light source.

"Very well, let's see what it is, I hope it's something good," she mused as she went down.

What Splash Woman didn't know, was that someone was watching her. And she didn't know this because, as good as her sonar was, it wasn't precise or powerful enough to break through the cloaking this stranger was using to hide his presence.

This shadowy figure started swimming in circles around her, closing in and making sure he didn't send any suspicious vibrations through the water. He didn't want her to know he was there. Not yet at least.

But being busy digging through the sand with her trident and caudal fin, Splash Woman was not paying any attention to her surroundings, because she was convinced she had found something important, something that, if it still worked, would help her greatly in finding what had happened to him.

"Just a little more!" She thought, digging frantically, sinking her arms into the loose sand until she finally felt her fingers touch it. "Success!"

She retrieved her hand and with it, a very old helmet.

"Yes, I think it's his!"

Feeling thrilled and overjoyed, Splash Woman swam to the surface where she could examine her prize.

She passed just a few meters left of her mysterious stalker, close enough to see him if she had been aware of her surroundings. But excited as she was, she didn't even notice him.

Once she emerged, the first thing she did after using her trident as a bench, was to examine the object under the northern sun. The years had not been kind and the built-in circuits in the helmet were useless, but that didn't matter. It was his helmet. The same sharp angles she remembered so well and the fading white and red confirmed it.

"Blues…" she sighed, cradling the helmet close to her power core, "how I wish I knew what happened to you that day…"

"Are you alright?"

Splash Woman tensed immediately and placed the helmet on her lap before turning around to see Tsunami Mako had surfaced behind her. When… and how did he get so close?

"You are… Tsunami Mako, right?" she asked. "How did you find me?"

"I was around," the marine reploid said, feeling glad his cloaking system had kept him hidden from her. The last thing he wanted was for her to think he was some kind of a pervert. "I saw you swim by and I thought I'd say hi."

"… I see," said the Robot Master with a nod. She didn't really wanted to talk to Mako, but if it weren't for him she would still be deactivated so she just couldn't ask him to leave her alone. "It's strange that my sonar didn't detect you."

"I always bring a cloaking device with me when I go that deep," he explained. "It keeps the mechaniloid fish from approaching. It's not that I dislike them, but they tend to get in the way. So, what do you have there?"

Splash Woman felt suddenly a little edgy. The way Mako stared at her and his admission of having something that let him get so close to her without being detected was unnerving her more than what she expected it would.

"Is it valuable?"

"This?" She lifted the helmet so he could better look at it. "It might be, I think it belonged to X's predecessor. I'd have to ask Doctor Cossack if it still works. There may be data saved here that could be important."

"If it's that old then it may be worth a lot of Zenny," Mako said. "But you found it, so it's yours."

"…Yes, I guess," she said.

"Your voice is very pretty, you know?" the reploid said, swimming a little closer, "almost as pretty as you."

"Ah… thank you," Splash Woman started looking around, hoping to see a boat or a ship, something to help her end the conversation, but there was nothing. She looked at the shark reploid and noticed he was even closer now, close enough to make her feel a little afraid. She really wanted to leave now.

"What is going on between you and X?" Tsunami Mako asked then, lowering his body so only his fin, pointy snout and eyes remained visible. "It's strange that he is so interested in you."

"That's… something personal, Mako. Look, I have to go," she said coldly. The shark reploid was making her feel very unsafe. "I promised Doctor Cossack I wouldn't be gone for too long."

"That's fine, I can swim with you back to port, I just…"

"Thank you, but it won't be necessary. Until next time," she interrupted and quickly activated her teleporting system, beaming out of the water with a flash of white, leaving behind just a cloud of steam.

"… Ah, so she likes to play hard to get, huh?" Mako grinned. "Fine, then, we'll play, my sweet mermaid, we'll play. I'll show you soon I'm better for you than X will ever be. You'll see."

Notes:

Thanks to Adam for beta reading this chapter.