Shuri pushed forward as fast as she could. The thrusters were working at full capacity to maintain her course toward the walls of Atlantis.
As she moved, she barely shifted her fingers across the palm of her hand, making minimal gestures that her bracelet translated into commands for navigating between radio frequencies.
She managed to find a signal from the wall guards and opened the channel immediately.
"This is Princess Shuri of Wakanda — I'm part of the delegation that arrived in the submarine you all surely saw. Listen carefully: the military storage complex in the depths has been destroyed. They had monsters locked up down there and four of them are heading toward the city right now. You need to evacuate the civilian sectors and prepare the defenses immediately!"
From the other end came only confused noise. Shuri could hear voices, but couldn't make out the words. The guards seemed to be talking among themselves in a tone that sounded dismissive, but the core problem was clear — neither side understood the other.
Damn it, they can't understand a word I'm saying, Shuri thought with frustration as she reviewed the data from the inscriptions she had collected in the city. If I can't find a way to make them understand me, Legion will have done that for nothing.
It took a tense moment of comparing symbols and writings, but she managed to rescue two simple words that she hoped were correct. With great difficulty, she pronounced them into the microphone.
"Attack... imminent."
The silence that followed was brief. On the other end of the line came shouts of alarm and rapid movement before the signal cut off.
Shuri let out a sigh, hoping the warning had been enough, though she grimaced when she checked her speed indicators.
I'm going to arrive ten to fifteen minutes late. At the speed those things were moving, Atlantis will be under attack long before I get there.
Suddenly, deep sounds — similar to whale song — vibrated through her body.
Shuri furrowed her brow as she saw an enormous figure approaching her at high speed. She went on guard immediately, raising her arms and preparing her gauntlets to fire, but lowered her weapons as soon as the creature was close enough to recognize.
It was the many-finned whale she had seen earlier in the city. The animal slowed down as it reached her, continuing to emit those sounds. Shuri cautiously extended her hand and the whale brought its head close, allowing the princess to touch it.
"What are you doing here?" she asked with a smile, surprised by the animal's behavior.
The whale continued with its sounds and began to circle around her. Then it positioned one of its large lateral fins right behind Shuri. She instinctively gripped the base of the fin and felt them begin to accelerate.
Is it helping me? she wondered, feeling the pull of speed. It seems this creature is more intelligent than I initially thought.
She held on firmly to the creature's fin, feeling the water rushing past her at full speed. Her suit's thrusters barely had to work now — the whale's power was simply astonishing. Shuri watched it sideways, noticing the nobility in its movements despite its size.
"I can't keep calling you simply 'whale,'" she said aloud, though her voice was somewhat lost among the bubbles and the rush of water. "You need a real name."
The creature emitted a deep sound — a vibration that Shuri felt in her chest, which seemed like an invitation to keep talking. The princess was quiet for a moment, letting words from home come to mind as she searched for something that fit that serene presence.
"What do you think of Zola?" she asked with a smile. "In my language it means calm, or tranquility."
The whale let out a series of singing sounds, moving its fins in a way Shuri interpreted as a gesture of joy and acceptance.
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Zola," the princess added, gently stroking the firm skin of the fin. "I'm Shuri, of the royal house of Udaku, princess of Wakanda."
Zola emitted vibrant sounds again, as if acknowledging the introduction. Shuri couldn't help but smile as she continued stroking her.
Looks like I made a friend in the most unexpected place, she thought with a sense of wonder as she watched the city's lights grow brighter and closer in the immensity of the ocean. Thanks to Zola's speed, she managed to get ahead of those enormous creatures.
Shuri spotted the imposing walls of Atlantis cutting through the ocean gloom. Using one final burst from Zola, she released the fin and moved forward on her own — but stopped dead when her helmet's systems exploded with red alerts.
Several automatic turrets rotated quickly toward her and a squad of Atlantean soldiers positioned themselves with loaded weapons, pointing at her dangerously.
The princess raised her hands, keeping as still as possible while the water vibrated with the soldiers' shouts. Although she couldn't understand their words, the tone was one of obvious hostility. However, before anyone pulled a trigger, Zola placed herself between Shuri and the weapons, using her body as a shield.
"Zola?"
The creature emitted a series of deep sounds. The soldiers, upon seeing her, lowered their weapons slightly and Shuri caught a word they were repeating with amazement and confusion.
"Aethelmar."
The alarms ceased and the turrets returned to their resting position.
"What on earth is going on here?" asked a familiar voice that Shuri recognized.
It was Byrrah, emerging from among the wall's structures.
The princess peeked out from behind Zola's enormous body and called to him by name. The Atlantean was surprised to see her.
"Princess Shuri? What are you doing here?" he asked, incredulous.
"I'd love to explain everything, but there's no time right now. There are gigantic monsters on their way to the city."
Byrrah furrowed his brow, completely lost.
Shuri quickly summarized how she and Legion had gone out to investigate and, following an alarm signal, had found a military storage site.
"You went to the Giant's Dungeon?" Byrrah interrupted, his face going pale.
"We didn't know what it was, but the site exploded and four enormous creatures are heading here," she continued. "Legion stayed behind to try to slow them down."
Byrrah let out a curse and began shouting orders in Atlantean.
The princess watched as panic spread across the soldiers' faces while their leader spoke.
After one last instruction, the group dispersed frantically — some took up defensive positions while others swam toward the center of the city to begin the evacuation.
"Something like this hasn't happened in decades, but preparations have already started," Byrrah said, turning toward her.
Shuri nodded, but her gaze drifted toward Zola, who was already slowly making her way back toward the depths.
"Where is she going?"
"Who knows — only Namor has been able to communicate with them. They haven't let anyone else touch them. It surprised all of us that an Aethelmar accompanied you," Byrrah commented.
"Aethelmar?"
"It is an ancient race that has protected Atlantis for millennia," he explained with respect. "There are very few of them. Their young ones often roam through the city, but they don't let just anyone approach them — much less someone from the surface. They are very intelligent. If she helped you and guided you, it must have been for a reason."
Shuri watched her friend's silhouette disappear into the blue. At that moment, Byrrah's radio let out a beep and his eyes went wide upon hearing the report.
"What happened?"
"Our radar is detecting two enormous figures heading this way at high speed."
Byrrah looked at the princess with a mix of exhaustion and urgency before pointing toward the heart of the city.
"You must return to the palace immediately. You'll be safe there," he directed, hoping that for once she would follow orders without arguing.
She nodded with suspicious calm.
The Atlantean left quickly, shouting instructions to his soldiers to reinforce the perimeter.
Shuri began swimming in the direction of the palace, but her movements slowed as she passed one of the imposing automatic turrets guarding the wall.
She stopped and looked it up and down carefully, analyzing every duct and every saline energy valve.
She looked around — the guards were running back and forth, carrying supplies and positioning defenses, far too busy to pay her any attention. A slow, somewhat mischievous smile spread across her face.
She approached the turret while pulling a vibratory-edge dagger from her equipment.
"I wasn't actually planning to help," she murmured to herself as she began making cuts in the machine's chassis. "But... how could I pass up the opportunity to apply the fourth step of the scientific method?"
She plunged her hand into the hydraulic circuits, ignoring the small sparks of energy jumping beneath the water.
"I'm sure they'll thank me for it later," she said with confidence as she began dismantling the internal components.
===
Ripjaws cut through the ocean with speed. As he closed the distance, the true scale of those creatures began to sink his spirits. From afar they had seemed large, but up close they were genuine mountains of flesh and scales that displaced brutal volumes of water with every movement.
If only I had Way Big, he thought, gritting his teeth. With him I could handle this differently. What a shame.
He pushed forward harder, feeling the vibration of the wakes left by the beasts.
"Which one should I attack first, SID? The turtle has a solid defense. The shark isn't far behind, and the eel is suicide — its entire body seems saturated with electricity."
"I agree," SID's voice replied. "The squid is the most logical option to start with. Just be careful not to get caught in its tentacles."
Legion nodded.
"And what do you plan to do?" the AI pressed. "Your current transformation doesn't have the size or the power to go head-to-head with them."
"You've never experienced it, SID, but if there's one thing that drives humans absolutely crazy, it's mosquitoes. Those things are insufferable and, unless you catch them off guard, they're almost impossible to kill. Right now, I plan to be that mosquito."
And he launched himself toward the squid.
Passing alongside one of its enormous tentacles — moving like a column of living muscle — Ripjaws placed his hands against it and, opening his massive jaw to its limit, bit with all his strength. His enormous teeth sank in deep, causing the squid to let out a shriek of surprise.
Almost immediately, the hero saw another tentacle shooting toward him at a dizzying speed. Timing it perfectly, he used the very limb he had just bitten to propel himself outward, shooting away and dodging the blow by centimeters as the water bubbled at his side.
While swimming parallel to the monster, he extended the claws of his left hand and drove them into the squid's skin. He continued forward at full speed, cutting a straight line through the tentacle as he slid along it.
The titanic creature shrieked again and a cloud of dark blood began to stain the water.
For Legion, those cuts were deep — but for the colossus's massive body, they were no more than superficial and extremely irritating wounds.
The beast was quick to react with fury. Three more tentacles launched at him from different angles, trying to surround him. Ripjaws tried to gain distance immediately.
He dodged the first attack with a powerful tail strike that lifted him several meters. He tilted to one side as much as his body allowed, making the second tentacle pass by. The third was coming too fast to dodge completely.
Rather than trying to flee, Ripjaws decided to take it head-on. He opened his mouth and bit the end of the tentacle with brutal force, bracing with his hands so the impact didn't crush him against himself. Using the squid's own attacking force, he propelled himself backward, managing to put considerable distance between them while the giant writhed, confused by the persistence of that small attacker, before slowly turning its enormous body around.
The monster's great eye — a yellow, glassy sphere — fixed directly on him.
Legion felt a chill run down his spine.
Okay, enormous sea beasts genuinely do terrify me.
"I've got its attention," he told SID. "Who do you recommend next, partner?"
"The shark is the best option for what you're planning, sir."
Ripjaws nodded and, gathering all the force he could muster in his powerful tail, began swimming in pursuit of the armored shark.
The squid didn't stay behind, launching itself in pursuit of him.
From its center, a massive horny beak emerged from the tangle of hungry tentacles.
The water bubbled as the squid's first arm tried to close around his waist.
Ripjaws made a sharp downward turn, feeling the pressure of the blow pass centimeters from his dorsal fin. Without losing momentum, he sank the claws of his right hand into the flesh of the tentacle he had just dodged, tearing a line of soft skin as he kept moving toward the shark.
Another tentacle shot from the side, managing to wrap around his torso for a second.
Legion didn't panic — he opened his enormous jaw and sank his teeth into the muscle squeezing him, tearing away a chunk of flesh with a violent yank of his neck.
The pressure gave way under the beast's pain, and the hero used that opening to propel himself with a double kick, gaining meters of distance as the squid's dark blood clouded his vision.
The attacks didn't stop.
The squid hurled its arms like heavy whips that generated shockwaves in the water.
Ripjaws swam in a zigzag, dodging a blow that would have been enough to knock him unconscious against a rock, and responded with quick swipes every time a limb came too close.
His claws left furrows in the monster's skin, but he stayed focused on the gray, armored silhouette of the shark that was getting closer by the second.
Dodging one final desperate swipe from the squid, Ripjaws finally reached the shark's back.
The armored beast, fully concentrated on its swim toward the city, had no time to react when Legion, gathering all the momentum he was carrying, extended his fist and struck with force directly into the center of its enormous eye.
The impact made the gigantic predator's body tilt to one side from the surprise and pain.
The hero, using the shark's own face as a platform, took a boost and shot upward — just in time.
Fractions of a second later, the giant squid arrived with full momentum.
Unable to stop and blind with fury, it drove its enormous horny beak directly into the shark's wounded eye, sinking in with a sound of crushed flesh. At the same time, it began to wrap its tentacles along the immense armored body, squeezing hard.
The shark reacted with violence. It opened its rows of teeth and bit several of the tentacles choking it. The squid let out an underwater shriek, withdrawing those injured limbs, but immediately used others to wrap around its rival's head, covering its mouth from above and below.
In a desperate struggle, the squid barely managed to prevent the enormous shark from fully opening its jaws while continuing to damage it with its beak. Both beasts began to thrash in the water, forming a whirlpool of violence and dark blood.
Legion was a few meters away, watching the chaos he had provoked.
He held his stomach with one hand while desperately trying to calm his breathing.
The physical effort had been tremendous and he felt his muscles burning.
It's ironic, he thought with a bitter smile, that in my aquatic form I'm running out of air.
However, the thought was cut short when he saw the whirlpool break apart.
The shark, ignoring the pain of its eye and the weight of the squid, began swimming in his direction. Through sheer brute force, it was slowly forcing its jaws open, tearing through the tentacles trying to seal its mouth. The squid shrieked without releasing it, driving its beak in again and again, but the shark wouldn't stop.
Ripjaws could see perfectly how the predator's good eye was fixed on him, blazing with fury. It seemed lost in the blood and the pain, focused on the only thing it had managed to make out before the collision.
"You have to swim, sir — now!" SID shouted at him. "Since the squid is attacking it from angles it can't see well, the shark fixed on the only thing it could distinguish before the impact: you."
"For the love of— give me a break."
And he gave another powerful tail stroke, resuming his desperate swim. Behind him, getting closer by the second, the shark was opening and closing its enormous jaws, covered in blood and pieces of tentacle.
Ripjaws felt his body barely responding. No matter how hard he pushed his muscles, the distance between him and the shark wasn't growing — on the contrary, he could feel the turbulence of those gigantic jaws brushing his fins.
He turned his head just a millimeter and saw the predator was about to close its mouth over him.
In a desperate move, he gave a violent tail strike and changed course, shooting straight up. The shark missed its bite by a hair, but Legion didn't come out unscathed — he crashed directly into the beast's snout. The impact left him dizzy and he lost control of his body, tumbling along the rough back of the shark as it passed by like a runaway train.
He was sent flying from the momentum, but something stopped him dead. His eyes took a second to focus, just as he felt his ribs crack and a metallic taste flooded his mouth.
He spat a mouthful of blood that dissolved in the water — a massive tentacle had him wrapped, squeezing hard. He bit desperately, sinking his teeth into the rubbery flesh, but the squid refused to release him this time.
Salvation came from the chaos. The shark, having lost sight of its prey, began thrashing wildly, snapping at everything nearby and deeply wounding the squid.
From the pain, the monster loosened its grip just enough for Ripjaws to break free, putting distance between them while dodging two more tentacles trying to stop his escape.
The pain was unbearable. He held his left arm, which was no longer responding and emitted cracks every time he tried to move it. It was broken.
He clenched his jaw to keep from screaming.
Son of a— it almost crushed me... I think I've also got a broken rib or two, he thought while watching the two giants.
The squid had released the shark. Five of its tentacles were destroyed, but to Legion's surprise, the wounds were beginning to close and the tissue was regenerating.
The shark, meanwhile, was moving away to circle in the distance, preparing to come back with everything for those who had disturbed it.
The squid watched it with its enormous eye, ready to follow while its bloodied body recovered.
Diamondhead is no use here, Four Arms even less... the hero muttered, frustrated by the limitations of his current forms in this environment. If I had something to absorb energy from, Chromastone would be a game changer.
"Sir, you must leave," SID warned him. "You don't have a form capable of dealing with this situation. Find some natural structure to hide in or use Grey Matter — for creatures this large, a prey this small is almost impossible to follow."
Legion shook his head, though the effort cost him a stab of pain in his chest.
He thought about the turtle and the eel still making their way toward the city.
If I leave these two loose, there's nothing guaranteeing they won't follow the others toward Atlantis. Shuri will have to deal with the ones up there somehow, but I have to handle these two myself.
"Actually," he murmured, "I do have a transformation for this."
SID stayed quiet for a moment.
"It's too dangerous, sir," the AI finally replied with a warning tone. "The side effects and the damage to your psyche could seriously compromise you. It is not an option you should consider in your current state."
Legion let out a faint smile.
"Well, that's the life of a hero, isn't it? I can't leave them loose, so..."
He propelled himself forward, swimming directly toward the squid on a collision course.
When he was about to make contact with that mass of tentacles, he struck the Omnitrix symbol hard.
A blinding green light exploded in the darkness of the abyss, leaving the monster temporarily blind as the transformation began.
=====
HEYYYY, HOW'S EVERYONE DOING? HOPE YOU'RE ALL WELL!
OUR PROTAGONIST MANAGED TO PREVENT TWO OF THE TITANIC BEASTS FROM CONTINUING THEIR COURSE — THOUGH UNFORTUNATELY HIS TRANSFORMATION CAN'T DO MUCH AGAINST CREATURES THAT LARGE. NOW, WITH HIS BACK AGAINST THE WALL, IT SEEMS HE HAS A PLAN... BUT WHAT TRANSFORMATION WILL HE USE?
AS FOR SHURI, MANAGING TO REACH THE WALLS OF ATLANTIS JUST IN TIME, SHE WAS ABLE TO DELIVER THE WARNING BEFORE THE BEASTS ARRIVED — THANKS TO ZOLA, HER NEW AQUATIC FRIEND.
I WONDER HOW THEY'LL DEAL WITH THESE BEASTS? WE'LL FIND OUT IN THE NEXT CHAPTER.
REMEMBER THAT IF YOU'D LIKE TO CONTRIBUTE ADDITIONALLY, WE HAVE PATREON:
patreon.com/EmptyTag
AS ALWAYS, I APPRECIATE ALL YOUR SUPPORT AND YOUR COMMENTS.
TAKE CARE OF YOURSELVES, A KISS 😘