Hello again. Today Fen and I sunk three fleets, mix of Iceni and Shoto. Four Merchant convoys, which I thought were navy fleets. And one island. By accident.

It was a very small island, so, yeah. Not as bad as it sounds.

Though, I suppose if you asked the people who were living on the island when we sunk it they'd disagree. Good luck with that though. I don't think anyone survived.

On account of all the total destruction. Things may have gotten out of hand.

It all started with breakfast. A small Shoto fleet showed up out of the blue, and looked to be wanting to bombard the island we were on. Hard to enjoy your eggs and toast with all that going on. So I limbered up with some stretches, and got mentally prepare to ruin someones day.

Which is when Fen bet he could sink more of the ships than me. Obviously I accepted that bet. Because I was confident I would not lose to a four year old hat.

And so the hunt began.

Ripping winds shredded sails and sailors of the first ship with equal vigor.  I smashed happily through hulls of the second and third and left the wreckage behind me to quickly sink and sizzle from the gaping holes in them at water level. Winged goats divebombed the decks of the fourth and I left it burning merrily away. Content to let the ocean take them into its eternal embrace. Then Fen hit the last one with an air hammer, smashing into into splinters.

In the end we tied. Which was unacceptable. Fen claimed that it didn't count unless we had actually sunk the ship, so the one I set on fire but he ripped to pieces went to his score instead of mine! So we were tied, 2-2. I contested the ruling, but without a third party we were at an impasse. So I accepted the ruling as long as we continued the bet.

So we found another fleet. Another four warships, Iceni this time. We tied again. Then another. Shoto, tied. The merchant convoys were found in between the 2nd and 3rd fleet. The first had four ships, two and two. Tied. the second merchant convoy had five. Fen pulled ahead, three and two. The next we saw had four, tied again. Fen still leading and gloating. The final merchant fleet had five, and I managed to snag the difference. 

So, after a lot of fun and games, we were still tied. Merchants only counted for half a point per ship. Because hey weren't really armed. We started bickering about who had better firepower. I still stand by my arguments. Fire is fire! of course it has more firepower than wind and lightning. Unable to find any more ships, and with the sun at its zenith, we came across a small island. A very unlucky small island with a smoking volcano smack dab in the middle of it.

"See that?" I said to my confrontational headgear. "Thats a real disaster waiting to happen, explosions, molten rock, choking smoke, and boulders raining from the sky. Nothing else compares to an erupting volcano. Especially those overgrown farts you call 'hurricanes'." I'll admit, I was a bit salty at being evenly matched by a four year old, and a hat. So those words were mostly spite.

I was looking for a fight, and Fen was determined to give me one.

Long story short, Fen would rustle up a hurricane, and I would rile up the volcano. Then we'd sit back and watch to determine which was the true disaster.

I swear. It sounded like a good idea at the time. Neither of us gave a second thought about the small port and city nestled beneath the volcano. I regret that.

I flew up and into the volcano, plunging down into the magma and then digging deeper. Down, down, down, into the depths of the molten mess I was determined to make go kablooey. I couldn't really breathe, so I had to move quickly. Once I figured I was deep enough, I reached down with my will. Deep, far deeper than I had ever seen or gone my will delved. I never reached bottom. My mental tether stretched taut long before that.

I pulled the heat down there, towards me. Upwards, as much of it, and as fast as I could manage. I was starting to really run low on breath, so when the sudden surge and upflow reached me I happily rode it up to the the surface. And when I burst from the crown of the volcano I immediately caught a lightning bolt with my face.

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Surging streamers of light and explosive noise were dancing fitfully through the air. They were joined shortly after by the fruits of my labor. A rumbling wave of molten stone accompanied by a blast of noise so deafening that I felt the world shake under its roar. The thunder was muted, even as lightning stepped and slid between the boulders of rapidly cooling magma that filled the air around me.

Far overhead I could vaguely make out a dot. Correctly assuming it was Fen I flew up to meet him. Once we were on the same level I took a look around. The lighting seemed to be coming from nowhere and everywhere. Red ribbons ran down the sides of the lush volcano. Burning paths through the underbrush. Waves of ash swept down slope as well. Carrying gray choking death before the relatively slow lava flows. A dense cloud of black smoke drifted from the top of the volcano, and occasional rumbles announced the arrival of more lava streams and lava bombs that filled the air.

Before that black cloud reached us, however, it began to shift. Slowly swirling around itself and ourwards. I looked at where it was headed. From all directions, heavy gray clouds were rushing towards us. I cannot describe the towering thunderheads adequately. The way they kept shifting and swirling as the sped inwards, it defies description. The occasional burst of lighting and thunder highlighted their beauty with a hint of menace.

Then, the closing clouds met the black volcanic smog. The denser black smoke dove down, and the already towering thunder heads shot even higher. Blocking the island from our view. The sharp roaring cracks of thunder, accompanied by the flashes of lightning played counterpoint to the deep rumbly blasts from the still erupting volcano.

Unable to see clearly whose disaster was winning we dove into the clouds. Which was a mistake. The flying semi molten bombs were being rapidly cooled by the rain inside the storm, causing them to explode into razor sharp shrapnel. These fragments seemed to somehow piss off the hurricane, as the rapidly scattering dust and shrapnel almost always got hit by lightning.

Leading to electrified clouds of volcanic glass filling the air and pummeling the ground. A ground that was being rather badly shaken by the unrelenting shudder of each eruption. So Fen and I tried to dodge around the lightning-knife-clouds that danced among the insanely strong winds and pounding rain within the super storm we had made. While the poor city below us was torn burned shaken and shattered by the storm we had wrought.

We dove deeper, nearing the ground. I can't say if we intended to try and save some of the poor souls down there, but if we were, then we were far too late. The ash flows had mixed with the rain. Making mudslides of runny gray sludge. They had covered most of the island already, and were now bleeding into the seas around it. Anyone down there was dead before we could get to them. The seas around the island actually boiled and steamed. Looks like my eruption had triggered a few other nearby undersea volcanoes.

Pretty shortly after that the island started to crack apart.

Ragged crevices cleaving through the earth, and rapidly filling with both chilling rain and boiling lava. The blasts from the original volcano were only increasing in noise and intensity. And at this point we had to get the fuck out of the mess we had made. Flying straight was impossible, since we couldn't see anything, and the winds refused to cooperate, So we started making our way outwards and upwards along with the swirling winds.

Things were officially out of our hands by this point. I couldn't possibly stop the eruptions, and Fen had no way of calming the winds.

So we fought our way free of the nightmarish super storm we had made, licking our many many wounds, and watched.

Which was a bit before the huge waves started showing up. Massive crashing behemoths of water came from all directions, no idea why, or where they had originated. But damn if they weren't there. The water around the island would actually run away for a bit, probably to complain to its big brother about the mess we had made. With the ocean gone we could make out the half-dozen volcanoes that had been covered before.

The the big-brother waves came in. Thank goodness they're loud, because otherwise we would have been caught completely off guard by them. Possibly even caught up in them and carried back into the storm. They crashed into the super storm, vanishing into the dense rain and clouds. Massive blasts of steam and sound announced their arrival on the island.

This cycle kept repeating. Ocean runs away, big-brother wave comes, huge smashing sounds. The sun started to descend, and the super storm kept on raging. Finally, within only a few hours of its conception, the storm cleared. And the island was gone. Not a trace, besides the steaming ocean and ashy water.

So, we decided to just be tied today. Next time though, I will win.

Dinner was some pasta at a restaurant on a different island we got to just before sundown. Quite tasty really. Red sauce and little pockets of noodle filled with some kind of cheese.

The locals talked of tremors and large waves. Beached and battered ships high on the beaches showed that the waves here had nothing on the ones we had seen. Still impressive though.

If Fen is right, and I am assuming he is, then we should be getting pretty close to Onica.

We rented a hotel room for the night.

Beds are nice.

Goodnight.