"Your territorial waters?!"
Standing atop the crest of his armored leviathan, Attuma slammed the heavy shaft of his trident against the beast's plated brow. A deep, resonant shockwave rippled through the surface foam.
"Foolish, arrogant surface-dwellers! Since the dawn of the primordial world, the oceans have belonged solely to the sovereign throne of Atlantis! Yet I did not march my vanguard here today to debate geography with vermin. Bring your commanding officer to the deck!"
Attuma's eyes burned with predatory triumph. His strategic objective today was blindingly simple: ignite a full-scale war. How could a few stern warnings over a loudspeaker from the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force force him to withdraw?
Both sides stood entrenched in their positions, but because neither faction had drawn first blood, a fragile, razor-thin silence hung over the sea.
Seeing the human warships refuse to lower their guns, Attuma feigned growing impatience, raising his voice to a booming roar.
"Humans! Deliver the murderer of King Namor into my hands immediately! Refuse, and your empire will drown beneath the unyielding wrath of the oceans!"
The words carried an air of absolute righteous fury, yet Attuma understood the reality better than anyone. There was no murderer to deliver; the demand was merely an impossible pretext to manufacture a righteous war.
The architect of a frame-up always knows the innocence of his victim better than anyone else.
"Have any of our strike groups deployed covert operations in the southern trenches recently?" Vice Admiral Saitō demanded, his eyes fixed on the bizarre, armored barbarian standing atop the sea monster through binoculars. "And somehow assassinated their king?"
The adjutant standing beside him stiffened, rapidly scrolling through encrypted naval logs.
"Our forces have maintained strict patrol parameters, General. Zero unauthorized sorties," the adjutant reported, leaning in closer to drop his voice. "However... forty-eight hours ago, an unlogged nuclear submarine belonging to the United States military was detected operating within the Tokyo Bay corridor."
"The Americans again?!"
Saitō's face instantly darkened. No naval commander relished the reality of foreign troops operating with sovereign impunity on domestic soil, but treaty obligations tied his hands. Taking the blame for Washington's clandestine blunders, however, was where his tolerance ended.
"Relay an immediate priority inquiry to the Prime Minister's Cabinet," Saitō barked. "Ask if we are being forced to take the fall for a Pentagon black-op."
Less than two minutes later, the communications officer turned from his terminal, pale.
"General, the Cabinet just transmitted their diplomatic response. The U.S. Pacific Command completely denies deploying any submarine assets to that coordinate!"
"Bastards! Absolute bakayarō!"
Saitō slammed his fist onto the steel tactical console, unable to suppress his boiling rage. It was blatantly obvious that the American forces had triggered an international disaster in deep water and left the JMSDF to absorb the military fallout.
'They break the glass, and expect us to bleed cleaning it up,' Saitō cursed internally.
Saitō drew a sharp breath, his military discipline taking over. "Broadcast our final reply to those fish-men. State unequivocally that the Maritime Self-Defense Force has deployed zero offensive strikes, nor do we possess their king. If they refuse to withdraw past the perimeter after that... authorize all batteries to open fire!"
Saitō sneered, looking down at the primitive spears and coral shields visible across the water. "A tribe of subterranean savages. If they had stayed hidden in their trenches, we might have left them in peace. But they dare to tweak the whiskers of our fleet?!"
"Understood, General!"
The broadcast horn on the lead destroyer flared to life once more, the adjutant's harsh, uncompromising refusal echoing across the waves. Simultaneously, the mechanical whir of dozens of automated turrets and missile racks filled the air as over a hundred destroyers and cruisers pivoted their main batteries, locking dead center onto the Atlantean vanguard.
"Is that your final decree, surface-dwellers?!"
Hearing the crisp refusal blare across the water, Attuma forced a look of incandescent, theatrical outrage across his face.
He knew with absolute certainty that the fleet before him had played zero role in Namor's disappearance. But it mattered not in the slightest. Japan was geographically closest to the oceanic breach where Namor had vanished. Attuma simply required a high-profile enemy to focus the collective grief and bloodlust of the Atlantean public.
As for who bled on the other side? It made no difference.
"Then let there be war!"
SPLASH!
At Attuma's command, the tens of thousands of warriors standing on the surface dived beneath the waves.
RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT! BOOM!
In the exact same microsecond, the JMSDF fleet unleashed its synchronized barrage. Heavy naval autocannons, close-in weapon systems, and automated machine guns tore the water into a frothing storm of lead and high explosives. Tracers drew blinding geometric lines across the sea, shredding the surface where the vanguard had gathered moments prior.
Even with the dense resistance of the ocean water blunting the kinetic velocity of the rounds, several hundred vanguard soldiers who failed to dive in time were instantly torn apart, their blue blood rising to the surface.
"Deep dive! All units, submerge to fifty meters!" Attuma roared into his hydro-communicator, swiftly adjusting his formation. "Close the distance beneath their keels and unleash the sonic batteries!"
The Atlantean legions surged into the dark depths, slipping beneath the blind spots of the surface turrets. Gliding like torpedoes beneath the steel hulls of the warships, the soldiers aimed their shell-forged Sonic Cannons upward and dialed the frequency to maximum amplitude.
SKRRREEEEEEECH!
Over a hundred naval vessels suddenly fell dead silent. The coordinated roar of deck gunfire was violently cut short.
Inside the steel hulls, the high-intensity acoustic resonance reverberated through the metal like a colossal bell. Hundreds of sailors collapsed to the deckplates in blinding agony, clutching their bleeding ears, vomiting, and writhing in helpless spasms.
Standing on the bridge of the flagship, General Saitō gripped the railing, his jaw tight with irritation. He had severely underestimated the technological capabilities of these abyssal humanoids; he had not anticipated their infantry wielding localized directed-energy sonic weaponry.
Yet for a seasoned flag officer, an acoustic counter was standard operational doctrine.
Saitō grabbed a heavy noise-canceling comms helmet from the bulkhead, locking it over his head. Staggering through the vibrating bridge to the central battle-management console, he slammed the fleet-wide emergency override.
"All bridge personnel who can still stand... activate the active sonar arrays at maximum output! Broadcast reverse-phase acoustic pulses directly into the seabed!" Saitō commanded through the secured channel. "Submarines on the flank, fire homing torpedo spreads into the waters directly beneath our hull grid! Decks, arm all personnel for anti-boarding close-quarters combat!"
HUMMMMM—CRASH!
The powerful sonar transducers mounted along the keels of the fleet flared to life, blasting high-decibel counter-frequencies downward. While the reverse acoustic waves couldn't physically crush the Atlantean soldiers, they successfully neutralized the localized resonance paralyzing the ships.
Groaning sailors dragged themselves off the deckplates, shaking the ringing from their ears as combat readiness was restored.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
A series of muffled, earth-shaking underwater detonations tore through the dark water beneath the fleet. Submarine-launched torpedoes detonated dead-center inside the packed Atlantean diving formation.
Colossal geysers of water erupted between the hulls, dragging hundreds of mangled corpses and vast sheets of crimson blood to the surface, staining the turquoise ocean into a horrific abattoir.
"King Attuma! We cannot sustain an attrition assault like this!"
Seeing their forward ranks decimated in the opening minutes of the clash, General Arno surged forward, gripping Attuma's shoulder to break the warlord's growing frenzy.
"Then tell me what tactical adjustments you propose, Arno?!" Attuma snarled, his eyes bloodshot. "We must secure an absolute, overwhelming victory here! Do you understand the stakes?!"
"Of course, King Attuma!" Arno replied smoothly, his tone cold and calculating. "We will inevitably crush their fleet. However, there is zero tactical necessity in filling their kill zones with the corpses of our finest royal guards. These soldiers are the bedrock of your domestic power; after this war concludes, their loyalty will be required to cement your eternal reign on the throne."
Arno turned his cold gaze toward the rear formation, where the massive Tribal Legions hovered in the dark currents.
Throughout the history of Atlantis, its civilization had branched into distinct philosophical paths: some mastered esoteric water magic, some engineered bio-acoustic weaponry, and others pursued biological symbiosis with primordial marine leviathans.
The tribal contingents mobilized for this campaign were the ancient beast-tamers of the abyss.
"Unleash the leviathans against their iron hulls," Arno suggested, a cruel smirk touching his lips. "Even if the beasts perish under heavy ordnance, it will not diminish your royal military prestige. And standard human surface firepower lacks the penetration to pierce the dense, calcified armor of abyssal behemoths."
Hearing the tactical logic, Attuma did not hesitate for a fraction of a second.
"Release the beasts!"
Within the tribal ranks, though the beast-masters felt a pang of reluctance to risk their ancient companions, the royal decree was absolute. Ancient, low-frequency whale-bone horns blew through the water.
ROOOOAAAR!
Dozens of colossal, armored leviathans—monstrosities spanning hundreds of meters with calcified bone carapaces, kraken-like tentacles, and jaws capable of crushing submarines—surged upward from the black trench.
As the behemoths breached the surface beneath the fleet, the barrage of 76mm naval shells and machine gun rounds bounced harmlessly off their ancient, bio-dense hides like hail against a stone fortress.
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