NERO

Friday, April 6, 2018

"Mag!" I cried, Pitching from deep in my stomach. "You there?"

The only response was silence, and stillness. Not that I'd respected a cry or anything but... Something. Movement. A shadow. An eruption of bubbles. Not nothing.

An anxious cramp appeared somewhere in my lower abdomen and began working its way down through my intestines; it was a very familiar feeling, and it told me that if something didn't happen, and soon, I was well on my way to full-blown panic.

Easy. I began flexing my gloved fists, working my fingers in and out the way I did when I was trying tamp down my water-shaping. Only this time, instead of keeping in the heat, I was keeping in the manic urge to tear at my hair and draw sickening conclusions. In the hands, Nero. If it's in the hands, it's in control. Keep it in your damn hands.

"See anything?" I asked tightly.

Jude floated a ways behind me, gazing sulkily across the empty seascape. When he didn't respond, I whipped around. "Jude!"

"No," he snapped back.

I pinched the bridge of my nose, and the wrinkle that was continuous with my furrowed brow. No fighting. Not now. Jude was seeing the same thing I was seeing — a whole bunch of sandy nothingness — so he probably hadn't been trying to be spiteful. But he also wasn't going out of his way to be helpful and make suggestions like he usually did... Which I kind of needed right now.

"Let's go," I said, trying not to sound cranky and failing miserably. "Another ten minutes, and we'll break."

Jude said nothing, and that was probably wise — I wasn't water-shaping, but I imagined that my mood was nearly boiling the water right now. Where the hell are you, Mag?

Normally, I wouldn't have been worried that my Sharpedo had wandered off — it's what she did, and our relationship didn't involve a leash, like with Pokémon Trainers. But it was unlike her to stay away for so long: she'd disappeared sometime this morning, when Jude and I had been taking sand baths in a long-gone atoll (actually, I'd been bathing him, due to his poor flexibility), and I hadn't seen her since. I'd long-called from the nearest ridge until I'd been blue in the face, but there had been no response, and now I was beginning to get gross, stomach-wringing déjà vu, which was hell on my nerves.

No, she hasn't been caught by another goddamn Pokémon Trainer, I thought with slight hysteria as we moved along. Stop being stupid—the universe isn't that cruel, or that improbable. She's hunting something that, for once, is giving her trouble. Or she wandered off outside of range of my long-call. She's fine, go on — before long, you'll run into her, you'll see.

The only problem was that the open ocean was much like the heavens: little substance and a lot of empty space, so it was going to be hard to run into anything when there wasn't much there to begin with.

What do you want to do? Sit around and wait?

Hell no — I'd waited for her for over twelve hours, and if it was taking her this long to get back to us, then something was clearly wrong. Another wrench twisted up my guts: What the hell have you done, Mag?

A while later, Jude said, "Nero."

He was wheezing; we'd gone for far longer than ten minutes, I realized — more like half an hour. Swearing, I looked around. The seafloor had flattened out now, and was creeping back up towards us — we were approaching shallows of some kind. In the distance, the water darkened — a landmass. Maybe a big island, with a tide pool, where I could stash Jude while I—

Déjà vu rippled...ripped through me again. In the hands Nero. Keep this in the hands. It's not happening again.

"Just a little further," I growled. "Then we'll rest a minute."

I grabbed his hand and tugged him along, and we pushed deeper into the blue. A small canyon passed beneath us, and then the sand disappeared, falling away in a series of shadowy valleys. Rock took its place, stacking up before us in a wall of black cliffs that struck up towards the surface like a tower. I pulled Jude atop one of these cliffs — a jutting lip of granite — and sat him down on the edge. The rock face was empty, save for a swath of algae growing in one corner, and a couple of Clamperls sitting in another. One creaked its shell open and peered out suspiciously at me. When it saw that I wasn't a threat, it yawned and closed up again.

"Mag!" I roared from the edge of the precipice. "Mag, here!"

But it was like yelling into the void of outer space: useless. Or was it because of that...sound?

"What's...that?" Jude asked. He'd been stretching, the tips of his fingers reaching out for the end of his long tail, but now he looked up, and I did too. There was indeed a heavy droning coming from the surface...a surface that was stirring and foaming restlessly about twenty yards above our heads. It looked kind of light the wake of a boat, but I saw no hull anywhere near. Wearily, I pushed up from the shelf.

"Stay here," I said. Whatever this was, I wanted to make sure that we didn't have to bolt in the next five minutes, so that Jude could take an adequate breather.

I struck up, poking my head through...and let out a smothered gasp as an immense pressure bore down on my body, pummeling my neck and spine like ten thousand furious fists. I went back under — was driven back under — and coughed raggedly, trying to get in a full breath. Then I kicked and resurfaced some ways away, where the surface was rippling, but was nowhere near as ferociously.

A moment later, I went back down to Jude. "It's a waterfall," I reported. "A giant one."

For the first time since we'd left Delphirius, his good eye lit up; he pushed up from the rock. "I...want to...see."

I hesitated. I liked — I was relieved by — that spark in his eye, but... Mag. "Let's find Mag, first," I said. "We can come back later."

His face hardened. Then, he launched up from the rock, twisting crookedly towards the surface. Angrily, I made my way after him. "Jude!" I snapped.

He ignored me and punched through the surface. I followed, and for a moment, my irritation faded away.

I'd seen quite a few falls in our flight away from Titus, but these were by far the biggest, and the loudest. The roar of falling water as it punched out of the high face of the island was deafening; it struck the waters below in a never-ending barrage of white explosions, turning the bay into a cauldron of frothing sea- and freshwater.  The thunder was such that I was shocked that I'd actually been able to surface beneath the falls for more than five seconds without being crushed like a cheap can: the weight of all of that water had to be colossal.

Jude craned his neck, tracing the way the falls and the island's mass climbed high into the sky. "Huge," he remarked, that sparkle back in his eye. I could barely hear him, despite the fact that we were about five hundred yards away.

I looked at him, and tried to banish that niggling panic digging deeper into my gut, panic about Magdalene and her whereabouts. Bear with it, for just a minute: he needs this. I'd largely tried to forget our spat the other night, but I couldn't deny that I'd torn Jude away from something he'd been building in Delphirius with the merkids. He deserved to smile for a moment, and I managed to do the same.

"Can you imagine going down from the top?" I asked.

He brightened at the idea. "Or...going up," he rasped. "Kingmen...can do that...did you...know? And if...they have...a Kingman...kid they...teach them to...climb...waterfalls...too."

I tried to imagine that: a Kingman father out here with his children, much closer to the thunder and weight of the water, showing them how to climb up through the water like an actual Seaking. I couldn't imagine willingly going into that pressurized torrent for any reason, even in service of teaching my own daughter how to reach the top.

Another bend in my belly, but this time for a different reason: How can you have your daughter if we're always running? How will you take her spelunking and show her how to play games and teach her how to hunt and tuck her in and kiss her goodnight if all we do is flee?

The words had been crawling around in my skull like something with clawed feet: every now and then, it would trip, and I'd get an ugly scratch, a painful reminder. I'd been certain that I'd moved beyond my ancient desire to have a family and sire a child, but since Jude had uttered those wickedly shrewd (or shrewdly wicked) words, I'd been unable to forget them, and like Mag, they made my gut ache and twist and churn, because...

My teeth scraped together. No, he was being spiteful. It doesn't mean that he's right.

But it was a bitter pill to swallow,  because even if I could deny what he'd actually said, I couldn't deny the current state of our lives — if you could call them lives. For the longest, we'd been unable to do as simple a thing as go to the same bed two nights in a row, or know anyone outside of ourselves and Magdalene.  But...was that because of Titus's presence, always lurking in the background? Or was this self-imposed, as Jude had suggested? It had been two years since we'd last seen the man in person, and months since we'd last run into any of his soldiers. Did that matter?

My hyperactive gut clenched, so that must've meant yes — as long as Titus was alive, I was convinced that they were still out there, and so we could not relax, or stay still. If we did, we were no longer safe.

Where? Jude had asked, and, How much longer?

The truth was, I didn't know. Another six months? A year? Two? Five? Ten? When could we be sure that Titus had lost interest in us?

We couldn't. That made the danger infinite. It could be that Titus would look for us until we died of old age, knowing nothing of the world and its sights and sounds and waterfalls... Nothing except for running. Of looking over our shoulders in fear.

"Jude." I spoke because I couldn't bear thinking about this anymore, thinking about whether or not Jude was right, and whether that this, striking forevermore out into the middle of nowhere, was a mistake. "Come on. We need to find Magdalene."

Jude stared up at the falls and their glorious thunder a moment more before silently dipping beneath the waves. I followed, wishing that I could lie down a moment and sleep away this sudden heavy dose of dismay that had settled over me.

But we needed to locate Mag, and I didn't want any more bad dreams.

***

We saw merfolk and then, thank Arceus, we found Mag.

There were three of the seafolk: a father and his two boys, if I had to guess. They didn't look like Cora, but they reminded me of her: each of them had a basket swinging from their arms, and the father had an additional sack across his shoulders. Scavengers? No, it looked like they were collecting rocks and shells: their baskets overflowed with them.

I also noticed that the father had a weapon: a curved thing that was almost but not quite a sickle. For a moment, seeing its blade glint in the light, I felt a flash of fear, and then felt stupid for it: there was no blood on the blade. But even if he had somehow wound up in combat with Magdalene using that weapon... He'd've been dead as a doornail.

All the same, they all looked highly cautious...spooked, even — as they passed over the far hill, toward wherever it was they called home, the father looked over his shoulder several times. And suddenly I was uncertain: had he seen Magdalene, or something like Magdalene around here somewhere?

A quarter of an hour later, Jude tugged on my arm. "Blood?" he rasped.

Yes, I thought, and my heart punched up into my throat. There was blood on the current, a lot of it, stretching like a rusty cirrus cloud into the far distance. Blood was highly dangerous underwater — waking up to Cora and a gaggle of Sharpedos had proven that — and while I had no reason to believe that it was Mag excreting it, I knew that I had to investigate anyway. The alternative was unknowingly leaving her to bleed to death, after all.

So we followed the coppery trail, me in the lead, keeping Jude close to my side. I scanned our surroundings as I went, keeping an eye out for other carnivorous Pokémon that fancied the taste of red, but saw little save for a Wartortle drifting lazily by and a Seadra clinging to a nearby stalk of kelp, tending to his newborn fry.

The blood trail led us to an underwater meadow filled with coral and seagrass that was suspiciously empty. And that was more of a sign than anything else that Mag was not far away — it would've been rife with sea life otherwise.

We stopped at a mass of sea flora resembling a rainbow-colored bush. Magdalene's scarred dorsal fin rose up in the middle of it, as well as a red smokestack of blood. I stared at it a moment, suddenly blinded by a strike of ice cold fear, and this too, was familiar — it was the same fear I'd felt when I'd first laid eyes on Darwin sucking her into that Pokéball back in the waters of Slateport City.

Jude drifted up to my side, snapping me out of it. "Is...she...?"

No! But I didn't dare say it aloud — speaking in that moment felt like standing on cracked ice, and I felt that if I uttered a syllable, Mag really would die. So I bent forward and pushed aside bunches of brittle coral, and let the situation speak for itself.

Mag lay on a bed of crushed sea flowers and tube worms, and when I moved she jerked. Alive. But badly injured. By... Needles? No, that was stupid. The shafts were wooden, the ends splintered. Behind me, Jude peered in over my shoulder.

"Arrows?" he said, and shifted forward.

"Wait," I said, barring him with an arm. Mag's eyes were open now, and almost black, which told me a lot of things: she was weak. She was in great pain. She might not have been fully conscious, and therefore, might not recognize us and could attack on sight. I swallowed. Coming this close in the first place had probably been a bad idea...

"Come over here, Jude," I said. "Let's let her get a good look at us."

Slowly, we drifted back and over, until we were floating a ways away, clearly in her line of sight. Her eye followed us, blinking rapidly. After a moment, they slowed, and her eye drifted closed once again. Slowly, I came forward, and eased a hand down on her flesh. She twitched...but did nothing.

"Okay," I breathed. "Good. It should be okay now, Jude." He came down quietly, and I cast my eyes over the body of my close friend and sucked in a breath. "What have you done to yourself, old doll?"

It wasn't just one, or five, or ten — there were at least two dozen arrows protruding from her body like the quills of a Linoone, each of them feeding blood into the red column rising up from her body. It was horrifying to see, and aweing at the same time — a lesser Pokémon would've been stone dead right now.

"What the hell happened?" I asked, even though I knew I wasn't going to get an answer. A better question was how and who — how had she gotten riddled with arrows, and who had done it to her?

"Let's...take them...out," Jude said. He reached down a grasped one with his hands.

"Wait—" I said, and Mag jerked in pain, so hard that it drove her clear of the coral, back out into the sand. Jude was yanked along, and wiped out when she stopped, spinning in a complete loop up into the water. I came after him and grabbed his shoulder.

"Idiot!" I snapped. "She's liable to bite you if you screw around like that."

He glared at me. "You wanna...leave them?"

I set my teeth. I gazed back over at the injured Sharpedo. "Let's be careful," I growled. "And give her some warning this time."

We went back over. I located a giant rock, placed it between her teeth, and told her to brace herself, and we got to work. She managed to stay still, save for a shudder of pain every now and then, even though it took us a good ten minutes to get out the first arrow. It was lodged in deep into her muscle, so deep that we had to widen the wound to pull it out: Jude dug in with his fingers, and I made a deep incision with my knife, and at least the projectile came free.

Unfortunately, the tip had plunged in so far that it had struck open a blood vessel — a vein, to my relief, as the blood rushed out in a steady stream instead of spewing like a geyser, but it was a shock just the same when it burst out right into our faces. Jude gagged, and I swore and tore off my glove.

"Mag," I hissed as I felt my hand and the surrounding water heat up. "Take a breath, and keep still."

I placed my super-heated hand onto her flesh, and she bucked wildly, rising off the seafloor and writhing in agony. But she didn't go far, and I managed to keep my hand on the wound long enough for the flesh to weld shut, and for the blood flow to cease. I yanked my hand away. "Done, done," I said.

But she was up now, and she kept moving, turning in furious, agonized circles, her jaws working compulsively. Jude and I watched, and the sight of all those arrows sticking out of her hurt my heart, especially upon seeing one jutting from her lip, and another the orbit of her eye. Fury welled up a moment later.

Who did this to you, Mag?

"One...d-down," Jude said. He was holding the arrow, turning it over in his hand. There was a dark look in his eye. "Ready for...the next one...?"

"Mag," I said, trying to call her down. But she didn't stop — she kept going and going in those circles, working out the pain, and my stomach sank. I rarely ever saw her like this — taking out that damned arrow had hurt a lot more than it had going in. Frustrated, I replaced my glove, and the heat slowly fell out of the water.

"There has to be a better way," I said. If this recovery dance was any indication, then cauterizing her wounds with water-shaping was going to take forever, and we didn't have forever — she'd had those arrows in her long enough, enough that they were already beginning to set into her flesh, fuse with her muscles. They had to come out soon.

Jude was studying the arrow. "Medicine?" he asked.

"Not enough." Some for me and Jude, sure, but nowhere near the amount required to treat this many injuries, especially if some of them went down to veins and arteries. I'll bet Kuma would have plenty. The traitorous thought snuck through my head like a snake, and I quickly dismissed it. Delphirius was days away.

But maybe... Maybe another seafolk community was close by. I remembered the wary merman with the sickle, and his two sons. I straightened. Brira, Triteloch, Silin, Coralora... They're all out here somewhere, aren't they?

"Jude," I said, and quickly explained my line of thinking. He fiddled with the end of the arrow.

"But...what if they...don't wanna...help a...Sharpedo?" he asked.

I remembered the cautious look in the merman father's eye, and my shoulders slumped. The answer was clear, but the déjà vu was there again, and it made me ill. "One hour," I said.

Fury flashed across his face. "You're...leaving me...here?"

"Mag is with you," I pointed out; as I spoke, she finally slowed in her circling, and came down to the silt behind Jude, looking worn out. "She's injured...but she won't let anything happen to you. You'll hide in the kelp and you'll keep her company until I get back."

His face twisted. "M-maybe...you should...stay here. I can...go and...you can...pull out...more and...heal...her...wounds."

"How long do you want to keep arguing?"

We stared each other down for a moment, and ultimately, he gave in, and went back to fiddling with his arrow, hurt on his face. I wished that there was more that he could do to help... But there just wasn't. He was too weak to swim after those merfolk and find their community, and he was too weak to pull out any more of Mag's arrows while I was gone. All he could do was sit and wait... Like always.

I got them settled back into the flora, and then kicked up. "Maybe help her sleep, if she gets too uncomfortable."

He grunted.

I took off, heading back the way we'd come... Only to stop as Jude cried out behind me.

"Nero!"

I froze and spun around, to see him coming back out of the coral. I went back. "What is it?"

His eye was wide and shining in a thunderstruck way I didn't like. "Crossbow," he rasped. He extended a scarred hand, which held the extracted arrow.

I gave it a stricken look. "What?"

"It was...bothering me," Jude rasped. "Why it looked...like this...why it was...so deep." He shook his head. "Crossbow. Enough...force. Maybe...many crossbows."

Thunder stormed between my ears, and I went down into his face, feeling my eyes and mouth pulling from the corners. "What the hell are you saying to me?" I said.

He didn't reply, and the claustrophobia returned, closing down around my core, depressing my ribs. It can't be, part of me whispered, but Jude held undeniable proof in his scarred hands, and a cold, sharp fear stole over me, slow and cruel as frostbite. Yet inside that fear, there was no surprise. From the start, since before the trench, I'd known that it would only be a matter of time. And now it seemed the time had come: the walls were closing in, and the cracks through which to escape were disappearing. I turned, staring out across the sea, my body heavy as though with lead.  Suddenly, the empty plain felt like it was crawling with eyes. Titus's eyes.

"Get back into the coral," I hissed. "Forty-five minutes."

He went, and so did I.

***

Grimness or despair — I couldn't quite decide. The seabottom passed in one giant blue slurry, but behind my eyes, all I could see was Jude holding up that bloody arrow. Crossbow.

Yes, of course — underwater, it was the only kind of weapon strong enough to propel an arrow that deep into Magdalene's flesh. And... Maybe... Many crossbows.

Horror took another turn through me, and I was nearly crippled by the impulse to just duck and hide, even though the plain remained mostly empty. Maddeningly empty. Where are they? Magdalene had gotten injured within the last fourteen hours... Yet Jude and I had seen no armed or armored merfolk in our search for the Sharpedo, save for that father and his sickle. Yet the knowledge that they were out there, so close that they'd actually wounded Mag... I wanted to be sick.

Hands, Nero! I tried, balling them into fists at my side, but my growing panic was a wild, unhinged thing, and no amount of hand-wringing could abate it. Especially considering where I was going: towards what I hoped was a merfolk community, filled with fins that would later be able to identify me—

Stop. Focus on swimming. Focus on getting the medicine!

I tried... And failed.

But I wound up back near the giant waterfall, which pounded the surface relentlessly, and managed to focus long enough to spot the hill where I'd seen the three mermen disappear earlier. I shot out towards it, beating my tail hard, craving the distracting ache of screaming muscles. I soared over the hill, and across the fields of sand beyond, until a gently-grading slope appeared. It descended down between two huge, cool shadows — islands, I thought, two of them, and this valley pressing in between them. I went down, keeping an eye out for merfolk, but saw none — just a lot of rock, coral, and seaweed.

I paused at the seafloor, heaving in a taxed breath, and wondered at how long ago I'd seen that merman and his sons come this way. An hour? Forty-five minutes? I wasn't sure, so I had no idea of how far ahead or near they might be. Might have a better view at the top of the slope.

Before I could start up the other end of the valley, I spotted something to my left, tucked into a cleft split into the rocky mass that was the western island. It was something too bright to be an oceanic plant, so bright that it could only be artificial. Garbage?

Yes — it was a huge, white dish, the kind humans cooked big, meaty meals in, and was scratched and worn from its new life on the ocean floor. As I came up to investigate, I found something inside: a giant glob of gelatinous goo, packed with white spheres that I instantly recognized as Magikarp eggs. It reminded me of the jelly that Cora's mother Augo made, except this stuff appeared to serve as a preservative, rather than a snack.

Behind the dish was a crate filled with bundles of neatly folded cloth, and a chipped cup holding half a dozen broken writing utensils. It was all organized and neatly packed away, so clearly it belonged to a merperson, but... I leaned back, scanning the valley for any sign of grotto openings or other natural abodes. But there was nothing—these two distant walls of rock, and a sandy valley in between. So why is this stuff stashed here?

I peered further into the narrow crack, squinting in the gloom. Were there any medical supplies? I thought I saw another container in the back, one that looked like a big bowl... Until it moved.

I jerked back, and narrowly avoided getting my nose cut off by a scowling Cloyster. It emerged slowly from the crevice, glowering and angling its dorsal spikes at me. I backed up further, giving it a generous berth. My eyes went back to the shadow behind it, and I grunted, "Sorry. Is that stuff yours?"

"No, it's ours — are you trying to steal our merchandise, stranger?"

My head snapped up, and I spotted a merman two or three years my senior coming down the island's side. Like me, he was a Milotica, and his hair surrounded his head in a loose, braided crown. He was carrying a green plastic pot in both hands, filled to the brim with rusty nails, screws, and thumbtacks. He stopped a meter above the sand, and the Cloyster finished its way out of the crevice, coming to land before the boy. It looked ready for a fight.

"You must be new around here," the boy growled. "We don't tolerate thieves, not anymore."

I lifted my hands, just in the case the Cloyster got ideas about launching itself at me. "I didn't know," I said, my lip curling. "I'm not a thief."

"Sounds like something a thief would say." He scrutinized me, looking like he was trying to decide whether or not to give his Cloyster the go-ahead.

"Do you have any medicine packed into those things of yours?" I asked.

The boy shifted his bucket of nails and tacks to under one arm and narrowed his eyes at me. "Is that what you were rooting around for?"

"Yes. My friend is injured, and I don't have enough to treat her. There was food and clothing there, so I figured..." I shrugged.

He was suspicious. "Would you have stolen it if there was some there?"

I imagined the crossbow arrows bristling from Mag's body and said, bluntly, "Yes." Pause. "With a guilty conscience."

The boy's affronted expression told me that he didn't know what to make of this curt conversation. "I think you'd better move along, stranger, before the rest of my family gets here."

Great. Though I wasn't surprised: this was not the first and certainly not the last time my poor social skills had failed me. Scowling, I backed off, feeling frustrated. "Will you tell me where the nearest merfolk community is?" I asked.

"Why? So you can pickpocket them?"

I glowered at him a moment, and then headed off. If he wasn't going to help, there was no point in uttering another word.

But I hadn't gone more than ten meters when another merperson appeared out of the blue — actually, he'd been hiding behind a protruding half-wall of stone stretching out from the island landmass.

Wait, no, not hiding — the old merman, a bald Karpon with a beard half a league long, was surrounded by a miniature dumping ground of junk, which he was working to arrange into... Something, I had no damn idea. There was a table in the middle of the mess, covered by a checkered handkerchief, with a couple of canisters of a substance called "Play-doh" on one end, and a jar of human coin currency in the other. He looked up as I came into view, and gave me a wave.

"Good morn! Out early, are we? Give me a moment, I'm almost ready." He arranged a broken-toothed rake, a mop handle, and an old, rotting branch side-by-side, and then glanced up at me again, frowning. "Haven't seen you around before," he noted. "Passing through?"

"Yes," the boy from earlier growled; he had come right up behind me, with his Cloyster struggling to keep up. "And hopefully this is the last we'll see him. He was pawing through my merch earlier, Akiva — I think he's trying to score some five-fingered discounts before Market opens."

"If I wanted your egg jelly, I would've already eaten it," I snapped.

The old man Akiva laughed. "You've missed out, boy — Lynden makes the best egg jelly this side of Hoenn, the kind grown men fight wars over! So, pray tell, if it wasn't the egg jelly that your heart was set on...what is?" He waved. "Oh, off with you, Lynden — I doubt this youngster wants to steal any junk from my little shop. He appears a bit too high-minded for that."

Lynden muttered something under his breath, but turned in went. When he was gone, through gritted teeth, I said, "I'm just looking for the nearest community. I need medical supplies."

Akiva tilted his head, waiting for more. When I didn't give him any, he said, "You're in luck, youngster: you've found Coralora."

Thank Arceus! I spun around, feeling excited color bloom in my cheeks. "Where?"

"Here." He gestured, encompassing the valley. "Well...not here exactly, this is just where we hold Market, but the merfolk that make up our community live around here. This is just where we all gather. You understand?"

"Do you know anyone who has medical supplies?"

"Certainly. There's not one vendor who specializes... But everyone's got a stash, here or there. Hell, I've got a stash." He lifted a brow. "Interested?"

My eyes scanned the stuff heaped around him. As before, it all looked like junk. "Where is it?"

He cocked his head again, this time in the other direction. "What's your offer?"

My patience began to run out. "Offer?"

"We are not a community known for our altruism, boy. I have something you want, and you'll give me something for it in turn: this is how commerce is conducted."

I glanced at the jar of pennies, quarters, and nickels at the end of his little table. "I don't have any money."

"Neither do I! Or anyone else in the seabottom for that matter — currency is a relic from the Era of the Kingdoms, don't you know that?" He peeked at the pack on my back. "What's in your bag?"

I reluctantly shrugged off one strap, then hesitated. "Show me the medicine, first."

He deliberated. "All right."

He turned around, rummaging through something sitting behind him: several large plastic bags. As he did, I noticed more shadows moving up and down the valley. Just like Akiva and Lynden, every one of them had an assortment what looked like rubbish from afar, only sorted in a variety of containers: tweezers and utensils in cups, stacks of clothing in bags, broken chair legs in boxes and crates, seaweed rope bundled into parcels. These things were set up on top of pieces of eroded furniture, against the island wall, or atop of giant blankets laid out on the sand, until the valley quickly developed into a corridor of crudely erected shops. It all reminded me of the on the Strip, where I'd been arrested by Officer Stanson, only nowhere near as congested.

"Here we are," Akiva said. "Take a gander." He'd extracted an old soda bottle from somewhere in those backs, packed end to end with silt.

"Sand," the old Karpon explained, "mixed with what humans might call 'top-shelf whiskey'. Makes for a good disinfectant. What you're lucking for?"

I recalled the way Cora had cleaned out my Carvanha bites, and nodded. "Could be you're trying to offload a bottle of sand on me," I said.

Akiva's smile was appreciative. "Smart boy! All right, take a breath." He unscrewed the top, and then waved his hand towards me, bringing the sour tang of alcohol into my gills. The sand was soaked in whiskey all right. He screwed the cap back on.

"Is that your only bottle?" I asked.

He brought out two more. "Might could throw in some bandages too, if you like."

"The bottles are enough."

He raised an expectant brow.

I shrugged my bag off fully and emptied it, cursing silently as I did. I didn't really have anything of note in here: our extra clothing, clean dressings for injuries, the needle and thread I'd forgotten to return to Hattice, my knife, the leftover Gorebyss meat. Akiva studied my belongings, looking unimpressed.

"Not a lot there," he remarked.

I lifted the knife. It's not the strongest weapon in your arsenal anyway, is it? "You can use this for...a lot of things," I said lamely.

"Aye. But three bottles of disinfectant for a measly knife? I'm going to need more, boy." He narrowed his eyes. "Your earrings..."

"No," I said immediately.

"Just one, then—"

"No."

He stared at me a moment, and shrugged. "Then I'm afraid there's no deal."

"What about these clothes?" I lifted one of the shirts, black and long-sleeved.

"We've no shortage of cloth around here."

I held up Hattice's sewing tools. "Do you have a shortage of needles?"

"For what purpose would I need a needle?" He reached out, unfolding the browning kelp that held the food. "What kind of meat is that?"

"Gorebyss meat."

Something flashed through his eyes: a look of stark hunger. Not the desperate kind...but the kind that said he hadn't had anything tasty to eat in a while. "You lie. You, catch one of those slippery things?"

I tore a piece off one of the remaining fillets and extended it to him. He popped it into his mouth, chewed...and that light grew brighter.

"How much is there?"

I showed him. "Will this suffice?"

"For three bottles of disinfectant? No. But..." Akiva plucked one of the bottles and stashed it behind him. "The meat and your knife for two. I think that would work. Deal?"

"Deal," I said readily. I pushed my stuff to him, and he handed the bottles to me, and I took them both with relief.  Akiva, in turn, took my knife and cut off another portion of the Gorebyss meat, stuffing it greedily into his mouth.

"Nice doing business with you," he said around a full mouth. "Mr...?"

I didn't give him my name, not because I didn't want to, but because I suddenly couldn't speak. I'd spotted something far over his shoulder, a large group of merfolk descending through the other side of the valley, and it was like all of my nightmares collectively coming to life and playing out right in front of my eyes.

But I'd expected this... Right? Crossbow, Jude had said. Maybe...many crossbows. And here they were, held at rest by nearly two dozen men in armor. But this was not the homemade, makeshift apparel of Aaron and the laid-back Delphirius sentries: this was authentic protection made by a blacksmith in a forge: sculpted breastplates, pointed gauntlets, helms plumed with seaweed, heavy, rounded pauldrons... All of it red. Blood-red.

Hands, I thought as I watched them approach, keep it in the hands, Nero. Not my heat, or my frustration — this time, I fought to keep my consciousness from flying straight the hell out of my body, especially when they finally came and went by in a long, armed column.

Over the passing months, as Jude and I had encountered soldiers less and less often, my paranoia had been such that I'd been waiting for them to suddenly appear one day out of the blue, and drag us kicking and screaming back to Titus. Yet now that they were in front of me, and now that I was seeing with my own eyes that my fears had been realized, that Titus's taint truly had spread to the Hoenn Region, and that those walls truly were closing in on us... Smoke passed across my eyes, and the light of the surface waters became pointed, like a starburst. Bile swam in the back of my throat, and I choked a little, trying to keep it in.

"You all right, son?"

Terror, flashing down through my spine: one of the soldiers had stopped, and was looking me right in the eye, and the desire to bolt was overpowering. Don't look at me. Don't talk to me! But I couldn't run — an armored hand appeared on my shoulder, and my flesh crawled beneath my dive suit.

"You look like death," the soldier remarked.

"Aye," Akiva agreed with a sudden concerned frown. "What's come over you, youngster?"

In that moment, I was deeply grateful that I hadn't given Akiva my name. I tried to pull out of the soldier's grip, and was successful. "Nothing," I rasped brokenly. "Just a dizzy spell."

"Well, that's good," the soldier said. "I feared you were ill for a moment. But you'd tell us if you were, wouldn't you? Our platoon has medicine, if you need it."

"Shh, Cap'n, don't tell him that!" Akiva said with a laugh. "We've got things to sell in trade for medicine, don't you know?"

"Beg your pardon, Akiva," the Captain said with exasperation. "Now, if you'll excuse me."

One breath, two breaths, and when I finally turned, the Captain had caught up to his men, who were waiting for him at the bottom of the far slope. He reached the head of the procession, and they continued on. In the direction of Magdalene, of Jude. We've got to get the hell out of here!

"You sure you're all right, boy?" Akiva asked.

"I'm fine. Goodbye." I launched up from the seafloor...then stopped, as if jerked to a halt by a hook. Damn! Part of me realized that while snatching up Jude and making wake was certainly the right course of action... It couldn't be the only one. I needed a strategy. Which meant that I needed information.

I went back down to Akiva, who raised a brow at me. "Those soldiers..." Shamefully, I trailed off — I was so overwhelmed that I didn't know what to ask first.

Luckily, the old man filled in the gaps: "Oh aye! A welcome addition to our community. We've had trouble with...trouble in the past, you see: dangerous water-types flock these sunnier waters, and we've often had an issue with passerby up and running with market merchandise." He winked at me. "Then these lads appeared one day, and offered our community more structure and protection, and they've been here ever since. Has been wonderful for business!"

"When was that?" I demanded. "When they 'appeared one day'?"

He pulled at his long beard. "Hmm, can't say exactly. In my old age, time gets a bit fuzzy, you understand... Maybe three months ago?"

Three months? That meant that these soldiers had been in Coralora longer than Jude and I had been in the Hoenn Region! How did we not run into them sooner? Well, there were probably lots of reasons for that — I guessed it was because we'd entered Hoenn from western waters, and these soldiers had come from the east...

"How many are there?" I asked.

"A lot," Akiva said. "Or so they say. As for Festus's boys, I've only seen a few dozen."

"That's his name? The Captain?"

"Aye."

Festus. I rolled the name around in my skull, but found no recognition. Did he join the Army after I left? That, at least, was a relief.

"One more question," I said.

"You sure are interested in these men, boy," Akiva said, looking intrigued. "Why so curious?"

I ignored him: "Where are they going, just now?"

Akiva shrugged. "To do whatever soldiers do," he said. "Patrols, probably — like I said, there're a lot of predatory Pokémon who skulk the sand in these parts. Why, I had it from Lynden that they drove off one monster of a Sharpedo earlier this morning!"

My jaw wobbled, and I barely held my face together from breaking out into something terrified or crazed or both. "Thanks," I managed, and then I left, not stopping this time after I rocketed up from the seafloor.  Titus's soldiers, and they might be headed straight for Mag and Jude! I let that drive my forward, and tried to forget the rest of what Akiva told me — I could mull over it later.

I swam so fast that I quickly caught up with Captain Festus and his group of soldiers — it looked like they were splitting up. A couple of clusters stayed put, while another continued forward, spreading out over the far hills. Searching? For Mag? I wanted to think not, but I could see the scenario too clearly: when they'd first encountered Magdalene, they'd panicked and filled her with arrows and pulled back. She'd stumbled away, addled with pain but very much alive, and the soldiers had reported this to Captain Festus later in the day. The Captain, after a night of deliberation, decided that Mag was a great risk to the community of Coralora — which was true — and had marshaled off of his soldiers together in a bid to kill her once and for all.

Now they were ranging, searching.

As I drew closer, I heard one of the soldiers cry, "Captain! Blood!"

My head snapped up, and I indeed saw a low-hanging cloud of bronze snaking from the west. That'll lead them straight back to Mag!

I kicked furiously, climbing so high through the water column that the top of my head broke the surface, and I jetted west, passing over the soldiers like an arrow fired from their weapon of choice. In record time I reached the giant waterfall again, and my eyes frantically searched the seabottom, looking for that empty coral reef. It took a maddeningly long time to spot it — my panic seemed to turn the seafloor into the surface of an alien planet.

When I found it, I started long-calling before I was anywhere near: "Jude! Mag! Get up!"

Jude appeared out of the brush, his face white. "What's...happ—"

"You were right," I said in a hurry, diving into the coral. "Crossbows and soldiers, Jude. And they're coming this way, looking for Mag. Mag! Get your ass up!"

My Sharpedo did not move — for a moment I feared the worst, until I saw her jaw creaking weakly back and forth, and her gills rippling. I slapped her side. "Mag, up. Now! Mag!"

Jude tugged on my sleeve. "C-can't," he said. "F-faint...ed."

Goddammit! I grabbed one of her arrows violently and pulled. Nothing, except for a fresh stream of blood. Cursing, I pulled on the arrow as hard as I could, very aware of how the head tore rifts through her flesh and muscle as it came out on a current of red. She didn't move.

I tore off my glove; Jude's fingers tightened in my arm.

"Ner—"

I ignored him, and once I had the water to a boil, I slammed my hand down on her fresh wound. "Mag, wake up right now!"

She came alive like a volcanic eruption, and shot straight up like a missile, writhing in agony. Sh— I launched up after, long-calling again.

"Mag! Mag, can you hear me? Mag, come back down here!"

Again, she didn't respond, and I think she couldn't hear me — she was awake, but she wasn't lucid, still in the throes of agony after I'd left a superheated handprint on her side. She spun around in rapid circles, eyes black, and then shot off... Oh Arceus, straight towards the soldiers!

"Mag!" I roared. "Stop, STOP!"

She kept going, and I tore after her, but it was useless — it was like trying to keep up with a speeding car on foot.

But just as I was about to fear that she'd gone completely out of reach, I saw her stop about a thousand meters ahead — jerk to a stop, as something slammed into her side.

No! Yes — the soldiers, they were here, coming up over the hill, as they began shooting at Mag on sight, leveling her with half a dozen crossbows all at once. Two missed, but four hit their marks, puncturing her flesh and fins, and she twisted, blood leaving her in a cloud. She looked confused, and when a seventh soldier aimed for her eye, she lunged at him, her teeth closing down on his arm.

"NO!" I screamed, about the same time he did, but even as the words left my mouth, it was a thousand years too late — Mag bit off his arm about as easily as someone breaking a dead stick, and he jerked away, shrieking in agony and leaving behind a tide of furious red. His comrades wrangled him down to the seabed, and they backed off in a hurry, fleeing back down the hill and shouting for help. Mag turned to follow them, her eyes black and furious.

"MAGDALENE, STOP!" She jerked at my cry and turned to me. Her eyes were like boiling ink, empty and unfocused, and she moved jerkily towards me, her mouth opening.

Wha— I jerked to the side, and her teeth barely missed my arm, closing down around empty water only feet away. For a moment, I was frozen — it was not the first time I'd been attacked by my own Sharpedo, but I'd thought that those days were done. Long done.

But I could see that this wasn't entirely her fault — she was still only half awake, and couldn't tell friend from foe. My teeth set as she circled around me. "Get ahold of yourself!" I shouted. "Don't make me boil you, Mag!"

She didn't stop, came closer and closer, her jaws widening. I lifted a bare hand. "Don't, Mag! Stop, before I... Stop. STOP—"

Just before she could decapitate me, a tornado of blistering water erupted around her, knocking her entirely off course and spinning her up toward the surface. In the hands, Nero. In the hands. Suppress her, don't kill her. I smashed my teeth together, trying to contort the cyclone, and managed to get it to bend in an arc down towards the ground; the boiling water brought Mag down, crushing her against the seafloor. Seven seconds was all I could handle — I felt the veins in my skull threatening to burst open, and so with a roar, I let it go.

For a moment, there was a super-heated chaos as the vortex lost it shape, whipping the ocean into a wild undersea hurricane. Then, as all fires do, it burnt itself out — the water cooled rapidly, and stilled, save for the boiling torrent that remained around my naked hand. I didn't re-glove it — when the sand finally settled, I approached Magdalene slowly, gasping.

"N-Nero?" Jude appeared from behind a boulder, looking ruffled.

"Stay there." I tried to straighten my spine as I approached my Sharpedo. To no one's surprise, she was still alive, and still conscious, maybe moreso than she'd been before — red was beginning to creep back into her eyes, and when she looked groggily up at me, there was recognition there. Still, I erred on the side of caution.

"All right?" I asked mildly.

Her answer was to push up from the ground, and take a good look around. My cyclone had greatly homogenized the surrounding waters, but there was still a thin thread of blood floating at the top of the nearby hill, and she turned towards it, giving it a long, forlorn look.

"Don't worry about that," I growled. "They were shooting at you. Are you in your right mind now, Mag?"

She moved slowly against me, and her tongue flashed out, lapping at the scars on my tailfin. I re-gloved my hand.

"Jude." He came over, and I said, "Let's get the hell out of here. I think more soldiers are coming, and we don't want to be here when they arrive."

--

How Dangerous Are Sharks?

In writing this, I think I kept Magdalene pretty close to the true nature of sharks. Thanks to movies like Jaws, we all readily assume that sharks are territorial, like human flesh, and are hugely hostile, all the time. But while I do agree that they can be dangerous, I like to feel that it's in the same way that any animal can be dangerous: when hungry or when threatened.

NOAA concurs. Here's their statement on the matter:

"Sharks have been known to attack humans when they are confused or curious. If a shark sees a human splashing in the water, it may try to investigate, leading to an accidental attack. Still, sharks have more to fear from humans than we do of them. Humans hunt sharks for their meat, internal organs, skin, and  in order to make products such as shark fin soup, lubricants, and leather."

Source: https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/sharkseat.html

In fact, in many scenarios, sharks can appear downright friendly... Though I'm sure wild bears also appear downright friendly, until we do something to piss them off.

Take a look at this video of a man petting sharks. I thought it was interesting.

[There should be a GIF or video here. Update the app now to see it.]