Pearl Diver/Stirrings

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For the second consecutive year, the Perspectives writing series presented a "Marathon" challenge in May. Instead of the usual single writing prompt for the month, Yuki Frost's player put up a new topic every 5 days, along with a bonus topic for a grand total of seven. I missed out on all of the previous year's, but this time managed to bang out a story for each before the following topic went up. After realizing I'd done it unconsciously for the first two, I tacked on a personal challenge that surprisingly made it easier to get the ball rolling when I sat down to write: starting each story with the same sentence.

Perspectives Marathon 2010

Childhood Moments
Memento
Hero, Interrupted
Fan
Injuries
Training
Where Are They Now?
Hide and Seek
(Androgyne)
Fastball Special
(Gx the Space Gremlin)
The Tie that Binds
(Gx the Space Gremlin)
April Fool
(Androgyne)
ani r u ok?
(Androgyne)
Little Things
(Androgyne)
A Lighter Touch
(Androgyne)
Stirrings
(Pearl Diver)

Pearl Diver is an idea I've wanted to roll up for ages, but didn't have a full concept for until recently: the embittered, long-lost Aquaman of the Freedom Phalanx. While it wasn't quite what the topic was intended for, I used the Marathon's bonus topic of "Where Are They Now?" as an excuse to officially introduce him after Vesveras latched onto the idea, decided The Noisebomb was Pearl Diver's biggest (and only) fan to this day, and gave him a cameo to deliver a pearl of wisdom to The Noisebomb to keep him in the fight during Farewell Tour.

-- AlwaysAPrice


Steel Pier, Independence Port. May 11th, 2010.

Ready or not, here I come!  A playful voice burbled just beneath the sounds of the dock.  A jolt of surprise shook through Morgan Murphy, and he nearly veered his forklift into a transport container in surprise, and brought it careening to a stop several feet from where a few of the other longshoremen were sitting around an upended crate playing cards on their break.  They bolted to their feet in preparation to run before realizing he'd regained control.

"Jesus, Murph!" shouted one of them, but he had already clambered out of the forklift, wiping distractedly at the coffee that had spilled onto his pants leg.  He reached back in and pulled the insulated tumbler out of the cup holder to take it with him as he waved an apology to the guys on break.  "Be more of a fuck-up, why don't you!"

Morgan walked along the empty side of the dock, looking down into the water, as his co-workers continued to yell and berate him irately.  Their words reached his ears but he wasn't listening to a one, it was nothing he hadn't heard a hundred times before.  Instead, he tried to filter out their angry voices and the sounds of containers thudding against the ground and each other, the mechanical whining of the crane's cable as it methodically unloaded the cargo ship on the opposite side.  He listened instead to the ocean, the lapping of the waves against the pier, and turned his awareness deeper, listening beneath the waves.

There she was.  Almost there!  They're gonna be so surprised!  She was closer now, much closer, and Morgan picked up speed, ducking around power jacks and climbing over crates in his path as he ran towards the end of the docks, eliciting more annoyed shouts.

Morgan reached the end of the dock and stepped to the concrete lip, looking out over the waters of Independence Port.  Now he saw her, the dark and massive silhouette drawing slowly nearer under the water.  Despite the threat he knew she posed to the workers and industry here, he could not help but smile.  It had been too long since he'd heard her voice, as long as it had been since he'd attempted what he was about to.

It hurt at first, subjecting his vocal cords to the exotic tones needed to translate his intent to vibrations she would understand after so, so many years without exercising the talent.  "They certainly will.  Don't you know by now how little these people like surprises?"

Beneath the waves, the gargantuan silhouette drifted to a halt.  She spoke again, her playful mood thrown off a little by uncertainty.  That voice...who is that...omigod!  A keening squeal of delighted recognition set Morgan staggering, covering his ears but laughing despite the ringing it set off.  He was just as delighted to be speaking to her again.  Where have you been?  Are you here to play?!

"Those days are behind me, old friend.  I work here now, among these people."

But...why?  They're so dry and, and boring!  This isn't where you belong.

Morgan's brow creased sadly, and he rubbed absently at the bushy beard he'd grown to obscure his face.  Not that it mattered anymore.  There didn't seem to be anyone left in the world who would recognize his face.  "I don't belong anywhere else, either, anymore.  My day is long past."

A gruff voice behind him bored into his awareness.  "Murphy, you planning to do any work today or is that gonna get in the way of your daydreamin'?"  Morgan could feel the foreman's glower on the back of his neck and turned, looking embarrassed.

"Yeah boss, I was just, uh.  I had to answer a call," he began to mumble defensively.

"Then where the hell's your phone?  Listen shithead, I've cut you enough slack with all your screw-ups, I am not going to stand for you just standing around and not doing your job then lying to my face about it.  Get back to work or OH HOLY FUCK!"

A horrifying warbling wail filled the air behind Morgan, and he glanced calmly over his shoulder, sipping his coffee as his boss staggered back against a crate screaming, the smell of the foreman's own befoulment filling the air for a brief instant before the sea air whisked it away.  Out past the end of the dock, a massive, bulbous head covered in mottled red skin surged up out of the water, accompanied by several equally enormous wriggling tentacles.  Two of them lunged forward and slapped down onto the end of the dock on either side of Morgan with wet thuds that reverberated down the entire length, causing everyone working on the dock to start crying out in fear and flee for safety.  A gleeful chortle filled Morgan's hearing as the foreman scrambled away, occasionally looking over his shoulder as if expecting Morgan to flee with him and confused and scared further by Morgan's complete lack of concern.

Is that what you left us all for, to be bossed around by the likes of a timid airbreather like him?

"Hey.  I breathe air."

You know what I mean, silly.  Why have you been silent for so long?

Morgan turned back and stepped up onto the dock's edge, gazing down sadly into the nearer of Lusca's curious black eyes.  "I don't know.  I left that life behind when I returned.  With my home gone, I guess...I guess I stopped listening.  I haven't been able to hear..."  His voice trailed off.  He hadn't been able to hear, at all.  That was the reason he'd left, come to live here, adopted the name of Morgan Murphy.

His hand shot into the pocket of his heavy overcoat and felt around for the object that, despite being useless to him for several years, he kept with him at all times.  His hand coiled around it, afraid at once to draw it out.  Afraid, because for the first time in eight years, it was warm.  Finally he steeled himself and withdrew his hand, clutching the dark sphere up in the sunlight.

For eight years, it had been not just dim, but coal black, giving off nary a gleam.  No longer.  As he turned it slowly in the sunlight, the faintest iridescent shine glistened over the surface of the black pearl.  It was impossible.  The Pearls of Power, of which this was the last, were entrusted only to members of the sunken nation of Iridia's royal family, who were charged not only with their kingdom's governance but also with defending Iridia and her citizens against all threats.  The Pearl bequeathed unto them mastery of the Iridescent Force, that gift from the gods that shielded Iridia itself, and allowed them to leave its confines, sheathed in iridescence that protected them from the crushing depths of the deep and let them breath miraculously in the water.

This gift and responsibility was what gave the last Prince of Iridia his name on the surface world: Pearl Diver.

To protect Iridia herself and the rest of the world in case a tyrant should come into mastery of such an awesome power, the Pearls of Power came with a caveat: should the people of Iridia lose faith in their leaders, the pearls would darken, and their connection to the Iridescent Force and all its gifts severed.  With Iridia now gone, and Pearl Diver's cachet on the surface world long eroded, his power was gone.

Or, it had been.  Morgan's mind desperately sought an explanation -- he knew that Iridia was no more, he was the last of his kind, and on the surface world Pearl Diver had been all but...

...the previous day, Morgan had been walking home through Kings Row and come upon a bizarre spectacle.  Dozens of people had gathered to observe some kind of impromptu wrestling match between a monstrous mutant shark and a slightly less monstrous mutant bat.[1]  The bat had clearly been the underdog, but that was not what had drawn Morgan's attention to the fight.  The bat was wearing a faded cerulean T-shirt, and there was something familiar about it Morgan couldn't place at first.

Morgan had recognized it when the bat had come tumbling into the crowd, and several of the spectators around him who were worked up by the energy of the event started to stomp and kick at the pathetic thing.  Morgan had shouldered his way angrily between them and reached down, grabbing the bat by the arm and helping him back to his feet.  In the process, he took a look at the shirt and what he saw sparked a grim smile of recognition.  Emblazoned on the bat's chest was the trident crest of the Iridian nobility, the emblem of Pearl Diver himself.

He'd always thought the licensing company had shelved that line for lack of interest.

The bat-man looked at him as he caught his breath, grateful for the brief respite from his beating.  Morgan was overcome with the sudden sensation that he should offer the mutant some words of encouragement, especially since no-one else seemed to be on his side.  His grin froze as his mind raced, but then the inspirational message on the side of the cup of coffee he'd stopped for on the way home had caught his eye.  "Winners are not those who never fail, but those who never quit, son."

Now, those words, that moment drifted back to him.  The bat didn't know who he was, but he knew who he used to be.  He'd fought on, and he'd won despite horribly unfair odds that day.  Despite all the travails and years of absence and powerlessness, that scrappy bat-thing still believed in Pearl Diver.  Again, the words echoed in his mind, and he realized.  Even with his kingdom gone, stripped of his power, the only reason Morgan Murphy was no longer Pearl Diver was not because of his many failures, but because he had given up.

Morgan clenched his fist around his Pearl of Power and looked again into Lusca's eyes.  "I think you're right, Lusca.  Come on, they'll be sending heroes soon.  Let's go play somewhere else."  Without further ado, he threw aside his coffee tumbler and dove off the end of the dock into the water.


  1. In The Freaky Noisebomb #49
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