The bridge of the ship was a triangular shaped room with flattened tips, technically making it a hexagon. The broad side looked ahead, to overview the sea and the decks below. John noted that his area was visible as well, but not to any great detail. Around them beeped unattended terminals with naval data and internal system checks scrolling over their large touchscreens.

The reason for the lack of attention given to steering the vehicle was rather obvious to John and everyone else when they stepped out of the teleporter at the backwards pointing tip of glass walls. It was the five people armed with a sword and gun each, in stereotypical privateer fashion. They were holding the crew of seven hostage. The negotiations as to what that meant were just about begin.

“We are commandeering this… SHIT!” One of them said as he noticed John and his group. He, and three others, were dressed like one would imagine typical pirate sailors. Going by what John got from their Observe info, that was a deliberate design decision.

“Oh, in de seebrreeze’s name Vincont,“ their captain, marked by the fact that he wore the biggest hat in the room with the typical skull symbol decorating it, ranted through his red-coloured squid face. “Arrrrr we really in need of going over dis again? Commandeering is what militarrrry and police do. We are pirates, at best we privateer! However, as we arrrr -officially- without employ-arrrrrr, saying we arrrrr seizing this ship would be da true way to say id. Furthermore, the word ship is not dat complicated, you silly g-.”

He was interrupted by Eliza as she burst out laughing, after biting her thumb to force the laughter to just quietly shake her. “What the fuck are you?! The comedy Arrrrsociation?”

“Nice! That was a good jab, keep it up,” Metra praised, grinning like a tomboy grinned with a bloodlusting look in her eyes and tapping the end of Qiada on the floor in a rhythm that made John think of war drums.

“Ehem, I have several questions,” John said after clearing his throat.

“What makes you think we arrr going to answer anything?! We arrr not afraid of you and your arrrray of prutty girrrls!” the squidface announced to the sound of his men (and the one woman) dropping their weapons. “What be you doing, hearrrties?!”

“Boss, sorry, but have you not watched any news recently?” the woman, a pretty sexy one in her late twenties, asked. Her voice would have been pretty seductive, were it not for the very evident fear and nervousness in the face of a still very battle-ready Metra. “That’s the… the, uhm, the Player! Josh Oldboy!”

“The who now?” captain squidface was still not up to speed.

“The Gamer,” John corrected, “John Newman, and I am getting hungry right now, so if we could please hurry this along.” This whole situation annoyed him a bit; after all Amalia had assured him that this sort of situation was specifically NOT what he was on board for. Also, they had only been on the ship for like 3 or 4 hours and there was already an attempt at stealing the whole ship. ‘If it weren’t for the jacuzzi and the self-cleaning floors, this cruise would get a 1-star rating on Yelp so far.’

“Who do you think you arrr to command us arrrround?!” the captain asked, raised his gun and immediately took a shot at John.

John was many things, but as quick as a bullet was not yet on the menu. For a rough estimate, it seemed that, to have reflexes that could react to the propelled metal in time, one needed to have an Agility of roughly 500. That’s what Eliza had (presumably) been at when Victoria shot at her. That much Agility wasn’t enough to outrun a bullet, that wasn’t a skill achievable by raw Stats as far was John concerned. At around 1000 people broke the sound barrier, and modern rifles shot bullets at four times the speed of sound. All that aside, the real reason why rifles eventually became useless in the Abyss was because people that had fighting skills had bodies that could withstand a few bullets and even if the bullet was faster than them the one aiming was most likely not.

‘What a stupid tangent to go on,’ John, whose mind was way quicker than his reflexes, thought as that bullet was caught between two sickly pale fingers with nails made from crystallized blood, a finger-width in front of his shoulders. “Thanks, Eliza,” he said to the blood mage with the worried eyes.

“This is really weird,” she mumbled, looking at the soft bullet in her hands discharging paralyzing energy, “she isn’t even trying right now. Normally she would at least harass my thoughts.”

“Mhm, I will keep an eye on you, don’t worry,” John promised as he sent back a Shardbound attack that disarmed the squidface via a precise strike at his hand. “Okay, seriously, unless you want to die,” John said and conjured a new wave of the dangerous manifestations of his mana, “I would just like to ask a few questions.” He was relaxed about this whole ordeal, hence why he hadn’t even put his Mana Protection up. The highest level on their side was 52, which laid with the captain, while the lowest on John’s side was Rave with level 91.

“Question number one, why are we even here, Metra?” he glanced at the berserker babe. Knowing now that there was no fight breaking out, she was leaning against the side of a terminal.

“I said I would keep you people on track, so I thought we might as well meet the crew and ask if there is something we should know,” she explained herself.

“And I fully support that train of thought!” said the actual captain of the ship as he inched away from the still armed captain. John was not exactly surprised to see that he was a seal-man wearing a captain’s uniform, while his (also seal-people) assistants were wearing less decorated versions of the same white and blue outfit.

“Fair enough,” John admitted. “Next question: drop the sword.”

“That is not a question!” the squidface pointed out rather aggressively. “And this is no normal sword, it be a cutlass, with which I will cut a lass!” he waved the weapon, and his whole crew groaned, letting John know that this wasn’t the first time he made that joke.

“Would you be kind enough to do it anyway?” John wanted to know. He really wasn’t asking, and he gestured at Metra to indicate as much. “Or she is going to break every bone in your body.”

“Jokes arrrr on you, lad! I don’t have a lot of bones,” his whole body wiggled like only a octopod could.

“I suggest dicing him instead,” Aclysia said, “I think I could make something from squid.”

John rubbed his temples. “Okay, next question, do you have cells to hold them in?”

The question was clearly directed at the captain Sealy, but squidface had some rather obvious attention issues. “Arrrr you not going to ask about our names or what our plan is?”

“No, I know them already, Captain Boss Senior,” that was his actual name, “and I refuse to spend more time on this, so just shut it so we can put you in a cell.” The way easier solution was to just kill them, but that was also something John didn’t want to do. These weren’t really bad people. Going by what Observe told him, they saw themselves as the Robin Hoods of the sea with an extra load of roleplaying. They didn’t kill, they just took money and then fooled around in an ultimately non-harmful way.

They weren’t pirates as much as they were pirate actors. Their job (even if they themselves didn’t realize that) was to point out security flaws to people or make whoever managed to get their ship seized by them look bad.

“I really have better things to do, I have a ship to explore and dates to plan,” he announced, “so drop the weapon and then follow me to whatever cell this ship has.”

“Boss, we really should do it,” the female pirate was the voice of reason.

Captain Boss Senior (now officially just dubbed Squidface in John’s head) wiggled his tentacle beard with unwillingness but, faced with all of John and his group, finally gave in.

_________________________________________________________

“You arrrrrr going to see us again!” Squidface promised, hammering his tentacle hands against the energy wall that separated him from freedom. It was by no means a bad place to be, on the contrary. This row of cells (each with their own bathroom) was set under the waterline, and they could look into the ocean through a window. Not that there was a lot to see; the oceans inside the illusion barrier were empty even of jellyfish.

“Whatever,” John shrugged, “just sit still until the cruise is back at Amsterdam and you will be fine. I guess, I have no idea about Dutch laws about seizing stuff for the fun of it.”

“Jail time, shortened if he tells us who his employer is,” Captain Sealy said as they stepped towards the teleporter.

“Great, anyway,” John moved on from this inconsequential event, “as per Metra’s wishes: is there some sort of protocol in case you need my help at the Atlantic Fuse?”

“Yes, here it is: you and your compatriots are to gang up and hit it til it dies,” Sealy said. John pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Lemme guess,” his girlfriend, half-laughing, added to the discussion, “if there is more than one enemy, the strategy is to kill them and then hit the biggest bad until it dies?”

“Yes! How did you know?” Sealy clapped his webbed hands together like an enthusiastic sea-lion.

“Just a hunch,” Rave said and booped him on the black tip of his prolonged nose. Sealy’s mouth opened into a giant, dog-like smile. John finally understood why the German word for seal was literally sea-dog.

Something moving outside the underwater window caused him to freeze in his enthusiasm. John looked with disbelief at the group of orcas swimming by. The black and white killer whales moved by with the relaxed ease of an apex predator.

“Why are there orcas inside this Illusion Barrier?” John wanted to know. The way one of them stopped and just looked at them behind the glass was pretty unnerving. More so for the seal-people that were with him, all of whom quickly scrambled to a part of the corridor without a window.

“Don’t you know?!” the terrified captain Sealy called out to him. “Orca’s are not natural creatures; they are to dolphins what dragons are to lizards, with the difference that they are way better at acting so they got people fooled into thinking they are normal animals when, really, they are unholy monstrosities!”

John’s eyes darted back and forth between the captain and the apparently magical water mammals. The evidence was obviously on the side of the seal-man’s claim, so John had to accept that. The fact that the Orca that had halted, slowly drifting by as the ship kept moving, opened its toothed mouth to breathe a playful cloud of visible shockwaves at the boat did make that an easier process.

“They still haven’t eradicated these things?” Metra asked and put a hand on the glass and tried to stare them to death. When that didn’t work, the sound of metal sheets sliding over each other filled the corridor, accompanying the dirty blonde’s natural armour forming out of her skin. Starting at her back and, from there, rapidly expanding through individual segments growing out of the last one, resulting in a pattern that reminded of a snake belly.

This was only the second time John saw the villainous, futuristically designed armour, dark grey with the colour of thick blood decorating it with lines and simply glyphs, edges and spikes sticking out in a way that would turn the receiver of a tackle into mincemeat.

As if they were suddenly in the face of the devil himself, the Orcas all fled in such a panic that they left cracks in the edge of the Illusion Barrier as they ripped their way out. The fine tears, like white veins in the water, soon healed themselves as John looked over to Metra with an interested gaze.

“I guess they remember me from when I was sent on a ten-year pilgrimage to slaughter every single one of them I could find,” Metra said. “It was one of the last orders Sargon gave me after one of them lunged at his kid at the coast of the Persian Gulf. It was a scary beast with a third eye, with Lorylim corruption oozing from its mouth from the piece of Cyclostone it had consumed.” She smiled to herself, “Good times, took me two days to kill that thing. That was before they started whispering.”

“Wait you had contact with Lorylim before?” John asked, and Metra raised an eyebrow at him.

“I am several millennia old, chances that I didn’t are rather slim,” she answered. “At one time I actually heard the song, that was pretty close. If you only hear whispers, you are fine; you should worry when they stop and run when you hear them sing… or ram the pillar of a Greek temple through the eye of the cyclops. Sadly, I can’t tell you too much about that story, I am under oath and all that.”

Undine’s discomfort plagued John’s mind together with his own curiosity; he needed to ask more questions of Metra in order to understand what he regarded to be his enemy by default. “Do you know what they are?”

“If you are asking whether or not I know what they are, I have to go with no. All I know is that they are disgusting and dangerous. They only got worse about two-three thousand years back, when they started to also be insane and corrupting as well as start that stupid song,” the helm parted, and the segments retreated until they formed a crescent of spikes around her neck, “but you can kill them, so that’s all I need to know.”

“Fair enough, but could you tell me…” John began.