#ReturnToTheFateGear

17: The Divine Triangle

#FanFiction #OthersidePicnic #FateGear #EdgarRiceBurroughs
#wss366 #MastoPrompt #JMusicFriday

“We have entered the Divine #Triangle!” Captain Mina’s voice boomed over Fate Gear’s speakers.

(“And we know what that means,”) Fate Gear added. (“Nothing returns from the Triangle!”)

“But we shall return as the heroes that brought down the Heavenly Host. And if we don’t, we’ll be legends!”

(“Lucifer is a legend too.”)

“No, I’m real,” a voice issued from the bowels of the ship.

Everyone’s head jerked around, looking away from the foul sprawling spawn above.

(“Ha, ha, fooled you.”) Fate Gear chuckled, accompanied by a trickling whistle.

Sorawo wasn’t laughing, though. She was looking at the sky. The open maw aloft drew ever closer as she waited for Toriko’s return with Benimori. Meanwhile, the captain preached the gospel of resistance, accompanied by sarcastic asides from Fate Gear.

“Words are not enough; resistance is action.”

(“Yeah, asking your grocer why eggs aren’t cheaper. Not enough!”) Fate Gear cracked.

The ship picked up speed as the creeping horror began drawing them in until Yuri started using the anchor and sails for drag.

(“Don’t just insult the rich. Eat them with an egg on top!”) Fate Gear jeered.

“You heard the ship! EAT THE RICH!” Mina was in full swing, frothing at the mouth and shaking her fist at the looming abomination.

“Thank goodness,” Sorawo said as Toriko and Beni arrived.

“What the f-ing hell is that!?” Beni asked, staring at the amoebic rent filling the horizon.

“Later, Beni,” Sorawo said, guiding Toriko’s hand to where she saw the sorceress’ fading portal.

“I can’t get a hold of it. There’s not much left,” Toriko said—"wait—wait, got it!"

The three dove through the hole. The last thing they saw was Captain Mina’s silhouette at the prow against a backdrop of the black eldritch horror and the fading refrain of:

          The master of the underworld
          distort even logic and refuses to downfall his body.
          Moment of liberation has come.
          This holy force,
          The light that erases the shadows.

Force Of The Holy feat.橋村姫　Music Video (Filmed at E.E.F 2025) / FATE GEAR

Conclusion

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17: Burning down the Heavens

#FanFiction #OthersidePicnic #FateGear #EdgarRiceBurroughs
#wss366 #MastoPrompt

After that, things moved swiftly. A balloon ferried Captain Napier to the Fate Gear.

“You capitalist swine! How long have you been leading these running-dog lackeys?” Mina hailed Napier, embracing him. “Never mind. Wait till you hear what I’ve planned! We’re going after the ultimate tyrant. We’ll be burning down the heavens. My cabin, MiLord; the wind has ears. More importantly, I have a 100-year-old brandy looted from Emperor Muskrat’s yacht. Tiss sweet, like poetry, and smooth as silk.”

"#Better than yer rotgut grog and I'll hear yer plan. If it doesn't sound good after that bottle, we'll know it's Tommy rot," Napier said.

The two departed, leaving a scowling Nana with the Otherside pair.

“And what might you two be thinking, lollygagging in the rigging? You may be gunner’s mates to the Captain, but yer nothing but lumps of tar. Get ta polishing the brass or you’ll be wishing you were #home with the fishes.”

Soon, the two were polishing brass and whispering together.

“I don’t like how things look,” Sorawo said. “Mina’s plans to attacking a god.”

“Not just any god,” Toriko said. “The one they worship in Canada—well, actually all the West. He’s one mean hombre sending plagues, turning people into salt, and telling them to sacrifice their sons. His own son had to sacrifice himself to make God back off.”

“So you’re worried too?”

“A little,” Toriko said, putting her arms around Sorawo’s neck, burying Sorawo's face in her bosom. “Protect me.”

“Stop it, you perv,” Sorawo said, pushing Toriko away. “This is serious.”

“You’d better take my tits seriously.” Toriko pretended to pout.

“Whatever! Come on. I need you to stop messing around and listen.”

“Alright.” This time her pout was real.

“When I was looking for the mergaunt’s mother, I spotted a remnant of the portal the sorceress used. If things get bad, you can pull it open.”

“Not without Benimori”

Sorawo, about to protest, stopped. Caring about people was new to her. “You’re right, with Benimori.”

As they spoke, Napier and Mina left the cabin. Whether from the brandy or bravado, they both swaggered across the deck. Napier slapped Mina on the back, causing her to stagger. “I haven't heard anything so audacious in years. Here’s to burning down the heavens.” He raised the nearly empty brandy bottle and drained it dry. “Who’s the eunuch now!” he bellowed out, laughing as he slapped Mina on the back again.

“There she is!” someone shouted as the Fate Gear, Venus Falcon, and the two biremes raced away from Mercury.

Sorawo and Toriko looked up. Undulating in the sky was a black amoebic hole. The monstrous maw sucked everything around it into itself.

”I’ll get Beni!” Toriko said, heading for the galley.

Grand Conclusion Next Week.

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16: Carson Napier

#FanFiction #OthersidePicnic #FateGear #EdgarRiceBurroughs
#wss366 #MastoPrompt

The trireme was now so close that the Otherside pair could read the name on the prow, Venus Falcon. The biremes had fanned out, threatening to flank the Fate Gear from the starboard and port. Meanwhile, the swift galleys marshaled to sweep in once the behemoth ex-prison ship was brought to heel.

“Hold your fire,” Mina bellowed. The order was as sudden as it was unexpected.

“Navigator, I wish to hail them,” the captain said.

Yuri flipped on the amplifiers.

"Hail, Captain Napier! You imperialist dog! Was Venus too hot a berth?" Mina’s voice boomed out.

The man at the prow of the Venus Falcon signaled, and a white flag swept aside the black. The thunder of a single cannon #report drew all eyes to the trireme.

Captain Carson Napier [Note 1] sheathed his sword before making a gesture not found in any book of signals.

“Fly the countersign,” Mina said into the hush that had fallen.

[Note 1] Captain Carson Napier: #Origin: The Venus series (also known as the “Amtor series”) written by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Continued next week in Burning Down the Heavens.

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15: Pirates of Mercury

#FanFiction #OthersidePicnic #FateGear #EdgarRiceBurroughs
#wss366 #MastoPrompt

It was true. The mergaunts had delayed the Fate Gear just long enough for the pirate fleet to catch up. The fleet was a ragtag bunch, comprised of everything from decrepit galleys resembling junks to gold-embossed, three-tiered triremes. Small, swift galleys were already in position to cut them off. Like gnats, they encircled the Fate Gear above, to starboard, and to port. Below, on the #surface, having finished the fallen mergaunts, magma worms waited hungrily.

The Fate Gear could have plowed through the galleys ahead of them, but the resulting hail of arrows, bullets, and cannon fire would have been difficult to withstand. Staying would be suicide.

“All hands to their stations,” Captain Mina bellowed. “Yuri, get this tub of ungreased gears moving. If she blows a boiler, so be it.”

“Aye aye, Captain,” Yuri replied, while Fate Gear whined.

(“All my gears are well oiled, and I don’t have any boilers.”)

“Get moving, you capitalist swine, or I’ll tear every one of your gears out and throw them overboard!”

(“Aye aye, Captain Tinbottom.”) The Fate Gear’s tone may have been sullen, and the insult ludicrous, but it surged forward. The beams creaked, and the generators throbbed as the ship threw every ounce of its power into outrunning the pirates.

“You two up there,” Mina yelled up at Sorawo and Toriko. “You are hereby #installed as gunner’s mates. If any of those mercurial scavengers come into range, pick them off. We’ll show them that the Fate Gear isn’t a lily-livered, limp-dick jellyfish. Our blood runs as true and red as any buccaneers.”

“I wish she wouldn’t describe our blood as running,” Sorawo said under her breath.

“It’s a saying,” Toriko responded, still smiling at becoming a gunner’s mate.

“Saying or not, I wish she wouldn’t do it.”

Behind the ship, the smaller galleys were losing ground. Ahead, many of the galleys turned away, fearful of the massive bulk of the repurposed prison ship hurtling toward them. The Fate Gear and its crew would have surely won free except for the trireme and two accompanying biremes. Their oars caught the ether, propelling them ever faster after the Fate Gear.

A simple skull and crossbones flew from the trireme's mast, and a muscular yet lean man stood at the bow. Unbound, his blond hair flew free in the wind. His bold face showed no signs of fear. His prey was almost within reach, and he would capture it as easily as a falcon snatches a dove from the air.

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14: Otherside Champions (Part 2 of 2)

#FanFiction #OthersidePicnic #FateGear #EdgarRiceBurroughs
#wss366 #MastoPrompt

“You mean use my eye?” Sorawo said.

“Yes, hurry,” Toriko replied.

Crack!—“That’s five!”

Sorawo peered at the mergaunts. None of them looked like an Otherside abomination, just every day “ordinary” monsters. This was an all #round waste of time, especially since they were gathering for a massive suicidal wave. It would be too #late if she didn’t find the mother soon.

“Maybe I can drive them insane,” she thought, and concentrated on a big, incoming bull.

Crack!

“Come on, work,” Sorawo muttered.

Crack!

“Don’t go to sleep up there. We’ve got a battle going, you scum-sucking lubber,” Nana shouted at Sorawo as the officers segued into a death metal version of “Twisted Sister Xmas.”

Crack!

“I’m wasting time,” Sorawo said. She was about to resume searching when the bull turned, screaming, and sank its teeth into the wing of the nearest mergaunt.

“Better than this stupid gun,” she said, dropping her weapon. It fell with a crash, missing Nana by millimeters.

“Better luck next time,” Sorawo thought. She couldn’t think of a better person to suffer a concussion than Nana. She glanced toward Toriko. “Well, maybe I’m glad I missed.”

For the first time that day, Sorawo felt excited. Until then, she had felt useless. Toriko could have fun anywhere, but not her. Parties were tedious, even Benimori’s; She didn’t enjoy Toriko being a perv; Captain Mina was a pain. Even the FATE GEAR was a horror.

“Where’s that mother?” Sorawo started working out the problem in her head. “Not in the suicidal waves… further back, near the middle. Ah, like that knot of bat things over there.”

Tendrils of psychic energy leaked from an individual guarded by a group of mergaunts.

“Found her,” Weird Eye Sorawo shouted. “To your right, the cluster in the back. She’s the one in the middle.” Sorawo’s voice was calm. The energy she was detecting was weak; it was nothing like the Kune Kune or Hasshaku-sama. There was no chance of her being driven insane or worse.

“Where…” Toriko responded immediately. “Oh, there they are, I think.”

Then she asked, “Which one is she? There’s more than one in the center.”

“The one on the right. It’s moving—just shoot them all.”

Crack!—“Did I get it?”

“To the left,” Sorawo replied.

Crack!—“Uwa, missed.” Crack!

“You got it!” Sorawo cheered.

All of FATE GEAR’s bells and whistles joined the officers playing “Super Sonic Samurai” as the mergaunts wandered off squabbling and biting at each other.

“And just in time,” Nana called up to them. “We have visitors—mercurial pirates.

Continued Next Week in The Pirates of Mercury

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14: Otherside Champions (Part 1 of 2)

#FanFiction #OthersidePicnic #FateGear #EdgarRiceBurroughs
#wss366 #MastoPrompt

Desperate to hold the mergaunt away from the ship, a few of the FATE GEAR’s crew choked up on their halberds. The ship’s wood had begun steaming, and the faces of the brave souls holding the mergaunt back blistered in the heat. Only the drenching they had received saved them from worse burns.

Crack! “Dead-eye” Toriko fired.

Ichor oozed from the mergaunt’s eye. Then it vanished below them, joining the tangle of monstrous corpses floating on the sea’s surface.

“Got it, that’s four,” Toriko called out to Sorawo.

“Bravo,” Captain Mina called, her words accompanied by the FATE GEAR’s carousel whistles.

“Yeah. Good show,” Sorawo grumbled as she fought with her rifle.

“But I don’t have much ammo,” Toriko said.

“So? What do you want me to do about it? I don’t bring weapons to a costume party.”

“You should. We never know where we’ll end up—see if you can spot the mother.”

Continued in next post

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