Dorsa: Still?

It’s been minutes, and still the ink keeps coming. It slithers out in towering jet-black plumes. The light around them had dwindled, then faded entirely, reducing the forms of our heroes have to four tiny pinpricks of light in the fog. They squint out from their submarines, struggling to see anything but blackness.

Well, anything but blackness and the burning red eye.

*  *  *

Before the ink began to flow, Finn had noticed something. He’d seen that his sonar was picking up a landmass where none should exist. Peering ahead, he saw the shadow of a colossal form, and watched, awestruck, as it began to move. This shouldn’t be happening. When they’d left the surface, Finn, Dorsa, and Spike had left whales behind. There shouldn’t be anything down here this big.

Finn watches as the titan slumbers, dreaming whatever it is that gods dream.

Finn: Hey guys, I think there’s-

Dorsa: Angler, incoming!

Spike: Watch out, soft boy!

Spike, piloting his banged-up freighter, careens into view. An instant later, the tell-tale flash of an angler’s laser pierces the fog. The sizzling bolt of annihilation — that would have wiped Finn away — slams into Spike instead.

Spike: Hah! I’ve seen tadpoles that hit harder than you!

Spike has a tough ship. When the adventure began, he’d had the biggest ship in the fleet. Now? The thing is unrecognizable. Every piece of scrap he’s salvaged has gone toward reinforced plating and repair drones. Spike may seem cocky on the front lines, but that confidence is well-earned.

So, Spike does what he’s done every time so far. He takes the hit. He returns fire. When an Angler attacks, you do what it takes to survive.

The only trouble is, all those other times, there hasn’t been a sleeping god stirring just over the horizon.

Spike: Goooooooooooootcha!!

Dorsa: Stay still so I can heal you!

Finn: Uhhh, are you seeing-

Dorsa: Hey! Don’t miss the scrap!

Finn: Uh… is it getting dark out here?

Spike: Yo Dorsa, got any more Energy? Still pretty banged up here.

Dorsa: One second, one second. Cooldowns, man.

Finn: Guys?

Spike: *dramatic pause*

Spike: …Sweet briny mackerel. What is that!?

It was, of course, the eye.

*  *  *

The titan’s fiery, blood-red eye had gazed out, unblinking, for the last several minutes. It’s watching them. In utter darkness, the only clue to their whereabouts had been the growth of the eye. It had grown in their vision, a swimming, hateful crimson pool leering at them from beyond the fog. And still they keep going.

Finn is not in the business of giving up.

Dorsa shakes her head. There’s no way the eye is this big. It keeps growing, filling up most of her forward viewport. Growing and pulsing. Radiating malice. And, no… Could it be? Perhaps radiating something more…

Dorsa: Look out! I think he’s charging something up!

Spike: Looks like! Stay behind me, little fish!

Dorsa: But-

Spike: I can take whatever he can shell out!

Something is definitely happening. They’d seen it before. Each of the dolphins’ diabolical devices had done this.

Pulse once…

Twice…

Then…

*  *  *

Finn isn’t about to just wait around. Revving his Gatling gun, he prepares to send a storm of hot lead into the eye.

The weapon is custom-built, and against every regulation known to fish and man. Its barrel assembly rotates so fast that energy must be pulled from the rest of the ship to power its devastating rate of fire. When Finn shoots, he is destruction incarnate. He is also nearly immobile – a big part of why he needs Spike to defend him. With a grimace, Finn pulls the trigger.

It’s no good. A ten-mile-long behemoth deity of the deep isn’t about to awaken from its vigintillion-year slumber just to die to a fish with a gun. Finn is dealing damage, but barely. He begins directing energy into his trusty GigaBlaster. The process diverts his attention as Spike lurches into place, ready to take whatever hit this thing is about to dish out.

Spike: Don’t try to stop me.

Finn: We won’t.

Spike: This is my choice.

Finn: It’s your job, dude.

Spike: This is my sacrifice, for all the-

And then it happens.

A hot red lance of screaming energy explodes from the eye, directly toward Finn. Spike steers himself into its path, protecting his little comrade as Finn keeps his gun spinning.

Spike has flashbacks to the nightmare all turtles have when they’re little: the one where you get cooked in your shell. He watches as first one, then another gauge on his dashboard turns red. He’s long past the point of losing shields. The blistering hellstreak is cleaving through the ship’s vitals. Spike lets it continue, casting a glance toward Finn. As long as the little guy gets out of this alive…

The lights go out. It’s okay. Spike knows the inside of this thing like he knows his own shell.

The heat goes out. It’s fine. Things are toasty enough in here as it is.

The air goes out. Whatever. Turtles can’t breathe underwater, but Spike can hold is breath a long time.

But there’s one thing the laser hasn’t touched yet. Spike grins, reaches over, and flips a switch. In his front viewport, the eye begins to shrink. It contracts, smaller and smaller, until the pillar of fiery energy becomes a bright sliver. In reality, Spike has just become massive. Like a monster truck on the highway, Spike gazes over the hood of his submarine, down at his modest-sized foe.

*  *  *

Dorsa smiles. She, too, has a device specially installed for this occasion. It’s whirring now, and is already giving an occasional rattle and pop, reminding her that her timing has to be precise. The light show is getting dazzling outside. She doesn’t know if she can hold out any longer, but she’ll only get one chance. Slowly, gingerly, she reaches down. The device is warm to the touch. Outside, she sees Spike’s ship rattle and absorb another hit. It’s time. She grits her teeth and pushes the button.

Success!

The popcorn is perfect. Only a few old maids. She leans back in her custom lounger and munches happily, enjoying the Toho-esque spectacle unfolding before her. A brilliant green flash illuminates her cabin, exposing lush carpeting and tasteful decor. She shrugs, and tags Spike with a quick patch-job. If the boys ever came in here, they’d probably accuse her of spending scrap frivolously — which is why she installed the reinforced doors. Being rich is about so much more than just having the biggest guns.

*  *  *

Spike: Thank god for you, Dorsa.

Dorsa: Just doing my job.

Spike: Well, I owe you one. How are you doing, Finn?

Finn: Turbines spinning and enemy at 33% health. Can you hold out?

Spike: Easy, baby. Just gotta-*BZZT!*

Finn’s jaw drops. His pectoral fins go white as they grip the steering column. The ship rumbles around him, and he watches in horror as the eye beam does something that would have been unimaginable a moment before: it becomes even more powerful.

Scoff if you will, human. To you, this might be a simple equation: a five gigawatt beam becomes a ten gigawatt beam. Big deal. I humbly implore you to work on your empathy. Finn watches, awestruck, like an ancient sun worshiper during a solar flare, as the brightest object he’s ever seen redoubles itself. Then again. And again.

Finn: SPIKE!!

It’s too late. The light lashes out like the fist of god, and Spike is blown to smithereens.

Finn has no time to react. The illumination splits open the darkness, revealing two titanic figures: enormous dark shapes have loomed up on both sides, like immense fleshy monoliths rising from the ocean floor. A dim, rational part of Finn’s mind takes note: where there is ink, there will be tentacles. The rest of Finn’s mind is screaming.

The light fades, Dorsa and Finn are left in blackness. The eye itself slowly closes. Light reaches Finn only in glimmers: reflections from the shattered pieces of Spike’s ship.

Finn: Dorsa… you there?

Dorsa: …Yeah.

Finn: Spike, he-

Dorsa: Don’t get sentimental. He’ll respawn in twenty seconds, you know.

Finn: Only if we live through this.

In the next few seconds, they begin a dance they’d performed so many times it had become rote. They note the low growl of revving laser cannons, the dim pulsing, the hypnotic patterns of passing bullets. They dance in figure-eights, anticipating the crisp lines of oncoming fire, slipping through the gaps. They’ve done this again and again on their adventure; by now, it’s so automatic that Finn can look ahead, scanning for the perfect spot to enact Plan B.

Finn: You thinking what I’m thinking?

Dorsa: I was just waiting for you to catch up.

Dorsa accelerates to the spot and begins charging her repair beam. Finn arrives after, drifting in slowly, killing the last of his engine power to rev up his cannon. The spot will give them three precious seconds to fire in safety. After that, it’ll be up to their hulls.

*  *  *

Years later, Finn’s grandchildren whisper to themselves, asking “why is grandpa so quiet?” They’ve come up with all sorts of theories about war flashbacks or silence over lost friends. Their theories couldn’t be more wrong.

It’s that darned gun. The weapon that tore swathes of devastation through the deep took with it precious things from Finn himself. His thrusters. His shielding. His regard for animal life. Very slowly, the gun began to eat away at something else. Weeks trapped in an enclosed space with a screaming death machine had robbed Finn of his hearing.

The elder fish smiles at his many, happy descendants, and returns to his newspaper.

*  *  *

Here and now, though, the gun is doing work. He keeps the cannon trained on where the eye was, and fires away. Finn doesn’t know how or why his HUD is able to display the health of enemies, but he watches with satisfaction as the behemoth drops to 10%.

8%, and the window of safety closes.

7%, and a flurry of bullets rattle Finn’s hull.

6%, and Dorsa releases the healing pulse.

5%, and nanobots knit Finn back together.

4%, and even though it’s not enough, Finn keeps his gun spinning.

3%, and Dorsa throws herself into harm’s way.

2%, and she shatters like glass.

1%, and so does Finn.

*  *  *

Spike is, as yet, unsure why Finn trusts a dolphin to do the repairs on their ships, run the resurrection equipment, and return them to combat. He can’t deny, though, that Flipper does excellent work. I mean, who else could take a dead turtle and a pile of shrapnel and re-assemble a fully-equipped warship in twenty seconds flat?

Spike takes his new freighter forward, watching as Finn has his blaze of glory. The little guy is always so dramatic. Spike isn’t much for theatrics. Instead, he calmly levels out and grips the cannon controls, preparing for mop-up duty. Then, that leviathan eye peeks open, just a sliver, and Spike gets a different idea.

He’d read somewhere about heroes making triumphant last stands, flying into the face of danger their faces locked into fierce grins. Spike doesn’t know what a fierce grin is. He isn’t even sure a turtle’s face can do that. But still, it sounds like fun. He lifts his finger from the trigger and guns it, full-speed, directly into the eye.

Spike: Once more off of the beach, dear friends!

Flipper: That’s “Once more unto the breach,” old chum.

Spike: Not where I’m from.

With amazing speed, the blocky freighter hurls itself forward. Bolts of red streak past the viewport. It turns out that turtles cannot, in fact, grin fiercely, but Spike feels a strange stirring within. He’d lost his friends. He’d lost his home. He’s going to enjoy killing this thing.

Cold blood has never burned so hot.

*  *  *

What happens next makes Flipper want to tear his degree in Physics off the wall. See, Spike has built up a lot of speed. When he reaches down and flips that switch of his, he makes his ship ten times as large with no reduction in velocity. This puts Flippers teeth on edge. Kinetic energy should be conserved, blast it! Spike will need a severe talking-to once this whole mess is behind them.

*  *  *

Spike isn’t much for fancy degrees, but he knows damage when he sees it. His ship hits the eye with the force of a tectonic plate. The behemoth might be huge, but a weak point is a weak point. English has many words, but few of them come close to describing the degree to which this thing dies. “Obliterated” comes close. “Annihilated” tries and fails. To be more apt, we’ll borrow the Chienese zhū lián jiǔ zú and call ourselves done.

Slowly, and with a *tink,* the boss’s HP bar drops from 1% to 0%.

fin