Nextgen Kids: Legend of the Nine Newborn

Salad Bar Cove

My mind's been pretty muddy lately, and it's been hard to get motivation for this story. Expect me to work on other projects soon.

Gourmet 6: Salad Bar Cove

Avalaran Sea

Somewhere out in the ocean was a gargantuan trench that split across the surface, the sounds of the falls roaring down into the depths of the planet. Haylee pulled a switch to extract sails on the sides of the Ace Sailor. "It's not an adventure without sailing dangerous natural phenomena. Hang tight, guys, we're going in!"

Haylee studied the treasure map on Tressa's phone, which depicted at which point to fall down the falls. The ship curved vertically upon crossing the edge, Haylee holding the helm tightly and using the side sails to maneuver along the surface of the falls. She followed the directions as indicated by the map, and it seemed there was a current along the surface to help her. "Nature sure is weird, but I love it!" Haylee cheered.

"Heh, I like your helmsman!" Tressa cheered, she and the crewmen hanging onto the rigging. She had to speak loudly over the falls. "After this is done, is it alright if I borrow her?!"

"I'm kind of borrowing her from another crew!" August replied with an ecstatic smile. "There's only so far the chain of command will stack!"

"Same with me!" Yuzu yelled, clinging the rigging with hands and feet to avoid flinging about. "If there's one thing Captain's good at, it's borrowing people!"

"I'm great at a lot of things, Yuzu, you seen me!"

"More questionable things than not!"

The wild ride continued for several minutes before the ship steered into a watery tunnel. It looped upside-down and back to right-side-up. The voyage became calmer as they sailed out of the tunnel, into a more vast region: an ocean beneath them and a ceiling of ocean above them, with swirling columns of water interconnecting either. "Yep, it's the Under Sea all right!" Tressa said. "There's so much sunken treasure, I can smell it!"

"I don't see those Gourmet Corp. guys anywhere nearby." Haylee said. "Better stay alert. We still have a while until we arrive."

"We could always hope they took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up falling into the abyss." Augustus joked.

"That would be problematic." Tressa replied. "Who's going to pay me back now?"

"We'll beat it out of the rest of them~"

"Heh heh! ..." Tressa looked over to Gourmerry on Tama's back; the ninja was currently barfing over the railing. "That's a crazy story you told me... Does the rest of the universe know about that Firstborn?"

"Hopefully, not. They're still trying to wrap their heads around all these other Newborn randomly popping up. We would have way more people coming after us if they knew who Gourmerry was."

"You must trust me an awful lot~" Tressa said with a teasing smile. "A Firstborn would make a hefty amount of profit."

"Oh, I didn't know you were a black market dealer~" August smirked.

"Not even close, buddy. I'm an honest to goodness merchant."

"That's what they all say~"

"Well, I am!" she yelled in a flustered way. "All I want to do in life is explore the world and find, buy, and sell treasures in a perfectly legal way. And even I know the Firstborn are too important to just casually sell. It would be like selling a weapon of mass destruction."

"Is that how you think of the Firstborn?" Yuzu asked.

"W-Well, I mean... I do my share of research, and I recall hearing the Firstborn were common targets for villains, to do... evil villain things."