Chapter Text
Sebastian had been scavenging for supplies in one of the flooded hallways which opened up to the outside abyss. He was preoccupied with trying to claw a flashlight out from a crevice in the cracked concrete wall, when he suddenly caught movement in his peripheral.
With a snarl, he whirled around, unholstering his gun and aiming it towards the source of the movement. He belatedly remembered a second later that he was underwater and thus his firearm was useless, but he figured the principle of drawing the weapon would send a clear enough message either way: DO NOT FUCK WITH ME.
He blinked in bemusement when he found a small golden fish staring blankly down the barrel of his shotgun. For several seconds, nothing happened. Sebastian was so baffled by the sight of the fish that he uncharacteristically found himself at a loss for words.
Then, the fish bumped against his gun, its fishy maw mouthing curiously at the barrel as though looking for algae.
Sebastian snapped out of his daze and uttered an annoyed grunt as he withdrew his weapon. Stupid fish. He turned back to the crevice he had been prodding at, muttering to himself in a burble of bubbles.
He sensed the fish swimming closer, evidently attracted by the debris he was dislodging. He had half a mind to swat the thing away with a claw, but stayed his hand when it suddenly darted into the crack.
Curious, he watched as the fish wriggled around for a bit before unceremoniously dislodging the flashlight from where it had been annoyingly out of reach from Sebastian’s large claws.
Huh. He snatched up the flashlight and gave it a once over. It was in pretty good condition! He fastened it securely to his tail, still feeling bemused but oddly gratified by the strange occurrence.
The fish had reemerged from the crevice and was poking about at other cracks in the wall, seemingly oblivious of its contribution to Sebastian’s efforts at restocking his wares.
Sebastian decided that instead of having the fish as a small snack, he’d let it live.
—
The next time Sebastian encountered the fish, it was when he was inside one of the areas he utilized as a shop for passing Expendables. This shop was situated in an air pocket above a flooded area, so Expendables would have to emerge from the hole in the floor in order to enter.
His ear fins twitched when he heard the sound of moving water, and he turned towards the entrance with his customary grin and clasped hands. “Welcome back, I got some—“ He stopped as his eyes focused on a familiar glimmer of gold under the water’s surface.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me…” He muttered as he slithered towards the pool. Lo and behold, there was the fish, its blank eyes ogling him.
He squinted at the fish, baffled by the fact that not only was it still alive after all this time, but it had somehow found him again. He hadn’t thought much of the fish when he had first encountered it, but seeing it again made him want to reevaluate what he had previously considered to be just another specimen of the native sea life.
Sebastian Solace wasn’t a marine biologist, but he was relatively certain that goldfish weren’t on the list of species that dwelled in salt water, let alone among the ones capable of surviving the crushing depths of the deep sea.
Granted, this fish wasn’t your average pet store prize you win at the Fair in a shitty little plastic bag kind of goldfish. It was a lot bigger. The only reason Sebastian thought of it as small was because, relative to his ten foot height, it was small to him. However, to the average human, the ‘goldfish’ was more like the size of a koi.
But it couldn’t have been a koi, could it? Maybe it was some kind of salmon. Salmon were capable of transitioning from fresh water to salt water, right? Sebastian felt like he had learned something to that effect in middle school.
Still, it was weird that it was down here at all. It wasn’t like any of the other sea life near the Blacksite, monstrously mutated or otherwise. It might have been an escapee from some other experiment onsite, though if that were the case, Sebastian hadn’t found any documents referring to it.
Never the less, the fish was currently blocking the entrance to his shop. “Get out’a here, fish bait,” he made a waving gesture with his hands. “Shoo! I don’t have anything for you here, and I don’t tolerate freeloading!”
The motion of his waving must have scared it off, because the fish swiftly swam back down and out of sight. Sebastian was about to return to his usual spot, when he spotted the fish coming back. He growled in annoyance, leaning down with the intent to catch and put an end to the little nuisance, when he abruptly got a face full of water squirted directly at him.
“AUGH! Why you little-“ Snarling, he punched a hand into the water, seeking to grab the fish. But when he wrenched his arm out of the water, he found he was holding a crank-powered flashlight. “What the…”
He stared blankly at the device, before looking back into the hole. The goldfish stared back at him with lidless eyes. “Did… you actually bring this for me?” He wasn’t expecting to get a response, and he didn’t get any as the fish simply swam in a small circle before diving away again. This time for good it seemed.
—
Sebastian sometimes wished he could dump his SCRAMBLER, if only so he could get other stupid devices to actually work. But unfortunately the chip surgically installed between his shoulder blades meant that if he ditched the SCRAMBLER, then Urbanshade would be able to track his whereabouts.
It wasn’t as though all devices ceased functioning when he was around. But some more sophisticated machines which relied on things such as radar or radio waves became incredibly difficult to work with.
One such device he currently held clasped between his claws as he swam across the ocean floor outside of the facility, occasionally adjusting the knobs in an attempt to pinpoint the signal it was supposed to be tracking.
He felt like he had been going in a circle for hours, and was getting increasingly more and more aggravated the longer he spent trying to decipher the mess of garbage signals he was receiving.
Safe to say, he wasn’t really paying attention to his surroundings and only realized something was nearby when a familiar green glow was cast over him. He stopped, hovering in the water, his tail swaying unconsciously into a tighter formation about him, like a coiled snake primed to strike. He raised his gaze from the device in his hands and glared at the Eyefestation looming above him.
What the fuck do you want? He mentally spat at it, knowing the Eyefestation was capable of low level telepathic communication when it wasn’t attempting to mentally force its victims to look into its caustic gaze.
YOU HARBOR PREY. The Eyefestation boomed, staring almost accusingly at the fellow monster with its multitude of eyes.
Sebastian made an indignant huff, bubbles bursting from his mouth in incredulity. What?!
YOU. The Eyefestation loomed closer, daring to get within Sebastian’s reach as it jerked its nose at him. HARBOR. PREY.
Sebastian barred his teeth in a wordless snarl, his tail lashing. Listen, buddy! I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about! Go stick your eyes someplace else before I tear’ em right out’a your sockets!
The Eyefestation’s eyes flickered red briefly and Sebastian braced himself, expecting another brawl of dominance to ensue. But after a tense moment, the Eyefestation seemingly thought better of it and slowly turned to swim back the way it had come with an air of disinterest.
Sebastian watched it go, bristling with nerves and outrage. What the fuck was it going on about? Was it talking about his dealings with the Expendables? That was none of its fucking business! And more importantly, why the hell would it even care?! It wasn’t like the monsters of the Blacksite were allies or anything; it wasn’t as if they were on the same side of some war with the humans. Each and every monster was in it for themselves, with their own motives and methods on how they would enact revenge on Urbanshade.
He sensed movement and tensed. Something had brushed the scales along his tail, and it took all his self control not to thrash about in a blind panic.
Slowly turning about in the water, his eyes picked up a glimmer of gold. There’s no way… He twitched his tail to the side, a fleeting shape quickly darted back underneath his shadow. He twitched his tail the other way, catching sight of the goldfish as it hurried to follow. You can’t be serious.
That little fish had been using him as cover as it picked along the ocean floor, hiding under or behind his coiling tail as he moved, like he was some sort of mobile shelter. And why not? Sebastian was the baddest bitch in the ocean around here! No predator would dare come near him. He was the perfect cover for a small bottom feeder.
Sebastian was torn between feeling incredibly irritated at the thought of being used in such a way and oddly flattered that the fish considered him the safest place to be in the open ocean. He quickly quashed the latter feeling. It was ridiculous, and he felt annoyed at himself. It was just a stupid fish!
He quickly swam off, intending to leave the little thing behind to get eaten by the local fauna. He swam back towards the facility, flowing effortlessly back within its confines through a broken section. Once he was inside, he couldn’t help but glance back out into the blackness, wondering if the Eyefestation was still watching.
To his shock, he spotted the goldfish still with him, floating by his tail and picking at some gravel like it had no thoughts in its head. It must have managed to tuck itself into his slipstream as he had powered through the water. It wouldn’t have been capable of keeping up with him otherwise.
Sebastian had the sudden and violent urge to smack it away— to claw and rip into its flesh. How dare this tiny fish have the audacity of presuming it was safe to be in his presence! How dare it think it had the privilege to just hang around him like he just some convenient stupidly large body to use as a meat shield. It probably thought it could get away with messing with him because it thought he was too slow to catch something so small. HA! If only it knew…
He sucked in a gill full of water, then let it out slowly, and the feeling of rage soon abated. He reflected, bitterly, that it was an incredibly immature impulse to project his feelings on a damn fish of all things. It was just an animal; it didn’t have some agenda or motive behind its actions beyond basic survival. It probably didn’t think anything of Sebastian, or even recognize that he was any different from any other creature.
He felt something bump against his wrist and looked down. The fish had a handful of USB sticks in its mouth, and as soon as it got Sebastian’s attention, it spat them out in a gush of expelled water, letting the USB sticks slowly float to the floor as it swam away.
Sebastian swept up the USB sticks before they could settle on the floor, staring thoughtfully down at them.
Yeah. Just a dumb fish.