Author's Note

Two chapters for today, seeing as how I didn't release one last week, we're getting to the fun stuff now, and I'm real excited.

Chapter 7: Sea Sick

The day had started off well enough, we'd gotten to Iliasport with little trouble and booked passage to Sentora. Apparently there had been a massive storm separating the Ilias and Sentora continents, and had just recently dissipated. No doubt the work of our target and his group.

The upside to this was that nearly every ship was getting ready to set sail, dozens of merchant, transport, and even combat boats were setting off. We'd hitched a ride on one of the merchant vessels, the captain had needed some form of protection as monsters, realizing humans were moving across the ocean again, had begun attacking the ships during their voyages.

That had been this morning, we'd left just after sunrise, the ship we took leaving with almost two dozen others. We were halfway through our journey, it was nighttime now, the moon reflected off the ocean water, lighting up the sea around us for almost a mile.

I was amazed it had taken this long for a group of monsters to attack us, from what a group of mercenaries had said, they were quite aggressive. Then again, we were traveling in a massive group, so they were probably more weary.

I now realized that had been a stupid thought, they'd just been waiting for night to come, for us to get tired. Dodging the tentacles of a scylla, I ran my new sword through her upper body, the wound gushing dark crimson as the monster bled out and died. Pulling the blade free I looked to see how the others were doing.

Aside from Nine and I, there were five other fighters on the merchant vessel, all of them were mercenaries taking this job for money. Two of them were some of these heroes we'd heard about, apparently they had some sort of connection to the goddess Ilias.

Nine was doing fine, I hadn't imagined she would have much trouble dealing with the boarding party. The others weren't doing quite so well, four of the mercenaries had already been taken down and the last one, a hero, was struggling against a particularly big mermaid.

Taking my knife out of its sheath on my chest I flung the titanium blade through the air. It sank to its hilt in the middle of the mermaid's forehead, the hero pushing her corpse off of himself.

Just then a mass of tentacles sailed over my head, two scylla smashed together slamming into the deck and then off the side of the ship. Nine strolled over, completely covered in blood.

"That's all, unless there's more idiotic enough to come up here."

I turned toward the other four mercenaries, three of them were on the ground moaning in bliss, their pants off and their lower bodies covered in juices, who's I wasn't sure. The third, the other hero, was dead, his stomach torn open by what looked like a crude axe.

The hero who had survived yelled out, running to his friend's side. It was a shame, they'd seemed like good enough men. The other three were currently under the influence of what was called 'critical ecstasy' an odd phenomenon of this world.

Well, that's what I'd thought at first, according to Nine it was simply a way of manipulating energy. The instigator would flush the victim's system with their magic, pushing the victim's own energy, usually life energy, out of their body. It was the same process that allowed Nine to remove the bandit captain's soul a week ago.

The reason why the monsters here did so through such an intimate method seemed to be mostly cultural, and because semen, along with blood, was the most magically energy rich source in a human's body.

Removing the entire soul of a being, like Nine had done, required a much larger expertise in this field of magic, and so most monsters relied on a more natural method, sexual intercourse.

I brought myself back to reality, currently Nine was removing the corpses from the boat deck, the hero was mourning his friend, and the other three were still down.

I sat down on a crate next to the ship mast, likely supplies the merchant was selling, and checked over my equipment. Nothing had sustained damage, easily cutting through the flesh and muscle it had needed to.

I no longer had the large cleaver with me, having vanished it into Nine's pocket dimension while on our way to Iliasport. I was more comfortable using shorter weapons anyway, the ninjato machete and my knife were the perfect close quarters weapons for me. I still had my crossbow of course, as well as the throwing knives.

Nine leaned against the mast to my right, stretching her fingers in front of her, before sliding down and sitting against it. "So, did you have fun?"

I didn't enjoy this as much as she seemed to, it was business more than anything else. "No. What do you think would have happened if we'd not been here?"

"Mmm, rape, lot's of it. The ships wouldn't have made it to Sentora either, there's a lot of food on these that would have gone to waste. Happy we helped?"

"We did what we needed to, we need to get to Sentora soon, it's much larger than Ilias continent, more places to look for the deviant." I spun a knife between my fingers, keeping the dexterity in my hands at its highest was always good, and made it easier to handle weapons.

"No altruism at all huh? Me neither."

With that the two of us fell into our own routines, checking weapons, or her armor in Nine's case. Eventually the other mercenaries had been released from their state of paralysis, moving into the ship's cabins to recuperate. The hero had done the same, taking his partner's body with him.

The sunrise was very nice over the open ocean, we would be nearing Sentora soon by the captain's estimates. Right now we were over nothing but deep blue water, turned pink and orange by the sun cresting the eastern horizon.

The first thing that clued us in that something was wrong were the waves, small overall, nothing like what you'd normally see in the open ocean. Random intervals, varying intensity, there were a few that rocked our boat more than others.

A scraping sound came from the bottom of the ship, something was brushing against the underside. As quickly as it came, the noise disappeared. Nine and I shared a look, this wasn't natural. We weren't nearly close enough to shore for rock formations to be hitting us, and there were no reefs in view.

Strapping on what equipment I had taken off, I stood by the railing of the boat, looking into the ocean for anything that would explain what was happening. Just then a vessel across from ours, another merchant ship, had something slam into it, violently rocking the entire thing, nearly capsizing the boat.

Nine stepped up behind me, grabbed onto my shoulder, and yanked me backward. Stumbling back, the ship we were on began to tip backwards, slowly but surely moving so the bow was placed facing the sky.

Crates and barrels came sliding down the deck toward the two of us, moving out of their paths I clambered onto the mast, now nearly parallel with the ocean.

Whatever was holding us up suddenly dropped the boat, wood cracked and broke, metal creaked and groaned, and the weight of the ship met the surface of the water.

What I saw after our violent reset to our original axis, was pure chaos. Many other ships in the fleet had been entirely destroyed, many others were barely holding on, we'd seemed to get away with the least damage.

The other men on the ship weren't coming from the below decks, nor was the captain shouting orders. No time to wonder what had happened, a massive tentacle rose from the ocean, many more following its ascension.

Looking around once more I saw some other boats in the fleet had tentacles wrapped around their ships, or coiling through the wreckage. This was a monster of some kind, a massive one, I couldn't see the body yet, underwater probably.

"It seems", Nine had managed to find her way from wherever she'd been when the ship dropped, "that we're disturbing someone's hunting grounds." She threw a small orb of light into the water, a wave of light passing over everything around us not a moment later.

"What is ist?" If we had to fight then so be it.

"A, well I'd call it a leviathan, it's huge, each of these tentacles has to be at least a few hundred meters long. The humanoid body is down there, about a tenth mile down. Even that is significantly bigger than most monsters here, a giant by all definitions."

"What do we do?" I couldn't fight it from here, but getting in the water would be perilous.

"Give me a moment." With that, Nine pulled open a rift in space, reaching through to pull out a dozen strips of paper, "These are talismans, I can imbue them with spells for later, or remote use."

"Remote detonation. How will that help?"

"Let me get to that, then ask stupid questions." She began writing intricate symbols on the talismans, each one the exact same as each other. "We're going to blow its limbs off, attach these to them, get far enough away, and then activate the spells contained in them."

"How are we getting them onto the tentacles? We'd have to break them off near the body for any significant effect."

"Heh, we. I, will be up here getting something ready for us to leave with." Ah, so it was me that was going to attach them.

I held out an open hand, Nine placing the talismans in my palm. "Good luck."

While we'd been planning, the tentacles had been moving throughout the wrecked fleet. Each one seemed to be searching for something, combing through the boats carefully. I saw One retract from the cabin of one of the ships, holding a flailing man. I couldn't hear his screams from here.

The tentacle that had nearly destroyed our boat was beginning to do the same, nearing me. I took a running start to the edge of the ship. Diving over the railing I sucked in a lungful of air, I'd have about five minutes before I had to come up.

Cold saltwater parted as I hit the ocean surface, I opened my right eye, the underwater was dark, not enough for it to hamper me though. I could see the leviathan from here, Nine was right, this thing's main body was almost comically small next to its tentacles, even with it being many times larger than most monsters I'd seen.

The female torso was attached to its tentacles at where the hips would begin on a normal human, the tentacles themselves started small, gradually thickening until eventually slimming down again. The appendages themselves were each massive pieces of muscle, likely about two hundred feet long.

Kicking the water, I shot forward, fast for a human being, slow compared to the leviathan.

It finally noticed me when I was about a hundred feet away, two of its tentacles retracted form the surface, lining up with my body as I steadily moved towards it. The poised limbs then shot forward at great speeds, much faster than myself.

Accelerating my body's movement in time I dodged the first tentacle, already it was looping back around to hit me. Time slowed again as the second came for me, shooting upward I narrowly avoided the colossal mass.

Now that I was getting closer I could see bodies around the leviathan's torso, all likely dead, drained of their life fluids, both blood and semen it seemed. The white and red mixture in the water was cloudy, seemingly being sucked into the mouth of the giant sea monster.

I was within a dozen feet of her when the two tentacles from earlier came back around, both spearing toward me again, this time together. A quick use of time manipulation let me dive right as the appendages at me, flying over my head and avoiding the body they were attached to.

While it was fast for its size, with my abilities the monster couldn't seem to catch me. A humanoid arm swiped at me as I reached its body, a duck saving my head from being taken off. A burst of speed and I got behind it. Planting three of the talismans on its torso, I kicked off of its back right as the other arm flew toward me.

Nine talismans left, I wasn't sure if we needed all of them, but better safe than sorry. I moved back to reassess the monster. There was something off about it, she hadn't talked this entire time, unable perhaps? It was then during my thoughts, when its eyes, which had been closed up until now, finally opened, two cybernetic optics staring at me from two dozen feet away.

"System reboot: Complete." A high mechanical voice rang through the water, the robotic being in front of me let out a pulse of red light. "Threat assessment: Level 8. High yield magic detected, temporal shifting detected. Countermeasures: Damaged. Initiating attack pattern C."

A wave of pure force radiated from the leviathan, slamming into me and sending me backward, the force caused my left eye to open, the saltwater burning it. This was not good.

The other eight tentacles, which beforehand had been above the surface, were dragged back down, the ten in total being poised against me. I looked down at my clenched hand, six of the talismans had ripped from the wave, only three were left.

The android sent its limbs, all ten, at me in a successive barrage. My relative time sped up again, I'd have to hold it longer than normal for this to work. From the outside my form would have seemed to fast forward as I sped off toward the incoming attack.

The first three tentacles passed by my right as I spun in a roll to the left, narrowly avoiding the fourth, which sailed by over the top of my body. The other six suddenly split open, still coming toward me, but as eighteen smaller appendages instead of the six massive ones.

I could feel a pressure forming in my head as I pushed my power to its breaking point. Time slowed even further, the tentacles were moving much slower now, slow enough that I could simply swim through them. My brain felt like solid fire when I got to the torso, attaching the other three talismans I kicked off the biomechanical leviathan, releasing my hold on time as I got further away from the monster.

My breath had run out, my mind was tearing itself apart even after I'd stopped manipulating time, my vision was darkening. I had to get above water, if I didn't I'd die. My limbs felt like lead weights, the lack of oxygen in my blood causing body functions to slow down.

I was so close, only ten more meters, I could make out a piece of floating wreckage now, the wooden scrap floating like a buoy. Nearly there, I reached with my right, still too far for me to reach, but the hope increased.

Something grabbed me, a coiling, cold presence on my left leg. Tightening around as the leviathan, having found where I'd gone, dragged me back down. I gasped, water flooding my lungs, the salt burning the organs.

I struggled, but the monster had too much strength, and mine was rapidly fading. Cold panic set in, even I wasn't immune to the emotion it seemed. I kicked and tried to pry it's limb from mine, no use.

My eyesight darkened, the last bits of strength ebbed from my body, the natural response, my body gasping in water as it tried to get air, simply suffocated me faster.

Not even fifty yet, three decades as an agent, and this was how I died, what a damn shame. With that thought, I finally blacked out, going limp in the leviathan's limb.

I woke up to the sound of explosions, gunfire, and an urgent voice yelling at me to move.

"GET UP ELEVEN! WE NEED TO GO!" Nine reached out a hand, I took it.

The surroundings were a scene from hell, rubble, chemical fire, and blackened earth were all around us. The city of Tion was gone, reduced to a memory. I grabbed my hand cannon, a miniaturized plasma accelerator, fed by ionized air through an intake at its back.

The mission was, in a word, fucked. Our target, an aspiring paramilitary group called Atlas, from one of the many versions of earth, had taken Tion some months ago. Nine and I had been sent in, the first time I'd worked with another agent, to root out its leadership, quietly.

Everything had gone fairly well, only turning for the worst when Nine had infiltrated a meeting of the group's leaders. Something there had set her off, I wasn't sure what, but she'd razed the building, a convention center of sorts, to its foundations.

After that the military force of Atlas, nothing to scoff at, had targeted us, and anything that wasn't them. Ballistic weapons, energy, chemical gas, even a nuclear warhead, which had leveled Tion, were used against the city.

Now we needed extraction, the EMP had knocked out my communications, even if my cybernetics still worked. We'd need time before they came back online and I could call my ship.

A group of black and red clad soldiers, one of Atlas' squads, came from around a broken down building. Leveling their rifles against us, Nine swore and erected a barrier of energy between us and them, the bullets bouncing off.

"Drop it when they stop." Timing was everything here. Eventually the soldiers figured out their guns were useless, ceasing fire and spreading out around us.

The barrier dropped, with that time slowed down, my cannon snapped up, aiming and firing at the five men. Time resumed its typical speed, plasma bolts splashing against the chest plates and helmets of the soldiers, burning through and melting the flesh beneath.

Screams rang out from the survivors of them, a cacophony of agony, three more bolts silenced those. I gestured toward the bodies, to their weapons. Nine shook her head.

"I prefer my magic. You can stick to your tech."

I nodded, and we continued down the shattered asphalt of a former street. Minutes later a massive ship flew overhead, not one of ours, the logo on its side denoting its allegiance to Atlas. A bay opened on the bottom, something falling out, another shape following behind it. The ship was far away by now, but it wasn't far enough for us to escape the explosions the warheads impacted land.

The two shockwaves shattered concrete and tore metal apart, both me and Nine hit the ground on our chests. Even so the wave of air blew us backward, Nine smashing through a solid wall, I myself hitting my head off a piece of metal support from a building destroyed in the blast.

I was out cold immediately, the world darkening and fading from my eyes.

My eyes shot open, and I coughed up seawater. Flipping onto my chest, I pushed myself up as I hacked up the last of the awful tasting liquid onto a wooden board floor beneath me.

"Good to see you don;t die that easily Eleven." We were on a small boat, a rowboat. Nine was sat at the front, a pair of oars sitting beside her. I sat down on the boards, my head was cloudy from the oxygen loss.

"How long?"

"Only a minute or two, once your life energy began fading I had to get you out." She'd saved my life then.

"Why? You could've just activated the talismans."

Nine cocked her head to a side, "You are my partner you know? I'd prefer you didn't die on my watch." She chuckled, "It would give me a bad reputation y'know?"

I coughed out a laugh, "Heh, of course, that'd be terrible."

"Besides," She stood up on the boat, "you'd have missed the fireworks." She pointed out toward the sea, back where the wreckage of the fleet was. I looked out, the leviathan was still out there, which meant the talismans hadn't detonated yet.

Nine snapped her fingers and muttered an incantation, and the ocean exploded.

From what she told me at a later time, the talismans each were part of a system, each would combine its power with the others, the effect becoming exponential, the yield was massive. The initial blast evaporated the water around it, and most of the leviathan, the resulting sub-aquatic vacuum being filled by water, the crushing force of which utterly obliterated what was left of the cybernetic monster.

From where we were, the water seemed to erupt like a giant geyser, boiling ocean being sent in all directions, a shockwave and a wave of water headed right toward us. They both hit our boat, sending us sliding across the water, thankfully not flipping over.

The explosive force had caused my ears to go deaf from the shockwave and the sheer sound produced. Gripping onto the edge of the boat I held on for dear life.

The rowboat finally slowed to a stop, bobbing up and down on the water. A massive cloud of steam was visible from where the explosion had occurred, the debris from the fleet were now well and truly gone, either submerged under the sea, or disintegrated in the blast.

My ears still ringing I looked back over at Nine, who was laughing hysterically, her whole body shaking from the action that I couldn't hear. It took a moment for my missing sense to come back to me and I could finally hear what she was saying.

"-'ve got a while to go until we reach Sentora… can you hear me?" I nodded. "Ah, as I was saying. We have some distance to cover until we reach the continent, probably a day or so on this little thing."

"Great," I muttered sarcastically, "if we run into any more robots you deal with them."

"Robots?" She sounded oddly concerned about that, "The leviathan was mechanical?"

"Biomechanical from what I could tell, had seams all along its body, not just the tentacles, but most of it looked more organic than mechanical, can't be sure though. It spoke too."

"What." She didn't phrase it as a question.

"Sounded like a threat assessment, like what you'd see from a report one of the scout drones would send in." The drones I referred to were an information gathering device, fully autonomous flying robots that would send back important information for us agents to use. "What are you so worried about?"

Nine didn't speak for a while, "Nothing you should concern yourself with Eleven, false alarm."

I wasn't sure how much I could trust that, but I would do so for now. "Alright, just let me know if it does need my attention."

"I will… nevermind all that." She sighed and sat down, grabbing the two oars and beginning the rest of our ride to Sentora.

It was late now, the sun was setting under the horizon, illuminating the landmass of the Sentora continent still miles away from us, it would be a few more hours until we got there.

We'd switched positions a few times now, sharing the exertion of rowing the small boat for hours at a time. It was boring as anything I'd ever done, but there was no other way to get where we needed.

"Hey, Eleven."

I looked away from the sky and the colors illuminating it. "Yeah?"

An instrument materialized in her hands, "I'll take over rowing for now. How about we make this less dull, I figured you knew how to play."

Why would she have guessed that? Oh, "Why do you have my guitar Nine?"

"I figured something like this would happen, or we'd just get bored one night while traveling."

"You just figured we'd be attacked in the middle of the ocean?"

She shrugged, handing me the string instrument as we switched places. "Let's go with that."

I sighed, picking up the guitar. I looked it over, making sure it was in good shape. "And what exactly do you enjoy?"

"Mmm, well not anything too, modern, instrument wise I mean. Acoustics sound better to me."

"Genres?" I could play quite a few, I had the time to practice between jobs.

Taking a moment to think, she eventually settled on something, "There was a band, something from one of the earths I think, Alice In Chains. Know any of that?"

I did, "They were quite into electric instruments you know. Though I could do some of their music with this." It wouldn't sound quite as good, but I could make it work.

"I know, they were good without it though. I'll sing if you play." Well that was a surprise.

"Ha, alright, let's see what we can do."

I started tuning the instrument, as much as I liked playing it, I hadn't had the time for a few months, hopefully I was still as good. The guitar itself was well made, dark brown wood and lighter silvery metal, six strings and a round shape.

Finishing up, I began to play the first song that came to mind.

The start was easy enough to play, I chose a song that wouldn't be too hard for a single instrument. The chords weren't low, not high either, a simple enough melody, but one that was recognizable.

About thirty seconds in was where the second guitar would have joined in, I fit its notes in when I could, meshing the main melody and the lower sounds together into a single piece.

At a little less than a minute was where the drums would begin, there wasn't much I could do there, Nine settled for tapping her feet loud enough for a somewhat similar resemblance.

A minute in and Nine inhaled, before letting it out as words, the lyrics to the song. Her voice sounded good, if a bit muffled by the mask she always wore. The tone of the song was somber, a look back at one's own life. Nutshell, was the name of the song.

"We~eee, chase misprinted lies,

We~eee, face the path of time."

"And yet I fight,

And yet i fight,

This battle all alone."

"No one to cry to,

No place to call home."

"My~yyy, gift of self is raped,

My~yyy, privacy is raked."

"And yet I find,

And yet I find,

Repeating in my he~ead."

"If I can't be my own~nnn,

I'd feel better de~ead"

From then on it was just me and the guitar, strumming away as we floated on toward the sunset, and Sentora.

Author's Note

Alice In Chains, great band, great music. If you need something as reference look up their unplugged version of Nutshell, the original is good too, and just imagine it really improvised with a woman singing.

On another note, if anyone is interested, MGQ's fanfic community has a discord, somewhat. There aren't many of us, but if you'd like to come by and chat, we've got a few people, a couple of which are writing, some of which are not. If ya know how discord works, here's the code, EDXHKqttb9. If not here's the annoying version, https(semi colon)(slash)(slash)discord(period)gg(slash)EDXHKqttb9