The explosion above wasn't thunderous—it was final.
The mountain shuddered, then split open, its top half sinking into the endless ocean that had once been the world. Fire bloomed for only a second before being swallowed by the flood. And just like that, everything Mickey had built above—the illusion, the vortex, the machines—was gone.
Inside the capsule, Mickey didn't flinch. He watched it fade through the glass—his reflection calm and cold. For years, that place had been his fortress. Now it was just another ruin buried under rain and memory.
He pressed his palm to the release lever.
The door hissed open.
---
Cold water rushed in, silent and heavy.
It wrapped around him like a living thing, but he didn't resist. Mickey stepped forward, his feet leaving the metallic floor behind as his body sank into the deep. The pressure increased, but his lungs didn't strain—his heart barely changed rhythm.
He could breathe here.
He had always been able to.
The world below was dark and infinite. His body moved with a smooth, eerie grace—slower than the legendary Ys1, slower than Sheev—but far faster than any fish or beast that still swam in the drowned world. His eyes adjusted easily, glowing faintly blue as he glided downward.
The sea around him was not quiet. It was alive.
Faint shadows twisted in the gloom—fish with torn scales, translucent skin, or eyes that glowed like fire.
The Rush Area's poison had spread through the waters over the years, twisting everything that came near it. Some creatures lost their form; others grew new organs, new teeth, new instincts.
They didn't hunt for food anymore. They hunted out of rage.
But none dared come close to him.
Something in Mickey's blood told them to stay away.
---
At last, he saw it—his new home.
The underground bunker, resting deep within a trench, half-buried beneath sheets of stone and coral. A ring of faint light shimmered around it, disguising it as part of the seabed. Only he knew the pattern to open it.
He approached, letting his hand brush the invisible barrier. The field rippled open with a low hum, and the water drained from the entryway as he stepped inside.
Once sealed again, the lights flickered on—soft blue hues, like stars inside a void.
The hum of machinery greeted him.
He was home.
---
He sat down near the console, the screens lighting up around him, displaying fragments of history he had long tried to forget. A single word glowed on the cracked display:
> "MISSION: YS – ARCHIVE FOOTAGE."
Mickey hesitated. Then he tapped it.
The room filled with the ghost of a memory—Dr. Nicolas standing in a pristine lab, his face lit by the reflection of a massive glass tank. Behind him floated something that barely looked alive.
> "Subject One," Nicolas said. "Codename—Ys1."
That was the beginning.
Nicolas and his team had harvested an unknown deep-sea creature, something from a trench even darker than this one, and injected it with an experimental chemical designed to "evolve" life. They thought they had achieved perfection.
But perfection fought back.
The tank shattered, alarms screamed, and in seconds the entire Rush Lab became a furnace of light. The chemical—unstable and alive—spread into the air, into the rain, into the soil. The lab and the city around it became a single wound in the planet.
The Rush Area was born that day—its waters boiling with death and mutation.
---
From that scar, new horrors crawled into existence.
When the surviving scientists scavenged what was left, they gathered droplets of that same chemical. Just drops—yet enough to rewrite life itself.
From it, they forged new monsters:
Ys2, Ys3, Ys4—humans reshaped into weapons.
Ys5, the wolf that roamed the ashes.
Ys6, the rhino with metal for skin.
Ys7, the eagle whose wings sliced clouds.
Ys8, Sheev—the deep-sea terror, second only to Ys1.
And finally, Ys9—Mickey.
---
Unlike the others, his body wasn't forged directly from the Rush chemical. He was made from the purified blood of the previous subjects. Nicolas had learned from his failures. He wanted a creature that could think like a man but survive like a god.
And that's what Mickey became.
He could breathe underwater, withstand crushing depths, and move faster than any creature that called the sea home—save for the oldest of his kind, the ones born in the chaos itself.
But with every gift came a shadow.
He wasn't truly human anymore.
He wasn't truly one of them either.
---
The console flickered.
A sonar pulse echoed through the bunker—low, steady, then louder.
Something was nearby.
Mickey's eyes narrowed as he brought up the holographic map.
Shapes moved in the dark, just above the trench. Dozens of them. Some large, some small—but all warped, swimming in erratic patterns. Their bodies glowed faintly, veins burning with Rush radiation.
Mutated fish.
Creatures twisted by the poison of the Rush Area.
They weren't attacking yet—they were fleeing.
Running from something bigger.
Mickey's blood chilled. He turned toward the window that looked out into the endless dark.
Far in the distance, beyond the curtain of ash-colored water, a shadow moved. It was vast, silent, and terrifyingly familiar.
No illusion could mimic that.
> "Ys1…" he whispered.
The first creation. The oldest. The one that survived the explosion.
And it was coming closer.
---
Mickey stood at the edge of the chamber, the faint tremor of the deep pressing against the glass. For the first time in years, he felt something unfamiliar: a pulse of fear, buried deep beneath the calm.
He reached for his mask and stepped toward the airlock again.
> "If you're still alive… then so am I."
He plunged back into the abyss. The light from his bunker faded behind him as he swam into the black, where even the Rush-born creatures dared not go. His speed wasn't the fastest—but it was enough.
Enough to reach the truth.
The deeper he went, the louder the silence became.
And somewhere below, the first Ys waited—awake after all this time.