Reincarnated Into A Dead Woman's Body In Another World-Chapter 455: Arc 6, - 71: Enemy Waters

Zero five forty-two hours.

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...

"Creak!"

"Shff."

Everything not bolted down came slipping to one side, sending Hotaru to slam into the wall beside her bunk. She gasped loudly, having been woken up by a thud against her body, "Ow...!"

She was stuck to the wall and saw ahead of her the sight of an unconscious blonde rolling out of bed and sliding onto the floor of the ship till she slammed against the side of a bunk—yet she did not wake up, much less even make a sound.

Pillows, papers and utensils all slid to one side before a loud splash from the outside started making everything slide from the left to the right side.

Hotaru’s face got buried into the thin mattress she was peacefully sleeping on before she raised her head in alarm, one ear still bent down.

Before everything could slide too far, the centre of gravity seemed to settle. In a daze, she hastily crawled to the side of her bunk to examine the blonde on sprawled onto the floor.

Her vision was a blur; she pushed her hand down on Jotou’s waist and shook her violently, "Jotou? Jotou!?" her drowsy voice began to clear up. "What’s!? What-!"

"Relax, she took the potion."

"Huh!?" the wolf-girl’s head looked in every direction of the room till her eyes located the source of the voice on the ceiling.

With shadows at her feet, Fumeko stood upside down and with her arms crossed—only her hair falling in line with gravity. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

Hotaru leaned down and hovered a finger near Jotou’s nose in a slight panic. Only then did the redhead let out a sigh of relief. "How long has she been out?" she sifted her fingers through her crimson locks.

"About an hour forty-five-ish?"

Hotaru massaged one side of her forehead and her eyebrow with it, "What’s happening? Why are you on the ceiling?"

"Don’t know. The ship started rocking to one side, there was yelling upstairs and everything began going that way so I stuck myself up here," she disappeared from said space and appeared back on the floor in front of the redhead’s bunk.

"I don’t like this sleeping potion one bit," Hotaru had to wake up the muscles in her body with stretched out movements to sit on the side of the bunk. "For a second I thought she was... eugh, never mind."

Fumeko picked Jotou up by an arm, followed by Hotaru hoisting up the other. They lifted her safely into the bunk the redhead was in and let her rest.

"Rumble..."

The muffled sound of thunder reverberated throughout the ship’s hull. "Hopefully she wakes up soon," the brunette remarked. "Tiffy was up top, I’m gonna go check in case she went overboard," she blinked out of the door.

"That’s a morbid thought," Hotaru reattached her spiralling sleeves onto her fingers and groomed herself for the early morning on the unsteady ship. "I hope Sobi’s having a better time."

Five or so minutes later, the Azure Firefly went to check on the commotion. The roar of thunder was the first sound that greeted her, followed shortly by the pouring of rain against the ship’s deck.

Rain drops pinged off of the metal top, the static of the radio was the only sound it was making; any resemblance of communication they had with Burnetrout was clearly lost.

A man of the crew gripped the ship’s steering for dear life as the SS Narwhal tumbled from one side to the other. Cleaving through crashing waves, the ship was still fast despite the turbulence.

The sea itself was more visible as the Sun was beginning to rise, but the darkened storm clouds managed to overpower the light. Lightning shot in a frenzy, pulsing out a crashing thunder with each brighter flash.

Hotaru placed a hand over her eyes to shield her vision; she poked her head out of the command centre. Her hair that she had just tidied up flew back into a mess... "Was it this bad the first time...?" she turned to face the others.

"Perchance, the deification of Beauregard is approaching its pinnacle?" the not overboard Tiffany stated; there were curls to her blonde locks, though it would be more appropriate to call it frizz due to humidity.

"Or there was already a storm going on and it compounded?" Fumeko reasoned.

"Brace!" the helmsman yelled.

The ship began tipping to one side as a heavy wave crashed into its side, splashing onto the deck. Hotaru held onto the doorframe while members of the navy gripped onto anything bolted down with expertise.

Fumeko barely budged from her spot; shadows curled under her feet of course. Her hand grabbed a tumbling Tiffany and held on with the same shadowy spell, stabilizing the blonde with ease.

"I would ask you three to head below deck, we’ll signal when the target’s in sight!" the captain yelled over the cacophony of sounds.

"Hang on, I’m sure it’ll be all the same if we stay up- Woah!" another wave impacted the ship from the other side and tipped it back which caused Hotaru’s body to slam into the door and cause her to trip before hitting the deck of the command centre. "Ouwh..."

"You’re gonna have serious back problems in a couple of years," Fumeko snarked.

"Shut!" Hotaru glared up from the floor. A navy women helped the redhead up onto her feet. With a thank you, she continued, "How long, ow, do you estimate the turbulence will last?" she held her waist.

"Possibly till the shores of the Malecise Regime; not that we intend to get that close," the woman replied.

"You realize Jotou’s probably being thrown around like a rag doll below deck right," Fumeko stated.

"Hark, for greater concerns have arose," Tiffany looked out the windshield. Hotaru wobbled her way to the front of the command centre and held herself tightly on Fumeko’s shoulder as if she was a pillar.

While the SS Narwhal was true to its name, being able to pierce through the rising water in order to advance, it was still a light vessel and the seas during a storm did not obviously ripple or move in one direction.

The helmsman strained to shift the steering to navigate through the storm as wave after wave battered against the sides of the ship.

At a certain point, panic of varying degrees was visible in all three of their eyes. The ship dipped down into the waves, so far that they were surrounded by high waves on all sides and lost all sight of the horizon.

It felt as if for corners of the sea were about to cave in on them and they would soon be submerged. However, that moment was but a moment as they emerged out on top and they ship was on a hill of a wave.

Everyone except Fumeko felt their feet lift off the ground by a centimetre or two before the wave settled back down to sea level. The ship splashed down, rippling water in different directions and everyone regained their footing.

"Slup-pung-thud!"

Well, everyone except one person that lost their hold of someone’s shoulder while mid-air, landed back, slipped her foot, slammed her upper torso onto the front panel and toppled onto the floor from the momentum.

Fumeko’s glazed over eyes looked down and fluttered. Her nose crinkled in scrutiny—how can someone even achieve what she did? "A goldfish on a tile floor would be more dexterous than you."

"Ngh... gh..." Hotaru’s head rose up from behind the front panel with her eyes in a daze and one ear bent down.

Meanwhile, down below...

"Where the hell am I...?" waking up from her comatose, she uttered her first words. Was that the ceiling or the wall? No wait, it was the floor actually.

She yawned and put her arms on the floor to push herself up. Propped up on her elbows, she glanced around... the cabin? She looked behind her, having flown out of the door of the quarters that was left open.

Jotou hoisted herself up on the seat of a chair and slumped onto it for a moment. Sifting through her blonde locks, she untangled the junk in her hair, including a pen. ’Maybe the Burntish Navy should invest in seatbelts.’

Using the sea’s sway, she got herself up with grace and held onto the table. She checked her wrist and grabbed the loose hair tie off of it.

As she went to stretch her arms up, she winced, "Owh- Oh..." The pain was non-existent. She was well aware she was thrown from one side of the ship to the other, however no pain ailed her.

In fact, there was no soreness, no fatigue—it was as if her entire system hit a reset. "I’ve not had sleep THAT good in... Have I ever had sleep that good?" her vision felt so clear and her limbs felt so flexible.

Thunder roared again, only to give pause to the sound of the ruthless downpour. "We must be getting close," Jotou cracked her knuckles and marched towards the-

The ship lifted to one side and she reflexively slipped herself onto the table. She elevated her feet into the air and slid down the slanted table before twisting her waist and landing onto her feet on the other side, right by the stairs going up.

She looked back at the table and then at the stairs. Her eyebrows jerked up, mildly impressed by herself. With a hop in her step in the unstable ship, she tied her hair back into a high ponytail while she scurried up the steps.

"What the hell’s going on up here!?" Jotou spoke over the storm.

"Jotou! Are you alright?" Hotaru ironically was the one to ask while she held the side of her head.

"I don’t think I’ve ever been better actually," she replied.

"We’re a couple of hours out if you couldn’t figure out," Fumeko relayed.

"Captain! We’re going to be diverting course sir!" the helmsman shouted.

"And why’s that!?" the captain then answered his own questions as he squinted out of the windshield...