Preventing Whalular Explosions (Seika)

For a bit now Seika had been hearing about strange happenings that were occurring on beaches across Fiore. Apparently, there were quite a few fish just lying on the beach for no reason. Since news stations and individual reporters all over the country wanted the scoop firsthand, they were hiring different people to travel there as soon as possible. However, it was rumored that the areas could be dangerous; for this reason, many of the jobs were going out to mages.

Seika had accepted a job not only because it sounded interesting and like a good time to go to the beach, but also since she was in the progress of overcoming one of her fears: water. So as the girl made her way out of the teleporter and studied the beach at Cedar Town, she huffed a breath of exasperation. There was hundreds of fish, jellyfish, sting rays, sharks, and other creatures just lying on the sand, apparently content to flap around and slowly suffocate in the air. Cautiously, she approached the nearest fish, which was very large and seemed to be something like a tuna or carp. With no small amount of hesitation she ran a diagnostic spell quickly over it, one that she had picked up after working at a medical clinic for a short period of time. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the fish except for the fact that being on land was going to take its toll very soon. So since it seemed to be okay, she tentatively picked it up by the tail fin and heaved it into the water with a splash.

The oceans seemed to be emptied of all fish and wildlife, big and small, and the water was so clear of even kelp, plankton, and algae that she could see the fish she threw as it hefted itself out of the water and promptly beached itself again. Startled, Seika blinked at the sight before she took another step forward only to be suddenly attacked by fish nearby. It looked like she had ventured too far into the horde and was now close enough that some could attempt to swat at her and bite and smack the mage painfully. Leaping away, Seika bit her lip as she stared at the full beach. Nearby, she saw what looked like another mage casting giant, sweeping spells that sent slices of fish flying through the air. He was killing them all; it was effective, surely, in clearing the space for the public to enjoy (tomorrow or the next day, probably, when the fish guts would be swept away by the water) but she was hesitant to engage in such carnage instantly. The fish had done nothing wrong, after all. And who was to say that there would be greater happiness amongst the world's population as a result of mass extermination of all of the beached aquatic creatures?

Pensively, Seika made her way delicately through the sea of beached fish, moving as quickly as she possibly could despite the careful steps she made. Her leg was bitten by a shark and all she did was kick the side of its head, unable to force herself to move close enough to kill it or utilize magic to do so. All of a sudden, an enormous figure rose out farther into the water, not really close to the beach but approaching at a concerningly fast pace, soaring through the air until suddenly a whale landed right in front of Seika. Only a few meters away, it had squished the fish underneath (or perhaps they were still miraculously alive) and was now proceeding to flail about and beat its tail and flippers in powerful strokes that left any nearby mages running for their life.

626 Words

Now there was a new problem to deal with, although undoubtedly related to the others. Seika mulled over how to get the whale back into the water, first considering a very powerful spout of water magic that could propel the mammal off the beach and to where it belonged, chilling in the ocean. There was just a few problems with that idea. First of all, the water was so shallow that unless she could send the whale flying far enough into the sea, it would probably end up stranded in the shallow water, soon to be beached again. Another problem was getting a water spell or some kind of air or pushing force strong enough to move the creature. Since, Seika herself didn't actually have water magic or anything that would be good with that kind of movement.

"Hey! Does anyone have any ideas for how we can get this back into the water? It um, it probably shouldn't be here, I really don't know how it managed to beach itself so... so enthusiastically, but, we should save it, right?" she half yelled, have asserted at a normal speaking volume. The girl was torn between whether she should be projecting her voice as much as possible or keeping it to a moderately loud volume in order to not startle the enormous oceanic animal that was flopping around nearby her. The result was inconclusive and not particularly helpful; a few mages nearby seemed to take notice, but they only shook their heads with no apparent ideas for how to return the whale to its natural habitat.

Tapping a finger against her chin, Seika finally decided, "I think we're going to have to kill it..." her voice wasn't too loud, but it was most definitely audible from the other workers and mages that were around the beach. They all looked at the whale at the same time, staring at it as it flopped around and struggled ineffectively. "The other fishies, they didn't wanna go back into the water. I think whatever made them do this, it won't let them return, so, let's kill the whale before it creates any more misery," not only for itself but also for the other fish that were undoubtedly being crushed underneath it or the ones around that were being smacked painfully by the giant fail and fins.

Seika couldn't bear to look as they put the whale out of its agony with some kind of spell that she was curious about, but not enough to look. With a wince the girl stared at the now dead creature. Nearby, one of the mages said that they should move it, push it back into the sea. "Ehh? Why?" She frowned, worried at the idea of having to move the corpse over all of the fish that were flopping around and navigating the larger sharks that could be a problem. Patiently, the mage explained to her that when whales died, they released a bunch of gas and it was even worsened by decomposition, where bacteria released more gas. Since it couldn't escape through skin or things like farts (Seika couldn't help but giggle at the explanation despite the mage's deadpan expression, or in fact furthered on because of that) the whale could eventually explode, leaving a mess of blubber, blood, and other unsavory whale parts all around the area.

560 Words, 686 Total (-500 for Job)

Now the issue was actually getting the whale into the water. For a few moments, she contemplated just dragging it. The likelihood of that working was probably quite good, if they could get enough people to come help, but when she told the other mages, they shook their heads no. Seika insisted on trying it herself, only to find that the body of a whale was rather slippery. It wasn't as if it were slimy, exactly, since the skin was pretty rough in her opinion. Rather, it felt like even though they were on land, she could still feel the smoothness and current of water flowing over it. The feeling felt very strange, actually. She wondered briefly if it might be on account of whatever spell or magical mishap had caused the whale to beach itself so abruptly and aggressively, but figuring out the source of the problem was not in Seika's interest right now. Taking a deep breath, she considered what to do. If pulling didn't work.... then maybe pushing? With a sudden sparkle in her eyes, Seika called out, "Everybody come help me! Let's push the whale into the ocean!" The others were not as excited at the prospect as she was, but grudgingly they agreed to try to help her.

The results were surprisingly efficient. Before another hour was through, they were able to slowly inch the whale off of the beach. Luckily it was dead; well, they probably wouldn't have even tried to go near the thing in the way they did, if not for the fact that it was a corpse and unable to attack them. Either way, Seika was glad by the time everyone managed to push the carcass into the sea. She was mildly curious about what it would look like for the whale to explode but decided against taking the foolish risk of letting it sit and watching it. After all, she wasn't trying to kill a bunch of people for no reason! That... was a bad thing. Only bad people did that. She had to remember. With a short but pointed breath, Seika flashed a smile at the other mages. "Thanks everyone for the help! Thanks to you all, we were able to save the beach from the exploding whale!" She threw her hands up and began to dance around, cheering. After a few awkward minutes of her dancing, she realized that absolutely nobody else was celebrating with her and in fact most of them had either already left or were simply still staring at her awkwardly, the majority not even directly.

"Ahh, well, I guess I should get back to cleaning then!" Seika thought out loud, before someone threw a fish at the side of her ribcage and hissed for her to stop being so loud and just get back to work. Pouting, Seika scowled at the mage and picked up a fish of her own. "You are such a meanie! And a downer! Just be nice, okay?" She was tempted to throw the fish at him but controlled herself. The rest of the beach cleaning went well, for the most part. Only, it turned out that there was too much for them to handle, even as a group. Tomorrow would have to be another work day. Seika wasn't too upset about that, unlike some of the other mages who grumbled a lot about that prospect. But she couldn't really hold it against them. They were supposed to only work for a day, and while she was sure they would pay them for both, it was understandable that it was more time committed than any hired mages would have originally suspected was necessary. When she said so much to one of her fellow workers, though, he laughed her off. He asked her if she really thought the companies or beach management would pay them for the full days of work when the contract and official job slip they had agreed to was only for one day of work. It would be considered their fault for not being able to do it in a day and needing extra time allowance.

When she heard this, Seika frowned. It was just so unfair, though; she couldn't stand the idea. Pouting, she picked up a fish and then threw it back down on the ground in anger. "Well then, I quit!" She announced loudly. The area around her grew silent for a moment before it was quickly broken by the sound of flopping fish. "Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry, are you okay? Did I hurt you?" Seika kneeled down next to the flopping fish and then brought her face close to it, as if inspecting for injury. Abruptly, the fish attacked, aiming for her eye with a sharp tail fin smack. "Ow!" She cried out and leaped away from the poor little thing. Around her, a few mages who witnessed that muttered to themselves. Obviously, she was crazy. Their goal here was to kill all of the fish and other creatures and she was here asking if it was okay. Seika honestly wasn't paying attention to anything of her surroundings much anymore. She had already made up her mind to leave and come back tomorrow, but not with the intention of cleaning. After all, whoever was paying the mages was just being a big meanie about it, and she didn't feel like standing for it.

902 Words, 1588 Total

Seika had been aware of her fear of the ocean for quite some time. In fact, she was so hyper aware of it that she actively chose missions that would bring her into close contact with water, whether it was through rivers and streams that were harmless and barely fear inducing or whether it took her in ships across the sea. The latter was far worse on her mental state, but it had a bigger impact on her fear. The way she figured it, eventually she would become desensitized to the ocean: its smell, its presence, it's everything. For now, though, Seika found herself slightly trembling as she stared at the water. From her position sitting on the edge of one of the docks at the coast of the Fishy Fish Sea, she wasn't really in much danger at all. The worst that could happen would be her falling into the water and panicking too much to swim; there were plenty of people around and surely one would take enough notice to rescue her.

Still, Seika was not reassured. She stared at the surface, the smoothness broken by her toes and feet that were dipped into the mass and swirling around but moreover disturbed by all of the boats and tourists that were around here. This beach, this area period, wasn't very popular. Nonetheless, a few families could be found around, along with zizzing boats and a few bigger ships. Nothing particularly large; there was no space for cruise liners in this harbor, nor ginormous cargo vessels, but the area had a decent trade. There were most definitely better places to put down anchor for those looking to make actual profit. Seika had chosen this one for the exact reason that there were likely to be less people around. This way, if she made a mistake there would be enough people to rescue her from her own idiocy, but not enough to take too many pictures or viral videos or get the word out. She could pictures the headlines; "Girl almost drowns from faceflopping into the ocean."

With a light laugh, Seika got to her feet a little bit shakily. She continued to stare at the water, the sun glinting off of the surface in a beautiful way that scattered the light into little shining pieces that were each individually bright but together, a blinding set of prisms. Reflecting on her own experience with rainbows and light magic, Seika reached out slowly, mesmerized by the way she saw everything and nothing in the reflection of the ocean. At the same time as she could see herself and every imperfection, she was faced with the ground underwater- no, that wasn't exactly the right word. There was some term for it... oh, the bottom? The bottom of the sea. Here, it was only a short distance away, hardly an ocean floor but more of a beach and sandy surface that could be the same as the exposed land just a few meters farther inland.

The first step to solving her fear of the ocean was to understand where it came from. Seika knew that, and yet, she still didn't want to think about her past in relation to the water. When she was younger, growing up in the Pergrande Kingdom, everything had been quite simple. It was a mainland country, after all, and a very large one, too; the biggest bodies of water she ever encountered were just lakes and occasionally major rivers. The ocean was absolutely unheard of, especially since immigration was fairly limited and the sea was watched by the government to confirm that no pesky magic users or parasitic foreigners made their way into the nation. Tourism was appreciated but overall, citizens of the Pergrande Kingdom were told to be wary of strangers to the country.

Seika had been no exception to this indoctrination. Along with her peers, she had heard that it was dangerous to go too close to the edges of the nation, that there were more illegal immigrants and deadly sorts of people that would be happy to kill, manipulate, and otherwise ruin their lives. Her family never told her anything otherwise, and being the trusting sort, she never brought up any doubts herself (at least, not without them being quickly and firmly shut down) so Seika never had a reason to doubt the word of, well, everyone.

Honestly, she should have doubted their reassurances anyway. Now as a mage, and having basically no experience beside what she had scrounged up on her own and with the help of some of her guild members and associates, Seika wished she had learned about magic earlier. Then maybe she wouldn't be stuck taking jobs that involved killing fish when she really didn't want to. Not only was the stench overpowering, but she also simply disliked the senseless carnage. It was wholly uninteresting and unappetizing. Occasionally, she liked grunt work that was mindless, where she could chatter away all day to her friends or fellow workers. But this wasn't that kind of case. Today, and yesterday in fact, there was nobody really to interact with. While she did love animals for the most part and working with them, as well as tasks when nobody was around (because hey, she didn't need 24/7 social interaction to survive!) killing them for the entire time, alone, splattered in fish guts, was a different story.

Withholding a noise of complaint, Seika got to her feet and began heading away from the docks, back to the beach. There was no telling what awaited her there or if she would actually get paid for her work yesterday despite skipping out today. The time for self reflection and thinking had been nice, though. Honestly, it wasn't often that she took the time to think rather than speak or act. Additionally, she rarely thought about her origins or past, especially as the Pergrande Kingdom wasn't really a positive influence on her life. No matter what, though, Seika would always hold her family deep in her heart, as well as the few friends she had made their. And in the end, it brought her here, and to Sin, and to finding Aphelia, so things were as they should be.

1041 Words, 2629 Total