Beyond the Deep - Boys-Love Lifeline

February 2068. Being alone at the top is hard, but Go Ottari doesn't have this issue anymore. Since Elena took over the Syndicate, he's carrying on day by day as an accountant for the group, finally enjoying life a little more. However, Elena's state of mind seems to be prey of the dark thoughts Go faced in his prime...

A mass of amorphous paper sprayed over several desks, overflowing on the holographic keyboards. Short green-ish tentacles rubbing a tired chin, the focused gaze of a squidman scanning through the countless figures and words lining up before him, his fingers dancing on two calculators, summing, subtracting and multiplying numbers at an amazing pace. A groan, the cancel button pressed on repeat, the fingers stopping for a short second, the forehead slumped on the desk. Go Ottari let out a long sigh, let himself rest for a couple instants before resuming his thankless job. No, not thankless. Elena wasn’t a bad boss, all things considered. She really valued his management skills and his impressive money juggling schemes, skirting the border between what was legal and what wasn’t. Yes, having Elena step up and take the CEO seat had been a blessing in disguise. He wasn’t anymore the central figurehead of the Fishface Syndicate, which made his life easier. No need to attend to soul-sucking events, no need to put his face on every act, his signature on every document. Now, he could really dedicate himself to his true passion: accounting. Numbers talked to him, danced around his fingers, in a precise clockwork of plus, minus, excesses and debts, building up a beautiful, ever-changing puzzle. With Blade and his thirst for power (and betrayal) gone, Go felt rejuvenated. No need to fear your second in command, no need to test his allegiance. Now, everything was in the hand (and fin) of Elena, which meant he had less responsibilities to deal with… and that he could even enjoy more frequent pauses. His wristwatch marked five thirty in the afternoon – the perfect time for taking a short break.

He grabbed a mug from his desk, decorated with a cartoon unicorn drawn in vivid colors and a sticker marking it as “Go’s property, don’t steal”. The thermos came up next, its cap unwinded with one swift gesture. A wisp of smoke emerged from the opening, carrying a strong aroma with it, spreading it around the room. Coffee. The blackest, most bitter coffee he could find on the market. That was his fuel, his secret source of energy, made out of Cuban beans imported via less than legitimate means. He filled the mug, let his smell receptors capture that heavenly fragrance, feast on it. Even a number-freak like him needed breaks, especially when dealing with international tax laws. He reached for one of the floating keyboards, tapped on a number. A new display opened up, projected on the opposite wall, colorful shapes populated it almost immediately. Go sipped a little bit of his drink through his hybrid mouth, let the hot beverage warm him up, as the opening of Magical Unicorn Friends welcomed him. That was something else he couldn’t do that often, when he was the CEO – watch a recorded episode of his favorite kid’s show with a mug of coffee in his hands, without living in constant fear of being found out and mocked for it by Blade or Feliz. If rumor had it that the steel-willed head of the biggest mutant crime syndicate on the planet was a fan of a Saturday morning cartoon, his credibility and authority might have taken a hit. As such, he didn’t envy Elena as much as his underlings thought. With her stepping up, he gained some freedom he never had – and he was totally enjoying it.

A knocking noise on his door made him jolt on his seat.

“Uh, Go? May I come in?”

A familiar voice, the voice of an stupid hammerhead that Go wished he could have drowned when he was still a kid. He groaned, stopped himself from smashing his fist on the desk. Those were supposed to be his fifteen minutes of relax. At least, until that finned idiot decided that his pause meant they could bother him.

“I’d love to say no and let you rot outside of my office, Feliz, but I’m sure you’d bother me anyway. What’s up?”

The door opened, revealing a burly hammerhead shark wearing a jumper and comfortable jeans, slowly making his way through the piles of documents. On the opposite wall, Magical Unicorn Friends was still playing, causing said hammerhead to second guess his sight.

“What in the Ocean…”

“Say anything on my favorite show and you’ll wish you had never opened that door.”

The words favorite show and my in the same sentence, coupled with pictures of cartoon unicorns fighting monsters with magic bolts caused his neurons to get scrambled and confused. Go Ottari. The squidman who would encase you in a pillar of concrete if you messed something up. The squidman who ordered Shaz to be filleted and sold at the nearby fish market (before miraculously changing his mind). That squidman was sitting in his dark office, sipping coffee from a mug and watching an animated show targeted at what Feliz assumed to be little girls. That couldn’t be right. And yet, that seemed to be the truth, as weird as it looked. So, instead of focusing on it, he tried to get to the core of the issue.

“I’m… I’m sorry for bothering, but the guys at the warehouse and I are having… a couple problems, let’s say, while itemizing a delivery.”

“That couldn’t wait fifteen minutes longer, could it?”

Feliz felt his blood freezing. Go not being his direct boss was still a fresh, new development, yet his unconscious fear of his former chief wasn’t gone yet.

“It… has to do with something Delfi… Elena ordered, sir. I’d prefer to discuss it when she isn’t around.”

Go rested his cheek on his open hand, squinted his eyes at the obnoxious shark-shaped blunder of nature that was staring at him with reverential terror. Then, he rolled his eyes again, his tentacles moving around his face without ever stopping.

“Okay, spit it out.”

“Sir… do you-uh know what-uh this Motiondickness is?”

Go blinked. Twice. Motiondickness. That had to be a prank.

“Is this a lurid joke, you mockery of a shark?! Because, if you’ve interrupted my pause for something as stupid as this, you can go f…”

“It’s… it’s in the delivery notes! Motiondickness Special Issue by Rion Shimase, imported directly from Comiket 191, Japan! Sent to the attention of Elena Thetis-Ariadne! Together with-uh several other bizarre… I guess they are books or… uh, comics.”

Feliz unrolled an A4 paper with several barcodes and machine-printed identifiers, reading a series of names that didn’t seem to have anything in common.

“My Cold-Hearted Knight, vol. 28-32, Strawberry Boyfriends vol. 4-12, Your Last Warm Caress vol. 7-8…”

“Okay, okay, stop. Stop.”

Go started massaging his forehead, groaned in pain. None of those titles meant anything to him. He never liked untranslated Japanese comics and, if they really were untranslated Japanese comics, he also had no way of being able to read them. Yes, the content of that shipment sounded pretty weird, even by Fishface standards. Go flicked his finger, recalled one of his holographic displays, the one with the syndicate expenses for the last two calendar months. He scrolled through the numbers, numbers that never lied, until he landed on an invoice from three weeks prior. Several hundred dollars spent for imported goods from Japan, bought from a couple resellers, billed under the wellness and mental health fund. Go frowned. He was the one who suggested creating such a fund in the first place, but it was intended for yoga classes, psychologist bills, and antidepressants. That discrepancy somehow caused his curiosity to skyrocket. He turned towards the hammerhead, glanced at the papers he was keeping in his hands.

“Have you already checked the content of the packages, Feliz?”

“N… no! I would never…”

Go’s lip tentacles writhed and twisted, as he massaged his squid-like forehead. Despite the appearance, it just hosted his brain, like a human head would. It was something that made no biological sense, since the body of a squid, whose shape it was mimicking, encased all of its organs. Of course, having only a couple basic neurons was not apt for what was supposed to be the strategist of the team, so the genetic engineers copied the general shape without forcing the original functionality into it. That made him feel even weirder, in retrospect: a squid-human hybrid that only took the appearance of a squid, but almost none of its real biology.

He glanced at the time on his watch, performed some mental calculations.

“Okay, okay. We have around two hours before Elena comes back from her business meeting. Take me to the warehouse, Feliz. I want to see those… books with my own eyes.”

**

“Motherangling goodness, izzat a weenie? Me feel ashamed, that do be bigger than me little Willy!”

“Oh, come on! Yer little Willy is the stuff nightmares are made of, Joe! That’s not that bad! Look, it still fits inside pretty neatly, see the next panel?”

“Sure, if ye have an asshole the size of a tunnel!”

Go squinted again at the surreal scene. A scarred great white, a pink-ish tiger shark with a mohawk, and a hammerhead mutant sitting down inside a dimly lit warehouse, browsing through pages and pages of what looked like Japanese comic books, neatly packed inside two huge carton boxes. Joe Buracci and Carina Kyrie, his own bodyguards, had joined the expedition because they thought it would be fun (especially Carina, who was more curious than a bottlenose dolphin) and were avidly going through the volumes, using automatic translators to inspect the balloons and make sense of that soup of foreign characters. After not even five minutes of checking volumes sampled at random, they managed to draw a first connection between those seemingly unrelated titles: all of those comic books were portraying love stories between gay boys, often with very explicit scenes in the mix, such as the one Joe was reading right now, under the mischievous gaze of Carina. The scarred-eyed great white whistled, pointed at a two-page full color illustration picturing a naked pale goth young guy with a dog collar hugging a massive mountain of a African-American man, slid his finger on the picture, tapped on it several times.

“Me like this Zodiaco guy. He too thin and girly, but that six pack! Almost as hard as mine!”

Carina sneered at him again, slapped him hard on his pecs.

“Keep dreaming, Joe. Yer puny abs are depressin’! Ye can’t even grate cheese on them, while I can!”

“You two, please, stop.”

Felix growled at the improbable duo of bodyguards, both wearing dark suits on white shirts, but with sleeves ripped at the shoulder levels, showing off biceps the size of a tree trunk. Feliz felt lacking in that respect – he hit the cinemas more often than the gym – and yet was higher in the hierarchy. Those two protein-filled, mononeural idiots were useful for busywork and opening heads like watermelons, but lacked any kind of finesse. As if to retort to his sudden remark, Carina grinned at him, showing off her immaculate pointy-toothed smile.

“Ooooh, little Feliz can’t handle grown adults talking about cocks? Ain’t it funny? Sure as hell ye were down for sucking Goldie’s big dick, if he asked for it, but now that Joe and I talk ‘bout a good pounding ye get all squeamish?”

Feliz’s mouth fell agape at that remark, his hand went for the innards of his jacket, for the holster. Yet, it stopped. It stopped one second before grabbing the gun. He breathed deeply. Once. Twice. He couldn’t let her get under his skin. Not under Go’s gaze. He left his weapon untouched, shook his head. Whatever. Carina could say whatever she wanted, he would have just ignored her. Just. Ignored her.

Close to the improbable sharkman trio, Go was sitting on the ground too, going back and forth through the list that Feliz showed him earlier. A total of seventy-nine booklets, of uncountable shapes, sizes and print quality. Many of the volumes were published by a famous label, some looked home-printed or put together with minimal means. He glanced at the staple of issues still packed in cellophane. The deeper they went down the stash, the more it looked like a mix of genuine romance stories without any erotic content and straight up male-on-male porn, in a ten-to-one ratio. He stood up, put back the volume he was going through back into the box, waved his hand at his bickering subordinates.

“Alright, the inspection is over. Feliz, go to the packing machine and make a new envelope for the books we opened. Joe, Carina, when he’s finished, bring the boxes to Elena’s office. Not a word about the content or today’s expedition, understood?”

Feliz blinked, gazed at the squidman in a suit taking the reins of the operation, shook his large head in slight disbelief.

“Excuse me? Go, are you letting her get away with this scot-free?!”

“Indeed I am.”

“But… why? She’s using syndicate money to buy boys-love magazines!”

Go closed his eyes, remained silent for a couple seconds. He wasn’t the boss anymore. He was just a high level operative. His word didn’t mean law, to the point where even Feliz, of all people, felt the authority to question his decisions. In the past, he would have just ignored that, but new times asked for a new Go. So, he took a deep breath and decided, against his better judgment, to explain his angle.

“Feliz, do you have any idea on how lonely it is, at the top?”

Carina raised her hand, only for Joe to grab it and pull it down, whispering something about not that kind of top. Go didn’t need to listen to the rest, he could imagine it. He chose those two for their physical strength, certainly not for their (lack of) brain. Once their muffled words died out, he started talking again.

“Say, petty excuse of a saltwater fish, what are my hobbies?”

“Your…”

“My hobbies, Feliz. What do I do in my free time?”

Feliz squinted his eyes, looked back at the other two brawny sharks for a hint, only to see them even more confused than him. Then, it dawned on him. The weird cartoon show that he glimpsed in Go’s office. But that didn’t make much sense, did it? It still felt like a fever dream, he couldn’t possibly have seen him watching a show made for human kids. Yeah, a person like Go couldn’t have free time or hobbies – that squidmother bastard was a serious business machine, someone who was never seen outside of his work and leading tasks. So, Feliz couldn’t, didn’t answer, waiting for Go to make his point instead.

“As you surely noticed in my office, I have some ways to kill time, I always had – I just took care of not showing it openly. After all, you abyss-dwellers needed a figurehead. I was that figurehead, yes? The truth is that you can’t shrug off all your needs for a greater good. Even someone like me cannot work for the syndicate 24/7 without a little support. Elena is just the same.”

Go pointed his finger at the stash of unpacked volumes, volumes that Carina and Joe were still looking the figures of, only half-listening to a speech that had become already too boring, complex, and serious for them.

“This… homosexual Japanese stuff is her lifeline. As weird as it sounds, it’s her little pocket of quiet between decisions that would suck the soul out of any of you planktonbrains. She’s been enduring it quite wonderfully for the past months, I didn’t expect her to last that much. So, I’d say we can allow her to relieve herself a little, can’t we?”

Feliz stared at Go dumbfounded, almost incapable of putting together an answer, still pondering about those words. That didn’t sit right with him. His ideal depiction of a boss couldn’t have free time and hobbies like normal person. But, if Go said so…

“Hey, hey, Go! Can me keep it? This Motiondickness thingy is hella neat! Me like them drawings!”

Joe’s wildly flailed arm and loud voice interrupted his thoughts, causing Go to roll his eyes, mumbling something under his breath.

“Put. That thing. Down. Idiot. It’s Elena’s stuff, yes? What do you think it will happen to you, if she finds out you stole the content of her package? Your muscles aren’t bulletproof!”

As Joe groaned and put down the book he so deeply coveted, Go let his tentacles wiggle around his mouth, glanced at Feliz. The hammerhead was still elaborating on their exchange, apparently coping with a different kind of reality he didn’t think possible. The squidman turned his back to the shark trio, put his jacket on again. Elena did say that Blade stole the most beautiful part of her, by unleashing that mob in France. That event made her fall back into the organized crime vortex she desperately wanted to leave behind. In hindsight, it was unsurprising that she tried to cling to that part of her life, a part she was still missing. Those volumes, those comic books were a small fragment of what she had lost, one that she was trying to bring back into her new present. He slowly walked out of the warehouse, without waiting for his underlings to follow him, after glancing at his wristwatch. Still forty minutes before Elena’s business meeting was over.

He would have smiled, if he had a human mouth.

He still had enough time to watch that Magical Unicorn Friends episode end.