John was sipping ice water, laying in the sun, as he listened to that announcement. As was scheduled, it was 30 degrees right now, noon, and all around wonderful. Siena was, begrudgingly, teaching Sylph how to move in water. Rave and Metra were playing volleyball against Aclysia and Gnome in the pool, hitting it over a net that the panel had created. In her absence, Eliza had taken to the maid role and was now running errands for John. Her constant tirade of curses whenever he requested something, as well as her eventually returning in nothing but her leather bra and thong that was her usual outfit because the maid stuff was just too uncomfortable in this heat, was quite entertaining.

Around the pool ran Nia as she kept Copernicus and Stirwin from getting at each other’s throat, patting them as equals. The second she was gone, the two light spirits went straight at it again, although the crocodile still stood no chance at winning.

“Just do it already!” Salamander’s frustrated voice was the only thing that cut through the current tranquillity of this Tuesday. Yes, it was indeed already the day following the date Monday. The reveal of Salamander’s goal had gone over with an arrangement of different shock levels. Not wanting to look like he supported the idea, John had left Salamander to fend for herself.

_____________________________________________________________________________

“So, let me get this straight,” Metra had begun the public inquiry into the nutcase that was Salamander. “You want to, on purpose, fuck yourself. Do I summarize this correctly?”

“If you want to boil it down to the basics,” Salamander shrugged, “sure, let’s put it like fucking that.”

The ancient weapon grinned, “Count me in.” A bunch of people looked at her with a raised eyebrow. “Oh, come one people, like you don’t fucking know that I am all about stupid, dangerous, dangerously stupid and stupidly dangerous stuff. If Salamander wants to go down facing mankind’s most ancient foe, I support that honourable death with all I am. I will either guide her to the afterlife or applaud the victor of a battle glorious.”

That had started entirely not how John wanted it to. He was hoping everyone else would sow some seeds of doubt here, at least to get Salamander to modify her goal in some way after he had failed to make a compelling enough argument to move the goalpost in any way. In his defence, he had been in mild shock at the idea itself.

Anyway, Metra set the momentum right into Salamander’s direction. “You are fucking stupid, but I won’t interfere with your shit,” Eliza added. “Not that I currently could even if I wanted. FUCK YOU THANA!”

“Thi-this is a terrible idea!” Gnome finally said something reasonable. “You really shouldn’t do this! You are going to threaten yourself and everyone around you!”

“And?” the surprise question came from no other than Sylph. “If Salamander wants to do that thing, she should do it. At least she is warning us. I think this is fine. Aren’t we all free here? Wasn’t that the deal that we could swish and swoooooooosh like we want? Like, I don’t get why we should be judging and stuff, it’s her decision.”

“It’s dangerous!” the stone elementals protective instincts had overtaken her stutter. “What if she… if she goes too far and we can’t get her back?”

“Then that will be sad, I will be super sad, so we just gotta do our best and make it not happen,” the air spirit answered, slowly drifting over to Salamander who followed her with wide eyes. “If Sally, silly, silly, itty bitty, Sally the silly of Sillisburg, evil overlady of Sillistein, silly Sally of silly sailing supreme supper super stuff wants to do this, then that’s that.” Sylph flew a little loop and finally stopped to sit on Salamander’s shoulder. “You won’t change your mind, right? Because you are stubborn fire thingy magics.”

“I sure am, you annoying airhead,” Salamander agreed with a trademark cackle and then ripped her younger sister from her shoulder to give her an aggressive tickling. “When did you become all fucking nice to me, huh? Don’t make me feel emotional after I have to watch your ass everyday!”

“HIhahahahahihihi,” Sylph didn’t get to answer as the blaze elemental’s thumb’s kept going at her stomach.

“Is this because of me?” Undine finally asked the obvious. Everyone had just waited for her to get that question out, watching her open and close her mouth in a gathering of courage.

“Yes,” Salamander kept it to a minimum.

“There is no reason for you to do this,” the ocean elemental said, her irritation whipping her into a storm that was ready to lash out and talk some sense into her older sister. “Repeating my mistakes is foolish, you know that, you stand to gain nothing but scars and lose everything, including yourself to a song nobody should understand!”

“And that is exactly why I have to do it,” Salamander said, “because the me that won’t do this is worse than the one I would lose.”

“I don’t get it,” Undine shouted, her singing voice breaking into a graceless cry of desperation.

Salamander narrowed her eyes, “Oh really? Then why did you do what I want to do in the first place?” the water spirit’s storm, barely beginning to unfold into their wider spirits, was vaporized. “You can act like the moral one all you want, Undine, but you know exactly what the gnawing of unmade decisions feels like. As a matter of fact,” the blaze elemental pointed at the ocean, “don’t try to tell me you don’t feel it right now, you chicken.”

“Right, why didn’t ya go swimming yet?” Rave asked, changing to topic much to John and Undine’s dismay. Although these two had different reasons for being unhappy. His girlfriend did bring it back into how it was relevant to this discussion, “Cause I think you’re afraid of something, so you’re overly cautious. Meanwhile Salamander is jumping into a pool of idiocy way too quickly. Ya both are idiots.”

‘Said the girl who likes to jump conclusions herself,’ John thought and got himself a knowing glance from Rave. The difference between when one was to act was really different from person to person. Not that big of a problem as long as one wasn’t either acting all the time without ever thinking or so afraid by the ramifications that they never did anything. Being somewhere around the middle was fine, which both Undine and Salamander seemed to be (although they both often needed someone to talk sense into them).

“What she says,” Salamander chimed back in. “You can stand there and say what I want to do is stupid, which it is, but you can’t say you don’t understand. What I am going through is something everyone knows at some capacity. I am just dumb enough to actually do the insane thing.” She grinned, “Doesn’t that make me admirable in a way.”

“You are most fucking definitely not a role model for my eventual kid, firecrotch,” Eliza growled and caused most of them to laugh at the idea that the theoretical mother herself would be a role model one day.

“You are right… would you help me try then?” Undine admitted, her blind golden eyes looking at the ocean.

“Sure,” Salamander said with a thumbs-up.

“Okay, so there really is no talking you out of this,” John sighed, “when do you want to do it then?”

“Whenever you get the next SEP,” she answered. “So as soon as possible, right here if need be.”

John looked around, “On the one hand, that’s a terrible idea,” he mumbled, “on the other, it has the advantage that you cannot escape anywhere if things do go south, fire and the ocean don’t mix that well.”

“See, it’s all dandy,” Salamander answered, and that was the end of notable things on that day.

___________________________________________________________________________

So now John was laying on a lounger, relaxing as the fact of the matter was that he had no idea when the second SEP was going to show up. There was no reason to make further fuss over it, or rather, there was nothing productive that would come of it. The track was set, and as little as he liked this one, it was what they were doing.

In meantime, Salamander was trying to get Undine to jump into the water. No idea why they were doing that now. “Come on, what is stopping you.”

“What if my relatives are somewhere in there and try to tear me apart?” Undine asked. Now that was a grim picture. Also, highly paranoid and unnecessary.

“We are on the fucking ocean, not in the plane of water elementals,” Salamander told her. The blaze elemental looked ready to just shove her younger sister over the railing, much like birds throw their kids out of the nest to force them to learn how to fly. It was rather hard to push a body made out of liquid though.

“How about orcas then?” the ocean elemental presented another thought of hesitation.

“You are a level 110, Tier 4 water elemental in the damn ocean,” Salamander told her. “You will be able to fend off some oversized fish!”

“Technically, they are not fish,” John interrupted, “they are mammals.”

“I know that, but that doesn’t sound nearly as good,” the blaze elemental retorted. “Anyway, point being that you can either retreat in time or, and this is much easier, just teleport back!” Undine tried to voice another retort, but with a groan of frustration, Salamander turned into a pillar of fire for a moment. “You are out of excuses, just JUMP!”

After a moment more of hesitation, Undine finally gathered herself, both literally and figuratively, and flowed over the railing, describing a perfect sinus curve before plunging down. She hit the water down below.

‘That’s a weird thing to get an Achievement for,’ John thought as he mentally tracked Undine. There was a moment of panic as the alien familiarity of salty water encompassed the ocean elemental. Much like an adult returning to the place they had spent the first four years of their life in, she was hit by a weirdly nostalgic wave before a certain serenity set in.

It was all encompassing around her, water, her home, just an amount so vast that it might as well have been infinite, stretching endlessly around her in all directions, even in the dark below. Only the buzzing of the ship’s engine could be heard.

Her body claimed a space larger than usual down here and was partially diluted. She couldn’t just slide her way forwards like a slug on land, here she had to move according to other rules. Settling in was a thing of mere seconds, and quickly she began to pull her body back together, increasing her density so that she actually had something like fins that could help her navigate. As she began to swim at the cruiser’s side, just playing in the water, the panic was all but forgotten.

“Attention, mateys and everyone else on the ship!” the voice of the captain echoed out of the loudspeakers everywhere. “We will reach the edge of the Atlantic Fuse in about one hour. We are going to sail a circle around it, which we will do at a speed that ends the circulation at midnight so you can see the thing in its full beauty, and then be back on our way… unless we get attacked by a giant monster of course.”

‘You hear that, Undine?’ John asked half sarcastically, interrupting the ocean elemental in her tranquillity. ‘Watch out you don’t get too close to whatever well of magical energy we are about to witness and giant sea dragons.’

‘I will,’ Undine promised, and thus the Gamer retreated back to his own mind. With closed eyes he just kept enjoying the sun until a shadow fell over him.

“So how is it going, buddy?” Maximillian, his presence not exactly being a surprise as the clacking of his walking stick gave him away from a country mile (the sound was really bad for stealth), asked.

John opened one eye, the world seemed a lot more green than usual thanks to all the adjustments his retinas had gone through behind the closed lids, “Pretty good, no new girl?”

“Oh, I slept with three today, not including Stef and Lala. This whole boat is full of bored girls waiting for a hot guy,” the king in vacation boasted, “but you know as well as I that whoever I seduce on this boat won’t be a big help if something does appear. So I thought I better leave them to their own for the rest of the day.”

“I don’t exactly remember asking for your help,” John said and then, realizing how snobby that sounded, hastily added, “Not that it’s unwelcome. Big sacrifice you make there.”

“Like everyone else, I hope that we have a smooth sailing,” Maximillian joked.

Salamander cackled at the pun as she jumped at John on the lounger. “Not that I want to interrupt this bromance of yours.”

“There is no such thing as a bromance between me and the Gamer,” the king insisted. “We are adversarial, friendly acquaintances.”

“Yeah, I can get behind that definition,” John nodded.

Salamander just laughed and looked at both of them with the eyes of a girl who just wanted to tease. “That shit aside, we have one hour, and the blue nuisance is gone.” The blaze elemental circled his naked nipple with her index finger, “Wanna have a go before we potentially fight for our lives?”