Divinity, sparking light in the darkness of the abyss

[Fenix]

Suwako took a deep gulp of sea-water, the refreshing feeling of once again heading below the ocean felt more than a little freeing. She’d tried for a few hours to get some sort of useful conversation from her previous helper, only for her to be mostly mute. It was enough to get Suwako to throw herself into the ocean - so she did! With a frog splash to boot!

Now, she found herself swimming through the shallows of the great ocean, sitting near the surface as she looked for something similar to land. There was plenty of fish in the sea, but Suwako had a feeling none of them were interested in giving her directions.

“Hey, Fish, gimme a lift!” Suwako yelled, her divine voice pushing through the water with only a bit of tinny distortion, before grabbing onto the fin of a nearby fish. The Coelacanth grunted, but begrudgingly pulled Suwako forward. The amphibian kami sighed, as she was pulled forward through the sea. The Water goddess hadn’t yet had a chance to stretch her legs, but she was certain that this would eventually fix itself once she regained her sea legs.

The feeling of the water rushing past her was still great, though, as the great fish bucked through the water. Guiding the large sea creature roughly in the direction she wanted to go was just barely doable with her small hands, and her arms were already sore from being jerked around by this underwater bull, but it didn’t bother her that much. After all, she had actually found herself a goal underneath these waters…

Bright and sparkling through the abyss, the tiniest shade of something sparks, resonating with her own. A shard of divinity. A god as she was a god. Holding onto the fish, she focuses her senses on that shard, feeling the power exuding from it. She had no idea who it was - her senses weren’t the best, so far from her place of worship - but she knew it contained power, and a lot of it, and she was eager to meet it in person and find out just how potent it was. At worst, it might be a god she could loot some divinity from to empower herself - ya know, if it was a complete jerk or something.

At best?

Suwako gulped.

It wouldn’t be good for them at the moment, but who knows? Maybe Kanako was there, trapped beneath the waves in some underwater cave somewhere and waiting for Suwako to save her butt.

The thought brought a smile to her face, as she imagined Kanako’s exhausted expression at being forced to rely on the shorter god - one she’d previously beaten - for assistance here. Suwako was more than capable of holding onto something like that for a hundred years or longer, and Kanako damn well knew it.

Though, she might be in such a good mood finding her oldest friend that maybe she’d let it slide a little earlier…

A slight frown hit the Moriya God as another possibility hit her. If she was here, it’s possible Sanae, her descendant, had also fallen down here. And unlike Kanako, she still had human needs…

For all she knew, the depths had left her starving and cold. A living goddess she may be, but she wasn’t fully one with the divine yet. Exposure might take longer to claim her, but she could be dehydrated, or just hungry, unable to catch fish. Perhaps her leg was broken, and she was lying crippled somewhere-

A spike of pure, unrelenting fear stabbed through Suwako’s heart, and her eyes grew resolute as she looked to the ocean depths below. She wasn’t going to think about something like that. She would find this fellow god beneath the waves, She would make sure to turn it to her advantage, and if it was Sanae, she would save her before anything bad happened. She was no mere human to be worried about “what-ifs” and “maybes”. She was a god! She dictated reality, it didn’t dictate to her.

...even so, the curse goddess could feel her lip tremble at that aching thought, hanging on in her brain like a Leech attached to one’s arm.

The thought was distracting enough, however, to be just as deadly as an over-eager leech. Suwako’s distracted attention made her notice something far too late, as a giant creature swam it’s way through the water towards her. Just a distant black shape in the ocean for now, too far to give Suwako enough to really judge from, but enough for her to jump off the fish she was riding, as it moved towards the large predatory thing.

Diving with a determined air, Suwako moved to go farther down. There was a little mountain nearby that she could reach. Creatures of that size usually tended to avoid that sort of thing, afraid of bumping against the sea floor.

Swimming as fast as her little legs allowed, she quickly noticed that this was not going to work out in her favor, as she got closer to the ground. The fish she’d allowed to leave had escaped off into the distance, but the shape continued to swim towards her. Apparently, she seemed like better prey than the Coelacanth, which Suwako was honestly going to just classify as profiling in her head.

“Alright, Asshole, just try it. I bet you’re not so-shit!”

Suwako looked up to see a very un-fishlike fish. A skeletal grimace with four forn-like Growths in front of it’s face, all combined on a very large fish. While Suwako Moriya had never gotten a chance to talk with the locals, the general name used for the creature was ‘reaper leviathan’, and if she could only hear someone name it, the pint-sized goddess would have agreed with the assessment. Something like this could have swallowed one of the Mishaguji whole!

“Okay, time to go find a hole to crawl in!” Suwako grumbled, pointing her legs firmly up as she looked to the seabed underneath her. She could hear tremendous roar behind her as the Leviathan’s voice boomed through the sea so powerful it pushed the very water around her. She supposed it was angry at her for something - perhaps territory? Perhaps simply having bad choice in food? Or maybe it was the blonde hair.

Either way, the Rocks below were not approaching fast enough, and Suwako knew it. Swimming as fast as she could, the leviathan got closer and closer as Suwako swam for the underwater hills. It didn’t take a sidelong glance for Suwako to tell just how close the beast was getting, and it took all of her willpower not to look back as she heard a low growl.

She couldn’t, until the last moment, after all.

It wasn’t until those grasping claws got close enough to brush her legs that suwako did a pirouette, turning around as she drew her iron rings. The leviathan was well-armored, and it only took Suwako this fraction of a glance at the beast’s great teeth that this beast could swallow her in one if she allowed it, and it’s skin was thick enough that her rings would still have a trouble in their current low-powered state.

Still, Suwako wasn’t some greenhorn child to cry in this situation. She’d lived through hundreds of battles, and with a simple kick and a growl of determination, she moved forward, out of the leviathan’s grasp, and slashed for the eyeball with one of her favored weapon. The blessed metal cut into the creature’s left lower eye, but to give credit to it’s determination, The beast’s mouth still opened wide to try to eat it’s offending interloper.

“Oh, no you don’t, You overgrown goblin-shark!”

Suwako’s foot came down onto the side of the creature’s face as she brought up her other ring, the weapon catching into the creature’s jaw, and created what she was hoping for. Rather than pushing against it, Suwako allowed the creature to push onto the second ring even as she held firmly onto the first. For all of the reaper leviathan’s jaw strength, it was pushing against a rounded object, and Suwako didn’t need to hold her ground - just let the fish push her forward. The leviathan seemed to realize this, and instead of continuing to try to crush the little pest, shook as hard as it could.

Suwako was swiftly flung from her perch, an iron ring still embedded in the Leviathan’s Eye as she was thrown violently into the rocky outcroppings below. Hard stone was muffled by the blessed effects of the water slowing her descent, but the pain in her butt was one she knew would stick with her through the next week.

“I will have to get that back at some point…” Suwako mumbled through her own frustration, rushing into the sea canyons below as she hoped the Great beast had finally lost her. Finding a small doorway of sorts into an underwater cave system below, Suwako wasted no time finding her way into the man-sized tunnel. The Sea-rock gave much needed protection, and for the first time in a while, Suwako didn’t need to have eyes in the back of her head just to make sure she wasn’t eaten by some great big-

A slam from behind her made Suwako yelp as she turned around to see a familiar site - the leviathan, trying for all it was worth to try to squeeze its face into the hole.

“Are you freaking kidding me?!” Suwako yelled, bringing up her remaining weapon as the beast pounded it’s face against the hole. Tremors echoed through the water as pebbles slowly fell from the rocky tunnel’s ceiling, and Suwako opted to swim further in, instead of fighting. Not a second later, the Leviathan pushed forward, breaking the cavern face apart as it did so. The debris seemed to slow it, but that only gave Suwako just enough of an advantage to maintain their distance, nto gain any. She swam through different loops, past stalactites, and into reefs, and the Leviathan wasted no time breaking through all of them just to try and snatch her up in their jaws. Eventually, she found something she was looking for - a hole in the cavern floor. Blackness followed underneath, but anywhere was better than this death-trap, and as she looked to the tunnels around her, it seemed like all she had left were dead ends… and the unknown.

And when what was known was teeth and attitude and altogether too many eyes, the Unknown sounded pretty darn good.

Suwako swam as fast as she could, a deluge of rocks and an angry tirtan behind her, gnashing and biting as it longed ot pull her closer. Suwako gave a smirk as she saw her victory ahead…

It was turned into an anguished scream ,as one of the beasts grasping arms finally found something. Her leg was caught within the beast’s grasp, and now it put it’s full power into it.

It only took a second for her leg-bone to snap like a twig, but the leviathan had enough finesse to merely break it, rather than remove it.Suwako felt the Creature pull her in, and Fear gripped her for a moment. She could already hear Kanako’s disappointment - thousands of years of godhood, and dead, underground and underwater-

Wait, underground!”

Suwako wasted no time as she concentrated a piece of her power, Pushing the rock to do the impossible and perform a miracle. Another eye was taken from the creature as bark and wood pushed impossibly through a crack in the bedrock, and hard cypress struck chitin and flesh. The move was sufficient enough to get the Leviathan off of the little goddess’s tail. Instead of waiting up for the results, though, Suwako focused on her swimming skills as best as she could. Her Leg hurt like crazy, and bubbles popped out of her face as she whined in pain through gritted teeth, but she saw the red in the water. The leviathan had been hurt - surely, enough to make it let by-gones be by-gones and let go of it’s little snack, right?

Suwako kept swimming as best as she could with her hand, her body startin to pant with exhaustion and pain. She wasn’t a young god anymore, and she wasn’t a powerful one at the moment, either. She couldn’t keep this up. Not in her current state. At least she was sitting within - well, the darkness of the depths, admittedly, but even so, it seemed empty enough for the moment. And now that she’d lost the leviathan…


The sound of an explosion rocked the ocean, and suwako was sent tumbling further into the depths so quickly she couldn’t get the breath in her lungs to scream in frustration.

Falling rocks and the remains of a tree came with the shark-sized leviathan, and Suwako noticed quite a few bloody cuts from it’s recent slam against the Cave entrance. This thing was more persistent than any sea creature Suwako had known in a long time. Unfortunately, it had also called her bluff - she was out of tricks.

Suwako’s fists balled up in frustration and she glared resolutely at the creature with all the hatred she could muster. This freak of nature had decided to end the lifespan of someone thousands of years older, all because it felt too high-class for the average fish-food. The Goddess was so angry she bit her tongue in frustration, hard enough to start bleeding. “You little cretin…” The Blonde added… before giving a sigh, and floating in a more relaxed manner. “...I guess I only extended my time a decade, coming to gensokyo…”

With a shrug, Suwako gave a smile. Her shoulders sagged, her body grew still in the face of the great beast, and a chuckle escaped the frog goddess as she allowed her oversized tongue to loll out to the side.
“Grow greater than I ever did, Sanae Kochiya. Grow stronger and brighter than I ever was, And forget about me quickly. The last traces of me, I leave to you.”

Suwako closed her eyes, privately hoping that she would never have to explain those last words to anyone, if she was honest. Still… She didn’t think there was any magical wizard coming to save her, and as the great leviathan grew closer, snapping it’s jaws, she grinned. It had taken a hell of a monster to finally end her life. Fitting, for a god.

-Is how she’d felt, until she saw a faint metal shape, golden and fitted heading through the water. Remembering a comic Sanae made her read, and then looking back to the leviathan’s gaping maw, Suwako gave a big smile.

“You are going to hate what happens next, big guy.”

The Explosion was smaller than what Suwako had seen in the comics, but the Exploding Shell was still more than enough to immediately rip open the Leviathan, the shot leaving a mist of blue bubbles and red blood across the sea. The salty taste of leviathan juices sent suwako into a coughing fit, and the aftershocks of the force - amongst other things - left her body feeling sore and her broken leg on fire.

“Hack… Wasn’t ready for this one, but I s’pose I can’t complain. Now what the hell…”

Suwako’s Eyes widened as she looked to see her savior. Was that… No way. She’d seen them before, as humanity moved away from the gods and towards science and technology… but still, she had never seen one so gaudy.

Nor had she ever heard one with a sound-system, let alone one with such a ridiculous song.

"In the town, where I was born~ lived a maaaan, who sailed the sea~”

 

[Fenix]

Suwako’s eyes blinked a few times as the submarine got closer, trying to free them of the sea-water that filled them. The gaudy yellow and white look seemed to be a little too creative for the dark prisons of steel she was used to, not to mention the various valves and horns along the top and bottom, amongst other little bibs and bobs.

With a sigh, Suwako adjusted her stockings. She already wasn’t sure how safe she’d be with whatever weirdos were in there, but it seemed saferthan the Devil Leviathan’s stomach, so she figured she could at least roll with it for now. Assuming they could even let her on-board, of course.

With that thought, one of the great golden tubes turned, angling in a way metal couldn’t, or at least, that it shouldn’t, and Suwako could see the glass hidden in the tube - an underwater telescope, she guessed?

It peered at the little Frog for a moment, before the golden behemoth stopped for a moment. A great door slid forward, then down, like a gaping jaw.

Oh cool, she was still getting eaten, it looked like. It was just going to be by some hippies’ deathtrap. Suwako groaned, but a familiar pain in her leg reminded her that beggars couldn’t be choosers, and she wearily swam for the golden opening that promised at least a semblance of safety.

----

It didn’t take long for the airlock to finally decompress, letting her through and making her immediately notice the sheer sogginess of her clothes. With a quick flourish - and a scratch behind the ears with her foot, always have to get behind ‘em and all - She sent a decent bit of the water flying, but it only did so much.


“Well hello there!” a younger voice immediately yelled, as the doors started to open. Suwako blinked. That wasn’t an accent she’d heard before.

“Well that looks just like a soaked dog innit”
“Nah, she’s clearly some sort of frog mate.”
“Frogs aren’t supposed to shake themselves off mate. S’a dog.”
“Naw, I think john’s right. With a list of ex’es like his, I think he knows his dogs from his frogs.”
“No one likes a smart alec!”

“Okay, who are you jokers?” Suwako finally snapped, as the group showed themselves.

A quartet of what seemed to be… british gentlemen? Suwako wasn’t so good with figuring out foreigners… And an older man smoking a pipe that seemed to be of the same, with a long white beard and a curious smile, came grinning at her.

“I’m John!”
“I’m John too!”
“Well then I’m John’s wife.”
“Don’t start with that again.”

Suwako sighed. Okay. so they were weirdos. That was okay. She’d been living in freaking gensokyo before. Weirdos was the name for her entire new home-town. Plus, these ones didn’t seem to be trying to irradiate the ocean or anything.

SSuwako gave the biggest raspberry possible to the joke, and with some relief, the response was simply laughter.

“Ho ho! She’s got quite the tongue on her.”
“And quite the tongue on her too, doesn’t she?”
“Looks like you might do fine here after all. Welcome… to the yellow submarine.”

Suwako groaned. “Well, thanks for the timely rescue. Were you just here to-”

Suwako blinked, as the sudden feeling of bone giving way almost led to a trip to the floor.

“Oh, easy there. We got you.”
“John, I think she’s buggered up her leg. How was she walkin’ on this.”
“Med-bay’s the second left, right, captain?”
The captain, who suwako quickly gathered was the elderly man in the naval uniform, quickly nodded, leading them out.

Suwako was a little surprised. For such sarcastic jerks, they flipped on a dime when push came to shove, and someone was in need of help for a friend…

A stupid smile came to the frog’s face.

Yeah, they reminded her entirely too much of Gensokyo. The genuine concern on these joker’s faces as she was moved from airlock to med-bay, and pillows were arrayed, was so touching she might actually vomit.

“It’s just a broken leg-” Suwako started to say

“We know, that’s why we’re just doing everything we can to help it heal.” One of them quipped, as the bleeding was quickly stymied with a set of gauze and quickly set with a splint.

“Sorry you had to deal with all of that. Those leviathans are pretty nasty types.”
“Yeah, And the worst part is that they don’t even like music!”

“Shame.”

“Shame!”

Suwako sighed.

“Alright, can I at least know the names of my sarcastic sailor saviors - for real, this time?”

“Ahh, right. Wouldn’t want you calling me John’s wife the whole time. The joke’d get old fast. The name’s George.”

“Ringo.”

“Paul.”

“And i really am John.” The last one would say, as the four introduced themselves.

“We’re the beatles!”

Suwako blinked, as old memories came back to her. Something Sanae talked to her about that came from the human world… It was something between the X-man talk (where Suwako slapped her on the shoulder for comparing her to the toad.), and the conversation about Giant robot (Where Suwako licked her straight in the eyeball for Comparing her to that ball Gundam).

Ahh, she’d cried a little then. It was a nice time to have such an adorable descendant.

Still, she seemed to remember…

“...I think I’ve known you before.”

“Oh, did you come to one of our shows, before?”

“No, I mean… My great-great-granddaughter really loves your music.”

All four of the beatles blinked a few times, before leaning forward on the small girl.

“...I age very gracefully” Was all Suwako was willing to give them - along with a crooked smirk.

“You think she’s just talking ‘bout a frog she found?” John asked the others, which got a row of nods.

“-anyways,” Suwako began with an irritated tone, “I heard your music through her. ‘Strawberry fields forever’, at least, was her favorite.”

“Oh, We always love to hear about a fan of our music.” Paul spoke up, offering a handshake as their mood again shifted from sarcastic to a more serious and honest tone.

“For a goofball, she does have some good tastes in music. Plus, I think she had a crush on the band, though in my world I do believe you were all dead.”

“That’s a bummer.”

Suwako shrugged. “I guess. Last I checked you all got to be happy old people and kick the bucket peacefully. That’s about all a human can expect.”

John cleared his throat. “Well, how ‘bout we talk less about our future corpses and more about what you were doing sailing the land of submarines… without a submarine, gal. What got you doing something so dangerous? Gal like you has to have way better things to do with her time than try out a career as fish food.”

Suwako grimaced. “Don’t remind me. I still need to get my ring back at some point.”

“Well, we could always go look for that in the submarine, luv.”

Suwako blinked. “So this is a submarine.”

“It’s the yellow submarine.”John would say with a smile. “Ended up on here a short time after our run in with the captain-”

And with that, he nodded towards the old sailor, who tipped his hat in appreciation.

“-and before you knew it, we took a wrong turn and ended up here, all off on the wrong planet.”

“Telephones still work, and it doesn’t look like much time passes over there, so we’re treating this as a big old vacation, more or less.”

Suwako nodded, keeping track as best she could of the conversation. This was clearly some strange other land, much like gensokyo, and they’d gotten caught up within it’s otherworldly currents.

“Well, it’s… nice to meet you all. I haven’t had a regular conversation in days. Seems like all the fish wanna say is ‘blub-blub’, and if you think that’s boring conversation, you should meet the people!” Suwako said with a grin. To her surprise, her crassness created a chuckle across the room.

“Okay. we like you.” Paul added with a grin, wth Ringo, paul and george both giving a nod.

“...Thanks.” Suwako gave them after a couple seconds, taking the compliment. These guys were unnaturally cheery, and in ordinary circumstances, she’d be more than annoyed by it. But with the loss of the natural sugar that was a dose of Sanae Kochiya in her life, it was actually refreshing to hear some naive positivity for once.

“...Oh, I forgot to introduce myself!” Suwako added. “Suwako Moriya, God of mountains, secret god of the Moriya shrine, and one of the native gods of Japan.”

To her surprise, curiosity and grins followed, but not a single question she expected.

“Japan! That’s amazing, we haven’t seen japan!”

“So they had their own gods over there, huh?”

“I didn’t know god as so small. Makes me feel a little better about how I look compared to pro-wrestlers. I’m just closer to god.” Ringo added with a grin.

“...You guys are… entirely too accepting of this.” Suwako admitted after a minute. She’d expected some sort of disbelief form humans seeing a god in human form.

“Girl, we’ve been fighting giant prawns for half of last week, harpooning a sea monster with a cigar torpedo, and Diving for sunken burgers since just last thursday. It’s all crazy, but questioning it ruins the fun.”

Suwako blinked a few times at John’s snappy retort, before, after a couple seconds, laughing. “...Ahaha… Ahahahaha!”

The beatles all stared at the injured girl.

“Sorry, I just… I think this is exactly what I needed to get rid of my temper. You four are the sorts of human I live to be worshipped by.”

“Well lads, I think we’ve just been complimented, but honestly I’ve never heard that one before, so who knows?” george quipped, as Suwako laid back into the bed-rest.

Suwako sighed, looking to the four. “...I was searching for something. Could I ask for a favor?”

“Of course.”

“I need to go a certain place. Care to help me get there?”

“Of course, of course. We’ll bring you where you need to go.”

Suwako smiled. “Then from now on, walk with all the confidence and swagger that only one blessed by the gods may muster.”

“...So should I sway my hips like an attractive woman?”

“Ringo’d do that even without your blessing.”

A chorus of snickers and chortles filled the room.