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On the Perseus, Ukyo sat in front of the sonar like usual. He had been there for an hour and so far had no problems. In the background he heard people moving on the ship, talking, things being moved around, bumping, and scratching. That was until there was a sudden change of something appearing beneath the ship at a decent size but not too large either.
He tilted his head to the only other person in the communication room, Ryusui.
“Hey, something appeared under the ship, not fish or rocks, just a sudden mass? Might not be a big problem though,” he explained.
Ryusui, sitting at the steering wheel (not in use due to motors), monitoring, looked over, slightly narrowing his eyes. He turned to him with a curious but professionally concerned expression.
“How roughly large?” he asked. Ukyo estimated and held his hands a bit under a meter apart.
“Just suddenly appeared and seems to only lower down, so it's not alive,” Ukyo said.
“Do you think something may have fallen?” Ryusui asked.
Ukyo shrugged. “Let’s go check with Senku and Kaseki to see if they noticed anything.
–
“What fell off?” Gen asked, watching Ryusui dive into the water.
“I am not sure to tell the truth, but it does not seem to cause too much damage for now at least. It might have been something detaching is the main guess,” Ukyo replied, also watching from the edge. They had this kind of thing happen very occasionally, luckily never disastrous.
Ryusui came up after landing in the water. “I’ll be back in a moment!”
“Don’t go down too deep, just come back up if it's far down and we’ll figure something out,” Ukyo said. Ryusui nodded, then went under.
Gen rested his chin in his hand and turned to face Ukyo. “By the way, what's with you always mentioning to not go too deep? It’s sensible of course, but still a habit. Any reason in particular?” he asked curiously in his normal fashion.
“Oh, I didn’t notice. But you are right. I’ve had the habit since before the petrification,” Ukyo replied.
“Oh really? Mind sharing?” Gen said.
-Flashback-
Ukyo’s time in the navy as Sonar Operator. One year before petrification.
Ukyo had been in the land sonar room, monitoring signals, when the Lieutenant Commander’s call came. He was requested to immediately join sonar room A to look into (listen) to a situation.
“Ah, you are here. The submarine’s experiencing difficulties, but the crew’s mics have been cut out. We are getting cut off from messages, however we have live audio. The signals seem ok and no major problems, but there is a faint sound we can not make out.” he said.
Ukyo nodded and sat down, putting on the headphones and switched between signals, live audio, and frequencies. ( If you could not tell, Im just grasping for straws and bs my way through it)
He could tell something was off like the others and his eyebrows furrowed. There was a slight anomaly in the signal and the signal showed they were probably quite deep down. He then listened to the frequency to figure out how far down. This was different from his usual tasks but he could do it.
“It seems they are getting close to the depth limit. We should be able to relay a message to them even if we do not get one back,” Ukyo said. The superior nodded then another member relayed a message, advising to go up.
Ukyo thought of something. “Is the live audio from inside the main area where the people are or inside the other sections?”
“Inside the main section,” the other member said.
“Why can’t we hear them talking then? I can’t hear a faint murmur of voices which would be likely since we have four members.”
Then Ukyo heard it, a faint screeching in the back with the faint hiss of air. Faint dread set in him. He quickly pieced it together.
“There’s an issue with the ballast tank, they can’t go up. If they keep going the hull will collapse.” he kept his voice at stable volume but alarm bells started playing in his head.
Everyone flew into ‘fix the problems’ mode. People were talking, moving, typing, calling, all while he tried to hear the problem level.
Everyone was at work. Then everyone listening did not need Ukyo’s specialised hearing to hear the unmistakable sound of metal crunching and screeching. Ukyo went still. The hull was collapsing. Everyone there knew what that meant. “The hull is being crushed,” he relayed despite his shock.
People around him tried to activate emergency systems in the sub to save it, but it had gone too far down.
Ukyo heard the frequency go a slight pitch higher then it shot up.
There was a snap and everything went silent.
–
He was given a hypothesis by the engineer team on what happened. He listened to the saved audio and sure enough, he heard the signs of the upcoming event, it was just easier now.
He filled the report and sent it to the Lieutenant Commander.
What had happened was earlier the sub had to go down quicker than normal to dodge, but due to a faint mechanical error, the error increased in the tank and the buoyancy feature was slowly starting to fail. They had already been deep so getting perfect signals was hard which is how it was getting missed. Over time it increased and spread the damage, which cut out mics. That's the point they called in Ukyo because the damage started to show up as frequencies. The submarine no longer could go up now by the time they noticed and went past its limit. The last thing was the sub being crushed by the pressure… along with the crew.
People were being sent out to check on the site, but everyone was sure of the situation.
Ukyo rubbed a hand over his eyes, trying to calm his thoughts. It was not his fault, but it still weighed heavily to lose people.
—
“After that, I just kind of developed the habit of asking people to not go too deep, especially if it is free diving,” Ukyo said.
“Oh dear… that was quite the situation,” Gen said, sympathy in his expression. Gen had been a great listener, during the tale he did not hide his expressions, but did not joke about it (as one should).
“At least we managed to fix that kind of problem though, so that was the only time that kind of thing happened,” Ukyo sighed lightly in relief. “The ocean is fascinating, but also heavy and deadly.” he stared at the water. Gen nodded in agreement.
“And that’s why we make proper equipment,” Senku said, walking to them and stood next to Gen.
Ukyo nodded with a gentle smile. “Once again, what would we do without science?”
Ryusui came back from getting dried and putting on dry clothes and passed a metal container to Senku. “Here it is. Hopefully salvageable.”
Senku shrugged with his science gremlin grin. “Ah, it's fine!”
Gen and Senku went off to the lab, well more like Gen just wanted to chat with Senku while he worked and Senku wanted to put Gen to work with the classic manual labour.
Ryusui turned to Ukyo. “So, have you ever operated inside a submarine?”
Ukyo smiled. “Yep! I had occasionally!”
Ryusui grinned. “Never got my hands on a submarine, but I want it!”
“Of course you do,” Ukyo muttered, shaking his head with a smile. “Maybe not soon, and I doubt it will go deep. But maybe someday. Only if Senku ever needs one though.”
“Well,” Ryusui boasted, “when that day comes at least we have all the people for it. Like you! When the day comes, I want you and your skills!”
“Oh my goddess- you…” Ukyo said but couldn’t fight the smile on his face and warmth in his chest.
(gave up on quality writing there but wtv)