Caleb’s words couldn’t help but momentarily baffle both Steven and Lori. Understandable, when some random young adult more than ten years younger than them whom they’d just met was this hell bent on saving all four of them – no less in the face of dangers far greater than any of them could handle. But neither of them were anywhere near as baffled as Noel, who couldn’t be more startled at the 180-degree change in Caleb’s behavior; a stark contrast to what he was like before, all dull over how it was impossible for them to do anything about this, yet now here he was going on about how they were getting out of here alive with the utmost determination.

When they found their inner voices again after the brief moment of surprise, Steven said, “Well that was somewhat… motivating…” and Lori asked, “There could be so many of them within this cave system though, how can we avoid them on our way to this ‘rift’ or whatever? Where do we start?”

Caleb thought for a bit and replied, “Sorry if I’m asking too much from you – even though it IS for our survival – but if you can recall how you got to this cave from the one where you were initially held captive in, then we can just follow that path in reverse to the rift. As for how we’ll avoid the aliens, me and Noel can detect them with our minds so most likely that will be of some help.”

Lori nodded before saying, “Certainly sounds like a plan, and a decent one.” And Steven asked with caution, “Sorry if we’re asking YOU too much, but can you detect any aliens outside right now?”

Caleb carefully swam to the cave entrance and hid behind the stone wall, where Noel joined him in seeing if they could sense anything out there. during this, Caleb whispered to Noel, “Told you I’d make sure nothing bad will happen to you, so please help me keep that promise till the end, okay?”

Noel’s memory went back to the day she had finally convinced Caleb to continue their originally intended mission, and the thing he’d said to her then. She couldn’t hold back a blush as her mind drifted to such thoughts, and she said, “Once again, I can’t thank you enough for what you did back there to save us both… not only that, but you snapped me out of it to once again let me see that we’re not without hope yet…”

“I only did what was necessary.” Caleb replied, blushing just as much at Noel’s words. “You snapped me out of it first, it’s only fair that I do the same for you when you needed it. So save the thanks for when we all make it out of here alive, and let’s concentrate on what’s important now.”

As they exchanged coy smiles with one another, Steven called, “Excuse me, but anything out there?”

Remembering what she and Caleb were doing, Noel shook her current thoughts out of her head and focused on the caves outside of the one they were in to reply, “So far nothing, I guess that means we’re good to go.”

“Please lead the way to the rift, we got all of our backs.” Caleb added. With this, Lori and Steven cautiously exited the cave, looked both ways like children crossing a street, and continued swimming. Noel and Caleb wasted no time bringing up the rear, not breaking their concentrations for even a split second. The caves may be empty for now, but there was no knowing if anything could run into them from behind a corner without warning.

The first few minutes of sneaking through the caves weren’t too bad, in that absolutely no danger was imminent behind any of the stone walls or dark corners. Noel and Caleb could at least reassure themselves of this, since they were still focused on detecting any aliens that could be around here. Steven and Lori however didn’t have the same luxury. Both of them were so paranoid and frightened by their very surroundings, to the point Caleb had to strike up a mental conversation for their nerves and stop them from either massaging the left sides of their chests or breathing heavily.

He started by asking them, “So how do you two know each other? What did you do before the invasion?” to which they responded by saying they were actually complete strangers and had never even heard of or seen each other before the aliens had brought them here.

Encouragingly, Caleb kept up the conversation, “Frankly, I get the feeling none of us will be strangers by the end of this. The only way we’re getting through this disaster is by coming together and looking out for each other. Noel and I learned that from personal experience.”

“It’s true.” Noel added. “Nobody needs to be alone throughout all this, we have to-“ but she then cut herself off mid-sentence upon sensing something familiar flash past the corner of her eye. She stopped swimming and turned her head in the direction where she saw it, which didn’t take long at all to go unnoticed by the other three who asked what was the matter.

“Something’s coming, isn’t it?” Lori asked with her hand back on her chest. Steven frantically waved his hand at Noel as if to make her hurry up and bolt with them, but Caleb swam over to Noel and looked in the same direction she was looking at with curiosity. Sensing it wasn’t anything dangerous, he raised a hand at Steven and Lori to let them know it was safe, and asked Noel, “What is it?”

“I thought I saw something in there.” Noel pointed at another cave entrance she had stopped in front of, and slowly began to swim closer to it.

“If it isn’t anything important, then pay no attention to it and-“ Caleb started as he swam after Noel into the cave, but then momentarily stopped himself and gasped in shock at what met his eyes.

He’d found himself staring into a wide open mouth filled with rows of sharp white teeth and backed away from thinking it was a threat, only to realize it was something already dead. Once backed away though, he could see the thing more properly and realized it was the huge skeleton of a killer whale. Looking back up to see where Noel was swimming off to, Caleb took a moment to get a better view of the cave they were entering. In a ghastly revelation, he saw the floor of it was littered with bones of all shapes and sizes. Just as Caleb heard Steven and Lori gasping with shock at the sight of this, he saw Noel bend down between a few ribcages and several more skulls of big marine animals to pick something up, saying, “I was right… it couldn’t possibly be anything else!”

The whiteness of the bones drawing a stark contrast to the dark colors of the cave’s stone walls was what had initially caught Noel’s attention. And speaking of contrast in colors, there had been something else among the bones that stood out from the surrounding white, which was what drew Noel further into the cave with a hunch that was proven right.

“Guess they considered these about as useless as the inedible parts of their caught prey.” Noel said, picking up her backpack as well as the harpoon that had been lying next to it for Caleb to see.

As Noel retrieved her previously missing belongings, Caleb found his lying on top of another whale skull and picked them up, while Lori muttered with unease, “It’s so nightmarish to think this is just a mere part of all the earth’s animals they’ve eaten so far…”

This made Noel briefly think about how even more nightmarish this cave would’ve come across if they’d seen any human skeletons among the countless animal remains. She quickly pushed those thoughts away, not wanting to scare Steven and Lori more than they already were. Once she and Caleb were done packing their things, she hastily exited the cave with him to join the other two, saying, “Let’s go now, the lesser we see of that underwater grave the better…”

Once again, they proceeded to sneak through the caves with Steven and Lori leading the way and Noel and Caleb standing lookout for all four of them. Seeing how disturbed the former two seemed to be after witnessing the cave full of skeletons, the latter two continued stirring up conversations for them. Such as asking how much further they had to swim until they arrived to the rift cave or discussing how they could get more decent tools for Steven and Lori to also arm themselves with.

“Just a few strides left now.” Lori answered, while Steven wondered, “If we could get back to nearby land, maybe we could get ourselves equipment like what you two have there.”

“Assuming we’d be able to move on land again for that, the abilities me and Noel have still got much room for improvement-“ Caleb replied, when Noel suddenly grabbed his arm in a panic and said, “I think something’s coming in the distance, we gotta hide quick!”

Steven spotted yet another cave entrance nearby and pointed at it for the rest to see. At once Noel and Caleb concentrated on it to check if it was safe. To their surprise, they could sense an immense number of life forms inside the cave, however none of them thankfully alien.

“Let’s get in there!” Said Caleb, and they rushed in to hide behind any rock formations big enough to hopefully conceal them from the view of whatever was coming. Though once they did hide, they came to face another shocking sight awaiting them within the cave.

The area they’d entered was a massive cavern with a rift at the far end and several huge biological layer bubbles containing various captured animals, much like what Noel and Caleb had already seen many times before. Only this time, the animals weren’t the underwater kind, but rather the kind found on land. Terrestrial animals of all kinds – more than the four of them could ever count – were floating about inside the bubbles, all of them in a trance and, most noticeably, having been bizarrely shapeshifted to have fish-like tailfins where their rear ends and legs should’ve been, like the four humans seeing them and being unable to hold back their bewilderment.

“Did they really shapeshift even animals on land to such forms so they could come to them?!” Lori asked while looking aghast, and Caleb muttered in response, “We did say they’re trying to exploit every life on earth to their benefit… and to think they’re still not done…”

“Greedy bastards…” Steven cursed under his breath, just as Noel whispered to the lot, “It’s closer to us than ever. Careful now, all of us…”

All four of them then stayed still in their hiding places. They even went so far as to breathing the water with extreme caution as if whatever creature was near them would be able to hear it. Yet their eyes remained wide open in case they had to make a quick escape from it.

Noel and Caleb could sense the creature swimming ever so closer to the entrance of the cave they were in until it was right in front of it. There was no more movement to be sensed from it afterwards as if it had stopped, which both of them were sure it had.

It was a tense moment that made them feel like even their heartbeats would give their positions away. Noel felt much worse than when she, Caleb, and the turtle had remained silent to hide from the horde of those giant lizard creatures in the apartment – as much as that moment too was deadly suspenseful, at least they weren’t in the belly of the beast back there. Caleb apparently felt the same way from how his fists were clenched tightly like he was trying to make his palms bleed, and Steven and Lori looked like they were just one step away from needing CPR.

Unable to take the pressure, Noel eventually found herself praying in her mind for the creature to go far away where it wouldn’t be able to see or sense them. She knew it was useless, but continuing to stay still and wait for their pursuer to get out of sight was just too much for her.

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This was why she nearly passed out from relief when she suddenly sensed the creature’s presence getting further away from them, slowly but surely. The other three’s tensed-up bodies also relaxed all at once, with Caleb letting Steven and Lori know of the receding danger, yet nobody came out from hiding just yet. It had to be much more far away for them to be safe enough to come out.

Their patience was finally rewarded when Noel and Caleb did one last check on the distance between the creature and themselves, then deemed it safe enough to finally continue going.

“I think that little game of hide and seek might’ve made my heart beat faster than that of a rat…” Steven muttered, his hand massaging the left side of his chest.

Lori sighed deeply, but not in a negative manner. “Then it’s a good thing this happened not too far from our destination. Based on my memory, it should be like a ten second-long swim from here.”

“Indeed, I don’t think our hearts can take more tension like this…” Noel mumbled weakly, but still courageously made her way out of the cavern with Caleb, right alongside Steven and Lori.

The ten seconds it took for them to finally reach the cave with the right rift were the most relieving ten seconds of any of their lives. However they couldn’t let their guard down just yet, because the moment they approached the cavern’s entrance they were forced to face another problem.

“Oh for god’s sake, how are we supposed to get through that?!” Caleb groaned upon spotting the rift among the many biological layer bubbles containing countless numbers of tail-finned people. Right underneath the bright ball of light lay the very same large electric eel he and Noel had been knocked out by before being brought here, still in the same coiled up position. The worst part about seeing it again here was that this time, it was also wide awake, glancing around at the bubbles floating above its head as if trying to see which one of the many humans it could eat first.

“I really wish we had time to think of a solution.” Said Noel with a nervous glace over her shoulder, “But I’m afraid we might not, because whatever we just got away from seems to be coming back!”

“What?!” Steven and Lori also turned around and looked in the direction Noel was facing. Though they still couldn’t sense the thing approaching, they didn’t have to – they could all see the rippling shadow of the creature swimming towards them becoming more and more clear with every second.

“Can we go back to that cave with the animals?” Steven asked, to which Noel answered, “There’s no other caves between that one and this, we’ll only be doing it a favor by swimming towards it.”

“I think I know how to avoid it…” Caleb muttered with the certainty of someone wondering if they should run into ongoing traffic to save a pet stranded in the middle of the road, “But it’s a bloody mad idea, and I don’t know if it’ll save us or just make things worse!”

Noel glanced back at how much closer the shadow in the distance was now. Surely the thing it belonged to was now mere seconds away from turning the corner and spotting them. She turned back to Caleb and said in both panic and impatience, “You said it yourself it’s do or die, if we don’t decide anything now it surely won’t be ‘do’ for any of us!”

Caleb also looked at the shadow, groaned again through gritted teeth, and hissed, “Screw it, let’s go!” before grabbing Noel by the arm and swimming straight into the cave they just reached. He also motioned at Steven and Lori to follow quickly, who did with fearful hesitation.

By the time the thing that had been swimming towards the cavern containing the humans – which turned out to be one of the huge lizard-like creatures – there was nothing in front of the cavern’s entrance. Just to double-check, it swam inside and glanced around with its eyes intently inspecting every corner, very obviously trying to sense any anomalies among the cavern’s contents.

But whatever anomaly it was searching for, it wasn’t able to find it at all. That very anomaly (or rather, anomalies) had managed to remain hidden from both sight and sense by swimming into the nearest biological layer bubble and blending themselves in with its countless occupants.

Through the small gaps in between the many limply floating arms, upper torsos, heads, and tailfins of the humans they were hiding amongst, Noel could just make out the sight of the lizard-like creature swimming thoroughly around the cavern for a full minute or so. Then with a somewhat disappointed snarl through its jaws, it swam down to the electric eel on the floor and stared at it for a few seconds, to which the eel responded by staring back at it in the same way. Both of the aliens were silent during this, but there was no doubt they had mentally communicated with each other to watch out for anything that may or may not have come this way. After that, the lizard-like thing swam out of sight, while the eel remained where it sat with its eyes more focused than ever.

Knowing the eel wouldn’t be able to hear their mental voices just so long as they weren’t directed towards it, Caleb was the first to speak, saying, “Well… that insane idea worked, somehow…”

“It did.” Steven replied. “Now the problem is how do we get out of this bubble or whatever…”

Staring spitefully at the eel as the memories of how it caught them came back to her, Noel muttered, “The moment any of us so much as stick a fin outside this bubble, it’ll sense it and come at us.”

“So does that mean we’re stuck here?!” Lori asked. “If so, we were dead either way back there, what we did now was simply delay the inevitable… we can’t stay hidden in here forever, isn’t that right?”

Noel and Caleb looked at each other. This seemed like a somewhat familiar situation to them. And they knew what they had to do or say in the face of this particular kind of hardship.

“We haven’t lost just yet.” Said Caleb. “We’re still alive, aren’t we? As long as we keep it together-“

“Sorry kid, but look around us.” Steven interrupted Caleb with the most utterly lost face they’d ever seen him wear. “We may be alive for now, but that’s only if we keep staying in this bubble. We’re not going anywhere with that eel-like thing guarding the rift, and both Lori and I have seen how persistent it is at its job from when we were held captive here. I apologize if I sound too brutal, but it’s just the reality of the situation. There’s no way out of this.”

There was an almost deafening silence between them all for a bit afterwards, in which Lori and Steven just floated about sighing hopelessly every few seconds, while Noel and Caleb observed the eel trying to think up ways to get past it. If it really was as persistent as Steven said it was at guarding the rift, then they had no chance of sneaking past it. They also had no idea when it would so much as fall asleep to give them the opportunity, and there was no knowing they’d still be here by that time. What if some of the other aliens noticed four humans not under their trance hiding amongst the ones that were? And of course, fighting their way past the eel was out of the question.

“Stealth and force won’t do us any good right now… not that we have a lot of it even after all that practicing.” Caleb thought to himself. “There’s gotta be some other way…”

Noel thought about the one other time they thwarted an alien without any help from the turtle, which was when they fought the sea snake. Looking back on that moment, they didn’t exactly use stealth or force to survive that encounter either. Most of the time they were too busy dodging the thing’s attacks, and the only reason they did manage to bring it down was because…

“Caleb.” Noel spoke all of a sudden, “Excuse me if this isn’t the best time to bring it up, but do you remember what Val said to Earl and Rhonda before blasting the last Graboid off a cliff to kill it?”

Despite the lack of context, Caleb immediately understood what she meant and replied, “Something about these bastards not being smarter than them, why?”

Noel nodded. “Also, what was the reason we managed to kill the sea snake that paralyzed me?”

“We lured it into the cave we slept in and surprise attacked it.” Caleb replied, having no idea what Noel was on about but trying his best to catch up.

“Exactly.” Said Noel. “To be precise, we outsmarted it. No stealth or strength used, just our brains. Now if we can just outsmart that electric eel too, we can get out of here…”

Genuinely impressed at this speculation, Caleb muttered, “Well damn, why didn’t I think of that…”

Making sure the eel wouldn’t notice anything, Noel cautiously swam to the back of the bubble and took out her knife, before slicing away at the biological layer like cutting paper with a pair of scissors.

When Caleb, Steven, and Lori confusedly asked exactly what she was doing, Noel replied to them – primarily to Caleb – in her best Kevin Bacon impression, “I got a goddamn plan!”

The idea of finding hope in a hopeless situation again made Noel hyped enough to crack jokes of this sort like Caleb normally would. Still, she maintained enough seriousness to ask Steven and Lori if they could keep an eye on the eel for her while she cut more of the bubble’s protective layer. During this she also asked Caleb if he could distract the eel for just a second when she told him to.

“Just one really short moment is all I need for me to swim to the rift and go through it. No doubt it’ll notice it’s been bamboozled and follow me through the rift. After that, I got this.” She explained.

“What? But that sounds hella dangerous!” Caleb protested. “As if I’d let you pull such a stunt just to save us, let ME do the dirty work while you distract the eel.”

Noel stopped cutting the biological layer for a moment to look at Caleb with the best reassuring look she could manage, and said, “I know you’re saying that because you want to protect me, but since I got us into this mess by suggesting we continue our journey, I’ll take responsibility and get us back out of it. It’s the best I can offer, so this time let me protect you in return.” And with a slight blush, she gave Caleb a quick hug before going back to work.

Caleb knew there was no point arguing otherwise. He had already seen how determined Noel could be once she made up her mind, hence how they got to this point to begin with. So he could only nod his reddened face and agree to her plan while she continued cutting the biological layer. By the time she was done with it, the part she cut out was more than thrice the size of her bedsheets.

Checking her handiwork, Noel called to Steven and Lori, “Eel still there?” to which they said yes. She took a deep breath and said, “Wish us luck. Once the eel’s followed me through the rift, destroy that half and you’ll all be sent back to earth, after which we can hopefully destroy the other half.”

As Caleb clutched his harpoon in preparation, Noel grabbed the large piece of biological layer and shouted, “Go! Now!” and like marathon runners hearing the starter pistol, they sprung into action.

Caleb swam out of the bubble in full view of the eel and did all he could to draw its attention to him. His attempt was successful, and the eel uncoiled itself from the floor to give Caleb a piece of its mind. This only occurred for a very short time, but it was enough to let Noel swim as fast as she could towards the rift. She went straight through it with everything she needed in hand, watching the eel with every stride she took – it was important that she could properly see her pursuer while escaping from it. By the time the eel had noticed something was wrong it could only catch a split-second glimpse of Noel’s dark blue tailfin vanishing into the thing it was supposed to be guarding.

As Noel had predicted, the fact it had been tricked into letting something pass itself by made the eel pursue the rogue prey through the rift. Rushing through the water at top speed in the hopes of not letting its target get away, the eel came out of the other side of the rift just as quickly as it had entered it. However, as soon as it did so it was greeted with an unexpected inconvenience in the form of a bit of a familiar substance flying right towards it. Though it was transparent like the bubbles that kept its prey secure in the caves of its home planet, it was also big enough to cover its face and cause quite a bit of disturbance to its vision, prompting it to try and get it off itself.

And unfortunately for the eel, this process distracted it just enough from properly seeing where it was speeding towards. Therefore by the time the eel did get the big piece of biological protective layer off its face that Noel had thrown at it as soon as she saw it come out of the rift after her, it was too late – too late to avoid crashing mouth-first into a sharp rock formation, something it could’ve easily dodged had it not been for Noel’s ploy with the biological layer.

“Yeah!” Noel cheered, looking at how deeply the rock had impaled the eel in the mouth and even its throat. “Try shapeshift-healing yourself out of that, sucker!”

Avoiding the red wisps of blood coming from the now dead eel, Noel swam towards the rift just as she saw three figures coming out of it; Caleb, Steven, and Lori.

“One side of the rift down, one more to go…” Lori mumbled. Steven noticed the eel’s corpse nearby and exclaimed, “Dear lord, did you really just do that?” and Caleb tightly embraced Noel out of relief to see she had succeeded. “I can’t believe your plan actually worked! I was so scared to think of what would have become of you if it didn’t but… just wow!”

Noel hugged him back, just as relieved as him. “Well, it did work, so let us not waste any more time destroying the rest of the rift. Can’t have any aliens in the distance smelling all that eel blood.”

And so they did, prompting the dead eel and countless other aliens that used the rift to get sucked into its implosion in a giant watery vortex. This, of course, at the same time released every single human they’d seen in the cavern. After the minute-long implosion was over, they found themselves surrounded by dazed motionless merfolk as far as their eyes could see.

“I do believe we know what to do next.” Said Noel, and Caleb nodded before saying, “That’s an awful lot of people to give protection to though…”

Noel thought for a second, then turned her attention to Steven and Lori and she asked, “Would it be too much to ask you to give us a hand with this job?”

Lori shook her head, and Steven replied, “Seeing how you just saved both our lives, not to mention many others here, it only makes sense for us to help with anything you need to do in return.”

“All right!” Said Caleb. “Let us first show you what must be done before making sure you’ll be able to do it too…”