A/N: The character of Overlord is based off the enormous eye floating in the sky as the Gipsy Danger fell into the Anteverse – however, a thorough search of the Internet reveals no other mention of that eye, anywhere. Could someone confirm that the eye is actually there, or am I just going insane?

One – Hydraulic Pressure

"So let me get this straight," repeated the Precursor Bishop, drumming its spindly arms against its sides as it stood on a slab of rock just below the almost-completed Rift. "From our side of the portal, anything can go through – Kaiju, missiles, whatever we can come up with."

"YES." Overlord hung in the sky above Bishop like a hideous sun, its bloodshot eye staring down at him. For the millionth time, the Precursor wondered how the other creature had ended up looking like that, and if the same might happen to it if it worked on this project for too long.

"But from the other side, only Kaiju, or things the Kaiju are touching, can come back through the portal."

"THAT IS THE CONCEPT. THE RETURN FUNCTION FOR THIS PORTAL IS, OF COURSE, ONLY A FAIL-SAFE. IN CASE OF EMERGENCIES."

Bishop couldn't imagine what emergencies the microscopic creatures of the other world might be able to create, but it supposed it couldn't hurt. "It sounds foolproof."

Overlord glowered down at him. "BISHOP, I HAVE PERFECTED THIS PORTAL DESIGN ACROSS FORTY-SEVEN WORLDS. I ASSURE YOU, IT IS FOOLPROOF."

"Alright, alright." Bishop raised his multiple fused limbs in protest. "Is the scout ready?"

Overlord squinted down at him in disgust, and from somewhere below, in the network of Kaiju breeding and holding pens drifting over the Precursor cities, there was the noise of a cage detaching.

"It's beautiful," breathed Bishop.

The creature was huge, even to the eyes – eye – of the monstrous Overlord. Muscles shifted under mottled green skin as the Kaiju clawed at its prison with all four arms. The axe-shaped turned towards the Precursor on the rock, and glowing orange phosphorescence pooled in the back of its throat as it growled.

"BASED OFF THE OLD DINOSAUR MODEL," boomed Overlord, the tiniest hint of pride in its voice. "AN ARCHAIC BASE, BUT WITH MY MODIFICATIONS IT WILL BE MORE THAN ADEQUATE TO CARRY OUT OUR MISSION."

Bishop inventoried the Kaiju's array of claws and fangs and teeth. "Er...and what is that mission, exactly?"

"SCOUTING. SEEING HOW FAR THE CREATURES OF THIS WORLD HAVE EVOLVED. FINDING THE MOST POPULATED AREAS FOR ITS BRETHREN TO DESTROY. BISHOP, YOU ALREADY KNOW ALL THIS. WE HAVE BEEN OVER THE PLAN COUNTLESS TIMES –"

"I know, I know, but you didn't tell me it was going to have so many teeth!" Bishop gestured frantically at the spine-studded monster hanging in the air between them. "Overlord, the creatures on this world are," Bishop held two of his claws a hair's-breadth apart, "this big! Look at this thing! You might as well use this for the entire invasion force!"

Overlord's eye crinkled in what Bishop thought might be amusement – there wasn't much to Overlord besides the eye, so it was kind of hard to tell. "PATIENCE, BISHOP. I HAVE EXPERIENCE AT THIS SORT OF THING, AND YOU DO NOT. TRUE, THE CREATURES ON THIS WORLD ARE TINY, BUT DO NOT LET THAT DECEIVE YOU. THEY WILL FIGHT BACK, AND WE MUST BE READY FOR THEM."

"Then hit them with everything we've got now, before they know what's going on -" Overlord glowered at him. "Fine. Okay, the scout looks good. Open the portal."

On the tiny planet Earth, at the bottom of Challenger Deep, far below the ocean's surface, otherworldly lightning flared out of the ground as a portal to a nightmare dimension was forced open.

"Open the cage," said Bishop.

The bars fell away with a heavy clunk, and the monstrous scout swam up towards the Rift. Blue lightning danced around its edges as Overlord, eye screwed shut in concentration, widened the portal's mouth.

"Is this safe?" Bishop called out as a stray lightning bolt blasted rock off the cliff above him. "Having the portal right above us like this?"

"BISHOP, I KNOW WHAT I AM DOING. THE PORTAL IS PERFECTLY HARMLESS –"

And the Kaiju scout Trespasser swam through the portal's mouth, into the Pacific Ocean.

Challenger Deep is up to 36, 201 feet deep in some places, the deepest point of the ocean, a valley within the Mariana Trench. Tons of water push down overhead, the pressure equalling roughly 1,099 times than that at Earth's surface.

This was the location that Overlord had decided to open its Breach from the Anteverse to.

As the portal forced itself open, Overlord's anti-Kaiju measures came into effect and blocked the water from entering the Breach.

Then the enormous, wedge-shaped head of Trespasser heaved itself through.

It has to be said that Overlord designed the Kaiju well enough to withstand the pressure at the bottom of the deepest place on Earth.

What it forgot to take into account was the fact that as the monster crawled out of the portal, it became dripping, sodden wet.

The Breach analyzed the foreign substance trying to enter the Anteverse, saw that it was connected to the Kaiju, and let it pass.

Overlord happened to, at this moment, open its eye and look up –

If the Precursor Bishop had been schooled in Earth media, it might have likened the event to a Visene commercial gone terribly wrong.

It watched from its perch on the cliff as Overlord's giant eye looked up, and widened in horror, and vainly tried to dive out of the way as hundreds of tons of salt water poured out of the Breach at 16, 099 pounds per square inch. The eye drifted slowly away, the tiny flagella on the bottom pumping at what was probably their maximum capacity, and then the tidal surge of water crashed into the bloodshot eye.

(The following translation left partially untranslated to avoid excessive expletives and to save us all the pain of learning Precursor etymology.)

"AUGGGGHHHH OH MY GOD I'M ▢ ▢ ▢ BLIND! OW OW OW WHAT'S GOING ON? BISHOP! DO SOMETHING!"

At that point, the wave of ocean water reached Bishop.

"Aieeee helphelphelp – Overlord, shut it off! SHUT IT OFF!"

Sensing its master's panic, Trespasser emptied its ink sacs, knocking dozens of small ocean-dwelling creatures unconscious and sweeping them into the portal. The Rift read the ink spattered on them, identified them as Kaiju, and dumped them onto Overlord's flailing eye.

"GAH! BISHOP!"

"Overlord, SHUT THE ▢ ▢ ▢ THING OFF!"

Barely visible beneath the seething water and the flailing sea creatures, Overlord squeezed its eye shut.

Lightning flickered above them. The flow of water stopped.

A steady drip-drip-drip was the only sound for several minutes as water drained off Bishop's rock and the surface of Overlord's eye.

Bishop was wedged against the rock face, where it had been hanging on to the rim of its perch for dear life. Slowly, it propped itself back up into a standing position.

"Overlord?"

The creator of the Breach was hanging in the sky, eye even redder than before, an unconscious sperm whale sprawled over its forehead like an off-kilter toupee. "THAT..." it began. "AH...IT WAS...THAT DOESN'T HAPPEN NORMALLY."

"No." Bishop looked glumly down from his perch, where far below the blob of water from the Pacific Ocean was falling towards the Precursor cities. "Ah...Overlord..."

"YES?"

"We may have some explaining to do."

A/N: The inspiration for this chapter comes from xkcd's Drain the Oceans: this website has a grudge against links, but a Google search of the aforementioned phrase will find the article.