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"description": "After a quick and brutal defeat at the hands of a mysterious new enemy, Marcus, now a Toa, has fallen into the deepest abyss of Spherus Magna's newly formed ocean. But then, a friendly aquatic creature saves him from certain death, and she seems eager to befriend him. Now, though the dark depths are full of all kinds of treacherous danger, Marcus must begin his journey back if he has any hope of saving Latias and saving the world from total annihilation.\n(Also on [url=https://archiveofourown.org/works/66118801/chapters/170396170]AO3[/url])\n\nEach chapter will have it's own \"soundtrack\"; these are completely optional to listen to, but I feel that these add to the experience as much of this story was partly inspired by music. Some songs are for specific scenes, and some are just there to add to the tone of the story.\n\nChapter 1:\n\n'Blood in the Water'\n[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGLy1KHaqP0]In Doubt[/url] - Peter Gabriel\n\n'Glow in the Dark'\n[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52axUCWYfGg]The Crashers and the Snappers[/url] - Breakaway\n\n'Sushi'\n[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHeW8McMBS8]Weird Fishes[/url] - Lianne La Havas\n\n'The Descent'\n[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTolIrPGTJQ]Already Over (Crimson Intro)[/url] - Mike Shinoda",
"description_bbcode_parsed": "After a quick and brutal defeat at the hands of a mysterious new enemy, Marcus, now a Toa, has fallen into the deepest abyss of Spherus Magna's newly formed ocean. But then, a friendly aquatic creature saves him from certain death, and she seems eager to befriend him. Now, though the dark depths are full of all kinds of treacherous danger, Marcus must begin his journey back if he has any hope of saving Latias and saving the world from total annihilation.
(Also on AO3)
Each chapter will have it's own "soundtrack"; these are completely optional to listen to, but I feel that these add to the experience as much of this story was partly inspired by music. Some songs are for specific scenes, and some are just there to add to the tone of the story.
Chapter 1:
'Blood in the Water'
In Doubt - Peter Gabriel
'Glow in the Dark'
The Crashers and the Snappers - Breakaway
'Sushi'
Weird Fishes - Lianne La Havas
'The Descent'
Already Over (Crimson Intro) - Mike Shinoda",
"writing": " The crushing depths swallowed Marcus as he sank, the weight of the ocean pressing from every side. His final breath slipped from his lips, bubbling upward as blood spread from the wound in his chest, painting the water a murky red. Darkness enveloped him. His limbs floated uselessly, too heavy to move. He drifted in and out of awareness, clinging faintly to the edge of thought.\n Then, through the dim haze, colors began to shimmer.\n Shapes flickered all around him. Bright, strange lights danced in the gloom like living brushstrokes. Threads of color twisted past his body, ribbons of pink, green, and electric blue, each one gliding with an eerie grace. One brushed gently across his arm and its surface pulsed with warmth, soft and wet, as if made of light itself. Above him, a few jellyfish floated, their translucent bodies casting a dull glow. Long tendrils swirled behind it, slow and searching, like fingers reaching for something lost.\n They were alive, these creatures. Alien, beautiful, and silent.\n Marcus watched them through half-lidded eyes, his thoughts growing slow and far away.\n So this was it, he thought. This was where he would meet his end.\n The light around him dimmed, replaced by one single glow ahead. A heartbeat of yellow, steady and rhythmic. It pulsed once, then again, drawing closer with each flicker.\n He could no longer move. He didn't even try.\n The light grew larger, stranger. It pulsed like something alive. For a moment, he thought he saw Latias. Her golden eyes shimmered in the current, so close he could almost touch her. His fingers reached out weakly.\n There was nothing.\n His hand fell, and he closed his eyes.\n Tap.\n A faint touch against his mask.\n Tap.\n Another.\n He managed nothing more in response than the flutter of his eyelid and a slow twitch of a fingertip. Somewhere in the fog of his fading awareness, he registered that it was real, not just his imagination. It nudged his face again, like a curious animal. He didn’t have the strength to flinch or attempt to push it away. Then, seemingly with a mind of its own, his orange Kanohi mask hissed and folded away from his face, the metal plates of his helmet retracting into the frame around his neck.\n The ocean’s pressure struck immediately. It clamped around his exposed skull, sending needles of pain into his temples. Every breathless second stretched the agony tighter. His head throbbed, and he thought his brain might burst at any second.\n Then, something pressed against his mouth.\n Something soft, wet, and squishy.\n It pressed there just long enough for his instincts to rebel as something strange and bitter coated his tongue and entered his throat. He recoiled, but he couldn't even cough it out in revulsion.\n But then, like a potent numbing medicine, all his pain was gone in an instant.\n The crushing pressure released its grip, and the pain behind his eyes dissolved. The fire in his lungs extinguished, and in its place, a strange calm washed over him.\n His limbs went slack, and with his thoughts scattered, Marcus finally fell completely into the uncertain dark.\n * * *\n Though his vision was too blurry to see much of anything, he looked around what appeared to be a small bedroom as he lay under the covers. He slowly turned his head, squinting his eyes. Through the open window, he could just barely make out trees swaying in the breeze.\n The foggy white silhouette of someone stood over him with a glass of water. Her voice was muffled heavily as though she were speaking from the other side of a wall, though he could just barely make out the words.\n “...[i]Marcus! You overslept again, idiot![/i]” she said bluntly with a sharp edge to her raspy voice.\n Marcus blinked, confused as he tried to focus on her face. “What…?”\n “You always sleep like you’re fuckin’ [i]dead,”[/i] she teased. “I was [i]two[/i] seconds away from dumping this cold water on you, so consider yourself lucky.”\n He couldn’t place her name, and couldn’t even make out her face. It blurred at the edges, like someone half-forgotten in a dream. But her voice, or what he could make of it, wrapped around his heart in familiarity.\n “I…” He glanced around. “Where am I?”\n [i]“Are you okay? You’re spacing out again. Here.”[/i]\n She held out a plate of some kind of food, though Marcus couldn’t smell it or figure out what it was.\n “You… made this for me?” he asked softly, motioning toward the plate.\n [i]“Obviously,”[/i] she said, rolling her eyes. [i]“You think I’d ever make breakfast like this for myself? Now hurry up and eat it before you’re late.”[/i]\n “Late? For what?” he mumbled weakly, trying to sit up but unable to do so, like he had been glued to the bed.\n [i]“You wanted to make things right, didn’t you?”[/i] Her voice fell as she turned away from him towards the doorway. [i]“By the way, I’m… sorry. For getting you into this mess.”[/i]\n He lay there, still, watching her. The edges of the room began to fade, swallowed by a slow, creeping gray.\n “What are you talking about?” Marcus asked as he struggled to free himself from the bed’s grip. “I don’t understand!”\n She looked over her shoulder again, her expression tender and tired.\n [i]“Just know that I don’t give a shit if you fail,”[/i] she said.[i] “I just… want you to come back safe. Okay?”[/i]\n Marcus felt his throat tighten.\n [i]“You’d better come back,”[/i] she said with a hint of annoyance, [i]“promise me.”[/i]\n “I… want to…” he said, barely a whisper as he reached for the weirdly familiar stranger.\n She growled, turning around and throwing the cold glass of water at his face.\n [i]“WAKE THE HELL UP!”[/i]\n * * *\n Air suddenly flooded his lungs. Marcus jolted upright, coughing violently while clutching his chest. His hands met cold armor. The pain was gone, and his wound had completely healed.\n He blinked as he looked around. He was still underwater, that much was clear. The sea pressed in from all sides like a watery coffin as he was stranded at the bottom of some kind of deep trench. And yet… somehow, he could breathe.\n He felt his face, realizing that his mask was gone, his head fully exposed to the water. He closed his eyes and with full concentration, he managed to bring piece by piece of his mask back out from the recesses of the armor around his neck, forming a protective air-tight helmet around him once again. \n He looked down. He was seated on the sandy seafloor, surrounded by large jagged rocks covered with coral that jutted out like broken teeth. The ocean around him pulsed with silence.\n Then he saw it—that familiar glow from before, yellow and wavering, like candlelight beneath the waves. Just ahead, maybe ten meters away, hovered a creature very unlike the ones he’d seen before.\n It was hard to see in the pitch-black gloom, but Marcus caught flashes of its shape: orange scales faintly lit by its own bioluminescence. It had four black limbs folded close to its body, and a long fish-tail that swayed slowly back and forth behind it. Its fins on its head and spine shimmered gold and flickered with faint pulses of light, almost like breathing.\n Its large aqua eyes locked with his.\n Marcus didn’t move.\n Neither did the creature.\n They simply watched each other for a few moments, both unsure of the other’s purpose.\n His hand trembled slightly as he pressed it against his chest, where the wound had been. No pain. No blood. Only smooth, unbroken armor.\n The creature tilted its head.\n “You… did this?” Marcus asked, his voice rough.\n As if a switch had been thrown, it perked up suddenly, fins flaring with a cheerful ripple of golden light. Marcus flinched a little as it darted forward, twirling in the water with smooth, fluid motions, kicking its four black limbs in little bursts like a gleeful dance. It spun once, then twice, then zipped in a wide arc around Marcus, sending soft trails of glowing bubbles spiraling past his face.\n Marcus blinked, unsure whether to feel cautious or amused. The creature gave no signs of hostility, just a strange, joyful energy, almost like a playful puppy greeting its owner after a long absence. It circled again, then came to a sudden stop, hovering just a few feet away, eyes wide and eager.\n He slowly raised a hand to it, then to himself, as he tried to communicate with the strange fish.\n “You… saved… me?” He tapped gently on his mask, trying to communicate with the fish-like being.\n The creature’s expression brightened visibly, its yellow fins pulsing twice in delight. It zipped forward until its face was inches from his own, and Marcus didn’t flinch this time. It floated there, snout twitching, peering at him with those massive, blinking eyes.\n Then, it opened its mouth.\n “[i]Brrbl-bububu-bibib-bababrr![/i]”\n Marcus blinked twice.\n The creature repeated itself, this time with more enthusiasm. \n “[i]Bubububu! Babbibrr-baaa! Brrrra-bibiboo![/i]”\n Marcus let out a tired breath. “Right, of course you can’t talk. What did I expect?”\n The creature floated back slightly, still watching him. It wasn’t frustrated. If anything, it seemed [i]pleased[/i],like the two of them were getting somewhere, even if Marcus had no idea what that somewhere was.\n He let his shoulders sag, slumping slightly in the silt.\n “…I don’t know what you are,” he said quietly. “But thank you.”\n The creature rotated slowly in the water, pulsing with soft yellow light that reflected in Marcus’s eyes. Then it leaned back, eyes narrowing in brief concentration. Its fins flexed outward, glowing brighter as a steady golden light shimmered through the water.\n A low, musical hum filled the surrounding sea, vibrating not just in the water, but in Marcus’s skull. It wasn’t painful, just strange, like a tuning fork pressed to bone. The creature’s fins trembled with the frequency, holding a vibrating resonance that pulsed like a coded signal. Then, the light faded.\n Silence.\n Marcus tilted his head slightly. “What was that?”\n [i]“B…[/i] [i]Bubble… in throates… for airbreathes easy,[/i]” said the fish.\n Its voice was strange, wet, and warbling, but finally intelligible. The creature's mouth didn’t move in any way he could see, yet the words rang out clear, though they carried an odd, uneven cadence. “[i]You… did drowning. You shell were a broked, can not lives down heres. For you, no gills for to airbreathing! So…[/i]” The creature lifted its front limbs and wiggled them excitedly. [i]“Baababa bubble lung![/i]”\n The orange aquatic being opened its mouth and inflated a large air bubble from its maw, which slowly floated to the surface.\n “So you [i]did[/i] save me.”\n The creature’s fins fluttered proudly. “[i]Yes! Me coulds not let the you go still-flat, crab Toa. Sad! Would sad![/i]”\n Marcus managed to let out half a confused chuckle. “Crab Toa?”\n “[i]You [/i][i]have hard[/i][i] shell, but are squishies insides. Like delicious crab!”[/i]\n Marcus rubbed his hand against his throat out of reflex. The lingering bitterness from earlier still clung faintly to his mouth, like sewage and seawater.\n \"Well, I’m not a crab, so don’t even think about eating me, alright?\" He hesitated, then looked at the fish. \"By the way… what did you do to me before, exactly?\"\n She tilted her head, fins pulsing faintly as her eyes lit up\n \"[i]Kiss![/i]\" she declared proudly.\n Marcus blinked. \"Uh… what?\"\n [i]\"Kiss heal! That is how gives air to you!\"[/i] She popped her lips a few times like the fish she was and wiggled her legs giddily, blowing an air bubble from her mouth with an open smile. [i]”So my [/i][i]breathes[/i][i] is you breathes!”[/i]\n Marcus opened his mouth to reply, but closed it again, and just ran a hand down the side of his mask.\n So... he'd been saved by a kiss, technically his [i]first[/i] kiss… from a fish.\n He grimaced. Was he grateful? Obviously. But should he feel flattered? He didn't even know how to process that. Mostly, he was just trying not to gag thinking about the bitter aftertaste still lingering on his tongue.\n \"You... kissed me,\" he said flatly, trying his best to process that in a way that didn't feel ridiculously awkward.\n [i]\"Yes!\"[/i] She beamed, fins fluttering like a triumphant trophy fish. [i]\"Fix pain! [/i][i]You still[/i][i] aliving. [/i][i]You are need[/i][i]… anothers?\"[/i]\n Marcus waved dismissively. \"N-no! No, I think I'm good for now… thank you.\"\n She made a soft chirping noise, like a disappointed hum.\n [i]\"Okay!”[/i]\n Marcus sighed, staring into the depths of the ocean gloom.\n Saved by a kiss from a glowing fish alien.\n As if this day hadn’t been eventful enough.\n [i]“Kiss save because water has… helping things,”[/i] the fish continued cryptically.\n “Thank you,” he said again.\n The creature blinked, seeming to interpret the gratitude. Its fins glowed warmly in response.\n The two of them sat in silence for a beat as Marcus was still catching his breath, the creature gently swaying in the water like seaweed in a current, its golden fins pulsing faintly.\n Then Marcus looked up at her. “So… do you have a name I can call you?”\n Its expression lit up again, fins flaring bright yellow in a sparkling burst. “[i]Yes! Suushilopibi Zuubawawibiquix Floonmaratox![/i]”\n Marcus blinked. “Uh… sorry. Say that again?”\n “[i]Suushilopibi Zuubawawibiquix Floonmaratox![/i]” she repeated even more eagerly with a certain rhythm to it, her glowing tail swaying from side to side.\n He stared at her, completely at a loss. “Okay, I… don’t think I can even say all that. Do you mind if I just call you… Sushi?”\n The creature seemed to consider this for a moment, then gave a delighted little spin in the water, bubbles trailing from her fins.\n “[i]Yes![/i]” she said. “[i]‘Sushi.’ Short-bite name. Like snack. Accepting![/i]”\n Marcus gave a tired laugh. “Alright then, Sushi it is.”\n Sushi wriggled in the water, clearly pleased with herself, her fins flashing again in quick pulses. Despite the depth, the darkness, the unknown… Marcus felt a warmth in his chest.\n He still had no idea where he was, but at least he wasn’t alone anymore.\n Marcus took a breath, glancing around the murky seafloor as the weight of reality crept back into his bones.\n “I’m Marcus,” he said finally, voice steadier than before.\n Sushi hovered close, blinking slowly. “[i]Mar-cusss,[/i]” she repeated, testing the name with her watery accent. “[i]Small name, but strong noise, like shell. Mar like sea, then [/i][b][i]hiss[/i][/b][i] like hot magma vent! Fits![/i]” She tilted her head again. [i]“But Marcus… sink. Big, [/i][b][i]big[/i][/b][i] fall from top waves where air sky is. [/i][i]What did happened[/i][i]?”[/i]\n Marcus’s jaw tightened as flashes of recent events returned. The golden armor, his fight against the Skrall, Tahu’s rage, the mysterious dark figure… the death of Mata Nui. And then, his last look at Latias’s face as he was shot down and exiled to what would’ve been his watery grave. \n “There was… [i]is…[/i] something really bad happening up there.” he said as he looked down at his gloved hands. “Something tore through a hole in the sky... I was trying to stop it, but it almost killed me. I was thrown down here, and now…”\n He looked at her as his brows furrowed under his mask, urgency in his tone.\n “I need to get back to my friends, Sushi.”\n Sushi floated silently for a moment, her yellow fins dimming to a softer hue. She blinked slowly, the mood around her shifting. Then she swam a tight, happy circle and said, “[i]You are being heavies. Fell very far. Nobody [/i][i]go this[/i][i] far. Not ever. Danger all around, everywhere. Hard to go back for heavy thing.[/i]” It looked at him curiously.[i] “But…[/i]” Her eyes gleamed. “[i]Not is impossible. Maybe paths.[/i]”\n Sushi tapped her chin with one of her black limbs, then spun once in the water, flicking a long glowing ribbon from her tail. She pointed to his chest with her black paw. “[i]You still[/i][i] healing. You maybe break again if you swim.[/i]”\n “I don’t need to rest,” Marcus said with determination. “I heal fast, so I feel good as new.”\n Sushi blinked once, then tilted her head skeptically.\n As if in reply, a faint hum began to rise from Marcus’s armor. Thin lines etched between the plates of his suit suddenly flared to life, tracing his frame with a vivid neon green. The light pulsed like a heartbeat, rippling softly through the surrounding water. It wasn’t harsh, but vivid enough to pierce the gloom around them, casting shadows on the ocean floor.\n Marcus’s eyes widened slightly. He hadn’t activated anything.\n The light responded again, this time running in a slow wave from shoulder to fingertip. He stared down at the familiar glow, recognizing its hue instantly.\n “Delta…?” he whispered.\n There was no voice in his mind. But even so, something, a faint presence, still lingered. Delta had no voice, but Marcus could feel him. \n Or at least… he wanted to. Maybe it was just wishful thinking. He couldn’t say for certain.\n Sushi swam up beside him, watching curiously. “[i]You shine now,[/i]” she said, nodding to the glow. “[i]Alive-light. Strong.[/i]”\n “It’s not enough,” Marcus said, scanning upward into the infinite black above. “I need to get back to the surface. That’s the only way I’ll know where to go. Where the others are. Which direction…”\n Sushi didn’t reply, her head snapping to attention above them as her glowing fins suddenly went dim.\n “What?” Marcus tensed. “What is it?”\n Her pupils grew massive, almost filling her eyeballs as she peered into the open darkness beyond Marcus’s sight.\n “Look,” she whispered, her voice unusually quiet. Marcus turned.\n Something shifted in the rocks above, a few small pebbles sinking down to Marcus’s feet. He turned, catching only the faintest swirl. A pressure change. Then a clicking sound like chattering teeth, echoing in ripples through the water.\n Beyond the threshold of the trench, nestled in the smothering abyss, dozens of tiny red lights had appeared. At first he thought they were just reflections, glitches in his vision, or distant bioluminescence.\n But they moved, synchronized. Watching.\n With each passing second, more and more emerged.\n They were eyes, hundreds of them.\n They came in slow, deliberate circles, tightening around the ruins from all directions. \n “What are they?” he asked.\n “[i]Zyglak,[/i]” Sushi said grimly. [i]“Old hunters. Too many now…”[/i]\n The rocky walls of the trench began to vibrate slightly, as if responding to their presence.\n One of the red-eyed shapes slithered closer, revealing the faintest outline of a spined, body plated in red, blue, and bone-white armor. Another surfaced behind it. Another above. The water grew colder.\n Marcus stood up, his heart quickening as he instinctively reached for a weapon he only now realized he didn’t have. Hard as he tried, for some reason he just couldn’t summon a golden sword with a single thought like he had before on the surface.\n He still wore a single piece of the the merged golden armor on his abdomen, but it looked rather dim now, as though it had fallen dormant. It had made him so powerful before, so why was it holding back on him now?\n “I can’t fight that many.” Marcus took a step back. “Not like this. Not while I feel… weak.”\n [i]“You don’t,”[/i] Sushi said in a hush.\n Her fins extended fully until her entire body trembled with energy, facing the encroaching swarm with the confidence of a creature used to surviving places like this.\n Then she opened her mouth, letting out a deafening screech.\n The tone began as a low hum, then rose rapidly into a high-frequency vibration that Marcus could feel in his ribs. The water trembled, and with a final burst, Sushi pulsed the energy outward in a concentric ripple that distorted the sea like a heat wave.\n The effect was immediate. The eyes scattered.\n The ghoulish red glows blinked out in a panicked retreat. The silhouettes retreated deeper into the watery void, twisting away into whatever caves they’d crawled out of.\n Sushi floated, panting faintly, her glow now weak and flickering. She drifted back toward Marcus and gently pressed a glowing fin to the center of his chest.\n After driving off the Zyglak, Sushi made a strange whistling noise and spun once in a small circle, the glowing tips of her fins flickering like a victory dance. \n [i]“Still good at bright light,”[/i] she chirped proudly. [i]“Keep Marcus safe! Marcus friend!”[/i]\n He looked down at her fin, the warmth of its glow soaking into him like sunlight through water. “Thank you again. Sushi… also friend.”\n She affectionately bumped her face against his mask, but her smile quickly faded into a worried frown as she stared outward into the dark where the red eyes had vanished. [i]“Home is… wrong now. Currents taste different. Ocean is feel… confused about so many thing. Water [/i][i]has memory[/i][i] of its own.[/i]”\n Marcus felt a memory briefly flash in his mind, but before he could recall it, it was gone. He didn’t fully understand what that meant, but the truth of his situation was all he needed to know.\n “The Mask of Life caused the reformation of Spherus Manga,” he murmured. “And all this water came from Aqua Magna, one of the moons. But because the moons fell to Bara Magna, this whole place has changed. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Ignika did something to change [i]everything,[/i] whether it meant to… or not[i].”[/i]\n Sushi’s eyes met his, unsure of what this ‘Ignika’ was, but certain that it was something important.[i] “Even… me?”[/i]\n “Yeah, maybe,” Marcus replied, unsure of himself. “...Maybe.”\n Sushi pondered this silently, wondering how she might’ve been changed. But it wasn’t long before the persistent Zyglak reemerged, wielding crudely-made tridents and diving towards the two of them. \n “Quick, down heres!” Sushi zipped past Marcus and made her fins glow brightly as she pointed to a narrow crevice in the nearby rocky wall leading to an underwater tunnel.\n “Haha NO, I am [i]not[/i] going in there, no freaking way!” Marcus shouted. “That’s going even further down, not up! I need to go [i]up!”[/i]\n “None choices!” Sushi said sternly, pointing again. “Will dies if Zyglak kill you!”\n Marcus groaned audibly, feeling a claustrophobic shiver up his spine as he squeezed himself through the narrow opening and narrowly avoided a thrown trident. Sushi closely followed, wriggling herself into the hole as well. The Zyglak prodded their weapons into the crack, but their bodies were too big to follow Marcus and Sushi further in.\n “...I can’t waste any time down here, Sushi. I have to get back to my other friends as soon as possible.” Marcus said after a short while, clenching his fists as they swam deeper down the long, narrow tunnel. “I don’t know what’ll happen when I get there, but I know it’s something really bad. I can feel it.”\n Sushi tilted her head slightly. [i]“I promise you return [/i][i]up to[/i][i] [/i][i]surface[/i][i] fast, [/i][i]I stay with and help[/i][i]s!”[/i]\n Marcus turned. “You will?”\n Sushi nodded firmly. [i]“Marcus is kind crab Toa, so Sushi swim with friend Marcus forevers, always! W[/i][i]e go up to friends together[/i][i]! Yes!”[/i]\n For the first time since waking beneath the sea, Marcus felt the weight on his chest lift.\n He nodded. “I really appreciate it. It’s nice to have someone to… well, it’s just nice to have someone. Lead the way, Sushi.”\n [i]“And, I give kiss if you lose breathings again!”[/i]\n Marcus gulped wearily, hoping it wouldn't come to that.\n But together, with only the faint neon glow of their bodies to guide them through the pitch-black of the twisting and winding tunnel formation, Marcus and Sushi began their even deeper descent into the perilous ocean.\n With his goal of saving Latias consuming his every thought, Marcus only hoped this path would eventually lead them to safer waters. \n Then, he suddenly realized something.\n\n “Wait, hold on just a minute. Sushi… you know what a “Toa” is?”",
"writing_bbcode_parsed": " The crushing depths swallowed Marcus as he sank, the weight of the ocean pressing from every side. His final breath slipped from his lips, bubbling upward as blood spread from the wound in his chest, painting the water a murky red. Darkness enveloped him. His limbs floated uselessly, too heavy to move. He drifted in and out of awareness, clinging faintly to the edge of thought.
Then, through the dim haze, colors began to shimmer.
Shapes flickered all around him. Bright, strange lights danced in the gloom like living brushstrokes. Threads of color twisted past his body, ribbons of pink, green, and electric blue, each one gliding with an eerie grace. One brushed gently across his arm and its surface pulsed with warmth, soft and wet, as if made of light itself. Above him, a few jellyfish floated, their translucent bodies casting a dull glow. Long tendrils swirled behind it, slow and searching, like fingers reaching for something lost.
They were alive, these creatures. Alien, beautiful, and silent.
Marcus watched them through half-lidded eyes, his thoughts growing slow and far away.
So this was it, he thought. This was where he would meet his end.
The light around him dimmed, replaced by one single glow ahead. A heartbeat of yellow, steady and rhythmic. It pulsed once, then again, drawing closer with each flicker.
He could no longer move. He didn't even try.
The light grew larger, stranger. It pulsed like something alive. For a moment, he thought he saw Latias. Her golden eyes shimmered in the current, so close he could almost touch her. His fingers reached out weakly.
There was nothing.
His hand fell, and he closed his eyes.
Tap.
A faint touch against his mask.
Tap.
Another.
He managed nothing more in response than the flutter of his eyelid and a slow twitch of a fingertip. Somewhere in the fog of his fading awareness, he registered that it was real, not just his imagination. It nudged his face again, like a curious animal. He didn’t have the strength to flinch or attempt to push it away. Then, seemingly with a mind of its own, his orange Kanohi mask hissed and folded away from his face, the metal plates of his helmet retracting into the frame around his neck.
The ocean’s pressure struck immediately. It clamped around his exposed skull, sending needles of pain into his temples. Every breathless second stretched the agony tighter. His head throbbed, and he thought his brain might burst at any second.
Then, something pressed against his mouth.
Something soft, wet, and squishy.
It pressed there just long enough for his instincts to rebel as something strange and bitter coated his tongue and entered his throat. He recoiled, but he couldn't even cough it out in revulsion.
But then, like a potent numbing medicine, all his pain was gone in an instant.
The crushing pressure released its grip, and the pain behind his eyes dissolved. The fire in his lungs extinguished, and in its place, a strange calm washed over him.
His limbs went slack, and with his thoughts scattered, Marcus finally fell completely into the uncertain dark.
* * *
Though his vision was too blurry to see much of anything, he looked around what appeared to be a small bedroom as he lay under the covers. He slowly turned his head, squinting his eyes. Through the open window, he could just barely make out trees swaying in the breeze.
The foggy white silhouette of someone stood over him with a glass of water. Her voice was muffled heavily as though she were speaking from the other side of a wall, though he could just barely make out the words.
“...Marcus! You overslept again, idiot!” she said bluntly with a sharp edge to her raspy voice.
Marcus blinked, confused as he tried to focus on her face. “What…?”
“You always sleep like you’re fuckin’ dead,” she teased. “I was two seconds away from dumping this cold water on you, so consider yourself lucky.”
He couldn’t place her name, and couldn’t even make out her face. It blurred at the edges, like someone half-forgotten in a dream. But her voice, or what he could make of it, wrapped around his heart in familiarity.
“I…” He glanced around. “Where am I?”
“Are you okay? You’re spacing out again. Here.”
She held out a plate of some kind of food, though Marcus couldn’t smell it or figure out what it was.
“You… made this for me?” he asked softly, motioning toward the plate.
“Obviously,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You think I’d ever make breakfast like this for myself? Now hurry up and eat it before you’re late.”
“Late? For what?” he mumbled weakly, trying to sit up but unable to do so, like he had been glued to the bed.
“You wanted to make things right, didn’t you?” Her voice fell as she turned away from him towards the doorway. “By the way, I’m… sorry. For getting you into this mess.”
He lay there, still, watching her. The edges of the room began to fade, swallowed by a slow, creeping gray.
“What are you talking about?” Marcus asked as he struggled to free himself from the bed’s grip. “I don’t understand!”
She looked over her shoulder again, her expression tender and tired.
“Just know that I don’t give a shit if you fail,” she said. “I just… want you to come back safe. Okay?”
Marcus felt his throat tighten.
“You’d better come back,” she said with a hint of annoyance, “promise me.”
“I… want to…” he said, barely a whisper as he reached for the weirdly familiar stranger.
She growled, turning around and throwing the cold glass of water at his face.
“WAKE THE HELL UP!”
* * *
Air suddenly flooded his lungs. Marcus jolted upright, coughing violently while clutching his chest. His hands met cold armor. The pain was gone, and his wound had completely healed.
He blinked as he looked around. He was still underwater, that much was clear. The sea pressed in from all sides like a watery coffin as he was stranded at the bottom of some kind of deep trench. And yet… somehow, he could breathe.
He felt his face, realizing that his mask was gone, his head fully exposed to the water. He closed his eyes and with full concentration, he managed to bring piece by piece of his mask back out from the recesses of the armor around his neck, forming a protective air-tight helmet around him once again.
He looked down. He was seated on the sandy seafloor, surrounded by large jagged rocks covered with coral that jutted out like broken teeth. The ocean around him pulsed with silence.
Then he saw it—that familiar glow from before, yellow and wavering, like candlelight beneath the waves. Just ahead, maybe ten meters away, hovered a creature very unlike the ones he’d seen before.
It was hard to see in the pitch-black gloom, but Marcus caught flashes of its shape: orange scales faintly lit by its own bioluminescence. It had four black limbs folded close to its body, and a long fish-tail that swayed slowly back and forth behind it. Its fins on its head and spine shimmered gold and flickered with faint pulses of light, almost like breathing.
Its large aqua eyes locked with his.
Marcus didn’t move.
Neither did the creature.
They simply watched each other for a few moments, both unsure of the other’s purpose.
His hand trembled slightly as he pressed it against his chest, where the wound had been. No pain. No blood. Only smooth, unbroken armor.
The creature tilted its head.
“You… did this?” Marcus asked, his voice rough.
As if a switch had been thrown, it perked up suddenly, fins flaring with a cheerful ripple of golden light. Marcus flinched a little as it darted forward, twirling in the water with smooth, fluid motions, kicking its four black limbs in little bursts like a gleeful dance. It spun once, then twice, then zipped in a wide arc around Marcus, sending soft trails of glowing bubbles spiraling past his face.
Marcus blinked, unsure whether to feel cautious or amused. The creature gave no signs of hostility, just a strange, joyful energy, almost like a playful puppy greeting its owner after a long absence. It circled again, then came to a sudden stop, hovering just a few feet away, eyes wide and eager.
He slowly raised a hand to it, then to himself, as he tried to communicate with the strange fish.
“You… saved… me?” He tapped gently on his mask, trying to communicate with the fish-like being.
The creature’s expression brightened visibly, its yellow fins pulsing twice in delight. It zipped forward until its face was inches from his own, and Marcus didn’t flinch this time. It floated there, snout twitching, peering at him with those massive, blinking eyes.
Then, it opened its mouth.
“Brrbl-bububu-bibib-bababrr!”
Marcus blinked twice.
The creature repeated itself, this time with more enthusiasm.
“Bubububu! Babbibrr-baaa! Brrrra-bibiboo!”
Marcus let out a tired breath. “Right, of course you can’t talk. What did I expect?”
The creature floated back slightly, still watching him. It wasn’t frustrated. If anything, it seemed pleased,like the two of them were getting somewhere, even if Marcus had no idea what that somewhere was.
He let his shoulders sag, slumping slightly in the silt.
“…I don’t know what you are,” he said quietly. “But thank you.”
The creature rotated slowly in the water, pulsing with soft yellow light that reflected in Marcus’s eyes. Then it leaned back, eyes narrowing in brief concentration. Its fins flexed outward, glowing brighter as a steady golden light shimmered through the water.
A low, musical hum filled the surrounding sea, vibrating not just in the water, but in Marcus’s skull. It wasn’t painful, just strange, like a tuning fork pressed to bone. The creature’s fins trembled with the frequency, holding a vibrating resonance that pulsed like a coded signal. Then, the light faded.
Silence.
Marcus tilted his head slightly. “What was that?”
“B… Bubble… in throates… for airbreathes easy,” said the fish.
Its voice was strange, wet, and warbling, but finally intelligible. The creature's mouth didn’t move in any way he could see, yet the words rang out clear, though they carried an odd, uneven cadence. “You… did drowning. You shell were a broked, can not lives down heres. For you, no gills for to airbreathing! So…” The creature lifted its front limbs and wiggled them excitedly. “Baababa bubble lung!”
The orange aquatic being opened its mouth and inflated a large air bubble from its maw, which slowly floated to the surface.
“So you did save me.”
The creature’s fins fluttered proudly. “Yes! Me coulds not let the you go still-flat, crab Toa. Sad! Would sad!”
Marcus managed to let out half a confused chuckle. “Crab Toa?”
“You have hard shell, but are squishies insides. Like delicious crab!”
Marcus rubbed his hand against his throat out of reflex. The lingering bitterness from earlier still clung faintly to his mouth, like sewage and seawater.
"Well, I’m not a crab, so don’t even think about eating me, alright?" He hesitated, then looked at the fish. "By the way… what did you do to me before, exactly?"
She tilted her head, fins pulsing faintly as her eyes lit up
"Kiss!" she declared proudly.
Marcus blinked. "Uh… what?"
"Kiss heal! That is how gives air to you!" She popped her lips a few times like the fish she was and wiggled her legs giddily, blowing an air bubble from her mouth with an open smile. ”So my breathes is you breathes!”
Marcus opened his mouth to reply, but closed it again, and just ran a hand down the side of his mask.
So... he'd been saved by a kiss, technically his first kiss… from a fish.
He grimaced. Was he grateful? Obviously. But should he feel flattered? He didn't even know how to process that. Mostly, he was just trying not to gag thinking about the bitter aftertaste still lingering on his tongue.
"You... kissed me," he said flatly, trying his best to process that in a way that didn't feel ridiculously awkward.
"Yes!" She beamed, fins fluttering like a triumphant trophy fish. "Fix pain! You still aliving. You are need… anothers?"
Marcus waved dismissively. "N-no! No, I think I'm good for now… thank you."
She made a soft chirping noise, like a disappointed hum.
"Okay!”
Marcus sighed, staring into the depths of the ocean gloom.
Saved by a kiss from a glowing fish alien.
As if this day hadn’t been eventful enough.
“Kiss save because water has… helping things,” the fish continued cryptically.
“Thank you,” he said again.
The creature blinked, seeming to interpret the gratitude. Its fins glowed warmly in response.
The two of them sat in silence for a beat as Marcus was still catching his breath, the creature gently swaying in the water like seaweed in a current, its golden fins pulsing faintly.
Then Marcus looked up at her. “So… do you have a name I can call you?”
Its expression lit up again, fins flaring bright yellow in a sparkling burst. “Yes! Suushilopibi Zuubawawibiquix Floonmaratox!”
Marcus blinked. “Uh… sorry. Say that again?”
“Suushilopibi Zuubawawibiquix Floonmaratox!” she repeated even more eagerly with a certain rhythm to it, her glowing tail swaying from side to side.
He stared at her, completely at a loss. “Okay, I… don’t think I can even say all that. Do you mind if I just call you… Sushi?”
The creature seemed to consider this for a moment, then gave a delighted little spin in the water, bubbles trailing from her fins.
“Yes!” she said. “‘Sushi.’ Short-bite name. Like snack. Accepting!”
Marcus gave a tired laugh. “Alright then, Sushi it is.”
Sushi wriggled in the water, clearly pleased with herself, her fins flashing again in quick pulses. Despite the depth, the darkness, the unknown… Marcus felt a warmth in his chest.
He still had no idea where he was, but at least he wasn’t alone anymore.
Marcus took a breath, glancing around the murky seafloor as the weight of reality crept back into his bones.
“I’m Marcus,” he said finally, voice steadier than before.
Sushi hovered close, blinking slowly. “Mar-cusss,” she repeated, testing the name with her watery accent. “Small name, but strong noise, like shell. Mar like sea, then hiss like hot magma vent! Fits!” She tilted her head again. “But Marcus… sink. Big, big fall from top waves where air sky is. What did happened?”
Marcus’s jaw tightened as flashes of recent events returned. The golden armor, his fight against the Skrall, Tahu’s rage, the mysterious dark figure… the death of Mata Nui. And then, his last look at Latias’s face as he was shot down and exiled to what would’ve been his watery grave.
“There was… is… something really bad happening up there.” he said as he looked down at his gloved hands. “Something tore through a hole in the sky... I was trying to stop it, but it almost killed me. I was thrown down here, and now…”
He looked at her as his brows furrowed under his mask, urgency in his tone.
“I need to get back to my friends, Sushi.”
Sushi floated silently for a moment, her yellow fins dimming to a softer hue. She blinked slowly, the mood around her shifting. Then she swam a tight, happy circle and said, “You are being heavies. Fell very far. Nobody go this far. Not ever. Danger all around, everywhere. Hard to go back for heavy thing.” It looked at him curiously. “But…” Her eyes gleamed. “Not is impossible. Maybe paths.”
Sushi tapped her chin with one of her black limbs, then spun once in the water, flicking a long glowing ribbon from her tail. She pointed to his chest with her black paw. “You still healing. You maybe break again if you swim.”
“I don’t need to rest,” Marcus said with determination. “I heal fast, so I feel good as new.”
Sushi blinked once, then tilted her head skeptically.
As if in reply, a faint hum began to rise from Marcus’s armor. Thin lines etched between the plates of his suit suddenly flared to life, tracing his frame with a vivid neon green. The light pulsed like a heartbeat, rippling softly through the surrounding water. It wasn’t harsh, but vivid enough to pierce the gloom around them, casting shadows on the ocean floor.
Marcus’s eyes widened slightly. He hadn’t activated anything.
The light responded again, this time running in a slow wave from shoulder to fingertip. He stared down at the familiar glow, recognizing its hue instantly.
“Delta…?” he whispered.
There was no voice in his mind. But even so, something, a faint presence, still lingered. Delta had no voice, but Marcus could feel him.
Or at least… he wanted to. Maybe it was just wishful thinking. He couldn’t say for certain.
Sushi swam up beside him, watching curiously. “You shine now,” she said, nodding to the glow. “Alive-light. Strong.”
“It’s not enough,” Marcus said, scanning upward into the infinite black above. “I need to get back to the surface. That’s the only way I’ll know where to go. Where the others are. Which direction…”
Sushi didn’t reply, her head snapping to attention above them as her glowing fins suddenly went dim.
“What?” Marcus tensed. “What is it?”
Her pupils grew massive, almost filling her eyeballs as she peered into the open darkness beyond Marcus’s sight.
“Look,” she whispered, her voice unusually quiet. Marcus turned.
Something shifted in the rocks above, a few small pebbles sinking down to Marcus’s feet. He turned, catching only the faintest swirl. A pressure change. Then a clicking sound like chattering teeth, echoing in ripples through the water.
Beyond the threshold of the trench, nestled in the smothering abyss, dozens of tiny red lights had appeared. At first he thought they were just reflections, glitches in his vision, or distant bioluminescence.
But they moved, synchronized. Watching.
With each passing second, more and more emerged.
They were eyes, hundreds of them.
They came in slow, deliberate circles, tightening around the ruins from all directions.
“What are they?” he asked.
“Zyglak,” Sushi said grimly. “Old hunters. Too many now…”
The rocky walls of the trench began to vibrate slightly, as if responding to their presence.
One of the red-eyed shapes slithered closer, revealing the faintest outline of a spined, body plated in red, blue, and bone-white armor. Another surfaced behind it. Another above. The water grew colder.
Marcus stood up, his heart quickening as he instinctively reached for a weapon he only now realized he didn’t have. Hard as he tried, for some reason he just couldn’t summon a golden sword with a single thought like he had before on the surface.
He still wore a single piece of the the merged golden armor on his abdomen, but it looked rather dim now, as though it had fallen dormant. It had made him so powerful before, so why was it holding back on him now?
“I can’t fight that many.” Marcus took a step back. “Not like this. Not while I feel… weak.”
“You don’t,” Sushi said in a hush.
Her fins extended fully until her entire body trembled with energy, facing the encroaching swarm with the confidence of a creature used to surviving places like this.
Then she opened her mouth, letting out a deafening screech.
The tone began as a low hum, then rose rapidly into a high-frequency vibration that Marcus could feel in his ribs. The water trembled, and with a final burst, Sushi pulsed the energy outward in a concentric ripple that distorted the sea like a heat wave.
The effect was immediate. The eyes scattered.
The ghoulish red glows blinked out in a panicked retreat. The silhouettes retreated deeper into the watery void, twisting away into whatever caves they’d crawled out of.
Sushi floated, panting faintly, her glow now weak and flickering. She drifted back toward Marcus and gently pressed a glowing fin to the center of his chest.
After driving off the Zyglak, Sushi made a strange whistling noise and spun once in a small circle, the glowing tips of her fins flickering like a victory dance.
“Still good at bright light,” she chirped proudly. “Keep Marcus safe! Marcus friend!”
He looked down at her fin, the warmth of its glow soaking into him like sunlight through water. “Thank you again. Sushi… also friend.”
She affectionately bumped her face against his mask, but her smile quickly faded into a worried frown as she stared outward into the dark where the red eyes had vanished. “Home is… wrong now. Currents taste different. Ocean is feel… confused about so many thing. Water has memory of its own.”
Marcus felt a memory briefly flash in his mind, but before he could recall it, it was gone. He didn’t fully understand what that meant, but the truth of his situation was all he needed to know.
“The Mask of Life caused the reformation of Spherus Manga,” he murmured. “And all this water came from Aqua Magna, one of the moons. But because the moons fell to Bara Magna, this whole place has changed. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Ignika did something to change everything, whether it meant to… or not.”
Sushi’s eyes met his, unsure of what this ‘Ignika’ was, but certain that it was something important. “Even… me?”
“Yeah, maybe,” Marcus replied, unsure of himself. “...Maybe.”
Sushi pondered this silently, wondering how she might’ve been changed. But it wasn’t long before the persistent Zyglak reemerged, wielding crudely-made tridents and diving towards the two of them.
“Quick, down heres!” Sushi zipped past Marcus and made her fins glow brightly as she pointed to a narrow crevice in the nearby rocky wall leading to an underwater tunnel.
“Haha NO, I am not going in there, no freaking way!” Marcus shouted. “That’s going even further down, not up! I need to go up!”
“None choices!” Sushi said sternly, pointing again. “Will dies if Zyglak kill you!”
Marcus groaned audibly, feeling a claustrophobic shiver up his spine as he squeezed himself through the narrow opening and narrowly avoided a thrown trident. Sushi closely followed, wriggling herself into the hole as well. The Zyglak prodded their weapons into the crack, but their bodies were too big to follow Marcus and Sushi further in.
“...I can’t waste any time down here, Sushi. I have to get back to my other friends as soon as possible.” Marcus said after a short while, clenching his fists as they swam deeper down the long, narrow tunnel. “I don’t know what’ll happen when I get there, but I know it’s something really bad. I can feel it.”
Sushi tilted her head slightly. “I promise you return up to surface fast, I stay with and helps!”
Marcus turned. “You will?”
Sushi nodded firmly. “Marcus is kind crab Toa, so Sushi swim with friend Marcus forevers, always! We go up to friends together! Yes!”
For the first time since waking beneath the sea, Marcus felt the weight on his chest lift.
He nodded. “I really appreciate it. It’s nice to have someone to… well, it’s just nice to have someone. Lead the way, Sushi.”
“And, I give kiss if you lose breathings again!”
Marcus gulped wearily, hoping it wouldn't come to that.
But together, with only the faint neon glow of their bodies to guide them through the pitch-black of the twisting and winding tunnel formation, Marcus and Sushi began their even deeper descent into the perilous ocean.
With his goal of saving Latias consuming his every thought, Marcus only hoped this path would eventually lead them to safer waters.
Then, he suddenly realized something.
“Wait, hold on just a minute. Sushi… you know what a “Toa” is?”",
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"title": "(FANFIC) Destiny Delta - Road 2: The Memory of Water - Chapter 1 - Into the Ocean",
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