Chapter Text
There was a heavy fog upon the water. Instead of smelling as water should, humid and cloud like, it bore the unmistakable stench of still water and rotting fish. Of course, an ocean should smell of fish in general, otherwise it would be a frightening and unnatural area of an ocean, but no ocean should be still. For an ocean to be still is strange. Unnerving, even.
Luckily, it was only the fog that introduced the idea of still water. The ocean waves were choppy and harsh, slamming into the sides of the boat with seemingly reckless abandon that sent shivers in your bones. Each crash sent showers of salty spray over the sides of said ship, splattering onto the deck.
It was so salty that Sukuna kept having to buy so much lotion he was losing out all of the money he made from fishing. He was poor. Dirt poor. Even half-oceanic monster men needed guardians.
It was a good thing that the fog was heavy enough to cover the deck, as it provided an excuse to not have to clean it: you simply could not see what mess lied behind the grounded cloud whatsoever. This did, however, gift one with a reason to be frightened. It was as if the seas only allowed those daring to navigate it limited vision, swallowing all surroundings and leaving whoever is stranded in it to the mercy of whatever creatures lie beyond the mere few feet one could glimpse. Not even fans could dispel the gloom. Three fans, two fans, or even only fans.
Somewhere deep below the surface of the choppy black water, came the singing harmonies of some enormous creature. The whalesong rolled up through the hull as though it was traveling through bone rather than brine, low and mournful. According to some traders near the marshland fish markets, the song had made lesser men grip the rail and pray to gods who didn’t quite listen anymore. If you sang back badly enough, you could scare away the whales. It was an especially useful tactic at three in the morning, and Sukuna wished to write poetry.
Patches of the sea glowed faintly where things best left unnamed drifted just beneath the surface, pale bioluminescent bruises spreading and shrinking with the swell. Little patches of bright greens and purples, inhabited by even brighter dots of phytoplankton or other krill swimming around. It left a rather nice glow on the hull of the fishing boat, green light bouncing off of the sleek red metal.
Overhead, the stars refused to blink. Well, hopefully they were stars. They watched, unblinking and lidless, like a thousand pupils fixed on the tiny red boat rocking alone in all that dark. Occasionally, they moved. Over weeks and days, slow enough to attribute to the changing seasons yet fast enough to be the movement of some large creature, hopefully benign.
Sukuna didn't look up at them. He'd never found them unsettling, or strange. They were beautiful, but boring. He was, by far, the strangest creature around so what could they possibly do?
His boat was a stubborn little thing—red hull scabbed over with rust and deep gouges from… some things, a white cabin with blue-glassed windows fogged from the inside, a peaked red roof that caught what little moonlight bled through the clouds. It even had a little antennae above that let him listen to radio songs as he sailed. It only worked on one channel, which was annoying, but not worth the money it’d cost to fix. His darling boat listed slightly to port, and he'd long since stopped bothering to fix it.
He crouched at the bow, red hair damp and wild around his face, wolf-cut layers plastered to his neck by the mist. The tiger-stripe markings along his arms—dark red against darker red, barely visible except where the glow-patches caught them—seemed to pulse faintly whenever he grinned, and he was grinning now, pointed teeth catching what light there was, the two curved fangs at the corners gleaming like fishhooks of their own.
His four eyes burned a dull ember-red in the fog, the only warm color in a world gone monochrome, the only proof he was alive. His tail curled loose behind him, tuft twitching, and he was careful — out of habit more than fear — to keep it well clear of the coiled fishing line.
It seemed rather obvious, from an outsider’s perspective. Of course somebody smiling and moving was alive. A dead person can’t talk. These oceans were different, and it would do well to remember. If only these oceans were different enough to also have restaurants or fast food chains.
A man got hungry, sometimes.
Something shifted beneath the boat.
A rather big something, at that.
He'd been tracking it for an hour—a leviathan-class fish, which he could then either eat or sell. The money was nice, but the taste and texture nicer.
But money.
Its back had breached the water surface twice, now, a ridge of black chitin studded with barnacle-crusted eyes that opened and closed independently of each other, each one rolling to track him with frenzy and fervor. Tentacled fins, too many of them to count, dragged along beneath the water like frayed roots. Every time the beast surfaced, the whalesong stopped.
It could be due to the crashing of its mass hitting the waves drowning out the music, or it was frightening enough that the whales did not want to catch it’s attention. It was slightly insulting, since the whales didn’t stop for him.
Sukuna's grin widened in response to the fish, though. His stomach growled, loud enough to embarrass a lesser predator. Metaphorically. His stomach was bottomless, and had far too much empty space to have liquid gurgle. His eyes caught what little light there was and threw it back doubled, tripled, flaring bright and flat like a cat's in headlights, before dimming back down to their usual dull ember.
He tilted his head, much like a cat with the prospect of a mouse as a toy, already salivating at the thought of what that meat would taste like seared, or raw, or however he felt like having it by the time he dragged it up onto the deck. So much for the good money that could have come from its carcass. Then again, he had replaced the engines on his boat for more fishing rod space, so he couldn’t have lugged the whole thing back with him. For now, he’d kill it, butcher it, and take the best parts. Whatever was left could feed birds or crabs or whatever scavengers there were in this area.
Then, he noticed something even more entertaining than the big fish.
It bloomed out of the black water off the starboard side of his darling, ringed in a sickly phosphorescent glow, spinning slow and hypnotic, like the sea itself had opened an eye just for him. Mother Ocean loved him like that, bringing him all sorts of treasures and adventures. Deep-water pressure puffed up and out of it in cold gusts that smelled of salt and just a wee bit more. What fun! What adventure!
Sukuna shuddered to think of how boring life would be without Mother Ocean’s gifts. He’d go crazy, maybe even eat people. It was on his bucket list, though only after he’d completely scoured the oceans.
…
Maybe that’s why the villagers avoided him.
Whatever.
He shifts his focus back to the whirl pool.
It was abyss tier, easily.
Now, now, what could possible lie in there? He dropped his harpoons against the deck, the leviathan long gone in front of this creepy old (new?) thing, and rushed to the back of the boat. There, he sent the deep-sea hooks—the good ones, the ones forged heavy enough to punch through carapace three feet thick—sailing out over the edge of the boat into the water in a practiced arc, chain rattling free of its coil.
The whirlpool swallowed them without so much as a tug of resistance. Just like that, chain and all, sucked into the glowing dark at once. Sukuna blinked. Then, he rewound the chains back into the boat, only to watch precisely half of the chain return, a clean cut left from where it had touched the mess of water.
Damn.
Sukuna stared at the empty water where his hooks used to be. A shame, because those had cost a pretty penny, at least five crab pots near the Duskgloom Shallows.
Then he laughed, delighted, already reaching for the harpoon mounted along the cabin wall. A different one to those on the deck floor, because those where for shooting and this was for swinging, especially in the water. He loved cutting. Anything that could cut sharp, his soul wanted sharper.
These harpoons were very nice, but not quite enough.
“What fun.”
He didn't even bother securing a line, just planting one foot on the rail, harpoon in hand, and jumped. His grin split wide enough to show every one of those curved fangs, the curved edge residing cheek to cheek, the quadrate bone unhinged, leaving the fleshy connective tissue open to see. A thin second lid slid sideways across his eyes, quick as a blink and twice as wrong, there and gone before it could properly be seen. If anyone had been watching closely —though no one could, in the middle of No Man’s Land— they might have thought they'd imagined it.
He dove down into the bone chilling water, his shoulders seemingly popping out of their sockets to provide for a more streamlined descent. Clawed fingers pointed down, and digitigrade legs pulled near-straight. His tail was free as ever, though; it was free to do whatever it pleased since it didn’t provide any water resistance anyways. The water was disgusting, here.
The last thing he felt was the water churning even faster, the phytoplankton rushing and concentrating in one spot. DUCK! HE GOT SOME IN HIS MOUTH!