The Pacific Ocean breeze was stiff and cool for the morning. The further away from Japan the cooler it seemed to get until land was no longer in sight. Only a single luxury liner sailed the seas south that morning leaving behind everything. It remained skillfully undetected in its trip. Aboard the deck only a few strolled its polished wood floors.

Having such a large ship to travel in had left some of the guests a little uneasy for the trip. They stayed cautiously towards the interior, which was vast and grand. Each room proved to be far more than they would ever need for the journey. The grandiose vision suited a happier occasion, which wasn’t weighed down so heavily by the somber aura that lingered underneath false joy.

Near the center of the over lit and sparkling dance ballroom sat Yuki in a semi-meditative state. The ringing clatter of shoes briskly walking towards him alerted his senses. He opened his eyes in the direction of Ayumi’s approach. “Hey Ayumi!”

The lowered brow and strictly controlled breathing made her mood clear. “Must you always indulge your fantasies in such frivolities?” She came to stop in front of him crossing her arms. Calling her displeased understated Ayumi’s mood.

Yuki became used to her stricter hand from all of the training he had with her. He slowly rose out from his position unfolding his legs to stand up. “No greeting?” He tried to keep things light despite Ayumi glaring at him. “I guess we have already seen each other today. So you don’t need to greet me.”

Her words became mingled with emotions that rattled at her control. “You think this is a joke?”

He leaned back a little from Ayumi’s pressing. It certainly hadn’t been the first time that he saw a crack in Ayumi’s armor, but the frequency that he saw concerned him. “N-No! Of course not! I just made the first thing that came to mind that I thought would be comfortable for everyone.”

“This isn’t a pleasure cruise, Yuki!”

“I know that! You don’t have to remind me!”

“Do you really?! While you’re here there is an entire country of people uncertain living in fear not knowing why their king isn’t there! Not knowing if they’ll be saved in time!” Ayumi's voice cracked and weakened with her words. A slight shaking in her arms showed how much her discipline fought with her emotions.

“And behind me as well, believe me I know what’s at stake.”

He stepped forward looking into Ayumi’s shaking eyes feeling the deep pain that sat within them. Only centimeters stood between them as he waited to make sure he was welcome. Yuki slowly closed the remaining distance, lifting up his arms wrapping gently around her. The fragile warmth of Ayumi overcame him. She reluctantly accepted his advance, putting her shivering arms up against his back. It almost made him freeze in surprise, holding her so close in such a defenseless and helpless state. He didn’t know what more to think just letting the moment hold for as long as it should. “Ayumi…I’m sorry…”

“…thank you…Yuki,” whispered Ayumi, her head resting on his shoulder not quite burying herself.

Chapter 94 – A Blue View

“I really don’t like this shit at all!” yelled Seiji over the deck as though he needed to be heard by everyone. Yori, Yori’s sister and Fumiko all stared quietly at him. Ever since they left the docks, Seiji clamped tightly to the side of the railing. At first, it seemed as though he was just enjoying the youthful energetic pursuits of a free luxury ride at sea.

Yori reclined in one of the plentiful sun chairs appearing to be very relaxed. “I concur… This is quite…unnerving…”

“Yes, I agree…it is quite unnatural!” Fumiko rested on the wide banister with her back to the ocean.

Seiji pulled away from the railing in utter panic-stricken confusion. “How the hell can you say that with the way you’re acting!?” He threw his arms out, shaking them a little incredulously at them.

“No, it really is!”

A cautious slit in his narrowed eyes looked at the two of them suspiciously. “You’re making fun of me again! Aren’t you?”

Yori dismissed the notion with a flippant hand jester. “It’s not as though you’re a tough guy or someone that tries to maintain a certain image.”

Two sharp strikes directly on target slammed into Seiji, cutting him down quickly. However, it quickly changed when he thought that he heard them laughing at him. Anger fueled a second wind to stand him upright and glaring down at them. “How the hell can you not be freaked out by this dream crap?!”

“Yuki’s not dreaming. He’s just meditating,” Yori’s sister added.

“Don’t nitpick me! It’s real, but not real!” Seiji froze up staring down as though he could see his words and they looked back with only questions. “None of it makes the hell of any sense. Just sounds like a dream to me!”

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“You’re part right and part wrong.” Ayumi’s undeclared arrival set Seiji on edge, hugging the railing. She stared at Seiji for a moment. “As I explained before, it is a type of illusionary power. We create what we want with our mind to make it real within the boundaries of our Field.” The longer she went on the more it became clear to her that he wasn’t getting it either distraction by irrational fear or too dumb to comprehend an explanation. Ayumi could only sigh.

“It’s like playing pretend when you were younger,” Fumiko translated, “Except what was pretend is now reality.”

Ayumi bit her lip a little, holding back her frustration with her explanation being dumb down so much, feeling it as an insult. It became even worse when she saw that Seiji actually seemed to understand. She lost a moment of her composure in slack-jawed disbelief. It immediately followed up by the sting at her pride waking her voice. “I can’t believe you actually understand such a simplistic explanation as to insult our great tradition!”

“I can’t help it if your explanations are too damn complicated.”

“…too…complicated!? Complicated?!”

Yori’s sister stepped in between them. “No one intended to insult your tradition Ayumi. You should be glad that Seiji understands now.”

“…fine…”

“I’ve got a question.” Seiji directed towards Ayumi in bold fashion acting like everything that happened a second before meant nothing.

“…What?”

“If you’re so powerful why not just make a plane or some instant teleportation device to get us there faster than a boat?”

Yori sat up from his chair and leaned over his knees. He made a slight nod before re-enforcing Seiji’s question. “I was actually wondering the same thing as well. It doesn’t seem like the most efficient method given what I’ve seen you do.”

The question turned Ayumi away from them, slightly looking a little cornered and reluctant. Her hesitation only made everyone lean and press in becoming even more curious considering her reaction. When she looked back, prepared to talk, to find them all much closer than before her doubt increased. “It’s because…I’m trying to limit how much fighting we have to do while reaching Atlantis. Going in from the air is going to get us spotted.”

Fumiko checked around with the others to see if it was just her. “That wasn’t a very convincing answer the way she said it.”

“For someone so confident that was pretty weak.”

“…my boat…” mumbled Ayumi, barely even audible to even herself. The sound of their whispers made her twitch. “Fine! It’s my boat!”

“Huh? Isn’t it just a fake?” Seiji questioned leaning in around the others.

Ayumi shook her head. “No! My boat is inside the boat.”

“Huh?”

The blank stare from Seiji made it impossible for Ayumi. “I make them as a hobby. Well it was the only one I finished…” Ayumi turned away, bringing herself up to the railing to rest her arms against. “It was the first time that I had been able to leave the palace. I never was able to do anything with it locked up in a secret room.” A look of nostalgia began to surface on Ayumi.

Yori and Fumiko shared confused looks with each other. Seiji was even worse off than them and Yori’s sister did the only polite thing she could think of by approaching the railing.

A rare honest smile came over Ayumi taking in the ocean smell. She glanced over at Yori’s sister noticing her and brought her into her world. “I always thought of the ocean when I worked on it. The feel of the breeze at your skin and salty taste through your nose and tongue. Open seas and boundless possibilities. I’d create little pools with my power dreaming of it, but no matter how real it seemed I always knew…”

By that point in the reminiscing the others had joined in around hoping for a straight answer about the boat. No answer seemed in sight and Seiji played the innocent victim. “Huh? What’s that got to do with not making a plane?”

Ayumi’s bubble broke and she turned back around to face Seiji. She tried to hold back her aspirated expression, staring at him. “Fine, I’ll do the only thing that will get through to that thick skull of yours!” She marched off the deck leaving the others behind.

After she didn’t return they quickly voted on following her. In route a broadcast requesting all of them in the ballroom gave them their directions. They found her speaking to Yuki still confused about what was supposed to happen.

She spun around to confirm that everyone arrived in the room. “I wasn’t planning on doing this for several more hours, but we’ll be doing it a few times on the trip. So follow my instructions if you don’t want to drift out to sea.”

Ayumi motioned Yuki back a little and placed herself at the point that seemed to be the center. A white oval appeared suddenly, covering almost four meters in length and a meter wide. “Stand anywhere within this white line I marked.” All she received was questioning and uncertain stares back. “Just do it. You’ll understand once we’re done.”

It took a minute for them to shuffle around in reluctance and feeling a little awkward. Once they finished Ayumi looked over at Yuki. The white line disappeared and a strange weightlessness came over all of them. “Do it. Remain as still as you can and don’t panic.” Suddenly, the cruise boat disappeared, exposing all of them to the ocean below them with about ten meters to go before getting wet. Beneath them a small boat about the size and shape of a lifeboat fell into the water in anticipation like it was going to catch them.

As expected, no one held still starting to flail about helplessly suspended in the air. The siblings latched on to each other while Seiji and Fumiko wrestled for control of Ayumi as their life preserver. Ayumi coughed and choked on their struggling trying to hold her concentration. “I said…don’t panic!” Nothing was going to calm them down. “Fine! Just stop trying to use me as an anchor!”

Their landing in the boat came less than what Ayumi hoped for with most of them nearly being strung up by the edge of the boat. In the moments that they tried to recover themselves, Ayumi closed her eyes and they were all suddenly rising again. The boat disappeared and wood planks appeared under their feet molding into a large room distinctly different from the one before, simple and unassuming.

Ayumi checked on everyone around her to see that they were all right, though quite shaken by the experience. She waited a bit before ending her explanation. “We’re traveling this way because when we have to switch, would you want to be only ten meters over the ocean or ten thousand if a mistake is made? And we can use the real boat as a temporary platform between Field changes. You understand now?”

Yori finally caught his breath to look up at Ayumi. “You know you could have just said that without having to explain about your boat hobby.”

“Uh?! I-I…” Ayumi's eyes widened when she realized everything that happened. Her mind played through all of the events quickly through her mind as it sank in. A depressed look shadowed over her as she collapsed to the floor. “I-I said all of that…why!? Have I become infected by his idiocy now!? What’s wrong with me…”

No one else said anything more, feeling at a lack of words. They watched her quickly break herself down falling into a deep hole to try to run away from her embarrassment. They decided to do the polite thing and leave to let her be alone until she recovered from the shock.

Hours later Ayumi still mumbled words to herself left barely able to function enough to keep her Field up. Everyone found places to spend their remaining time until Yuki took back over. The boat wasn’t nearly as fancy or over the top as Yuki, but it still functioned as needed.

At the rear of the boat Yuki leaned against the railing staring out into the ocean. Saki arrived back having changed into more summer wear, as the equator started to arrive for them. She stuck to something comfortable and certainly less feminine than the other girls. It was a simple long white shorts and pale blue tank top with an off white jacket. “Hey Yuki, are you going to get some sleep? Your shift starts in six hours.”

“Uh?” Yuki coughed absentminded. He turned back to look at Saki for a moment, but returned to the view. “Yeah, I’ll sleep soon…”

Saki stepped up next to him placing her hands out in the air playing casually with the breeze between her fingers. She tilted her head over towards him. “Thinking about it?”

“A little…” He shifted his weight on his legs suddenly feeling the awkward stiffness crawling up his knee. “…a lot… I feel like I’m just running away from all of the hell I brought down on them.”

“I’m not so certain it is hell to them. It might have seemed like that at first, but people are adjusting. I think it actually brought all of us together. We wouldn’t all be here now if it hadn’t happened. They have a way to be able to achieve what they want now because of what you did.”

Yuki thought about it, having not considered Saki’s perspective. “So you think it’s a good thing that happened?” He saw her giving him an encouraging nod to keep going. “I guess it does depend on how you look at it…and things did seem to be settling down when we left. Yeah! By the time we get back life will be back to normal again and they’ll be living happily and normally!”

“Exactly! So don’t let it worry and weigh you down! They’ll be fine while we take care of this!”