CYOA – Life And Death Situations (Patreon)

Chapter 6 – warnings: none

The brothers are warm to each other. It makes them more stable and less driven to pursue their individual goals at any means possible.

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Hanzo and his brother hadn’t seen each other in a good few day cycles, and when he follows the soft, aching melody echoing through the sea, he is… rather disturbed to find his brother lying across a large rock, the usually vibrant green colors of his tail dim to a point of necrotic looking.

There is no sign of his new friend anywhere, which is almost more disturbing to Hanzo. All his warning bells are ringing, distracting him from his own troubled thoughts for the moment.

The human at the beach...

“Where is the thing?” he asks sharply, his tail flicking and propelling him to Genji’s side. “What has it done to you?!” His hands are brushing across Genji’s back and down his strong tail, looking for a wound. All he encounters is the slick oily film their kind is producing inside the water to shield them from little parasites.

The sorrowful little whining that had led Hanzo to this secluded spot deep on the bottom of the cave they call home, suddenly cuts off and Genji whirls around, hissing and slashing at Hanzo with his claws. Hanzo jerks his upper body back just in the nick of time, strong feet pressed against Genji’s hide, claws digging against the tough scales to help him propel himself away from his brother.

“He’s done nothing!” Genji hisses, the fins all over his body standing upright and prickly, not allowing Hanzo to get close to him.

Hanzo lifts his hands, one eyebrow lifted, and Genji seems to calm down after a moment of reconsidering his outburst. His face does crumble a little, though, just before he lowers his fins again and turns back to drape himself once more across the rock.

Hanzo gently moves his tail, pushing himself closer yet again. He places one hand between Genji’s shoulder blades, not petting but just silently touching. When nothing comes forth, he says softly: “What happened?”

“Humans…” comes the miserable answer. Hanzo can feel his hackles rise. He immediately thinks of the humans that had tried to capture him – and, again, of that one male on the beach that had helped him get free against all odds.

He pulls his hand slowly away again from Genji’s body and moves around him. The water down here is cold and uncomfortable, and he’d rather be up in the warmer currents right now, but Genji likes the chill when he’s not feeling well.

“So the… thing was with the humans after all?” he asks softly, trying to peek into Genji’s face. Genji’s eyes snap up to his, his brows pinching in obvious anger. Instead of exploding again, though, he just relaxes once more and shrugs his shoulders.

“I dunno.”

“Where is it, then?”

Since the thing had appeared some weeks ago, it and Genji had been inseparable. Genji is always very proud of any little trinkets he finds, but this time he had been absolutely enamored with the stupid thing, dragging it around everywhere he went and speaking to it as if it had any mind of its own.

He swore up and down that they were communicating but Hanzo had never seen any sign of actual intelligence in the thing. It creeps him out to be honest.

“A boat came and followed us for a while,” Genji says after a moment. “Like it knew exactly where we were.” Hanzo frowns at that, eerily reminded of his own encounter. Immediately the few raw welts in his tail begin throbbing ominously. However, Genji keeps talking and he focuses back on it.

“It kind of freaked me out and I tried to grab him and get away from them but there was this… this pulse and it made me really nauseous and disoriented. And when I found my bearings again, he was floating up to the boat.”

Hanzo’s face goes dark and hard at that. He reaches out and fists a hand in Genji’s hair, forcing him to look him in the face.

“I knew this thing only meant trouble! It ensnared you and called the humans, Genji! Can’t you see?! They somehow… used it to try and capture you!”

“No!” Genji’s face is dark, on the verge of transforming as he suddenly gets up from his slump and instead is perching on the stone, the sharp claws of his feet easily digging into the hard surface. “He was just as surprised as I was! He did not want to go!”

Hanzo sighs deeply.

“Genji…” he says a bit warily. He has let go of Genji’s hair the instant that his brother has shot up from his slump, and is now gently gesticulating upwards. “Let us talk in the warmth. You can tell me all about what happened then. In detail.”

Genji seems to calm down at that, though he keeps staring at Hanzo a little distrustfully.

“I won’t if you keep suspecting Zenyatta of trying to capture us.”

Hanzo’s eyebrows lift and he gently starts sucking air into the compartments beneath his scales to let himself begin to float upwards.

“Zenyatta?”

Genji, starting to follow him slowly, looks a bit sheepish.

Zenyatta. Little fish.

“It fits him,” he murmurs mulishly. He reaches out and curls a hand around the top of one of Hanzo’s sturdy feet to keep him from floating up further. “I won’t come with you if you keep suspecting him,” he says again, and he looks so serious that Hanzo pauses and finally nods. It is rare that Genji takes something to heart like this.

“Very well. I won’t suspect it. Him. Zenyatta.”

Genji nods and lets go of Hanzo. As they continue floating up, light starts to catch on their scales, and Genji becomes aware of the disarray of Hanzo’s usually immaculately groomed tail.

His mouth opens in a wide O of dismay and surprise.

“Brother! What happened?”

Hanzo sighs deeply. He can feel his face drawing taut with the memory of being caught in the net and having to accept a human’s help in struggling free.

“We will talk about this, too, Genji. But first… I want to hear what happened to you and your friend.”

.o.

Hanzo has to make an effort not to sneer whenever Genji speaks of the thing that he’s so taken a liking to.

For what it’s worth, Genji has fallen in love with the thing since first laying eyes on it – even if his little brother might not be aware of it himself. 

Genji is a lover, first and foremost; he might mistake his feelings for lust, but Hanzo can see all the little mannerisms that show that there is more. Something else.

“We’ve just been out around the reefs…” Genji says now. They are high up in their cave, lying on the stone bank, with their tails trailing in the slight current of the water. He is looking down at his claw slowly drawing circles in the algae growing like moss on the stone.

He still behaves so much like a little one. Hanzo frowns.

“Go on.”

“Well... Zenyatta hasn’t been himself for a day or so. He’s not moved much and made those weird noises every now and then. Like a hiss or something. I thought that bringing him to the reefs might cheer him up; he likes to watch how busy it is there.”

Hanzo makes an effort to sit up. Their physiology is not too suited for it, but it helps him to think when he is upright.

Genji does not comment on it. He is still scratching at the stone and the plants covering it, but his eyes are distant as he is far, far away, remembering.

“Nothing happened for a long time, though. He just kept… floating and making those weird sounds. He was not receptive to anything I said or did… until that suddenly changed.”

Hanzo looks at him, the gills at his throat flaring softly in an involuntary show of interest and focus. He realizes that Genji is speaking calmly but is still having an almost necrotic hue to his skin and scales.

His little brother is suffering.

“I don’t know what triggered it, but Zenyatta suddenly stopped hissing and began moving. It was like he came up from a deep sleep. He was disoriented and confused, but then he became… frantic. I have never seen him like this. He was squirming out of my embrace and grasping my arm so hard it bruised…”

Genji stops scratching and moves his hand instead towards his opposite bicep. He moves as if in a dream, slow and sluggish, eyes fixed on nothing in particular as he recalls the happenings.

And, as he said, there is indeed a bruise on his arm; a dark blue-ish black that is already starting to fade but definitely shows the shape of a hand.

“And I was so focused on him, I didn’t notice the boat until it was right above us… and Zenyatta started drifting up towards it. I grabbed him and pulled him back towards me. I started fleeing but the boat just followed us… like it knew exactly where we were the whole time. I swam as fast as I could but it just kept up. Then there was this… pulse all around us. It shifted the water. I’ve never felt this… disoriented before. I must have blacked out for a second because when I came back to, Zenyatta was almost up at the boat. He was stretching his arms out toward me.”

The last he says with bitter certainty. He slams a fist down on the ground, looking up at Hanzo with now sharp eyes.

“He did not want to go, Hanzo.”

Hanzo just silently stares back at him; waiting and thinking. Wondering what all of this meant.

“I broke surface. There were two humans that I could see. I don’t know if there were more on the ship.”

He continues despite Hanzo jerking in alarm. “I tried to pull him back down with me but they’ve had some weird… things. Rods. They hurt. All I could do was kind of flail and let them shove me off of him. And then everything was done.”

Genji is pressing his lips together, looking down, playing with one of the rings he has donned on his fingers.

Hanzo sits quietly, thinking about the tale, head pounding with all the implications.

“It… he… has been sent by the humans after all.”

Genji flinches, looking at him in angry betrayal, but Hanzo lifts a hand to stifle his protests.

“I am not saying that he tried to deceive you. Maybe he did not have any other choice. I have never seen a lifeform such as him. But the fact remains that the humans were able to somehow locate him with disturbing accuracy and that he had no choice but to follow their call.

This is troubling, Genji. Maybe… maybe it is for the best that he is gone.”

Genji presses his lips together so they won’t wobble, and he turns away from Hanzo in a way that makes him think his little brother might leave him now to lick his wounds in peace.

Genji is a temperamental and surprisingly sensitive young man; a combination that is volatile in and off itself and that Hanzo has always had trouble managing.

He braces himself for Genji’s tail to flick water at him just to be petty, but it never happens. Genji does not flee from him to be in peace. Instead, he says with a rough voice and sharp glance at his tail: “What happened to you, then?”

Hanzo looks down at himself. He still feels… dirty, somehow. There are the phantom touches of the net the humans had caught him in, and the sudden reminder of the defeat he had felt for just a moment has his throat go tight.

He slowly reaches for one loose azure scale and plays with it. It aches when the sharp edges push into the raw flesh beneath where the net had slipped underneath the scales and dug into his skin, but it also helps to keep the renewed panic at bay.

“I was out scouting,” he tells Genji who is watching him with a tight expression. He finally plucks the scale from his tail. A new one would grow in its place. He almost flicks it away from him with the same negligence as one would throw the parts of an empty oyster, but Genji’s hand is out in a second, palm up and demanding.

Hanzo sighs and puts the scale into his brother’s hand. It is gone and tucked away into a pouch at Genji’s hips quicker than an eye could see.

“There was a boat but I pegged it as a normal fishing vessel. I did not pay it any mind and went about my business... yet, thinking back… they did vaguely follow me about. Their shadow seemed to always be over my shoulder.” He feels sharp annoyance at his own negligence. They had both underestimated the humans and paid for it dearly.

He sucks on his sharp teeth, the anger gripping him hard. He has to wrestle it down and inhale deeply, finding some semblance of inner balance before he continues with a rough voice: “Suddenly something had wrapped around me with too much accuracy to have been mere coincidence.

I struggled to get free as I was being pulled up. Just as I broke the surface, I managed to free my arms and slash at the ropes pulling the net. It was my luck that those ropes had not been of the same material, because otherwise I would not sit here with you now.”

Genji is staring at him with single minded intent. Almost a kind of fascination as if Hanzo was retelling a fable instead of his struggle for life. He can’t find it in himself to be annoyed with his little brother: it is simply Genji’s way.

Hanzo is thoughtful as he looks down at his hands, thinking about those few heart-stopping seconds as he had been struggling for his life. “When I fell back down into the water, I caught sight of weird little objects all along the hull of the boat. Silvery and round and… moving. I had never seen anything like them, so I destroyed them and fled. I must have done the right thing because they did not pursue me any longer.”

Genji shakes his head slowly. He looks troubled, as he very well should be.

Hanzo falls quiet, not quite sure whether he wants to relay how the rest of the day had ended. He thinks about that human once more. An idiot like the rest of them that had spoken to him in that weird language they have, clearly talking to him as if Hanzo were a spooked animal.

He had helped him, at least… though Hanzo is still not sure about what had happened back there. In his mind’s eye, he can recall the way his poison had simply slithered into the human’s skin… absorbed as if it had never been there to begin with.

“Will you help me search for Zenyatta?” Genji suddenly asks, dragging him out of his thoughts.

Hanzo will keep the other part of his adventure to himself, just a little longer. He needs to… think about this – and Genji is too distracted by his own sorrow anyway.

He sighs deeply and put upon but nods anyway. “Of course…”

At least he can make sure Genji doesn’t do anything reckless.