Not much could surprise me anymore. But entering the swampy exhibit where Gator was supposed to be camped out took my breath away.

It was starkly different from any other room in the aquarium. While the room’s main attractions were still placed in large tanks interspersed throughout the room, they were odd, funny shapes with long, bubbly curves like little waves, splashes, and drops of water. Enormous, curved, and knotted swampy trees towered over the tanks, creating a leafy canopy across the room. After a quick poke, I was shocked to find that each painstakingly placed piece of flora was 100% real, and each plant's roots were hidden in elaborately designed boxes of dirt that blended in with the tanks and floor. 

The animals in this area lacked the same color that the animals in the tropical exhibits had, being mostly mottled greys, dark reds, pinks, and blacks. Crabs scuttled to and fro around the tanks, twitching their eye stalks whenever they heard footsteps. Rays and skates drifted around the murky water aimlessly, while large, skinny, and big-lipped river fish sat blowing bubbles at the bottoms of the tanks, unmoving. 

I was going to continue drinking in the room, but Kishibe pulled me to the floor, harshly jabbing at the soldiers at the very back of the exhibit. 

I peered out past the tree I was ducking behind to notice a hive of action. 

Many of the soldiers Gator had positioned around the exhibit had little to do. They paced around, rifles in hand, occasionally being ordered to leave the room to eliminate more survivors, no doubt. However, a good number sat hard at work on the cold floor, packing black metal boxes with a feverish haste. 

I squinted, straining as hard as I could to see what was in the packages. 

I sat up with a jolt. Weapons. Lots of them. The closer I looked, the more I saw. Sniper rifles, assault rifles, pistols, grenades, a spattering of knives, the electricity-tipped staff I had seen one of the soldiers wielding. More types than I could count lay scattered in neat piles to be boxed.

I locked eyes with Kishibe. 

“You were right. He was setting up something here. Our friend Gator is the weapons distro. He’s setting up an armory.”

I inched closer to the action, but my haste would soon prove my undoing. 

 With a quick squeak of my shoes against the tile, and the horrible sound of a glass tube shattering against my feet, the entire room trained its guns on me. 

I groaned and put my hands in the sky. 

Brushing past the shoulders of the unit he commanded and the boxes strewn across the floor, Gator approached my defeated form with slow, deliberate intensity. 

He chuckled in amusement. 

“If it isn’t the detective. You really thought what you were doing would go unnoticed? Come on. I know who you are. You fought Mantis and Barracuda already. I’ve been waiting for my turn.” 

I smiled weakly. I glanced around, possibilities flashing through my head. I couldn’t take on all these soldiers and a super yoked captain. At least not all at once. 

Gator cracked his neck, rolling up his sleeves. 

“Relax. My men have been ordered not to fire upon you. You’re mine. Your friends, however? They’re fair game.”

All at once, the tense silence exploded into a whirlwind of noise. 

Clover rushed to my side, ducking behind a tank. Felix detonated a smoke grenade, pulling himself and Kishibe into the cloud while soldiers followed. Erin delivered a vicious uppercut to the soldier closest to her, following up with fancy footwork to dodge the blows of the group beginning to encircle her. 

Gator hit me with a devastating overhand, right to the chest. I managed to cross my arms over my ribs to protect them, but the blow was so heavy it still sent me flying backwards. 

Skidding forward, I pushed a barrage of palm strikes into Gator’s chest. He didn’t move an inch, or even attempt to block the blows.

Grimacing, I then attempted a flurry of elbows. No dice. They bounced off his muscle like a ping-pong ball hitting a ping-pong table after a serve. 

 He stood there, absorbing my rapid-fire combos, smiling coldly. Thoroughly humiliated, I jumped back to rethink. 

I assumed my usual fighting stance, bobbing between the balls of my widely spaced feet, arms up, open palms at my cheeks. To my dismay, the large man burst out in deep, haughty laughter. 

“What they say about you is true. You don’t fight with your hands. You are weak. Insignificant. I don’t know why the other captains struggled.”

I led with a high kick, hoping to knock the sunglasses off the man’s face, increasingly frustrated. He blocked my strike with one arm, clinching my waist with another, pounding me into the floor. 

My collarbone exploded in a ray of white-hot pain, the shock of the strike reverberating across my spine. 

Gator picked my entire body up with ease, his huge hands damn near wrapping around my entire torso. I squirmed and writhed, but after what seemed like a decade of struggle, I managed to get my hands free. 

I launched a sharp overhand elbow strike to the top of his skull. This time, the strike connected, and he dropped me to the floor, satisfaction running through my body.

“Not so tough now, eh, big guy? Bring it.”

I hit him with everything I had. 

Low kicks, high kicks, roundhouses, front kicks, axe kicks- my legs were a blur as they rocketed through the air in one enormous combo. 

But Gator was unfazed. Cool as a cucumber, he knocked aside more of my blows than I would've expected, deflecting and redirecting them with what looked like a modified form of Sambo. I was relatively unfamiliar with the Soviet martial art, but it was working on me. He clinched and locked my legs, trapping them between his armpits, elbows, and between the crooks of his arms before another one of my kicks forced him to release his grip, and the blows that did land simply bounced right off his skin. Judging by the small twitches of pain in his expression, I was doing damage, but frustratingly slowly. 

He also was a beast in terms of stamina. I had been fighting for a short time, but the heavy overhand punches and brutal knees, kicks, and chops he launched back at me were the kind I would’ve expected from a man who had just started his bout. 

I blinked, stunned. He seemed to notice me analyzing him, my eyes darting across his body, looking for any sort of weakness.

“You can hit me all you want, but you will never break me.”

The sunglasses drooped a micrometer down the bridge of his dark nose. In seconds, his fingers pushed them back up. Suddenly self-conscious, he adjusted his earrings and straightened his hair. 

“Would you like to know why they call me Gator?”

“Felix!”

Amidst the infernal noise of the battle raging around us, the Frenchman heard my plea. Annoyed, he tossed me a grenade, and I thanked the heavens he understood my request. 

I threw down the bomb, a plume of smoke rising into the air. I ducked next to the tree that Clover had ducked behind. 

“What’s the sitch, Aurum?”

I grimaced. 

“I can’t hit him in any meaningful sort of way. Everything just bounces off him. I know it’s like, a sudden thing, but can you predict the future on-command? I need to hit him in a place where it hurts, and I need to do it now. I can’t wait for your thingy to activate. I’ll be too battered and bruised by the time it does.”

Clover closed her eyes, deep in thought.

“I think so. If I think really hard, if I want something really badly, I think I can do it. I remember once. The workers were feeding Calamari. I had heard they were closing the exhibit down, and I was so worried I was going to lose him, after I read a flyer about another octopus here being transferred to another aquarium. I thought he was in danger. I snuck into the area, concentrated really hard, and saw this fuzzy picture of an employee saying he was staying, a little while later.”

I sighed in relief.

“Great! I know this is a big ask. I’ll do everything I can to help you.”

She nodded, retaping her band-aids, the dirt and grime of our adventure beginning to wear them down. She furrowed her brow, scrunched her eyes, and the crimson light engulfed her body.

“Keep him busy. This might take some time.”