Lugubrious
Izurich
Yankee
rush99999Link
Word Count: 2245
Level 4 - (24/40) + 3
Location: The Edge of Blue ~ Limsa Lomiscuttel Port ---> Cute Girls Doing Naval Warfare
Sakura unfortunately didn't have time to share the harrowing tale of warfare and rescue out over the water, as it was time to roll out across the waves. The party split up, with the Scouting Gang + Koopa King taking their places aboard their now comfortable airship and the rest answering Captain Brineybeard's call and stepping up the gangplank onto his living ship. Along with them came their Admiral appointed minder, Chao Hu. Maybe the admiral just wanted some assurance that they weren't going to...well, no, the whole plan was for them to ditch the battle so it couldn't be that. Did she think they were going to turn on them in the middle of the fight? What was one girl going to do in that case? Did she want someone she trusted to lay eyes on whatever horror they would be facing later, or was the shipgirl going to jump off the back of the ship when it came time for them to pull away from the fighting and join her sisters? He decided to put those questions out of his mind, at least until he saw what she did when that time came.
As the anchor was weighed and Shippy pulled away from the dock Link threw himself at the mast and scrambled up to the top, pulling himself up onto the lip of the crows nest. Holding on to the mast with one hand to keep him steady, he stood atop it and pulled up the Shiekah Slate. He noticed with some surprise that another rune had reactivated itself some time last night, a note he stored away for later, before hitting the photo rune and raising the slate up to his eyes.
The sight of the Limsa grand fleet setting out across the water was something else, and from his vantage point he could capture a good chuck of it. Inaudible under the cheers of the towns hopeful citizens and the breaking of waves there was a snap. A third memory was catalogued in the slate.
Link spent the majority of the trip up there in the crows nest enjoying the scenery, the salty wind that blew past his face, and taking photos of the local wildlife. There wasn't a stretch of water that went by where his interest wasn't piqued, either from something semi-hidden in the depths or resting on the shore. If he were going at his own pace he would have investigated them all, but with no time and no map to mark them on he had to just let mysteries like that beached ship go unprobed, probably forever. The thought wounded his adventures spirit.
He could be a sailor, he thought. He had a ton of experience with rafts and what was a ship if not a raft that doubled as a house? He bet he could get Bolson to build him a ship, and if not just have him build two houses in the style of Lurelin Village and then stick them together. They didn't have to go out into the ocean, they could stay by the coast like this. Leisurely sailing along, surviving on fish, mooring up on exotic beaches, and taking in whatever was over the next horizon. Not a care in the world, just him and...
He sighed sadly, his heart pulling him away from the scenery. He'd have to find her again first of course, but after that? Sailing. Once he didn't have to be a hero anymore he'd try his hand at sailing.
It was after the Navy's first contact with the enemy that Link's position on Shippy radically changed. He hadn't be able to catch the first encounter, looking out over the ocean and using the zoom function to spot the aftermath of the short fight. After that all notion of enjoying the scenery was forgotten as he shifted gears from passenger to lookout. The slate rested under his hand on the railing of the nest so he could have the greatest field of view possible to spot where the sea began to churn and battle was joined, and he would bring it quickly up to zoom in wherever violence erupted. As he did he tried to learn as much about the Abyssal's way of fighting as he could, noting the flashes of their cannons and the small flying objects that they sent at one another, but he could never make out much. Between the distance, the monsters ducking in and out of the waves as they pleased, and the shipgirls bombing his photos as effectivity as they did the enemy, he couldn't even get one good picture of an Abyssal.
Instead he settled for calling down a play by play of each encounter to anyone that wanted to listen.
"Three black fish have got one of the short girls isolated from the rest. They just popped up right in the middle of the group and went for the weakest looking one." He called out, watching for the umpteenth time today leaping shapes with gnashing teeth pursue a girl as she skated back. "She's shooting, shooting, she got one but the others got her by the leg. I think her mates are gonna reach her it time thoug-HYAAA!" He screamed, leaning in and staring intently. "Noting to worry about." he called down after a moment, impressed. "The shark woman just got both of them. Bit them right in half while they were on her, I can see the heads dissolving." He put the slate down and whistled. "That woman is a terror."
It was while he was watching the girls squamates carrying their injured friend to the backlines that he heard Ms. Fortune calling a team meeting, so he climbed out of the nest and slid down the mast to join her. What she had to say wasn't very heartening. A shipgirl had been murdered last night, and Ms. Fortune apparently had a number one suspect. Link struggled to place a face to the name Sephiroth, but cottoned on pretty quickly when she talked about him fusing with a crazy stalker. Come to think of it, Link hadn't seen that guy since he slinked away from the group last night. "Was that guy was with us?" Link asked. "When he took off last night I assumed he was a local recruit, like Glenn." He said, motioning to Frog. "I haven't seen him since then." He glanced over at Chou who hadn't deigned to join a team meeting. Questions flared up again. Was that what she was monitoring, trying to see if they were guilty by as association?
He shook his head. There was no reason to air that sort of suspicion on the verge of a battle they would be fighting side by side with her in. Besides, they had nothing to hide so it didn't really matter.
It could also be, of course, that Chou had one of those talk-boxes and that with her around they could more easily stay in contact with the rest of the fleet. The first time she had gotten a message through that thing he had suddenly felt very boneheaded for imagining this girl Yigaing out on them.
Link wandered over to have a listen. The words came from their escort for this battle, informing them that they were about to destroy an enemy lookout. It was easy to spot even from the deck, a cozy looking wooden tower that was about halfway between a Moblin tower and and a Shiekah tower in terms of craftmanship. He was watching through the slate when the girls had aimed, fired, and obliterated the thing and everything around it in a hail of steel and fire. He lowered the Slate and looked out to the tip of the cape, grimly reminding himself that the enemy that had been besting that was waiting just beyond. He scurried back up the mast. It was the most advantageous firing position in case he had to put an arrow into something coming just under the water.
They rounded the tip into the bay proper. Their goal was rights there, but Goddess preserve them there was a whole lot of monsters in their way. Luckily for them as battle was joined and explosions began to resound across the waters surface their escort pulled up beside them, and to his delight the voice they'd heard on the other end of the radio was the shark woman he'd been watching rip apart Abyssals for the entire voyage. As she charged into the approaching enemy Shippy entered battle mode her captains command, spitting cannonballs at the enemy as even the creatures of the deep arose to aide their passage.
Bowser also entered the battle in grand style, growing to be seated on top of their airships and raining down six different flavors of devastation wherever he didn't see friendlies. Link thought back to Smash, and how he'd consoled himself by saying his glider would have been an unfair advantage if they had let him use it anyway. He wondered how sour the grapes the Koopa King abstained from for the sake of the tournament tasted?
Despite their best efforts, though, the enemy still got through. In the water monsters started Blasting at Shippy, Prompting Link to try and return fire from his perch. He tagged one with an arrow right in its white, fleshy bits, prompting it to zoom to another position only to run right into range of Shippy's barrel, scoring the ship another kill. His attention refocused when Shippy was boarded, the abyssal leaping of of the water to give Link his first real good look at the creatures they were facing. How to describe these things? They were a head? No, they had a head. The big mouth was their body, a giant hunk to metal integrated into their flash. Their eye...was that an eye? No, it was just a part of them that had opened up. Why was the metal hunk that replaced one arm attached to the other arm. They didn't seem to be anything. They looked...they looked...
Familiar.
The looked like Ganon. Unfinished. Something that shouldn't be able to live. Just flesh and machinery molded together into a semblance of form that kept going out of sheer malice alone. What kind of foul sorcery was going on in the depths of this ocean to create monsters like this?
He still took a moment to take a picture before pulling out his bow and sending three arrows plunging right into the skin of the one underneath the crows nest, right into the shoulder of that dangerous arm. That thing had a cannon on it. It tried to scream with its non-mouth, arm going limp to its side as it looked up at him. Something detached from its back and zoomed up toward him. Link rocked back as one of those small fying things that now filled the air shot past him, teeth shining in the sun as it tried to ram his head off. He stowed the bow and jumped over the side of the crows nest, the Fork flashing into his hands as he dived, prongs pointed down. "HYAAAA!" He screamed as he broke his fall by landing on the Abyssal, plunging the spear into the meat of the things white neck before kicking off its face and arm and landing on the deck. It tried to swing that cannon at him in a clumsy flopping motion, but Link sidestepped before pulling back the spear and taking a moment to charge up. There was a brief flash as he lunged forward, stabbing the spear forward over and over into the things body before delivering another devastating blow to the neck. With a last twist of the fork it went limp, slumping off the spear and dissolving into ash on the ground.
Link looked around for the next one but as he did it became apparent to him that these enemies, despite their fearsome appearance, didn't seem to have the easiest time getting around out of the water. They moved in a series of flops, like seals would. Elephant seals, it turned out. As Link was thinking about his mobility advantage one of those deceptively fast flops carried one of the Abyssals straight across the deck at him. He switched equipment again, just getting his shield up in time for the blow to knock him across the deck. He hit the railing and looked up to see the monster aiming its cannons his way but before it could fire a foot stamped down on its arm and the shot went wild, slamming into the rail beside him.
If looks could kill the scowl Cia was giving the He-Class as she ground her heel into the flesh of its elbow would have ended the entire war right then and there. "How dare you?" She spat at it, twisting her hip and sending a dark wave of magic rolling over it and any other poor abyssal that happened to be nearby. The magic sent the monster flopping out from under her in the opposite direction, tumbing head over mouth across the deck. The sorceress turned to face Link, all hints of anger replaced with a smug satisfaction. She grinned, narrowed her eyes slightly, then dissolved into darkness and disappeared.
Link leaped back to his feet, bringing out his sword and trying to ignore the ominous feeling he had gotten when the Striker had looked his way. No that he wasn't grateful, he just didn't remember calling out to her. Another thing to put on the back burner. Worry that they're all out to get you later, fight now!
