Part 4, Barely maintained
Lighting struck the ship as they lay dormant, the sudden boom and the shake of the ship awakened the Rusted entity, bright green dots appeared within the helm
Mana: ‘Shit- my mental ears- wait, Crackling?- FIRE’
Spirit energy blasted them off their seat and back onto their feet, thunking against the deck for only a few steps as they crashed through the degraded doors into the captains quarters
Mana: ‘It’s-’ they turned, the rusted boots scrapping against the deck ‘Are you kidding me, lightning struck the damn wheel’
Rust: ‘Ow, don’t just rant about it, atleast clear it’ Rust began to rapidly flake off the body, carried by red spirit energy as it moves like a tide across the rear of the ship
‘Suffocate the fire, make it burn itself out’
Mana: ‘Is this not an excessive use of our forms-’
Rust: ‘It is only to put out the fire quickly before it can spread, we can easily reclaim the majority of our lost form once the fire is no more, and we can always add onto ourselves’
there is a flicker of pink in the back of their mind, though they don’t intrude
Mana: ‘RIght, but we are still worn thing, thin metal can’t stop much if someone watches’
Rust: ‘All i sense are those unique atlantean variants, they have been keeping their distance after their first check, some intelligent variant not seeing us as a fight worth having’
‘We have no flesh to be consumed’
the crackling of the flames were nearly gone now as the rust guided by spirit energy smothered the flames, then the crackling ceased, and the rust withdrew onto the shared form, now with small spots of ash and burns showing on the armour in seemingly random positions
Mana: ‘Lets see the damage’ they stepped up the stairs, and then looked
Tulip: ‘So many burns! if it wasn’t for the wheel basically falling apart i’d say it looks cool, but did we really just lose another ship cause the wheel is turning into ash?’
Rust: ‘I want to try something, be quiet’ they stepped toward the wheel
Tulip: ‘Oooo-’
Mana: ‘Try wha-’
Rust: ‘Quiet, if it works we will still have the ship’
Tulip: ‘you really love that word alot’
Rust: ‘Than Silence, you annoying flower, less talking, the more effective i can actually do this’
They grabbed the wheel and pulled it, the wheel basically fell apart into scraps against the floor. Then they pulled back an arm, and punched their arm into the space the wheel was previously splintering the wood while lodging their hand into the space
Mana: ‘HEY- how does this help us keep the ship?’
Rust: ‘They ignored Mana, despite how their eyes flickered and twitched, red spirit energy began to flow, carrying some of their rust through the ship and between the wood, seeing how the ship connects to the wheel and the way the ship turns’
the tendril of rust began to thicken near the entry point, held together by spirit energy, as their arm was pulled back, a lever seemed to form, not a full wheel, but simply turning and holding it to the left or right would suffice for turning
Mana: ‘Holy hells’
Rust: ‘See?’
Tulip: ‘I was expecting it to fail, considering-’
Rust: ‘You really love to hold over the one time i crashed’
Mana: ‘Yeah yeah, so we have a sorta customized rotting ship now?’
Rust turned the lever left, there was a grinding sound within the ship
‘We may not have much life left in this ship, but given we are closer to where those beasts first appeared, there should be a larger quantity of ships we could take over, simply steer us toward the center of this sea and we should eventually run into another ship to take over’
Mana: ‘So just take back the metal we used once we have the ship aimed where we want to go?’
Rust: ‘Yes’
Tulip: ‘This was very cool!! What id we did this same stuff to a living thing and just-’
Mana: ‘I don’t want you to get any details on that, please don’t’
Tulip: ‘Aww’
Rust: ‘Why couldn’t i have just slept forever’
Tulip: ‘Cau–’
Mana: ‘They were not being literal’
They set sail, the ship groaning in protest with the improper steering replacements, and some extra rust not quite where it should be within the ship
Rust: ‘Now I’ll reclaim what i am able to reach from it’ and of course, their spirit energy begins to flow through the rusty metal again and into the ship, though i won’t go into repeating the same intricate details this time as the rusty flakes are dismantled and returned into their body
(My procrastination finally ended, basically wrote everything here in 2 days :D)