Elizabeth whistled and clicked as she delivered her parcel to the sub. She could feel the thrill of the hunt nearing the end. All the orcas could. With the sub surrounded and dead in the water, it was helpless. As long as the whales stayed away from the torpedo launchers (which Liz had sent them very explicit images of what would happen if they didn’t) the sub was powerless against them.

As Sam invaded the ship, a burst of clicks detected more chunks of ice covering any surface to air weaponry. Good, he had it under control. And now he was calling for Weltgeist.

Liz focused her mind on the bugs she’d planted on Weltgeist. Swimming alongside the ship, she was easily in range to pick up their thoughts. There was agitation and alarm. Good, that meant he was moving.

It wasn’t long before the door on top of the ship opened. Herr Weltgeist stood there, hands empty, the spear nowhere in sight.

“I commend you, Herr Johnson,” he said in accentless English. “It appears your Artemis is every bit the huntress you claimed, even with a bullet wound. Please give her my regards. You have found me and captured me. Very well. I surrender.”

He held his wrists out but his face was not one of defeat. From the water, Liz could see a victorious smile and a worrying sparkle in his eyes. But her echolocation saw nothing in the hallways and stairs behind him.

Surrounded by water with ice slowly consuming the submarine Sam felt a little more relaxed. The pod of Orca’s swimming around the ship helped as well but Sam was trained. He knew not to relax until the mission was over. With the capture of Weltgiest it would be but he still had a feeling the man wasn’t revealing everything. The sudden lack of accent made him skeptical.

”I told you.” Sam said honestly, ”She’s more skilled than she knows. In fact the only reason you are still alive is because of her. I could have frozen you ten times over by now. The sub would already be halfway to the bottom of the sea here.” he looked around making sure not to let his guard down. His thermal vision was picking up on the heat of the sub.

Something was off about this. Looking back to Weltgiest he frowned his lone eye tracing him over. The bullet felt heavy in his hand and he tossed it over the side of the ship into the frozen waters. ”She’s also the reason this bullet isn’t in your head right now.” he sighed loudly and started walking towards the man.

Ice continued to encase the hull of the vessel with every step he took. Two clones of ice broke free from the frozen liquid and stepped behind Welgiest. ”You attempt to control me again they will cut out your tongue before you finish your sentence. Apparently my ravens love tongues.” maybe he should take a hand to discourage him from acting out?

The clones grabbed Weltgiest and bear hugged him shifting into a solid entity to keep the man still. ”Who else is in the sub?” Sam asked as another clone formed from the water below and clamored it’s way up the side of the craft.

”No more tricks.” Sam said before sending the first clone into the sub.

Herr Weltgeist did not move as the ice figure wrapped around him and became a frigid straitjacket. Only then did he nod his head toward the whale fins that could be seen darting in and out of the water around them. “A huntress who does not kill? My, how unfortunate. Still, I gather she’s owed my thanks. I’d tip my hat to her, but you can see that I’m otherwise engaged,” Weltgeist said.

He stared amiably at CS. “My, an X-Man resorting to such banal threats? Oh how the mighty have fallen,” he said. “Would it make you feel better if I said I was shaking in my boots?” He was not. Not even close. In fact, Weltgeist looked perfectly at ease, as if he was exactly where he wanted to be.

Elizabeth swam closer and popped her head out of the water, the only orca to do so. She stared at the man in concern. This wasn’t good. The man was up to something. He had to be. It was like back in his office, utterly at ease despite being almost in arm reach of ravens, dogs, and Sam. Back then, he’d had mind control, a gun, and an escape hatch on his side. And mind games.

The icy doppelganger passed by Weltgeist and started making its way down into the sub. “No more tricks,” Weltgeist agreed. “Only my most loyal men are below.”

A sound rippled through the keen ears of the orcas. A muffled whomp and then a shift in water pressure. Liz barely had time to hear it before Weltgeist spoke again.

“They’re loyal to the very end. Remember me when Ragnarok comes, Lord Odin.”

Then the explosives that Weltgeist’s men had setup reached the torpedoes in the sub and a concussive wave of fire, force, and shrapnel blasted in all directions as the submarine exploded.

”No...” he didn’t' care how Weltgiest felt about his threat. Sam would have been done with the conversation already if it hadn’t been for Liz. She requested no killing. Sam was reluctantly obliging to that request. He had made so many ‘promises’ in the past about not killing people like Weltgiest. To Ghost, to Kat, to himself. All of those he broke. Liz didn’t ask for a promise though. Somehow making it easier to deal with this situation. Maybe he should cripple him. Making it difficult to do something like this in the future?

>>>“Only my most loyal men are below.”

The clone stopped mid hatch and Sam suddenly got a pit in his stomach. Something was off. More so than any other point of the day. His thermal vision was obscured below until there was a point where things suddenly got hotter below.

”You wouldn’t.” there was a moment of pause and Sam saw the look on the man’s face. The look that told him everything. It wasn’t Weltgiest. He wasn’t here. They were following the wrong man. ”Liz! Move!” the ice that already was surrounding the sub solidified more trying to stop the impending explosion.

A jet of ice shot under his feat and Sam lifted himself as fast and as high as he could pushing himself from the explosion of the sub. The jet would be fine. It was far enough away but Sam and the orca’s however...

The sub erupted in an explosion. Sam’s body coated in a thick ice as he reached terminal velocity.

Death rained down in Antarctica.

Fire licked across the surface of the waves caused by the exploding submarine. Shards and chunks of metal and shattered ice rode those waves, skewering, slicing, and perforating. The ice clone was incinerated by the sheer force of the blast. The loyal men of Weltgeist were not so lucky.

The violence of the oncoming grave swept equally agnostically through the firelight waters below. A bubble of air and force warped outward, like the smiting of an angry sea-god.

Whales crumbled, twisted, split, and flew beneath the onslaught, even as arrows of ice and hull stabbed out in all directions.

<<Aaaiiiiii!>> Elizabeth screeched as an overwhelming lava-like pain blasted through her host’s synapses and spilled over into her mind. Instant echoes slammed into her from the rest of the pod. Many had been underwater, which had dispersed some of the momentum of the projectiles, especially for the whales that had been yards and yards out.

But for the ones right by the sub? For the one Liz was possessing?

Something snapped.

Suddenly, Liz felt nothing. No response. The matriarch who’d been amused by the sapience in her mind wasn’t answering. Neither was her mind.

Elizabeth lost sight. Sounds. Smell. Taste. The etch-a-sketch sonic map of the world around her faded, except in her memories. Suddenly she, too, was adrift in the black void.

The concussive force from the blast sent him further upwards as shrapnel flew past him. Something hit him in the head and the leg, the impact on the head caused him to black out for a moment only before he felt a searing pain in his leg.

Sam could only fly so high before gravity started to take hold of him. Once it did he fell hard and fast. The water was the next thing he saw as his vision came back to him. His thermal imaging was off, he had to sever the connection with it before the explosion.

The impact on the water was hard but he was still protected by his armor. The sound of fire and large pockets of air rushed passed him as he sank into the cold water before the ice armor could lift him up again. That was when he felt it again, his leg. Sam winced and shouted as he erupted back to the surface. ”Mother *****er!!!!” he floated on his back as ice started to raise him up on a small floating platform.

”Liz!” his voice was hoarse, he was tired. And the water around him was engulfed in flames still. The main reason his voice was the way it was. His ears were still ringing. Looking down he spotted a large chunk of metal in his leg. It was.... painful to say the least.

”Nooooooo...... killing......” he grunted as he reached down and pulled the foot long jagged piece of steel from his leg. The ice around it softened and resolidified as the metal was freed from his leg. ”Last.... time... I’m listening.... to you!” the metal clattered next to him as he let out a howl of pain.

On the jet, having front row seats to the explosion (from a far safer distance) the scientists all watched in horror as the dogs on the jet started howling and barking.

She drifted in space for an eternity, the darkness and depths swallowing all time and space. Nothing mattered. Nothing could touch her. Nothing but a crippling sense of loneliness and wrongness.

It was a place she’d glimpsed so many times before. A liminal space, where her mind wandered for those immortal moments between leaving her body behind and entering the mind of a new host. Those shards of forever when nothing existed and she was merely herself.

<<Forget this!>> Liz declared. She stabbed mental tendrils out into the darkness and immediately found something.

Searing, agonizing pain lanced through her mind but Elizabeth rejoiced nonetheless. It proved she was alive, as was the creature she had connected with. It was an orca, and it seemed to be injured, even if it wasn’t dying. <<Come to me,>> she commanded it. Then she realized she didn’t know where the whale was, or where she was, for that matter.

Liz lowered the floodwalls around her psyche and let the oceans of minds flood her soul. Panic, pain, rage, confusion, and many flavors of shock filtered through and for a time she was washed away by the rivers of grief, but she was eventually able to ride the waves.

Sensory input blazed throughout her, bombarding her with a myriad of perspectives on everything. She felt dozens of mortal wounds and heard the death gasps of seven whales before she lost contact with them. One by one, she slowly cut whales off from her mind. She didn’t know where they were, but Liz could roughly tell how close they were. Her powers weakened by range, and assuming all the orcas were experiencing similar levels of trauma, the ones closest to her would be the most vibrant.

In theory.

Sliding behind various eyes and echo charts, she found the closest whales were in a wide ring around the exploded sub. The machine was rushing to the ocean floor, but oil and other chemicals created a pungent, roiling bonfire on the surface of the waves, thick black smoke already beginning to obscure the beginning of the southern lights in the sky.

From there it was simple math. Wherever she was, she was right about where they saw the sinking body of the matriarch whale, whose metal-laden body was beyond the power of buoyancy.

Liz chose the whale she thought was strongest and healthiest. <<Come to me,>> she bade it, focusing on the place where the matriarch had swam, where Liz had last seen through her eyes.

A scant minute later, the whale slid through the spot and passed through Liz. <<Got you,>> she said as she felt the possession connect.

Liz cast out with echolocation. There was someone else she needed to find. <<Let’s go get Sam.>>

”Gnnnnnhhh’ Blood poured out of his leg and Sam felt he lost consciousness for a moment. He was floating, but alive. He had to focus. The wound was stopped with ice as it purred into the mixture and made a blood red spot under his armor trying to keep everything contained. His vison blurred for a moment and he heard a familiar scream of ‘Daddy’ before smacking the spot on his leg where he was just impaled. Pain. His eye snapped open and he howled.

This wasn’t the place he was going to die. Eve needed him and that was all the motivation he needed to start moving again. He was floating on a chunk of metal but it was steadily lowering. It must have collected some air. Ice covered his body more pulling it from the surrounding water till the metal under him sank and was replaced with a floating shelf of ice.

Bobbing on the surface ”System point check.” he growled to himself coughing from the flames. It was best to get out from the scene of the wreckage but there was no way he’d be swimming with his leg the way it was. Starting with his toes he worked his way up to his ankle. It hurt but he could still control everything. It was a clean impaling it seems. Even if it did more damage than he thought Doc could patch him up later.

Tapping his ear with a grunt he coughed, ”Everyone alright?” he asked his voice appearing in the jet with everyone else. ”How's the patient?” wondering what would happen to Liz if her host died.

The darkness of the water was a small blessing. Even the water-adapted vision of the orca didn’t so easily see the carnage that littered it. The taste of metals was strong, but they had nothing to see. The firelight and the sky lights played out on the surface as even the moon had risen, but in the grave-like waters there was nothing.

Nothing but sound.

Elizabeth dodged a sinking chunk of hull as it plummeted to the depths. She spared only a moment to mourn a great whale that she passed, before casting another blast of clicks into the ocean. Although the whale’s eyes revealed little, the acoustic centers of his mind revealed a world of starkness to her.

She would never forget the images.

Like a black and white torpedo, she closed to the distant surface where she detected the only struggling humanoid, who was also building an ice floe beneath him. She surfaced and immediately spouted water from her blowhole, breathing in the frigid air. “Eck eck eck!” she whistled, rolling over slightly to wave a fin at him. It was the only thing she could think of to try to let him know it was her.

Meanwhile, the ravens in the jet were still fluttering around and frantically squawking everywhere, keying up the dogs and scientists alike.

“Oh, God, Sam! What was that?” Sam’s scientist friend shouted in response, assuming there was a microphone already on.

“We’re all unharmed,” the mousy woman said, butting it with professional ease and detachment. “Patient’s status is unchanged, at least from this end. Naturally we have no way of knowing if her…consciousness… is impaired in any way. What is the situation down there? Are we in danger?”

There was a some calls from the apex predator that answered his question before he received the other message. Sam exhaled his worries turning his head to see the wave from the magnificent creature. It seemed Liz was well, or suddenly he made friends with an Orca after the submarine blew up... he doubled checked to make sure he wasn’t dead moving the injured limb. Pain. He was alive. So was Liz. Thank god. He wasn’t ready to deal with losing a friend. Not again.

”A **** show. Blew up in my face.” he grunted and moved his head and upper torso up to look at the flames around him. ”A big one.” the fires would eventually die down. There wasn’t anything that could catch. Other than him and the orcas that Liz was hanging out in wouldn’t stick around if there wasn’t anywhere to breech.

”She’s here with me.” he said feeling like he was talking to himself more than anything but knew everyone was listening in on the other end. ”She’ll be back soon. I’m sure.” he gave a small thumbs up to Liz in the orca and formed two ice clones to help him upright on his small platform of ice that was forming. His leg dragged a bit behind him. ”How about a little push to the jet?” he asked curiously to Liz.

It took some time.

With an ice lift his clones helped him into the cockpit of the jet. ”Birds, Dogs.” he grunted in acknowledgement before looking back down to the Orca and shouting. ”Ready to go home? We got a debrief.” she wasn’t aware that a debrief was drinking a bottle of expensive whiskey. ”and we have to drop the scientists off at the closest military base so they can explain what happened.” he looked to the others, ”What were you studying out here anyways?”

It took time indeed.

The orca that housed the mind of Elizabeth Sundance bobbed its head and ducked gracefully under the water. With a gentle thrust of their tail, they pressed their head against the ice floe and began swimming steadily to where the X-Jet hung in the sky like a quivering thunderbird, silhouetted against the aurora.

They made it through the battlefield in silence, at least on her end. Then again, what else was there to say?

When they finally got close enough to the jet, Liz waited until Sam was safely onboard, alongside his icy helpers. “I’m on my way,” she spoke through the ravens before summoning one of them down to the water.

Only a minute later she’d slid her mind back into the bird’s an with a last jolt of sympathy and hope, she sent the orca on its way and winged her way up to the jet, taking up a perch on a cabinet and overlooking her body. “We’re good to go,” she cawed.

Sam’s friend just dropped his head and covered his face with his hands.

“....we were only studying penguins…”

Despite the pain he chuckled. Sometimes that was all you could do in situations like this. They were alive despite having everything happened. Sam was injured. The scientists probably a lifetime of trauma if they recalled anything (he still didn’t know the extent of Weltgiest’s power) and then Liz... someone who had no business being on the front lines was dragged there by the icemancer. He’d apologize later but all he could do now was laugh.

His clones sat motionless in the back of the jet near the ramp. They no longer had a reason to be there but Sam was a bit more cautious now that he had a large hole in his leg that required healing. His hands supported him as he limped through the cockpit holding on to chairs as he passed.

”Hope you learned a lot about them. Might be able to discuss them with...” he looked to Liz’s body that was still turned towards the ceiling of the jet wondering if she was avoiding her own body to keep away from the pain of being shot. Something he was going to apologize a lot for later. ”The ravens. Right Liz?” he asked hoping the birds didn’t suddenly want to peck his eye out or eat his tongue. They still needed him to fly back to the mansion.

”All strapped in everyone?” he winced as he sat down. Bruno was at his side licking the leg that was frozen over due to the smell of blood that was now frozen. ”Sorry.” he said quietly to the dog and Liz who was probably listening as one of the scientists discussed the organ that converted salt water to fresh water in penguins.

As the ramp closed up and once again the cabin pressure was comfortable and life-saving, Elizabeth fluttered down to Zorro and slid into his mind, releasing the raven to act in accordance with its wishes, only partially modified by her own will. Both Huninn and Muninn had a very vested interest in the blood they could still detect on Elizabeth’s body and, well, Liz didn’t want to dwell on that.

Besides, the day had been pretty long for Zorro too.

<<You are wonderful,>> she told him, her mind open to his, for what good he’d be able to make use of it. Mainly it just let him feel the depth of her love for him. And that was enough.

Lizorro padded their way to the front of the jet, near Sam and Bruno, and flopped down on the floor. It was almost as far from her body she could get, although she still had eyes and ears on it, keeping her alert of every action. Ravens didn’t miss much when it came to shiny things and potentially dying things. Canine ears and noses were good at picking up the rest.

Even so, she could hear the pain in Sam’s voice, the physical pain, and what sounded like emotional pain. And his apology.

None of the humans would’ve heard it. Liz likewise didn’t bother responding via raven. Instead, she had Zorro look up at Sam, let him tongue flop out of his mouth in a doggy grin, thump his tail twice against the floor, and then lay down and put his head between his paws. It was the best answer he was going to get from them. They’d discuss it in-depth once they had dropped the scientists off….wherever they were supposed to. Until then, Liz was content to enjoy the natural joy of a canine’s mind and let it soothe her savaged soul.

The mystery of the missing scientist was over.

If only they didn’t have several new mysteries instead.

The jet set down and Sam let out a long sigh of relief. He was exhausted. He was in pain. He was however alive. They both were. Looking to Zorro (who he was pretty sure was Liz at this point) he cleared his throat and spoke, ”Let’s get your body patched up.” then to Bruno, ”Were, home big guy. Go see V.” the massive dog barked twice hopped once and then rushed out of the jet running back towards the exit of the hanger.

Looking at the exit Sam sighed, ”Great.... another headache.” Doc Prof was standing at the entrance arms folded and a scowl on his face. ”Guess now’s a good as time as any. Ready for some third degree? We will debrief after.” he looked to Zorro then to the birds who could have been holding Liz’s mind.

Obviously Sam waited for Liz to be healed before mentioning what was wrong with him physically. Doc could heal pretty much everything except for the emotional pain. That was going to be addressed with a bottle later.

“I can’t believe you! You brought Elizabeth on one of your excursions!?! What were you thinking!?!” Doc shouted and shook his head as he overlooked the woman’s body for any other obvious wounds. His hands glowed slightly as he touched the hole where the bullet entered.

”I was thinking it was a rescue operation. She’s good at finding people. Just so happened there were nazi’s” Doc eyed Sam and shook his head. “Of course it happens to you.”

A lot of things happened quickly after they landed. It was rather much a blur to Elizabeth. She dwelled inside Zorro but kept a firm grasp on the ravens’ minds to prevent them from going wild inside the mansion. The medbay was particularly fascinating to them, what with all its reflective services and bright lights. Nevertheless, she kept them in check and continued using them to speak on her behalf.

“It really was just supposed to be search and rescue,” Liz said from one of the ravens. “Heck, I wasn’t going to pass up a free trip to Antarctica!”

Doc stared at the ravens and then at Zorro with a look that just seemed disappointed, like his star student settling for a B- on a test. “You shouldn’t encourage him, Elizabeth,” he said. The flesh under his hand began knitting itself back together.

She cocked Zorro’s head. “If anything, I held him back,” Huninn repeated. “I’m pretty sure we managed to avoid Ragnarok as well.”

“That extremist group?” Doc said with a start.

Muninn ruffled his feathers like a shrug. “That’s not inaccurate, but I mean the death of the gods slash end of the world one,” she said. “Still, we got to pet some whales.” Before most of them died. Liz decided not to mention that part.