The screeching suddenly ended, like the song of a drunk when one hits him rightly on the head with a large board.

The sea calmed suddenly and all who had learned to balance with the waves were shaken, nearly thrown to their respective decks. Not a wave could bee seen out to the horizon.

Sephiroth smiled, and turned to the aft of Black Valentine’s boat, which shot downward several feet as he did. The crew, injured, dead, or otherwise were thrown against the railings.

All faces watched the back of the boat as it was pulled downward, then followed a new target, a long, large, green-gray tendril shooting out of the water and writhing around on the deck until it curled around the railing for support.

Several more followed and no person made a move… until several hundred followed, latching to the railing and mast and any part of the boat they could.

The tendrils stretched and compressed, like slithering snakes.

Rude and Reno grabbed Reeve and dragged him out of the way as more tendrils came aboard uninvited.

"Get back!" Black Valentine yelled. "Onto the other ship!"

Something lifted out of the mass of tendrils, amazingly clean for something locked away in depths never meant for the mind of man.

It pulled itself up by the tendrils, which were all it was from the waist down.

"Mother of all that is glorious," Cid swore.

The pile of tendrils that oozed off the deck every which way as it sat on the deck of the ship that rocked violently as it adjusted to the shifting weight.

Above the mass of writhing boneless limbs was half of what could have once seemed partly human. Its mouth had no lips and was filled with three sets of teeth shaped like needles. More tendrils, also writhing, were braided along the edge of its head. The tendrils writhed over withered breasts, not long enough to cover the nipples, which resembled hungry maws of remoras. It had shoulders, no arms but spikes curving upward where limbs should have been.

"Once awake, but kept from life," Sephiroth said, walking towards it. "Now alive. And again t rule the sea in blood! Feed, mother!" Sephiroth pointed towards Black Valentine and his crew of half-Turkish misfits and the creature crawled forward.

"That be that ugly curse Valentine dredged up!" Tifa exclaimed.

"That be a curse aworking!" Cid yelled, pointing to Black Valentine.

Vincent’s arms hung limp at his side and his head on his neck.

Elena bravely waved a hand in front of his face and gasped when she saw why he gave not even a breath.

The blackness in his eyes had drowned away in color, leaving a full, uneclipsed iris in his eyes.

"Bring him back!" Reno yelled.

"No time!" Elena shouted, boarding the raven as the creature pulled what had been the last of the Shinra fleet towards her. She screeched hungrily, louder than before.

"I said bring him back!" Reno shouted, drawing his sword.

Rude set Reeve on the raven and grabbed his brother-in-arms.

"Damn you!" Reno shouted, as he was tossed onto Cid’s boat.

"Find an escape you barnacle-brained heathens!" Cid yelled.

Reeve looked up from where Rude had left him to crawl aboard. Black Valentine still stood blank as tendrils wrapped around him up to his knees as the creature oozed from one ship to another.

"You flee well," Sephiroth gloated to the others. "To tip the scales further!" He disappeared and an immense wind rose about them. The sea was tossed in every direction and the ships along with her.

Reeve clung to the side of the raven as the wind and sea attempted to render the two ships apart. Valentine still stood there, the mermaid’s tendrils up to his chest.

"Eat this, ugly!" Reno shouted, throwing his sword at the mermaid. The blade landed at Valentine’s feet, who never once blinked.

The mermaid let out another screech, and withdrew, leaving several severed tendrils to writhe on their own on the deck, spreading black blood everywhere until they crawled off the ship and fell into the sea.

Reeve gave up holding to the raven and fell into the sea.

"What does he think he be doin’?" Cid wondered aloud.

Tendrils wrapped around Valentine’s neck and writhed in his hair, turning his face and lifting it, drawing his closer to the mermaid’s toothy maw.

"Let loose him you nasty fish or I—" Reno yelled, interrupted by a voice on the heavy wind.

"You die!" Sephiroth said, the wind dying and he coalesce on the deck of Cid’s ship. "That be my mother, and insults are to be paid for in blood!"

"I be a pirate by heart!" Reno said, drawing his pistol. "I only pay rightfully at brothels!"

"Then face God!"

Instead of charging at Sephiroth head on, Reno backed away and leapt onto the rigging. "You and God will have to catch me first," He scrambled up the rigging, followed by Sephiroth, who charged through the stunned and scared crowd of others.

Unnoticed by the others as they fought the mermaid’s son, Reeve climbed aboard Black Valentine’s ship towards it.

Gracelessly, he threw himself over the railing and into the pile of squirming tendrils. Wrestling with and tearing at them, he dug through the deep mass of living and strangling green.

The things wrapped around his throat, pulled at his arms and legs, moved about his fingers, but he kept digging and didn’t give up until he found what he was looking for.

Triumphantly grabbing the box, he rolled away and out of the horde, only to find his foot trapped at the end up several tendrils.

Still, he had won his battle.

Reeve held the box away, holding under him as tendrils crept over him and pulled him back into their writhing, hungry mass.

Valentine’s head shot back in confusion. Pupils and sight returning, he drew back from the creature, as did his fist before striking her. "Even heathen lips are too sacred for you!" Valentine’s hand shot to his boot, from which he pulled a small knife. "Here be your kiss!" He sliced with the knife, right through the creature’s thick neck.

Black blood welled up from the wound. The tendrils stopped moving and Reeve ran untangled himself and ran inside.

"Damn" Reno shouted, his foot caught in a loop in the rigging.

Sephiroth grabbed him by the neck and slammed him against the mast, expertly balancing without holding anything but Reno and Reno’s sword. " A curse on you and your children!" Sephiroth yelled, and jammed the he sword though Reno’s shoulder.

Reno shrieked and the mermaid turned its head.

"For thinking you could defeat her so easily."

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