image [https://imgur.com/1lXtTF6.jpg]

Swimming topside was a pain compared to going down. The heavy pressure of the water felt like it was fighting back against us as we paddled our arms upwards. Luckily, Marek had freaky strong strength, and I was made of durable materials, so it just took some time to get back to everyone.

As we stuck our heads out of the water, I immediately called out “Uncle!”

It was Indena who shot her gaze over the edge of the boat first, then Uncle and Yamin, then Mella.

Oh good, it looked like Samael was still on Yamin’s head. They must be getting along now, I hope.

“Young Mistress, status report,” Uncle said as he helped us up.

“We found a puzzle down there, and then we completed it. Then a big hangar door opened up. It connects with the building over there.” I pointed to the beam tower.

“What did she say?” Indena looked at Uncle. “Does that mean that you guys found a backdoor?"

Uncle apparently didn’t know anything about those hidden access ways. But he did think we should take advantage of them.

Even if we had a key and walked in through the front door, they probably already had it secure. But if we take the hangar entrance, which they likely didn’t know about, we could get in undetected.

“Good find, Shrimp.” Indena shook my shoulder as a show of accolades. Poor Marek didn't get any recognition though. “But does that mean we all have to swim down there? Fire mages and water don’t really get along too well.”

That was an issue, but Mella had us covered. She could use those magic jellyfish bubbles to let everyone breathe.

“No, you don’t understand…” Indena shook her head. “I can’t swim.”

Mella also apparently had us covered there. She summoned several spirit creatures into the water that looked like a cross between a dolphin and a shark with pitch black skin. She claimed they could take us around under the water.

“Why didn’t you let us use those before?” Marek asked.

“Because neither of you had an issue swimming, so I didn’t think of it.”

What a likely excuse.

Anyways, she even summoned one for me, so I just hopped onto the shark and it made a squeaky sound.

Since Mella was handing out her magic bubbles, she made sure to put one on Samael too. He was back on my head at this point supporting my side ponytail.

Like me, Uncle didn’t ‘need’ to breathe underwater, so he didn’t have a bubble on his head.

It looked like Yamin was hesitant to dive underwater so quickly. I tried asking what was wrong, but she kept looking nervously at Mella and dodging my question.

“Oi, witch.” Indena called out, figuring out the issue on her own. “How can we trust you wont pop these bubbles and kill us while we’re under?”

Mella had a blank stare, then looked at Yamin.

“I’d be a fool to not consider drowning the Evil One in such a vulnerable state. But I did promise not to until I have bested you in combat, fire mage. I won’t do such a thing.”

Could we trust a witch? So far, Mella’s been pretty honest with us, and she’s actually done a lot of good for our mission. I guess I trusted her enough to nickname her something decent. Indena on the other hand had a lot of bad words to call her.

“We have to take her word for now,” Uncle said. “Let’s not waste anymore time.”

He was right. We’d already wasted enough time messing around. We had a job to do.

Since I remembered the way, I was the one leading our group under. It took us much less time to get to the bottom with these sharks.

The hangar door was still open, so we were able to pass through the energy shields to get back inside.

“Space out!” Yamin cheered once she got a good look at the hangar. “This place looks like a futuristic space station.”

With how much she loved space, I’m not surprised she’d like this stuff. This place had the same design as Elysium, but the difference was that this was a bit more rustic looking and also smelled like fish.

“On the contrary, this structure is far older than you may think,” Uncle said, interfacing with the door to the tower basement hallway.

Indena placed her hand on each of us and sent a pulse of heat energy over our bodies, drying us off in seconds. She reluctantly reached for Mella, barely touching her shoulder to do the same thing for her. Indena’s face cringed the whole time she made contact.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Yuck!” Indena quickly stepped away when Mella was dry.

“I’m not diseased.” Mella scowled at the sentiment.

“Sure you aren’t, hippy,” Indena responded.

Those two will never get along. Indena didn’t get along with many people, but this might have been one of her more justified grudges.

“Thank you, Indena,” Yamin said to her.

“Thank you.” I followed her example.

The others also thanked her, eventually including Mella.

“Yeah, whatever.” Indena just waved her hands so we could get a move on.

"And thank you Mella," I said. "You helped us a lot too."

She looked a little indifferent at my gratefulness, but gave a nod.

"Is anyone...ah, never mind," Marek sighed, looking really disappointed.

"What's your problem?" Indena asked.

Yamin suddenly looked really sad, realizing what he might have been wanting to say.

"We should thank Marek too. He's saved us more than a few times already."

All at once, trying to keep our voices low, we said, "Thank you, Marek." He was looking a little chipper after that.

Uncle finally got the door open, then we carefully snuck into the hallway. Lucky for us, it was empty, so the bad guys probably hadn't even been down to this level.

Whenever we went into a facility made by my ancestors, that was functioning properly, my map automatically updated and gave me the layout. Sure enough, I could tell exactly where Uncle was leading us.

To a normal person, it looked like we were heading right down the hallway into a dead end. But actually, that was a trick to deter any intruders.

“Old man, what’s going on?” Indena asked. “There’s nowhere to go from here.”

The security room was supposed to be at the very end of the hallway, but all we found was a big wall with a railing and lights on it.

I checked my map again. The room Uncle was seeking was behind this wall.

“Uncle, how do we get in there?” I asked.

“Easy.”

Uncle sent out a signal that activated something inside the wall. Suddenly the wall started to light up like computer pixels and vanish away, one random square at a time.

Now we could see into the security chamber. You can imagine why this was hidden, since you’d be able to take control of the tower’s defenses from here. Unless you had high security clearance, this passage stayed closed.

The security room was like a big empty dome. It didn’t seem like there was anything really interesting about it at a first glance. But that's because it was in lockdown mode.

“Reminds me of a planetarium,” Yamin commented.

“It really does,” Marek agreed. “But what is this place?”

“This is a security chamber,” Uncle answered. “From here, we can figure out what’s going on in this structure.”

Uncle spawned a virtual keyboard midair. He interfaced with it until the hexagon patterns in the dome started to light up and activate.

The walls hummed a loud sound, then a wooshy noise passed through the air. Pixels of all kinds of colours blipped into existence around the walls, then slowly formed into different camera feeds of places across the tower.

“Wow…” Indena and Marek marveled.

“High tech…” Yamin said.

“This machinery baffles and disturbs me,” Mella awed.

Uncle and I had a very easy time processing all the info here, and we could use our heads to interact with the programs when needed. Both he and I had the highest security clearance of all dad’s creations. Loading up things like this was a cakewalk, assuming some hacker god jerk didn’t mess with it, like last year.

There were thirty different camera feeds. We scanned through each of them, seeing a few dozen pirates scattered around, doing pirate things. What really interested us was the beam emitter chamber at the top of the tower.

There was a man standing in front of the beam. Bio readings indicated he was organic, just like my human friends. He wasn’t like these ghost pirates.

“There.” Yamin pointed to the screen, being the first human to spot the man by sight. “Someone’s in there. Can you make that screen bigger?”

Uncle caused the beam emitter chamber feed to expand and fill the whole dome. The footage was hazy though, possibly caused by interference with the mana beam itself.

“Is that another pirate?” Indena asked.

“No, he just looks like a creep,” Yamin commented.

“Scanners indicate that there’s one sentient lifeform in that room," Uncle replied. “He’s alive like anyone else.”

I wonder who this guy could be. He looked like he was wearing some kind fancy red cape with a hood.

Too bad he was facing away from the camera. We couldn't tell any more of his details. We tried switching the camera angle, but either the central energy beam would get in the way, or his hood and cape bundled him up tight.

No matter who he was, he and his pirate friends were not supposed to be here. We’d have to deal with him.

"What's the plan, Old Man?" Indena asked. "We gonna head up there and off this guy?"

"I'd like to call in some reinforcements first."

Many bee constructs came down from the ceiling. They were known as wasps, about the size of a small car and very strong fighter bees. These were the warriors of dad’s bee army. I’ve seen them in action before and they’re really strong.

“Listen up.” Uncle stood stern and strong, like a general commanding his forces. “We have intruders in this facility, and you all will aid us in taking them out. Security Protocol 12; Maximum Prejudice.”

*Beep Beep*

“Order acknowledged,” said the wasp captain. “Entering search and destroy mode. Registering organics in the current room as friendly.”

More wasps appeared from above, and they instantly flew out of the room to go attack the ghost pirates and the one guy in the tower.

This was looking like it was going to be an all-out battle! These wasps would beat em’ up in no time flat!

“What should we do now?” I asked.

Uncle said we needed to go hunt down the man in the emitter room. He gathered up some wasps to help us and we made our way there, sealing up the security room behind us.

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