Storm Strider

Marisol definitely tried to land on her glaives, but the swirling winds made it so she couldn’t reorient herself mid-air. She slammed painfully down onto the whirlpool on her back, and then—the strong current sucked her underwater, her hydrofuge spines doing nothing to keep her on the surface.

Shit!

Archive! I can’t breathe underwater for that long! What do I–

[Relax,] the Archive muttered. [The candy Reina gave you is called a ‘skyball coral’, which are consumable corals biologically engineered by the Percebe Perfumers to give people thirty minutes’ worth of oxygen underwater. You only ate that piece of candy five minutes ago, so there is no need to worry for the time being.]

True to the Archive’s words, she didn’t immediately feel like she needed to kick back up to the surface. It was like her lungs just didn’t need air anymore, so she let the violent currents pull her down, down, and down until she eventually came to a gentle halt—and then she forced herself to open her eyes, a thin hydrofuge film forming over her irises to help her see underwater.

The first thing she did was gulp, looking straight down; she glimpsed the maw of the seemingly endless abyss below her, stretching farther than her eyes could see. If she remembered her textbooks correctly, the whirlpool at the centre of the city was nine kilometres deep, one kilometre wide, and the lower depths were impossible to reach without specialised mutations and diving equipment. Now, she was no stranger to seeing an abyss below her—she’d already fallen into the great blue once—but what she didn’t expect was the fact that the walls of the giant whirlpool weren’t barren rocks.

Not at all.

As she started sinking slowly, she noted the dense underwater forest growing horizontally on the circular walls, absolutely teeming with life. Giant seaweeds swayed gracefully in the gentle deepwater currents, reflecting bright sunlight in watery, mirage-like shimmers. Vibrant moss and kelps sprouted from the rocks like fields of grass, and fish of every shape and size darted through the undergrowth, scales shimmering like multi-colored gemstones.

It was an aquatic ecosystem.

[... It is true that the whirlpool is nine kilometres deep, and that every kilometre, there is a different unique ecosystem prospering and propagating on the walls,] the Archive explained, as she twirled around and marvelled at the strange creatures swimming around her; she recognised a few of them as clusters of jellyfishes and schools of serpentine eels, but many more she didn’t recognise. [Each kilometre of the whirlpool is assigned a ‘Depth’ number, and the first kilometre below the surface is known as ‘Depth One, the Seagrass Meadow’. It is the safest Depth with very little bug activity, making it an ideal harvesting environment for many commercial fishermen and weed farmers. Now, would you please tap your harness’ sapphire core in the middle three times as hard as you can?]

The Archive appeared over the gemstone on her chest, tapping its little legs, so she obliged—almost in a daze—and immediately felt her personal gravity. If she was sinking slowly towards the bottom of the whirlpool before, she was falling fast towards the closest wall of the whirlpool now. Falling felt weightless here. It was smooth, it was gentle. Within ten seconds, she landed glaive-first on the mossy ‘ground’ of the whirlpool, and she didn’t even need to consciously stick to it with her segmented setae; the humming and whirring gemstone on her chest did all the hard work for her.

[Designed by the legendary ‘Stellerin’ of the Rampaging Hinterland Front, this harness is used by Harbour Imperators whenever they have to dive into the whirlpool,] the Archive said, and she stood up straight, tugging on the straps as she whirled around to gawk at the seaweed forest. Ignoring the fact that she could look straight up and see the exact same seaweed forest a thousand metres away on the opposite end of the whirlpool—and the fact that she was underwater—it almost looked as though she were standing in any normal forest. [There are only three controls you should know about: tap the bottom third of the gemstone relatively to yourself three times, and your personal gravity will make you sink ‘down’ to the bottom of the whirlpool. Tap the middle, and your personal gravity will make you sink towards the closest wall. Tap the upper third, and your personal gravity will flip, making you rise towards the surface rapidly.]

And it ain’t need no energy to do all that?

[It does not work outside the whirlpool,] the Archive said plainly. [The whirlpool has many, many peculiar properties. For one, the pressure per volume of water is far lower than the seas outside. The average human body cannot normally withstand even three hundred metres’ worth of underwater pressure, but combine both the relatively low pressure and the innate enhanced toughness of most people who dive into the whirlpool, the Harbour Imperators can withstand up to nine kilometres’ worth of underwater pressure. In short, the harness is not all-powerful. It merely capitalises on one of the whirlpool’s many peculiarities.]

What about the healing seawater thingy? If I open my mouth now, would I–

[Focus.]

[They are coming.]

The moment the Archive pointed up was when she saw the three Imperators stabbing through the surface, descending rapidly towards her. Now, the surface was technically two hundred metres ‘up’, but the Imperators were in front of her as long as she was standing on the wall—and quickly, she saw them tapping their harnesses as well, orienting themselves to the seagrass meadow’s gravity.

And… are we really gonna fight? She gritted her teeth, looking around the dense seaweeds as she tried to focus on her ripple sensors; the whirlpool’s currents weren’t as strong down here as they were on the surface, but they still took up a significant portion of her senses, making it impossible for her to locate the Imperators. We’re underwater. If one of us gets knocked out, wouldn’t we be in danger of falling somewhere nobody else can find and drown?

[They are Harbour Imperators with water-type insect classes. Even if the three of them are only new recruits, they most likely have mutations that let them breathe underwater for extended periods of time.]

Oh, so they’re fine. What about me?

[Objective #13: Defeat the new recruits]

[Time Limit: 23 minutes]

[Reward: Induction into the Harbour Imperators]

[Failure: Possible suffocation]

… Cool.

So it’s all risk for me.

[You like living on the edge, do you not?]

She scoffed, contemplating swatting the Archive off her shoulder, but then her ripple sensors flared and she felt a tingle to her left; a shadow dashed past a clump of seaweeds and neared her. She reacted on instinct, skating a few metres back to narrowly dodge what looked like a ripple flying at her chest—and she frowned immediately as the three Imperators waded out from the forest, clutching their shrimp pincers with their normal human hands.

All three of them were young, their hair tied in braids so they couldn’t whack their own faces. They were two men, one woman, and all three seemed to have the same shrimp class with only one visible and evident mutation manifesting on their body: all of their right hands were giant orange pincers, disproportionately large even compared to the crab pincers she’d seen on the Blackclaw Marauders. They were almost like cannons strapped to their arms, and she couldn’t help but shiver when they pointed their pincers at her again, their free hands clutching the back of their claws as though to brace themselves for recoil.

“... It ain’t personal, kid,” the man on the far left said, narrowing his deep blue eyes at her. His voice was somehow louder underwater, making her wince; maybe it was another mutation of his. “We respect what you did to keep the lower city safe from that Mutant. Really. We’ve all got family who live down there, and it would’ve been a real big mess if you hadn’t been there… but we ain’t about to let a no-name stranger with no official training show us up.”

“Raise your arms and yield,” the lady in the middle said, tilting her chin back. “I don’t know how you’re breathing underwater—or if the water strider class even has any mutations for underwater breathing—but you can’t be doing this for much longer. I estimate… ten? Maybe fifteen more minutes? We can’t breathe underwater for longer than three hours, and we have crustacean classes with specialised respiratory mutations. I don’t doubt your underwater stamina is much lower than ours.”

“What the two of them said,” the man on the far right said, putting zero effort into the conversation.

…

Well, she supposed it wasn’t really a conversation, and she didn’t think they’d hear her out anyways.

Truth be told, she wasn’t particularly keen on fighting humans—not after what she did to the Whitewhale Marauders—but she’d promised Victor and Reina that she’d help with the Imperators’ duties, whatever they may be.

So she parted her lips and tried to say ‘no’, but they really must have some sort of speech-assisting mutation or something, because all she ended up doing was panic-swallowing a mouthful of seawater the moment she tried to talk. While she coughed and doubled over and tried not to gag, the three Imperators simply stared at her weirdly—and that was her opportunity to bolt.

Dashing back, she skated behind a clump of seaweeds as they ‘clicked’ their pincers in unison, firing a ripple wave that tore up the ground she’d been standing on.

What… is that?

How are they doing that?

As she skated further and further back into the seagrass meadow, the three of them fanned out to pursue. She wasn’t skating as fast as she wanted to—water resistance slowed her significantly—but that didn’t mean the Imperators were slow to begin with. They leapt onto swaying seaweeds, kicked off the leaves, and bounced around overhead as they fired from three separate directions. She ducked and bobbed and weaved, narrowly evading each shot, but…

A few ripples ‘grazed’ her, and she winced every single time, feeling her bones rattling under her skin.

[It would appear they have the ‘pistol shrimp’ class,] the Archive commented idly, completely nonplussed as she yelped, barely evading another ripple that would’ve slammed right into her head. [Pistol shrimps have a disproportionately large claw capable of snapping and producing extremely powerful bubbles. These bubbles move fast enough to break physical objects and disorient enemies, but they can also be used to interfere with underwater communication between leviathans. They are basically ‘sonar waves’. Fun fact: their pistol pincers can grow up to half their body sizes, and the larger the pincers, the stronger the bubbles they can fire.]

Bubbles? She clenched her jaw, skating up a seaweed as the two men converged on her from opposite directions, both trying to grab her collar with their bare human hands. I thought bubbles were, like, round and soft and pretty! What do you mean they’re shooting bubbles at me?

[Sound travels much faster underwater,] the Archive explained. [On the surface, their pistol pincers would not be able to produce physically striking sounds. I imagine they would still be quite noisy, but many crustaceans have mutations and abilities that only properly function underwater—for the pistol shrimps, the underwater sound waves they can produce via their bubbles can be powerful enough to rupture your entire body from the inside out.]

… Aw. That’s kinda cool, actually.

[Indeed. Now focus. They also have–]

Whips. Chainwhips. She was about to backflip off the seaweed she was skating up when she suddenly found her arms bound to her sides, a metal chain with a small anchor at the end twirling around her torso at a blurry seed. The lady who’d flicked the anchor at her immediately jerked her down, yanking on the chain with both hand and pincer as she was slammed into the ground a good thirty metres away—kicking up a foggy cloud of moss and stone dust as she did.

As she groaned and lay there on the ground, all trussed up, the three Imperators banded together in the distance and approached her slowly. She could tell they were coming closer; her ripple sensors were starting to adapt the underwater currents.

“Stay there and yield,” the lady called out again. “A civilian should not be interfering with Imperator duty. You are unfit for the job. We have had training as Harbour Guards since we were children, and then we trained several more years just to be initiated into the Imperators. A mere girl who picked up an Altered Swarmsteel System cannot compare to us.”

“It ain’t all about individual strength and speed down here, either,” one of the men said. “No Imperator dives alone. Not even the six Lighthouse Imperators and the Imperatrix himself. Things can go very wrong very fast even if you’re with a full team, and the deeper you go, the worse your decision making because of Corpsetaker’s levitoxin. It clouds your judgement. It instils the fear of death in your heart. How do you think you would react when you are inevitably confronted with the fact that the leviathans of the Whirlpool City are far, far more powerful than you could ever imagine?”

“What the two of them said,” the other men said, putting zero effect into the lecture.

…

And Marisol clicked her tongue in irritation, extending her preapical claws with a loud snap to sever the chains binding her arms.

The lady who’d been holding the other end of the chain took a step back, startled, and the other two stepped forward to guard her. For her part, Marisol simply climbed onto her glaives and stretched her shoulders, arms, waist, and legs—popping every joint she could pop and making sure she was in tip-top condition to dance.

… I’m looking ‘up’ at them, right? she thought. The surface is behind them, so if I tap the top of my gemstone, will my personal gravity change and make me rise towards it?

[Correct.]

Then screw this underwater resistance shit, making me slow and all.

Sharpening her eyes, dragging her right glaive back with a loud screech, she leaned dangerously forward and prepared to charge headfirst at the Imperator man on the left.

Then she tapped the top of her gemstone three times and immediately felt herself falling ‘forward’.

Talking like I ain’t know fear, this lot.

They ain’t ever seen ‘speed’ like mine.