#throughgoldandironchains

***

First came the sound, a booming roar that shook the whole ship and a hundred hearts. It seemed like a growl from the depths of a cave, mixed with the striking screech of metal sliding against other metal, swords clashing as the background noise of a battlefield.

Second came fear.

“What was that?!”

“What the hell was that?!”

“A thunder?! Are getting into a storm?!”

“All quiet, you pieces of shit!”

“What was th-!”

Only in third came the impact. The three standing pirates were sent flying when everything trembled violently. Hara was slammed against the stairs and didn’t get up again; Seto fumbled on the ground in the middle of the corridor. Furuhashi fell on Wakamatsu and the man was one step from taking the chance and strangling him with the chain between his wrists, but didn’t had the time.

With a screeching sound, like a desperate animal skinned alive, the ship opened. In. Two.

Kise watched in terror the wood snapping open to reveal the red sky of sunset and a tormented sea and a huge eye. Screams filled the air as the big pitchy-black globe came closer to the crack and rolled, taking in everything it could see, before pulling back. Another noise, like a mixture of a roar and a bellow, rose up to the sky and almost broke their eardrums. Gravity suddenly changed, forcing them all harshly against the floor.

“It’s lifting us up!” Aomine roared, pushing the oar out of its hole and freeing their chains from around it to watch out of the little opening. He bleached when he saw what was outside. Kise gulped at his low “Sweet Goddess of Oceans”, but crawled closer to him, pulling at the restraints tying him to the others, and peeked out as the ship kept going higher.

He felt his heart stop for a second. Whatever it was, it looked like a huge squid; a single tentacle as wide as the height of a ship from the lowest point of the keel to the highest of the mainmast, the head easily thrice as tall as the Royal Palace in Rakuzan. It was of a dark blue shade, like sea at the horizon, and was covered in seaweed and shellfishes. Its eyes had no white sclera, they were pure spheres of blackness and if it had a mouth it wasn’t visible, nor Kise wanted to have anything to do with it.

He had been infected with Akashi’s rationality and ended up believing that things as sea monsters and curses and merfolks and whatever didn’t exists. The thought made him laugh nervously, earning him a shocked and worried look from Aomine.

“Oi,” he tried to say, but if he had planned to finish the sentence he never got around that.

With popping sounds, the crack became the greatness of void and the ship became two halves. People screamed everywhere when those in the middle rows fell, Seto first of all and Furuhashi closely behind, and the chains trying the prisoners together all together pulled at everyone.

Aomine cursed, but planted his feet against a protruding beam of the ship skeleton and grabbed onto the chains. His muscles tensed as he tried to sustain the weight of the falling others. Kise and Midorima and Murasakibara and all the others imitated him, but with the guys on the other half doing the same and the two parts being pulled further and further away, it was just a matter of time.

Sakurai lost his footing and was pulled to dangle from the tensing chain. He yelled in pain as his whole body was hosted up by the rings around his wrists and blood dripped down his arms, all the way to his elbows and shoulders. He screamed again when it dripped on his face.

“HOLD ON!” Kise could hear the begging note in his own voice, but the stubbornness that was his main trait didn’t allow him to give up yet. He had tears stinging in his eyes from the effort and the fear and all those screams, but he clenched his teeth.

Midorima to his side was trembling. He had lost his glasses somewhere, but his sight seemed to be getting out of focus from other reasons completely. His hands were going numb and slipping on the chain the more blood poured from the cuts on his wrists. Everything was muffled to him, every voice seemed barely a murmur, and for short but terrifying moments he couldn’t even remember what had happened to lead them in that very moment.

The chain slipped away from his fingers for a second, so many inches lost, and he had no idea how long they had been doing that. It seemed like a lifetime, but was probably barely a few seconds. An arm encircled his waist, holding him up when his knees buckled and gave up, all his energies on keeping his grip on the chain, but he barely heard Murasakibara calling his name right into his ears.

Atsushi gulped when Shintarou went slack against him, completely out cold but burning with fever, and he kneeled on the precarious floor while trying to hold onto the chain still and to ignore the wind that came in howling from the opening.

Ten seconds, he had counted them. That had been how long they held onto each other, like hopeful children seeing a solution where clearly stood only disappointment and pain. They had felt like hours. Blue filled the crack in between the two halves of the ship and for a moment the darkness was absolute, but then the tentacle kept on moving, upward.

There was a moment of relax when the pressure of the dangling bodies was relieved from the muscles of those still standing. Only for a second, though, before a powerful tug pulled them all forward and lying on their stomaches.

“No-” Aomine’s words fell into a pained growl when his body was dragged forward, the chain dangling from both sides of the tentacle now wrapping around it. “It’s trying to take us!”

His words fell on deaf ears as Murasakibara and Midorima fell over the edge, but Kise roared.

Not yet!, he didn’t really think, but he wrapped their shared chain at his wrists'  height around a metal ring on the floor, used to keep still four heavy wares under a net, and for good measures he put his foot to keep it there. He cried in pain when the tug reached them and the force dug the metal in his flesh, opening long wounds that dyed his hands in red, but it lasted only a moment.

The old chain, rusted by sweat and blood for months, snapped and both Kise and Aomine, just behind him, fell backward.

They rolled a few meters before their bodies hit the fallen oars and benches, sending bruising pain to their shocked brains. When Kise managed to shake the feeling away just enough to push himself on his elbow and look back, the last bodies attached to the chain were being pulled upward. Gasping, he tried to reach the hole of a oar and to look outside, but in the chaos of tentacles and waves and the huge creature he didn’t manage to understand what was happening.

“Is that thing gonna eat them?!” he yelled as he felt Aomine pulling himself closer to him, defying the gravity of the reclining half ship, but when he turned he bleached at the huge splint of wood protruding from the pirate’s left leg.

“How the fuck am I supposed to know?!” Daiki still screamed back, looking around to find something, uncaring of his own injury, only to realize that they were alone now, even the guards swept away who knew when and where. “We need to get out of here before it decides to crush us!”

“We must be at least thirty feet from the water, we can’t just jump off!”

“You got a better idea?!”

Kise shook the chains in Daiki’s face. While the part holding his wrists together had broken, he still had rings around them and his ankles were still tied together; not to mention Aomine’s limbs were all still connected in pairs. “And how do you plan to swim with these on, uh?!”

“I don’t know!”

“Then-!”

They both startled when their half ship was shaken up and down in a sudden movement of the tentacle holding them. Kise bit his lower lip to bleeding, while Aomine hissed as his stomach hit the floor again. As sudden as it had come, the movement ceased, but when they both turned to see what was happening, they froze at seeing someone trying to pull themselves from the higher floor to theirs, now striving as if to climb a hill.

A blur of movement and the man jumped and landed barely a few steps from them. His clothes were not a prisoner’s.

“Shit.” Aomine grabbed Kise, managed to pull him behind him just as the pirate lifted his eyes and saw them.

“You!” he roared, mindless fury raging in his eyes.

Before they could react, Hanamiya drew his gun on them and pulled the trigger with an inhuman snarl.

***

Akashi took a deep breath of air instinctively when his and Momoi’s heads broke the water surface, but he inhaled again sharply and for an whole different reason when his eyes caught what was around him.

Ogiwara’s tentacles kept on hitting the water, simulating a storm that had Satsuki gritting her teeth to keep them still and afloat, and the air was filled with screams and yells. The pirate ship, broken in two, was hold up in the air by two tentacles and a third one shook around the long chain that held all the prisoners. The smell of salt, wood and blood was nauseating even in the middle of the open ocean, and the sky seemed to be bleeding too, the sun disappearing fast under the line of the horizon.

Shigehiro screamed again, a screeching sound that made Akashi cringe, and Momoi howled something back before turning to look around.

Her eyes widened and she pointed closer to the Kraken. “There! Lifeboats!”

Akashi followed her gaze and indeed the lifeboats of the ship had fallen loose and were floating around in the chaos, but only two of them. A piece of a third was sinking nearby and the fourth was nowhere to be seen.

“It’s not enough for all the men!” he yelled back at her as the mermaid was already swimming closer, “We need more!”

“You’ll have to make do!” She pulled him on her shoulder just for a second before throwing him on one of the boats, “We’ll find debris to build a raft with!”

“That’s not the only—!” He cursed, loudly, when a tentacle hit the water close to them, sending a wave of water to invest them both, and he coughed water as he grabbed the rope hanging from a side of the boat beside his, “We’ll need the keys for the chains! If they fall into the water as they are, they’ll all end up drowning!”

Another wave shook the boats as Akashi was still tying them together, making him hiss in pain as his injured arm holding the rope took the worst of the tugging force, but Momoi helped him keeping them together.

“Who has the keys?!” she yelled over another scream of the Kraken.

“The captain! Hanamiya! He is…!”

“I’ll find him.” Both Akashi and Momoi startled as someone helped them pull the boats together, but Kuroko looked scarily impassive in the middle of the carnage.

His face was pale to the point it seemed to gleam a bit, teal strands attached to his skin, and his eyes were big yet somehow empty. His voice hadn’t as much as trembled as he had spoken and soon enough Reo and Mayuzumi were behind him, but he didn’t acknowledge them.

“We’ll help with the raft while you search for the keys,” Mibuchi added, pushing Momoi slightly aside, “You go help him, those humans won’t last long.”

Akashi bit his tongue as he heard those words, but his hands didn’t faltered — not even the injured one — and kept on tying knots to secure the two boats together. Reo pushed the door of some kind of wardrobe closer and handed him pieces of rope to add it to the structure.

“Will we?” Mayuzumi seemed just as unfazed as Kuroko, but he hurried up in obeying his lover under the others’ glares.

Kuroko sent a lingering look to the screaming creature, his friend, before meeting Akashi’s eyes once again. Their promise shone bright in his irises for a second; the following one he was looking at Momoi, as empty as before. “Let’s go.”

She didn’t need to be told twice and they vanished with their tails barely visible under the water surface.

Akashi stole a glance and the chain of prisoners, still high in the air, but wasted no time in praying and instead tied the lid of a wooden crate to his boat.

***

Hanamiya cursed, furious, when the gun refused to shot. Wet as it was, it came as no surprise, but still Kise’s heart was beating hard in his ears.

Aomine cussed again, under his breath, in relief, but his posture stood guarded, on his knee with his sane leg ready to push him on his feet and his hands on the floor to give him an additional push. His eyes were on Hanamiya, refusing to leave him, but his focus shifted continuously from him to Ryouta behind him.

“To Hell with this!” the captain shouted, throwing the weapon away to draw his sword instead.

He seemed completely out of his mind, charging the two prisoners with a scream. He didn’t pay attention minimally to the monster outside, to his men that were probably all dead already or to the ship falling to pieces; his eyes were shining and reddened, capillaries broken in the white sclera.

Aomine reacted instinctively when the sword fell on him and he lifted his wrists to parry it with the chain binding his wrists. Burning sparks accompanied the metals clashing and they burned his face just enough to make him hiss. His whole body tensed in the effort to keep the blade from cutting straight into his skull, but Hanamiya kept on pressing down, made stronger by his standing position, and he couldn’t get up. The pulsing in his leg was growing unbearable now; he wouldn’t be able to hold on for long.

Makoto probably noticed too, because he lifted his word again just to smash it down a second time. Aomine lost some space and the chain dug in his forehead before he managed to push it higher again.

“I’ll kill you!” Hanamiya didn’t seem to be aware of whom he was talking to, his eyes were wide and his pupils almost took over the whole irises, as if he were drunk or drugged. He lifted his sword again. “I’ll kill you!”

Daiki clenched his teeth, readying himself for the impact, but it never came.

Makoto’s blade found a stud of wood, a splinter of oar as long as a human arm, and got stuck in it for a moment, before Kise’s body pushed in and sent the captain flying on his back.

“OI!” Aomine tried, but Kise didn’t seem to ear him as he pointed his improvised weapon at the pirate.

Hanamiya grunted, standing up. Outside the shell of ship they were in, there were still screams and roaring of waves and booms of the tentacles hitting water, but he couldn’t care less about it or about what that octopus was going to do with them. All he could see was the soldier’s expression.

Kise’s face was cold. All form of teasing or cheerfulness replaced by a frigid mask that made his eyes shone in pure gold, as sharp as a lynx’s. His perfect beauty had been twisted and while it still existed, somewhere, it seemed impossible to see now: there was nothing pretty in a war machine, and the soldier looked no different from a chiseled cannon or a gun; just as deadly and expensive. There was blood dripping from his split lower lip and his hair were sticking to his face looking brownish for the water, but the snarl his mouth was twisted in was unmistakable.

Makoto smiled at the death promise it held.

“Come at me, princess,” he hissed, but instead jumped forward himself. He engaged Ryouta’s piece of wood easily, but the man maneuvered it like a real sword, uncaring of its minor resistance, and, hell, he was good.

Kise was mindful of the chain tying his ankles together and to Aomine’s, but as long as the pirate stood on the floor behind him he could work with that little space he had. Hanamiya was irrational and so was his fencing, lead by hatred and instinct alone, whereas Ryouta had been training his swordsmanship for years with the best master the Royal Palace had. And the gods knew Kasamatsu would kick his ass hard if he were to lose his focus even just for a second.

Keeping Makoto at bay with a real sword would have been an easy feat, but for as much as he could parry and dodge his hits even with wood, he couldn’t fall into any strength competition that could break his weapon, nor he could be sure that his attacks, even reaching their target, would make any real damage without a real blade.

He manage to pierce the pirate shoulder with a lunge, there were Akashi himself had wounded him already, and Hanamiya retreated a couple of steps with a howl of pain. It would have been the perfect moment to press him, but Aomine was still holding him back, and Kise growled, a deep guttural sound that had Makoto’s eyes back on him fill with shock.

Kise had never been a real doll, after all. A puma, that suited him far better.

Hanamiya blinked once before opening up in a creepy smile, his teeth showing as he taunted. “That wasn’t majestic at all, princess.”

“Come back here and I’ll show you majestic,” Kise barked back, unfazed, but he man did obey and jumped back on him.

This time, Ryouta had to sustain the assault by crossing their weapons and the blade stuck into the wood once more, making him cuss as he realized his opponent had all the intentions to push his way through it to slit his throat. The words flowing out of his mouth would have put to shame Hanamiya’s crew, but the captain seemed too out of himself to even realize what profanities were being spat in his face.

The splinters dug themselves in Kise’s fingers as he tried to fix his grip on his weapon and the wood creaked pitifully under the pressure of the blade embedding itself deeper and deeper. The ship was inclined a bit more in Makoto’s favor and his sword slipped inside its furrow. The blade reached Kise’s skin and sliced through his right eyebrow, blood spilling on his eye, before he managed to bend backward at his waist to avoid having his face split open.

Hanamiya grinned. “Any last words?”

“Sorry, we don’t have time to chat.”

Kise yelped when, together with the voice from behind him, came something heavy to slam into the back of his knees, a big round shape that made him lose his balance and fall on his back. He lifted his gaze to see what had happened, but he managed to open only one eye, the other forced close by the blood from his injury, and he could only catch sight of Hanamiya falling after him with the blade still in his hand briefly.

He rolled to a side, on his stomach, just barely in time to avoid the sword. There was a yelp and a scream and when he raised his head Makoto had rolled several steps closer to the tail of the ship. He seemed to have hit something heavy in his fall because he cursed with a hand on his hip as he tried to stand up, just to fail miserably.

Kise felt no pity, and instead turned to see Aomine still on his back on the floor, eyeing Hanamiya with distaste.

“Did you just trip me?!” he screeched, because if they were probably going to die soon anyway eaten by a big ass squid he wanted to at least go knowing whom he could trust!

Daiki ignored him, instead, and grabbed him by the arm and pulled him closer to the wall. Kise was ready to yell at him again, but then he realized the pirate was trying to use him as a crutch to get back on his feet, his other hand gripping on a bean to keep them from slipping toward the bottom of the ship, and shut his mouth. The splinter in his leg must have lacerate the muscle because even with his help Aomine could barely stand and kept on trembling continuously. He was pale and sweating buckets; no good signs at all, but he still never moved his eyes from Hanamiya.

The captain was wobbling on his feet with his back against the wall, but he looked still too much confused to be of any danger, to Ryouta.

The ship trembled, hitting something, and so did they. Kise found himself grabbing a fistful of the shirt on Aomine’s chest, his other arm circling the pirate’s waist as one of the man’s was slumped around his shoulders.

He had no time to waste in being embarrassed when he noticed water pouring in from some of the oar holes. Fast it filled the below deck, reaching Hanamiya’s waist in a handful of seconds.

“Shit, it put us back down!” he cursed, but his voice was more scared than furious now. Daiki joined his cussing for a second, his eyes flickering all over to look for an escape route that wouldn’t get their chained asses at the bottom of the ocean.

All he saw were the boxes tied to the handle Kise had used to break their chains. He didn’t like the way they trembled under pressure, weighting on their ropes. Even their bodies were slipping closer to the bottom of the ship.

“I’m sorry…” They jerked, immediately turning at the sound of Hanamiya’s voice, but the captain had his head hung low, water at his mid trunk now. He looked battered and defeated, sinking with his ship as he should have, as every captain should. “I didn’t mean to… I… I am…”

But then he was suddenly laughing, loudly. Kise jerked at the change.

“As if I would ever say something like that, idiots!” The scream filled the air, together with the splashing sounds of the pirate’s hands grabbing on fallen pieces of benches or oars to pull himself upward, against gravity. His eyes  were reddened and crazy, as he stared at them. “I will kill you!”

Daiki cringed. His hand tightened instinctively the grip on Ryouta’s shoulders as he felt him shift, as if ready to attack, the idiot. “Fuck you, Hanamiya!”

The ship trembled again and its sinking stopped abruptly. The wood creaked under the pressure of something outside, something circling them all, squeezing.

It’ll crush us!, Kise realized, eyes widened as he bent his knees, Aomine following closely, to try to keep some balance, but trembling as the effort strained his injured leg. Hanamiya kept on laughing, uncaring or maybe completely unaware of what was happening all around him.

The creature screeched again, this time in a long pitched sound that held its metallic note but seemed somehow whiny. It lasted for seconds that left the humans with whistling ears, but when it stopped the silence didn’t come.

Wood exploded right beside Hanamiya and splinters showered both Kise and Aomine, scratching their arms as they tried to protect their faces. The tip of a tentacle hit furiously around the hole it had just pierced. Makoto screamed, but wasn’t touched and the thing retreated. The opening it left was like a window on the underwater, but still the piece of ship didn’t sink.

Why is it keeping us afloat?!, Kise growled to himself, trying to hold onto the plain surface of the floor under his feet. His body was trembling with the effort not to slip closer to Makoto, and now the sight of the hole and the occasional flicker of a tentacle in the distance made him ever more desperate.

Hanamiya thought the same because he grabbed onto the things fallen around him and tried to resume his climbing, out of the water and closer to them. He wasn’t laughing anymore, but fear and rage were coming back the more he looked at Kise.

It was his fault, after all. His and that bastard Akashi’s. It was their fucking fault all of this happened, nothing had ever interfered with his plans before they were taken aboard and now he didn’t even have his Tetsuya anymore!

Tetsuya! He grabbed onto an upturned bench and crawled against the pendency of the floor, his fingernails bleeding as he didn’t care at all. Tetsuya!

“You took him from me!” he yelled, ignoring how Kise was shifting to prepare to kick him in the face. Both of them had lost their weapons now so it was down to hand to hand. “You took Tetsuya from me!”

“Are you fucking crazy?!” Aomine growled, but the ship creaked again and his arm protested, still holding both him and Kise anchored to the protruding bean. He wasn’t sure how longer he could resist, especially with his leg pulsing more painfully by the second. “Tetsu wasn’t…!”

“Tetsuya is mine!” Hanamiya slammed his fist on the wood, the pitchy black hair sticking wet to his face to draw a terrifying web on his pale skin, deign lace to frame his blazing eyes. “Give him back to me! Tetsuya! TETSUYA!”

“Hanamiya.”

***

Akashi coughed when a wave crushed him down, slamming him agains the bottom of the lifeboat.

He cursed, but stood up on his hands and knees and leaned over the boat to grab at another large table of wood Reo had picked from the smashed head half of the ship. As soon as he outstretched his arm, though, the merman grabbed his wrist instead.

“Your shoulder is bleeding again!” he yelled above the screeches of the Kraken and the screams of the prisoners, “We need to-!”

“No time!” Seijuro pulled away from his grip with a hiss, and Reo let him go but couldn’t wash the worry off his face. “Get me these guys’ keys and we’ll talk about my shoulder when they’ll all be safe!”

Mibuchi looked horrified, uncertain, and stood floating beside the raw raft for a long moment, scaring Akashi that he might stop bringing supplies for them to work with. Instead, Mayuzumi came by with another piece and Reo looked desperate but slipped underwater again.

Seijuro breathed in relief.

Their raft was badly assembled, precarious, little. It wouldn’t hold all the prisoner as it was and…

Akashi stole a look at the chain of men dangling against the Kraken’s tentacled, still up in the air. He imagined the pressure on their shoulders and wrists and winced, but only for a moment. He went back to work immediately after, hissing against the slipping rope, swelled with water, as he tried to tie some decent knots.

Where the fuck is Tetsuya?!, he growled to himself, eyes stinging as his hair whipped his face with every breath of wind.

They were running out of time.

***

Hanamiya turned, his head snapping aside fast enough to break his neck, but all that came out of his lips was a soft whisper of wonder as his eyes met a cold pair of pale blue irises.

At first, Aomine didn’t recognize him, with the long hair fluctuating around his shoulders and a certain silvery light all over his face. And, well, the gills and those kind-of-but-probably-not fins instead of his ears. And the fangs. They shone a bit underwater, through soft plump lips that weren’t even trying to hide them, but that didn’t seem to bother Makoto. Oh, and the tail.

As Daiki hissed “Tetsu?”, the captain turned on his knees.

Tetsuya slipped out the water surface, his pale face framed with sparkling drops, and his eyelids half dropped on the irises in a sultry expression. His lips parted with a soft pop as he pushed himself upper.

Hanamiya seemed to have a moment of lucidity when the fins at the side of the creature’s head spread open and trembled slightly in tension, but Tetsuya exhaled and he froze.

No, Kise realized. His heartbeat dropped when he realized the creature was humming, softly, under his breath, far too low for them to hear the melody inside the words that he was pushing into the captain’s face.

With the ship inclined, Makoto could lean over the water as Tetsuya stood parallel to the floor and he stared dumbfounded at the creature in front of him. Once more, he seemed completely indifferent to his morphology, to the danger standing in his slightly open lips embracing gently words and notes.

Kuroko’s hand raised fluidly to Hanamiya’s cheeks, cradling them in a way that would have been soothing had he had another expression. Any expression at all. Instead, his face was completely blank, devoid of any kind of emotion, and cold, analyzing. It made Kise’s skin crawl.

He pulled himself up, closer to man’s skin in an elegant embrace. His right hand caressed him and moved from the man’s cheek to the arm as his mouth brushed against the side of the neck, nuzzling it almost fondly.

Kuroko’s pupils abruptly shifted, turning into sharp vertical lines in the middle of the blue irises, like a snake’s, and his lips curled with a snarl to show long white shark-like fangs. His nails elongated into pointy claws that pierced the flesh, keeping his prey still as he dug his teeth in his throat.

Hanamiya screamed, but for a second. The next moment, Tetsuya had dragged him underwater already, leaving behind only muffled sounds and a blood-red swirling trail vanishing in the ocean.

The Kraken roared again.

“Aominecchi, watch out!”

***

Takao spluttered. Some mixture of saliva and snot hit the stone floor in front of him, but he didn’t even manage to feel disgusted.

Curled up on his side, he strived to use his thin shirt and black pants to keep his own body heat closer, hiding his hands inside the sleeves and brushing his arms around his torso as fast as he could. He was half sure a mouse at tried to eat his foot at a certain point, but the boot had managed to protect him.

Good, I hope it poisoned you, was his petty thought. If he were less cold and tired, he would probably be annoyed, angry even. He hadn’t managed to put a foot on his own barrack before Haizaki had sent someone to get him and dragged him to a forgotten cell in the Royal Palace. How many hours had it been since then, Takao had no idea, but he was pretty sure he had passed a night because the temperature had gone cold and then warm again. Now it was dropping again so maybe they were in the evening? He wasn’t sure.

He didn’t really care.

Haizaki would have the Emperor informed of what had happened and Takao’s chances of being moved to a crew closer to His Majesty — one that would travel for shorter periods of times, one that would come back to Rakuzan so often, and to the castle, and to its doctor — would turn to ashes.

It’s not like there’s still a doctor worth visiting, anymore, supplied a voice in his mind. One that he was fast to strangle and kill and feel so guilty about.

Shin-chan’s glasses were still in his bag, in the quarters hopefully, and he missed the little comfort of holding onto them dearly. He curled up more as he called himself an idiot in a heated venomous whisper.

He jerked when a sound of footsteps echoed against the walls of the stairs right in front of his cell. Then he stiffened, eyes with suspect the shadow of a single man flickering fast in the orange shades of the torch fire.

He bit his lower lip when he recognized him.

Black boots holding white trousers and the blue shirt with the Royal Emblem proudly sewed right above the heart. The dark brown cape on his shoulders, tied roughly under a squandered jaw, did nothing to hide the big sword dangling from his side, but not even the blade could rival the sharpness of the glare made of blue eyes and thick eyebrows.

Takao felt chastised enough under just that look. “Sorry.”

“If you end up apologizing anyway, why don’t you just stop pulling this stupid shit, uh?!”

Takao curled up even more, his eyes fleeing from the confrontation with the other’s. Even the cold and the mice and the cell, even a reprimand of the Emperor himself!, seemed a better option than the scolding he was going to receive. He could tell, by experience.

“I’m sorry,” he just repeated quietly, not sure what else he could say for himself.

Kasamatsu sighed. “Just be grateful I intercepted Haizaki before he could obtain a meeting with the Emperor,” he grunted, slipping a ring full of keys from a hanger on his belt. “And that I hate that asshole.”

Takao almost smiled as he saw the gruff Captain of the Guards open the lock on his cell. Almost, but he refrained himself and simply pulled up to sit. He didn’t have a death wish, yet, or anyway not by Kasamatsu’s hand.

The man glared at him anyway, clearly having picked up on the aborted gesture, but shook his head as he stepped inside the cell to bend over him. “Careful,” he ordered as took his coat off and he slung it over Kazunari’s shoulders. Then, obeying his own order, he helped him stand up and take first hesitant steps outside the cell.

Takao smiled sadly, reminding far too well of how many times the man had done the same to him back when he was still training and Kasamatsu was his teacher. He was in infirmary once every five days, and not to see Shintarou, back then. “Thank you, Captain.”

Yukio huffed, apparently annoyed, be the hand he was keeping on the other’s small back moved to pat him on the head for a couple of times. “Whatever, idiot.”

It seemed to die there, at least it did for Takao, and the younger man focused on climbing the steps with lips pulled in a thin line and frown settled in between his eyebrows. He didn’t notice the other’s expression for a long time, until they were halfway in leaving the dungeons.

“Just don’t go die on me.”

The sentence was so sudden, Takao stopped abruptly in the middle of the stairs, eyes widened and confused. Then he noticed, Kasamatsu was pale. He couldn’t be described as thin, with the muscles from his training, but he looked somehow perished. His hair were kept slightly longer than he used to, his lips chapped with marks terribly similar to the mark of teeth, and there were bags under his eyes, dark and purple.

Takao knew that look.

Kasamatsu recognized his, apparently, because he sighed. “Akashi’s ship,” he said tersely, moving to resume his movement or maybe just to prevent him from seeing the look in his eyes. “Kise was on board. He’d been in the kid’s crew for four years.”

“Oh.” Kazunari hadn’t known that.

He used to know Kise, somehow, vaguely. Both being in the graces of Kasamatsu, they had met briefly a couple of times, even sparred with each other. In his memory, the blond soldier was cheerful, open, but deadly. They had gotten along with taunts and tricks until the moment he had shifted and become something close to an invincible genius of the sword. Takao had barely been able to almost graze him once, such was the different in their skills. But he was also like a big baby when it came to Yukio himself and there was no way to deny even the Captain had grown to care for his student.

“Yeah,” Kasamatsu left it at that. He had shown a moment of weakness, Takao knew, that he would tuck under the carpet and forget of, probably until the moment he was alone in his quarters and could spend the night biting his lips and cursing fate for stealing a person he was so fond of from him. Now, he looked ahead with his head held high and he supported Kazunari’s weight in their climb.

Another thing Takao knew was the pain of loss, so he lowered his gaze and resumed walking.

When they reached the top of the stairs, Yukio didn’t let him go. Instead, he accompanied him all the way to the outer courtyard, where the barracks for the passing soldiers were.

Takao used to have a house for himself in the town. Midorima used to reach him there when the days had been too hectic for them to meet in the Palace. He hadn’t been there in years, but never sold it.

The sky was red, he noticed, and it painted the sky of a weird combination of black and oranges and yellow. It didn’t look poetic, it looked dangerous. Takao stared at it with a nervous knot settling in his stomach.

“A seagull,” Kasamatsu commented, pointing at a dark gray cloud curling on itself in a corner of the scenery, picturing a seagull with wings open and claws pointing and ready to catch a fish somewhere further than the horizon. “It’s a bad omen.”

Takao frowned. “I thought you weren’t superstitious.”

“I’m not,” Yukio shrugged, but it was a tired gesture, melancholic. “But could you blame me for being a pessimist, in these times?”

Kazunari shook his head, striving to put up half a smile just for the sake of both their minds, but when they resumed walking he stole one more glance at the shaped cloud.

He couldn’t deny the bad feeling twisting in his guts, either.

***

Kise had tried to escape the merman’s magic. Daiki was looking completely caught up in the sight of his friend’s new form and Ryouta had been scared, terrified, that they would’ve ended up the same way of Hanamiya. Intrigued, enchanted and then dead.

He had turned his head from the show in front of them the moment Kuroko’s fangs and shown and bit his tongue to a bleeding as the pirate’s screams filled his ears. When they had stopped, he had almost gagged and his eyes had opened instinctively. The Kraken had screamed and his tentacle had shook the ship again, rapidly, and the pull had been the last needed.

The hook in the floor he had used to break his own chains was ripped out of its position by the weight of the four wares under the net and gravity made the rest.

“Aominecchi, watch out!” he had yelled as they rolled down the deck with the rambling sound of thunders, fast, fast, fast. Too fast for the men to move out of their path, especially with Aomine’s leg.

They weight hit them both head on, the net tangled with their limbs, and a second later Kise felt the hard impact of freezing cold water against his back.

He fell into complete darkness.

***

Aomine almost screamed when his leg was hit, first by the cargo and then by the salted water, but had been swimming in the sea before he learnt how to walk, his mother said, and he only took a deep breath before water engulfed them.

He opened his eyes immediately, grabbed Kise’s hand blindly and grabbed onto the net to try to climb with him the sinking bundle. The salt was stinging him and his wrists were still tied together, but ahead of himself he could see the last reflexes of the dying sun. Ryouta must have seen the same, because he let go of his hand to wrap the arm around his chest instead, and glad for his untied wrists he moved to try to pull them both to the surface. Both their ankles were still tied but if their kept their stride short and fast and worked together they surely could have made it anyway.

They barely moved above the weight before Daiki felt his ankle pulling him down.

Kise kept on kicking, surely feeling the resistance yet stubbornly ignoring it, but Aomine turned back anyway and he felt a tug of terror in his chest when he realized the stud of chain keeping his ankles together had been caught in the broken hook. A simple glance was enough to let him know that the more he moved his feet, the more he got stuck in and they were sinking now, they were sinking slowly, the red above their head getting further.

He pulled at Kise’s armpit around his chest, trying to get him to either turn or let go, but Ryouta wouldn’t look at him. He swayed his arm around like crazy, as if it alone could have made the difference against the weight of four wares. They were filled with old rags, Aomine knew. Fairly light now, but the water must have been dripping inside the wares now and soon the clothes would be soaked and so much heavier.

They’ll get us all the way to the bottom like a fucking anchor, he realized. His body was all aching, his lungs were starting to frizzle with the lack of air and sure he could resist longer but what difference would it have made?

If Kise kept on pulling, he couldn’t untangle himself; and even if he did, Aomine wasn’t sure he could move his freezing hands well enough for the task. The net looked more and more like pitchy tentacles pulling him to his death. And Ryouta with him, because they were still together with that stupid chain connecting their wrists.

Aomine had always been all the flaws Satsuki’s mother could think of, but never in his life he would have wanted others to get hurt because of him. His sister’s loss had brought to him a guilt he didn’t want to feel ever again.

Thus, he struggled against Ryouta’s arm as hard as he could, trashing in the attempt to make him lose his grip. Kise kicked him in the spine, definitely on purpose, as if to tell him to stop, but Aomine ignored him and focused only on the weird feelings in his lungs growing more uncomfortable by the second. He elbowed the soldier in the side, avoiding the chest not to risk making him exhale any precious air.

This idiot is thicker than he looks!, he growled in his mind, three quarters annoyed but maybe a quarter impressed. Completely desperate, though, because the redness of the sky was fading, further and further. Why couldn’t Ryouta just fucking let go?! There was no point in dying together, for all the salt in the Dead Sea!

He flailed and almost sputtered out some air when, as he tried to slip out of Kise’s grip by kicking around aimlessly, he felt a strange short vibration and his legs suddenly went around.

Daiki stilled, confused, and looked down as he tried to make sense of the feeling.

The first thing he noticed, quite obviously, was the wares sinking fast. The second was that they were moving now, heading to the surface, pushed by Kise’s tentative kicks and swings of his arm. The third made him lose his mind.

There was something heavy and sharp in her hand, like some kind of stone that had been levigated to make some kind of rudimental weapon. She was naked, pink air lazily dancing around her head and torso, but from her waist downward there was no trace left of the pale legs she used to rest on his lap, of the think ankles she was always demanding for a massage to, of the feet she used to kick him in the shins with when he would make some vulgar remark. But her eyes, no. Her eyes were the same, round and open and the shade of a gentle blush or of plump lips or of the darkest spot on a soft peach. Pink, like her mouth opened in a gentle, almost nostalgic, smile.

Aomine pushed against Kise’s grip with twice the strength from before, incredulous, shocked. What was she doing there?! She was alive, a merman but alive?! Why had she never come to him, then?!

He opened his mouth as if he could call her name, mindless of the salted water around him, but she was faster with hers and Daiki froze as a single crystal note rang into the very core of his mind, from inside his head, in between his ears. It was melodic and soothing and reassuring and made him go limp, unwilling to fight the arm around his chest anymore, and Kise’s body pulled his further and further, toward the surface.

Aomine blinked. He wanted to swim toward her, he really wanted, but at the same time he…didn’t? He couldn’t understand and his eyes went to the only person he thought had the answer.

Satsuki looked at him like she was telling him goodbye. She placed a soft kiss on her webbed fingertips and blew it toward him, making the fins on the sides of her face lift and open like fans, trembling a bit.

***

Akashi was trembling in cold and pain by the time the umpteenth wave washed over his impromptu raft, but he clenched his teeth and staggered back on his feet, trying to move back to the centre of the structure. He couldn’t move his right arm anymore, at all, and it dangled at his side lifelessly, but he wouldn’t spare it a glance.

He had long since noticed Kise wasn’t at any end of the chain. He had hoped, stealing glances every now and then, but the familiar body of his friend was nowhere to be seen. Refusing to accept that, he had kept on working and scanning the sea.

After minutes, Kuroko had jumped out of the water and Akashi had stared, dumbfounded for a moment, in seeing his elegant shape arching in the air against the fading pink sky, surrounded by drops like precious tears. Their eyes had met for a second, a glance that had been fond and reassuring, before Tetsuya had splashed within the sea again, at the other side of the almost two meters wide raft, and vanished within its depths. It had been so beautiful it had taken Seijuro a moment to realize the merman had dropped something beside his thigh.

He ran an arm over his face to take the water away and he widened his eyes when he recognized the rusty shape of a keys, held together with a metal ring. He almost dived to grab them, clenching his numb stiff fingers around the thin bars, and he would always deny but a relieved sob escaped his throat in that moment.

He turned on his knees, his hands grabbing on the edge of the raft closer to the flailing Kraken. “HEY!” he yelled, trying to make himself heard, but the beast screamed again and the sound covered up everything else. Akashi opened his mouth again anyway, he would not give up now!

A soft hum, so low it was possible he could hear it, yet there, in the middle of his brain, in the depths of his mind, to soothe his thoughts away and placate his tempestuous feelings. It was just a bunch of skipping notes, playing like silver bells in a diamond grass, and there were words but for some reason they wouldn’t stick, like a blurred sight in thick fog.

Akashi blinked when it suddenly stopped and all he could hear was silence all around him.

Silence?

He jerked and one of his knees went up immediately, as if to bring him to his feet on the precarious boat. He had no idea how much time it had passed so he lifted his head, eyes widened, to look for whatever might have happened, but he stopped.

The Kraken was shrinking slowly, a tired kid falling asleep, and his tentacles were moving lazily, letting got of pieces of ship to sink underwater carefully. The one holding the chain of prisoners moved closer to Akashi’s raft and the men that had been screaming in terror and pain since a moment ago were now all quiet and meek, their gazes unfocused and fazed.

Seijuro stumbled into his useless arm as he crawled to a side to let the creature lay the first ones, at the two opposite ends of the chain, on the raft. One was Midorima, completely unconscious, while the other that Wakamatsu man Aomine always bickered with. With hands steady despite their paleness and the cuts and bruises all over them, he opened the locks he could, grateful for the numbers carved in both them and their respective keys, and then pushed the cuffs outboard to let other people be laid on the structure.

Wakamatsu blinked sometimes before jerking as if he had suddenly been pinched.

“What the fuck…?!” He turned, paled in seeing the Kraken so close, then waited as he saw the beast helping Murasakibara’s and another man’s bodies on the same pathetic lifeboat of him. He looked at Akashi, ready to demand for explanations, but he found hims biting his lips as he tried to roll Atsushi’s awake but unresponsive body so that he could free his hands. He cussed with himself, but grabbed the giant and moved him around.

Seijuro stole a glance at him, but he shrugged. “I’m not picky, as long as I make it out of this alive.”

He was half certain the Navy Officer muttered something as he rolled his eyes, something that sounded suspiciously like “merchants”, which would make no sense at all since he was sure he hadn’t told him what his profession had been before being caught. Still, he suppressed the shiver running down his spine, and focused on the matter at hand.

***

Night came fast as they freed prisoners after prisoners, the Kraken patiently laying them down at their pace, and when they threw the last rings overboard and the chains sunk without a noise there were no celebrations. Everybody was holding their wrists, shoulders, ankles, and looking around at their helpless comrades in that nutshell of a boat that seemed a child’s play kept together with raisin and scraps of thread.

Akashi had collapsed beside Midorima after Murasakibara had told him how he had taken care of Kise, before he was lost with Aomine. He laid beside the doctor brushing hair out of his face, caressing the feverish skin of his forehead to soothe the nightmares away and touching the little mark of the eyeglasses on his nose. He felt tired and empty, not even room for rage or despair, and everything hurt but his eyes stung more as he tried to hold himself together, to not think that the man before him was all that was left of his friend, the best he could ever hope for, probably.

No merfolk had come back. Tetsuya had vanished after leaving the keys, Reo and Mayuzumi had never come back from their last trip to get supplies and Momoi hadn’t been seen since the very beginning of that tiring night. Akashi didn’t know what to think of that, he felt too weak for both trust and suspect, so he just laid down and closed his eyes, hoping for the cradling embrace of the waves to take him away, wherever.

It didn’t even matter anymore.

He jerked when the whole structure creaked, calling cusses and half yells from all over the place, and he sat up immediately, eyes wide when he realized Sakurai had stumbled — almost thrown himself, really, with how weak with blood loss he was — from one side to the other of the structure, ending up in Wakamatsu’s lap like a child or a lover.

The merchant flushed a deep crimson, sputtering incoherences before settling for a single: “What the fuck?!”

Sakurai grabbed onto his shoulders, though, and instead of answering he lifted a hand. Seijuro tried not to stare too much at the disgusting blisters and wounds around his wrist or how the whole limb was trembling up to the very shoulder. “W-What… the-re…”

Wakamatsu was the first to turn and doing so he moved his shoulder aside enough for Akashi to see what Sakurai had been trying to point at.

“Ryouta…” It slipped past his lips before he could stop himself; his face morphed into a mask of relief and despair at the same time, bringing him on the verge of tears against his will; and he didn’t realize moving, but he was already leaning over the board beside Wakamatsu, bent so much at his waist that he was just one breath of wind from falling out. “RYOUTA!”

Kise was leaning on a piece of bench or a shard of the side of the ship, his trunk and one of his arms slumped over it as he obstinately carried something darker under the other, keeping it beside him on his precarious passage. His hair were dump and stuck to his face, but Akashi could still recognize the moment his topaz eyes open, many seconds later, and he difficulty lifted them to look for the source of the voice.

When he found it, his head lifted, slowly but almost in a snap if compared to his eyelids movements, and Akashi would have jumped back in the water, working arm or not, but Wakamatsu had grabbed him before he could.

“Let go of me!” he roared, all the energy and commanding strength from before his capture coming back as his objective came so close to him, and he struggled and he kicked and he would have overturn the whole structure if he had to, he would have punched the merchant if his arm allowed him. “Let me go! Ryouta! Ryouta, we’re here! Ryouta!”

Kise seemed to gurgle something. He spat or vomited water that dripped down his chin, viscous and sticky, and he had a spasm, then another and another, as he willed his legs to move and kick to bring him closer to safety.

“Ryouta!”

There was a splashing sound and for a moment the whole raft dangled, its equilibrium completely broken as the biggest weight left it.

Murasakibara emerged again a few meters ahead of them and his arms were long enough to bring him to Kise in a handful of swings. He grabbed the piece of wood and said something that made Kise tremble a nod and fix his grip on the bundle at his side, rolling it enough to reveal short blue hair and tanned skin.

“Fuck, that’s Aomine!” Wakamatsu gulped and held Sakurai closer as the younger whimpered. The merchant had honestly no idea what had happened, but the day Sakurai had arrived and entered Daiki’s cell, the man had kind of started bullying him out of troubles, in some weird way of showing care. It made sense for the guy, the youngest of them all in his pale seventeen years, to be so attached to the grumpy pirate. Even him, for as much as he would deny it to the end of Earth and return, was at a loss for a moment in seeing the moveless body.

Akashi gulped, even if his throat felt after shouting as if someone had ran sandpaper all over it forcefully, but he waited for Murasakibara to pull the piece of wood and it’s occupants close to the lifeboat enough for the rest of the men to get them. He ignored his injured arm completely to swing the other around Kise to pull him on board, and someone whistled in surprise when he managed, as if he wasn’t every inch the Official he had been appointed as. He noticed Wakamatsu had pulled Daiki on board too only when it was time to open Ryouta’s fingers from their grip on the pirate’s shirt.

Seijuro had never been one for closure, but he realized he had been whispering nonsenses, empty “you’re safe, I’m here, you’re alive, let go, you’re safe, you’re safe, you’re safe now, you’re safe”, only when the guy in his arms chuckled.

Head on his captain’s shoulder and his dump hair soaking his shirt even more, Kise’s pale face morphed into a tired smile as his eyes opened again to take a look at Seijuro’s face. “T-That is my line,” he croaked, “Akashicchi.”

Akashi let the voice and the name fill him with relief and he laughed. He laughed openly if exhaustedly as he pulled Kise closer and buried his face in his friend’s shoulder too. If he cried, the shirt was too wet for Ryouta to tell anyway.

He held him close for minutes that seemed hours, the time it took for the moon to rise, the wind to get colder and the night to assault them. He shifted to shield him from most of the wind, as he saw Murasakibara do for Midorima and Sakurai, and that was how he was the first to notice the lights.

At first he thought them starts. Warmer, yellowish instead of the most ethereal white, but starts. Only when they grew closer he recognized the shape carrying them.

“A ship…” he murmured, his voice almost unrecognizable to his own ears, raw, but he didn’t care. “Who…?”

A bell was ringing on the deck of the approaching ship and long “OI!” finally reached their ears. Akashi tried to answer, but his throat failed him, and it Wakamatsu who returned the call, shaking his arms as if he could be seen in the darkness.

Seijuro wanted to chastise him for thinking so foolishly, but someone yelled “There! There!” and he sealed his lips. Torches pointed in their directions and buzzing of voices grew louder. Even so, he could hear the sound of ropes and the splash of lifeboats being released.

He held Kise closer, still unsure.

“Hey, on the raft!” His head snapped up and his shoulder dropped a bit as he recognize the voice. “Is that you, pompous asshole?!”

He didn’t bother taking offense and instead chucked to himself, nodding to Wakamatsu.

“We’ve got plenty of those, but the red-head here says you’re looking for him!”

Kagami’s booming laughter came to them filled with relief. “Hold on thigh, guys! We’re coming to get you!”

“One last effort!”

“Almost there, almost there!”

“You’re going home, guys, don’t give up now!”

Akashi let the encouragement from the ship, half true probably and half desperate in the attempt to gauge the state of the prisoners, lull him to relax. He held Kise closer and pressed his face in his hair, ignoring how dirty and salted they were, to breath the faint note of his friend’s scent under all the other smells.

Kise, stupid stubborn idiot, stirred and opened his eyes in a crack. He tried to ask something with a seagull’s croaking voice, definitely in no better shape than Akashi after all the water he had gulped dragging himself and Aomine to the first floating thing he had found. Akashi was quite sure he was demanding to know what was happening.

“Rescuers,” he forced out for himself, striving to be comprehensible, “Help.”

Ryouta looked at him for a moment, blinking, before suddenly his eyes lit up with understanding. He squirmed to roll on his stomach and then to get on all four, just to check for himself, and when he effectively saw the lifeboats approaching them he brought his hand to grip on Akashi’s, on his shoulder to hold him up.

He hugged his captain like he hadn’t been in his arms until a moment ago, and who cared about anything he cried on his shoulder, feeding on the warmth of the hands now carding in his hair, even if they pulled painfully at knots at every single movement.

The tortures, the captivity, the nightmares, it was all done for. They were going back home, to their lives, they were free.

They were safe.

Authoress’ Notes:

For now.

I’m really sorry for how long it took me to finish this, really, but as I said now we’re probably one or two chapters from the end of the story! We’re almost there, now, so it’s time to wrap up and I’m actually excited about writing it!

I hope you liked this, really!

See you,

When the echo of the soldier’s voice died down in the empty study, he didn’t turn, but his head showed its side as he spied from a corner of an eye the figure standing stiffly behind him. The dirty clothes and the messy hair told him the man had just reached the port, probably touched solid ground barely minutes before, and his cold gaze answered the question even before Nijimura even posed it. “Did you find anything?”

Haizaki lowered his gaze, but just slightly. He had never fared well with etiquette, but Shuuzou found he had little to no desire and possibly even less strength to put him back in his place, at least for this time. “Nothing, Your Majesty. Some corpses from the Red Dragon’s crew had been found by passing boats or on the shores, but none of them seems to belong to Akashi. Many others are still missing, also. It’s safe to assume the ship has been completely sunk, and not abandoned to float somewhere.”

Nijimura’s eyes closed again as he turned to face the window again.

“It’s the only way to avoid a civil war, Nijimura-san. There will be little to no opposition to your coronation and you can lead this kingdom far better than Shirogane-sama ever did, we both know that.” Akashi had looked older than his age while saying those words; he was nothing more than a stupid fifteen years old brat playing with the big boys back then, but his eyes told a different story and spoke of many sceneries he had taken into account and was ready to face.

With Shuuzou’s coronation, the Akashi’s family had become the dangerous second in line, the other option for everybody who didn’t look fondly at the new king, and as such countermeasures had to be taken. It had been Akashi Masaomi’s order, one that maybe was given begrudgingly or maybe out of spite against the son that had withdrew from the fight for the throne, but in no more than five weeks since Nijimura’s enthronement Seijuro had been moved from the land Army to the Navy and shipped far, far, away from the capital of Teiko, the city of Rakuzan.

Shuuzou had never stopped feeling guilty for his junior’s exile — because that’s what it was, in all but name — and that was why he called Seijuro back to the palace as soon as his training was complete, showering him with all the titles he could while trying to give back the honors he had unwillingly taken away.

“We didn’t have many hopes to begin with.” His voice stood firm and steady, like a leader’s — an Emperor’s — should be, but when he opened his eyes and saw Haizaki’s reflection in the glass he realized his face was betraying him. Shougo looked at him as if waiting for an outburst of any kind, while his reflection appeared like a broken shard of its own, an empty washed out shell of how he used to be before the last events.

Once morning came, he would be back to his stern and firm persona, ready to lead the country, but for now, with the crown resting beside him, he let himself tremble under his loss.

Haizaki didn’t have to tell him that Seijuro was gone, with all probabilities. Nijimura wasn’t an idiot, he could draw that conclusion by himself, so he just made a gesture with a hand, dismissing his general, and waited to be left alone.

When the door closed behind him, his arm moved almost on its own and the crown clanged loudly as it bounced on the floor once, twice, thrice.

He let it roll on the ground, uncaring, as he laid his forehead agains the cold window.

I’m sorry, brat., he thought, bitterness flooding his mind, I’m sorry I made a shitty job in keeping you safe. I’m sorry I wasn’t there.

The memory of blazing red hair and a faint, slightly embarrassed, smile accompanied him through one more sleepless night.

***

Haizaki heard the sound of metal hitting the floor and shook his head, but didn’t dare to get back into the Emperor’s private quarters and simply walked back to the main corridor, where a couple of his men waited for him.

He squared his shoulders and lifted his chin when Otsubo Taisuke and Ishida Hideki appeared in his field of vision. His hand found the handle of his sword instinctively.

Hideki was too weak to oppose him, Haizaki knew, but Otsubo was a veteran and one of the most skilled soldiers in the Navy, on his way to make a career and probably very close to get the captaincy of a ship of his own. Not to mention, he and that stupid Miyaji man had a soft spot for Takao.

He clicked his tongue in annoyance, but stopped in front of them.

“The Emperor wants to be left alone, nobody is to approach his quarters until he himself leaves them,” he declared, looking at Taisuke. “Go refer the Palace Guards his orders and then join the rest of the crew. We’ll disembark our cargo tomorrow, now you all go to sleep. It’s too fucking late for anything else.”

Otsubo seemed surprised by the order, but he was respectful of the hierarchy, a trait Nijimura appreciated greatly in him, and simply bowed before leaving down the corridor to obey. Haizaki watched him go, waiting for the echo of his steps to stop before turning to Hideki.

“Go take Takao.” His voice was cold and sharp, cutting, and the man jerked in surprise, his eyes wide open at the mention of his comrade, “Get Mochizuki to help you bring him to the palace dungeons.”

Ishida looked horrified, but when he saw Shougo’s expression all he could do was biting his tongue and lowering his eyes as he bowed and left to carry out his order.

***

Kise clenched his teeth, but for once he didn’t voice any complaint, not even when Seto chained him to the oar once more.

Obedient, he stared down at the wood in his hands as to not see the man’s sneering face and instead he focused on the figures in the grains he had grown far too familiar with as of lately. He could probably name them and feed them and invent stories about the secret affairs between them, but he chose against that, wondering briefly if perhaps he had already started losing his mind. Instead, he chose to focus on Aomine’s low grunts beside him and on Midorima’s stern figure sitting with his head held high at the other side of the little corridor between the two sides of oars.

He realized he didn’t know many things, at the moment. He didn’t know if Aomine would make it out of another oaring session like the last time, he didn’t know if Hanamiya would have appeared below deck once more to demand his revenge against Akashi, he didn’t know the littlest thing about Murasakibara if not that Midorima was elbowing him for something he had just said and he didn’t know why every time their eyes met Shintarou looked at him as if seeing a ghost hovering just above Ryouta’s shoulder. He didn’t know if he would live long enough to find an answer even to just one of those questions, but he knew one thing.

When Seto snapped the whip against the floor, right beside his leg, and Furuhashi did the same close by; when the splinters of wood punctured his skin and his back burned with the strain of his muscles pulling and moving under the still fresh wounds; when he heard the sound of waves hitting the side of the boat with raging fury; he knew.

He knew he would not go down without a fight.

***

Momoi was biting her lower lip in worry and Akashi was torn between being grateful and amazed for the sudden affection she had developed for him or feeling deeply offended by her lack of trust in his strength. Kuroko himself was frowning, his long tail bent under him as he ‘knelt’ beside the well the mermaid was floating into at her waist height.

Kagami grunted, grabbing his arm at the elbow with a swift movement as soon as Akashi was done slipping on the red waistcoat he had been given — a little big on him, but nobody cared at the moment —.

“I am pretty sure this is a bad idea,” he dared to say, picking up for the umpteenth time a discussion Seijuro had no intention of going back to. He had taken his decision and he wouldn’t change it, no matter how little support he would find.

“Nobody asked you, Taiga,” he retorted in fact, trying to snatch his arm free but failing as his feet slipped slightly on the slimy ground around the well.

Kagami rolled his eyes, but helped him sitting down on the well edge nonetheless. The water soaked Akashi’s boots immediately and weighted down his trousers, but the soldier ignored the sudden coldness to grip at the borders.

“If you want to die, I don’t care, you know? But if that’s not in your plans, then this is a stupid idea.”

Akashi wondered briefly if Kagami’s part in the plan was so important that his accidental drowning could compromise the whole operation, but before he could finish to evaluate pros and cons a hand touched his neck. A very slimy and very webbed hand.

He shot Tetsuya an exasperated glare that was completely ignored.

“Kagami-kun has a point, Akashi-kun.” Traitor. “You’re still weak and your shoulder is broken. You should stay here with him and join us later with the ship.”

Seijuro shook his head, firm, but inside he was surprised. How could nobody understand? Kuroko and Kagami, who both had lost a friend for a very long time, should have been the first to sustain him, yet they seemed determined to treat him like another helpless relict of his ship’s sinking.

“I am not staying behind when my friend and subordinate is in danger,” he stated then, voice firm as his eyes on Tetsuya’s azure ones. “Kise needs me.”

“Yeah, because you’re in any condition to do anything to help him beside getting killed, uh?” Akashi’s head snapped back, blinding fury in his eyes, but he was interrupted before he could say anything by Taiga’s shaking head. “No, okay, that was uncalled for. But still, you’re pretty much just a little sack of bruised bones and in the water you don’t even have the same advantage of these two-”

“I can breath just like them.”

“But you cannot fight.”

Kuroko closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, trying to regain the composure he had so clearly lost with his last sentence, and when he opened them again he had all the gazes on him, some appreciative and some definitely less. He didn’t let it stop him, though.

“Akashi-kun, please,” he decided to try, moving his tail from under him to slip inside the well himself. “I know how you feel, but getting yourself in danger with no reason will not help Kise-kun.” Obviously, Seijuro opened his mouth to retort and he switched his tactic just in time to prevent his objection. “I thought the plan was for you to help me get Kagami-kun’s help and for me to free everyone. Do you not trust me to keep my side of the deal?”

He was playing the trust card in a very unfair way and the betrayal shone clear in Seijuro’s eyes, so clear for a moment Kuroko thought he had managed to score a win against the other.

He knew he was wrong the moment Seijuro’s eyes ran from his face to another and betrayal was succeeded by comprehension and sympathy. He knew it even before he turned his head too and was confronted by a pair of honest pink irises.

“I think he should come with us, Tetsu-kun,” Momoi stated slowly, with righteous calmness, shifting her weight in the little space they had just enough to move beside Akashi and lay her hand on his leg in a physical display of her siding. “He has the right to.”

“It’s like suicide!” Kagami immediately tried to object, but a glare from the mermaid shut him up. Immediately after, Satsuki looked at Tetsuya agin and once more she looked steady and unmovable in her conviction.

“I am aware, just like he is, of the dangers of such a choice,-” It was barely a murmur now, like she was whispering an heavy secret, or maybe it was just the burden on her shoulders, that bundle of feelings that chained her to Daiki no matter how many miles between them, and she looked so strong yet so tired, “-but refusing his involvement is just the same as denying all he has been through on that ship.” Momoi read something on his face, Tetsuya never knowing how she could take his mask apart that easily every time, and her lips stretched into a severe line. “If you won’t allow him to come, I will carry his stupid wrecked body all the way from here to the battlefield. You know me and you know I will.”

Gods he did; thus he sighed.

Kagami groaned, realizing he had been outnumbered, but finally let go of Akashi’s arm to instead help him slip into the well to his neck and help him stay afloat as Momoi moved beside him with a simple flick of her tail and wrapped her arms around his waist. Tetsuya touched his shoulder carefully to make sure the bandage would resist the travel, but was careful and made no attempt to pursue the matter any further.

Still, he exchanged a worried glance with Kagami that had Seijuro rolling his eyes.

“I am not a newborn child,” he pointed out quite spitefully, earning a giggle from Momoi, the umpteenth animalistic sound of complain from Taiga and an impassive stare from Kuroko.

“And yet, you quite like to behave like a five-year-old, don’t you, Akashi-kun?”

Seijuro deemed himself superior to the fight Kuroko was trying to pick and didn’t answer. Instead, he shot one last look at Kagami behind Momoi.

Taiga was a strong man, that much was clear; he had never seen him fighting, but both Tetsuya and Satsuki respected his skills highly so that must have accounted for something. Sitting on his heels at the edge of the well, scratching the back of his neck with a tired sigh, dressed up in simple black boots and trousers and a white shirt, he didn’t look half as fierce as Akashi was sure he could be, not even with the red bandana wrapped around his head. But still, his hand had yet to move from the handle of the sword at his waist.

Once more, Seijuro didn’t have any choice but to entrust his and Kise’s lives to a stranger. He couldn’t say he liked the feeling, for as grateful as he was for the help he was receiving.

Because of that, he didn’t say anything, but simply nodded his head at the man, a silent sign to be explained at a later date, after a battle they both had waited far too long for, already.

Momoi barely blew a low “You can thank me when everything is done” in his ear before her weight pushed him underwater, locked against her belly and chest. When he turned, salt water stinging in his eyes, he could only outline Kuroko’s white tail in the darkness of the well. The speed of their swimming knocked that little air out of his lungs, but this time he didn’t startle when he kept on breathing normally.

Behind Satsuki’s shoulder, the round window of the well opening and Taiga’s blurry figure grew so little they soon became nothing more than a lonely star in a pitchy black sky.

***

“Eh? But that’s stupid,” he said, frowning and not liking the situation in the slightest.

“Murasakibara!”

“If you don’t mind, Captain Okamura, I think I can deal with your subordinate on my own.”

“But…!”

“Please.” There was no gentleness in that voice, only the firmness of an heavy name and even heavier experiences, laced with power, and Atsushi didn’t like it, but kept quiet all the same. “I wouldn’t want you to be bothered with a task you won’t be involved into anyway. I am sure you would very much rather waiting for us to talk about the details outside.”

“…I’ll be right behind the door if you’ll need me.”

Atsushi didn’t like it.

“So.” He lifted his eyes, shifting on his chair as he debated if taking another bite into the apple pie in front of him or waiting for the other man to finish talking from behind his crossed hands. “You think I am stupid?”

Definitely not liking it.

“… didn’t say that.”

“So what is stupid, exactly, about all I said to you, Murasakibara?”

Atsushi opted to look around for a moment. The table before him was covered in all kinds of simple snacks, either salty or sweets, and the smell was irresistible for his growling stomach, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t sense the danger surrounding his interlocutor completely. He was the biggest man in his crew, the strongest also, and he had yet to meet anyone, in any situation, taller than him, yet the man sat comfortably in front of him, alone, in a the big room. He had a full plate in front of himself and he had picked at a bit of everything Atsushi had taken, as if to prove him nothing was poisoned, but didn’t seem interested in eating at all.

Murasakibara didn’t like people who didn’t like food. They must have been evil.

The man’s steel glare was piercing and uncomfortable.

“Everything,” he still said, frowning and kind of pouting as he finally decided to go back to his pie. “Merfolks do not exist.”

***

If the tunnel had been dark, the open sea wasn’t much better. Momoi and Tetsuya kept on swimming deeper and deeper, almost aiming vertically for the bottom of the ocean, and Akashi was too busy repeating himself that his head wasn’t going to burst open because of pressure, now that Tetsuya had kissed him, to bother with asking them. He had also almost resigned himself to the truth that they weren’t going to tell him anything. Tetsuya had been extremely secretive about the medallion now dangling from his neck and Satsuki had seemed quite reserved about the matter too.

He had no idea how long it took them, but when he saw sand a mere ten feet from him he knew it hadn’t been nearly enough to reach the depth of ocean. Merfolks’ tails sure were prodigious and left him in awe once more, but only for a little bit before his eyes lifted and met something tall and dark in front of them.

It looked like a tower of raw black rock, unpolished and sharp, covered in seaweeds and shells, and it stood as tall as a galleon’s mainmast. It was firm yet there was a big crack in the middle, from bottom to top, that seemed like the scar of an old wound, an open gash that had no more blood to lose.

Kuroko swam rapidly in its direction, but Satsuki hesitated a bit and her arms tightened slightly around Seijuro’s waist. When he turned to steal the truth from her face, though, she shook her head and with a powerful flick of her tail she sent them both almost directly beside Tetsuya once more.

If the man had noticed the slip, he didn’t point it out, his eyes too focused on the structure before him. Akashi realized only in that moment that the expression he was wearing was not only of determination, but also of…excitement?, expectation? He wasn’t sure, it was nothing more than a wrinkle at the merman’s eyes corners.

Still, it bothered him someway.

Once more, being unaware of the details made him nervous. He knew they were headed to the temple where Tetsuya would ask for the help of an old friend — from another species, which was enough to make Seijuro’s skin crawl, because he wasn’t sure of how much he could handle to find out after the heavy blow of the merfolks already — to take down Hanamiya’s ship without casualties.

Or at least without losing Aomine, Kise, Midorima and Murasakibara. The conditions to their deal.

Just what kind of person will I be once this whole nightmare will be finished and I’ll get to look at myself in a mirror?, Akashi had wondered those words so many times already he could have probably carved them on his gravestone one day.

Unaware of his thoughts, Kuroko signaled Momoi to stop and instead swam closer to the crack in the rock. He laid his hand on a side of the gash almost gently before pecking inside.

Akashi froze when he heard him humming.

It took him a moment to realize that Tetsuya wasn’t properly singing and he was still perfectly in control of his own self, but his heart had already sped up instinctively, in fear and surprise and… Seijuro forced himself to shake those scattered bits of anticipation and curiosity out of his mind. He didn’t want to end up like Hanamiya, eternal slave to a spell that was far more unbreakable than any chain on Earth and beyond its borders.

The humming died down fast as Tetsuya retreated his head and swam backward just a little, but Akashi’s heart didn’t slow down and instead his eyes widened even more, his mouth gaping.

Kuroko was smiling.

Openly, uncaringly, honestly in a way Seijuro hadn’t believed he could be. Tetsuya stared at the crack in clear expectance, eyes shining playfully, joyous.

What did you see?!, Akashi wanted to ask. What is in there that made you like this?!

But he didn’t ask, because he heard.

“KUROKO!”

Following the loud and dragged scream, from the crack a wild chestnut mop-head appeared first, followed shortly by a pair of bright eyes the same shade of durmast wood finely nestled into a cheerful face, with soft cheekbones and skin tanned in a golden shade by a playful sun. Strong arms propped up a naked torso with defined muscles and a round tattoo of the same incision of Tetsuya’s medallion on his left side, right above the lowest ribs, under the pectoral. The guy seemed around Kuroko’s age and Kuroko was also the only thing he had eyes for.

Tetsuya didn’t wait in swimming forcefully into the other man’s embrace and Akashi jerked.

Momoi lowered her gaze, regarding him with a surprised expression, but Seijuro pretended not to see. He had no idea why he had reacted the way he had and he honestly had no time to waste to investigate the matter. He was only there to save Kise, nothing more.

Kise., he repeated to himself once more. Kise. Kise. Ryouta.

Kuroko detached himself from the stranger, but this one kept his hands firmly on his shoulders, forbidding the merman from swimming out of reach, and for some reason Akashi felt like it was difficult to breath. Maybe the kiss had an expiration time?, maybe the spell was losing its effectiveness?

His breath stopped completely, sucked in with a sudden inhale, when the guy pushed himself completely out of his hiding and his lower half was revealed.

Momoi simply blushed a bit, but Kuroko smiled, unperturbed.

“I missed you,” he said, his eyes never leaving the other’s face. “Ogiwara-kun.”

Akashi wondered if he was the only one who couldn’t tear his gaze from the black tentacles spreading from Ogiwara’s waist.

***

Midorima coughed and immediately spat when he felt a salty metallic taste in his mouth. He spied on Seto and felt guiltily glad that the man was too busy in snapping his whip above Aomine's head, laughing at his involuntary jerking, to notice him.

Without hesitation he ran his foot on the goblet of spit and blood and smeared it on the floor ‘till when it mixed with the other stains from sweat and lashes.

I will make it out of this. I will make it out of this and go back. I’m not dying here.

***

“Tetsu-chan?”

“Kuroko?”

Akashi’s eyes snapped away from Ogiwara’s tentacles — tentacles!, like an octopus’! — only when two other voices joined the group.

He was met with the sight of two otherworldly beautiful beings and he refused to feel uncomfortable and out of place when he realized that even them had no legs to show.

Emerging from the crack, at first was a man with long black hair, so long they reached the tip of his emerald fish-tail, all straight like silk when just produced by its worms, falling free behind his shoulders. He had green eyes, deep and gentle, in a chiseled face that could have been feminine if he wasn’t also completely bare-chested and perfectly muscled. He had shells tied in bracelets around his right arm, three inches under the shoulder, and his voice sounded more musical than the other one's. He had also used the familiar nickname with the easiness that came either from a long time intimacy or a terrifyingly open attitude.

The second figure was another man, but with a far colder demeanor. His grey hair floated around less than his comrade’s because sternly collected in a braid that shortened them to his waist-length, and his tail was just like all the other three, like a tropical fish’s, the end looking like a veil fluttering in the current, but shone slightly in a silver shade that reflected every little bit of light. He too had shells tied around his right arm, in the same position of the other merman, but also some others around his left wrist and what looked like shark teeth embedded in his hair.

Kuroko let go of Ogiwara to welcome the hug that came from the black-haired merman and outstretched his tail behind him to entangle it a bit with the gray-haired one, who was clearly trying to look indifferent but had unavoidably gravitated closer to the other three.

“Mayuzumi-san and Reo-san are the heads of our shoal.” Akashi didn’t jerk when Momoi whispered in his ear, but appreciated their slightly distanced position and the discreet help in understanding what the fuck was happening. “Mayuzumi-san, the one with the silver tail, is the one who transformed us all. Tetsu-kun first, Reo-san shortly after and finally me when we thought Tetsu-kun had died. Technically, he is our chief, but he doesn’t really care about hierarchy. And anyway, Reo-san has him dancing in the palm of his hand.”

“I heard you, Momoi!”

Satsuki only giggled at the scolding, but still she swam closer to the group, Akashi staring at them from securely tucked with his back against her chest. The three strangers stared at him for a second before Momoi brought them both in a vertical position that allowed them to realize he wasn’t like them.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Kuroko!”

“Chihiro!” Mibuchi’s scolding came with a swat at the other’s shoulder and a reproachful expression. “Language.”

Akashi could see what Momoi had meant and by the way the both of them moved around each other, he wasn’t surprised when Mayuzumi scoffed but entwined his fingers with Reo’s all the same, just before moving his eyes once more on Seijuro.

“So?” he groaned, looking all pissed and annoyed. “Another one?”

“No.” Akashi felt Momoi jerk behind him at the sudden answer, but looked only at Tetsuya, surprised by the firmness in his voice and his clenched fists. “He is not to join our shoal. I was forced by the situation into giving him the first kiss, but there won’t be more.”

Akashi tried hard not to dwell on the feeling twisting his guts, but he managed to only because Mayuzumi groaned loudly at that.

“Then what?!” he seemed to beg. If begging could be also annoying and fed-up, anyway. “He’s your new pet or something?”

“Chihiro.”

Kuroko rolled his eyes and Momoi huffed, but Mayuzumi and Reo just glared at each other, apparently unaware of their surroundings. Ogiwara looked kind of restless beside them and looked at Akashi who just kept on frowning.

He knew he was being kind of unfair, to be honest, but he still couldn’t look at the creature’s tentacles without feeling a bit of repulse. Part of him wondered why he didn’t felt the same way for fish tails, but he decided not to dwell on it. His list of ‘things to deal with later’ was growing anyway.

Whatever kind of fight had been going on within the couple in power, it was over with Mayuzumi scoff and Reo’s shaking head. While the silver-haired merman let go of their joined hands, the brunet didn’t look bothered with it enough not to swim closer to Akashi, stopping gently just in front of his face.

Seijuro could see his gills pulsing gently on his neck, and the webbed protuberances in his ears’ places lifting lazily. He stared, those green eyes deep and welcoming, for a while before smiling, albeit a bit sadly.

“You look like you’ve been through quite some troubles,” he commented, perfectly at ease, and Akashi couldn’t help but lift a brow.

“Do I, now?” He feigned indifference. “I didn’t notice.”

Momoi actually snorted behind him, but he held Reo’s gaze firmly. The merman seemed surprised by his answer for a moment, but then opened up in a warm smile and turned to look at Tetsuya.

“I like him already,” he stated, as if Akashi wasn’t even there and earning himself a roll of eyes. “We can keep him, if you want.”

“Don’t go around making decisions on your own, Reo!”

We’re not getting anywhere. Seijuro was ready to interrupt, but he was preceded.

Tetsuya laid a hand on Ogiwara’s wrist and the gesture was enough to shut both Reo and Mayuzumi up, making their faces pale slightly. Shigehiro, on his part, looked nauseous for a lack of better term and Akashi felt confusion filling him when Reo swam back beside Chihiro to touch his shoulder slightly.

“Tetsuya…” Mayuzumi was starting to say, his voice firm and filled with refusal already, but this time it was Ogiwara who stopped him with a desperate look.

“Wait, I want to know what’s happening.”

Chihiro clicked his tongue, but his arm found Reo’s waist and there it stood in silent protectiveness. Momoi’s grip on Akashi also strengthened a bit, just as Kuroko turned to face Ogiwara alone and took a deep breath.

“I need you,” he started with and Seijuro pretended not to feel the pang of hurt those words sent through his chest.

Starting now, he himself was utterly useless.

***

Kagami didn’t slam his head into a beam because he was worried for that reckless idiot Kuroko, that scary woman Momoi and that snobbish bastard Akashi. He definitely didn’t, so his comrades’ laughters were out of place.

“Tone it down, Bakagami,” came his captain’s order, half bored and half exasperated. “We will be late if we have to waste time stitching your head back together.”

Kagami nodded and picked up again the barrel he was moving on board and that had fallen from his hands after the heavy impact of his forehead against wood, but he kept his mouth shut. The voices of the other members of the crew all around him made for a busy cozy nest and the hands patting his shoulders every now and then where comfy reminders that his life wasn’t how he used to be.

He lifted his eyes when the barrel was taken from his arms and he met firm grey irises softened by gentle wrinkles at the corner of the eyes.

Scratch that, he met one iris and there were wrinkles at the corner of one eye. How could Tatsuya fight with his hair on half his face was a mystery he apparently hadn’t been entitled to unveil.

He frowned and his brother sighed, but turned and laid the barrel in its place and in the dim light of the storage below deck when he turned back to Kagami it was a bit difficult to decipher his expression. He laid his hands on Taiga’s shoulders and grabbed them tightly.

“It will be okay, Taiga,” he promised, nodding to himself. “We’ll be on their trail before they can even think about doing something stupid.”

Taiga grunted something vaguely assentive, but Tatsuya understood all the same and let him go back to his duty.

Kagami knew he was lucky to have his brother with him. They had always been together, Taiga and Tatsuya, since they were new borns and then kids pickpocketing people down at the port; and even later on, when Himuro had become a beauty and the mind of their duo, planning frauds and smooth talking people into whatever he wanted to while Kagami was the muscles that showed up if anything went wrong. He had always known his brother could have left him behind whenever he wanted, but Tatsuya had never done it, not even when Taiga had passed the limit and joined the pirate crew of Seirin. Back then, Himuro had been furious and tried to talk him out of it for weeks before one day popping up at the docks and jumping on board, muttering about little brothers and stupidity.

So, yes, Kagami was glad to have Himuro with him, so glad that he let him believe his words had been reassuring enough.

After all, how exactly was he supposed to point out that Kuroko had already thought about something extremely stupid?

***

Kissing was bad. It was a simple rule and Ogiwara couldn’t believe Kuroko had disregarded it, again.

When it was about Momoi, drowning and helpless, or Reo, thrown down a cliff with a witchcraft charge that weighted even more than the stone tied around his neck, Shigehiro could understand. All the marine deities could testify, Kuroko had never been able to abandon anyone who was in danger. His heart was so big it could have held the water from all the seven seas.

But this new guy, Akashi… It stirred something in Ogiwara’s guts. Sure, he was clearly hurt — Shigehiro had eyes, he could see the bandages and the bruises — but helpless? No, those shining red eyes weren’t the ones of someone who didn’t have anything left, someone on the verge of giving up. Those blazing irises talked about plans and strength, the patient wait of a predator hiding within the coral, ready to go for the kill. And the brown-haired creature wasn’t sure about who exactly was the prey.

Kuroko had explained the whole story to him in hurried whispers, standing far too close to him for it to be a simple coincidence, and he had never moved his eyes, not even on Reo or Chihiro. It was bad news, Ogiwara already knew that. And when Tetsuya finished talking about the friends he needed to help, the ones he wanted to help escaping, he also knew where it was going.

No, please, no, he found himself thinking desperately, but Kuroko’s hands caressed his side and he knew that, yes, that was exactly what he was being asked.

“Kuroko-,” he tried, but his voice trailed off when he saw his friend’s eyes.

He made the mistake to look for Akashi’s face, as if it could help him decide, and met instead Momoi’s face. The soft lines, the gentle bent of her chin, the long neck, the plump lips slightly opened in worry and those eyes, big and warm and desperate. He was immediately done for, the very second those pink quartzes embraced him and he sighed.

Ogiwara wasn’t a merman. He descended for an equally olden ancestry, the Sea Wizards, a group of creatures sharing half a squid’s body who lived in the depth of the sea, controlling currents and maintaining the balance of the oceans. Centuries ago, when humans had started to colonize the waters too, his race had moved toward the surface, trying to impede the new comers from extending their power. They failed, some being captured and some being killed, no matter the shape they took. They were a strong race, but time took its toll on them and they were so scattered around the seas that they rarely managed to procreat and protect their own species, especially when so many others were at risk. Time passed and now Shigeiro was, if not the last, one of the few survivors of his own kind; and he had no idea of eventual others’ whereabouts.

Kuroko had been the one to break his solitude, unsurprisingly. When it was just him and Mayuzumi, decades and decades ago, Tetsuya had loved to wander around, exploring the new world that his past life as the young prince of a snowy extinct clan had forbidden him.

They would spend days talking and Ogiwara would listen endlessly to his friend’s stories about his tribe’s struggle to protect itself from the cold and how their land gods would ask for sacrifices every now and then to help them pass the winter, about how falling in the water was simply a death sentence and how he had felt no fear but just desperation when he had been chosen to jump in the fjords to appease those deities, the sounds of the chants he was repeating in his mind as a prayer for his people’s safety and of his parent’s cries behind him as he walked to the end of the wooden bridge above the icy waters, the cold and finally Mayuzumi’s embrace around his waist.

“My tribe has been long gone now,” he had told him one day, his eyes raising to the sky above the surface, so many miles higher, “Sometimes I wonder if it’s because I didn’t die on that day.”

Ogiwara had learnt with time that Tetsuya’s regret could not be erased, just like his need to save everyone he came across to. Sometimes he thought to ask if it was because of his people, if he was trying to make amend in some convoluted way, but in the end he had never dared to open his mouth.

Now, he looked at his friend once more and he sighed.

“I didn’t give you that much power to take it back,” he simply stated, forcing an hesitant smile to show up on his lips. “If you think this is the right thing to do, you know I’ll help you.” He sneaked a look at Momoi, whose face was filled with relief and gratefulness now, and he gulped. “Just promise me you’ll stop me as soon as I lose control. The risk of your friends getting killed in the chaos is far too high to be worth considering.”

“What does this mean?!” but Akashi’s voice was ignored as Kuroko nodded solemnly.

“I swear on my life, Ogiwara-kun,” he declared, his face set into a firm frown, the very picture of stubbornness, and Shigehiro couldn’t help but chuckle a bit.

His hand went to the merman’s hair on its own, ruffling them fondly even as the other pulled away with an accusing grimace, his hands up to protect his now wild head.

Ogiwara turned to face Kuroko completely and he looked down at his tattoo for a second before addressing his friend with a nervous smile and a simple: “We should hurry up, right? Your friends have been waiting long enough.”

For a moment, Tetsuya hesitated. He was fully aware of how much Shigehiro hated what he was asking now, but in the end he smiled sadly, feeling a pang of hurt clenching his heart. He had always been a coward and an hypocrite, hadn’t he?

So he slipped the medallion from around his neck and pressed its mark on his friend’s side, right upon the ink, and he kept on pushing on it even when Ogiwara’s shrilling scream pierced through his eardrums.

“Thank you,” he whispered, even if he knew the other was already too far gone to hear him.

He lifted his eyes and saw him growing.

***

“I, too, am the last of my dynasty,” he had revealed one day.

Kuroko had moved his eyes down, back to their little den inside the rock. In the coziness of the light reflecting into the gems protruding from the walls, thousands of rainbow shades fell on his skin, white and almost colorless from the cold country he came from and from the time spent so far from the surface, and his teal hair fell lazily around him, tied yet a bit rebellious, hugging his waist and shoulders. His irises had the same shade of the sky he was so desperate to look up to.

Tetsuya stared, silent, for so long Ogiwara wasn’t sure he had been right in speaking up. It took the merman some moments to turn and swim silently closer to the Wizard, resting his crossed arms on top of the rock the other was sitting on.

“Are you lonely?” he asked and Shigehiro chuckled a bit. Kuroko was just simple as that, straightforward and honest, blunt to the point of tactlessness.

“Not really.” The Wizard shifted his weight to rest on his elbow, face in his hands, and stare down at Tetsuya while making weird expression and puckering his cheeks. “I’ve got you now, after all,” he frowned. “And Mayuzumi, I guess. In a way.” Kuroko deadpanned at him. “I a very weird way.”

The merman rolled his eyes, one the highest forms of expression one could get from him, and Ogiwara smiled, a bit crookedly because of his hands.

“You don’t feel…different?” Kuroko asked and Shigehiro frowned because something, maybe the twitch of the tail or the drop in his voice, seemed to tell him the other wasn’t talking about him, or at lest not at all. “You’re not part of the shoal, after all. Not technically.” His eyes shone. “One day, we could just leave, migrate, and you’d be alone again.”

Ogiwara had known Kuroko for a while, by now. Months that tasted like centuries, nights of nightmares and days of curious explorations, had built up a special kind of trust between them, one that was made of steel and coral and nacre. But while their bond was strong, Tetsuya was also frail, especially in his self-confidence. He was terrified of being left alone and Shigehiro just wanted to change that.

He didn’t think much about that, but at the same time he didn’t really need to. Kuroko was a good person, and that was honestly enough for Ogiwara to pick him, especially within his huge list of friends he could entitle with the great honor of the medallion. Really, it was either him or Chihiro and there was no trace of an eventual future addition anytime soon.

He let a hand travel up to his chest and when his fingers met the cold hardness of gold he didn’t hesitate grabbing it and taking it off. When he held it up, Kuroko looked a it blinking slowly. Ogiwara smiled when those azure irises fell on the tattoo on his side.

“Did you know this place was a temple?” he asked casually, perfectly aware that Tetsuya was eyeing him attentively. “My people used it as a shelter for all the sea creatures that needed their help. And this-,” He pushed the medallion closer and Kuroko picked it with care, eyeing it with clear curiosity but his usual blank face, “-is the key to a great power that was used to restore the balance, either delivering punishments or dealing with problems.”

The frown digging the forehead of the young merman was adorable and Ogiwara smiled again, completely at ease despite the heavy moment.

He used to picture the moment he would use his power definitely differently, but even that way was okay. It felt right, to share that chance with Tetsuya.

“I want you to keep it.”

As predictable, Kuroko’s eyes went wide. “No, Ogiwara-kun, I can’t-…!”

“You think your gods are angry at you, right?” Shigehiro interrupted him and he saw the way Tetsuya flinched, the obvious break in his resolve cracked open, but he went on anyway with an encouraging smile playing on his lips. “These powers are on par of any gods. If you keep this, I’m sure yours won’t be able to hurt you or those you care for anymore.”

Ogiwara chose the wrong words, he saw it playing in Tetsuya’s irises, and his smile faltered as those words — It’s too late now, I should have protected them sooner, I’ve got nobody left that my gods may pour their wrath on — played in his mind as if said out loud, but Kuroko was special, he had always been, and his grip on the medallion tightened. He cradled it to his chest like it was his most prized possession and he let go of his grip on the rock to swim upward a bit, moving to sit on it. He looked down on Ogiwara with eyes a bit too lucid and he attempted a smile that would have made half the marine monsters ran away for how forced and… honestly creeping it was.

“A god’s powers?” he asked, a fake mockery in his voice. “That’s quite a birthday present, Ogiwara-kun.”

They both chuckled, Shigehiro moving to sit mirroring his friend, and when they stopped he helped the merman to slip the medallion on.

“Yeah, I know. It will be difficult to top it, next year.”

This time Kuroko jabbed him in the ribs — he clearly had a low threshold for humor — and doing so his fingers caressed the tattoo. When Ogiwara was done whimpering pathetically, the merman’s hand was still on the ink mark.

Tetsuya stood, touching and thinking, his other hand caressing the medallion instead, and when he finally let go he did so taking a deep breath.

“So,-” but he seemed to be trying to change the topic, or at least to shift it a bit, just enough to take himself out of it, “-what can you do with these powers?”

Ogiwara arched a brow, clearly stating that the talk was all but ended, but he shook his head and sighed. Being friends with Tetsuya also meant knowing when to give up and allowing him some space.

“Shapeshifting.” Kuroko raised a brow, but Shigehiro allowed himself just a smug smile. “This kind of magic allow us to shift into the shape of the strongest creature of all oceans, just as strong as — if not stronger than — any god you can find of earth.”

Kuroko’s eyes shone with mild interest, but when Ogiwara didn’t seem ready to add anything he apparently considered not pursuing the topic. But in the end, his curious nature took the best of him. Not without a sigh.

“Pray tell me, Ogiwara-kun,-” he asked, his voice laced with exasperation and superiority. His face stood blank, though, “-which kind of creature can you turn into?”

Shigehiro’s brown eyes shone, his blood suddenly pumping and his heart beating fast with the usual excitement that came from envisioning such a great raw power.

“The Kraken.”

Authoress’ notes:

And we’re done. Here it is, the ace up my sleeve, my precious son I’ve been waiting so long to add here! Isn’t Ogiwara adorable?! Isn’t he?! My little baby Kraken. 

Okay, uhm, there were a lot of details in this chapter, but starting from the next one we’ll get into the real battle so things will be very hectic! Make sure to keep an eye out for your favorite character (AKA: scream at me about them), or you may lose track of them ^-^

And that’s all, I guess. I hope I’ll be able to provide the next chapter relatively soon ^^”

See you,