The ship floats calmly amongst the waves on the high seas. Ship’s Captain’s words carry, his shouts ferocious. The ocean may be calm, but aboard the ship, they prepare for fighting. Frantically.

.

They came from the water so long ago. Now they sought to tame the oceans. They threaten all the world, parasitic and tasteless. Loud, abrasive, and crass. Seeking our destruction.

We must wipe them out. They hunt us. We’ll return the favor.

We only wish to live, but we will defend.

.

Only a birds’ eye view could see the monsters the ship prepared for.

Beneath the waters there was a seething mass. Old creatures, born of this earth millenia ago, yet far more traveled than earth alone.

These were no simple Kraken.

This mass, was beautiful as much as deadly.

Flesh tendrils drifted, twitched, and slid together. Deep shades of red, this was a pinnacle of evolution, change, and combination. Their massive bodies surrounded the entire area of the ship. Even racing, it could never escape the grasp of the writhing below it, if they thought to grab for the ship like kindling.

The bodies were reminiscent of octopus. Smarter still. Except, the textures. They were diverse. Jelly soft tendrils. Chitinous claws. Plated metal covering larger sections. It wasn’t technology, exactly. It was more innovation and design itself, built within biology.

If the fear that spread from the ship as a black cloud of evaporated sweat weren’t so great, it might be a moment to stand and marvel at the beast beneath the pretty blue waves. At the feathery tendrils feeling out the bottom of the ship, cataloging each barnacle they found.

The stillness of the morning is torn when the ship’s canon fires into the waves.

.

Parasite fired first.

.

It was over, ship there in the blink of an eye gone. Pulled down, ripped apart, and swallowed, into the red creature, no visible sign it had ever existed at all.

Peaceful morning, peaceful existence, resumed.