DoA Careers: Trapper 3 | Tatlitli, (Jinpachi), (Laverito)

"Wha - what is going on out here? Excuse me, but could you maybe not - oh, OH!"

 

The strange abyssal emerged from the rocks and crags, summoned by the sound of Laverito screaming. It didn't take him long to realize that he should've stayed inside today. The blood on the water should've given him more of a clue, but then again, Tatlitli's water element allowed her to flee faster than the surrounding currents flowed.

 

Turtli had tried to distract the monster, to no avail. Glimmering trails of wisp phosphorescence simply weren't tasty-looking enough, evidently. Tatlitli appreciated the effort, and would say so once her life was no longer actively in peril.

 

Laverito was clinging to Tatlitli's left horn like a knot of seaweed, screeching horribly. If Tatlitli were to shake him off, maybe shove him down into the lee of a rock, and presuming he shut up, the monster would most likely ignore the spindly land-hopper in favor of the larger, meatier trespasser. 

 

Tatlitli did not do this, however. For one, it would have required stopping, which was a terrible idea right now. Secondly, Tatlitli took some small measure of comfort in the knowledge that the cause of this mess was also suffering the consequences.

 

So, Tatlitli was being chased by a massive, enraged, unusually pointy octopus. Propelled by liberal use of her water element, she was going very fast. Stopping was an absolutely terrible idea. And Tatlitli had been practicing with self-propulsion, but she was not so arrogant as to believe herself anywhere near mastery.

 

All this to say: when the abyssal spiraled into Tatlitli's path, there followed a very impactful moment for all involved.

 

Laverito's shrieking transcended to a pitch hitherto unknown as the land-hopper was knocked off of Tatlitli, who couldn't see where he'd ended up with an abyssal in her eyes. Blind or no, stopping was still very much not an option, so Tatlitli continued fleeing, hoping that luck was on her side and she wasn't about to crush any of her passenger(s?) between her own skull and a hard place.

 

Fortunately, the abyssal recovered enough to wriggle away from all the pointy bits on Tatlitli's face. Any abyssal's slim body would ordinarily be faster than a polar's bulk, but Tatlitli had her element at her back. As the strange abyssal wrapped himself around Tatlitli, he wheezed, "Sorry, I don't usually do this, but oh my goodness that's a very large octopus. Why is it so pointy? And why is it so mad at you?!"

 

"Down, go down, DIVE, DIVE!" Laverito howled. Tatlitli couldn't have said whether it was trust, exhaustion, or bewitchment that caused her to actually obey the land-hopper. It turned out that he hadn't actually been blown off, but had rather been transferred from Tatlitli to the abyssal like an opportunistic parasite.

 

Tatlitli dove. Turtli had gone first, and the blue light of the turtle wisp below was reassuring. A narrow trench gouged through the ocean floor, decorated with slow falls of sand and bristling deep-ocean plants. Wrapped in an abyssal, heralded by the screams of a terrified land-hopper with more magical artifacts than sense, Tatlitli darted between the craggy walls, searching for a gap wide enough to fit her but narrow enough to stop the monster. 

 

Unfortunately, the monstrous octopus' tentacles were much narrower than it was.

 

"Agh, do something!" Tatlitli demanded, as she wedged herself against the rocks to resist the pull. The tentacle tugged and pried, dragging her out by inches at a time, scraping her scales and frills raw. Above, not nearly far enough away, an enormous, jagged, hungry beak gaped and snapped.

 

The abyssal had avoided capture, being such a narrow target, and pressed himself back into the recesses of the crevice. "When I told myself I wanted to be more outgoing, this is not what I meant!"

 

Turtli circled Laverito like a shark, showing more aggression than Tatlitli had ever seen from the turtle wisp before. Laverito wailed and mashed his hand-fins against his face. "Evade the ancient guardian monster of the unseen depths, only to get eaten by the moon-addled pet turtle. I hate my life."

 

"Guardian - guardian of what? What did you do?!" the abyssal wanted to know, quite reasonably.

 

"Augh!" Tatlitli contributed.

 

"It was supposed to be a simple retrieval! Fetch an artifact lost at sea, bog-standard stuff - but the octopus went and activated it somehow, merged with it, and then the overpriced, good-for-nothing, fool's-gold net failed!"

 

The abyssal looked up. Sure enough, there was a net wrapped around the octopus. Part of the octopus. Clinging to the octopus like half a hat.

 

"You thought that would work?!"

 

"It was supposed to be an enchanted net!"

 

"HREGH," Tatlitli reminded them. Her claws gouged into the surrounding rock. She was now bleeding from additional scratches. Her bones were protesting, desperately.

 

"Is that the, the artifact?" The abyssal wanted to know.

 

"I can't see past the big fat aqrion in the way! What do you see?" Laverito said, apparently too wrung out to bother with his usually consistent manners.

 

"That - it's stuck in, uh, between the eyes, a sort of, glowing, glassy-"

 

"That's it!" Laverito proclaimed.

 

Tatlitli's vision was going, but she felt something small and swift slice through the water. There was a pulse of something more feeling than sound, that vibrated deep within Tatlitli's bones, and then the tentacle released her. She was too overwrought to do anything more than drift aimlessly. Turtli came to her, nudging a cold shell under the exhausted aqrion's chin.

 

"You broke it!" said Laverito, offended beyond measure at the loss of his profit.

 

"An aqrion was dying!" said the appalled abyssal. "We were about to die! Of course I broke it, you trespassing, unreasonable, you - you noise-pollutant!"

 

Laverito, unbothered by things like 'empathy' or 'basic common decency', continued to mourn the loss of promised land-hopper coinage. "All that work and effort and tracking and time, all for nothing..."

 

Tatlitli, feeling somewhat more alive, rejoined the conversation with a rasp in her tone. "My work, effort, tracking, and time, you ungrateful greedy-guts. Personally I quite like being alive, so you can either shut up or swim yourself to shore."

 

Laverito shut up.

 

Tatlitli looked to the abyssal. "So. I'm Tatlitli. What's your name?"

 

"I - you - Jinpachi?"

 

"Thanks for saving my life, Jinpachi," she told him, casually nudging an ecstatic Turtli out of her face. "Friends?"

 

"Friends - ! Oh, to the bottomfeeders with this whole thing!" With that, Jinpachi dulled his many bulbs to their dimmest glow, and swirled out into the darkness of the deep trench, vanishing in an instant.

 

Tatlitli nodded. "Friends."

 

"Please just take me to shore," Laverito groaned. "Last time I take a contract underwater, I swear..."