Open Ocean, off the coast of Izula Island

"It was a pleasure and an honour. Au revoir..."

Bubbles... All I hear is bubbles. Feel bubbles. Bubbles caressing the curves and turns of my body, wrapping around me as I am now one with the sea. Flotsam as frothy and filthy as the encrusted barnacles on my boots and clothing. I am to become food for the small fish and shrimp that coast in these waters. I'm dead... I'm dead.

The picture of a floating half rotten skeleton wearing Anne's dress with strands of what was once beautiful scarlet red hair entangled in a mass of seaweed and crustaceans. Her jaw is slightly agape, and a hermit crab who's been inhabiting the hole that was once used to eat crab was now being used as a home for the small shelled creature who's been inhabiting the former orifice for the last month and a half. Anne wasn't going to need it anymore. She gave up and she died. She died while Lady Mary and the others sailed off without her. This was the trophy, the reward for her hero's death. To be a rotten corpse covered with bird shite, entangled with weeds, crustaceans, sea slugs and to have a hermit crab live inside her rotting flesh. Her eye sockets were already picked clean by either minnows or birds of the sea. A barracuda already took her left thigh and leg, and another took her right hand all the way to the elbow. There wasn't much left of her for the sharks, though if a Tiger came swimming about, the hermit crab's home would be likely relocated to the tiger shark's stomach. But right now, what remained of Anne Dieu Le Veut was a floating heap of bones and sinew that was entangled with yellow green and brown grassy weeds with a hermit crab who was now removing her jaw, which was now left stretched and agape in a yawning scream of what could have been agony if she were al-

-live! LIVE!

Her pallid eyes blinked, a bout of bubbles spewed from her lips as she choked, holding onto her neck just under the surf. She expelled what little air she had left and her stinging eyes and chest that was filling with water warned her that if she did not get to the surface soon that she will drown. She kicks her legs hard and noodles her way to the surface, desperate for air and for the surface world. She didn't want to become the...the thing she had seen in her partial cross over to the afterlife. She wasn't going to allow it, not if she had anything to do about it at least. To 'die trying' was a bit of an understatement at the present moment, but alas it was just that that Anne was doing. If she didn't reach the surface in her weakened state she would become a floating tangle of bones and grass to be harvested by the maggots of the sea. This thought peering in her head again struck her with fear and she pushed herself harder, air spewing from her mouth as her bulged eyes glanced to the sea above. She wasn't going to stand for it, no. As a Pirate under Lady Mary Killigrew, she would not let herself succumb to this fate yet!

Above the waves, the afternoon light was high, possibly between 1 or 2 pm. The waves were like glass, and were still and as flat as the lands that were in this region. Wreckage floats upon these waves, wreckage from the Imperial Navy and fleet no doubt. Perhaps some from the Dreadnaught's Revenge as well. Suddenly the surface breaks with tension as Anne Dieu Le Veut breaks the surface! Her back arching, her head snapping backwards, thrusting her long and beautiful scarlet red hair back from her pale features. From a glance she could have been mistaken for a mythological mermaid. She gasped, then fell upon the surface, choking on practically zero oxygen. She wheezed, her light green eyes bulging and cracked red; pleading her body not to give up now as she swam to one of the floating piles of debris. Thankfully for her, a raft-like piece of debris with a few barrels strapped onto it floated nearby. She kicked weakly, swimming painfully over to the raft as she continued to gasp for air, choking on water that was still trapped in her lungs and nose. She managed to grab onto the raft, and pull herself up. As soon as her waist was raised from the waves she cringed then expelled both her stomach and lungs. She puked up saltwater and her lunch she had eaten before the storm, and for some odd reason it felt good. Good to be rid of the waste that was killing her internally, and to get the taste of the salt water out of her mouth.

As she pulls herself up onto her thighs Anne pukes again, but this time when she does she feels her energy and strength leave with her ham and biscuits. Faint, the tired castaway blacks out. It is about ten minutes later that she re-awakes. Her tired eyes slowly wink open, looking straight in the eyes of a gull that was staring back at her. Anne blinks at the bird, then remembers her bizarre vision and immediately swings her arm at the bird, causing it to fly away. She rolls onto her left side, and just noticing her dangling legs still outstretched in the warm waters of this ocean, she reels them in. Her black leather boots are heavy and drenched, her dress too was form fitting and clung to her bare skin beneath like a second set of heavy skin. She realized she would have to seek land soon and prepare a fire so that she would not catch hypothermia by nightfall. She also realized she was stripped of her weapons and items. She patted her body down, but could not find the bags of ammunition, food, supplies nor her pistols and her prized Alexandrite Cutlass, Doré Harpie.

But better yet... where in the seven hells was she? She looked around her, and though she could see a string of islands not too far to her left, to her right she could see the makings of a large continent and a city that rose from it that did not look like anything she had seen before. "Au nom du Divin, où suis-je?" Anne says softly under her breath. Without her hat, the long red hair of her bangs covered over her right eye and clung to her brow. She was still damp, dripping with salt-water in the open ocean. An ocean she has never charted or frankly heard about in her entire twenty-three years of life.

Blinking again, she realized it was probably best not to dawn on the small stuff for now. Survival was what she needed to focus on till she could get better bearings. Something gold caught her eye in the water as the sun's rays bleated down upon it. Covering her left brow to protect against the sun's rays, she could see the familiar shape of a nude harpy sticking out of the sand below the waves. As it turned out, she was in the shallower end of the ocean, for her sword and her items seemed to have had fallen off of her at one point and was plunged to the bottom. Anne stood onto her knee, buckling the raft slightly as she guessed the depth with her eyes. It was perhaps twenty feet or more down, but it was still in her reach.

"After I grab my supplies... I'll need to salvage what I can from the wreck to better my chances of survival for one of those islands. Dieu, if only Bonnie or Raj or Lady Killigrew..." she shook those thoughts from her mind. "No... I cannot let myself think this way. Alors arrêtez! You must get to one of the islands first, then you can think about the others Anne. Don't let your chances for survival drop because your head is not in the right place, huh?" Her mind argued with her feelings, but she did stop. She crawled over to the edge of the raft, and looked into the clear blue water. She could see fish and crustaceans; they were somewhat difficult to make out due to the refraction, but nothing that would look like it would try to take a bite out of her if she were go in for another dip. She needed her equipment.

She slowly dipped into the ocean again, her somewhat damp clothes were drenched again, weighing her down by a fraction. This would help make her reach the bottom more quickly, but it would be slightly problematic on the way up. "Très bien...good... bien." She says to herself, taking a deep breath of air before rushing back under the still waters.
Thankfully, since the ocean was calm, she didn't really have to worry too much about her makeshift raft from floating away. Besides, the barrel that was held down onto it seemed to keep it weighted in position.

The world below the open air was vastly blue, yet still colourful. Anne could make out the shapes of the fish now that she could see them. Some looked similar to the ones she had seen at the fishmarket, or that one time when she was tossed overboard when Raj thought it was best to harpoon for White Shark. Others however were entirely new species of fish she had never seen before, which made her further question where she was. Though again, suppressing those thoughts for now, she managed to dive her way down to the bottom. In front of her a Reef that was covered with urchins and small rainbow like fish (ones she'd never seen before either), as well as mollusks. She kicked her way down to where her sword lay, tip embedded into the muddy sand; her items and pouches hanging off the leather belt strap which they were all connected to. ''Un, deux, trois, quatre'' were not in sight, but after a quick look around, she saw them still strapped in their leather thongs in the tattered remains of the belt they were once in, hanging off the reef itself.

She took hold of her cutlass and of the strap which held her firearms before returning to the surface. As she rose, she indulged herself for one last look around and greatly regretted it. Despite the beauty of the undersea life and this ocean's strange ecosystems, it wasn't hard to notice a body of one of the Empire's boys: Black officer uniform and tailcoat, iron curaiss with a big embossed cross at it's core. An Imperial Templar Soldier; he was motionless and haunched over under the surf. It was apparent he was dead with his wide horror stricken white eyes and motionless gait even as the fish were nibbling at his flesh. Despite being her enemy, she couldn't help but feel sorry for the young man. He was, after all, caught in the same boat as her. Only difference was that she managed to wake up before she drowned. He.... not so much. She returned to the surface, biting her lower lip as she made her way past the soldier and broke the surface. She paddled her way over to her raft and tossed her things on board. She then turned to the other floating items and began to collect what she found that could be useful. By the time she returned, she found three oars, an armload of planks, the tattered remains of a white sail, about 40 feet of knotted rope, and another barrel.

She tied the barrel on board and turned one of the useless oars into a makeshift sail. As she sailed towards the islands, her mind crept onto the soldier... who's back was parting the surface nearby. She looked over to his floating corpse with solemnity, and at the last moment jumped back down into the still ocean and grabbed him by the collar. She brought him over to the raft, unsure of what she was doing, but her mind wouldn't be at ease knowing that he did not receive a proper burial. As a pirate, she's left her fair share of bodies in the water to be left for the fishes. But right now, she was nothing. Nothing but a human being who wanted to give this man what little respect he deserves. With the body tied onto the raft, she pulled herself up and sat down. "Now... it is just a matter of sailing over to them." she says to herself, noting how lonely she was now that her crew could be dead. Still, she pushed on and began paddling with the oars under the shade of her makeshift sail towards one of the many islands nearby.