ic Spiraling Shape (IC)

[Avenger Assembled]

"It is the sign of the Elder Ones," Aquaria croaked proudly. "Those who ruled Lemuria, in great days, and who will return when the stars are right." She traced her fingers over the design too, almost reverently. "It is a proud symbol - one that means bravery, and goodness, and protection. It suits you." She beamed at Jessie, smiling without showing her teeth in the Surfacer fashion. "I think you can fit it over your back when you aren't using it, see the hide straps go here..." 

 

- 

 

When the phone rang, Aquaria croaked to SFX, "We will meet in the butterfly garden again. Bring all of your things." When SFX arrived, the mismatched pair of the armored Sea Devil and the shielded Singularity were waiting for her in the butterfly garden. "Phantom is on her way," said Sea Devil, who had a bulging leather satchel over one shoulder. "Then we will go." Sea Devil considered mentioning to the others that they were going to see her spawn and her spawn's spawn, but she couldn't think of when that was likely to come up so decided to keep it to herself for now. 

[BlazingCoconut]

The ride up the elevator and journey to the butterfly garden was at least familiar this time.  Zhu carried the small ball that would become a membrane to protect her from the cold and allow her to breathe.  Field tests would have been good but she was reasonably certain of her work and she could always just surface if it didn't.  Considering that the deepest water she had ever been in was a swimming pool, it was going to be quite a challenge.  In fact, her swimming skills were nothing more than rudimentary.  Still the membranes that would stretch from finger to finger and the fins that would appear on her feet would help.  At least in theory.

 

As she approached, she smiled and said, "it's good to see you again.  Thank you for believing that I can be of help."

[Electra]

"All right," Jessie said, still sounding a little dubious but obviously not wanting to disappoint her friend. "Thank you, it's very nice. I don't know if I'll be able to use it very much, but I'll try it." And that was how she came to be standing back in the butterfly garden with the unfamiliar weight of the shield strapped to her back, still wondering in the back of her mind whether she'd have an easier life if she didn't spend quite so much time not disappointing Aquaria. No time to think about that now, though, not when there was work to be done. She just hoped that the weird star sign on the shield was just a decoration and not some kind of monster-summoning spell just biding its time. She nodded a polite greeting to SFX and waited. 

[Avenger Assembled]

"Soon Phantom will come and take us to the nest," said Aquaria, big eyes blinking as she looked from Jessie to SFX by swiveling her massive head. "When we arrive, I will speak to them," she said, "so that they know we are their friends and we bring them treasures. Then they will speak to us." She fell silent for a moment, considering, before she croaked, "If they fight, we will run away with Phantom. There will not be any trouble." Having had this conversation with Jessie in the elevator, she added, "I do not think they will fight. We will be bringing them food - and I know the rites." Suddenly she leaped slightly into the air and turned to look at SFX. "Are you a vegetarian?" she croaked, obviously concerned at the prospect as she emphasized the alien word. 

[BlazingCoconut]

SFX

Zhu stepped back as Aquaria sprung up, she was looking for a threat and just couldn't find it.  When she asked if Zhu was a vegetarian the Chinese girl exhaled in relief.  That was a question that she could answer.

 

"No, although I don't eat that much in general.  Is it a problem than I am not?"  She worried for a moment that Aquaria was asking this as a request.  However, looking at the Deep One's sharp teeth, she didn't think that was going to be the case.  Then looking to Jessie, "um... are you just going to use Scuba gear when we go underwater?"

[Avenger Assembled]

"My people only eat meat," croaked Aquaria in reply. "You see my teeth?" she asked for emphasis, opening her mouth slightly. She clearly was keeping her mouth from opening all the way, but SFX had a glimpse of piranha-like teeth in jaws with deep anchored muscles - she knew enough biology to know the face of an obligate predator when she saw one. "We will be bringing meat for the tribe and their eating may be hard for you to see. And hear." 

[alderwitch]

Without much fanfare, a white light appeared - easy to mistake at first as the light glinting oddly although any one with the sense to tell of dimensional or magical disturbances would sense the tang of the Master Mage arriving. The fabric of her cloak unfolded from the light with the mage herself unfolding from its voluminous folds with an almost inaudible pop of air displacement. 

 

"Ah, good." Phantom said as she appeared in place. She paused to take in Jessie's new accessories with a long, inscrutable pause before she continued without providing comment on her arms, "We are ready to depart then?"

[BlazingCoconut]

SFX

SFX nodded to Aquaria, while the deep one's teeth were certainly not friendly looking, they were just another aspect of her that surprisingly Zhu just took in stride.  She listened about the meat comments and nodded, "I think I'll be okay with it.  I'll just not eat very much if I don't have too.  But, I like working with movies and a lot of the better effects are related to um... horror movies..." 

 

Realizing how that might sound, "not that I think you're horrible or horrific, but um, the sounds and sights, I think I should do okay."

 

Thankfully, Phantom appeared at the right time, saving her from making a bigger fool of herself, "yes Ma'am.  Should I prepare for being underwater now?"

[Electra]

Jessie's shoulders twitched under the straps of her new shield, but she did her best not to respond any more than that to Phantom's scrutiny. Phantom wasn't a threat, she reminded herself, Phantom had already signed off on her. It was okay. Really. 

 

"It's not underwater," Jessie assured SFX.  It had been her first question too, an important one. She did not like going under the water. "It's like an old oil rig that the Deep Ones have moved into. More defensible than a beach, and not too many people interested in fighting over it anyway, so it's a good place to live." 

[Avenger Assembled]

Phantom's spell deposited the heroes on the rusted surface of a platform that towered some thirty or forty feet above the wine-dark waters of the Atlantic; a long-abandoned platform that had obviously seen better days. Window glass was smashed or missing, wall and floor panels rusted out or missing, and everything creaked ominously against the wind. If not for Sea Devil's assurances that there was a thriving Deep One colony here, and for everyone's superpowers, the ominously decaying structure might have been a frightening place indeed - but did the presence of Deep Ones really make them safe? Her face set, Aquaria walked away from the little group, her feet squelching on the ground as she went, and cocked her head, listening to noises in the echoing darkness of the broken super-structure beneath their feet. With her eyes bugged out especially wide, Aquaria reached into her bag and came out with an overstuffed kitchen bag (which in retrospect must have made up most of the mass of what she was carrying) and opened it up, -dumping out a tremendous quantity of fish onto the metal beneath her feet. Not just fish - fish heads. 

 

Aquaria stamped her feet on the ground, first one, then the other, with a force that was almost shocking - leg muscles made to power her through the depths of the ocean or high into the air letting her kick hard enough to send vibrations through the metal super-structure beneath their feet. She began to sing, too. "Bra-aah! Bra-aah! Brek-ek-ek! Co-ax! Co-ax!" Without the need to modulate her voice against the small spaces and thin walls of the Surface, her song was a booming bass that echoed across the rig and out to sea, loud enough that the birds nesting elsewhere on the rig fled. And then, after a moment or two, came a deeper, answering chorus from the depths of the rig beneath - and great eyes, glowing like a cat's, appeared as a half-dozen Deep Ones clambered into view. 

 

These were not quite like Aquaria - similarly tattooed, they mostly were more fish on the scale where Aquaria was frog, scaly where she was smooth-skinned. One that did have her smooth skin seemed especially fierce where she pointed a trident at Aquaria and bellowed something that earned a bellowing reply from Aquaria in return. If this was a song it was a hostile song, or so it appeared; Deep One and Deep Ones bellowing and hissing, the former in the light and the latter still in the dark. A few of their tridents shimmered with power; it was clear this was a war party. 

[BlazingCoconut]

SFX

Zhu looked around the group as the war party approached, this did not look good at all and she did not want to be skewered on an oil derrick miles from home on her first few weeks of school.  For one, she had no idea what Aquaria was saying to her, which was a bit of an oversight on her part.  Why did she not bother to build in translation into the suit?  In fact, why had she not bothered to build a universal translator at all?  She thought about it, all it would really take was miniaturizing Google's server farm and porting their code into something approximately ear sized.  Oh, and enhance the code so that it could handle language detection.  That kind of seemed a tall order so she settled on something that would just translate Lemurian languages and allow them to have the same intonation as the frightening creatures.

 

Thankfully, she had a small army to help her work.  Stepping behind the trio, she quickly started to code the essentials for the hardware, using off the shelf designs from various hearing aids that she could liberate from the net.  Then, with some alteration of Dragon Naturally Speaking's source code she began to adapt it to handle the languages that she needed.  Well, if the government files on Lemurian were be believed.

 

Still, the young girl put her heart into it as she raced to give them some means to communicate before things became complicated.

[alderwitch]

Phantom didn't look overly concerned at the angry Deep Ones at surfacers on their boat, but it would have quickly become a very bad day if she had a Claremont student to protect in the face of something that registered at 'actual threat' for Phantom versus 'This is Tuesday'. The portal closed without so much as a look or a gesture and she floated above the deck of the boat - her gaze glowing and white under her cowl. She swept that baleful gaze first over the Deep Ones to ensure that Aquaria had things well in hand if it became actually violent to take in their surroundings.

 

When SFX stepped behind her, Phantom assumed it was out of a sense of self preservation and for the first time since meeting SFX, the mage turned entirely solid as if to provide a better barrier. As her booted feet hit the deck, it was clear that when standing the woman was significantly shorter than one might have guessed; cloaks added volume. "You're only missing out on some quality invective. Apparently the Lemurian tongue provides some truly filthy insults." Phantom's voice sounded dryly amused as she turned enough to take the teenager in from the corner of one eye. What little could be seen of her expression was surprisingly kind as she added more quietly with the assumption that the two heroes closer in age to SFX were occupied with the threat to not hear her reassurance, "I'm not going to let anyone hurt you."

[Electra]

With one quick glance at Phantom to make sure SFX was covered, Singularity pulled the shield from her back and raised it. She stepped forward, not quite between Aquaria and the other Deep Ones, but easily in range to block any attack before it happened. And then she just waited. She didn't say anything, not that they'd have understood anything she had to say, but her face was the blank cool of a seasoned soldier or a really good bodyguard, unfazed by the threat of violence and ready to become violent herself if needs be. The etched not-quite-star on her shield seemed almost to glow in the dim light. 

[Avenger Assembled]

"No no!" Sea Devil croaked quickly to the Surfacers even as SFX's translators came online, "it's fine! We are greeting." They went back to their hissing and bellowing, a sound that now everyone could make out - 

 

"TRIBE!" she bellowed, cutting off the taunts of the other Deep Ones, who had largely fallen silent anyway at the sight of the glowing Elder Sign on Singularity's shield. "I bring my brood-sister and my allies, and this for you!" She kicked a fish head from the pile over to the group, one of their tongue's (Naia's, she thought) lashing out to catch it and swallow it whole before she hit the water. "You may keep the secrets of the tribe - but I bring gifts beyond the food!" From her bag, she pulled other things - jewels engraved with the golden sign and the elder sign, flashing painfully to her eyes in the brilliant sunlight, blades of orichalcum too, and the other lost treasures of a tribe. She stepped forward, closer to the shadows, and the Deep One that looked like her jumped up to meet her. 

 

"Is this _really_ your broodsister?" inquired Naia, giving Jessie a steady look that reminded her of a shark's - or maybe a frog's. "What life do you live on the Surface, Aquaria Innsmouth?" She sounded young through the translator, though still an adult. 

 

"One of sacrifice," Aquaria croaked in reply. "And of victory over our enemies. The one called Devil Ray, the one who hunted our spawn for his sport, took these. My broodsister, and my friend, and myself, defeated him in battle with every advantage. I have taken them from him, and brought them to you, so that you might sing."