Go With the Flow

~~~

“You’re surprisingly quiet, seapony.”

Flowing’s ear perked in the direction of Tempest Shadow’s voice, though she did not bother fully turning her head to look at her. She didn’t have to…she could see the maimed unicorn in the reflection of the fishbowl she was encased within well enough, resting with one hoof draped over the airship’s steering column. Her mane and tail both waved dramatically in the wind behind her, as though she were some picteresque depiction of a sailor hanging in a dive bar back in Herring Harbour.

“Why the blazes would I want to speak with you?” Flowing returned, looking directly ahead at the pretty patterns of rain streaking down her glass prison.

Tempest shrugged. “Boredom? Intrigue? Fear?”

“Yeah, no. Not happening. Bite me, you jerk.”

“Mhm. I suppose I’m just used to more… talkative bounties. Begging for mercy, threats, snide remarks…”

“I can bring back the snide remarks if that’s what you’re looking for.”

Tempest smirked. “Y’know, that hippogriff that captured you… he was in the same position as you once.”

“The backstabbing, lying traitor?” Flowing scoffed. “Good. Hopefully it wasn’t his last time.”

“He does have a habit of getting into trouble,” Tempest admitted. “Originally, he was a bounty just like you. But… when he started to co-operate, and made it clear that he’d be a useful ally, well. Things turned out quite well for him.”

Flowing rolled her eyes. Already she could see where this was going, but for one reason or another she decided to humour it. Perhaps Tempest was right about the boredom thing, after all. “Uh huh. I’d bet.”

“My point, seapony… Flowing, is that maybe there’s a reason why you wanted to go against your Queen. And why you wanted to be discovered. And why you’re here, right now.”

“My Queen…” Flowing scoffed. “That’s the first bit of soggy seaweed in your story. Novo’s the Queen of the Hippogriffs. I’m a seapony. And my family have been long before your boss drove the hippogriffs into the ocean.”

“That right?” Tempest rose an eyebrow. “Then you really don’t have any loyalty for her. This should be easy for you.”

“Even if it was, a seapony with eye flukes would be able to see you’re downright evil, and helping you would be—”

“Evil,” Tempest Shadow repeated, interrupting Flowing to bluntly state the single word. “What an interesting description for somepony simply doing her job.”

“You’re helping a tyrant, Tempest. Don’t give me that, ‘it’s just my job’ crap. Everyone’s got a choice and you’re making a rotten one and you know it.”

With an irritated snort, Tempest looked away from Flowing and instead turned her focus over the guardrail, at the black waves passing below. Flowing’s own view was obscured, but judging by the growing intensity of the wind and rain, she imagined them to be growing choppier and choppier.

She wondered if Starry would be trying to pursue her, in this. She hoped not… there was no reason for both of them to be in danger just because she had gotten captured, after all.

Momentarily, one of the storm creatures—a short, adolescent-seeming one—came hopping over to Tempest… though not before oogling Flowing through the glass for several moments.

“Ooh, shoot. Now that’s embarassing…” the little creature said with a snicker, tapping the glass with a cake-coated finger. “I’d hate to be you right now, fishy!”

“Grubber…” Tempest growled out.

“…I mean, really. The bowl and everything? You didn’t have to go that hard on her, y’know, Tempy.”

“I swear to the sirens, I’ll bust out of this bowl and kill you,” Flowing said, narrowing her eyes.

“Feisty, too! Hey, Tempy, after she shows us to the—”

“Grubber! Stop bothering the prisoner!” Tempest stomped a hoof on the deck of the ship. “What do you want?!”

“Phew. Grouchy, even after winning. But we’re here. Well. Almost. Almost here.”

Tempest rose an eyebrow, and looked down at Flowing. “Is that right? Are we almost there?”

“Hard to tell, with all this rain…” Flowing said. “The caves are surrounded by a horseshoe shaped rocky archipelago. You’ll have to bring it down a little, anyways. Won’t have any luck spotting any signs of the archipelago from way up here…”

“Fine. I’ll bring us down,” Tempest grumbled out.

“You’re gonna have to land on the water. Do you even have diving equipment?”

“Yes. Do you take me for a fool, seapony?”

“It’s probably best for both of us if I don’t answer that,” Flowing sneered.

Beneath them, she could see their destination slowly coming into view through the rain. She hadn’t been here since she was an adolescent fry, but it was mostly unchanged from the last time she had been. The coast-line of some uninhabited part of the eastern continent was barely visible through the fog and rain, but the horseshoe rock formation was directly beneath them. One could have fit the entirety of Herring Harbour inside of the rock formation, and probably still had room for another little fishing community.

They descended in a gradual corkscrew, and Flowing was surprised when it actually touched down onto the water instead of simply hovering above it. It seemed the airship had some sort of amphibious arrangement. It was no wonder it had caught up with Star’s trawler so effortlessly.

The water within Flowing’s bowl swung with the momentum of the airship’s sudden stop, which meant Flowing was roughly pushed against the far side of the glass. With her tail still bound, she couldn’t even really do much to prevent it.

“Ow…” She grunted. “Is this really necessary? Y’know I’m not going anywhere.”

“I like the assurance,” Tempest replied. “Given how slippery of a catch you’ve been for me thus far.”

She trotted off at that, joined after a few moments by the bumbling little companion of hers, which left Flowing alone for the first time since she’d been initially captured.

Their stop would buy her some time, and she’d seemed convincing enough that they hadn’t bothered analyzing her directions any further or asking for elaboration… Tempest no doubt recognizing how fruitless an endeavour it would be getting information from a seapony who so clearly hated her guts.

Flowing figured she had… an hour? Maybe two? Before she got an answer to whether or not her little scheme would hold fruition. It was brash, daring, foolish, but one had to be a bit of all three if they wished to survive some of the stranger days on the sea.

In the meantime, she turned her focus to the bindings on her tail. It was… part of her scheme she hadn’t been anticipating, after all, and it would surely prove to be a bit problematic when it came to making any sort of an escape. Fortunately, the metal binding was clearly not intended for a seapony’s tail. It surely must have been something jerry-rigged from a hoof-cuff or shackle, and while it still kept her from swimming, it was hardly snug against her scales. They hadn’t bound her forelimbs, either, apparently not finding much intimidation from her fishy forefins. If she could just… find some way to dislodge the locking mechanism keeping the cuff to her tail, then she would no doubt be at a greater advantage.

An idea struck her. Her fin travelled to her ear, and carefully curled around the fishing-hook earring. She’d have to be quick and she couldn’t possibly do it when Tempest and company were around, but for now...

She got to work fiddling with the lock on the collar they had affixed around her neck, first. She just had to get one part of it free, after all, and the position of her tail meant it would be a little more awkward for her to use her improvised lockpick. The whole while, she worked in between quick glances around her, ready to stow the hook out of view in her fin the moment they came back. Until then, she fiddled blindly, not quite certain if she was making any sort of progress, but at least comforted to be doing something.

Thud.

Flowing nearly lost her grip on the fishing hook, as the impact rocked the entire airship-turned-boat, the mighty vibration shaking the water within Flowing’s bubble.

Then, silence. The rain was growing stronger, and Flowing heard a few distant thunder rolls. Somewhere else in the airship, she could hear Tempest shouting something Flowing could not properly hear. She braced herself… waiting and waiting and…

Thud. There it was again. Instantly, she felt like she was back in the cargo ship with Star, although this time, her encounter with the horrors of the deep was far less unintended.

“Get it up! Get us into the air!” She heard Tempest shouting above the rest, as the metal and wood of the airship groaned and complained. The ground began to vibrate dramatically as the engines started to come back to life, churning the ocean below furiously.

While it would surely help Tempest’s ship escape, whatever was beneath them did not seem to quite appreciate having its waters disturbed.

The airship’s engines were a blaring whine, and the airship itself lurched uneasily as the crew were no doubt taking as many actions as possible to hasten their ascent. Tempest was cantering back to the steering column, her gaze a steely venom that she affixed on Flowing for all but a split-second, before her hoof was gripping the steering column firmly and she was giving it a mighty twirl.

“You’re fish-paste now, seapony…” Tempest said. “Where in Tartarus did you lead us?”

“Not fun being on the receiving end of a piece of bait, is it?” Flowing returned. “You’re not the only thing hunting these waters.”

Tempest snarled furiously, though whatever she had been planning on retorting with vanished as… something struck the airship from beneath. The entire thing rocked like a nursery cradle, a cacophony of various affairs within the ship itself being strewn about. Flowing struck the side of the fish bowl, and when she recovered and glanced downwards she saw that it was already starting to come off the moorings affixing it to the deck.

And then, in Flowing’s peripheral, she saw it.

A mighty tendril of the kraken who’s lair they’d foolishly disturbed, rising out of the ocean like an enormous serpent the size of a town street. Even Tempest lost her focus on steering the ship away for a moment to simply gawk in horror, as the tendril rose higher and higher above the still-ascending airship, backlit by a vivid display of violent lightning. Along the tendril, the suckers themselves looked as though they were the size of a sailboat, and they were quickly growing larger as the tendril curled downwards to strike at the interloping airship.

The impact shook the entire airship with enough force that Flowing felt the fishbowl dislodge from its moorings, and begin to roll down the deck of the airship that was now tilted at a dramatic vertical. She gasped as she rolled around, battering against the glass again and again, the metal shackle clanging loudly against it. She winced as it bit into her scales, although after each impact with the glass she could feel the mechanism getting a little looser…

Before she even knew she was approaching the gunwhale, the bowl rolled over the edge of the ship, and she was in freefall. She tumbled like a cannon-ball towards the water below, her vision reduced to a spinning, frantic frenzy as she spun and fell. Even in the chaos, she could see a few other tendrils joining the first one, batting Tempest’s airship aside like it were a cheap toy in a filly’s bathtub…

And then, with a mighty splash, Flowing’s prison struck the ocean.

It shattered the moment it impacted the choppy waves, and Flowing instantly felt cool seawater against her scales once again. Her tail was still bound, though, which would surely prove to be a bit of an issue if she wasn’t prompt with freeing herself.

All around her, there was movement. She was sinking towards the blackness at the bottom of the ocean, and in her peripheral she could see the dozens of tendrils of the kraken stretching out of the void. The kraken made the lusca look like a little guppy, though fortunately this meant that Flowing herself was apparently too small for it to immediately notice as it was more focused on Tempest’s airship.

Still, she was sinking fast and she had no way of swimming to freedom, yet. She’d somehow managed to hold onto the fishing hook in her fin throughout everything, and now no longer afraid of being discrete, she quickly resumed her earlier efforts with far more vigour.

Downwards she fell. The kraken still hadn’t noticed her, though she was falling into darkness and her angler light was burning against her own desires, meaning she’d be rather easy to spot. Biting her lip, she fiddled desperately with the locking mechanism on her collar, twisting the fishing hook every which way.

Above her, the entire ocean shook, a rippled vibration travelling downwards and outwards as the airship finally struck the waves. Or... Part of it did, anyways. Flowing abandoned her work for a moment to watch, biting her lip as bits of the ship’s balloon and affairs from within it struck the ocean and began to sink down towards her. The hull of the ship itself followed, hitting the ocean and then bobbing back to the surface, the sound of it’s furious engines instantly reaching Flowing’s ears the moment it was under water.

Click. Her earring-fishhook-lockpick finally found purchase. She felt the metal glide cleanly off of her neck, her tail instantly extending to its full length, trailing behind the chain by the binding still attached to it. Still, it wouldn’t prevent her from swimming, and she did so as fast as she could, tearing towards the surface once again.

~~~

The Thespis was having a bad week.

The thought struck Tempest as a shockingly juvenile and obvious one, as she was flung off her hooves and sent sprawling away from the steering column. She hit the deck of the airship with a thud, just barely managing to roll her way into a graceful landing. The deck was angled at a sharp 45 degrees as she climbed her way back to the steering yoke, the ship sent in a careening spiral as... Something had struck them from beneath.

A heavy spattering of seawater splashed against the deck, soaking Tempest’s mane and skinsuit, just as she grasped the steering yoke once more, leaning onto it as the ship continued to steepen its sideways lean. The fishbowl was gone, torn clean off its moorings by its own weight, and the seapony herself was nowhere to be seen

All around them...

It was unlike anything she’d ever seen.

The beast that was lurking in the ocean... It was something out of the fairy-tale books Tempest could barely remember from her fillyhood. Even the Thespis itself was completely dwarfed by the tentacles flailing out of the sea. She counted four of them, and they each rose out of the ocean in a different position, about fifty or so feet from each-other. If the creature had a head or body, it was still fully submerged. Tempest had enough to worry about with the tentacles flailing at her ship, anyways.

Their engines whined incessantly as she rapidly steered them away from the beast. It still was not nearly fast enough. She wrapped a hoof around the steering yoke and braced herself as she saw one of the tendrils swinging directly at the balloon, striking it and once again sending them into a dramatic spin. Any success she’d had in altering their course and getting them out of there was negated. They were right back where they’d been, and Tempest knew they were unlikely to get away without somepony stepping in.

She corrected their corkscrew, but this time it was too late. They struck the ocean at an angle, and skipped off like a stone, sailing back into the air and directly into the path of another tentacle. Tempest swung the controls around, narrowly missing the kraken’s tentacle as barrels and crates were strewn off the deck of the Thespis and splashed down onto the water below.

“Grubber! Get over here and take the wheel!” she barked out. The little rat was, at the very least, responsive in a crisis, and he was at her side within moments and with minimal protest.

“Where are you goin’, Tempy?” he asked, tilting his head.

Tempest didn’t reply. She barely even heard him. Her actions were motivated by something different now...initially, her hunt for the seapony, her journey across the ocean...it hadn’t been personal. She’d just been doing a job. An ugly, unpleasant one, but a job all the same.

Now, though?Now that the ship she’d been sailing in for five years was being torn apart and the creature responsible was the one she was supposed to have captured?

Now it was personal.

Tempest trotted across the half-leaning deck of the airship, to where the yetis had been preparing the dive equipment...prior to their abrupt interruption. Portable oxygen oxygen tanks, a regulator...Tempest did not concern herself with the flippers that accompanied the set but she hastily strapped the oxygen tank around her barrel and tested the regulator. Finding everything to be functional, Tempest grabbed a harpoon gun from a nearby yeti who was watching her, perplexed, and then she put one hoof over the edge of the airship.

“Keep flyin’ us outta here!” she barked out. “I’ll see you runts after I take care of our kraken problem!”

Tucking the harpoon gun into her armour, Tempest kicked off the edge of the airship and angled her broken horn directly at the waves. Free fall, for what felt like a moment, and then she collided with the waves and sunk beneath them with a mighty splash. The water chilled her to the bone even with her combat suit still on, but she was fuelled by enough fury and adrenaline that she hardly noticed.

Beneath her, the kraken’s tentacles were like a shifting redwood forest, rising out of the darkness. It was nothing short of terrifying, but Tempest was a speck compared to the focus of the kraken’s attention at the moment.

She just hoped the Thespis could get clear.

She should have known the seapony would have tried something stupid to free herself. Tempest scanned the waters below for her, taking calm, patient breaths of the canned oxygen as she let the weight of her combat suit drag her downwards. As she sunk, she cradled the harpoon gun in her hooves, feeling the sharpened tip of the harpoon itself, as she continued to sink deeper and deeper down.

Then, she saw it.

Glowing like an ember in a cavern, the seapony’s angler light rose out of the darkness as she swam up, towards the surface. She was too far away for Tempest to possibly have a shot with the harpoon gun, and she was swimming further away still, at a rate that Tempest could not hope to match. No matter how quickly she swam, she simply could not match the fish’s own natural biology.

...Which meant she would get away. No matter what Tempest did... Had done... All the seapony had to do now was swim, and she would have no way of catching her.

Above her, Tempest heard a mighty splashing impact, and when she jerked her head up she saw that a sizable chunk of the Thespis had come off and struck the water. A bit of the largest rearmost propeller column, still spinning desperately even as it sunk down, and down...

And sliced directly into one of the tendrils of the kraken.

Tempest braced, for she knew exactly what was about to happen before it did. There was a sudden storm of blood as the prop cut into the kraken’s flesh, and down below, a mighty roar of pain and fury sounded out from the bottom of the sea. The tendrils suddenly began to flail with renewed fury, excepting the one that was now filling the ocean with a sickly red.

The seapony had stopped and swam out of the way of the propeller when it had struck the ocean, and to Tempest she seemed to be temporarily stunned by the turn of events. It could have struck her as well, after all. More bits of wreckage collided into the sea afterwards, the seapony nimbly weaving through them... And stopping only to follow one of the pieces of wreckage down. Tempest stared, dumbfounded, squinting to see what the blazes she was doing through the shifting, wavering waves.

Then, as the seapony started to struggle and pull at the wreckage with a hoof, Tempest realized what was happening. After a moment or two of struggling, the seapony was pulling one of Tempest’s own free, after they had apparently gotten swept overboard. Whether they were unconscious or not, Tempest couldn’t see. She simply saw the seapony herself grab the yeti in both of her fins, and begin to swim him back up to the surface...

Tempest simply watched. Her hind legs idly kicking beneath her to keep her suspended at her present height, while the seapony continued to vanish out of view above the waves, only to soon dive back into the depths, her angler light often the only sign of her as she seemed to be scanning for any one else who might need help.

Then, when there seemed to be nopony else to save, the seapony began to swim off. Tempest knew that if she did so, that was it. She was gone, for good.

She’d lost.

As if she had somehow heard Tempest’s own thoughts, the seapony turned. Tempest saw her scanning back the way she came, as if doing one last dummy check to ensure there was nopony else in need of saving. And that was when she seemed to notice Tempest for the first time.

She waved, and Tempest could have sworn she’d made out a smug, fish-eating grin on the mare’s face. Then, she turned tail and began to swim off again, just as another torrent of wreckage rained down into the drink.

Tempest's grip on the harpoon gun strengthened. She threw the strap over her barrel and began to furiously swim after her, not giving a damn if she was slower or not. If the seapony wasn’t going to flee when the opportunity had presented itself, and was going to gloat and taunt instead, then Tempest wasn’t going to ignore her either.

~~~

The moment her tail was unbound, Flowing was darting up towards the surface of the waves, not picking a direction in particular besides the general ‘up.’

When she surfaced, it was like she’d popped out into a war-zone right out of the tales of the hippogriffs back home. Bits of the airship littered the kraken’s breeding ground, as the storm creatures scrambled their way as high as they could onto the wreckage, or splashed helplessly on the waves themselves.

Flowing should have fled then and there. She knew she was well within her right… that hornless mare, all these creatures… they would have enslaved her, and her kind, and hurt many in their quest to do so. To say nothing of how Tempest would react to Flowing’s deception, and Flowing wasn’t exactly ready to go hoof-to-fin with a trained bounty-hunter-slash-Storm King-lieutenant. After all, Tempest would surely be in the wreckage somewhere, waiting to exact her revenge on Flowing the first opportunity she got…

And yet, Flowing felt a tug in her chest at the prospect of turning tail and fleeing. She felt it grow stronger when she saw the feeble splashing of the storm creatures. And before she knew what she was doing, she was dropping back under the waves once again, swimming towards the first set of submerged flailing limbs she saw.

The creature yelped when she grabbed him in her fins—she heard it half muffled from beneath the waves. She winked at him(?) as he quickly glanced down at whatever had gripped him, and seeing that he was being grasped by the very seapony he was tasked with imprisoning earned a rather dumbfounded look from the creature.

Flowing swam quickly, the chain behind her whipping back and forth as she did. She carried the storm creature to a sizable chunk of floating wreckage, and let go of him to let him scamper his way up. He did not say anything, which… Flowing was not surprised by, considering she had yet to hear them mutter a single word. Perhaps these creatures could not talk at all?

Regardless, he at least seemed grateful that he was no longer drowning. Flowing didn’t wait to say goodbye, she instead dunked her head back beneath the waves and went searching for the next creature in need of assistance.

Bit by bit, she assembled a little makeshift life-raft of formerly-drowning storm creatures, taking them all to the same piece of floating wreckage, that fortunately seemed to be largely ignored by the kraken more focused on trying to swat down the part of the airship that was still floating. Flowing couldn’t see any signs of life on it, though if she squinted she could see a few motorized lifeboats hastily speeding away. Good for them, she supposed, though she wondered if they knew they’d left so many behind.

One of the creatures had actually gotten his paw wedged in between a bit of wreckage when it had hit the waves. Flowing almost did not notice him at first, until she heard the staccato pounding of his clawed paw under the waves as she swam with her head under. Quickly, she pirouetted around and swam towards him, dodging a sudden intrusion of spare airship parts striking the waves from some impact above her.

She quickly gripped onto the wreckage as it sunk deeper and deeper, pulling it apart with her fins and furiously swaying her tail to try and slow its descent towards the depths. She fought hard to dislodge the storm creature from his position, knowing that it could only hold its breath for so long.

Fortunately, she got him free with a particularly enthused tug on the gnarled airship ruins, and hooked her forefin around him. The chain almost snagged on the sinking wreckage as she went to swim off, but a quick flick of her tail dislodged it.

Eventually, Flowing had dumped half-a-dozen storm creatures onto the floating ‘raft’, which she then started to push towards the rocky horseshoe shaped rock formation that surrounded them. She didn’t get any thanks from them, in fact, their looks instead seemed to be pure bewilderment. They at least made no move to stop her when she started to swim away.

She thought it odd that she hadn’t seen Tempest yet.

The thought struck her as she started to swim away from the activity once and for all, now. She thought of the fleeing lifeboat, and found herself scowling in disgust as her mind put two and two together. She thought of the way Tempest had used one of her own guards as a fear-demonstration, albeit temporarily.

Expendable, surely. That was all these poor creatures were to that mare. Expendable.

It was a disgusting thought, but it wasn’t a surprising one. Flowing stopped as she was getting ready to leave the archipelago, glancing back one last time to make sure that there really was nocreature left to save.

That was when, finally, she noticed Tempest.

She surely must have been floating a little lower, and a little further from the debris field, for Flowing to have not noticed her. She had donned scuba gear, and it did not take a smart fish to know why. It seemed she was really desperate to catch her seapony.

Flowing gave her a smile and a wave. “Goodbye and good riddance, creep!” she hollered.

Then, she turned tail and swam off, as the rest of the airship continued to sink all around.