The dark blot stops, leisurely trails back to the discarded scrap, and without any hesitation — attempts to lob it back up into the air, the core shooting out of the water like a geyser before plopping back into the water a ways back. The lights under the water thrash for a second in the currents before stilling, weaving, and twisting angrily. Rough, eerie noises like warped whalesong come from the depths — and a thick, jet-black tail patterned with stripes of light and a few spine-like fins surfaces for just a second. The leviathan creature of almost sixteen feet long moves beneath the ship, switching sides before meandering back along to the side with her porthole.

     Ebony likes to call herself knowledgeable when it comes to odd an unnatural things, but is just a few drops shy of being confident enough to claim she knows everything. Marine life definitely isn't part of her centuries of knowledge and experience, though a simple fish doesn't seem to be what she's dealing with here.

     She watches the apple core fly shoot out of the water and drop again, listens to the call from the impossibly large creature that sets her hairs on end. None of the crew come to lean over the side of the ship to catch a glimpse of what made the sound. Any sane person would be using the quiet night to catch up on sleep. A less-than-sane person might be seriously considering jumping into the icy waters to investigate. Thankfully, Ebony looks to the rowboat suspended at the ship's side before that. The porthole is just big enough for her to wiggle through, and a careful leap lands her in the center of the smaller vessel. The short venture takes her much lower, closer to the surface of the water. If she were to commit to some acrobatics, she could wet her fingers.

     Instead, the Demoness pats her coat's pockets, finds the sliver of dried meat wrapped in paper she had been saving for later, and drops half of it into the water. It seems more sensible than risking her limbs just to catch another glimpse of what lurks beneath.

       Kage regards her for a long moment, deliberating his next answer. Friends…yes. That’s the closest approximation to what she is to him. Her asking how close they were has something flickering in his expression, throat locking up and a brief flash in his eyes. He only speaks when he feels he’s gained enough composure back.

       "We were very close, you were one of the few people in this world that I could trust.”

       He says it lamentingly, because telling her all this is no guarantee of her returning to her former state. After all this, she may choose to never speak to him again.

       “He wasn’t a man. He was a demon. I don’t know if that weighs heavy on your conscience with that difference in mind. Whatever humanity he had left was gone…and he would have killed you if you left him be.”

       It’s true, he’s been flaky with the ruse as of late, the more danger she’s in, the more scared he has gotten of her being too blind to the truth when the real danger hits. Phantom was so close, and still searching.

       “I can still help you, Ebony. I promise you, I can. I can be with you every step of the way as more of it uncovers, but I couldn’t lie to you anymore. I couldn’t…blind you anymore.”

     His answer has her wondering again about more than just herself. What kind of life does this man live that would leave him with only a few individuals he call friends? She can't imagine anyone putting that much trust in her, but it would explain all this effort on his part. If she had only a few people in the world, which she supposes she does, she would do the same.

     "I can see that. It's crazy, but I can."

     This realization only soothes her for a moment, right up until the word 'demon' leaves his mouth. A figure of speech, surely. That man must've just been an awful human being. Her mind supplies the image of the mark his body left on the pavement, like it was burned from existence, then that awful feeling she'd had all over that night in the alley. Finally, the shocked, almost scared, look in people's eyes when she tossed full-grown men out of a bar and accidentally shattered a headboard.

     Ebony's eyes flick to the window, the door behind her. She might've actually made a run for it if the sincerity in his tone didn't pull her out of it. Her palms slide forward against her thighs until she's almost doubled over, elbows digging into her knees so she can hide a pained expression behind her hands.

     "I need to know more first—about you. Not who you are to me, who are you?" Then, much quieter: "What are you?"

@ebonyforged ♡'d starter call for maritime au —

Light cuts through the dark water as the bioluminescent, abyssopelagic creature moves a little too close to the surface, given cover by the dark night. He doesn't traverse to the surface, not without good reason. Curiosity — happens to be a good enough reason for the leviathan to barely breach the water. Or hunger, maybe, if not curiosity.

     With little in the way of intelligent conversation to be found among the crew, and not nearly enough lamplight to do any significant amount of reading by, Ebony has resigned herself to a couple of hours of staring at the waves through an open porthole. The calm weather allows it, but there's really not much to see there. It's far too dark and far too quiet not to notice any odd thing. A glimmer of something, cool-toned and bright against the dark waters, has her blinking and rubbing her eyes just to find that it's definitely there, not just something conjured up by tired eyes, and it's moving.

     She's still holding the apple core that she's been enthusiastically scraping away at for the past hour, its edges steadily getting dry and brown. Whatever lives in salty waters won't care for fruit, surely, but it's close enough to trash that she doesn't mind reaching out of the porthole to drop it into the water, right over the strange figure below.

Blood was a familiar scent to Spades, one that tickled his instincts, hunger twisting his stomach, his pupils dilating not unlike a cat sensing prey, his nostrils flaring. It distracted him from his paperwork, a man temporarily reminded that he was a beast. The fact that the blood was dried kept him from opening his mouth in a flehmen response or, worse, actually getting up and doing something creaturesque, but there was still that little poke of instinct in his brain mildly distracting him even as Ebony spoke. Other than that, he couldn't really care about any potential mess or manners- he'd done worse himself.

Ebony might not have dropped into the chair of her own volition, but after a pause of processing the scent of blood and trying to get himself to ignore it, Spades gestures to the seat opposite him in invitation.

"How did it go? Successful?"

     With her mind occupied by the fantasy of a thorough shower followed by a long, scalding soak in some soapy water, Ebony doesn't note the finer detail of Spades' reaction to the state she's in. To her, he looks a bit put off if anything, a perfectly normal response. It's surprising that he invites her to sit, in spite of it.

     Ebony already has the tendency to lean and slump when she sits, but today moreso than others. There's a weariness in the way she stretches out her legs in front of her and supports the weight of her head in a mostly-clean palm. She didn't come to be covered in blood just by standing around.

     "Obviously. Security was just a lot better than I expected. I didn't exactly get out unseen." As if an afterthought, the Demoness pats the pockets of her jacket before reaching inside to take out a flash drive. She puts it on the very edge of Spades' desk, where she doesn't have to move much to reach, before using a finger to flick it and send it sliding towards him. "I'm sure you'll forgive the slip-up this once, since I've always done a clean job for you before." The tired but confident curl of her lip suggest she's not all that worried, or much too tired to be.

     "You wouldn't happen to have an en-suite bathroom attached to this office, would you?"