//------------------------------//
// Episode 8: Coarse and Rough 
// Story: SuShi's Bizarre Adventure: Darkness Manifest 
// by Jojoleopard 
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To their shame, Subterra and the others didn’t find anything that could jog her memory, even after walking around the entire lagoon of Tikehau. They had spotted a diving team that worked to clean out the rubbish around the atoll, but there was nothing else significant here.

Shiho grumbled all the way back to their boat, muttering about how it was a whole waste of a day and how TWI was getting stronger the longer they took.

“Your attitude isn’t helping. Stop being so irritable, Shiho,” Ocellus said as she brushed past her. “Let’s just move on and hope we find TWI on the next island.”

Subterra stopped by Shiho as they watched Ocellus carry on. “I’m sure she doesn’t mean that. She just has a lot going on.”

“Good grief. Don’t we all?” Shiho tugged at her jacket and looked up at the moon in the sky.

Subterra shrugged. “At least the view of the sky is still something.”

Shiho shook her head. “I’d give it another seven or eight years. Pollution’s going to block out the stars even out here.” Then she kept walking.

“What a world we live in.” Crafteon creeped its head close to Subterra’s. “Are you sure it isn’t better to help TWI make the world better?”

“We can’t, not in the way TWI’s going for.” Subterra shook her head. “She wants to kill so many people so she can take control.”

“Is that so bad? According to her, these people are the ones sending the world down to its destruction.”

Subterra kicked at a can on the sand. “According to her. I’m sure there are good people out there too.”

Crafteon’s tentacles lingered on a broken bottle of wine and swept it away. “You can tell yourself that, but the beach here speaks enough. But you’re my Stand master. I respect your wishes.”

“Right. We’re not going to harbor this thought anymore. Let’s get going before TWI sends another Stand master after us…” Subterra ran along to catch up with Shiho and Ocellus.

The three women spent a night at the hotel right at the docks. The room was an open air one, letting the seabreeze in from a balcony overlooking the jungles and the shore. With the world’s temperature heating up over the years, the night breeze was no longer cool, but it was certainly better than the hot wind blowing in the day. Ocellus and Shiho didn’t waste time in drifting away in their sleep, but Subterra found herself lying there for quite some time, staring up at the wooden ceiling above them.

She found the darkness soothing, almost like a calming presence that made her feel like everything would be alright. And perhaps everything would be alright. There would be no way of knowing, and she still didn’t feel easy about leading them back to TWI, the person she had apparently run from. But Shiho needed to find her grandmother and Ocellus her mother. She hadn’t gotten as much details from Ocellus as Shiho, but her mother was working for TWI, who had hospitalized her group of friends. What Ocellus was probably after was revenge, but Subterra didn’t want to accuse her of anything, at least not out loud.

As the waves continued to crash on the shores outside and with her attention on the dark ceiling, Subterra eventually fell asleep, waking up only when a mosquito landed on her face, just under her left eye. She swatted it away, then sat up, finding both Shiho and Ocellus had already roused. Ocellus was standing at the balcony, leaning against the railing as she watched the sun rise. Shiho sat at the other end of the bed, drinking from her flask. Subterra had shared the bed with her last night and Ocellus had taken the couch. According to her, she had slept in worse places, but then again, that sounded like something anyone would say.

“The next island isn’t far,” Shiho said as she slipped her grey coat on. She tossed her lightphone over to Subterra, who caught it after it bounced off her hands twice. It projected a detailed map of their surroundings and it had a red arrow pointing above the next island. “It’s called Rangiroa. It’s another popular diving spot with a bit more to civilization than this dump here.”

“We should grab a bite before heading out.” Ocellus sat on the couch and slipped her ankle-high boots on. “No good going out there with an empty stomach.”

“For once I agree with you.” Shiho nodded as she stood up. “We already paid for breakfast anyway.”

In no time, they were cleaned up and ready to head out, first going back down to the restaurant to get some food. The restaurant was an open air locale consisting of a thatch roof held up by tiki poles. Everything here was dark brown, including the floorboards and the tables, making it a little more difficult to tell the tables from the ground from afar.

Shiho grabbed a few buns and slipped them into her coat pockets, while Subterra got a basketful of eggs in her hoodie. Ocellus didn’t have much room to hide anything, so she slipped a couple of sausages into her shorts. That hadn’t been the best of ideas, especially when she walked by a mother and her little girl. The woman had gone on a huge lecture about being indecent near children. Shiho quickly scurried out of the restaurant, but Subterra, unable to just leave Ocellus to such a fate, sent Crafteon out to knock over a tray of rice.

There was instant mayhem and Ocellus took the chance to slip away from them, holding tightly to the sausages in her shorts as she ran to keep them from falling out.

“I’m never doing that again…” she groaned, her cheeks bright red. “Next time I’m carrying a bag for this.”

“Good grief. Of all places…” Shiho shook her head. “Let’s just get out of here. The faster we find TWI the better.”

Once they were back on the Brandy 2, Tikehau was soon behind them as they sped off to the next closest island. Rangiroa was just east of Tikehau, having a bigger land mass and a larger lagoon. They could see two people wading through water, picking up rubbish with claws coming from backpacks on their shoulders. At least there were still people apart from TWI trying to make a difference.

They found another resort to dock at on the north side of the atoll and this time, not wanting to risk anything, Ocellus and Subterra stayed with Shiho as she docked the boat.

“Anything ringing any bells yet?” Ocellus asked as she tapped a foot against one of the boardwalk’s poles.

Subterra looked at the resort ahead. It looked just like any resort on the last two islands. There wasn’t really anything special about it.

She shook her head. “Sorry. No.”

Shiho frowned and shoved her hands in her coat pockets. “Come on. Let’s get going. We’ve got a bunch to cover.”

As they traversed the atoll looking for anything outstanding through the islands of Polynesia, the three women spent a lot of time walking along the beaches and Subterra did her best to try and jog her lost memories, but unfortunately, after three hours, they hadn’t found anything, just like with the previous island, though there was still much ground to cover here compared to Tikehau.

With the loss of the ozone layer, it was getting unbearable to walk about in the hot sun. Subterra had pulled her hood over her head, but it did little to provide her reprieve from the intense heat searing over her skin. Ocellus, having the most skin exposed of the three, found that her skin was already starting to turn red. She touched her arm and Subterra swore she could hear her skin sizzle on contact.

“Good grief, this heat…” Shiho put a hand above her eyes and attempted to look up. “Still nothing, Subterra?”

The younger girl shook her head. “I’m sorry. None of the resorts are getting anything. And everything else is just… coarse and rough sand.”

“It’s irritating, I’ll give you that.” Ocellus looked at the underside of one of her boots.

“And it’s getting everywhere.” Shiho groaned as she gave her foot a shake. “I have plenty of sand in my shoes.”

“Maybe we should get to cover,” Ocellus said, pointing to a cluster of large boulders. “Give our bodies time to cool down.”

“We need to find TWI,” Shiho countered.

Ocellus slapped a hand to her forehead. “Look, we’re not going to find her if we die from melanoma. I’m not asking, Shiho. We’re going to take a break. Come on, Subterra.”

Subterra looked between both of them, then gave Shiho an apologetic look as she followed Ocellus. She wanted a break too.

“Good grief…” Shiho said as she shut her eyes, but she followed along soon after.



“Right there. Right there.” A dark skinned woman in a black bikini with a red floral sash tied around her waist waved a hand as she watched two men finish laying down a banner over the front of a decrepit old building. Two of the planks on its facade were already starting to get loose. “Parfaite. Merci, messieurs.”

She brushed aside her long black hair from her front, tucking it behind her right ear as she took a few steps back to admire their work.

She rested her hands on her hips as she read the words on the banner. “Rangi Church welcomes all. Come seek the presence of God.”

“You think this will be enough, Leilani?” one of her companions, Big Horse Rock, asked as he dusted sand off his shins. “You think they’ll start coming back?”

“We can only hope, Big Horse,” she said. “In times like these, there is no better place to look than the House of God.”

This woman was Leilani Seabell, a native to Rangiroa. She had spent most of her life on this island, especially in the Rangi Church itself. Her father had been the priest here and his father before that. She had left Polynesia many years ago to pursue a different path, one where she had been sure would make a better living than that of a church worker. It was there, all the way in New York that she had realized that path wasn’t for her. She had been led astray by debauchery and money and if she hadn’t set her sights back on God, perhaps she would already be dead at the back of some shady alley.

“And it’s nice to be back here again,” Leilani said.

She couldn’t believe the state of the church when she had returned here. Since her father’s passing, there had been no succession to him and the congregation had started shrinking until only the shell of a building was left.

“Some of the natives won’t be happy to see the church back up again,” her other companion, Rain Bull, said. He was a friend who had followed her over from New York. “Most people don’t have religion these days, with the state the world is in.”

Leilani shook her head and narrowed her bright yellow eyes. “Religion should be the first thing they look towards in this bleak future. Only God can save us now.”

Her dark skin glistening with sweat, Leilani wiped her face with a hand before looking up as high as she could at the near cloudless sky. It had gotten hotter and hotter out here among the islands and in a few more years, she didn’t know if people could still walk around in the open. It felt as though the sun was approaching the planet, ready to swallow them whole.

“All we can do is wait for the second coming now…” Leilani sighed and sat herself down on the church’s front steps.

The wood creaked under her weight, but didn’t break. That was another thing they would have to do in the coming days: refurbish the structure and clean up the inside. Through a hole in the roof, leaves had gotten in and the entire floor was littered with dead and dry leaves, along with weathering from the occasional storm.

If not for the mysterious powers she had been born with, the whole building would’ve already collapsed a year ago. She looked at the shiny pink tendrils curling around the building, holding the rotten planks in place. It was something only she could see, for some reason. Big Horse and Rain Bull could not see them, even if it were in front of their faces.

It was a strange looking thing, resembling a mushroom and a jellyfish at the same time. She had taken to calling it Jellyfish.

“The name isn’t super original, I know,” Leilani said to herself. “But it’s easy to remember. I wonder why my parents were not gifted with such abilities. They surely had stronger faith than I do.”

“With some paint, this building is going to look brand new, Leilani,” Rain Bull said as he finished inspecting its perimeter. “You’ll see. The banner is but the first of many steps to revitalize the church.”

She couldn’t help but smile. “My father would want that. The revival of the congregation here on Rangiroa. I know we would-”

One of Jellyfish’s tentacles started vibrating and Leilani’s attention immediately flicked to the sand ahead. She saw nothing, but something had entered Jellyfish’s radius. When she had used its tentacles to hold the church in place earlier, she had also spread them out across the beach, a natural act for someone like her.

“I’ve had to deal with other people with abilities all these years. Now would be no different and I was right to leave Jellyfish’s tentacles all around the beach. Something is here, something stepped in,” Leilani said, not quite just for herself. “Whatever it is must’ve gotten quite the sting. Jellyfish’s tentacles are able to deliver a brief shock that sears the flesh on contact, leaving it sore and numb for a few hours. But that’s weird, because I still don’t see anything. What triggered my trap?”

“Rain Bull, Big Horse! Be careful.” Leilani quickly shot to her feet, backing up till she was against the church doors. “Jellyfish has picked up something.”

“That strange power of yours?” Big Horse rounded over from the other side of the church. “Is it someone else with powers?”

Rain Bull clutched tighter to the broom in his hands. “It could be more of those atheists. They really don’t want to see the church thrive.”

Leilani pursed her lips. “I’m not so sure about that.”

“Well, whatever it is out there, we won’t let them touch the church.” Rain Bull spun the broom, then planted its end down against the sandy ground.

Leilani felt another of Jellyfish’s tentacles vibrate, this time about ten yards closer than before. And it was getting closer still.

“Rain, it’s-!”

She wasn’t fast enough and from under the sand, something burst out, grabbing both of Rain Bull’s legs. He squealed and threw the broom high and he was gone before it could even hit the ground, disappearing into the depths of the sandy beach.

- To be Continued...-