She waited. And waited. She’d been in this cell for over a month now. Only a month, but that month had been hell. She’d never been tortured this badly in her life. Of course, she’d grown up in the slums, fighting for her food and for her right to live in this forsaken world, but not once had she ever been caught. She’d gotten into brawls on the streets over scraps, but she always took what she wanted. And after learning the concept of the sea, she stole a ship that belonged to human traffickers and killed everyone on it before taking it as her own to do as she pleased. She learned how to teleport, she became a world hopper. She played around but never found comfort in anyone’s touch. She avoided her responsibilities and did whatever she wanted, slaughtering those who got in her way with a crew that feared her more than anything. But they respected her, because despite all the stealing and killing, she only ever hurt other despicable people. She set slaves free and gutted rapists, all while singing praises to the sea and throwing her dirty prisoners overboard. Her crew feared her, but they respected her.

  Though, on the other side of the coin, she was lonely. She couldn’t remember her parents. Her first memories were of starving on the streets. She didn’t know whether they’d died or if she’d simply been abandoned. Though, knowing the world she lived in, it was probably the latter. Fighting for her life was all she knew. But she’d put herself on top and became an untouchable figure in the waters of multiple different planets and universes. She was Hera of the Sea, the greatest and most powerful pirate to have ever lived. She had power, all the power she’d ever wanted, and yet despite it all, she felt as if something was missing.

  She’d always aborted the children she carried, not wanting to bother with them. She took special brews made from different plants that would kill the child before it formed. Many women did the same. But one morning, Hera started thinking more about what she wanted. She’d never had a family before. Her crew respected her, and they revered her, but they did not love her. She was merely their untouchable leader they followed because they liked what she did and appreciated her hefty payments. They liked the glory and prestige that came with being one of her men. But they weren’t anything close to being her family. She’d been too cold to them to let that happen. Perhaps it was just an instinct for her to keep people at arms length. But after contemplating it for years, Hera decided she wanted a family. She wanted to have a child.

  Of course, she had no clue who the father was. She didn’t want to know. That’s why she went around and had one-night stands with several different men over the course of a month until she got pregnant. And this time, she let the child grow inside of her, and felt something she had never felt before. She felt what it must feel like to be a mother… a mother who wanted to protect her child the moment he was born, who cried for the first time since she was young the moment she got to hold him after the pain of conception. Hera held her newborn son and sobbed. No one had seen her that way before. The crew that was with her… had never seen her look so painstakingly human.

  And she named him Kylan. Hera had never loved anybody so much. She raised him with as much love and care as she could, she wanted to teach him everything she knew. From the moment he was born, he was around water. He was born on a ship and he was raised on a ship, to the point he’d been confused the first time he walked on land at three years old, having assumed the whole world was water. Hera taught him to swim and how to hold his breath under water for ten minutes, and when he turned five, she taught him how to hold a knife and the basics of how to use it. She’d never been more gentle with a person, and grew happier because of it. She grew friendlier, she made genuine connections. She trusted others for the first time in her life. It seemed like things could never get better than that… and perhaps they couldn’t.

  When Kylan was only eleven years old, so terribly young, one of Hera’s friends attacked her ship. A sea serpent she’d once befriended back when her son was still an infant, who she hadn’t seen since. They were both world hoppers, after all, so it was hard to meet someone again by chance if you were both always moving. But Hera never forgot her. Her name was Tamillia, and she’d once saved Kylan’s life. But this time, she destroyed it.

  She destroyed everything. The ship, the people in it, her crew. She barely escaped with everyone alive. And afterwards, Hera had left Kylan with someone she trusted to go see why this was happening, because not only was this behavior the opposite of how she knew Tamillia to be, she was also knowledgeable enough about the world to know that mythical beasts weren’t like this. She wanted to know why. Hera wanted to know what had made her friend go berserk. She tried pleading with Tamillia, demanding she tell her what’s going on, and she even tried begging. But she got no response. Hera was about to decide to kill her before helping the members of her crew who had joined her through a portal, when she was suddenly hit with a blast on the back of the head… and she ended up here.

  It was probably Orvana who had hit her. And it was probably Orvana who had infected Tamillia in the first place. And it was most definitely Orvana who had separated her from her son, who might’ve killed her son. Hera hadn’t the slightest clue if Kylan was alive, and that made her angry. But seeing that other boy run through, so young and frightened, so full of desperation to get her out, to help her… she couldn’t let an innocent boy like that die, as well. She just hoped he wouldn’t come back… though, for some reason, she had a feeling he would.

  But now she’d been waiting for days. Orvana had tortured the five of them, especially Aphrodite, every day since they’d been locked inside this prison. She seemed to especially hate that man, for whatever reason. Maybe he’d actually managed to put up a good fight against her… who knows? Either way, Hera could see he was almost dead. Usually, Orvana came by with healing potions if it looked like they were about to die, but this time, they hadn’t seen her in nearly a week. It was odd. Especially since Orvana hadn’t come back to resituate the gag in her mouth or get rid of the other kid’s plants. Had they been abandoned?

  She waited longer. She knew what planet they were on, after all. Trivanma, the planet of floods in the Oacabi dimension. She only knew because Orvana had bragged that if she ever let it happen, the geyser they were under would erupt and flood this underground prison and they would all drown. Though if that witch had abandoned them, all the better. Her plan could work if they’d been abandoned. Orvana probably thought she was leaving them to drown on a hopeless planet, but that was not that case. Hera had everything she needed right in front of her, and she smiled when she heard a loud eruption sound overhead.

  “Mmmmffph!!” came the sudden sob, the woman turning her head to see Aphrodite crying through the harness that encased his entire face. She didn’t know why, since she assumed all of Orvana’s explanations on their pasts and concepts had been complete lies, but she figured it really must have something to do with his concept being dangerous if he opened his mouth. But she could still see him resisting his chains through the bars, muffled cries escaping him as Hera’s smile faded into a frown.

  Stolen story; please report.

  “Don’t worry. We won’t die,” she assured him, Aphrodite’s face flinching up to slowly look at her. He could barely turn his face in all his chains and stiff harness, but she could see his green eyes and puffy pink eyelids behind the metal. “I’m going to get us out of her. Just wait until the water starts to fill the room up. I’ll have all I need, and these chains won’t be able to stop me,” she smiled, turning around to lean back as water started steadily trickling its way into the room from the stairs. “Just wait a bit more.”

  On her side of the cell was Aphrodite next to her, as well as Lyri next to him. Across from her was Hectal, and beside him was Dio, who was giving her a hard stare. They were all still gagged except for herself, so none of them could really talk, but she could feel the suspicion behind the woman’s expression, like she thought Hera was being delusional. But Dio looked away regardless, sliding herself into the water as far as she could go without choking herself on the chain around her throat.

  But Hera was very happy. She started humming as the plants around her began to feed on the water like they were entirely parched. She’d seen the way they’d fed on the pink-haired kid’s blood to grow, like a parasite extracting energy from its host to gain strength. She figured water would work the same. Hera couldn’t help but be completely satisfied as she started singing her favorite sea shanty about slaughtering monsters and looting dungeons, her words picking up with energy as the plants kept growing.

  The vines twisted under the handcuffs, as if they were trying to help her. Hera’s eyes narrowed as they crawled up her arms and around her throat, a wide smile on her face as she let the plants do what they wanted. That kid might not have shown the same desperation as the first boy, but it was clear they’d still wanted to save her. Or repay her for the information she’d given, at the very least. They’d done it subconsciously, but they’d given her a tool to use. If she could get the plants to completely get under the shackles so she wasn’t touching anything that was concept resistant, this water would be her weapon. And the more the water filled inside the room, the hungrier and larger the plants got, fulfilling the pink-haired kid’s subconscious orders to them to help Hera in any way. They twisted around the throat, snaking themselves entirely around her body as leaves and flowers grew in between the chains and her skin.

  In all honesty, it hurt. Not the plants, they were doing what they needed to do. But the shackles had been tight, so it hurt to have something get pushed in between so that none of her skin touched the metal. But she smiled and sang through it all, determined to embrace her path to victory, before suddenly, there was no longer any metal touching her skin. The plants had fulfilled their purpose, completely pushing themselves in between Hera and her shackles.

  “Hahh… hahahah…!!” she laughed, water exploding around the room and turning into something feather sharp as her shackles were suddenly shredded like paper. She left the plants untouched, since she didn’t want to aggravate them, and she had the water push herself up as she found herself standing in a room flooded all the way to her knees. “Hahahah, let’s get out of here, why don’t we?! Look at that, that kind little boy already had my cage opened for me!!” she bellowed, laughing loudly as she stepped through the bent bars and into the corridor, smiling at each and every one of them. “My name’s Hera. You might know me as a pirate called Hera of the Sea,” she grinned, throwing blades of water at the bars and their shackles with expert precision. Not one person got hurt. Instead, they all fell forward with their newfound freedom, stunned and awestruck as they all stared at her.

  “You… you really did it,” Dio gawked, Hera nodding her head along proudly.

  “Yes. Yes, I did. How ‘bout a thank you?”

  “...thank you.”

  “That’s the spirit!” Hera gave a hearty laugh, before her attention was suddenly caught by a loud splash. It looked like Aphrodite had tried moving, but the moment he managed to crawl just a little bit away from his bars, he collapsed face first into the ground, bubbles gurgling under the water as they all watched. And Hera stopped laughing at the sight, giving a small sigh before she walked over and kneeled down beside him, lifting his head out of the water so that he could breathe. “Don’t worry, ya won’t die, I promise. I’m getting us all out of here, and you’re gonna get all healed up,” she assured him, reaching under his bruised and battered torso that was so thin and scrawny. He barely weighed a thing to her, so she lifted him up to carry him under his back and knees and moved the water away from the rest of them to make a path. She put a smile back on her face, being the first to take initiative to walk up the stairs and leave this godforsaken prison. She didn’t even turn around, since the rest of them looked like they could all walk fine. But she did laugh a bit while giving a casual provocation, “Whatcha waitin’ for, eh? Ya rather die down here? I dunno ‘bout you, but I’m getting out, I’m gonna find my son, and then I’m gonna get my revenge. I can promise you this, that witch is dead the next I see her. You guys can join me if ya want… the more the merrier.”

  And then she walked out.

  It was silent as the remaining three looked between each other, as if questioning what they should do, but Hectal was the first to act. He trudged through the water that Hera had let go of as his four inky black arms moved, what looked to be white stardust flickering along his skin. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m joining her. I’m not too happy about being locked up here and tortured.”

  “Pah. Fine, I’m in too,” Dio spat, staggering against her bars as she limped over, pushing herself in front of Hectal before having to lean against the stairs.

  “Um… if you’re still injured, you probably shouldn’t pick fights,” Lyri spoke coyly, Dio hitting her fist against the wall as if to shut them up, before she steeled her resolve and kept moving, her injured leg dragging against the steps as Hectal followed behind her. He seemed polite, as he didn’t even say anything to defend himself or protest how she’d pushed him. Not that he’d moved even an inch from it, his stance solid with abs of steel to explain why. But Lyri just smiled, following along as they towered over the two with their height and larger body. “Anyway, I can heal all of us up just fine if you give me a musical instrument. I’m best at the lyre and the flute, but I can use anything. I cast spells through music, and that includes healing spells! The bad news is that I don’t have any musical instruments on me… and singing doesn’t count…”

  “That’s fine. We’ll find you something,” Hectal agreed, his lower left arm hovering behind Dio’s back every time she almost fell over, struggling against the currents of the water along with her injury making everything worse. And it took Hectal a moment of contemplation, before he moved his arms under the woman and hoisted her over his shoulder.

  “Aye, aye!! Put me down!! Are you really a rapist?!” Dio screamed, but Hectal ignored her as he started to move much faster than she had been, the water not hindering him in the slightest as he pushed against the current like it was nothing more than a light breeze.

  “No. Actually, I’m still a virgin, so that story doesn’t really make sense to me. However, you’re injured, and this place is flooding, so we need to get out quickly. Please don’t waste our time with your pride.”

  “What?! How—!! How… ugh. Whatever, fine,” Dio relented, propping up her arms on Hectal’s back to hold her face, glaring at Lyri as if she were expecting them to be able to do something about it.

  But all five of them made it out in one piece after Hectal managed to pinpoint a ladder to climb up, Hera moving first so that she could control the waters from the still flowing geyser and protect them. And this was the story of how five rogues met and became allies… a story of how they bonded and became irreplaceable in each other’s lives. A bond through revenge, drinks, and many jabs and arguments that would drive them all crazy… but a strong bond, it would become. A bond they all needed, yet one they hadn’t been expecting to find.