Saga Ocean Master Alliance

Once upon a time, there lived a man named Orm Marius, known across the seven seas by a darker name: Ocean Master. Orm had wanted the throne of Atlantis for himself ever since his half-brother, Arthur Curry, claimed it and became Aquaman. It was a wound that never quite healed, no matter how many years passed.

So when Orm came to Black Manta one quiet evening with a bold, daring plan, Manta found himself surprisingly willing to listen. The idea was simple enough: seize the throne of Atlantis during the Festival of Poseidonis, that one joyful night each year when the whole city gathered together, unguarded, to celebrate beneath strings of glowing coral lanterns.

Manta did not want to rule Atlantis. He had never wanted a crown, or a kingdom, or the burden of ruling anyone at all. What he wanted was simpler and, in its own way, sadder: he wanted to watch Aquaman lose something that truly mattered to him, the way Manta himself had once lost everything on a stormy afternoon in Amnesty Bay, so many years before.

He agreed to help.

Their plan unfolded with brutal, careful precision. While the whole city celebrated, laughing and singing beneath the soft coral light, Orm's loyal soldiers quietly sealed every single exit from the royal palace. Meanwhile, Black Manta's glowing red eye-beams disabled the throne room's ancient alarm wards, one by one, each one falling silent under his steady aim. For a few tense, breathless minutes, it truly seemed like the alliance might succeed. Orm stood before the empty throne, close enough to touch it, while Manta stood guard at the doors, watching, waiting.

But alliances built on nothing sturdier than convenience rarely hold up when they are truly tested.

Orm, practically drunk on how close the crown felt, made a mistake. He ordered Manta to guard the doors alone while he dealt with the throne room's final, stubborn ward himself, speaking to him less like a partner and more like a servant hired for the night. Black Manta, who had spent his entire life refusing to answer to anyone, felt something cold and sharp flare up inside him at the command. He hesitated, just for a moment, weighing whether to simply walk away.

That single moment of hesitation was all it took.

Aquaman and Mera burst straight through the palace's outer wall, water and coral scattering in every direction. Aqualad, ever watchful, had grown suspicious of Orm's soldiers gathering quietly near the festival grounds earlier that evening, and had warned them just in time.

The battle that followed scattered Orm's forces within minutes. Mera's water constructs pinned soldier after soldier firmly against the palace walls, hardened water holding them fast. Aquaman drove straight toward his half-brother, trident meeting trident in a clash so fierce it shook the throne room's ancient pillars down to their foundations.

Black Manta watched from the doorway as Orm stumbled, faltered, and finally fell before Aquaman's determined fury. And in that moment, Manta made a swift, practical decision, the same kind of decision that had kept him alive and free for years. He abandoned the alliance entirely, turned, and dove for open water, refusing to share in whatever defeat awaited Orm inside that crumbling throne room.

He escaped clean, exactly as he usually did. But this time, the taste of victory — or rather, the taste of watching someone else's ambition collapse — lingered strangely in his mind long after he had left the palace behind.

Orm had wanted a throne, badly enough to risk everything for it. Manta had only ever wanted Aquaman to hurt, just once, the way he himself had hurt for so many years. But watching Orm's grand ambition crumble so completely, so quickly, taught Black Manta something he had not expected to learn that night — an uncomfortable, quiet truth about just how hollow that kind of victory would have felt, even if it had actually succeeded.

He swam home to Hyde's Reach in silence, turning the thought over and over, unable to quite shake it loose.

Somewhere in the quiet of that long swim home, past the towers of Poseidonis and the kelp forests and glowing thermal vents, Black Manta admitted something to himself that he rarely allowed himself to think. He did not actually want to see Aquaman lose everything, the way Orm had wanted the throne so badly he was willing to risk it all. What David Hyde wanted, underneath the anger and the years of scheming, was simply to be understood — to make Aquaman feel, even for a moment, what it was like to lose someone important without warning.

That was not the same thing as winning. It never had been. But it was easier to chase eye-beams and gold than to sit with a memory of a stormy afternoon and a father who never came home.

He reached Hyde's Reach as the thermal vents glowed their familiar warm orange, and floated there a while in the dark, saying nothing at all.