“Could you please?” captain Sealy asked. “Either of you? Pretty please?”

He was addressing Maximillian and John, both of which were just lying in the sun, covered in girls. While John was being cuddled by Salamander, her new fire dress had the nice property of not burning people (as long as she didn’t want to), and a deeply flustered Gnome, stun locked by embarrassment, Maximillian had gotten himself two new girls. Stef and Lala were still around, just not right now.

“So, let me get this straight,” the Gamer asked after taking a sip from his glass and then putting it back on the salver Aclysia was holding up. In the background he heard his girlfriend’s laughter. They were busy playing in the pool again. Something that John would much rather be watching right now than to have this conversation. “You are telling me that one of those pirates I caught on the first day escaped their cell and that she,” it was the one girl in the group, “is coming back here with a fleet.”

“That’s what her captain told us upon interrogation, yes,” Sealy answered.

“Interrogation being you asking where she was,” Maximillian pointed out and flicked ashes off the joint he was currently smoking.

John gave him an annoyed glance, “You know that thing reeks, right? What reason is there for you to smoke it right next to me?”

“…You have a lighter,” Maximillian answered after a 5 second silence.

“I am a unique kind of fire elemental, not a fucking lighter,” the short-haired redhead growled back. “Call me that again and I will show you a REAL hotbox.”

“Sure thing,” the king didn’t seem to really understand what she was complaining about. He took a hit from the blunt and then passed it onto one of his girls.

“Okay, so that guy is obviously too high to help you,” John sighed, “which leaves only me.” There was also Tilgun, but he was Tilgun. “Just two questions, number one, you have a giant fucking cannon, why not just use that?”

“Captain Boss Senior spoke of a fleet of two-hundred vessels, our cannon is only helpful against big targets,” Sealy answered.

“Okay, then I actually have a follow-up question before my planned second one… why does this ship not have safety precautions against large numbers?”

“Well… we do have some…” Sealy’s body language was pretty dodgy, him wringing his webbed hands and all that, “there is a small army of golems that we could unleash, buuuut the activation console was damaged when that higher dragon climbed around.”

“…Mhm,” John looked at the guy for an extended period of time. The seal head was wiggling from left to right nervously. “No, I don’t believe that,” he finally declared. He could practically see the cold sweat developing on the guys face. “You know what I think? That you thought that there will be several thousand Abyssals on this ship, so nobody would be stupid enough to even attack because of the sheer fighting force that presents. Your emergency protocol would be to just appeal to everyone’s want for self-defence.”

“Whaaaat?” Sealy barked in panic a few times. “Nooooooo, we would never do that!” his head waved from side to side even faster as if he was on the lookout for some predator. “It’s not like Amalia is trying to fix our war-tax deficit by striking a few unnecessary things from the budget. Never!”

“Okay, my second question then,” John continued on, shifting a bit in his seat to get more comfortable. Was a bit hard with Gnome holding onto him as if her life depended on it, somewhat of a shock reaction to being seen in her swimsuit by a relative stranger. “What’s in it for me?”

“We won’t be rationing your energy consumption if you do,” Sealy promised.

“Why would you even need to do that?” John furrowed his eyebrows. “Seriously sounds more like a threat than a reward.”

“Well… you know how we are currently towing a higher dragon because he is interested in you?” the cruise’s captain pointed out. “We might run into some problems at the last day.”

The word towing here was absolutely accurate, as Tilgun had gone to sleep following yesterday’s events with Salamander. As he still had to follow the boat somehow, he had threatened to hook one of his hands into the back of the ship. Sealy, on the basis that that would cause even more property damage, had hastened to deliver a stammered proposal involving a giant metal rope. Thus a higher dragon was now getting pulled on said rope behind them.

“I guess that would lead to some unpredicted costs,” John admitted, “but it’s hardly my fault.”

“No, yes, maybe, uhm,” Sealy clearly didn’t completely agree with that sentiment, as given away by him glancing at the rescue vessel that was now swimming in the middle the VIP pool, currently boarded by Sylph who was, ironically, playing pirate, but he also didn’t want to get in bad graces with the Gamer. “That aside, we still have to reduce general energy availability to have enough energy to keep the engines running and arrive in New York on schedule. Or maybe not, depends on how much we have to feed the slimes for the repairs.”

“Huh, well what are we even using that much energy on up he-“ John looked at the superheated pool, “say no more. Anyway, that’s all you would give me?”

“I would offer to refund your ticket for the trouble, buuuuut,” Sealy flopped his hands around like tiny windmills. Refunding what he had gotten for free was quite hard.

“Geez, John, put the poor guy out of his misery,” a wet Rave commented, walking over to them with attractively swinging hips. Her sticky hair sprang back into curls, strand by strand, as it dried. With longer hair came the minor disadvantage that the process took longer, but when she fanned it out a bit, it still instantly regained its volume. “Ya gonna do it anyway, don’t be a dick about it.”

“On one hand, you are totally right,” John smiled at his girlfriend as she circled his chair and put her arms around him from behind, “on the other, you are ruining my fun.”

“Maybe I don’t think ya should have this kind of fun,” she scolded him from above, her chin resting on the back of the chair. Droplets of water hit John’s shoulder as he looked at her. “Seriously, ya gonna cross the dick limit. Ya ain’t gonna tickle anything of use out of this poor fellow, so there is no reason to act all coy or like a certain Rat ya keep complaining about.”

That cut deep but was also true. “Point taken,” he therefore said and turned to the confused but also bright-eyed seal-man. “So yeah, while I technically only agreed to fend off things in the Atlantic Fuse, which I also technically did.” The argument could, quite convincingly, be made that Tilgun would have had a feast with the people on this ship if he (mostly Metra) hadn’t been here. “All that aside, I don’t really feel like I earned my keep, so I guess I can help smash a pirate fleet.”

“Hurray,” captain Sealy clapped his hands together in an enthusiastic way. Sylph flew by and dropped the ball they usually used to play in the pool down on the enthusiastic naval expert, who promptly began balancing it on his nose.

“We might as well test your new powers while we are doing that,” John said to Salamander, whilst indiscreetly tapping her ass. They hadn’t really gotten to do that, the little scuffle they had with Izha, who hadn’t even fought back, aside, since it was a safety hazard. All they had done was check out her item form.

_____________________________________________________________

They separated into three groups. Group one was the one that would meet the enemy fleet head on. This group was currently located on the previously dislocated safety vessel, which they had gotten back into water by simply throwing it overboard. Those things were quite sturdy. It consisted of John, Sylph, Salamander and Undine.

The second team was keeping a lookout on the ship itself. It consisted of a toasted Maximillian, who was helping from the background if anything, Rave, Nia, even though she had vanished after the briefing, and Metra. They were also on Eliza-watch, since there was no telling if Thana was going to see this as a sort of opportunity.

The third team was Stirwin, Gnome, Siena and Aclysia. They were keeping a watch on the cell of the guy they were supposed to guard. Stirwin was there for morale and fusing purposes. They were also supposed to teleport in in case of emergency, but they weren’t useful on the water.

It all depended on what kind of fight this was actually going to be. If they were fighting a lot on whatever fleet the enemy was presenting, not being able to fly or swim wasn’t a huge drawback, so Gnome and Aclysia could join them. If they kept it to mostly mobile combat, then the current line-up had to suffice. Thanks to the Invoke attribute on Gamer’s Pompous Shoes being set to Water, he could run on the ocean surface for up to 110 (in other words, his level) seconds. It recharged at a rate of 1 second every 5 seconds on land, which, as previous testing had concluded, just meant a solid surface not underneath water. So, he could run from one ship to the next, fight, recharge and board the next one.

‘Then again, seeing whose son I am about to face here,’ John thought, his vessel getting pushed by Undine after the cruise ship, ‘this is probably totally over preparing. There is going to be some bantering, some weird allegations, some pleads to just release the kraken -namely the captain- and that’s going to be it.’

They were riding behind the cruise to quickly get to either side, as they didn’t know from which they would be attacked. ‘In the first place, if we are talking 200 ships, how is he moving them around unseen? Does he have a giant field with him? Is there a super-strong Fateweaver? I can get how they are going to find us: we have a predefined route and chances are they have some sort of communication set-up. Still, how would one move a fleet of that size, unseen?’ He turned his attention over to somebody who could probably answer that question.

‘Yes, Master?’ Aclysia’s voice rung out when she felt John’s consciousness connect to hers.

‘Can you ask our talkative captive what kinds of ships are under his son’s command?’ He had no idea about any mobile barrier functions if some model number if it was thrown his way, but he could at least estimate the size if it was a type that was also found in reality. Which he very much expected. In the sciences, the Abyss mostly lagged behind the normal word, largely thanks to the need of normal people to keep inventing stuff while Abyssals could already get almost everything needed pretty easily. Not a lot of progress was to be made in a world that didn’t need progress.

‘He says man’o’w-arrrrr-s, Master,’ Aclysia truthfully transmitted.

‘U-hu…’ John thought as a single ship suddenly entered the barrier.

A man’o’war was a heavy battleship from the 16th century. The giant kind often seen in movies, mighty wooden beasts that earned their name by transporting heavily armoured soldiers across the oceans, outfitted with rows of cannons and high masts, a true warship.

What he was looking at was a medium sized mega-yacht, or just a giant yacht, whatever one prefered. Not unimpressive, not at all. In fact, John was rather impressed. A clean blue and black hull with enough space for 40 people to live in apartments lower income families would marvel at the size alone. Without a doubt a kitchen was somewhere in the almost 100-metre-long ship, with enough storage space to last them for a long time. The thing had several decks with blackened windows, and a small pool rose out of a heightened part of the front end. It was all around pretty awesome. John wasn’t quite sure if it was advisable to cross the ocean on that yacht, he didn’t have the expertise in boats to make a claim for or against that, but he could certainly see a rich person using it to party out in international waters for a few days. That was just for a normal yacht of that size, magical enhancement notwithstanding.

John waited for a second ship to appear as they began moving towards the localized attacker. Jack flew over the ship and spied, aside from the attractive looking woman that had kicked this whole chain of events off, a tentacle bearded fellow who was wearing a comically big hat and an outfit that John was sure was based on some caricature of Blackbeard. He too was a kraken-person, albeit of blue colouration instead of his father’s red. A quick Observe revealed him to be level 52. While that was above average, it was below John-verage.

“You are not the captain yet, Captain Boss Junior,” the women reminded the blue kraken and took the hat off the guy. Jack landed on a seat nearby, unnoticed.

“As long as my father remains in captivity, I am the stand-in!” came the retort, quickly taking back what he thought to be his. “Therefore, I deserve to wear this hat!”

‘Well, there is my entry into the banter,’ John thought and looked at the water below. There was distracting shimmering on the surface, distinctly different from just water. ‘…Say… Aclysia… can you ask him if he meant PORTUGUESE man’o’wars specifically?’

A moment later he received a ‘Yes, Master. Why do you need this information?’

‘Because that’s a name for a type of jellyfish,’ he answered and looked at the, most likely 199, translucent gelatine marine-lifeforms floating on the waves. One ship moving in an individual barrier made way more sense, all of these Portuguese man’o’wars keeping up less so, but they were probably some kind magical being.

Yup.

“Okay, this is stupid, take off that hat and get into the cell with your father,” John just delivered his demand the moment he got close enough.

“That’s the guy, that’s the man who wanted to seduce me!” the attractive looking woman said.

‘And here come the weird allegations,’ John sighed. “Look, lady, you look good, but I have enough good-looking girls with me. Right?” He gestured at Sylph and Salamander flying next to the boat and then at Undine when she poked her head out the water. “So I didn’t try to seduce you, because I really didn’t need to.”

“I would never believe someone who molested dear Susie!” Junior said.

“You have some circular logic there, because the only way you wouldn’t believe me is if I molested her, which I didn’t, but you don’t believe me because you think I did, but I didn’t. You see the problem there?” John pointed out, whilst thanking all the gods that existed that at least this one hadn’t taken to his father’s habit of forcing pirate clichés into every sentence.

“Lies and slander, lass, I shall cut you with this cutlass!” everyone around Junior groaned as he delivered his old man’s joke. “I shall release the…”

“Let me guess,” Salamander drily stated, “Kraken? Very creative, octopus face, are you going to show us your dick?”

“No, not the kraken, you burning buffoon, what I have in store is much more dangerous than a kraken… I shall release the… technically-not-a-true-jellyfish-but-actually-a-siphonophore!”

“Are you being serious?” John asked and then almost fell over on his boat as the waves rose.