“Ah, another one...” Terra whispered unintentionally while looking up, then hastily covered her mouth. She did it so Diode wouldn’t hear.
Diode had seen it herself, though. “That was their third head, wasn’t it?” She quietly, and bitterly, asked. “Meika is already on her ninth throw with three catches, while we...” Terra wouldn’t speak above a mumble, leaving Diode to finish saying it. “We’ve caught nothing. Zilch. Zero. We’re bald.”
“Like a bald head... now that you mention it, have you ever wondered what that saying means?”
“Long ago, the punishment for fishers who couldn’t catch anything was to fully shave their head. At this rate, we might end up in the same boat ourselves.”
“Wait, they’re going to give you a buzz cut?” Terra groaned as she imagined Diode’s glossy silver hair being reduced to nothing. “It’s okay—I’m sure you’d rock it! And I would pet you!”
“I don’t want that. I haven’t even gotten to touch your hair at all. Let’s avoid conceding to Meika with shiny, bald heads.” It was only at times like this did Diode’s sharp tongue seem somewhat dulled. “But really, what will we do now...?”
Their pillar boat slowly circled the troposphere. Three hours had already passed since they had started to fish. It was afternoon as far as the time of day on FBB was concerned, but the star was barely above the horizon. It was awfully difficult to make out the scenery when looking in its direction, but on the other hand, the besshu’s coloration was ludicrously difficult to see—almost indetectable—when they flew with the star to their backs.
“Die-san, is it possible the nishikigoi are camouflaging?”
“Yes. They are. The ‘nishiki’ part of their name refers to a unique kind of cloth that shines differently based on the angle you look at it. Even though it’s a lost technology that can’t be reproduced on modern printers, it’s believed their mysterious luster comes from something similar. That coloration disappears after they’re caught, though.”
“Ohhhh, interesting! So they evolved that way because the fact they’d get attacked during their ascent was woven into them... no, I wonder about that?”
Terra paused for a moment to think. Since the variety of FBB’s besshu were created by Professor Exceptional Eda using her knowledge of fish from Earth, she wondered if it was really appropriate to call it evolution.
Diode tilted her head and gave a barbed response. “Should you really be thinking about that right now?”
“I’m not sure. I just thought we could find a hint for the way to catch them, but maybe that doesn’t require thinking about evolution.” Terra forced a smile and rubbed her hair to put the conversation back on track. “For now, I guess the question on my mind is just why they’re climbing that high?”
“...Now that you mention, something like this happened before.” Diode breathed out and followed Terra’s train of thought. “Back when we were trying to catch bachi orca, you said something along the lines of ‘I wonder why they jump?’”
“Yeah, exactly! Back then it turned out the ones we could see were being chased around by something bigger than them inside of the clouds.”
“How about we watch the replay, then.”
Terra worked with the VUI to look at the records of everything they’d done up to that point, but she was let down. “No chasers showing up on radar or optical instrumentation.
“Which means they’re not jumping to get away from a predator.”
“Maybe they’re climbing on a whim? Haha...” Terra forced a laugh. There was no way they were leaping several hundred kilometers high on a lark.
Diode shook her head. “I’m not sure either. Anyway, there’s something else I’ve been wondering about.”
“Something else?”
“How are they able to effortlessly swim around in an intense plasma shower like this?” She pointed at the shield meter, so Terra looked too.
The outboard wiring was successfully protecting them from the downpour of charged particles, but the amount of electricity it required was no joke. It was using a whole 10% of their electrical output.
“You’re right. We were sizzling from the radiation at first and it took a huge toll on us to even get to the point where we’re neutralizing it, but they’re mysteriously able to act like it’s no big deal.”
“Besshu are creatures that do live inside those insane storms, so maybe they’re completely fine even here?”
“Still, plasma and lightning are very different. I think if besshu from the mid- to low-latitudes tried swimming into what effectively is a particle cannon, they’d get taken out, you know? And yet, the besshu here only seem to be getting more energetic instead of getting worn down.”
“How about we try taking another look at the nishikigoi’s ecological data, then?”
The two checked their library entry again, but the details were vague—it was impossible to research its particulars, because the nishikigoi’s organs dissolve shortly after a catch. It was a strange phenomenon, but not unheard of for besshu.
“Mmghh, ecology unknown, goals unknown...”
Terra earnestly puzzled over it but no good explanations or insights came to mind. The boat swung around and turned to descend while she thought.
“Terra-san, handle the thinking, please. I’ll do what I can.”
“Did you figure out a way?!”
“Copying those two,” Diode replied uncomfortably. “For the time being, we should imitate what they’re doing.”
“R-right! Meika-san didn’t say we couldn’t copy her, so maybe if we do, we’ll find an opportunity to develop a strategy!”
“Can you handle it if I trust you with managing the power? Don’t push it too far.”
If Diode was in perfect condition, she would be asking for the impossible instead. However, this time Terra chose to indulge in her kindness. “I can keep our power draw within the limits.”
They nosedived, their eyes already on a lone nishikigoi below. After tracking its ascent and verifying its trajectory, they began their pursuit, leaving a trail that resembled a double helix inside the curtain of light swaying across the sky.
This besshu seemed to be exceptionally energetic. They couldn’t quite close the distance to it even though they were ascending at full power. Diode was grinding her teeth as she pushed the throttle right up to the lower edge of emergency output.
“Damn it... The speed won’t go any higher.”
“I’ll keep trying, I can give you another 3% of output!”
“I told you not to push it, didn’t I? Where were you thinking about getting that power from? The outboard wiring?”
“Err... um.”
“So you were thinking of getting it from there! You can’t! Making a catch isn’t worth whatever happens to our DNA when we take a particle beam to our faces! Your precious genome is going to get totally shredded! Do you have any other options?”
“—Sorry, nothing else at the moment...!”
“Understood, I’ll manage somehow.”
True to her word, Diode increased the speed by an extra percentage by tweaking the control surfaces. It was for reasons like those that her piloting ability couldn’t be described as anything less than extraordinary.
The pillar boat chased down the nishikigoi from behind its tail, sliding between its scissor-like tail fins as it vigorously twirled in its ascent. Finally, after they were practically aligned, they lunged above it and neatly rolled so that they were showing their bellies to one another, almost like they were mating with it—
“Oof.” “AIEEE!”
A violent vibration suddenly spread from the boat’s ventral section just after what seemed like a huge blunt impact.
“Flutter!” Diode shouted, pulling back on the throttle panels. The pillar boat rapidly separated from their prey and entered an aimless sub-orbital trajectory.
“Are you all right, Terra-san?”
“Mhm, I’m fine. We didn’t take any damage. That was just an emergency separation, right?”
“Yes. We weren’t hit, so I suspect that was shuddering from the airflow... Ah, right.” Diode rewatched the recording of the chase and nodded. “The moment we got to within three meters of the besshu, we caused some turbulence that formed vortices. We got too close.”
“Huh? But there’s no such thing as a twenty-meter swing arm to cast the net. Considering the size of the fish, it’s still more preferable to be about three meters away.”
“And if you could say precisely, down to the decimal?”
Terra included the scale in the 3D blueprint and read off the value. “Under 3.9 meters, if possible.”
“More than three meters, but under 3.9 meters...” Diode mumbled, then grimaced. “That’s why... I messed up.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I was only focusing on Meika, when really Jigō-san is the one to fear.”
“Chūya Jigō-san... that’s her twister, right?” That information had been important enough for her to hear it during reentry. “A zuijin’s something like a servant, right? It’s incredible that he’s able to pilot despite only being a servant, though.”
“Terra-san, you’re mistaken. He’s no mere servant; he’s a talented twister who was trained directly by the two top-ranked fishers in Gendō.”
“Huh, so he’s a pro, then?”
“He’s not, but for him to become one would be... Never mind, maybe you’ll understand better if I put it this way: he was the shuttle pilot pursuing us back in the black-veined squid nest.”
Terra’s expression went blank as the weightless pillar boat crested the arc of its parabola. Two diametrically opposed emotions, respect and enmity, seemed to continue upward on a collision course.
“Ah, so he managed to return unharmed... then again, doesn’t that make him an outright enemy?!”
“Yes, and if we had just let him fall, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”
“Well... I wouldn’t go that far...”
“Because you’re trying to have it both ways,” Diode huffed, dangling upside down in her control pit as she pouted. “Anyway, he’s very good, and he’s probably even more serious now, since he’s now carrying his young lady he values over his own life. That’s why he’s being so exacting. His calculation errors are under a meter.”
“So he’s too much, even for you?”
“Get real, of course not,” Diode replied instantly, her expression not brightening. “I can even make an approach with a 0.1 meter error... that’s if, um.”
“I get it. That’s if the boat can do its job, right?”
“...” The girl averted her eyes, understandably so. They were in a fight that required careful thought and their full efforts. The two were a highly skilled combo, but anything short of perfection would leave them stranded in a land of zero.
“As long as the boat can do its job...” Terra stopped and corrected herself. “More like, it’s no use unless the boat is perfect, right?”
“...I wouldn’t go as far as–”
“No, I meant, if you can fly a boat that does the job, your genius will at least put you on the same level as Chūya-san—on the same level as Gendō tradition. But that’s not really what we’re aiming for here.”
Diode thought about it and gave a small nod. “Yeah. So, unless we treat the tradition like it’s a joke, we wo–” The pillar boat descended into a chasm between clouds bowfirst. She suddenly stopped talking and stared into the sky below her feet. “...What’s that?”
Terra directed her gaze to her own feet. Several small spheres released a piercing light as they came from an abyss that was entirely filled with blue-purple flames.
“...Uhh.” Her senses were flipped, so she rotated the control pit. The abyss became the sky, and the floating spheres became falling spheres. What seemed to be the exhaust plume of a pillar boat fluttered by them, as if it had just departed. “I wonder...?”
“Looks like something Meika did.”
They magnified their long-range feed and were positive they were looking at a balloon. It was huge, almost three hundred meters in diameter, and there was likely something burning in one section of it given how brightly it was shining. Below it hung a thick, oblong gondola over fifty meters wide.
“At that size... it really doesn’t strike me as an observation device. Perhaps it’s a weapon or obstruction?”
Diode mumbled as she looked at Terra, who shook her head.
“That’s not what it is. You can’t tell?”
“Please, don’t drag this out...”
“I won’t. It’s simple. They detached something big and heavy from the pillar boat before returning to operations. What would give them a reason to do that?”
“...So that’s their prey?!”
“Yeah, I’m certain of it.” Terra nodded, her expression stiff. “It’s not easy to go up and down over and over while carrying a load of besshu. That’s why they suspended their prey and left it floating on a balloon like that. That bright light is probably a jet because it’s a hot-air balloon.”
“Wait, haven’t we also done something like that?” Diode was correct, they had come up with a similar fishing method down in the mid-latitude belts.
Astounded, Terra replied, “Our method divided the pillar boat in two, with a mothership and child, keeping the mothership at altitude. What they’re doing is wrapping the catch in ultrathin fiber and leaving it behind. That way, the twister and decomper can fly off together. Which one do you think is more efficient?”
“...Tch.” Diode clicked her tongue.
Meika worked strictly in accordance with tradition, so it seemed decomping a balloon like that was a part of it. Terra could tell perfectly well that Diode looked down on it as an antique practice.
“Let’s move on to our next one, Die-san.”
The moment Terra tried to give her some encouragement, Diode locked eyes with a spot in the sky and quickly worked her VUI. She magnified the long-range feed and showed it to Terra. One of Meika’s balloons had collapsed in shreds and started to fall.
“...Isn’t that coming our way?”
Diode usually reacted to Terra’s voice instantly, but this time—and only this time—it was natural that she’d hesitate. Even so, she swung the bow towards the falling object. It simply seemed like an object in freefall, not making any particularly strange movements, and that made calculating its trajectory simple. After a few minutes, they matched trajectories and descended on the same vector.
The object surrounded by a cylinder of AMC clay seemed to be prey. It was small though, at most around fifteen meters in size.
“Should we pick it up?” Terra sensed Diode’s back stiffening at her question—maybe she could have phrased it differently, but she’d be saying the same thing anyway. “Let’s take it, Die-san. I think it’ll be fine if we give it back to them. It’s not like we’d be stealing it.”
“...Yeah.”
Diode brought the boat in as they dropped into the shadow of the cloud that towered over them. Decomping the back of the pillar boat to swallow the lost item was as simple as plucking fruit from the branch.