[ti]closed[/ti]Beneath the Bay

Orion sighed, it would probably be a minute at least till Bee saw the PM, let alone.

PING.

Oh, that was fast.  Orion hadn't even left the menu yet, so Bee's words floated before him and a grin spread across his lips.  Of course Bee was just as hype as he was, he'd never met someone with an appetite for adventure as strong as his.  They'd smashed monsters, raided legends, and gone to Joes together.  All of that hype aside, he still needed to get here which would probably take him a few minutes, time Orion would probably spend wistfully recounting all of the things he loved about hanging our with-

"Hey man! What did you find?"

Orion practically jumped out of his skin, turning to see his best friend and Bandannadito Bee, bolting towards the beach.  Was this some sort of new party finding procedure or had this been a stroke of serendipity?  Did Bryan take his idea about a swimmer exclusive partyforming app called Fin-der?  The fighter of course played this super cool and disguised his jolt as a hop for joy.

Smooth.

"God damn man, keep me waiting all day why don't you."

He fiddled loosely with his inventory before fetching out a pair of goggles he'd stolen from Mom's pool chest a while cleaning up the mess from the Revival machine incident.  Fastening them over his baby blues he took one graceful step forward and pencil dived off his little outcropping into the water below.  The crispness of the water hit him like a truck that carried trucks filled with bricks, and after sinking for a foot or two, Orion brought his arms down in a powerful motion and heaved himself back to the surface, instinctually taking a deep breath.  

"I've found something about doors to other areas?  It might be a bit of a fast travel shortcut, but considering it could be a way for contagion from Mystra to get to Asper we should probably scope it out."  He'd look around a bit above the surface before dipping his face into the water and looking down.  "I'm guessing it's probably down deep if I were a betting man."

"Dude you know gamers man, gotta be the world first at something.  How many nerds do you think are trying to boast about like, finding the word's first collectable fire hydrant red rusted unicycle right now on Reddit?"  Orion let out a chuckle and swam a little closer to Taka and Bee, treading water a socially acceptable distance away.  "Meanwhile the real motherfuckers know what's up, and that's what's down, yo."  Unlike Bee, Orion was going into this blinder than a badger who'd had his eyes bitten by a box jellyfish.  "You're the motherfucker with the god damn submarine so I'll let you lead the way and I'll catch your wake."

He had not clue what wonders were waiting below.

So once again he took a deep breath he definitely didn't need to take with his new class, and took the plunge into the deep.  With a hairpin turn he thrust his arms outwards and then back to his sides, his muscles rippling as he pulled himself through the water.  His feet snapped upwards, getting as much downward thrust as he could muster, bolting into the blue with as much speed as his body would allow. He wasn't sure what he was expecting to be below them, but he sure as shit wasn't expecting there not to be a floor within sight.  

Beneath him was an endless cerulean abyss, something he'd never experienced, not at this level at all.  Below bits of ruined wreckage lay in mangled spires at stretched into the seemingly infinite depths.  Some floated freely, a scattered field of debris that only served to further obfuscate what was beneath his feet.  A chill went down Orion's spine, to call what he was experiencing Thasslaphobia would be like calling the hit track "Who let the dogs out" penned by famous musicians "The Baha Men" an okay song.  It would be like calling a drop of water the pacific ocean, or like comparing owing someone one dollar to the Federal United States Debt.  

"HOLY FSCCK" 

The words left Orion's lips in a garbled yelp as his words got warped and distortion of bubbles leaving his lips.  Part of him panicked as he realized he'd wasted his breath, instinctually pulling out of his descent as if to surface for air before realizing he didn't need to.  Nervously, he took in a breath only to find nice crisp air filling his lungs and not water.  It was a jarring feeling, frankly once he realized it.  He was less...in the water as the water was around him.  He wasn't quite wet, but more in a very thin...air bubble that surrounded and protected him.

Once the initial shock was over, he steadied himself again and followed after Taka and Bee, doing his best to close the gap between them.  

Orion did his best to keep up with Bee and Taka, but unfortunately he was not a scuba shell, nor was he used to this whole "swimming" thing.  Eventually he ended up calling out Posidon, his Carvanha and latched on to one of it's rear fins as he let himself be dragged deeper and deeper.  The light from the surface began to dim ever so slightly, and then more and more as the sheer Blue of the world began to sink in.  He had to remind himself to breathe, that he could breath, just to keep the panic from welling up in his chest.  At any moment he could press a few buttons, be back on the surface, just fucking fine, no fuss no muss.  Or better yet he could just log out and wake up in his bed, a little sweaty but totally fine.  So long as nothing bit him he wouldn't have to worry about Phantom Nerve Injury, and so long as he didn't start actually drowning in game he wouldn't wake up feeling like his mask was waterboarding him.

Everything was fine.

As if sensing his panic, Bee and Taka halted, and the more experienced swimmer grew closer and began to sign a bunch of stuff.  Was this...scuba lingo?  Should he have studied this in some sort of Swimmer Class tutorial?  Or was like, water speech one of the higher tier perks?  He hadn't seen that in the wiki, but then again Bee was Bee, so maybe it was just natural he knew something more than Orion.  The only thing he caught was something being pointed to of in the Suwestorf direction, but he had zero inkling of what was said.  Instead he just paused and opened up his UI, taped a few things, and then shot Bee a PM.

Cayge_Match: What?
Cayge_Match: I caught nothing besides there's something to the Suwestorf of here.

He was going to wait for a reply, but something caught his eye below them.  As he squinted and peered into the darkness he couldn't quite tell what was below them only that it was...purple.  Not your usual inky black, or murky blue, but the faintest hint of some sort of light, far off in the distance.  Orion quirked his head to the side, snapped his gaze back up to Bee, and then tried to use some of his swimmer speak to point downwards with a shrug as if to ask.

"What the fuck is that?"

The floor was purple?

Orion found himself blinking in confusions before Bee beckoned him below.  He would dive down deeper in his wake, Poseidon circling around like a sentry drone ready to throw hands with anything and everything that might try to approach the two as they continued their descent.  Orion was unsure if the Swimmer class was keeping the colossal amount of pressure that they should be under at bay or if it was some unknown force below.  Perhaps Hydance simply hadn't coded something so oppressive into the game, but considering Mystra and other events that had transpired he found that exceptionally hard to believe.  Orion simply didn't have time to ponder all of this as they swam in silences, his arms sore from all of the breaststrokes the propelled him deeper yet deeper.

The lights beckoned below, like the shining lure of an anglerfish.

It took a while for the fighter to realize what he was staring at, from a distance it was this vague light with a strange uneven crisscross hatching across it.  As he grew closer shapes began to come into focus, that wasn't cross hatching, but well actual hatches?  They were more like doors but...on the floor?  That made them hatches right? 

These weren't Doortals, they were Floortals.  

Making a mental note to give this constructive criticism to Bee later, he continued down until he was just barely floating over one, peering through the windows into the strange beyond.  Once again reminding himself to breath, he would turn back to Bee and cock his head to the side and began to type to him.

Cayge_Match: Ayo what the fuck is this?
Cayge_Match: Does this open?
Cayge_Match: Imma give it a yank n see.

True to his word, Orion flit from door to door until he found something that caught his eye.  Placing one hand on the handle, which seemed to be a horseshoe tack welded onto a rusty rectangle, he planted his feet on the adjacent doors and yanked with all of his might, gritting his teeth as he struggled, each of his tired muscles straining against thousands upon thousands of gallons of water.  He hefted and heaved for a hot minute, before he paused for a moment and let his brain do some heavy lifting.  

Try pushing dipshit.

Brilliant idea.  Bracing himself, he pushed on the door and watched it swing open with glee.  However, for some reason he didn't quite expect water to just start pushing downwards now that there was somewhere to go, like bathwater swirling down an empty drain.  Eyes wide, he turned to try and swim away too late, and the current dragged him kicking and screaming downwards and through the portal.

"Oajdkl Fajkdjflk" He yelped, muffled by the water.   

Have you eve seen the end of Free Willy?

You know, some sappy kid is like "Go willy go" or something (I've never actually seen the scene) and the Willy is like "It's time for me to be free" (again I HAVE NOT SEEN THE SCENE) and then does a big graceful jump over the kids and avoids like the whale cops and makes it into the open ocean?  

Cause Orion jettisoning out of the rusty door of a refrigerator was NOTHING like that remotely.  I mean, maybe if you replace the kids with a rattata shitting bricks, and the weirdly specific whale cops with a bag of half eaten bagels, and the open ocean was a pile of garbage bags filled with the rotting remains of cleanup from the Halloween party.  Orion was too skinny to be remotely whale weight, and honestly he didn't make for a very aerodynamic or graceful projectile as he flailed his limbs thought the air as if he were still at the bottom of the bay and could swim.

He could not.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH"
THWUMP.
"FUCK!"

Orion landed into the trash heap with all of the grace and style that a whale landing in a pile of trashbags, so perhaps he really was the free will-another THUMP from the fountain of seawater signaled another arrival, and peering his head out of his nasty nest Orion quickly spotted Bee and Octo sliding down the hill the hard way.

"BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"  Orion called out, marvelling at the sheer distance he had flown.  Maybe he really had become the unencumbered William on that jump.  "I THINK THE FLOORTAL SENT US BACK TO BRIARBANE."  He would wriggle free from his gross entombment and struggle to his feet, limping slightly as he muscled his way back to his bro.  "And if we don't figure out a way to shut that thing we might just drown the town."

"Ya think?"  Orion would turn to Bee as he ripped an even larger whole into the mega wet dimension, increasing the spashzone by a radius of YES and decreasing the amount of time they had to prevent MOM's house from becoming beachfront property.  Oh shit, he would need to think quickly in order to find something to seal old fridgeful with, his eyes dancing from rusted bolts to shoddy sheetmetal.

"Break it?"  Orion asked turning back to Bee incredulously.  "We need to go back through don't we?  The quest mention other doors didn't it?  Otherwise we're gonna have to fast travel back to the harbor and do all of that swimming down again and I'm gonna be real with you chief I don't think I have another ten minute commute into Davy Jone's coinlocker in me because holy shit do my swimmin muscles hurt."

His gaze settled upon the crane that was used to manipulate large car frames or cargo containers and snapped his fingers.  "What if we dropped the sucker face down in defense position?  If the geyser isn't heavy enough to lift the fridge, the fridge should close the portal the moment it makes full contact with the ground!  We just need to get it up high, get under it so it closes on top of us, and Boom, back to the Bay?  Okay?"