Chapter 17

Mary decided emotional trauma and stimulation might awaken lost memories from amnesia. She considered herself an amnesia expert not because she had a thousand hours of experience performing neurosurgery, but because she had watched a thousand hours of soap operas with amnesia tropes…

Her hypothesis was that America's memories could get more jogged by a nocturnal encounter (looking at the fourth wall lying forlorn in the back, she decided the readers desperately needed some erotica after 16 chapters).

Now, before the whole drama with the amnesia, they had done the act multiple times a day. They made it a game to do it in every conceivable place in the Palace of Nations. They did it on the conference room table, they did it in the kitchen, the storage room. She made a surfboard out of him on the jacuzzi. He snuck up on her fully erect and fucked her off the floor once in their private kitchen. They eventually ran out of places that they began doing it in the grounds, in iconic tourist spots in each other's places. She remembered raw days during the lockdown and practically begging the NBA to come back before he managed to do her 12 times in a single day. She figured their massive capacity for sex, even beyond that of other nations, stemmed from their early years of repression by their puritanical fathers.

She decided to pique Alfred up by using dress-ups. She went into her bedroom and soon emerged as a diamond-dripping dame from the 1940's. She rejoined Alfred in the yacht's private room, where she began strutting around and making flirtatious looks at Alfred.

She had barely set up her portable Bluetooth Speaker to play Doja Cat's Planet Her album to set the mood when the world seemed to cave in around her.

"Alfred, Maria, you need to get up here right now!" said Kiku over the intercom. She rushed up to the open and ran into Alfred, who was also jolted by Kiku's distress signal.

Oh shit

The creature loomed over the yacht, easily towering over them. It looked, Alfred thought, like a cyborg Gyarados on steroids. He had an accompanying hypothesis about how Team Rocket was behind the entire shenanigan but he decided it was not a time for jokes.

"What on earth?!" exclaimed Maria, appearing beside him.

"I'd venture to guess Wang sends his regards," said Honda.

The beast roared, a guttural, throaty roar that created minor shock waves all over the yacht. It was a declaration of war. The serpent dove down and encircled the yacht. Faster and faster it went, until a localized whirlpool began forming around them. They felt the tremors and found it hard to stand.

Alfred fired a few shots, Kiku threw stars at it and Maria increased the speed of these projectiles with her winds, but all of it bounced off the creature's presumably metal hide.

"Japan, get back to the control room, I have a plan" Maria said with a calmness that scared the guys with her. She whipped out her war fan and, with a sudden leap, maneuvered herself onto it, like a hoverboard.

"Hop on, Al. I need you to shoot its eyes out"

Alfred wasted no time and jumped in. Kiku ran for the controls. The fan flew high above the storm brewed by the serpent. "That thing's messing up the thermals. Hold on tightly."

Alfred held on tightly.

"Not there!"

Alfred held on tightly elsewhere.

The beast reared up from the waters, as if insulted by the challenge put up by the two tiny humans in their little flying machine. Alfred flipped the coins, and his pistols shimmered into being. He took aim, his twin barrels readying their strike. He fired. And missed.

"Well that was anticlimactic" he muttered.

"Uh, maybe try to lead a moving target? That's what you taught me back then" suggested Maria.

"When was that? That memory hasn't come back yet"

"1943. You brought in those new guns when the War was turning in favor of the Allies"

"Oh, I was thinking we did that playing Valorant"

Maria rolled her eyes. "Just hit it this time. I don't think we can stay aloft for long"

The serpent obviously had no idea how American shooter games worked and preferred the Japanese school of Bullet Hell. Instead of merely circling, it began firing a barrage of water spouts and acid at them. Maria banked, turned, did an Immelmann, and managed to avoid the first wave.

"This is crazy! Why did I sign up for this shit?! We're gonna freaking die here!" Maria gasped, shook that they were still alive at that point.

"USE THE FORCE, MARY! Or maybe just remember who the fuck you are!"

The floodgates opened, and suddenly, Maria knew what she had to do. She headed straight for the serpent, weaving and ducking her fan as they flew and raced along the creature's back. They sailed over its head, and time seemed to freeze as Alfred finally lined up for a perfect shot at the creature, when suddenly-

"WAIT, DO I SHOOT THE EYES OR THE MOUTH?!"

"HELL, IF I KNEW!"

Alfred went for the mouth. Luckily, he remembered that the creature's steel hide, while bulletproof, would mean that bullets entering via the throat would bounce repeatedly inside the serpent, turning its innards into Swiss cheese. He aimed and fired at the gaping maw.

For a horrible second Alfred thought it hadn't worked and they would die a horrible death digested by a sea serpent with bad breath, then the ping-ping sounds of bullets tearing through innards was heard, and the creature groaned and sank back to the depths.

"Seems t'was beauty killed the beast" said Alfred.

"My hair is all messed up because of the storm, my face is flushed and my makeup is ruined, Boticelli's Venus, I'm not". She smiled anyway, admiring how Alfred always tried to cheer up a descended from the sky and rejoined Kiku, who was fighting a losing battle with the water seeping into the yacht.

"There goes the deposit, I guess" muttered Alfred.

"We're going to sink in an hour and a half! The pumps have ceded defeat, I'm afraid" said Kiku.

"Mary, your fan" Alfred said, turning to her and gesturing to the floor.

"The winds will be too undirected to push the water out" Maria said, shaking her head. "Unless-". She turned to the back and got an idea, oh so dangerous an idea, but they were out of tricks.

"Hold on to your hats, boys. I'm blowing this joint to the nearest shore!". Taking her fan, she whipped up a powerful gale that blew the yacht forward, and even pushed some of the water out of the yacht. Alfred and Kiku were pinned to the wall and could not see where Maria's winds would take them. Not that they needed to, Maria had an inkling of what the nearest landstrip was.