Locating Obake in the crowd had been tough but necessary. Unlike the rest of them, his first instinct had been to being planning a solitary escape before curtly joining the group. Standing at a drinking table in one corner, the only four people aware of the danger slowly passed Obake's tablet back and forth as they continued talking about some imaginary biology experiment. By openly making people aware of an intruder and giving them a guard, the public thought they were safe. Instead, they had handed over control to a group of strangers now holding them hostage. Even the catering staff for the event had been rounded up into the room under the pretence of 'eliminating possible cover'.
"No, you're getting the protein markers wrong again." With fewer qualifications than the others, Obake was playing the part of a fool. Yet in their other conversation, he had considerable experience to prove his worth. "Look, this is how you do it." Taking the tablet from him, Yusei began scrawling out equations with his finger. "Am I right?" Akiza carefully examined the notes and made some amendments before passing them back to Obake.
"As always." Scribbled on the screen was a plan for a smash-and-grab takeover of the guards which Yusei had immediately put down as too dangerous. Musume made use of a provided stylus to alter a few choice components before revealing the latest iteration of the plan.
"How about my idea?" The red dragon mask hid most of her features but there was no way to mistake the bloodlust in her voice. Being kept in a cage was no way to pacify her. Maybe her anger was the reason that her plan included more severed limbs than any of the others.
"No." Wiping the sketch clean, a few careful strokes crafted a far less dangerous plan. "How about this?" It was far more likely to work yet there were some drawbacks. Quite painful ones, in fact. "But we'll need a volunteer." Even with their faces masked, it was impossible to miss how two sets of eyes turned to look at Musume.
Looking down at the drawing, Obake did somehow appear to miss it. "Your work appears solid. I think that I might make a viable donor." Finally raising his head, hidden eyes turned to face the redwood mask that was secretly relieved. "Providing you can guarantee all my teeth make it." Dark laughter came back in response.
With a confirmed plan in place, the group peeled away one at a time. Yusei slowly circled shifted through the crowds, settling into groups for brief intervals to avoid being noticed as heading in one particular direction. Musume split off next in order to vanish into the crowd. "I'm only doing this because it's the least-worst option." Sliding the small tablet into an inside pocket, he was last to step away from the table. Everyone leaving all at once or even gradually over the course of a few minutes might spark suspicion. A unanimous vote had agreed that Akiza was the least suited for various parts of the plan. Unanimous because being the subject generally excluded people from voting either way.
Noting the progress of his boss around the room, the doughy-owl waited until he was in roughly the right area before making a move of his own. Stepping towards his own target, he gently brushed past a figure in a shimmering white dress. "Having a nice time?" Putting on his sleaziest voice, both eardrums almost ruptured as the woman let out an ungodly shriek.
"What do you think that you're trying to pull?" A walrus on legs stampeded through the ground and grabbed him by the front of his suit. "That's my wife you're fondling!" Two trembling hands attempted to force open the grip on his suit as Obake paled beneath the mask. He had expected a reaction but not as severe as this.
"I'm so sorry, I thought she was my date for the evening. The dress is identical!" At just the right moment, Musume emerged from the crowd in her ivory robe to slap away the hands and throttle Obake herself.
"What do you think that you're doing?!" Stammering excuses that sounded almost vaguely coherent, a sizeable crowd was gathering to watch the commotion. "Touching other women again?" With that rather unpleasant declaration, the first punch was throw. Against the plan, this came from the husband but Musume quickly joined in the brawl. Various guards converged on them from all angles and allowed Yusei to slip quietly from the room through the unguarded doors.
It only occurred to Yusei when he was out of earshot of the fighting that he actually didn't know what he was looking for. There could be any number of reasons to take the event hostage. Political leverage, personal gain or even just the thrill. But taking them without alerting anyone eliminated the alertness which usually accompanied panic. So whatever they had planned necessitated no interference.
Okay, think it through. Ducking down another corridor, he was eliminating the major rooms by order of which were unoccupied. So far, none of them had contained anyone with the exception of the captive main hall. If we're being held hostage, they're not making it obvious. If they're demanding a ransom from anyone, it's being kept quiet. Everyone at the party was extensively connected. If even one of their respective organisations was being held to ransom, the others would hear about it almost instantly. So, not a standard hostage situation. They could be directly contacting the government. Maybe Lazar was being pressured into agreeing to some demands, or maybe an even higher position in the government was being pressured. But that would still have set off some alarms they would have heard about.
Unless he was thinking too obvious. There were all sorts of different reasons they could be held hostage but only one reason why none of them would had heard about the capture – because they wouldn't be around afterwards.
What were the weakest points in the ship's design? Below the waterline but not near the reinforced exterior hull. Sliding down a steep set of emergency stairs, he passed from the fancy public parts of the ships and into the bare metal of the functional quarters. All of the probable targets were situated in the restricted portions of the ship. Normally, the crew would have been preventing him from accessing these areas. Another worrying indicator that their pleasure cruise had been hijacked. A grim thought arose in the back of his head: If the crew weren't present nor being held with the hostages, then where were they?
Two areas are most at risk on a boat: engines and storage. While fossil fuels could move a thousand miles and still be good for use at the other end, electricity is lost over long distances. So the engineers had decided to simply put them right next door to one another, separated by a thickly reinforced gap room between the two. That wouldn't have been safe if the fuel had been something instantly combustible but the ship operated on a series of solar-charged cells.
Not batteries in the sense that most people thought of, each compartment contained several thousand cells that would operate in tandem to achieve a much higher rate of efficiency. The design would theoretically stall and limit any ruptures into what is known as a runaway cascade failure – unstoppable but slow as the cells blew one after another. Theory said that the boat could safely journey for three hours with a cascading failure without any danger to the crew. Theory generally forgot to include external elements like an additional ignition that would reach all the cells at once. Instead of a slow burn, the result would tear the ship apart as the same measures designed to keep the water out would force the pressure of the explosion straight through the hull.
Of the many regrets Yusei would face in his life, he would never have imagined that not learning to defuse complex explosives would have been up there. But with an innocent little box of death ticking away in front of him, he desperately tried to think of anything that he could put to use. Electronics were supposedly universal but wiring a phone wrong was unlikely to destroy a boat and he was unwilling to take the risk. The obvious answer was just to throw the thing overboard and hope it was the only one.
That, of course, was not how events would transpire. Trying to move the device started a slow beeping. Returning it to the previous position cut off the noise. "Proximity alarm." Trying to pinpoint the exact moment his life had turned insane, Yusei decided not to bother attempting to find the source of the signal. It could be as small as a grain of rice and hidden practically anywhere. Probably tucked into a narrow crevice that nobody could fetch it from. Make sure that anyone who tried to be a hero would kill themselves along with the rest of the hostages. As an added bonus, it was also giving the impression that this had been a lone operator and mask whoever was currently in control of the boat.
Whoever had planted the bomb had positioned it right alongside the batteries. Carefully moving the explosive again, Yusei did his best to smother the sound with his overly expensive dinner jacket. There might not be much wiggle room but there was a hatch only a few feet away. If he could just get it over the lip of the door, it might reduce the explosion enough for the boat to remain afloat until help could arrive. If not, they would all be dead before they knew it. Even though the beeping possibly matched his heartbeat, the device didn't deploy as it tucked it out of the way. Making sure to tighten the door as much as he could, Yusei began running back through the boat towards the main hall as fast as the smooth undersides of his dress shoes could carry him.
Up in the main hall, events had managed to settle down. Musume and Obake had retreated to a window bench as the bruising walrus nursed an arm still sore from being temporarily dislocated. Despite the screams she had uttered at the ruse, his wife had had the audacity to slip Obake her number. Now and again, his companion would still offer a brief laugh at his discomfort while Akiza tended to the wounded left in her wake.
"How long do you think he will be gone?" As if his words carried some mystical power, Yusei burst in through the doors at that exact moment. There was just enough time before the wooden panels swung shut to recognise that the corridor behind him was completely empty. Watching him clamber onto the stage and order the musicians into silence, Obake slowly withdrew a pair of resealable bags from his pocket and carefully began encasing his tiny tablet inside one.
"Ladies and gentlemen." The arrival of a slightly underdressed and heavily out of breath person always drew a few concerned glances but they quickly dissolved into mindless gossip at the state of him. "Excuse me," What little attention he held dribbled away. With either a few minutes or hours on the timer and no way of knowing which, there wasn't really time to be polite about the entire affair. Pursing his lips, Yusei whistle reached pitches shrill enough to wake Jack from the deepest of caffeine withdrawals.
"What's the big idea?!" Another walrus clutched his head as waves of pain chased the alcohol through his skull.
"Please remain calm and make your way to the lifeboats." Instead of the scare he thought this would incur, laughter greeted his words. Losing patience, he cut straight to the chase. "Let me rephrase that: there's a bomb in the engine room that could go off at any second." Not to be deterred, Obake carefully enclosed the first bag in the second before gently securing it back in an inside pocket. "Think about it: when did you last see any of the crew?" True enough, all the guards had slowly drifted away and vanished to leave only the catering staff locked in the hall with their guests. As questions began babbling around the stage, Obake withdrew a lifejacket from inside the hollow bench and wrapped it tightly around himself.
"Would you mind stepping aside?" Unsure of exactly how to proceed, Musume took a couple of steps away as he grasped one of the droopy potted plants and threw it through the window. Shattering glass and a screaming jumper appeared to bring reality home to the crowd and they began to start paying attention.
"There are four emergency lifeboats on the main promenade. We could all fit inside one so we should focus our efforts on getting everybody safely down. The best-case scenario is that I'm wrong and we spend a few chilly hours talking." That future disappeared sharply as the explosive down in the hold went off. Despite the best efforts of Yusei, a major fire was starting down in the engine compartment. An overload in the electrical systems sparked across the ship and started dozens of small fires. It was somewhere between his hope for the damage to be minimal and the saboteurs attempt to destroy the boat in a single move.
"Run for your life!" At roughly the moment a mask screamed the hysteric line, Obake finally disengaged himself from the long curtains and drop the rest of the short journey. With everybody sprinting towards the doors, Musume was just about able to prevent Akiza from being trampled in the stampede as several smaller explosions sounded about the ship. Slipping from the stage, Yusei angled through the crowd to reach the two women just as all three were swept into one of the corridors.
"Musume, take Akiza to the Spirit World. Now!" Running scared was often considered a cowards tactic. When there was a bomb that could go off at any moment, running scared was the commonly accepted idea. With no way of knowing how little time they had left, he was going to take whatever measures were available to keep them safe.
"Don't you," Discarding his mask let Akiza see the seriousness in Yusei's gaze. If there had been clear access to the outside, he would have pushed for wings. In the cramped confines of the corridor, they would have to settle for the next best thing.
"On it." Whatever differences Musume had with him went out of the window as soon as Akiza was in danger. "Come on." Grabbing her mother by one arm, the face behind the bloody mask twisted in concentration. People continued to jostle them down the corridor as she kept them still in order to focus.
After a few minutes, even the only non-Psychic of the three could tell something was wrong. "Any time now." Transporting people across a dimensional gulf was probably not easy work yet Luna had never taken this long.
"It's... not... working." Trying to lift too much weight could tear muscles or break bones. Trying to do what Musume was doing was sending pain through parts of herself that she hadn't known existed. Blood started dripping out one ear as the pressure continued to build, staining the collar of her borrowed dress.
"Okay, Plan B. Head for the boats." Whatever difficulties she was having would have to wait for another time. "If things get worse, can you still pull out your wings?" Maybe one of those deadly burdens could still get the Izinski ladies out of danger.
"Boats are Plan B, wings are Plan W." Letting the changes come was a difficult prospect to face, of letting her own body be twisted away from her. Trying to return to a normal form again was a brutal and difficult process. Even though she had learned a measure of control over the transformations, Musume wasn't going to ask for 'help' unless it was absolutely vital.
"Do you really have that many plans or do you make it up as you go along?" With smoke billowing from all over the ship and the crowd running wild as panic and terror set in, barely a handful of people were keeping their calm. Even so, the prospect that not one but two people cared about her enough to each have multiple plans was a wonderful distraction for Akiza to focus on. It diverted some attention away from the imminent disaster.
With fires raging everywhere, the crowd scattered as they attempted to navigate their ways to the main deck and comparable safety. Quickly forced apart from Akiza, Yusei was at least able to see Musume wrap one arm tightly around her shoulders before they were swept away. After being forced down several increasingly warm corridors, the crowd eventually managed to reach the deck and instantly began forcing one another aside in order to secure seats for themselves.
"Yusei!" Still concealed behind her mask, Musume almost carried Akiza to where Yusei was trying to organize some sort of order to the evacuation. "How's it going?" A few of the more experienced swimmers and desperate fools were imitating Obake and jumping straight into the water with life jackets. They seemed to be mostly unaware that night waters could be deadly freezing.
"Get aboard." In the journey to leave, it appeared that Akiza had dropped one of her mother's earrings and lost a shoe. Under normal circumstances, he would have stopped to help but time was critical.
Before they could, even more frightened screams came from the boats. Wading into the mess, Yusei only returned with worse news than their current situation. "Did you see anybody fall on your way here?" The only things either had seen on their scramble had been the heads before them and the feet beneath. It hadn't exactly been the time for sightseeing.
"How many people are missing?" With reactions and skills far beyond what most people could do, Musume performed a rough headcount and compared it with the crowd from earlier.
"Maybe a dozen." Even as the last group of people managed to squeeze themselves onto the boat, another handful stumbled from the smoke and gasped in the fresh air. With so many people still lost in the fire, Akiza knew what would happen before it did.
"Akiza, get on the boat. Musume, I want you to lower it into the water as soon as everybody is aboard. I'll get the rest out in one of the others." There wasn't any point in arguing. Musume had proven long ago that Akiza's continued well-being was incredibly important to her. Any attempt to put herself at risk would be dealt with swiftly. Clambering aboard, the good doctor silently fumed at the turn events had taken as she watched Musume slowly winch the boat and Yusei swing it out. When it was clear that it was ready for deployment, she lunged up to swing herself aboard and left him standing alone on the deck.
No sooner had it lurched out over the water that two other passengers stumbled out of the smoking tunnel that led back into the ship. Holding a hand against the side of the swinging lifeboat to balance herself, Musume could have sworn that a perfectly dark figure was calmly walking back through the billowing smoke as she dropped beneath the line of sight.
Black fog surrounded him on all sides as Yusei charged through the winding corridors of the ship. He had barely bothered checking to see if the two latest victims were still breathing before loading them into one of the remaining boats and heading back inside. If he spared even another minute to help one of them, it would spell death for another person inside. Back and forth he went, occasionally breaking windows to steal a breath of air before continuing. Fumes were slowly starting to seep into his lungs and make him dizzy. Now and again, he could have sworn that there was another figure gliding about the corridors, disappearing into rooms and returning from different ones.
Keep it together. Even though he could probably guess, identify and then break down the various chemicals he might be breathing in, there was little he could do to stop their effects as he found and carried out the third and fourth victims. If Musume had been right – and Yusei had grown to trust her judgement – then he only had to find another eight or so people. But one wrong turn had him lose his way in the smoke. Before he knew what was happening, the precious oxygen in his lungs was gone and the wall was suddenly warm and fluffy. Pushing himself upright again, Yusei managed to stagger into the nearest room and gain a short reprieve from the toxic fumes.
Through the smoke and haze, he was just about able to make out the same dark figure he had glimpsed in America in the dust storm and at their celebrations. Held out in one hand was a damp pillowcase for him to tie about his face.
"There's still a few more people somewhere." Careful to leave some room for the cloth to move about, Yusei knotted it behind his head and instantly felt a drop in the toxicity of the air he was breathing. "You search the port side and I'll take starboard." Nodding once, the figure vanished again. Hoping that this new player could be trusted once more, Yusei continued his search through the haze of mild delirium and smoke. Minutes passed in sweltering temperatures as he uncovered another body and dragged it back to the desk. The people he had rescued earlier had been neatly stacked in the lifeboat with another three bodies. That left only... only...
For an instant, his dark companion was beside him as another figure was saved from the burning ship. Even with fresh air, it was taking him impossibly long to figure out that about three people should be left inside. Allowing himself the greedy gift of another few seconds of oxygen, Yusei pounded back through the smoke and left the other party behind. Past watering eyes and searing breaths, there weren't many places left that he could still check without being swallowed by flames. After another full five minutes in the living nightmare, he finally spied three bodies piled against a door with abrasions covering them and flames creeping up the corridor behind them. In the rush, they had clearly been crushed against the door and then trampled.
In all the various disaster exercises that Yusei had been obliged to undertake at the SRC, he had always scored the highest marks. But they had all been hypothetical. Right now, he was faced with the issue of three fully grown adults – doubtless of great levels of importance in their respective areas – two men and a woman who he would have to decide which to save and which one to leave behind. With ever-rising heat and danger, he made his choice.
Even as the fire reached a midpoint between the group of four and its starting place when he arrived, Yusei carefully knotted the damp pillowcase over the woman's mouth and draped her over his back. Grabbing a hand from each of the men, he carefully put one foot before the other and kept moving in what he hoped was the right direction to reach the boat.
Part of his mind wondered exactly how much use Musume could have been had he not ordered her to shepherd the other survivors and make sure they were a safe distance from the ship. It was only then, as he began stepping against the walls for better purchase, that he realised how far it was listing. Not much right now – maybe as little as ten degrees – but not righting itself at any point. Something down below the waterline appeared to have ruptured and the ship was mere minutes from a watery grave.
One foot in front of the other, he hauled his precious load towards the deck. With the weariness that seemed to have been with him since the very beginning of his life, part of Yusei wanted to collapse right there and sleep for several days. For a single instant, he could almost have believed that the dark figure to have saved him once before was helping to drag the bodies along the hall. Then Yusei was stumbling across the deck with flames licking right on his heels.
In all the confusion, it appeared that he had automatically found his way clear. Luck – finally returning since the fire had started – had allowed him to place the survivors inside the boat above the water. One of them was even starting to wake as Yusei managed to drop the last three passengers into their new transport.
"What's going on?" Carefully grasping the charred lapels of the man, Yusei focussed his usually towering intellect onto the insurmountable task of forming a coherent sentence.
"When the boat is in the water," Blood was pounding around his head and the world was slowly starting to tunnel now. "You have to unhook it. You understand?" A slightly absent nod was the only reply he could get before stumbling back to winch the boat clear. Whatever had kept the lights going was long dead and the only illumination was coming from the deadly flames spreading across the deck. One turn, two turns, three. Each revolution of the handle felt like some ungodly being had seized his head and was squeezing it tight.
After lifetimes of suffering, he finally was able to push the boat clear and begin the easier task of lowering it. Sparing a glance at the flames spreading along his shirt, Yusei noted with a clinical detachment that he was in absolute agony with one arm on fire and flames across his back. Feeling the lines suddenly go slack, he was at least able to take solace in the fact that the last members of the formerly amazing party were safely in the waters below. A passing fancy went to the fate of his assistant in the search. Seeing more than feeling the ship tip another few inches, he pitched over the rails in a drunken stumble and felt the wind rush past as the water reached up to claim him.
Icy water was a welcome shot of adrenaline and kept him from drowning as the loaded boat was forced away in the swells of the sinking ship. Such a current was temporary at best as the metal would soon create a down surge to drown anybody still in the water. Salt was searing the wounds in his back even as the frigid waters kept them numb. Striking out to the rescue boat he had just launched, Yusei tried in vain to reach it as the current pushed the larger object far faster than it did him.
"Yusei!" In his exhaustion, the exhausted hero had failed to register the sound of another approaching vessel. Driven by the makeshift oars of several pieces of debris and crewed by the rich and famous, Akiza had captained her vessel in a crude line towards him. Shouts of fear at the sinking ship beside them were kept to a minimum with a saw-toothed blade Musume had pulled from somewhere mysterious as she relaxed in her seat. Leaning over the edge of the boat like so many figureheads before her, Akiza reached for her constant companion. Careful not to excite the injuries, she pulled the beaten mess of a man from the vigilant clutches of the sea.
"Is anybody missing?" With possible muscle fatigue, oxygen deprivation and several dozen microbes attacking his systems, even asking a single question was taking Yusei several attempts.
"We haven't been able to check the other ship but we don't think so." It was the best that she could do at short notice. "But we don't have a radio on board and we're too far from land for a signal." Reaching into an inside pocket, a damp smile greeted the feel of a mobile phone handset.
"Good thing I improved my phone." Wrinkled fingers failed to find a grip on the case and Akiza was forced to grab it before it could fall into the black depths of the water. If Musume had thought to check her own phone, she would have enjoyed full service and the ability to call for help from the minute the boat went down.
"Who should I call?" Tucking both hands beneath his arms, Yusei began shivering beneath the hastily wrapped blankets provided by several other passengers. Although his handset had taken a short dip, it was still in working order.
"Start a new message to 'the Captain' and type 'SOS'." Possibly going delirious in his state, Yusei gave orders as carefully as he could. "Hold down the send button for three seconds. It will send our coordinates." As the last sections of the ship disappeared, a resulting swell dragged the surviving boats towards the deceptively calm waters. Vicious undercurrents threatened the safety of anybody leaning too close into the water.
"Who's 'the Captain'?" Careful to keep her tones light, Akiza snuggled against her friend in an effort to keep him warm. In a perfect world, she would have ordered a warm shower and fresh sheets but it was the best she could do with the warmth of herself and a reluctant Musume.
"Huh?" Exertions were piling on him quickly now. It was a struggle to think of even a simple answer.
"The person you had me text?" After a long moment, Yusei smiled. Everything that he had endured was meddling with his mind and making even the simplest question difficult.
"Oh Captain, my captain." It seemed to be an old quote from somewhere. "Back before the Enforcers, there weren't many people helping Martha. Winters were really hard. One day, things got really bad. Somebody snuck in and took a bunch of food. Jack cried, Crow cried, we all cried a bit." Everybody on the boat stopped talking at the admittance that Jack could – and had – actually shed tears. "Martha didn't even blink. She sends us all out to find any radio components we can. Somebody caught a few rats as well. I think it was Kalin." Eyes were starting to fog over as he slipped further into the past. Akiza would normally have shaken him out of such reverie but it was keeping him from slipping into shock. "Once we get back, Martha is going to have dinner ready. Not much left for afterwards but we have rats. Surprisingly good eating, if you can clean them properly. Not that we have to eat rat often. Too slippery." Gentle nudges brought him back to the story at hand. Some of the more generous sailors began donating spare jackets to cover Yusei with. "It'll be okay. Martha's got on the radio to a friend. She calls him 'the Captain'. Says he knows how to slip about without being caught. Doesn't like calling him very often." Smaller words were starting to slip through his sentences. Far away, an engine sounded with a steady beat. "Plenty of food to go around, if we can find him somewhere to hide him. Old recycling plant has a waste pipe big enough to fit a small boat. Kalin and Crow will scout around, Jack and I can unload the boat with Martha. Found out why she doesn't like the Captain. They travelled some years ago and he remembers the embarrassing stories. Plenty of food to go around now. Captain left contact information, says to call him if we need him. Likes to spend some time in New Domino just before winter sets in." A steady beat turned into a loud roar as help came to idle between the drifting survivors, dragging them all out of the bleak recollection and back into the present. Even just hearing the one brief tale of dread that saturated the Satellite had unsettled the listeners.
"Ahoy there!" Standing on the top of a sleek racing yacht with the enigmatic name 'C Mistress', silver hair shouted a greeting to the bobbing survivors. "Deliver your intentions or prepare to be boarded!" Standing as straight as he could on the uneven and rocking surface, Yusei shed his accumulated shell of jackets and cupped both hands around his mouth as his focus came back to the present.
"Clive, you miserable bastard, I almost drowned waiting for you to get out here! You're lucky there's nobody else in the water." A hearty laugh drifted the boat that much closer. Standing at the prow was a face that was wise, eyes that twinkled with laughter and a forehead that seemingly bulged with intelligence.
"I've called in every captain with a working tub. I'll take the worst fifty now, everyone else can stay put." Smiling slightly in the half-light, Yusei indicated the slumbering bodies clustered at one end of the boat and the other liferaft that was gradually drifting away.
"Some people have smoke inhalation. We could do with that diving equipment you keep stashed away." Pure oxygen would help the people in the other boat breath a easier. A swell jarred his upright posture and Akiza balanced on one knee to help stabilise him with a careful hand. "A few others haven't got jackets so any blankets would be a big help." Even across the distance, diamond eyes could see the streaks of soot and grime on Yusei's increasingly pale face.
"You should come and all." Though his tone brokered no argument, Yusei waved aside the command with the political indifference of one who was likely going to be dead or in jail soon anyway. "You're not looking too good."
"I'm fine. I'll just stay here and rest awhile." Noticing a damp stickiness in her hands, Akiza looked down in the dim light to see palms red with blood from Yusei's shirt. As he turned around, the extensive damage to his back could been seen clearly as he faltered and began to fall. As his vision dimmed into a tunnel, Yusei's collapsing mind noticed particular colours. Red blood on Akiza's hands, the scarlet weave of her hair and the crimson dragon mask looming over her shoulder.
Almost two miles away, unseen by the arriving boats, an unnoticed survivor gave a weary sigh, set sights on the nearest patch of land, took a rough guess on the tide and began heading for shore.
I have a 'sinking' feeling of negative reviews. Eh, eh? Yeah, I deserve them for that pun alone.