!

London 1890 -

In his office, Mycroft Holmes has been busying himself in figuring out a mystery that has has the docks around London buzzing with stories. For the past year sightings of mysterious lights coming from underwater have been seen by dock workers and people on ships at night.

Around the docks and shallows, there have been sightings of something long is seen appearing and disappearing. Many of the waitresses said that it’s a sea serpent with one large glowing eye. And it’s covered in seaweed.

There is also something smaller that are also been appearing near the docks at night. That moves much faster than the other one, with many seeing a giant manta ray that has two glowing eyes.

The next is sightings of a strange crab creature that has been spotted on the coast lines and at the docks. Having a dark green shell and standing at least 12 feet tall. It’s been seen at spots where there have been shipwrecks, salvaging parts from what some people have seen. There are also the reports of strange happenings around England, that has something to do with the crab creature.

Then there are the reports of something much larger out in the deeper water. Many claiming it’s a sea monster or a whale with how big it is. Two navy patrol boats encounter it while it was resting near the surface during sunrise, allowing a better view of it. From what the sailors on board the two ships could make out, the thing is some kind of submarine that has been covered in seaweed and has a large whale skull on it, making it look like a sea monster. They could make out the metal body of the submarine and it had to be at least 54 meters long. The giant manta ray suddenly appeared and disappeared underneath it and then the submarine sank into the depths.

Putting the clues all together, Mycroft realized that the sea creatures aren’t sea creatures at all but machines of some kind. It could be another nation or someone who managed to create underwater machines and are testing them. There is also cases of smuggling of raw gold ore that have been showing up, that the custom agents having been finding with the source coming from the docks.

!

Underwater -

The base that Izuku built and left to her, has allowed Enola Holmes to live under the noses of her brothers and everyone else’s. He taught her how to use the machines and tools of the base and even left a copy of Secundo who helps run the base. Izuku reset the copy to the default setting so that the copy could be made into a female version instead but with the memories of Secundo so that she would know what to do. Now calling herself Stacy the sister AI to Secundo runs the base and informs Enola what’s happening and aids her.

The base is made up of 3 large rooms that’s used for power, food and water, and the workshop. The two moonpools, one for the prawn suit, and the other for the seamoth. The Seatruck dock, and the Cyclops docking bay which is a much larger moonpool that only has the upper part of the cyclops poking out of the water. 8 basic rooms with one being the bedroom, a bathroom, a kitchen, dining room, trophy room, entertainment room, the other two are used as storage. The control room where Stacy’s main computer is located, that allows her to run the base. And a scanner room that allows her to scan for resources and ships.

Currently Enola is in the large room for food and water, she’s tending the garden with the lantern trees, marblemelons, the potato plants, and other plants she has brought to grow. She even brought in a beehive so that she would have honey and the bees can pollinate the plants, also having a flower bed for the bees.

The waste from the plants are placed in a bucket that be emptied out into the Bio-reactor that turns it into power for the base. She also needs to clean the filters of the filtration machine that separates the water from the salt, providing water to the base and salt for her food. The machine could also make bottles of water for her and make blocks of salt, but only if she had it on the other setting.

One of the crab robots walk by as she was walking to the power room. The crabs are modeled after the ones Izuku found on that alien world, and like those ones, the crab robots here help maintain the base. They do need to be washed off with fresh water like everything else that comes in contact with the sea to avoid rusting and salt buildup, but can easily be recycled and rebuilt as a new crab bot.

Entering the kitchen Enola pulled out a fish from the refrigerator and place it on the fabricator. Atomically rearranges raw resources into useful objects, or in this case debones the fish, removing the organs and other dangerous things in the fish and cooks it before presenting her a fully prepared fish. It even deboned the ham she had last night and made it nice and tender. She had tested it out on some slightly spoiled meat and it removed all the rotten meat and left only the good meat.

She made fish stew in tomato broth, she had learned to cook following the instructions from the how to do videos. Izuku had left her many gifts when he gave her the ownership of the base, like the instruction videos to teach her things like cooking for herself. Another is the entertainment videos of plays called shows that have people or drawings that move on their own repeating the same story over and over again. She got the idea to dress up her machines as sea creatures from a show with a talking dog and a group of young detectives that go around solving cases with people dressing up as monsters. She’s glad that she’s small and petite, it allows her to move around a lot In the small cramp spaces in the machines.

She had just came back using the seatruck which has 5 modules, a fabricator, sleeping, two storage, and a docking module for the prawn suit. Exploring a sunken ship for valuables, and resources. She has been mining the gold vein she discovered using the scanner, but it never hurts to fill up the war chest with more funding. She can’t just be salvaging resources to repair her equipment all the time after all.

Enola looks at the hanging reinforced driving suit that provides 50% physical protection and enhanced survival in extreme temperatures. It would need repairs after the last case she had.

She was helping a man named Ellis Graham, who was on a quest to discover the fate of his old friend Julius Lambert, a scientist. To his dismay, Graham finds that his friend has bred a carnivorous plant with decidedly-dangerous capabilities, with which Lambert is obsessed. He named the plant Carnivorine. (1)

A strange plant — a hideous shapeless monster: a sort of vegetable hydra — or, rather, octopus — gigantic and size and repulsive in aspect and in coloring. So immense were its proportions, that is filled by itself the whole space of the conservatory. It consisted of a central bladder-shaped trunk or core, from which sprang countless branches — or, rather, arms — thick, leafless, of a livid green, and streaked with blotches of a dull-crimson. Each arm terminated in an oval protrusions which had a resemblance to the human eye.

Lambert's goal was to give Carnivorine the power of locomotion and set her free upon the world, for no very obvious reason other than that he believes he can, and that it would be an interesting scientific experiment. Which once given locomotion by Lambert, went and ate him. With Graham running away in fear, leaving Enola alone with the plant after it attacked her. Graham did return later with the police but not found an empty laboratory with no signs of the young woman or the plant monster. They did found the body of Lambert and whatever notes he left behind.

Enola had used her stasis rifle on the monster plant freezing it in place, long enough for her to pour some lamp oil on it. Then taking out a flare, she tossed it onto the plant setting it on fire. Repeatedly firing the stasis rifle on the plant keeping it in place as it burns. Finally the plant was dead and using the laser cutter, slice the plant into pieces. Where she took the pieces back with her to toss into the bio-reactor to make sure it’s dead.

She did saved a unburnt branch, drying it out before placing it inside a glass display case. In one of the extra rooms she has turned into a trophy room of her past cases. She place it with the other trinkets she has picked up, from the cases she has solved but the plant isn’t the only strange trinket she has picked up. The rusted remains of the highly sophisticated clockwork female automaton, Olimpia sat in a glass case. (2)

Her encounter with Izuku has open her eyes to a world that people now a days think are just fantasy. Now she’s also looking for anything that has to do with the supernatural, two cases so far have bare fruit but nothing that’s like what she seen with Izuku. Traveling to one world to another, seeing things that she could only dream about. She has to find a way to follow him.

Turning off the stove and filling her bowl she went to the dining room to eat and watch something on the television. Thinking of the blueprints of the portal gun, she has looked over it and can’t make heads or tails of it. She’s just not a genius in technology, to build one herself. She began to think maybe if she reveals the technology to her brothers and get it all out there that there can’t be someone who can do it instead.

“After all, why keep all this to myself,” Enola said to herself.

!

Author's Note

1 - Carnivorine was published in 1889 in Peterson's Magazine by Lucy Hamilton Hooper.

2 - The Sandman short story by E. T. A. Hoffmann, first published in 1816.