Bubbles of Futility

While Guts keeps his eye on Casca, his sight starts to smear, a consequence of leaning too hard on the Berserker Armor. Fear grips him that he might be losing his vision. A blink restores it, but the dread lingers, and Farnese and Schierke, watching in their luminous bodies, catch the brief flash of panic. Roderick urges him back below, since the salt breeze only worsens the burns Ganishka's lightning left across him. Following Guts' gaze to Casca, Roderick asks what she is to him. The two witches lean in, desperate to hear the answer, but the instant before he gives it Farnese's luminous form winks out and she snaps awake in her physical body, baffled by the sudden recall. Schierke wakes as well, and Serpico enters as both sense something amiss, the young witch gripping her staff hard.

Casca climbs out along the bowsprit. Alarmed, Guts springs after her, but his nearness only pushes her further, since she cannot stand him. As she edges onward the ship crashes through a swell, and the lurch flings her off. Guts grabs for her with his prosthetic hand, which can hold nothing that is not magnetic, and Casca drops into the water. He dives after her, finds her below the surface, and hauls them both up, enduring her using him as a raft until Roderick reaches them in a rowboat. Casca is pulled aboard, but a wave yanks Guts back under, and the weight of the false arm keeps him from rising. He lets himself descend, reflecting that water and Casca always seem to court disaster, and old memories surface of their days together in the Band of the Falcon before he blacks out.

He comes to below deck, ringed by Schierke, Ivalera, Puck, Isidro, Roderick, and Serpico, and learns that Roderick plunged in to save him. He bolts upright asking after Casca, and Schierke assures him that Farnese is bathing her and that she is safe, letting him sink back in relief. Schierke asks the others to clear out so she can redraw his erased talisman, and they file into the next room where Magnifico lies wretched with seasickness. As she works, Guts studies the prosthetic set aside on a nearby seat, recalling how it failed to catch Casca, how he had forgotten it was only cold metal, and how, no matter how hard one tries to force things back, what was cannot be regained.

Guts' vision blurs from overuse of the Berserker Armor. Farnese's luminous body is abruptly pulled back into her physical form just before Guts answers Roderick about his relationship to Casca. Casca climbs the bowsprit and is thrown overboard by a wave, and Guts' non-gripping prosthetic arm fails to save her. Guts dives after her and nearly drowns until Roderick rescues him. Recovering below deck, Guts reflects on his inability to save Casca with the prosthetic and on the impossibility of restoring what was lost.

Part of the Millennium Falcon Arc, this twenty-two-page chapter appeared in Young Animal issue fourteen on July 13, 2007. Its title reflects Guts' meditation on futility as he weighs his prosthetic limb and the irrecoverable past.