The deep water was a shroud of ink, heavy and silent. Their small submarine cut through it like a mechanical minnow, its running lights dimmed to faint, ghostly greens and reds that illuminated the cockpit in a sickly glow. Outside the thick viewport, the world was a shifting tableau of black shadows and deeper blackness. Then, the first of the offshore smelting rigs loomed out of the dark.
It was a skeletal city of pain, hammered together from rust and despair. Towers of black iron, weeping condensation and strange, oily minerals, rose into the water column. Massive pipes, thick as ancient trees, coiled around its frame, pulsing with the heated waste of constant forging. Through the murk, they could see the hellish orange light of molten metal being poured deep within its belly, a single, Cyclopean eye of industry in the abyssal night. The smell of sulfur and hot metal seeped through the submarine's filters, a faint, acrid tang that coated the back of the throat.
As they glided past its monstrous, barnacle-crusted legs, a sensor on the console let out a soft, insistent ping. A yellow light blinked on a schematic of the rig.
Jannali, her eyes glued to the grainy sonar monitor, didn't move. Her finger tapped a slow, restless rhythm on her thigh. The screen showed the monstrous outline of the rig, their own tiny blip, and… nothing else. No patrol boats. No scurrying dots of divers. No response.
"It's too quiet," she muttered, the lilt in her voice low and tense. "Are they really gonna just let us roll up to their dock without a single challenge? Not even a 'g'day, piss off'?"
In the confined space, a blue blur of nervous energy ricocheted from wall to ceiling to floor. Thwump. Wobble. Sprong!
"Wee! Rescue! Wee see friends! Wee…!" Jelly Squish vibrated with excitement, his gelatinous body flattening against the viewport before bouncing off towards the rear hatch with a soft bloop.
Jannali's head snapped around, a fierce glare aimed at the wobbling jellyfish. "Would you settle down, you anarchic aspic? You're giving me the twitch!"
Jelly, plastered against the ceiling, merely giggled. "Weee…!"
Mikasi, in his coyote form, sat neatly on his haunches by Marya's boots. His head swiveled with an almost mechanical curiosity, his luminous golden eyes tracking Jelly's chaotic flight path. His ears twitched, but he made no sound, a silent, shimmering spectator to the madness.
Jannali shook her head, turning back to the screens with a profound sigh. "Unbelievable."
At the helm, Marya's hands were steady on the controls. Her gaze was fixed ahead, where the monstrous shadow of Kamaten Island itself was beginning to blot out the faint, filtered moonlight from above. The Heart Pirates insignia on her jacket was a dark smudge in the low light.
"I agree," she said, her voice calm but flat. "This is too easy. They know we're coming."
Jannali cursed under her breath, a creative string of Outback invective. "So what's the move, then? Turn this tub around and tell Bianca to start blowing things up early?"
A faint, almost imperceptible smirk touched Marya's lips. It wasn't a smile of joy, but of cold acknowledgment. "We go in anyway."
Jannali stared at her, then let out a long, weary groan, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Right. Of course we do. This is going to be a long, dramatic night, I can feel it in my bones."
Sprong! Jelly bounced off the sonar console, setting off a brief chirp of protest from the machine. "Weeee!"
They slid out from under the shadow of the smelting rig. Before them, the coast of Kamaten rose like a rotten tooth from the gum of the sea. Cape Wallows was a cliff of what looked like wet, folded leather, dripping with viscous, slow-moving water that shone with a foul phosphorescence. The air coming through the external vents now carried the stench of salt, acid, and something else—something old and metallic, like the breath of a colossal, slumbering engine.
The dock Halia had indicated was a jagged crack in the cliff face, a natural stone wharf worn smooth by the acidic lap of the Sanzu River's outflow. It was empty. No guards. No lights. Just the rhythmic, grinding chiku-taku, chiku-taku of a million rusted clock gears spinning in the wind above, a sound that felt less like a noise and more like a pressure inside the skull.
Marya guided the sub with a silent, sure touch into the jagged mouth of the dock. The hull grated softly against the stone. She killed the engines. The world shrank to the hum of their own life support, Jelly's muted, excited jiggling, and the distant, ceaseless ticking of the damned island.
In the new silence, the trap felt absolute. They were a tasty morsel being willingly swallowed into the gut of the Hitotsume. Marya's hand went to the worn hilt of Nisshoku, her knuckles white. Her eyes, reflective in the dim light, held no fear, only a sharp, focused calculation. The fun was over. The heist had begun.
-----
The hatch opened with a groan that was too loud in the absolute quiet. A wave of thick, damp air washed into the sub, carrying the smell of wet stone, sulfur, and something sour like old, rotting metal. Marya was the first out, her boots hitting the dock with a soft thud that echoed off the close, misty walls of the cliff.
Jannali paused in the hatchway, her eyes scanning the jagged stone wharf. It was empty, slick with condensation, and ended in a wall of shifting grey fog just twenty feet away. The only light came from the dim green glow of their sub and a faint, hellish orange bruise in the sky, reflected from the distant smelting rigs.
"Really, mate?" Jannali hissed, keeping her voice low. "You want to park here? In the bloody obvious spot?"
Marya glanced back, a shadow in the gloom. She gave a small, one-shouldered shrug. "They know we're coming. Might as well be comfortable."
Jannali shook her head, a string of muttered curses lost in the rhythmic, grinding chiku-taku of the unseen gears above. "This is going to be a proper disaster. I'm calling it now."
Marya didn't answer. She stood for a moment, then glanced down at Mikasi. The coyote-form shimmered, dissolved into a swirl of light particles, and reformed into a simple, polished wooden flute. It floated gently before tucking itself into the outer pocket of her leather jacket, the end poking out like a strange accessory. Marya gave the flute a faint, almost affectionate pat—a tiny crack in her stoicism for the inanimate-turned-animate.
Jannali moved to follow, but a blue blur shot past her face with a soft woosh. She jerked back, banging her elbow on the hatch frame. "Oi!"
Jelly Squish giggled, a sound like bubbling water, and landed with a soft splot on Marya's shoulder. He molded himself to the curve of her jacket, forming a wobbly blue pauldron, and looked back at Jannali with two big, shining eyes full of mischievous glee.
Jannali scowled, rubbing her elbow. "Why you little wobbling menace..."
"Come on," Marya said, her voice cutting through the tension. She was already walking toward the fog, her form beginning to blur at the edges. "I want to get in and get out."
Jannali rolled her eyes so hard it was a miracle they stayed in her head. "Is she serious right now?" she grumbled to no one, stepping out onto the damp stone. "There's no way we're just waltzing in and waltzing out. This isn't a bakery." She unslung the compact cylinder from her hip. With a sharp flick of her wrist, it elongated with a series of satisfying clicks into her full-length spear, Anhur's Whisper.
The dock ended, and the island proper began. The ground wasn't rock or soil; it was a spongy, leathery substance that gave slightly under their boots, like walking on hardened skin. The mist clung to them, cold and smelling of acid and age. Jelly's eyes grew wide, swiveling in his gelatinous head. "Oooooh," he whispered, his glow dimming to a nervous pulse. "So dark. So... tick-tocky."
Marya's hand, which had been resting casually near her side, moved to grip the hilt of Nisshoku. Her knuckles were white. She stopped walking.
Jannali, senses on high alert, saw the shift. Her own grip tightened on her spear. "What is it?" she breathed.
A glint of deep, molten red flashed for an instant in Marya's golden eyes—the brief, visible surge of her Kenbunshoku Haki stretching out like a thousand invisible threads into the mist and the strange, fleshy ground. "This way," she said, her voice low and certain. She turned, not towards the obvious path leading uphill, but toward a narrower, darker gap between two towering, moss-covered shapes that might have been petrified tree trunks or giant, buried ribs.
Jannali opened her mouth to question it, but then she felt it too. Not through Haki, but through the deeper, older sense in her blood. Her third eye, hidden beneath her headscarf, gave a painful throb. The island wasn't silent to her. It was screaming.
"Crikey," she whispered, the color draining from her face. She could hear it. Not with her ears, but in her mind. A low, mournful drone of incredible age and profound, hungry sadness. The weight of centuries of forced slumber. The whispers of the Ogre "Silent Saviors" whose life force had seeped into this ground. The grinding of the great screw-Anchor was a toothache in the world's jaw. "This island is... louder than the others. It's all... churning." She swallowed, a dry click in her throat. "Whatever is here is... old. And it's hungry."
She turned to share this grim insight with Marya.
Marya was gone. The spot where she had been standing held only a faint, dissipating curl of mist.
Jannali's heart leapt into her throat. "What the hell?" she spat, her fear snapping into anger. Without another thought, she tightened her grip on her spear and sprinted into the dark, narrow gap after the vanishing silhouette of her reckless, infuriating captain, the curses flowing from her in a furious, whispered stream. The oppressive chiku-taku of the gears downed the sound, making her chase feel like the most silent, and most foolish, thing in the world.
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