Birth of a Bee-- Part 2: Great Distances Ness spit blood from his cut lips into the water below their on-moving boat. It had seemed nearly like a dark magic had thrown their lives completely out of balance, and all seemed doomed. Merely teenagers, Jeff and Ness were living in an era only described by chaos, havoc, total destruction, and inevitably death. At the same time, Jeff was at the wheel, controlling every movement the ship made, which was a pretty smooth ride. Ness shook his head and paced around the entire boat, and even checked in the lower levels of the ship to see if anything new was there. (There never was). Jeff enjoyed the monotony, Ness couldn't stand it. Ness slammed his head down on the railing and swore silently that if Jeff began singing "100 Bottles of Beer On The Wall" one more time, he would have to knock him out and take over the boat. "Hey! Ness!" Jeff smiled, "Even in times of desperation, you simply can't let your sense of humor!" Ness thought silently to himself that him hitting Jeff over the head with a baseball bat would be pretty funny, but his trail of thought was cut off by the boat begin shaking! From the water, emerged none other than the sea-beast, Kraken! The Kraken once was a hostile reptilian beast which attacked ships at random: now it was an even-more hostile serpant which attacked only when Giygas ordered it to. But now, the Kraken was angry, and it was also, apparently, very hungry from the way it eyed the two boys and licked its enormous chops. Yes, the Kraken had eyes. Deep, evil, red, demonic eyes which was only one of the many mutations to occur to the beast when the evil energies surged over the planet, and veiled it in what seemed an eternal darkness. The Kraken seemed quite happy that these two boys were in its area, for reasons which are simply too awful to mention here. The Kraken got a devilish grin as its new- found blade-like tail whipped through the hull and deck of the ship like a magam- hot blade through butter, which seperated the two boys! They both shouted to each other but were cut off as the Kraken unleashed a hot, scorching, firy breath which hurdled them into the air as nothing more than unconscious heaps. Ness was the first to open his eyes and look across the new scenery which him and his knocked out buddy now found themselves; a beach. Ness reached into his backpack and poked Jeff with the tip of his baseball bat and waited for a response. Jeff coughed and sat up, followed by Ness, of who's eyes were caught by a shiny object on the shore. "What's that?" Ness asked weakly as he pulled his burned body up to its burned legs. Jeff pulled himself up as well and looked, "It looks like a gem... a saphire, prehaps?", Ness lifted it up and inspected it, and Jeff said, "Hey! O' Fearless Leader, mind giving us both a hand?" Ness remembered their current conditions and healed them both to prime conditions. It was a pity they were still hungry. Ness took the stone and slid it into his backpack, "Who knows? It may come of some use to us. Somehow." The two friends continued on their long trip North and quickly discovered their locale. The port town of Summers, Toto. Jeff kneeled down near a still corpse and sobbed. Ness walked to his comrade's side and looked. It was some girl of whom Ness had never seen before. Ness helped Jeff to his feet and, instead of asking about her, told Jeff it would be all right, and they set off once again. The two set off through the blazed and destroyed cities and found a new ship. Heading North wouldn't be a problem seeing as how all the water-borne problems were behind them now. Ness smiled, examining the ship, until he found a hole. A rather large one in the bottom of the hull. "Looks like the rope tied to the dock is the ONLY thing holding this sucker afloat." Ness had sighed. Jeff shrugged and said, "If we could pull together some planks of wood, then, in all probability, I SHOULD be able to repair this boat." He then pointed to some driftwood in the tide. Ness sighed and took off his shirt and cap, "Yeah, yeah, I get the message, you can't swim, and I can. So yeah, I'm goin'." Ness then dove into the warm water, and then climbed back out over and over again in several rotations to collect wood. After a day's work, a quick nap, and a little bit of bailing out, the boat was as ready as it would ever be. After a few hours out at sea Ness turned to Jeff (who was at the helm) and said, "Who was that girl back there that we saw?" Jeff sighed, "It was a friend of mine from the boarding school. She told me that she would be taking a vacation there. I guess the weird monsters found her before we could," he wiped a tear from his eye. Ness thought long and hard for quite some time, "I wonder..." he said, "Why haven't those monsters caught up to us? I mean, we AREN'T making the best time in the world, y'know!" Jeff merely shrugged and pointed ahead, "In one or two days, we'll eventually reach Fourside. From there, we ought to be to able to make some air- borne transportation and reach Winters quickly. Movement through ship is not possible because of the huge ice chunks." Ness nodded and they looked ahead at the sinking sun. Each of them wondered their own questions. "Will we ever make it out of this?", "Is Paula alive? Is she okay?", "What happens to a human's soul after death?". It seemed in that one cold hour that it took them to reach Fourside, they went from children, to men. To Be Continued...