Part XII: Enter the Whirlpool

Hiro was past the point of being frozen-scared, and was now panic-scared. He pushed his sail back and forth, trying to catch the wind that would send him far from this place. Perhaps to a place that wasn't as filled with a giant fish that was about to eat him. Although he didn't want to be so bold as to ask for that outright.

The dolphins were swerving faster around his boat, filling the water with their bottle noses and grey flippers. The screeching was making it impossible to think, and at first when Hiro's boat ran onto solid ground, he thought he had been driven crazy.

He had, sort of. His boat had actually ran into a solid island of dolphins. The water was so packed now that they were all moving as one great mass of dolphin, and the boat was moving along with them. Hiro briefly considered getting out of the boat and making a run for it, but decided that skipping over gooey dolphin flesh wouldn't really get him anywhere.

Grabbing the X-Ball for comfort, Hiro looked out on the great sea of dolphins, and paused to listen. Nothing. The dolphins had stopped both screeching and moving. The water was still.

Far away, Hiro heard a whirring, humming sort of sound. It sounded just like the wheel on a mill, as the water rushed past the blades. It seemed to be coming from the other side now, then from the port, then the bow of the boat. The water at the end of the island of dolphins began to rise.

The sound was coming faster now, and the dolphins on the end of the island began to crest, forming a bowl. Then the bowl became steeper, and steeper, until the wind was rushing fiercely past Hiro's head, creating a cone, then a funnel of dolphins surrounding the boat.

The dolphins began to whip around, creating a whirlpool of sea-based mammels. Hiro knew what was happening now. He was going to be sucked down into the great fish with the dolphins, sucked into the belly of the beast to rot for all time.

Hiro weighed the options of staying to die or trying to run as he climbed up the dolphin whirlpool, X-Ball in hand. Apparantly I already made my decision, Hiro thought as he climbed up the makeshift ladder.

About fifty feet up now, the force of the dolphin whirlpool working against him, Hiro almost fell. He held on to the Dolphin above him with one hand, the X-Ball in the other. He paused. It was him or the X-Ball.

It fell out of his hand, almost in slow motion, and as Hiro continued to climb, he regretted that the X-Ball had been lost forever*...

*Hiro wouldn't gain his amazing ability of 20/20 foresight until much later.


NEXT WEEK: Fallin' Again


THE COMPLETE HISTORY OF X-BALL:
PART I       PART II       PART III       PART IV

PART V      PART VI      PART VII      PART VIII

PART IX      PART X      PART XI      PART XII