The portal didn't take Sebas where he expected.
To be fair, Sebas didn't expect anything. He had no plan. He had never had a plan. Plans were for Idiots.
The portal spat him out onto a beach.
"Oh SICK," Sebas said, landing on his feet for the first time ever. He looked around. Blue sky. Palm trees. Crystal clear water. White sand. Gentle waves.
"Holiday arc," he whispered. "Let's go."
He was wrong. This was not a holiday.
About fifty feet to his left, Nanami was getting eaten alive by fish that appeared out of thin air. Maki was getting kicked through palm trees by a giant red octopus man. Naobito — a seventy-one-year-old man who moved faster than most people could think — was getting his arm bitten off by shikigami.
This was Dagon's Domain Expansion. The Horizon of the Captivating Skandha. A tropical paradise that was actively trying to murder everyone inside it.
Sebas did not notice any of this.
He was too busy looking at the ocean.
"Yo," Sebas said. "I wonder if there's fish in there."
Nanami slashed through three shikigami, blood running down his face, barely standing. He turned his head and saw — in the middle of an active domain battle where three grade 1 sorcerers were being overwhelmed by an evolved special grade cursed spirit — some random man with one shoe sitting on the beach with a fishing rod.
He blinked.
He blinked again.
"...What?"
Maki crashed through another tree, rolled, stood up, and also saw the man.
"Who the FUCK is that?"
Naobito, missing an arm, looked over.
"Is he... fishing?"
He was fishing. Sebas had manifested a fishing rod from thin air — a nice one, wooden handle, proper reel — and cast the line into Dagon's cursed ocean like a man on a Saturday morning with absolutely nowhere to be.
He didn't even have bait attached to the hook.
"Shh," Sebas said without looking at them. "You'll scare the fish."
"WE'RE DYING," Maki screamed.
"That sounds like a you problem."
Dagon himself paused mid-attack. His shikigami froze. The ancient cursed spirit born from humanity's fear of the ocean looked at this random human who had appeared in HIS domain, in HIS ocean, and was FISHING in it.
"How did you get in here?" Dagon demanded.
"Door was open."
"There IS no door."
"Then how'd I get in?"
Dagon opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. Nothing came out. He had no answer for this. His domain was supposed to be sealed. Nobody should be able to enter without another domain or—
"Anyway, quiet," Sebas said, wiggling his fishing rod. "I'm trying to catch something big."
The line tugged.
Not a normal tug. Not a "oh I caught a trout" tug. The kind of tug that said "something down there is angry and it is LARGE."
Sebas grinned.
"Oh we got a bite, ladies and gentlemen."
The ocean MOVED. Not waved. MOVED. A massive swell rose from the depths. Dagon's shikigami scattered. The water churned. Something enormous was coming up from below — something that had absolutely no business being in a cursed domain, or in this anime, or in this dimension, or frankly in any ocean that valued its reputation.
The water EXPLODED.
Out of the cursed ocean — launched forty feet into the air with the force of a ballistic missile made of fish — came Duke Fishron.
For those unfamiliar: Duke Fishron is a boss from Terraria. Part pig. Part dragon. Part fish. All nightmare. A massive blue-green monstrosity with wings, tusks, glowing eyes, and the general appearance of something that was made on a Friday afternoon after a very long week.
It was the size of a building.
It hovered above the ocean, water cascading off its body, wings beating, eyes glowing, tusks dripping with cursed seawater.
Everyone froze.
Nanami froze. His blade lowered half an inch. His brain — the brain of a man who calmly calculated ratio techniques under life-threatening pressure — produced exactly one thought: "What."
Maki froze. She'd fought cursed spirits. She'd been kicked through trees. She'd stared death in the face. But she had never seen a flying pig-fish-dragon the size of a house erupt from the ocean like it had a personal vendetta against physics.
Naobito froze. He was seventy-one. He was missing an arm. He was done.
Dagon froze. This was HIS ocean. HIS domain. HIS water. And something had just come out of it that he had not put there and could not explain.
"...That is not one of my shikigami," Dagon said quietly.
"No shit," Maki whispered.
Duke Fishron hovered in the air for a moment. Its massive eyes scanned the beach. The palm trees. The sorcerers. The cursed spirit. The sand.
Then it looked at Sebas.
Then it looked at the fishing rod.
Then it looked back at Sebas.
"Yo," Duke Fishron said.
Its voice was deep. Gravelly. Like a man who'd been smoking at the bottom of the ocean for three hundred years.
"Did you just FISH me out of my dimension?"
"Yeah," Sebas said. "My bad."
Duke Fishron looked around again. Squinted — as much as a giant pig-fish-dragon CAN squint.
"This ain't Terraria."
"Nope."
"Where the fuck am I?"
"Anime."
Duke Fishron processed this. Its wings beat slowly. Water dripped from its tusks. It looked at Dagon. Then at Nanami. Then at Maki. Then at the beach. Then back at Sebas.
"Aight gang," Duke Fishron said, descending slowly until it was hovering just above the water. "So let me get this straight. You pulled me — a Terraria boss — out of my home ocean — into some anime beach dimension — with a FUCKING FISHING ROD."
"Duh."
"And there's some octopus dude over there trying to kill people with magic fish."
"Also correct."
"And you're just... sitting there. Fishing."
"That is what I'm doing, yes."
Duke Fishron stared at Sebas. It could feel it. The power radiating off this shoeless idiot like heat off the sun. Whatever this man was, he was NOT normal. He was not even in the same POSTCODE as normal. Duke Fishron had been a boss fight for millions of players across millions of worlds, and it had never felt power like this.
It was not going to fight this man.
"Aight," Duke Fishron said, with the energy of someone who had done the maths and decided that peace was the correct option. "I ain't about to start nothing. This ain't my world. I don't know these people. That octopus over there ain't my problem."
Dagon bristled. "I am not an OCTOPUS—"
"Bro you literally have tentacles on your face."
"THOSE ARE AESTHETIC—"
"You look like calamari with anger issues."
"I—"
"You look like what happens when you leave sushi out too long and it gets mad about it."
Dagon's shikigami started swarming toward Duke Fishron. Hundreds of them. Piranha. Eels. Things with teeth that shouldn't have teeth.
Duke Fishron didn't even flinch.
It opened its mouth and released a TYPHOON of pressurised water that scattered every single shikigami in a two-hundred-metre radius. The wave crashed through Dagon's domain like a tsunami through a sandcastle. Palm trees bent. The beach flooded. Nanami grabbed onto Maki. Naobito grabbed onto nothing because he only had one arm.
Dagon stared.
His shikigami — his GUARANTEED-HIT shikigami — had just been power-washed out of existence by a fish from another video game.
"Like I said," Duke Fishron said calmly, settling back down. "I ain't starting nothing. But I ain't taking nothing either."
It turned back to Sebas.
"So what do you want from me, one-shoe?"
"Honestly?" Sebas said. "Nothing. I was just fishing and you showed up."
"...You fished for ME."
"I fish for whatever bites, mate."
Duke Fishron sighed. A deep, ancient, aquatic sigh.
"Can you send me back?"
"Yeah probably."
"Then do that."
"In a minute. I wanna see how this plays out." Sebas gestured at the frozen sorcerers and the stunned Dagon. "This is quality entertainment."
Duke Fishron looked at the carnage. Looked at the sorcerers. Looked at Dagon, who was still processing the fact that a fish had just called him calamari.
"Fair enough," Duke Fishron said, and sat down on the beach next to Sebas.
And so, in the middle of Dagon's Domain Expansion, while Nanami, Maki, and Naobito were actively fighting for their lives, a man with one shoe and a Terraria boss sat side by side on the sand, watching.
Sebas manifested two cans of Fanta.
He offered one to Duke Fishron.
Duke Fishron took it.
They watched Dagon try to reassemble his shattered dignity.
"That octopus is getting cooked," Duke Fishron observed.
"He's not an octopus."
"Bro he's literally got tentacles."
"...Yeah fair enough."