I'm Coming Home Chapter 47

"What do you mean un-detain….Where are you going?" Immogene tried asking.

"They're the Navy….duh. Water." Alecta gave an exasperated eye roll.

"We're going with you,' Hotch, Emily and Morgan stepped forward.

Alecta spun around, 'No. I cannot vouch for your safety. Dry land is dangerous enough. You have no clue what awaits you under there."

"Sharks, whales….It's the ocean." Reid began rattling off examples.

"Have you learned nothing these last days Dr. Reid? Sharks are the least of my problems right now."

"We're going with you, and that's final." Hotch was putting his foot down.

"You're so cute when you get all 'Hotchy' on me." Alecta turned back around, looking out over the side of the battlements that faced the sea. "If the three of you come with me you must do what I say, when I say it. If you deviate from my orders at all it would mean death for us. Do you understand?" She turned on her friends. The three Agents nodded in unison. "Very well, come then, we have work to do."

Alecta and her three volunteers made their way to the edge of the battlements, 'Uh, we have to jump down there?"

"That's where the water is."

As the four of them neared the edge of the battlements, Alecta's wings disappeared, as if being enveloped back into her body. The other three agents were standing slightly behind her, but were each making their ways to the edge as well. Suddenly, there was a loud roar that came out of the water; something was rising up out of the water. Without stumbling back more than a step or two, Alecta turned her head to the left to keep the splashes of water hitting her directly in the face. Hotch, Emily, and Morgan ducked their faces as well. It felt as though they had been hit with a strong crashing wave and left standing.

"Poseidon really!"

"Forgive me little one." His voice as booming like thunder; he might have apologized, but you couldn't mistake the smirk on his face.

"Pray tell what is going on."

"If you make it to the kelp forest, stay close to it…."

"What's going on?"

"Nothing…much. Just some…obstacles we are working on. Just stay to the kelp forest it will offer you some cover. One of us will alert you when it's safe…safer."

"Who is this 'we' you have mentioned?" Without answering the man shaped wall of water that had been there turned to return to the sea.

"Asshole! He always does that shit to me. Paybacks are hell, I hope he remembers that. Now before we go over the edge here there is something I need to tell you. Where we are going, your lungs alone probably won't be enough. I can give you a little boost as far as that goes; it would require physically changing you appearance."

"What's the problem with that?" Morgan arched a curious brow.

"I haven't had to do it, or even heard of it being done, in centuries. I'm not sure that I could change you back."

"What?!" Emily asked shocked.

"Don't worry. I know someone who can change you back. But I just wanted you to know about it before we hit the water. Imagine how it would have been if I waited until we got back to tell you that you were stuck that way. Coming?"

Alecta dove over the side of the battlements heading for the waves below.

Hotch, Emily, and Morgan looked curiously at each other.

"Well, she's kept us alive this far…" Hotch tried to reason.

"She does have some friends in high places….her friends out rank Rossi's connections. Do you know how hard that is?" Emily chuckled.

"If we need that Navy, then we have to go." Morgan shrugged.

With that they dove over the edge to join Alecta.

Watching them come up from their dive, Alecta waited until they got their bearings.

"I need an answer. Will you allow me to change you so you will be able to follow me?"

"You will be able to change us back?" Morgan looked at her suspiciously.

"It can be done, yes."

"Do it." Hotch told her.

She ran her hands down the sides of each of their three bodies reciting some old chant that only she seemed to know. After this was done the three of them each had a set of gills, just small ones, on the sides of their body; five on each side. And they had tails.

"Wait a minute….what the hell?" Morgan had noticed quickly enough

"Look, I don't have time to argue….do you want to help or not?"

All three nodded.

"Well, come on. We're burning daylight."

Morgan's tail was tuxedo black; Alecta remembered a comment that Garcia had made about Morgan's ass in black jeans.

Emily's was sort of a Lapis Lazuli color; it was smashing with her coloring.

Hotch was in a sort of Sage green; Alecta wasn't sure why but that was what came out…maybe she was just curious and since the thought popped into her mind..poof.

Alecta was in a sort of a 'black opal'; it was something else.

Once they went under they followed Alecta out of the bay and into the open sea. They swam as fast as they could for some time before coming into sight of the kelp forest that they had been told about. Alecta stopped, they were by her side; she looked around to see if anything looked sketchy. She turned to look behind them, seeing that they were being followed; she gave them an order to swim as fast as they could for the kelp. It seemed as though there was a few sharks following them closely.

They weren't going to make it in time, as fast as they were going, the sharks were equally as fast, if not more so. Alecta commanded that the others keep heading for the kelp. She broke to one side, the fringe around her tail lighting up, the light pulsating, like an eel drawing the sharks' attention. She led them through the obstacle course from hell, diving under things, swimming through others. The sharks were keeping pace with her. She led them around one final turn, praying that this would work. Swimming into a vast chasm she waited until the last possible moment before she pulled away; the sharks weren't able to turn so sharply. Tentacles shot out; long, massive tentacles, wrapping around each shark, squeezing…causing the sharks to tear apart. Blowing a kiss, Alecta turned back to the kelp forest where the others were watching from safety.

After that, they calmly made their way through the kelp, steering clear of open water for a while. Once they reached the end of the kelp forest, Alecta stopped, suspended there for a moment, taking a deep breath. There was another large chasm before them they would have to make it past.

Finding they could actually communicate to each other, Emily asked what was wrong.

"This is where it gets dicey." On the one hand, Alecta knew they should spread out a bit, that way if something did come after them it would be harder to catch them all at one time. But on the other hand, if they were spread out, if they were attacked by more than one enemy, it would be harder to get to each other for back-up.

"What's down there?" Hotch asked.

"Don't ask questions you don't want the answer to. Come on, be quick. And be as quiet as you can." With that she got back to business swimming across the yawning mouth of the chasm, carefully, yet quickly. She motioned that they would have to dive down at a certain point. As they entered the darkness, Alecta's tail lit up, a steady, soft glow this time, only slightly lighting their way.

"I would glow brighter, but I don't want to draw more attention than I am already."

As they made their way through the black hole, Alecta stopped suddenly, holding them back.

"Please, let this be friendly; please, let this be friendly…"

"What are you talking about?" Morgan asked quietly.

Suddenly, everything seemed to shake and there was a tremendous roaring sound.

"Go! Go! Go! Totally not friendly. Get out of here!" They high-tailed it out of there (pun totally intended) as fast as they could. A large creature, all anyone could see of it was tentacles was coming after them.

"What the hell is that?!" Emily questioned as they took off.

"You saw what happened to the sharks?" Emily nodded at Alecta. "Well, fewer questions, and more swimming or that will be us."

They couldn't seem to out-run all the arms and tentacles, the creature was closing in on them…..that was before something else came between them; she was even larger than Poseidon had been, but she was quite lovely. The entity turned her head to the four friends, winking, and told them to go that she would take care of them.

"Thalassa, I could kiss you. "

"Go!" The deity warned.

Without hesitation Alecta and her three friends hauled ass to get away; they only stopped to turn back once. Alecta saw her friend Thalassa about to be overwhelmed. That just wouldn't do.

"Stay here, stay close to this coral. Don't go anywhere."

"What are you doing? You can't go down there."

"She needs me." With that Alecta took off at what could only be described as warp speed, on a mission to save her friend. On her way through she broke off a jagged piece of sea rock and kept going. Seeing the first glimpse she could get of the body of the creature peeking out of the chasm she swam straight for it; she began jabbing at the creature multiple times to weaken it. It wasn't working fast enough so she swam into the danger zone around its tentacles and began hacking at them to cut her friend lose. Thalassa was still struggling. As large a being as she was, this creature was getting the better of her. Finally, tired of nothing working, Alecta swam straight towards the mouth of the creature, pushing herself inside.

"What the hell is she doing?" Hotch was about to charge forth but Morgan grabbed him by an arm holding him back. Suddenly, there was a deep rumble that you could feel coming from inside the earth, so it seemed. Morgan indicated that they should take cover, which Hotch and Emily followed him in doing.

Suddenly there was an explosion. The creature that had been coming for them exploded, parts going everywhere; Alecta had gotten flung out of its body in the process, flying through the water as though she was shot out of a cannon. When she came to a stop in suspended animation she acted as though she was wiping dirt off of her shoulders.

She looked to Thalassa and they exchanged courteous nods to one another and went their separate ways.

Emily kept looking over at Alecta, wanting to ask her questions, but Alecta let her know they needed to wait a little longer.

"How far away is this place we have to go?" Morgan wanted to know.

Without answering, Alecta began diving down…and deeper still, the others following her. Nobody was sure how far down they had been diving when it seemed as though they began to slowly surface. When they surfaced, it was bright daylight. The beach they saw ahead of them was deserted. In the water around them at various distances there were ship wrecks all around from all different eras of time; the ships looking like skeletons littering the surface.

As they swam up to this one specific wreck, Alecta raised up out of the water, grabbing on to part of the rigging of the ship that was left. The others began to rise out of the water and follow her lead.

"How long has this been here?" Morgan had more or less merely wondered out loud.

"Since the 16th century; it belonged the Muscovy Company…they were an outfit out of Great Britain during the early days. An ancestor of mine…well, of my mortal self, Michael Locke was a director of sorts. He had been a bit of an adventurer and merchant, Henry VIII at one time had given Michael and his father the keys to the kingdom, they were favorites you see. Michael talked the company into funding some of Martin Frobisher's work in finding a northwest passage to Asia for trade purposes. He was also on friendly terms with a pirate named Strangways, Henry Strangways…or Strangwish depending on what sources you read. So it seems as though Matthew might have had privateer tendencies. This was a ship that he loaned to Strangways, paying for the fee out of his own pocket."

"What are we doing here, at this wreck?" Emily asked.

Using her upper body strength to pull her farther up the side of the ship, Alecta looked back at Prentiss, 'This is as close as we can get to do some intelligence gathering. If we get any closer we need to be ready to strike, and until I see what we are up against I can't risk it."

With that she pulled herself over the edge of the ship, onto the deck, helping the others pull up before she turned over on her stomach to begin pulling herself to the other side.

Once she was at the other side of the ship, she situated herself near some rigging where ropes would have been tied once upon a time to hold the sails; there was a railing that went around the top of the hull that she could peer through.

She sat up, looking through the slots in the railing, her tail curled up slightly behind her, her hair covering any nudity that might have been possible on her torso…although it seemed to be getting help from a lot of kelp and seaweed from having swum through so much of it. It seemed as though her hair and the marine plants were very nearly the same color, sort of a brackish brown color….

While she watched what was going on she just casually reached up and grabbed a bit of seaweed and started nibbling on it.

Seeing the looks she was getting from the others, 'What? I'm starving. And besides, seaweed and kelp happen to be good for you. Ask Reid when we get back. I'm sure he can tell you. Here we go." The others looked more closely when she spoke.

"That bastard! I'm going to kill him…again. Perhaps I should feed him to the…." Alecta, or Anat…really her temper was slipping so there was no telling who was showing up to the party…stopped herself mid rant. That rarely happened.

"Feed him to what?" Hotch arched an eyebrow at her.

"My dog Fluffy." She was not going to give away all of her secrets just yet it seemed and the mischievous gleam in her eye and defiant edge to her posture finalized that for everyone.

"Who is this joker anyway?"

"His name is Mot. We go way back. During my early years, he killed the only one I ever loved. And now he's got his grubby paws on my damned navy!"

"We can take him out." Morgan was confident.

"No! You stay away from him. He's mine. You can't kill a God of Death….but I can."

"What makes you so sure?" Hotch asked.

"The last time we met I split him with a sword, squeezed his remains through a sieve, burned him with fire, ground his bones to dust with millstones, and scattered the remains. I think I can handle him."

"And just think Hotch, this chick was watching our backs in that Russian dive bar just a few weeks back." Morgan grinned. Alecta only nodded.

"I am quite territorial over what is mine. Hotch…you…the team really. And Gibbs' team….I adore Ducky, that's all there is to say about that."

Alecta sat a little longer taking in what information she could gather just from watching.

"He has Thaumas guarding things….bastard! What does he have on Thaumas? He would never do this willingly. What have ya done old boy? He will be easy enough to swing. I need him on our team anyway."

"Who is Thaumas?" Emily was getting antsy.

"He is the son of Pontus. In Greek mythology, Pontus was one of the primordial sea gods…before Poisedon. Thaumas was his son, and he is quite dangerous; he is the personification of all the dangers of the sea…the unpredictability of it…all of it. That is Thaumas. If Mot's got him doing guard duty it leaves me to wonder how bad Thaumas has been lately."

As they sat there watching what was unfolding before them, they began to notice that their tails were turning back into legs. When Emily pointed that out to Alecta, Alecta explained to her that this was only temporary; they had to be able to walk on dry land, and the water here was shallow enough that there was practically no danger to it, currently. Once they had achieved their goal of setting the navy free, they would wind up gaining the tails back at least long enough to get back to the palace.

"Where are we anyway?"

"Davy Jones' Locker."

"It's a real place?" Morgan thought that Reid would love this.

"Real is a relative term these days. Am I real? I am a war goddess from the Neolithic era. You can see me, you can hear me…' Pinching Morgan, getting an 'OW!' out of him, "You can feel me. But am I real? You see me in the form that you have always known me as, from that first day at the office. I still appear to be a mortal woman named Alecta. But have you ever stopped to consider what is underneath this….this package? Is there a physical being or am I invisible, like the air around you? Am I no more than an idea; something some poor bastard thought of to explain the harsh world around him?"

"Michael said…."

"Yes, I know what Michael explained. But that was so very long ago. I might have been human once. But what am I now?"

"As far as I care you're still very much human." Hotch spoke looking her dead in the eye.

"Aren't you cute? I'm not getting any younger. I will distract Mot and Thaumas…to say the very least. I need the three of you to take this key and bust Themistocles and the boys out. He will want to retrieve his ships….stay with him if I haven't rejoined the effort yet. They will offer you better protection than being out here alone. Now, wait for me to give the signal."

"Where'd you come by a key like this?"

Alecta arched a brow at Morgan, 'At the last battle of Armageddon. I stole it off of one of the demons I killed. It went to a cage of sorts. Any time the enemy came across one of your kind, if they didn't kill you they caged you, to enslave later and make you do their bidding. I kept the key all these years."

"Why?"

"Emily, their kind never stays down forever. We can kill it, but it keeps coming back. And every time they come back, I will be there, just as I always have been."

"How many wars like that have there been?"

"Ugh, there's no time for this now. Go!"

Hotch, Morgan, and Prentiss made their way in the direction that Alecta had sent them. Alecta, meanwhile, made her way straight for Mot.

First Alecta jumped through a hatch opening that lead to where a cargo hold would have once belonged on the ships skeleton; doing so dropped her back down into the water. The water was over her head by several feet, so she chose to swim as close as she could to shore. Once she was close enough to shore that she could plant her feet again, she began walking the rest of the way onto the shoreline.

As she made her way out of the water, coming to where it was just about waist deep, Mot seemed to notice he and his thugs were not alone. He turned his gigantic body around and saw who was coming to the party.

"Anat, how marvelous to see you again. What's it been? Eight-thousand years…."

Anat merely drew two swords, from thin air apparently, because it was anyone's guess where they came from.

"Get ready to die ya bastard," the two swords being swung through the air making a whooshing sound as they cut the atmosphere.

"Things are different today, I've brought back up."

Alecta shrugged, 'I'll kill them, too; now hurry up, I don't have all day."

"So it begins."

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Hotch, Morgan, and Prentiss had no clue what was going on….they were busy retrieving Themistocles and his navy as they were instructed to do. All they knew is that they heard a lot of clanging of swords, the sounds of bodies being cut through, a fair amount of yelling; all the typical sounds of a pitched battle.

The three of them managed to bust the navy free from their bondage and began following them to the ships as Alecta had instructed, until Hotch decided to make a detour.

As soon as Morgan saw Hotch swerve back to the right and break into a run in the general direction of where Alecta was, he followed…Prentiss down behind them. Themistocles was left to shout at them to come back, sending a few men with them to keep them protected.

Upon arriving at the scene of the battle, Hotch and the others saw a river of bodies. There were no fewer than thirty that had been dispatched, and Alecta had her swords slicing through two others in rapid fire movements as it was; blood was everywhere and there would only be more as time went on. She turned on Mot, having saved the best for last; in reality, he had been able to hide behind his gauntlet of supporters, now it was just the two of them…Mot and Alecta, well Anat as she was quickly becoming again.

After what seemed like forever, Alecta had Mot at her feet on his knees; her swords were crossed at his throat. Mot kept running his mouth about how she wouldn't dare to kill him again and taunting her of how he would seek his revenge against those that she cared about most. When he made those threats, Alecta got a vision of a long ago battle. A tall man, a god really, has been slaughtered, leaving Alecta completely bereft and heartbroken, as well as filed completely to the brim with rage. As the vision faded from her mind, Alecta tightened her hands around the grips of her scimitars.

"Go to hell." She muttered as she snapped the swords together with force, severing the head of Mot from his body. As the head of the death god rolled to the ground, Alecta stuck her sword into the gaping hole in the neck, then bracing the sword over her shoulder, the head atop it as a warning; meanwhile she grabbed the torso by the collar of the clothes that Mot had been wearing and began to drag it behind her. She was covered in blood, some of it in her hair, smeared over her face…the battle was quite violent.

Seeing the looks of her teammates, Alecta quirked a brow at them, 'What?"

"Nothing about this seems strange to you?" Morgan asked carefully.

"Souvenirs.' with that Alecta kept walking, meeting up with Themistocles and the rest of his men. The two old friends embraced in a hug and began talking of old times and old friends that were no longer with them.

"Come old man, there be a shit storm brewing."

Themistocles chuckled and threw an arm around her shoulder as they made their way to the ships, asking her if she was sure about these new people she ran with…if they could hold their own, if they were loyal. Of course, Hotch and the others couldn't really understand any of it since it was in an ancient form of Greek that hadn't been spoken by anyone alive (with the exception of some isolated populations) in just over 2,000 years.

Once everyone was back on ship, they were able to relax until they got closer to where the ships were going to have to cross over into the land of the living, then everybody started getting things tied down, the people themselves were getting to areas of safety where they'd be able to hang on to something sturdy….

At Topkapi Palace, the Sultan and some of the others joined the palace guards on the battlements; they saw the flash of light, it was almost as bright as the sun.

Simon smiled. Selim hugged Kong.

Michael was trying hard to be his usual stoic self, but he was excited, 'they have returned to us at last."

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Post AN: Ok, there's chapter 47. Sorry that it took so long to get it out. I just seemed to have lost my mojo for a hot second. I can't say it's 100% back, but it's getting there. Now, I have to brew the next chapter and see what I come up with. Hopefully it won't take so long this next time.