Giethi’s lips trembled. “It- It didn’t die?” She picked up one of the scales, nearly the size of her chest. The slimy, clear mucus covering the scales rubbed against her hands, slowly sliding out of her grip. “It… smells like rose perfume.” She held it out for Wylinoris to smell. “God, that’s strong!”

“It’s the mucus, god.” Her hand had a strong smell of the extract that wouldn’t wipe off with vigorous work. “At least it smells nice.”

“Once you get off the boat a group of bees will swarm us.”

Deri groaned, coughing up the final bit of water and reaching for the staff. “What the hell happened..?”

“Well,” Giethi said, awkwardly. “No need to worry about it right now.” Wylinoris helped him up. “Is the Kraken gone?”

They chuckled awkwardly. “Well, we know it isn’t a sea beast.” Giethi paced around. “Citirth cut its tail in half, right?”

“And you threw your staff in its eye.”

She rubbed her temples. “There’s no way it could have survived, it should have bled out.”

Deri stared in confusion at them. Giethi stomped on the floor. “It fucking passed out in that cave!

“What the hell are you both on about?!”

“Shut the fuck up, Deri!” They both cried aloud.

Deri promptly shut up.

“Give me the gun.”

Wylinoris held out the gun, shakily. Giethi emptied the rest of the bottle of gunpowder into the musket and half of the pellets in the barrel. “I’m going to kill that son of a bitch.”

“The average skull density of a- a- is two point seven inches in a p31m hexagon formation, with two out of seven of said hexagons being empty pockets for mass- mass.”

The machine rumbled out into the room, with half an inch of salt solidified onto its legs. “Oh great, now you too!” Giethi aimed the rifle at the robot and pulled the trigger. A large puff of smoke followed by sparks shook up the machine’s torso, ruining the neat, clean cavity of stainless steel illuminated by dim, yellowed light bulbs. “I am here to service you in most forms I am able to. Testing firearms that make Thomas Jefferson urinate himself is not part of my plans.” Giethi stood in silence with the smoking weapon. “Your weapon is insufficient for reaching a ‘kill’ point on a class two Sayotatu.”

“The hell’s a Sayotatu?!”

“Class one Sayotatus are small, scrimpy amphibians with tiny, useless wings.”

The robot turned to Deri and squatted a bit more, dragging its fingers against the water. “Class two are violent, massive, and carnivorous beasts in magnitude.” P-Sed tipped over into the water and began mumbling. “You know this thing?” Deri asked blindly.

“Know it? This is the rust bucket that killed Citirth and hung him onto the ceiling!” She blurted rapidly and wiped a tear from her eye. Giethi cleaned the claw of its salt and approached Deri and the machine slowly. “What the hell are you doing?!” He scoot back as she began raising the claw and pointing it at the machine’s head. “Killing it. We don’t need two homicidal maniacs after us.” She brought down the pole, with such strength and built-up stress and rage to puncture through the fragile heat tiling armor, and through the sheets of glossy sheet metal. It shook for a bit and then collapsed on the floor, letting seawater run through the grooves of the tiles. The staff twisted for a bit with the occasional grunt from Giethi turning it, doing circles around the case; finally releasing it from the head after what felt like an eternity. “Piece of shit. It would rot later anyways.” She freed her weapon from the head with a small struggle, bringing out small clippings of copper wire. “I- uh…” Deri stammered. “I expected more mess. Because like… all of the grinding. And stuff.”

“Well, it was more like a whirr.” Wylinoris added. “A whirr? Like… Motors?”

“Wasn’t my staff. Wait, motors? Motors!” Two little mechanical arms, no thicker than a sewing needle popped out of the hole made by the claw and began pulling some of the tiles on the face in. “Holy-”

“That was very… Savage.” The small hexagonal shape made of frosted glass on the bottom-left side of the machine began glowing a great yellow. “Unkind. Cruel. Heartless.” Its arms began moving and pushed P-Sed back up. “But I forgive you. Humans are prone to have emotional, sporadic bursts of emotion at any given moment.” The machine towered over Giethi, looking down at her frantically panicking face as she dropped her staff. By now, its legs were no longer crouching, putting even more height against her. “You- You’re a monster.”

“Incorrect assumption. The monster; at the moment is the Sayotatu knocking the hull of the boat at the moment and consuming your crewmates.” P-Sed waded closer to Deri.

“This…” It paused. “Human is injured.” They crouched down, slowly lifting his leg. Wylinoris and Giethi attempted to pull him back but lost grip. Small needles ejected from its arm, shocking Deri and putting him to sleep. “I have simply sped up the regeneration process. His leg will be fully healed in an hour or two.” Wylinoris stared through the holes in the machine, being able to see through them cleanly with no wiring or loose metal around. A bit… too tidy.

“I intend to cause no harm.”

“You killed Citirth!”

The boat rattled more.

“That appears to not be the issue at hand. What we should be focusing on is this injured man and the beast that’s about to kill all three of you!” Giethi stared in shock at the machine and chucked her staff at the wall in anger.

“It’s obvious he wants to help.” Wylinoris blurted.

Giethi stared with disgust at her.

“You. You saw his body hanging and you expect me to want this hunk of junk around?!”

“He just helped Deri.”

“One good deed doesn’t offset a murder!”

“As I mentioned before, we can communicate about this later.” Wylinoris nodded and lifted Deri. “I’m going with it. You can stay here and drown.” She set him down in the central chest cavity. “The fuck you think you’re doing?!” Wylinoris packed up the musket and P-Sed plucked it out of her hands. “You can stay here and wash your face in the water. I’m going to do something.” P-Sed picked her up from the back and lifted her a couple of feet. “I’m going to increase the pressure exerted by the firearm.” P-Sed’s bland, robotic voice droned on as it got fainter as they walked away slowly, leaving her behind in the engine room.

“Hey… so, did you actually kill Citirth?” P-Sed stopped in its tracks a few feet from the staircase. “I… I.” It paused. “I did not intend to kill him. All of my sensors had not been activated completely, including updating my location and camera drivers. And he held out his father’s necklace… Who was an astronaut I was servicing before he died in a failed rocket launch.” Wylinoris became silent. “But-” “I refuse to say anything else!” P-Sed marched up the stairs with a bit of attitude. Despite still being a heartless machine, incapable of feeling emotion, they were surprisingly human in their speaking. They were distraught, in regretted their actions. “I was built to serve. Not to murder.” P-Sed gripped the gun tightly, bending the wooden trim around the stock. Wylinoris jumped off their arm. “Hurry up with what you need to do, I’m dying to get out of this place.” P-Sed poked a hole in the barrel and slid in a small electronic tube wired up to his arm. “All you should need to do is add more gunpowder. The accelerator should do the rest-” Someone plucked the gun out of P-Sed’s hands. “Give me that, you asshole.” Turbines in the tube spooled up and the musket lit up a bit upon being grabbed. Giethi rubbed the edge of the barrel and the grooves carved out by P-Sed. She tugged on the gun more until the tube ripped off of their arm, acting as a vacuum to the air sucked in by the pipe.

She stared at it and wrapped it around the musket.

The disgusted look on her face when taking a glance at Deri inside P-Sed’s chest cavity was more than enough.

“Oh great, you have to haul him around like this?”

The muskets muzzle was extended around half an inch to make room for the accelerator and dual turbines poorly welded onto the sides of the breech, being fed by the same clear plastic tube. Wylinoris stared at the tube in confusion and then understood how the firearm worked quickly. “We need to put down that “Sayotatu” or whatever the fuck you call it as soon as possible.” She wrapped it around her back, dwarfing her in height by a foot. Wylinoris stared in a bit of disbelief, she didn’t expect Giethi to spring up all of a sudden and decide to help them. “And don’t think I'm done with anything you caused!” Giethi pointed at the robot.

It nodded slightly, adjusting its posture to a more relieved state.

“More gunpowder my ass.” She popped open a weathered-looking vial, full of the same orange powder that was used to blow them back in the run-down house, now charred from the explosion, and dumped the rest into the gun. “Ay, Robo-bitch. Are you sure this can handle type two explosion mana?” Giethi held out the empty vial to Wylinoris’s nose.

Burning hot, as she had just snorted the fine dust of chili peppers. “Wakes you up, right?”

“I would not recommend using fatal amounts of SH-IS10 in firearms-”

“I don’t give any fewer shits about if you recommend it or not! Does it work or not?!”

“Y- Yes, but the lifespan of the weapon-”

“Good enough.”

Giethi loaded the last of the musket balls into the barrel.

“You’re coming up too! We need a shield. Wylin, carry these.” She handed Wylinoris the rest of the vials. Some had dust that was suspended in liquid, sparkling brilliantly and swirling with contrasting, bright colors.

Giethi bust the hatch open with P-Sed pushing her up. Seawater immediately started running down the grooves in the wooden planks leading to the hatch. Wylinoris followed behind, switching hands while climbing up the ladder to prevent the vials from spilling out from her pockets. “I don’t see jack shit!” Giethi yelled amidst the commotion with the waves crashing and tugging the boat in all sorts of ways. A large paw covered in rough, sandpaper-like skin and the same large scales they found. The slimy mucus covered the entire muscular arm and body, reaching to a gigantic body. “That’s uh… bigger than the one we killed.” The beast towered over the boat, dwarfing the one they previously killed in the cave.

You could easily see gills on the lower part of the throat closing up since it had breached the surface, and damage on the hull of the boat was more visible. It was a miracle that the boat didn’t just fall apart in one fell swoop, the gigantic size of the maws alone could crush the ship in half. Steam bellowed from every crevasse of the scales from the amount of heat being produced by this elegant creature. Its snout was short in length, containing an enormous pair of jaws and smooth pink insides. The eyes were similar to humans, except with enlargened and red irises. The structure of the facial muscles made it appear always furious, and two large violet fins accompanied the cheeks. A large dorsal fin covered from snout to tail was speckled in what pretended to be stars and transparent. It growled and locked eyes with Giethi. She trembled in fear when watching the anatomy of the creature, it was obvious this; unlike the Sayotatu she cooked to death; was an experienced fighter with well-defined muscles and fierce intimidation.

It turned around, probably sensing Giethi’s fear and awe in the creature. “Well, uh-” Wylinoris wiped the water off her face. “I guess we assumed the best-case scenario…”

“Very.” The servos in P-Sed whirred to life, its posture adjusted to be as large as possible, and venting of white clouds began on their back with small turbines spooling up in their arms. Giethi turned around quickly and rustled through the pile of vials Wylinoris was holding and picked out sparkling sky blue vials. She opened up the cap and was met with a small foil cover on the side of the bottle. “Here goes nothing.” Giethi put the bottle on the floor and stomped on it with her boot, covering the sole of the shoe. In an instant, she tipped over, slipping the other boot on the pile of powder. “Oi oi oi oi oi! Throw me the vials!” She started floating, ever so slightly from the dinky wet floor of the deck. Wylinoris dumped the mass of bottles into Giethi’s pockets.

One inch.

Two inches.

Giethi started ascending to the air, slowly increasing in speed. “If I fall, you gotta catch me. You caught that, Robo-bitch?!”

“Is she an idiot?!”

Deri moaned a bit, bumping his head on the top of P-Sed. “The hell’s going on?”

He glanced at Giethi floating and stumbled out of the compartment on the robot. “Oh fuck!” The turbine whining ceased, and small shock diamonds started firing out of holes in P-Sed’s body. “Wylinoris!” Deri walked with a slight limp. “Go to my room and get my staff!” Wylinoris froze in the moment and tripped into the hatch’s opening.

P-Sed connected the turbines on the musket to the turbines on their arms. “You’ll need this.” They held it out for Deri. The tubes connecting them to the musket clouded up with condensation and venting, spooling up the whine of the turbines on the gun.

Deri aimed.

The fiery explosion from the powder in the musket started to ignite the condensation in the turbines and plastic tubes, making the whine coming from the mechanism ear-rupturing. It sucked in more of the precipitation coming from P-Sed, making the explosion more violent, and suddenly–

It fired.

The gun blew Deri back into P-Sed’s arms which gripped him tightly. Both the headache-causing whine on the firearm and P-Sed ended after a few seconds. The barrel of the gun was still spewing out hot sparks, and the turbines attached to the gun glowed red hot into his face. The beast turned around to look at Giethi and suddenly shut its left eye. The gun was less accurate than Deri thought it would be; he aimed at the torso of the beast, but an eye was better in the short term.

“Deri! Deri!” Wylinoris chucked a well-crafted bronze staff with amazing details carved into it up the hatch, her following shortly behind. “Heh. Haven’t used this in a bit.” Deri dropped the gun in the compartment in the robot and rushed over to dust off the sharp ends of the staff. It was plain in design, a solid piece of bronze all the way that hooked to the side on the top. Dragons and sea monsters were engraved on every flat edge of the staff. He popped open the bottom and shook some old, dusty vials that were stuck on the inside due to grime and densely packed dust. He scooped up the blue powder from the vial on the floor and began lifting too. “You fire the musket,” He cried. “I’ve gotta help Giethi with the bitch.” The staff rattled like a shitbox car trying to go past fifty on the highway. “Crap.” He pointed the staff at the monster and began moving closer at high speeds.

“Wait! What the hell am I supposed to do?!”

“You-” Deri narrowly avoided a swipe from the beast. “You fire the musket! Try to injure it!” Giethi blasted the beast’s face with some sort of violet plume, and Deri began sticking his staff in any sort of opening and lit it on fire. “Crazy bastards, leaving me alone and expecting me to work on the sidelines.” She muttered to herself and placed themselves in front of P-Sed.

“Alright, you–” Giethi swept through the maws of the Sayotatu attempting to bite down on her. “You Bexcroft Bastard, is that all you got?” The dragon claw on her staff was rotating rapidly, blowing out different colored plumes of plasma in the beast's face. “I killed your son and I’ll kill you too!” She flew past the massive, clean snout and stuck the spinning claw deep into the closed eye. “I know how to kill you!” The beast lifted one of its massive arms slowly and attempted to swipe Giethi off. She dropped two vials of the same orange powder into the hole she carved and covered her eyes. “Deri! Don’t look!” The burst of blinding light knocked them back, toppling the beast.

“Hey, Deri!” Wylinoris called from the sidelines. “You bastard, there's no ammo left!” Deri glanced at her and paid no attention.

The Sayotatu was still breathing.

Despite having a large burn scar covering almost half of its head and completely blowing out its eye, the monster found an urge to push on. Giethi started shivering in what it saw in that hole that used to be its eye.

Fire.

And bone.

This monster was burning and you could see bone, high-pressure blood covering up the hole, tainting the seawater red, and even more rage in this creature. Its fins were completely burned off due to the explosion and scales were covered in what used to be its flesh. Bits of wine red muscle rained down from the sky onto Giethi’s dark pink coat.

In what felt like mere moments, the blood was replaced with the same steam billowing out of every crevasse and began venting out to the rest of the air. It got up with a limp and a tear from the other eye. It snarled at Giethi and swiped away Deri with its tail towards the boat. Its bellowing, deep roar knocked every last bit of confidence out of Giethi. “Oh Muruer, what have I gotten myself into?”

It fiercely lunged at her with its maws wide open, with sharp teeth and burning rage. It didn’t have a playful personality anymore, it was set on killing her. “Gieth’!” Wylinoris fired a shot with bottle caps from the vials into the wyvern’s jaws. She shook out of her trance and began flying around it. To the Sayotatu, Giethi was like a pestering fly. Then she saw it.

A weak spot in the bone leads directly to the brain. It was covered in blackened scales, but up close was very visible. “Wylin! Fire at the weak spot!” She pointed at it. “What weak point?! You gotta mark it!” She frantically searched in her pockets. She rubbed a bronze tube.

They paused for a moment and pulled out a bronze gauntlet. Citirth’s staff.

“I’m… I’m sorry, Citirth.”

The staff clicked open and rotated back into the blade with a chain. She hung it on the charred flesh on top of the weak point. “Thank you.” She whispered to the blade.

The bullets whizzed past her, hitting the target with great precision. The monster toppled over once again, falling to the water only to be washed away by the waves. Giethi landed silently and somberly onto the boat. Wylinoris and Deri cheered and hyped up each other. “Yeah, woo!”

They went over to congratulate Giethi. “Gieth’, wow-” Deri stopped when noticing the melancholy look on her face. “Giethi?”

“Hey, Giethi, what’s wrong?

“It’s… It’s nothing. I- I’m fine. No need to worry about it. Honest.”

Deri wiped the seawater and droplets of blood off his glasses and face. “P-Sed, get your ass out here!” The robot stumbled over, twitching rapidly with the gun nearly covered with frost. “Jesus!” Wylinoris ran over and ripped off the musket out of the turbines on their arm. A small puff of sparks blew into her face, and P-Sed powered down. The plastic tubes snapped open due to the frost buildup and the barrel of the gun cracked open. “I- uh, can still get you back to Southhath.” Deri whispered, only interrupted by the hazy rain from the remaining puffs of steam by the creature. “Oh right. Yeah.” Deri ran below deck. Wylinoris began to follow, but Giethi stopped her. “Hey. Wylinoris.”

“Hm?”

“You– I… Uh. Wow.” Giethi kept stammering. “You, uh– you haven’t eaten in a while… right?”

Wylinoris nodded.

“Huh- Uh… Well, uh. How, um, about I take you for… Uh… Dinner?”

She smirked. “Heh. So it’s a date, huh?”

Giethi blushed and got flustered.

“Wait- wait, wait–”

“You said it! It’s a date.”

She skipped a tad downstairs. The whirr of the engines filled the sea breeze and the gentle rocking of the boat stopped. Giethi rubbed the stretched fabric of her coat from Citirth’s staff and walked downstairs, closing the hatch behind her with a small tear.