EoD Pt 2 Sidestory: Fate of Hawaii (Patreon)

It’s been awhile, dear reader. 

When the bombs were finally launched, the Hawaii laser tower would shoot down two nuclear bombs, failing to shoot down a third and overheating before it could fire a fourth shot. A drop in an ocean, its construction would coincide with ACME completing another expansion, another descending ring around the city: fisheries, deep water kelp farms, hydroponics, krill-quarium units to make power pills. 

Two bombs and fish. At first, the changes wrought on the city were minor: the aquaculture ring would be shut down when the radiation rose: two bombs weren’t enough to significantly reduce it. The ocean water that had once served as the cities farmland was now toxic, sterile, unable to support life and too poisoned to effectively filter with their infrastructure, leaving them with limited potable water. Barely enough to drink, let alone use for mass aquaculture. 

However, the stores of food in the city because of the aquafarming district meant that starvation was kept at bay for at least a few more years, and the city would, at least, successfully keep a few of the species they grew for food alive long enough to breed for some degree of radiation resistance. 

These species were more toxic, less nutritious, usually meaner and more dangerous, and when converted to food would cause mild radiation poisoning, but they were, at least, a stable source of food that could be kept watered without dipping into their drinkable stock, though their Radkrillbugs and Tunalugs and Mutakelp was still too fragile to grow in unfiltered sea-water. 

All of it edible…technically. Sure, you were still killing yourself, but it was slower than starvation, and if you had a supply of Rad-Away you’d probably be mostly fine, third arm or webbed toes aside. 

Beyond allowing the city to support a larger (if limited due to facility space) population, this food had another use: trade. Once the dust had settled and the population finished crashing, the place still found itself with a modest food surplus that would be sold by Water Seekers during the off-season at New Alcatraz, when they weren’t making the Honomaru run. Sure, the stuff was a little poisonous to them, but ghouls didn’t have to worry about radiation. In exchange, ACME City was able to afford spare parts, salvage, and even man-power for water runs or to help protect their boats from Wrecker-pirates. 

And another part of the Pacific Wastes joined the growing trade-network between its communities. Wreckers. Ventropolis. ACME City. New Alcatraz. Over time, this growing community would even adopt a common currency: pre-war coinage. Pennies. Nickels. Quarters. The easier the metal was to corrode, the more valuable: pennies in particular were valued for their high copper and zinc content, which could be melted down and used to make things like wires. 

With this trade network slowly forming, the Pacific began to grow, if slowly, if slowly. And with growth came its own hazards: Piracy. If there was a market for something, there was a market to steal it.

Wreckers in particular would find the act alluring: many settlements would, in the off-season, take up raiding, seizing ships, cargo, and people, from ACME, the Vaults, and even rival Wreckers, ransoming the items back or selling it themselves either in Wreckertowns or New Alcatraz. Not all of them, and even those that did would typically only did so as a supplementary means of making an income when they couldn’t fish or conduct salvage, but as a result many communities would form thoroughly negative opinions of the Wreckerclans as a whole, with New Alcatraz being the singular exception, not helped by how territorial the people were when defending their salvage claims. 

Of course, one particular ship would become particularly infamous: the Doctor Edgar’s Wrath, a Bathsubmarine piloted by the most dangerous Pirate-Wrecker in all of history, Dread Captain Long Tom Uranium. In his youth, he had served under a Wrecker by the name of Captain Arbuckle: while on a salvage run, he had been infected by a horrific mutagenic plague, one that had killed the majority of those infected. It had only been thanks to the tireless work of a certain Neurospecialist that they had survived. 

But they had not made it out unchanged. Something had changed in Long Tom’s mind: once relatively jovial, he became, snappy, rude, and cruel, complaining of night terrors involving needles the rest of his life. In the years after, he would slowly claw his way to power over three ships: the Wrath, the Storm, and the Fury, each built or taken.

Over 231 vessels he would pillage. 21 Wreckertowns pillaged. 13 raids on ACME City, 8 on Ventropolis, 3 on Deep Canyon, 2 on a certain oil rig inhabited by a certain military organization. They would begin to call the man the Scourge of the Sea: possessed by both a strategic genius, a near prescient ability to predict and outmanuever his enemies, and a terrifying ferocity in combat, his legend spread like wildfire, as did rumors, theories, hearsay, and misinformation.

Not long into his career as terror of the pacific, the Wrecker-Pirate would face his first set-back: a sea-monster, one conjured by a strange intelligent fishperson using uncanny eldritch powers. A titanic lump of mutated flesh from the darkest part of the sea, some horrific leviathan that had budded off some unknown horror: again his vessels the thing eventually fell, but not before a great and titanic battle in which the captain had been forced to exit his vessel to fight the gigantic beast in close quarters, in the midst a swirling storm, the sea a horrifying froth, plasma and meat flying. 

Captain Long Tom Uranium would survive, but not unscarred, losing his leg and finding himself convalescent for a year. Still, the Captain had survived: the sea-beast had not. And it is here that his legend would take another facet, as, upon recovering, Long-Tom would promptly replace his lost limb with a prosthetic that ended in peg leg, all made using old assaultron parts…as well as a grenade launcher built into the end. Y’know. Just in case.

In time, he would encounter more of these creatures, but now he had more knowledge of how to kill them. 

And his new addition was useful for other matters, like taking ships and raiding foes, making him even more terrifying in combat, or so legend goes. In reality, while useful for beasts capable of lifting your entire body, it was less so for human to human combat, with him mostly only using it as a tool of intimidation and surprise. 

The years would continue to go by, and he would face another sealife related disaster: a fish-man attack that would result in the captain find his hand devoured by one of the creatures. Barely surviving, the Captain would on recovery hunt down the fish-man who had consumed his hand and consumed the mutant in turn in revenge.

They say fish found in fishman territory is cursed, strange: that it slowly turns those who consume it into more fishmen. None had ever consumed the meat of fishmen before, not since a certain neurospecialist, and much like the neurospecialist, Long Tom had already had his genome rendered pliable by mutagen. 

The next week was spent with his teeth falling out, bloody, torn gums growing two rows of razor sharp replacements, a process that was no doubt agonizing. And yet when he recovered, the captain was possessed of two things: a much more dangerous bite and a peculiar craving.

He had gotten a taste for fishman flesh. 

The next few years, when he wasn’t embarking on raids, the Wrecker-Pirate known across the seas as the terrifying and uncanny Captain Long Tom Uranium would hunt down and consume more and more fishmen in between his raiding and trading. And month by month, he continued to change, growing larger, more massive. His skin would turn a mottled grey color, becoming rough, sandpapery and coarse. His eyes would bulge turning a solid grey. His remaining toes and fingers would grow membranes, webs between each digit. And on the back of his neck, a strange lump of cartilage would grow, forming something akin to a dorsal fin. 

And the more he changed, the hungrier he got, and the more he would eat, the more he changed. Not just Fishman meat: flesh in general. While still capable of eating vegetables, his transformation had cursed Long Tom with an unnatural gluttony, punishment for violating taboo by consuming fishman flesh: the mere scent of wet, dripping, bloody meat would send the man’s olfactory senses into a desperate, hungry frenzy, Long Tom finding himself helpless to his instincts to feed. Of course, to a man who can afford it, no amount of appetite can truely be a curse, and Long Tom had treasure aplenty to afford things like tunas, crabs, eels, sharks, and even Fishman meat. And so the great and large pirate would eat and eat and eat, eventually growing quite rotund and portly, gaining a look that belied his impressive strength, intelligence, and reaction time. 

As the years passed, as they always do, the Captain had assembled a fabulous treasure, a legendary reputation, and a mighty fleet. The terror of the sea: one who ranged across the entirety of the Pacific Wastes, possessed of no equal, the greatest pirate in the ocean.

This would come to an end when he crossed paths with the Water Seeker, a journey that would begin when, one foggy wintertide season, as the freshly awoken captain had been crossing the deck of his Bathysub, still groggy, he found himself smelling something strange, yet familiar. 

Just barely did the Captain avoid the slash of a dagger that would have disemboweled him, surprising the Prophet, who had been using their psychic abilities to avoid detection in order to assassinate the captain. Recognizing the strange eldritch figure, Captain Long Tom was filled with a murderous hatred, chasing the Prophet across the span of his Bathysub, the Drowned Psychic only escaping by summoning another leviathan and sneaking away in the resulting chaos as crewmen who had been sleeping prior found themselves violently awoken by their ship coming under attack. 

Enraged, Long Tom found this an easier fight, having remembered the last battle, slaying the sea-beast using the weapon systems of his flagships, modified anti-air cannons taken from pre-war military installations and torpedoes made with blasting gel purchased from New Alcatraz. 

Eventually, the beast died: it was dangerous, yet it found itself outmatched by another form of predator. And yet, even with the battle won, Long Tom was still enraged. That was twice that figure had tried to kill them. No more. 

He would scour the breadth of the ocean until he had found whatever hole the Prophet had crawled into and drag the mutant out of it screaming. Splitting his fleet into thirds, each led by one of his flagships, his pirate army would become more active- and violent- than ever, invading towns under the mere suspicion they might have a lead, attacking more ships in order to seize material for Long Tom’s war effort, and killing thousands in a mere handful of years with his attacks. 

It was this behavior that would draw the Water Seekers ire. During her journey to learn of the Drowned, she would encounter Long Toms pirates while searching for the SPD’s. Ambushed mid-journey, she would be confronted by the Fury, nearly getting killed by having her boat sunken from beneath her, only surviving by boarding the enemy ship and fighting her way through it until he met its leader: First Mate Dominic St. Paul, Long Tom’s right hand man. 

Impressed, the man made the Water Seeker an offer: tell him everything she knew, and they would let her live as a member of the crew. She responded by trying to shoot him in the face. This for once failed to work: First Mate St. Paul was a cut above the other foes she had fought, utilizing modified Crisis Armor to fight the warrior to a standstill. As talented as the goddess of guns was at the art of killing, she was still a novice to it. And to let him match her near endless stamina? Good old chems. 

Forced to concede defeat, the Water Seeker made a hasty retreat, fighting her way to the escape pods, blasting a hole in the hull on her way out to keep the Fury from chasing her.

A few days later, she would wake up dehydrated and delirious on the Isle of Spite, a Wreckertown created in the ruins of Vault 120, long after it’s original survivors had left. Her escape pod had been pulled ashore by the towns engineer, Humphrey O’Macleod, who had been out searching for salvage. 

Allowing the Water Seeker to recover in his home, it was from the inventor that the Water Seeker learned just how pervasive the raids of Long Toms crew had become: across the breadth of the Pacific you could find his ships, and they all seemed to be searching for the same thing. 

It was then that the Water Seeker decided: she would attempt to destroy Long Tom’s fleet. Conscripting the Wrecker engineer to help her, the pair first decided to take out St. Paul and the General Chases Fury. To do so, they needed to level the playing field: the First Mate had an edge on experience, but the Water Seeker could almost match it with her strange talent for death. She just needed an edge. 

Humphrey decided the solution would be through technology: he had been working on a back-pack modification that could be applied to energy weapons that would greatly increase their power, but he was missing one item. A specific model of fusion core: the only place where one could be found that he had found?

An old, wrecked ship: a military transport by the name of the USS Gorman that had gone unsalvaged because of one of its inhabitants, a massive rad-crab by the name of Gigantic Gor-Crab. 

To fight this creature, Humphrey supplied the Water Seeker with a harpoon gun and a suit of Vault Tec Diving Armor. Stripped of most of her firepower and mobility, the Water Seeker was forced to make do with stealth, creeping into the ship, locating the fusion core in question without issue: it was only during her exit that Gor-Crab would find her, forcing the Water Seeker to flee, using her harpoon gun to slow the beast down long enough for her retreat.

Returning to the Isle of Spite, the Water Seeker found it under attack by the Fury: St. Paul had followed her. Fighting her way to Humphrey, the Engineer quickly assembled the back-pack module for the Water Seeker, hooking it to a plasma rifle. With it, the Water Seeker burned her way through the Wrecker Pirates, until she once more reached the First Mate. 

Once more, he offered to allow her to surrender: it would be a shame to waste such a talented fighter. And once again, his offer was rejected. This time, however, the playing field had been evened: with the upgrade to her energy weapons, the Water Seeker was able to melt a hole in her foes power armor, though the battle had taken all her talent and ability to win. The death of their leader would force the pirates to retreat, returning to the Fury…only for the vessel to explode. Humphrey had snuck aboard and rigged it to blow.

Afterwards, on parting, the wrecker-engineer crafted the Water Seeker a replacement vessel made using salvage and scrap from the Pirates Bathyship, and advice: the next subordinate that served under Long Tom Uranium was located on the westernmost edge of the Pacific. Battlemaster Arbuckle, the great-grandson of the historic Captain Arbuckle whom Long Tom had served under so long ago. 

Nowadays, the young Wrecker served as the strategist of the fleet, advising Captain Long Tom on matters of planning. According to word o’ semaphore, the childless Captain had taken a shine to the young man, such that it was good odds that he’d select the Battlemaster as his heir should Long Tom perish of old age: the Young Arbuckle was currently working on killing monsters in the far edges of the known sea, hunting creatures that sounded suspiciously like the Leviathans the Water Seeker had encountered sailing on the Storm of the Century. 

It would be some time before the Water Seeker could investigate: as pestilent to the region as Captain Long Tom had become, he was ultimately a minor warlord. His pirates, while a problem, were not a priority compared to the Leviathans and other altered horrors creeping their way across the sea. 

The next opportunity for her to follow up would occur when, after locating SPD 1-1 and killing its mutated leader, the warrior found herself resting in the town of Shitheap, a wreckertown established in the remains of a vault whose inhabitants had all died from disease. The town was considered particularly miserable: it was a place for those with no other place to go. Wreckers who had been kicked out of their clans, blacklisted from crews, or just to poor to escape its orbit. It was the far edge of the pacific: no one in particular wanted to live in this place.

There was exactly one person in that place who had hope to improve it: Rozalyn, the town mechanic and shipwright. The woman would repair the Water Seekers vessel for a small payment of copper- During their conversation, Rozalyn revealed the town was a frequent victim of Arbuckle in between his hunts, which had helped ensure that past attempts to help improve the town had failed: if he could be removed and his pillaging stopped, Shitheap might, eventually, become less of a shitheap. As a result, she had spent many years coming up with a plan-

And so it was decided. The Water Seeker was in the right area. The right opportunity had presented itself. A brief detour was acceptable. Roz informed the Water Seeker that if she was going to take out the Battlemaster, she would need to lure him away from his hunts first: Long Tom had been on the prowl for information about mysterious sea-beasts fervently enough that faking a lead would likely be the only thing capable of drawing Arbuckle away from his leviathan hunts near the Edge of the West, a rad-swept region beyond which only existed permanent typhoons. If a powerful enough signal was broadcast tantalizing information out, then it might be possible to draw him in for an ambush. 

For this to work, however, they would need a way to cripple his ship in one shot. Near the lost Isle of the Forbidden, there was a tower, a gigantic weapon that had shot down two nukes, a failed attempt to reduce the severity of the apocalypse. No Wrecker had been able to salvage it, as the thing was protected by another great terror of the sea, the Mo’okuna, a titanic mutated serpent that destroyed whoever wandered into its territory, large enough that not even Long Tom was willing to face it. 

The Water Seeker would have to be quick, quiet, and run like hell. But if they could salvage the tower, or at least critical parts of it, Rozalyn would be able to build a single shot ambush weapon. Setting out on her vessel, the Water Seeker crept her way to the Laser Tower, managing to reach the offshore installations docking bay, finding it mostly abandoned barring Ghouls, all long since feral. 

Sneaking her way up the tower, the Water Seeker would occasionally catch glimpses of the serpent, though thankfully neither of them got a direct look at each other, allowing the warrior to make her way to the top, though the entire time the Seeker found herself on the edge of alarm, finding shed skin, loose teeth, piles of excrement, and other signs that the Mo’okuna could stumble across her the entire time were she unfortunate. Reaching the top, the Water Seeker managed to locate the towers control room, finding it remarkably intact and empty: the entry-hatch was too small for the monster to enter. 

Given a brief respite, the Water Seeker began salvaging what she could: capacitors and focusers and amps and control rods and other critical components. None are quite sure how the heroine actually carried all of this, but it is indisputable that she did so. 

Once it was time to escape, the Water Seeker activated the alarms in the control room, enraging the Mo’okuna and distracting it long enough for the Water Seeker to escape. Attempted to destroy the control room, the Mo’okuna paid no attention to the Water Seeker as the warrior crept away, reaching the docks…

Only to be ambushed by a familiar face: the Prophet. Attempting to assassinate the Water Seeker, the abyssal fishperson took advantage of the Seekers burden to attempt to even the disparity of combat ability between the two of them. 

And yet, the Water Seeker prevailed, successfully wounding the Prophet grievously, forcing them to retreat, summoning a leviathan, confident the creature could easily take advantage of the cramped conditions of the docks to destroy the meddlesome wanderer. Emerging from the surf, the mass of bloated cancerous flesh let out a horrific wail of malice…

Before finding itself smashed by the tail of Mo’okuna, the creature and the fighting having drawn the titanic serpents attention. It was then that the Water Seeker saw it fully: dwarfing the abyssal giant several times over, the serpent was a dull grey color, covered in patches of eel-slick skin and scales here and there, electricity crackling around its gills, even as its eyes glowed radiation green.

Fearing for her life, the Water Seeker crept away, hoping her small size made her unappetizing to the monster, which slithered its way down the tower, sniffing the flattened corpse of the Leviathan. Deeming the creature inedible, the Mo’okuna gave a deep belly hiss, mouth opening to reveal not just fangs, but also additional rings of needle like teeth going down the mutant beasts gullet. 

She began to pilot her vessel away from the tower just in time to watch the serpent rear back and fire a pillar of lightning at the Leviathans carcass to vaporize it, the arcing beam illuminating the pacific for miles around, and for the rest of her life, the Water Seeker would refuse to go near the water-lizards territory. 

Returning to Rozalyn, the pair of them worked on setting up the ambush: traveling to a nearby located island that had once hosted an ACME resort, the mechanic would lay the ground with mines, turrets, a few salvaged robots, and foxholes and fortifications to be used by the few Wreckers she could convince to help her and the Water Seeker. Then, at the top of the ACME Hotel that had served as the resorts heart and powered by the buildings reactors, the group set up an emitter designed to broadcast a very special message and, taking advantage of the fact that the hotel overlooked the entirety of the small island, re-assembled the laser tower components into the Rozalyn Cannon. 

It only took 71 hours for Arbuckle to come, drawn in by the broadcast of, seemingly, a scientist who had developed a weapon to fight the drowned who needed help. Still, the Battlemaster was smart enough to recognize a trap, sending first a probing assault party to test the defenses. 

They were better trained than most pirates, but the Water Seeker was better, and the ground had been prepared in her favor. Accordingly, the broadcast was changed, with the “scientist” now complaining about pirates attempting to kidnap them and begging for help, interspersed with a few tidbits of information the Water Seeker had learned for credibility. Science wasn’t her forte, but she wasn’t stupid, and during her journey had memorized numerous important facts about the pathogen and its behavior, if only to better learn how to destroy it. 

Arbuckle now had a measure of their defences, however: the next assault, he would send three landing parties, all hitting different parts of the beach, hoping the Water Seeker would only be able to successfully repel one. 

This did prove at least partially successful, in that one of his teams did successfully take a singular beach-head, but they were only able to do so at one: the Water Seeker and Roz’s volunteers had successfully pushed them back on the other front. 

The next assault would occur two days later, Arbuckle attacking under cover of night, the Storm surfacing and beaching itself. This had been exactly what Rozalyn had been waiting for: activating the Laser Cannon, she was able to hit the Storm in its engines, stranding the vessel, though she would only get a single shot off before the Reactor died.

Now, their means of escape destroyed, Arbuckles crew surged up the beaches, attempting to fight their way to the hotel through the lasers, mines, bullets and bombs that there barraging them. The means to be cautious had been taken from them, and so they were forced to be bold. 

And yet they were forced into open combat with a god of death: the Water Seeker was a human terror, killing with such speed and ferocity that many Pirates would have their wills break, fleeing in a panic from the grim reaperess that was cutting a grim scythe through their numbers, the slaughter eventually drawing Arbuckle out, the young Wrecker obviously mutated. 

It seemed that the Battlemaster had taken after their mentor in another way: Arbuckle had taken to eating Fishman flesh in order to emulate Long Tom. And yet, without the accidental partial inoculation Long Tom had received as a youth, Arbuckle’s repetition was proving disastrous to the Wreckers sanity: the same hunger Captain Uranium had received, but also paired with an increase to aggression, worsening impulse control, and declining intelligence. 

It also granted him a strange form of regeneration, enhanced strength, and other mutations that helped to make the man incredibly dangerous. When he confronted the Water Seeker, he was just as much fishman as he was human. 

Enraged by the reaping of his crew and growing more furious to learn he was fighting the killer of First Mate St. Paul, the fishman hybrid swore to the Water Seeker that he wouldn’t rest until he had avenged them by ripping off the Water Seekers head and feeding it to the sharks, before furiously attacking her. Much like St. Paul, he had put up a great fight: moreso, even: even with his declining mind, Battlemaster Arbuckle was still possessed of great cunning, occasionally retreating when sufficiently wounded to inject himself with stimpacks and let his regenerative capacity repair injured limbs as well as to apply other chems and throwing grenades, having the sharpshooters on his crew provide suppressing fire from behind battle-lines and cover to cover him. 

It was a hard-fought battle, but in the end, the Water Seeker had more gun than Arbuckle had stimpacks, and once those were gone it was just a matter of overwhelming his healing factor. Finally, Arbuckle would fall, weak and gasping, his body having begun cannibalizing itself to repair the damage done. 

Accepting his defeat, he offered his surrender for confinement and execution - his only condition that his crew be spared. This…this gave the Water Seeker pause, the warrior not being familiar with foes asking for mercy, especially on anothers behalf. 

Deciding after deliberation that regardless of what choice she had made, the threat of Arbuckles fleet of pirates was over, the Water Seeker would take Arbuckle alive, alongside his crew. Travelling back to Shitheap, the town would ignite into a furor when it learned that its most common tormentors had been captured. A trial would be held by the town, which would come together and, convinced by Rozalyn, agree to hang only the Battlemaster- his crew would be put onto salvage duty, starting with the remains of the Fury: Rozalyn hoped the influx of workers and the highly valuable components of the pirates Bathyship could be used to revitalize the Wreckertown. 

The next day, Arbuckle hung on the wind, convicted by a jury of his victims and his crew found themselves clapped in bomb-collars to keep them behaving until such a time as they had paid back their debt: maybe not the most just ending, but it was at least one the Water Seeker could live with. 

As she set out, the Water Seeker found her vessel upgraded by Rozalyn, the wrecker-mechanic including components from both the Storm of Century and the Laser Tower to create what amounted to a small war-sub, one that would no doubt prove useful for the final battle and, in the coming days, would also prove handy when encountering some of the larger hazards of the sea, including the slowly dwindling population of Leviathans, the monsters having been destroyed more and more over the course of the Water Seekers quest by both her and other factions in the Pacific. 

It would be some time before her war against Long Tom would continue: after both SPD 1-2 and the battle at Deep Canyon. Visiting Ventropolis, she would come across a Wrecker shipping guild known as the Dockers Collective that had been attempting to establish a trade route between Ventropolis and several other Wrecker-towns that weren’t in easy range to trade with New Alcatraz. Led by Boss Hugo, a Wrecker-captain possessed of a cyclopian single-eye mutation, the organization was stymied by a combination of Ventropolis prejudice against the Wreckers and the depredations of Captain Long Toms fleet making trading too dangerous.

The Water Seeker was intrigued to learn Long Tom was in the area. Boss Hugo was intrigued to learn that she had taken down his lieutenants already: her reputation by this point had spread far enough that he was well aware of her talent of lethality. He hired her, making her an offer: help him take down the Wrath, and convince Ventropolis to do business with them, the Dockers would pay the Water Seeker by getting a trade route set up between the Wreckertowns she had visited and ACME City as well. A pain in the ass, but all parties would benefit immensely from commerce with each other: ACME had irradiated food and a pressing need for manpower, parts, and other goods, and the Wreckers were radiation-proof and had all sorts of goodies to sell. 

Agreeing to the terms, the Water Seeker would board a Bathysub, the Pride of Babylon, bound for New Alcatraz. Halfway through, they would be attacked and boarded: the Doctor Edgars Wrath. Over radio, Captain Long Tom Uranium announced his intentions: the Water Seeker had killed his best friend as well as the Battlemaster, who had been like a son to him. Because of this, he was going to make sure the Water Seeker paid: along with everyone who had ever sailed with her. Boarding the Pride, Long Toms crew were to a man all mutated beyond Wrecker standard: much like Arbuckle, they admired the Captain enough to emulate his consumption of fishman flesh, a crew of partial cannibals whose progression varied, some being near feral berzerkers, others being merely gilled and web-fingered, many having the same grey sandpapery skin as their captain. 

Ferocious and hardy, these pirates were perhaps the most terrifyingly effective of the crews the Seeker had fought thus far, each requiring countless bullets and distressing quantities of microfusion cells to put down: each and every inch was hard won by the Water Seeker, who slowly cut a path to the enemy ship, boarding it in turn. 

She was in enemy territory now: before, she had fought the pirates-and won- on either neutral ground or well prepared territory. She was behind enemy lines now, and in the cramped corridors of the Wrath, the Water Seeker found herself tested to her limit, every corner hiding another enemy, every shadow being another foe in waiting, and each and every bullet too important to waste. Soon, however, she found herself encountering less and less fishmen hybrids, until eventually she reached the hold of the Bathship.

In it were countless cages full of Fishmen, many in poor health or injured, captives of the crew likely doomed to serve in their larder. Taking a moment of her time, the Water Seeker freed the creatures, opening their cages and the hold and allowing them to flee into the surf. Continuing on, she eventually found herself in a great and massive banquet hall, where she finally met the Captain.

Angry, sorrowful, but most of all hungry, the mutant glared at the Water Seeker. Still, for all his hatred, the man was big enough to admit that his foe was talented indeed. So before he killed her, he would permit a brief parlay.

The Water Seeker asked why: why he had committed himself to the life of a Pirate. With his talents and resources he could have become a hero to the wastes, and yet he instead chose to prey on it.

‘It’s the only thing I have ever known: I was born into piracy. My first killing was as a mere babe of eight years, against a rival crew. My pap had been cut down in front of me, and it was all I could do to kill the other man before my ma was killed. Twas the first night I ate well: the day Captain Arbuckle deemed me a man, and allowed me to eat at the adults table, with adults portion. It was the first night I ate well- reward for murder. And every murder afterwards, I ate well: every death another bowl full of victuals, each successful raid a full pantry.’

They were a monster, the Water Seeker responded: their appetite had made them less than human. 

‘Perhaps. I am certainly no longer what I once was: the hunger is…constant now. When I look at a person now, I can’t help but see not them, but the meal they could potentially be’, The fishman admitted. ‘But the time for my ending is not now, and you will find my faculties more than sufficient to kill you’. 

With that, the battle began: with his crew cheering on, Captain Long Tom attempted to kill the Water Seeker, his monstrous strength and regenerative abilities paired with his sheer unrelenting skill made it the most difficult fight the Water Seeker had ever participated in, lasting two hours.

And yet, eventually, under the barrage of bullets, plasma, laser-fire, and grenades, Captain Uranium would lose strength, eventually falling to his knees, spent, the Water Seeker likewise deeply exhausted, if still in fighting shape barely. 

‘Aye, looks like you win this one,’ Captain Long Tom agreed jovially, coughing blood, body covered in wounds. ‘Get it over with then: I’ve had a good run. Longer than most: at least this way, I won’t go out from old age. No way for a pirate to die, that.’

His crew watching in silent horror, Long Tom Uranium closed his eyes as the Water Seeker raised her weapon to his forehead and fired.

And no more did Long Tom exist. Staring into the crowed of now thoroughly cowed mutants, the Water Seeker ordered them to let the Pride continue on its way, and to make way to Ventropolis. She had an agreement to cash in.

The Dockers would seize the Wrath, repurposing it to serve as an anti-piracy vessel in order to help convince Ventropolis to do business with them. They would also send ships out to Spite and Shitheap, each laden with supplies to help the Wreckertowns that had helped liberate the seas from one of its greatest menaces, with another expedition to ACME City planned. 

And the Water Seeker would continue on her journey, confident the region was just a little bit more prepared for the Drowned.