Anomaly

“Aaaah! Oh my God—we’re falling, we’re actually falling!” one of the anomaly-response team members screamed, his voice cracking with pure panic. His face was stiff, a mix of worry and sheer anxiety, and his wide eyes tried to keep up with the world plummeting alongside us.
“We’re gonna die! We’re definitely gonna die!” another team member shouted, his voice splintering as his body spun helplessly through the air, arms flailing as if he could grab onto the empty sky to save himself.
The rest of the team either yelled out incoherent phrases—words so jumbled they practically dissolved in the wind—or focused on the dozens of windy tentacles dropping from the sky and rushing straight at us.
Maybe it was both—panic and confusion running side by side. The truth was: we really were falling. I didn’t have another option. Staying in the vehicle would’ve doomed us, there was no way to continue like that.
So I grabbed everyone I could and jumped out, dragging the team with me. Naturally, the anomaly’s windy tentacles didn’t give us a break and kept chasing us through the air, determined to catch up.
And, well... ironically, my body is bizarrely light. Light enough that if I just relaxed, I’d probably float instead of fall. That’s why I’m using my Alter Ego to make myself heavier—a simple but necessary trick.
But back to the main issue: we were plummeting toward a violent, open sea, where colossal waves rose like living walls. Honestly, I hadn’t thought that far ahead. The plan was basically: jump out of the vehicle, hit the water, and hope those windy tentacles didn’t decide to follow us down there.
Of course... there was that little detail of potential underwater anomalies. I preferred not to think about it. But they almost certainly existed—especially because, moments earlier, I’d seen something move in the depths, something big enough to distort the darkness at the bottom of the sea.
With my body still turned toward the tentacles, I saw some of them closing in way too fast. They came like living whips, slicing through the air as we fell.
The first ones to get caught would probably be the anomaly-response members positioned above me—an easy target in the chaos of freefall. But that wasn’t going to happen. Not while I could still do something about it.
With a single thought—save the response team—my Alter Ego activated. I felt the black lines wrapped around my limbs vibrate, reacting to the urgency of the moment, and new branches sprouted from them, sharp and flexible like living twigs.
They shot out toward the windy tentacles, intercepting them midair and forming an improvised barrier. Unfortunately, my mental strength was already being split across several tasks, each action tugging at what little focus I had left.
In the end, all I could do was redirect the attacks, push them off course just enough to buy time—nothing more. But right then, that was better than nothing.
The closer we got to the water, the fiercer those windy tentacles attacked. In the final stretch, I twisted my body again and faced the open ocean, just a few meters below me... Well, this was definitely going to hurt.
I was dropping way faster than I’d expected. The wind shredded across my face like razor-thin blades, spinning me sideways as I tried to regain any semblance of control.
If the others hit the water like this, they’d probably have every bone in their bodies pulverized. The surface didn’t look like water at all—it was a solid slab, as welcoming as a block of asphalt.
My only thought as I hurtled toward the sea was simply: “Well... this is probably gonna hurt like hell” The truth is, technically, I might not feel anything at the moment my body shattered—because, yeah, it’s not like I actually have bones to break. But the general idea remained the same: the scene wasn’t going to be pretty.
And yeah... exactly as I imagined, that’s what happened. The impact hit like a cold, blurry punch, and for a moment everything around me turned into nothing but foam, pressure, and a strange silence that swallowed my thoughts. After that... let’s just say I confirmed that falling like that makes it impossible to look even remotely graceful.
The water slammed into me like a colossal fist. The second I touched the surface, my body just burst in every direction—flattening, stretching, and vibrating all at once, as if I’d been thrown off a building in the shape of a living blob of gelatin.
The pressure swallowed me whole, crushing my body and making every fiber in me shake like it was trying to snap back into place.
I felt everything rattle inside—my inner membranes vibrating like tightened strings being plucked without mercy. Water exploded around me, hitting me like a liquid wall, white foam rising in a turbulent veil that swallowed my vision for a moment. The impact reverberated through my body, forcing out a breath I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding.
For a second, I became almost shapeless—a living, formless mass falling way too fast. I felt my edges unraveling, like I was spreading out through the air. But then something inside me pushed back.
My body started pulling itself together again, dragging every fragment back into place, a spring of boneless flesh trying to remember its proper shape. The gelatinous texture quivered, tightened, and little by little I reclaimed a silhouette that looked at least vaguely human.
The shock of the cold came right after—sharp, sudden, slicing through every layer of my body and ripping an involuntary shiver out of me. I felt the dark ripples inside me stir—they always reacted like this when the temperature dropped so fast.
As I started swimming upward, every movement tore through the water in turbulent bursts. It’s strange to think about it now, but even with my whole body twisted from the fall, I could still feel that familiar strength pulsing through my “arms”—the same strength capable of punching straight through the trunk of a tree with one hit.
With each push, I shot forward several meters, like my entire body had turned into a liquid arrow cutting through the blue around me. I broke the surface gasping—not because I needed air, but because the impact had been absurd even for me.
Water erupted around me in unstable whirlpools, as if the ocean itself was still trying to understand what the hell had just dropped from the sky. Heavy droplets slid down my face as I tried to get my bearings and, honestly... I was still trying.
While the scattered pieces of my body kept returning, sticking to each other until I was fully whole again, my eyes scanned the hazy sky. Thankfully, the reaction team members—along with Victor, Rupert, and Arthur—were all okay.
I’d managed to stop them from falling straight into the ocean, which would’ve resulted in... well, something very unpleasant. They were soaked, dripping like they’d just walked out of a storm, but that was the least of it.
The important thing was that they were alive—and conscious—which, considering the chaos of the last few minutes, was a victory on its own.
“Oh my God... we’re alive!” one of the reaction team members cried out, their voice cracking as if the reality of it had just now hit them.
“I... I don’t feel good at all... I think I’m gonna throw up” The other member’s voice came out shaky and sick, like each word was an effort not to collapse right then and there. He clutched his stomach, face pale and sweaty, clearly fighting the rising nausea.
I had no idea who said what, but I let it slide and turned all my attention back to the windy tentacles that had been chasing us nonstop just seconds ago. Except, to my surprise, they had simply... stopped.
I could still see them—dozens of them—suspended in the air, swaying gently, almost lazily, as if watching us from afar. There was no hostility, no hesitation. They didn’t look scared, just... still. Expectant. Like they were waiting for something.
I tried to make sense of their strange behavior, to come up with any explanation at all, but I didn’t get the chance: suddenly, without warning, all the tentacles began to pull back at once, sliding away as if dragged by an invisible current.
I wasn’t the only one who thought the situation was bizarre. Rupert, still panting and with his eyebrows nearly meeting in the middle of his forehead, let out a disbelieving comment: “What the hell...? What happened? Is that thing actually scared of water?” He said it like every word was an insult to common sense, staring at the anomaly as if expecting it to answer him. His eyes darted between the creature and the ocean below, like he was searching for some logic in that reaction.
At first, I thought he was talking nonsense. Was he seriously saying that the colossal thing above us was afraid of a little water? Impossible. It would be like claiming the blue sky was actually red—made no sense whatsoever. At least, that’s what I thought... until I felt a strange stirring beneath my feet.
The water, which until then had only been swaying with the wind, changed its behavior. The waves gained rhythm, like something was breathing underneath. For a moment, I had the clear impression that it wasn’t me moving inside the water, but the water trying to pull me—dragging me somewhere.
For a second, I thought I was just imagining things. The sea was so restless that any stronger ripple could easily have been just two waves colliding in the distance. I tried to convince myself of that—it was the simplest explanation, after all.
But before I could fully cling to that thought, Arthur’s voice reached me from above. There was something different in his tone, a quiet tension. When I looked up, I saw he wasn’t looking at me—his gaze was fixed on the turbulent water below. That made my certainty waver. If Arthur had seen it too... then maybe it wasn’t just in my head.
“It wasn’t the water it was running from” Arthur’s voice cut through the silence, making all of us turn toward him. Then, as if following a shared instinct, our eyes moved to the same point he was staring at.
I did the same—and activating my spatial vision, I projected my sight outward, high above the ocean, observing everything from an elevated angle. What I saw below forced a silent reaction out of me; my chest tightened for a moment. I couldn’t hide the surprise—not even from myself.
At the same time, Arthur continued, his voice steady but quiet enough not to break the tension building around us: “That thing was pulling back because of something in the water”