The Adventures of Rin and Aya

“Where’d he go? Where’d he go?!” Luka practically screamed in Chase’s ear causing him to flinch. “Something pulled him under…we’re going to die!” The brunette frantically waved his arms around, beating the water almost as if he thought he could use the limbs like wings and fly out. The ice cold muck that Luka was stirring up and flinging everywhere flew up and smacked Chase in the face in a never ending shower. He tried to hold up a hand to shield his face, but the frantic Luka was making too much of a disturbance.

“Stop!” the blonde yelled. “If you keep doing that you’re going to draw attention to us and then we really are going to die!” Upon his reasoning Luka stilled, nervously treading the water and looking around suspiciously.

Meanwhile, Sin kicked out as hard as he could, twisting his body around before each try to break free in an attempt to gain leverage. Whatever it was that was pulling him down, though, was extremely strong and it hadn’t budged at all yet. He couldn’t even see what it was that had a hold on his ankle. The water was dark…no problem. He could see in the dark just fine. It was the muck and fogginess of the water that stopped him from making out so much as a shape of the assailant. But that wasn’t his only problem. His lungs were starting to burn and in only a few minutes he would pass out if he didn’t get air soon.

“What are we going to do?” asked Luka. Both he and Chase knew they would be nothing more than sitting ducks if they simply did nothing, but as they thought of their options they quickly found that there weren’t many.

Chase held up one of his hands and a small orb of light instantly started forming. He wasn’t sure if this was going to work or not, but he knew it was worth a try. As soon as the orb was the size of an orange he lowered his hand into the water, and just as he hoped it would the orb continued to glow, lighting up the surrounding water and muck. “Our first priority is to help Sin,” he told Luka. The younger of the two watched the orb shimmer underneath the water as it continued to grow in size. Soon it was the same size as a soccer ball, a beach ball, and soon they were swimming in nothing but light.

“Chase…?” Luka started, wanting to question the blonde as to what he had planned, but before he could the now large sphere of pale yellow light shot from Chase’s hand much like a bullet from a gun and they could see it getting smaller and smaller by the second as it moved down into the water’s depths.

Out of the corner of his eye, Sin could see the giant orb of light spiraling down deeper into the water on his left side. Looking at everything around him—that being only water and muck—Sin noticed the colors inversing. At first he wasn’t sure if it was because of the light or if it was just him losing too much oxygen. When the sphere of light suddenly exploded, resembling a firework, everything inversed their color so now the water was darker and the muck was lighter in color making it easier to see. Taking this perfect opportunity, Sin looked down just as whatever it was that had him let him go. He could see an extremely long, thin structure—almost like an arm—recede away from him towards…

He squinted his eyes, trying to refine the shape of the blob he was looking at. It was huge. He could tell that much, but the actual shape of the mass was harder to make out. All he could see was the “arm,” and…more “arms.” He tried to count them, but when he got to ten a strong force hit him, almost like an underwater shock wave, knocking whatever wind he had left out of him and sending him towards the surface of the water.

Luka and Chase quickly grabbed a hold of the hedge wall they were closest to as the water started getting rougher and rougher, the waves trying to overtake them and pull them under. It was only a few seconds later that the cause of the rough waters broke the surface in a spray of water, much like a geyser, and on top of this wall of water was a nearly unconscious Sin. As the water receded back to its origins Sin fell with it, but just before he collided with the water’s surface a thick vine from the hedge shot out and caught him and pulled him securely up against the hedge to keep him from drowning. Chase quickly turned his head to look at Luka after he had watched the whole incident, questioning him silently if that was his doing since he was the one with the Earth pendant. Luka simply stared with wide eyes and shrugged his shoulders, not knowing what caused the hedge to do that because it certainly wasn’t him.

Not caring to dwell on the matter the two swam through the rough waters and over to Sin. Chase grabbed onto the vine and with some force pried it from around his companion’s waist before Luka joined him in keeping Sin afloat. “Come on!” Chase shouted over the loud rush of the torrent. “We have to find solid ground!” The two started swimming with all their might in search of dry land, the waters still churning around them and not helping them with the task of holding onto Sin and making sure his head stayed above water.

They didn’t make it far. They had maybe swam ten feet before the waters settled, everything around them going deathly calm. Even the breeze that passed through the halls of hedges wasn’t there anymore. Chase and Luka stopped and gave each other apprehensive looks. They both had bad feelings about this. It was too sudden and unpredicted, like the calm before a storm, and the aura that the situation emanated was unsettling.

All too soon the silence was broken. A thunderous noise resounded from underneath the water, creating tidal wave-like ripples in the water from the reverberation, and the water started to bubble uncontrollably. Even though it was underwater, Chase and Luka could still here the two toned bellowing and had to cover their ears. There was a deep base note that produced the disturbance in the water, but the second note was shrill and ear bleedingly painful to listen to. It left the guys incapacitated as columns of dark, grayish, seaweed colored tentacles shot out of the water, writhing against the hedge walls as they threatened to escape their boundaries. Luka almost fainted as a tentacle came down from above, threatening to crush them, but just before it could smack against the water another tentacle came from below, wrapped itself around them painfully tight, and dragged them down into the water’s dark depths.