I'm a Stingray?

The old man gave out quite a deep sigh, it was easy to see that he had been quite annoyed since his thought-process was interrupted.

But thankfully his etiquette had high standards, so he managed to push irritation away and embraced logic.

Necessarily he answered, "Yes, we are ready. I can't figure out anything out of these bodies. We need to find someone who survived, they could probably help us."

"Alright then let's leave," Timmy spoke out a slight request.

Most here were quite motivated to get out of here, as this den felt like it was filled to the brim with death, not quite peachy to be exact.

Yet after they slipped out of the den, Timmy was the first one to notice quite a large fish which swam just tens of meters away.

At first the team was pushed under quite a bit of stress, as they expected for a battle to break out soon.

But senses of familiarity revealed themselves, the closer this fish got. By now it was easy to figure out that the approacher was a shark.

What stood out as important in this confrontation, was the smaller species that swam in cooperation with the shark.

It only took a bit of observation, to figure out that this smaller marine animal was a stingray!

Considering how rare stingrays were in this area, it was often wonderful to spot one.

But in this case, the entire team knew who this stingray was, and necessarily they recognized the shark as well.

This disk-like fish was Snoopy, he was the hero's sibling! It was surely nice to meet a friendly face around here.

Hints of joy broke out from both parties, and they all grew a few smiles once they got closer to each other.

"Is that really you?" Timothy was the first to question, once they got close enough to each other.

"Yup, we're back." The latter answered.

The hero felt quite lost all of a sudden, so he had to ask. "Uh, back from where?"

"How don't you remember your own plan? You sent us to kill a colossal squid!" The new-arrival instantly complained.

Such a statement coming from family, helped the hero assure that he truly had sent these couple of fish to handle some squid.

So he didn't want to question this conclusion, as it would take too long to explain just why he didn't remember.

Instead he asked with quite a few rays of excitement, "You actually killed a colossal squid? Those things are supposed to be huge!"

"They are... but I just ripped through its head a few times. You do remember what kind of powers I have, right?" Snoopy questioned once more, as he tried to figure out just how much his brother remembered.

It was not that he cared about such sentimental values, but he figured that there was something going on around here.

As a golden start, the hero was coated with a dark-grey skin colour. This detail was very alarming, especially since he had left the reef before with blue-skin.

Due to that matter Snoopy also had to question, "Did something happen to you?"

The sea-pancake hung on to that question for a little while, and eventually he could explain. "I just met with some weird water goddess, or was it a ghost? Not sure but I did lose a lot of memories."

"And your skin turned grey?" The latter questioned.

"Oh yeah, that too..." The hero lied with the aid of a mumble.

He just didn't want to explain the context of what a system was right now, it would take too much time.

With hints of honesty the latter cooperated, "Okay then. You are my brother for sure, I could smell you since a little while ago. But I just wanted to make sure that you're okay."

"I'm okay. It's just my head... uh, it won't get fixed until I meet that weird goddess again." The sea-disk explained.

And it was fair to say that this talk, managed to throw mental burden against his noggin once more. A short while ago he was okay, but such a topic still managed to weigh him down.

He had killed a few fish through the journey they took to get back back home, with the aid of Azelaq's scream.

The goal was to surrender a few souls to the same self-proclaimed goddess, and get benefits in return.

But these benefits were nothing more but mental clarity, which tended to fade away if he didn't kill enough fish.

Snoopy had no clue what his brother was talking about, but he managed to pick up that the hero was becoming overly-stressed.

So he simply stated, "Don't worry, we will cure you somehow."

And then he questioned, "What happened to this place though? I don't remember the reef being this dark."

"That's what we're trying to figure out. The entire tribe has been killed too," Osira forced herself into the conversation.

"What!" The new-arrival shouted.

And then instantly asked, "Are our siblings okay?"

"I don't know, they aren't down there at least." The sea-pancake answered, right after he gave the black-grouper a slightly angered stare.

"We have to find them!" The other urged, it was easy to see that concern grew greatly across his tone.

So the hero instantly planned out, "They probably survived the attack, whatever this attack was; so we can just look for them in the reef and try to figure things out."

And so they slowly ventured deeper into the reef for that same reason. Safety was one thing that they all embraced, so the entire team steered a few meters above the reef.

The dark and green ground itself had not given them any trouble, but it was best to be cautious.

As for just how they were supposed to handle this situation, the whole team was clueless.

This destruction of life was rather wide-spread, which made the hero slowly dwell in anger. Before he had done so much work to revive the reef, yet this darkness had destroyed all of it!

Such a fact surely had an impact against his conscience, as he understood that the promise he had made to that old sea-snake had not been fulfilled.

That aside, every member of the group swam with wishful hopes; neither of them knew what the future carried.