The silence left in the Den Den Mushi's wake was heavier than the cavern's deep stone. Galit Varuna stood on the command deck of the Dreadnought Thalassa, the smooth, dormant console before him reflecting the grim set of his jaw. His fingers tightened around the silent snail for a moment before he slipped it back into his belt. The Captain's voice had been the sound of igneous rock—unyielding and final.
He turned from the view of the ancient drydock, his boots making no sound on the resilient deck plating. "Bianca," he called out, his voice cutting through the low, rhythmic clank-whirr of the automatons.
From across the command deck, where she was wedged halfway into an open access panel, Bianca Yvonne Clark yelled back, her voice muffled and strained. "Like, what is it?! I'm, like, kinda in the middle of trying to, like, convince a nine-hundred-year-old toaster that, like, engine integrity is more important than, like, polishing the navigation bezels!"
Galit found her, her lower half visible, legs kicking in frustration as she wrestled with internal components. The air here smelled of hot ceramics, warm oil, and the faint, sweet-metallic scent of active energy crystals.
"We have a… development," Galit said, leaning against the console beside her, crossing his arms.
Bianca wriggled out, her face smudged with a new streak of black grease, her magnifying goggles askew. "Like, what kind of development?" she asked, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand and leaving another smear.
Galit's emerald eyes were calculating. "It appears the rest of our team has been taken," he pauses searching for the correct work, "into custody. We have until dawn to retrieve them."
Bianca's eyes, magnified huge behind her lenses, narrowed. She blinked slowly. "Like… are you serious right now?"
Galit's mouth quirked in a humorless, acknowledging smirk. He nodded once.
Bianca let out a long, slow groan that came from the depths of her soul. She rolled her eyes so hard her head lolled back. "Like, this thing," she gestured wildly at the ship around them, "is in the middle of, like, major repairs! Dawn is, like, impossible! And I am, like, locked out and can't, like, do anything to speed it up!" She threw her hands up in the air, a wrench in one clattering against the overhead panel. "Like, what would we even do anyway? Walk up and, like, ask nicely?"
Galit sighed, a controlled exhalation as he stroked his chin, his mind racing through tactical trees that all ended in barren soil. Before he could answer, a new, deeper tremor shook the Triple Ten Gate. This one wasn't a distant echo; it was a local, jarring spasm that made the deck plates shudder and let out a low moan of stressed metal. A fine mist of ancient dust sifted down from the cavern ceiling far above, sparkling in the eerie light of the ship's dormant consoles.
Galit muttered, his gaze darting to a hairline fracture in a viewport that hadn't been there a minute before. "That does not improve our tactical position."
Bianca groaned again, slumping against the console. "This is, like, a ticking time bomb! The whole mountain's gonna, like, swallow this place in, like, ten hours! And our friends are, like, in a pirate jail or whatever!"
Galit's eyes scanned the command deck. The Karakuri automatons continued their work, undisturbed by the tremor or the human drama. One was meticulously realigning a crystal array with tiny, delicate tools. Another was welding a sub-floor panel with silent, bright sparks. Their methodical, unhurried pace was a maddening contrast to the closing vise of time.
"I am not sure," Galit said, his voice low, "that there is anything we can do from here."
Bianca pushed her goggles up onto her forehead, leaving a clean ring around her tired eyes. "So, like, we're just gonna leave them there?"
Galit gave a small, helpless shrug, a gesture so foreign on his usually decisive frame it spoke volumes. "Unless you have a viable suggestion. We lack the manpower for a direct assault."
Bianca's eyes narrowed, her engineer's mind switching from frustration to problem-solving against its will. "Like, mount a rescue? With only, like, the two of us? That's, like, ridiculous. If the Thalassa was, like, working, then, like, yeah! Boom! But, like, hand-to-hand? We might as well, like, turn ourselves over and ask for, like, a group cell."
Galit nodded. "Agreed. The risk outweighs any probable gain. We'd be captured or killed, and the Thalassa would be lost."
Bianca spun around, leaning her back against the console, her chin in her hand. "Unless…" she drew the word out, her gaze drifting to the nearest automaton, which was now polishing a handrail with a soft cloth.
Galit raised an eyebrow. "Unless?"
"Maybe we could, like… reprogram some of these little guys. Not to fight, but to, like, cause a distraction. A big, noisy, 'look-over-there' kind of thing. And we, like, slip in and break them out during the chaos."
Galit nodded slowly, following the logic. "A sound tactical diversion. But without a guaranteed exit strategy—a functional ship—we would still be trapped on a hostile island, with alerted guards, and a volcano that appears to be in a very bad mood."
Bianca's shoulders slumped again. "Like, yeah. So, like, we need this thing to be, like, operational." She kicked the deck lightly with the heel of her boot.
"How are we on time?" Galit asked, returning to the core variable.
Bianca blew a stray strand of hair from her face. "Like, we're like… fifteen hours in? With, like, ten to go before the whole place goes kaboom. And the last, like, six hours of that is, like, for final diagnostics and system harmonization or whatever. We might be able to, like, skip that part if we're, like, willing to fly a ship that might, like, shake itself apart at the first hard turn."
Galit sighed, a long, weary sound. "Skipping final diagnostics would still see us ready after the dawn deadline. We would be retrieving corpses from a brig, only to die in a collapsing mountain or a disintegrating ship."
Bianca threw her hands up once more, the wrench in her grip glinting. "Are you, like, serious right now?!" she yelled, not at Galit, but at the universe.
"The team with Marya was also captured," Galit added, the information clinical.
Bianca froze, then let out a sound that was half-scream, half-laugh. "Are you, like, SERIOUS?! Like, are they supposed to be, like, top-notch fighters or something?!"
Galit bit back a grim chuckle at her outrage. "Or something," he confirmed wryly.
"So we're, like, stuck," Bianca concluded, the fight draining out of her. "In a, like, holding pattern. In a, like, doomsday clock."
Galit pushed off from the console, standing tall. The existential dread of the situation was a cold weight in his gut, but it was a familiar weight—the pressure before a storm, the quiet before an ambush. "For now. If critical systems come online ahead of schedule, we reassess. We can take action with a vehicle. Without one, we are merely more potential prisoners. We monitor. We wait."
Bianca nodded, a defeated but accepting gesture. She looked at the stubborn automaton now polishing the same spot on the handrail for the fourth time. "Like, yeah. If I have, like, an epiphany or anything, I will, like, totally share."
Another tremor, softer this time, rippled through the dock. Somewhere deep below, the mountain groaned. The countdown continued, measured in the silent, relentless work of clockwork ghosts and the slow, inevitable fracturing of stone. They were trapped in the belly of a dying wonder, waiting for a miracle that had a deadline.
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