Restart Round 3 - Chapter 3

The Terrifying Sub-Aquatic Abomination

I pushed open the door slowly to find Halcus floating beside Ravex who had seized up and begun playing elevator music again; the music had an eerily soothing sound underwater. The wizard immediately directed his staff in my direction, prompting me to raise my hands like a criminal on a police procedural. Upon realizing that I was neither a snorkeling electric imp, nor a cyborg zombie pirate he lowered his staff and waved me over.

As I followed his lead, Ravex seemed to jump back to life, shaking his head wildly as if he’d unexpectedly fallen asleep. Had I a voice at the moment, I would have expressed enthusiasm that “the gang was all back together,” unfortunately it would have come out as little more than bubbles underwater.

With all of us together, Halcus pointed towards a large door just next to him. He seemed to think it lead somewhere important.

I nodded my agreement. By principle of video games large doors often lead to important places ergo we were in the right place.

It took both Halcus and Geoffrey’s combined might to push the door wide open. As it slowly edged open, I caught the glitter of gold and jewels. Once it was fully open, I saw mountains of them. Mountains upon mountains of treasure, crowns, jeweled swords, gold lined chests, strings of pearls, everything any self-serving pirate would want to find. What’s more, sitting atop a majestic throne was a brown-haired woman in a red dress, she was bound to the throne by heavy iron chains. Suffice to say, the last thing I noticed was the fact that most of the room was above water.

As we walked in, Halcus immediately took notice of a beast of a robo-pirate, a lunk of a skeletal man with six clawed mechanical arms. I gulped nervously, I quickly went back to staring at the treasure, hoping not to grab his attention.

"Well wouldya lookit that, more company!" He said, his voice surpisingly chipper for an undead scrapheap.

I heard him say something about pulling up chairs and gave him a sideways glance as he pulled out a couple of thrones from his pile of treasure. I felt my jaw drop. As he began offering us grog, I immediately butted in with a snarky that I hoped would give me enough courage to look him in the eye.

“Who be ye?” I asked in my best pirate voice.

"Yarrgh! Ye be speakin' t' Captain Scrapton Skarzz the Scary, Scourge of the Scalding Skies! Head of th' Scarlet Skiff! In me day n' age, thar be no finer vessel to sail th' big blue yonder!" The pirate replied, his accent making his words hard to follow.

“...but this ship is hardly a skiff, it's way too big to be one...” Halcus remarked quietly.

As Scrapton began thrashing about and yelling wrathfully, I quickly mentioned the first thing that came to my mind, “Pretty nice Beta Tester you have there.”

Scrapton seemed to calm down a bit as he turned to look at the unconscious girl. The good captain began rambling on about how she had just magically appeared on board one day and that she was his new “best mate,” her along with Skippy.

At that point in the conversation, I glanced around, noticing no one aside from us. Until with a whistle, I saw a gigantic eye appear in one of the window accompanied by a giant squid’s tentacle rising through the floor. I didn’t really hear much of the rest of the conversation, I was just too focused on the eye and tentacle belonging to “Skippy”

As the conversation began to go south, I noticed the poorly-named abomination beside the good Captain was beginning to get a little agitated. It’s eye, twitched about nervously and the one visible tentacle was shaking like a leaf; a big angry red leaf. I was too focused on Skippy’s humongous fish eye to hear the rest of the conversation, but somehow it came as no surprise when its tentacle came charging at me. Impacting with the force of a freight train, it drove me out the back wall, then the wall behind that.

As it pulled away, I quickly pulled out a few Extracts of Vita and gulped them down greedily to satisfy my flashing healthbar. Looking around, I found myself in the open ocean, floating just above the ship. The six masts of the ship stretched down the length of the vessel before me, each casting a daunting shadow across the ominously empty seafloor. Though the open ocean gave my shivers, I was more afraid of the fact that I could NOT see Skippy.

‘Maybe I’m looking and his name isn’t ironic, maybe he’s just an oddly shaped eel…,” I thought, hopefully.

I felt a cold shadow on my back, and was almost too afraid to turn. When I did, I saw one of Skippy’s tentacles creeping up behind me. Tearing Greysteel from its sheath, I trust the blade into the great suction-cup covered monstrosity of an appendage. It recoiled as if it had been pricked by a pin, dragging my beloved sword from my grip and sending it floating down towards the sunken deck. I furiously swam away as one of Geoffrey’s magic beams struck the tentacle, covering my escape. As I swam down to the balcony were my golem companion was, I finally caught a glimpse of Skippy in his full glory, something that would make H.P. Lovecraft proud.

Skippy was a squid, in a world where squids could grow to the size of the Empire State Building. His head stretched far back across the sea to a point where I couldn’t even visualize. Each of his eyes was the size of monster truck tire, both of them had locked on to me. Resting at the bow of the ship, making the massive figurehead seem insignificant was his mouth, rows upon rows of teeth like medieval lances, enough to make the Sarlac Pit cry. All around the ship, its ten tentacles rose up from the depths of the sea like gargantuan stalks of ivy. Upon looking at him, I realized there was no better name than Skippy for upon setting my sights on the beast as a whole no name that had any thought put into it would have done it justice.

Deprived of Greysteel, I dug through my bag and pulled out the Victorian Crutch, the closest thing I had to an actual weapon in that virtually bottomless bag. I twisted and I pulled, hoping that a blade or a pistol as it may be would pop loose, but nothing happened. I didn’t have much more time to pull free a weapon, Skippy had opened its mouth and begun to inhale, all it needed to do to annihilate its opponent. I furiously gripped for a handhold, catching Geoffrey’s hand by mistake. Unfortunately it seemed that even his weight wasn’t enough to resist.

The whirlpool drag us in towards the great maw, I felt the end would come soon. I didn’t blame myself, there was no way I could’ve stood against that thing.

As I saw the dark shadow of Skippy overcoming use, I heard Geoffrey’s voice, muffled voice, “Back-up power rerouted, engaging flight mode.”

Geoffrey’s eyes immediately switched from their normal golden color to a dark red. The cubes forming his body came together in a rectangular platform, with his hands and feet on the underside and his head at the front. His hand slipped from mine and my feet were pulled towards the platform. As the mouth of Skippy surrounded us, Geoffrey’s hands and feet glowed brightly, leaving a trail of magical energy as they propelled us from the maw of Skippy and out into the open ocean.

We were a good couple of yards away from the ship, when Geoffrey stopped. His voice came out, deep and mechanical, void of sarcasm, “Ten minutes of energy reserves remaining,” it informed me.

‘Crap,’ Was I all I thought to myself, as I pulled out the Victorian Crutch again, desperate to configure it into a weapon.

I twisted and tugged again, but it still wouldn’t work. Somewhat enraged and deeply afraid as I heard Skippy’s roar tear through the water, I tried snapping the cane like a pencil. To my surprise it inside broke open on a hinge, like a double barrel shotgun, revealing a small inch wide hole, the barrel to the gun itself. It took just a second to recall the size of the vials I’d been using all this time. I pulled two Flares from my Tardis Bag, one I loaded into Victorian Crutch, the other I slipped in the pocket of my now soaked suit.

Using my weight, I pushed Platfrom Geoffrey forward towards Skippy. The beast seeing my approach, swiftly retaliated. His tentacles burrowed into the seafloor and shot up in front of me, one after the other. Each time however, thanks to Geoffrey’s skilled maneuvering, I avoided them. Once I found myself close enough, I got into kneeling position and leveled my weapon on Skippy’s giant eye. I found that there were a few extraneous parts sticking out which could function as sights and once I found the squid’s eye, I tugged on the trigger. As I had hoped, the Flare was ejected from the cane’s tip, straight at the beast. It exploded into a flash of white light, the moment it struck. Skippy’s tentacles flailed about in shock, as its eye was shut in pain, one of them almost knocking me loose. With the creature half-blinded, I loaded up the second Flare intent on finishing the job.

“Seven minutes of power remaining,” Geoffrey’s voice informed me. As I pushed him to circle under the squid’s massive head.

From the shadow of Skippy’s skull, I found my target. Its bulbous eye jutted out to the side a good three feet. With a clear shot and no present danger, being out of its line of sight, I kneeled down and aimed carefully. Never in the world did I think being on rifle team would have prepared me to face a Cthulhu Expy, but here I was. Without any more delays, I let the shot fly. Again, Skippy quivered in shock and pain as it became completely blinded. And with that, I could set my plan into motion.

Reaching into my bag, I dragged out a handful of Anklebitter Poisons, the weakest poison available and the only ones that I could manufacture. Rather than load them into my newly acquired weapon, I dropped them across the deck of the ship. Upon impact, each one created a puddle of purple liquid. Finally, I swooped down and retrieved Greysteel before pulling two bags of Dreamer’s Dust and dropping them on deck. Flying up to Skippy’s closest tentacle, I gave it a quick stab, hoping the reaction is probable. After waving his tentacle around in the water, Skippy’s mouth opens and once again inhales, this time not dragging me in, just thousands of gallons of water, about two dozen deadly poisons, and a few pinches of sleep inducing dust.

Geoffrey and I position ourselves above the deck of the ship as we wait for the great beast to begin feeling the effects of the poisons. Skippy begins to doze off, his head drifting out of view like an autumn leaf. I personally, didn’t know if the poison would kill him, how long the dust would last, or how mega-pissed Skippy would be when he woke up.

Geoffrey suddenly fell out beneath me, his body drained of it’s normally glow and reduced to simple hunks of stone. I swam down after him and pulled together his pieces, I was in too much of a hurry to worry about him turning back on in a second, so I simply dumped the pieces into the bag before swimming back into the ship.

Inside, I found Halcus and Ravex, looking winded from their fight and the Beta Tester stretching and yawning.

“Time to head home,” I asked as I walked into the room, feeling my potion on the verge of ending. They simply nodded werely, not even questioning the absence of Geoffrey.