Robin woke up with a jerk, his arms and legs restrained, the water already in his mouth. He began to panic, thrashing wildly.
His arms and legs had apparently been partially submerged in mud and silt, and it spread through the water, clouding his vision. Robin pushed away from the bottom of the bay towards the top, but his feet sank immediately into the soft earth, and he did not move.
You are going to drown alone and completely out of sight, far too deep to ever be recovered. Wait… Deep! You... you idiot.
Robin felt himself relax, the tension instantly melting from his mind and body. He kicked his feet gently and felt himself shoot upwards a meter or so, clearing the dissipating cloud of soil he had created.
Mercy of the Deep… I forgot I can breathe underwater. Ugh, and this is also a great object lesson for why I should have already set up my “Programmed Instincts” ability. Holy Yoshi. I am glad no one saw that…
I should not have said that, Robin thought, darting nervous glances around himself, his paranoia growing.
There was nothing that he could see - no sea serpents rearing back to snatch him up, no sharks circling hungrily, and no Lions of the Sea aiming annoyingly powerful tiny guns at him.
Granted, there could be, but he did not see any amidst the towers of kelp, their air-filled nodes bobbing in a disturbingly animal-like fashion. That was enough for Robin, and he began to swim at an angle to the surface, preparing to launch himself from the water back to the ship.
A moment before he hit the surface and far too late to stop, he saw Tao, glowing gold, balanced on the top of the railing of the ship. His vest was open and flapping in the wind, the burnt front visible. Tao was dripping wet and shouting something angrily, but Robin’s eruption from the water interrupted him, causing him to jerk around to see the cause of the splash.
Something that Robin had experienced before in his life was that if a person looks at an object while moving, they will tend to move towards that object slightly. He had encountered this human tendency for the first time whilst on his bicycle, having crashed into the curb while looking at a dog in a nearby yard. While he did learn to pay better attention while on his bicycle, he had not yet mentally applied the lesson to his Ysari System-enhanced forms of movement.
Robin was launching directly at Tao. The man snapped a look forward, yelling something, and then grimaced, cursing and jumping backwards off the ship. Robin shot past where the gold-lit man had been, feeling like the Netflix interpretation of the anime version of Bullet Bill from Mario, immensely grateful that the man had not used Mario’s usual tactic in that situation and had instead chosen to abandon ship.
Unfortunately, May was directly in front of him, the glowing white machete held up in both hands.
Crapcrapcrapcrap! Robin realized he was screaming at her to move, and was not sure when he had started.
May smiled at him, the sheer nerve of her! She made a gesture, whispering something, and Robin felt his body slow and stop, his forward momentum spending itself in the open air.
May finished her gesture as Robin completely stopped and hung midair, and he consciously realized the entire process had taken less than a second from the time he left the water.
“Hey, I want to try something. I used my Webs of Starlight ability to make some invisible webs from starlight.”
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Robin interrupted her, waving awkwardly from the air.
“You say that so nonchalantly.”
May laughed, nodding. “Yeah, it is kinda weird, right? But also… super cool. It feels like something you’d see in an old cartoon made entirely for selling toys.” May spoke in a deep manly voice, putting her fists on her hips. “Starlight Stella Saves The Solar System!”
She laughed again. “Or something super cheesy like that.”
“Anway,” she continued, “I want to see if you can control the webs with your class ability or skill or whatever it is for you.” She glanced up at him, fake concern oozing from her facial expression. “You’re a little red, you should hurry up! Don’t want the webs to completely cut off your circulation.”
Robin nodded, eagerly taking the conversational out. He was not about to explain why Solar Savior Silver was well-written insightful social commentary, animated by geniuses. He had been on both ends of that debate before, and it was never fruitful for either side.
He focused on Reshape Webs, trying to feel the so-called webs that were suspending him like a badly-tangled marionette.
There is definitely something there… They feel a lot like how Opal feels when she is shifting between patches of light … or whatever it is that she does.
Robin forced his MANA into the webs, feeling them becoming dilute with his energy, and he willed them to release him to the deck.
He dropped to the deck of the ship immediately, willing the webs to return to their original shape as he clambered to his feet. He looked around, nodding absently as he scanned for threats, or pirates, or… anything.
“Why is it so quiet?”
May looked at him, raising an eyebrow. “That’s a dangerous thing to say.”
Robin shrugged, still nodding. “Yeah… but why, though?”
She moved over the edge of the railing and glanced over, carefully keeping her head from poking all the way over in case there were any surprises waiting for her. She spoke as she scanned the waves, turning to walk along the railing towards the bow of the ship after a moment.
Robin followed her, choosing to instead keep his eyes on the ship itself. The long metal boxes that were stacked up everywhere made a lot of space for potential ambushers to hide, and while he was fairly confident in his (not to mention May’s) perceptive abilities, there was always the possibility of a pirate class ability giving the hypothetical attacker the edge they would need.
“There were a few pirates at the building, but I’m pretty sure I got them all, at least, all the ones that were up there.” She walked for a moment before continuing, still scanning the dark, lapping waves, the fire on the shore twinkling like an apocalyptic party.
“There were no survivors, or dead people, or … anything. The people who worked here were gone.”
“I… I saw an ear. A pirate on the dock was using it as bait.”
He hesitated for a moment, and then spat out his phrase, the words coming out too fast.
“Are they cannibals?”
May did not say anything in response.
Robin moved to hop up on a small stack of the metal crates, easily clearing the two-meter jump. He landed on the top with a small thump, and was startled to hear a small cry come from inside the box, though it sounded like the noise cut off abruptly, like… someone was trying to hide.
I knew it.
Robin snapped out an arm blade, halting in place. After a single step, May turned to look at him, eyebrow raised. He gestured to the box on which he was standing, and May nodded, moving to his side atop the box with a small leap.
He pointed to the lock on the side of the box, a generic steel lock like might be on a storage unit or school locker. May nodded as she stood over it, brandishing the Machete of the Dark. Robin stepped off of the box onto the next lower layer, readying himself to remove the lid.
Robin held up three fingers, and then dropped them slowly, counting down. He bobbed his fist on one, and May hacked downward at the same moment, shearing through the lock and partway into the box, leaping off the side in the same motion, using her downward force to rip the machete clear of the metal.
A terrified scream rang out even as Robin yanked the lid open, and the sheer intense sincerity of the emotion in the exclamation gave him pause, his arm blade held up above the metal box like Van Helsing’s stake held over the chest of Dracula.
The box contained a middle-aged Caucasian man wearing the types of clothes that Robin associated with reality shows about deep-sea and Arctic fishing trawlers, which is to say, yellowed coveralls, a stocking cap, and boots. He was filthy, covered in what appeared to be his own excrement and waste, as well as…
Blood.
The man had blood caked over his mouth and neck, with some having reached the neck of his shirt. It was dried into his long grey and brown beard, some of it flaking off as he continued to scream, staring at Robin.
Robin had stopped looking at him quickly. The thing the man was holding was much more interest-worthy, although it raised far more questions than it answered.
May beat him to the question, speaking before Robin could even formulate what he wanted to ask.
“Why do you have a half-eaten human leg with you?”, she asked bluntly.