Water. Water everywhere.
The magic of deep space teleportation, or whatever the Mauvians had put into their phones, had been at least polite enough to stick him on a ship that gently rocked in the waves, though he supposed that was for a given value of polite. There certainly wasn't any visible land nearby; everything around him was an endless expanse of neverending waves and water.
He supposed some clouds darkened the sky in the distance. He probably should stay away from those if he could. Some clouds above, but didn't look like anything that was going to eminently harm him.
If it wasn't for the fact that the sky looked distinctly off and the fact that he had been to other senshi and knight locations in space, he might have just believed he had been stuck in the middle of the sea on Earth. Or maybe the ocean. Knowing his luck, probably the ocean that was as far away as possible and also might have frozen him to ******** death.
The ship he was on didn't seem to be the newest in the world. When he walked, he could tell where some of the boards were spongy, where others might have needed some more serious repair that would have been best provided in, say, a port. If land existed on this water world, anyway, though he felt that the existence of wood proved that it must have, somewhere. Probably. What the hell did he know. It seemed solid enough that he wasn't at risk of capsizing, but perhaps only barely. Of course, Hydor had never been an expert on ship-sailing and never had any reason to think that he needed to be, and the only item he had received from his homeworld until that point was the item that Almadel had given him.
It had taken a bit of research, but he had eventually determined that was a storm glass or at least some space analog to it.
Storm glass on Earth had been primarily used by sailors, so he supposed he should have known better...
He glanced down at the storm glass in his hand, noting the patterns and crystals in the liquid before looking back up at the skies above. He wasn't quite sure he understood how the two correlated, but if this object was useful at all, it was probably warning him of the storm he wanted to stay far away from in the distance.
There was a part of him that was quite tempted to simply abandon the ship and head home. He wasn't sure today was the day he wanted to experience a space superstorm.
"Senshi!"
Hydor jumped, shivering when he heard something that was an attempt to address him. He looked around for the source and found the search fruitless, but he froze again when he scanned back in the other direction and saw something else facing him. No one that could have called itself anything human, and for a moment Hydor thought that perhaps he hadn't gone to his homeworld and had instead spent too much time playing Subnautica before sending himself to bed. Foolish, perhaps, but he reached out anyway, looking for a sign that what he was looking at was real--
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"What?"
"Glass is cloudy."
"Not telling me anything I didn't know, sailor," Hydor's eyes scanned out toward the horizon. There was some choppiness in the waves at a small distance, but it wasn't necessarily anything he was concerned about. The skies above them were darkened with the clouds of mild rain, but it was not enough to convince Hydor that it was simply time to abandon the ship and return to the seas. "Be more explicit."
"Sorry. Uh. Glass is like a nebula."
Hydor looked down to the storm glass that his sailor held in hand, then, taking it from him and watching the liquid. He saw the clouds within, expected the clouds within, but what he was looking for caused alarm when he had found it. Specks throughout, twinkling like stars in a distant nebula that may have also been teeming with life, multiplying before his very eyes as he took the time to observe and understand and--
"That's a problem."
"Aye. Should we abandon ship? Will be safer if we can get a few hundred down--"
"No."
Any further commentary from his sailor was ignored, the senshi of Hydor sweeping toward the front of the ship and laying his hands on the large wheel. "Too much valuable on board. Can't risk it being taken."
"So what do you--"
Hydor, without warning, spun the wheel, the edges spinning quickly enough to create its own breeze.
"We leave."
It was an easy enough answer, but the sailor who Hydor spoke with seemed uncertain that the time was truly enough. They fretted, but as Hydor looked over his shoulder once and held up his hand to the sailor to silence them, their body relaxed as they remembered the hands they were in. "The storm behind." Hydor saw it forming; the clouds that he hadn't been worried about at a distance were doing something he did not like upon closer inspection. He saw the way they were beginning to move not across the sky but around each other, folding and forming around each other and increasing the choppiness of the waters. "If it is allowed to catch up to this ship, the ship will be trapped. Nothing on here will survive, especially if the winds and the pressure get to it."
"It sounds like a good reason to leave--"
"You know better than that. Can't let this not make it to where it's supposed to go." Hydor's spin was a bit more finely controlled this time. The sailor still ran to the railing and held onto it with his dear life. "Too much valuable in the cargo. Too much valuable to let it not be reached."
"Will you tell me what it is?"
Hydor felt the edges of a smirk on his lips and felt something flare at the side of his throat.
"No. Best you not find out."
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Not real, perhaps just a figment of his own mind, as Hydor suddenly broke from what he saw and stumbled forward as if he hadn't been reaching out to anything in the first place. The storm behind him encroached closer, the air around him feeling thicker as if he had just walked into a hot sauna or a room where the tension was so high he might not have even been able to cut it with a knife. The storm glass in his hands felt different, looked different, and he decided to take a moment to observe it a bit closer.
Sorry. Uh. Glass is like a nebula.
The glass was like a nebula, cloudy, with spots like stars throughout.
Hydor sighed deeply.
Perhaps he should just leave. Unlike the sailor and whoever's mind he had apparently briefly stolen, Hydor didn't really care what this odd decrepit ship had on it. Should have been easy enough to leave, but he found himself rooted into his spot instead as if something was telling him he couldn't. That made his breath catch in his throat, remembering what he had been told of the storms that approached by his mind.
Nothing on here will survive, especially if the winds and the pressure get to it.
Hydor didn't have any interest in dying on some weird ******** planet out in deep space somewhere because he refused to get away from some ******** storm.
Didn't want to know what was on this ship that wouldn't survive under high pressure, but Hydor wasn't sure he wanted to take the time to find out. He bolted, running toward the front of the ship where he saw the ship wheel (did it have a special name? he'd have to look that up later, he hadn't ever been a sailor) in his mind. Remembered what he saw the person in his mind do. Rapid spin. Sure.
Hydor yanked on it as hard as he could -- no wonder sailors were so ******** buff if this was the s**t they had to deal with on the regular -- and found he had to grasp it as tightly as possible as the boat practically whipped itself into the right direction. He forced himself back to his feet, grumbling to himself as he wondered both if that was enough for his brain to let go of why it was refusing to let him leave, and what else he had seen in the ghost of thought of someone else that was already fading. Had done a few more minute turns. "Sailor" had headed elsewhere on the ship--
Great.
It was a multistep process, but Hydor followed it to the best of his ability. A few more minute turns in a mimic of what he had seen in his mind, and then he dashed across the ship to attempt to mimic what the other had done. Something with the sails, probably -- in all of those pirate movies and pirate games, there was usually something to do with sails. Not that he had ever had to apply that knowledge in real life! Usually, it was just handwaved, or some NPC dealt with fixing that s**t! What the hell was he supposed to do with it?
Was there an interstellar internet search page, maybe? Maybe it was a name based on the ******** Graham's Number instead of on the Googleplex?
The pressure dropped further, and Hydor could tell because he was beginning to feel a harsh headache like a knife jabbing him in his brain. He turned to look behind him to check on the clouds in the distance.
Those were rapidly looking scarier. He really should just leave. Didn't want to get wrapped up in whatever his world had in store for him, especially if there was an implication that something wouldn't survive this storm. Implied it might have been a hurricane, maybe. Low-pressure systems with a lot of wind, ******** glanced up and down the sail he found himself in front of, looking at the ropes that formed the way it was connected to the ship and the pole -- mast, it was a ******** mast, that was what sailors called poles for whatever ******** reason right? -- and growled under his breath as he tried to force his brain to think about what it was supposed to do with this, exactly.
"Hydor," he groused, though it was hard to tell who he was talking to as he pulled on the ropes as if that would actually do something. It did something, but Hydor was quickly getting the sense that it wasn't anything terribly ******** useful. He needed to get this sail to face away from the wind, right? So it was blowing into the sails and he could get some navigation away before that storm got any closer? Were there even enough winds to pull that off? "Do I look like a sailor? The hell did you put me on a ship for? Land, I get. I can do land. Especially when there's no other ******** people here for me to deal with--"
His thoughts cut, for a moment, and he swore he heard a whisper on his ear.
"This way, seaman."
It was as if something had possessed him.
Hydor would have time to be freaked out by that later when he could think again. Hydor could have a meltdown about the fact that he was being possessed when he found himself doing other things than rapidly changing configurations that he could hardly understand as if by memory alone. Perhaps it was memory alone. That would have been something he would have plenty of time to think about as the ship finally began its creak away from the storm on the horizon.
"Best give the storm a distance. It'll wreak havoc on everyone and anything else."
And yet, somehow, instead of feeling relief and immediately fleeing as his mind let go of the need to keep him there, he just felt the urge to do more.
Perhaps he'd stay a bit longer.
Backdated to November 6th!
2059 words
2059 words
