Playing Koi (21) (Patreon)

Jemma's hands shook as she took the radio carefully in her fingers, twisting its critical activation knob until it clicked. The coil hummed, though it wouldn't start draining her limited battery until she transmitted something.

There were no young goldfish to watch her this time. They were all asleep, or at least pretending they were. Only Kisten, her tail curled backward behind her and expression intent. Either Jemma was about to deliver these fish from their captivity or discover many fish she knew were dead.

The battle was over now, with the last shouts and distant sounds of weapons too faint to hear. Either the navy had won, or—the alternative hurt too much to contemplate. They couldn't have lost! Arlo and the others weren't dead!

Finally, she heard it—a distant hiss, followed by the voice of a bored fish. "Hurricane Actual, this is Salvage Seven. Dispatch lifting crane to search sector 14."

Pause, then a different voice answered, a little quieter. "Roger that Salvage Seven. Five has the crane, will relay priority request. Might be on your tails for a few minutes."

"Tell them to hurry things up. We're getting some strange readings under the rock here. Possible EM source, maybe something more interesting."

"Got it, Salvage Seven. I'll boil their fins and get back to you, over."

"See?" Jemma asked, tapping against the radio. "We can't occupy the tank forever. But if we move now, we can get you and all these little fish you're protecting out to somewhere safe. Not as nice as Thetria—but we didn't have magic to cheat with."

Kisten floated in the water in front of her, gradually turning upside-down, flowing along the feeble currents of that enclosed space. She said nothing, not even silently. Her face was unreadable, another half-sane mask. Whether the news relieved or horrified her, Jemma couldn't tell.

But she wasn't waiting to find out. Jemma twisted the transmission power all the way up, then held it up to her face as she depressed the key. "Hurricane Actual, this is Jemma Minnow. I was a passenger on the Tidal Fury—can you hear me?"

More static. Kisten swam up next to her, holding onto her arm with both of hers. That might make it difficult to use the radio, except that underwater she had almost no weight. Her body stretched to its full length in the water behind her, eyes focused on the radio. Waiting for the reply, just as intently as Jemma was.

"Jemma, we're reading you. Why didn't you report sooner?"

She didn't know the voice of course—she couldn't know all the fish in the ocean, or even all the fish in Algaegard. But they had a familiar Algaegard accent, and that would have to do. Besides, bloodthirsty predators weren't exactly going to take the time to learn to operate radios. "Was injured, but some friendlies found me. I've got… little over twenty goldfish here. Orphan children all, by the look of it."

That wasn't exactly going to excite anyone in naval command. Responsibility, with no clear answer for who should take charge. If they were doing an extended salvage mission, that could mean days or even weeks stuck down here with Kisten before anything happened. Kisten needs to get out of here, into the sunlight. She was already reminding Jemma a little of the one who first transformed them. The sooner she was back in civilization, the better. 

"Something else. Fish who saved me is an ancestor—been here since the fall of Thetria. Classically educated, with advanced magical research. Pretty sure she was planning to escape her orphans into another universe or something."

Finally, Kisten reacted, releasing her arm and floating far enough away to see her signs. "Planet, I think. Universe is everything by definition, so… not that ambitious." She twitched in the water until she was exactly upside-down from Jemma's perspective, her hair trailing down past her in a little cloud. "Also, I'm not planning. I was experimenting. Last time I opened a Worldgate big enough for twenty-six fish, I had… lots and lots of help." She sagged in the water, dropping back down to the floor and curling up around Jemma's tail.

"Sounds insane, Jemma. Sure you didn't just swim your way into some lunatic? No reason you should take a claim like that seriously, I think."

"Positive, Hurricane Actual. She's not crazy—" Probably a lie, though not for the reasons dispatch thought. "I'm with Kisten, the founder of goldfish magical study. I've watched her teleport right in front of me."

Kisten rolled over along the ground, staring up at Jemma. "If he says something stupid next, I'm bringing him here."

Jemma already had her hand off the transmit button. She glowered down at Kisten. "Don't even think about it. He's the one who sends help."

Kisten groaned silently, then pulled in her tail. She kept talking to herself, though her words overlapped and blurred into incomprehensibility. "Is she crazy? Goldfish rescued fish before they could get eaten and kept them alive while the city was getting torn apart? Sure, seems crazy to me!" And on she went, muttering more or less the same thing as she spoke to herself.

"I just passed your message up to command, Jemma. Where do we look for you? Far as I know, we already rounded up all the survivors. Place looks pretty deserted from where I’m sitting."

She didn't know, of course. But with Kisten's help, location was just a matter of arranging details.

The harder part was getting Kisten to let them in, since she had the entire building surrounded by a smaller, much weaker version of the barrier that once protected all of Thetria. Thankfully without the time dilation, or else she would likely not have found any of her girlfriend left to save. 

When you gave up eating and cleaning so you could use magic to revert your body to an earlier version before you worked yourself to death... you were no longer qualified to care for yourself.

At Jemma's request, the first salvage crew to arrive were a pair of goldfish, both unarmed. They brought some basic supplies, took a look around, and were gone again before most of the sleeping fish were awake.

"Did they come from a fresh human? Someone else unlucky enough to roll the same as I did?" Kisten swam in a nervous circle around Jemma, her fins flicking nervously to either side. "Thought I recognized them.”

"The eyes, right?" Jemma shook her head once. "I know of... three new humans since I got in. Might be more we never found; you know how the aquarium can be." Dangerous to any fish smaller than a certain size, who happened to swim into the wrong tank with the wrong fish watching. "All the goldfish living in Algaegard are either Arlo's kids, or... people we transformed. But your son had like 14, and they all had a lot, so..." She trailed off.

Kisten turned again, focusing on her hands. She took a long time to say anything. "You said his name before. But it doesn't feel like he should be... around. Last of Jasper's old eggs."

"He's older now," Jemma agreed. "Doesn't do as much inventing as he used to. Still the only one who can turn fish into goldfish, so I'm not sure what the justice department will do when he gets too old. That's where the other goldfish came from, though. We copied Thetria's defenses, kinda."

She could spare the details. Kisten didn't need to hear that becoming her species was a punishment they used for the most serious criminals. She would find out eventually, but not today.

"I want to see him. Before I let any fish look at my lab. It has to be him."

Of course that made everything considerably more difficult. Jemma had to make more calls and jump through more hoops. Lucky for them both that Arlo hadn't been killed in the attack that ripped a hole in the Tidal Fury.

He floated his way in with an escort of four marines, each one an armed and armored fish with eyes obscured by helmet.

Arlo himself dwarfed his mother now, old enough that his muscles were fading. He was still enormous for a goldfish, even as his scales dimmed, and his skin wrinkled over the old tattoos.

Jemma didn't hear their reunion, but she could still see the relief on Kisten's face.

It didn't hurt to watch, this time. Jemma knew intimately how that felt, both the pain of loss and the relief that came from a child returned. 

Finally, Kisten released him, swimming a slow circle around the marines. 

"I want to know everything," Arlo said. "I thought Thetria would be here... forever. It wasn't supposed to look like this when I came home."

Kisten circled back around, reappearing behind Jemma. She rested one hand on her shoulder. The fish might be silent, but Jemma knew her too well to miss any obvious signs. Kisten was terrified of something. She wouldn't say as much until a few hours later, when the rescue team had inspected the lab and met her orphans. 

The nervous fish would have nothing to do with anyone who wasn't a goldfish, especially the big fish with armor and weapons. Many of those were the same species who had assaulted the city, only raised in civilization as the offspring of humans, instead of wild in the glass.

They would probably need somewhere special to live, when the time came to bring them to Algaegard—somewhere they would be around only fish that wouldn't terrify them.

But that wasn't what scared Kisten. Despite her painful history, the goldfish had something else in mind.

"He's so... old," she said, in the privacy of her bedroom at the end of the day. Arlo was so old, in fact, that he couldn't remain with them in such a dangerous place, with so few amenities.

"Your son?" 

Kisten nodded. She circled once around the room, gathering random scraps of paper, and a chunk of calcified grease to write with. "Have to do something about that. Bigger jump will be harder. Might knock me out of commission for a few days. Need you to explain it to the kids. Could put him back with them, actually. Just carry this..."

Jemma caught her wrist, holding firm. She didn't think most transformation magic could be cast without the fish present to be targeted. But she also didn't know for sure. This goldfish was so old, and she'd spent so much of that time in magical study—maybe none of the old rules applied to her anymore. "Wait."

Kisten squirmed, then vanished, reappearing with her page a few feet away. She hunched over it, scribbling something over layers and layers of old text.

"Before you cast anything, you should know. He's married—guppy named Nicole. If you know some spell to help him, but you don't treat her too, he'll hate you. Losing his wife like that..."

"Right." Kisten bit her tongue, clearing more space on the side of the page. "Can do that. Two fish. He was eleven when he left, so maybe—"

Jemma swam closer. This time she didn't try to grab the goldfish. Clearly that was a doomed effort. "Is that all you want to do from now on? Just find old fish and make them not old anymore? Because there's a lot of them in Algaegard. It's an old city."

That made her hesitate. She reached to the side, as though expecting to find more paper there. But of course, there was none, only more rubble and a desk crumbling and ancient. She spun slowly, looking up at Jemma. "I won't just watch him die when I can stop it. If you make me take steps to protect... social unity, or whatever, I can do that. But I'm not giving him up."

Jemma shrugged. "I'm not telling you what to do. Except maybe one thing: ask him before you decide. It's his life."

"I owe him," Kisten dropped to the ground again, stirring up a little cloud of silt. "He went to Algaegard because of me. I worried about you, and he..." She sighed. "He doesn't get to live forever like we do. Real fish—they come and go. So many times, Jemma. Again, and again and again. They're brilliant, they're stupid, they're loving and compassionate and evil and ambitious and selfless and kind." 

She dropped her pen, wrapping both arms around herself. "Tried... blocking it all out. Not caring. When I was the last ancestor left, there was no one else. Just practiced and practiced. But they were screaming." She opened both eyes again, fixing Jemma with pupils so wide they filled her face. "Those kids... too small to be worth eating, I guess. Crying for their parents. I couldn't block them out."

Jemma wrapped both arms around her. "I'm glad you didn't. That doesn't sound like the woman I fell in love with. But it's okay to be done now. You've helped enough."

She shook violently in Jemma's grip. Not strong enough to pull free, or drift away through the water. She didn't teleport away this time either. "Not yet. They're still stranded on this side. Thetria is out there, on the other side. There's a better world."

"One day." Jemma squeezed. "I can help you do it. Maybe even Arlo—ocean knows he's sick of politics. But you don't have to do it right now. We're not using necromancy in place of meals anymore. Those kids can get parents. Heck, maybe even your grandkids can adopt them. It's time to let go of this place. When the crew comes tomorrow with a transport sub, we'll both be on it, okay?"

The goldfish didn't answer for a long time. She rolled over in the water, facing Jemma. Finally, she nodded, as uncertain as a wounded animal. "So long as... all my kids are on it. No one gets left behind. And I'll need help to get all my notes together."

"We can do that now," Jemma said. "We'll be ready when the sub gets here."