Scene #8965: Shrimpnapped!

Owner	Pose
Angela	Today's adventure began when Shajo and Nonon were talking to one another by WellCheers, an Abnormality so easy to deal with that it's typically used as free refreshments. But this time, Haschen brought in a new clerk in training who thoughtlessly pushed a button and... ...Collected a purple drink and thoughtlessly drank from it whereupon... a swirl of water erupted around all four of the employees involved and when the swirling waters faded...they were gone! ...Unlike most cases where an Abnormality makes an employee 'disappear' after a failed work, however, this Abnormality simply moves someone outside of the facility rather than immediately killing them. Unfortunately, where they are taken...happens to be The Great Lake. "I imagine with Nonon and Shajo present," Angela's request for assistance begins. "That they will not be immediately torn apart, but The Great Lake is one of the more dangerous places in The City. It would be best to bring them back as soon as possible. ... You should ... You should look out for ..." She sighs. "...A fishing boat manned by anthropomorphic shrimp people." AND SO... A ship has been prepared (Angela has suggested using it for purposes of discretion, even if not everybody strictly needs it). It's a small but sturdy ship with an Enkephalin powered motor that should get everybody to the Center of the Great Lake and back. Despite Angela's warnings, the lake seems...remarkably peaceful at first and nobody even needs to aim the ship. A map from U Corp has been supplied and is automatically guiding the vessel to where a 'shrimp manned' vessel was last seen. And indeed, after a rather sedate trip, you see there--in the middle of the ocean, a small fishing boat manned by like four shrimp men as well as the four missing L-Corp agents who seem to have been shanghaied into casting down nets, bringing up sea creatures (shrimp, mackerel, krill) onto the deck.
Angela	"Hey Shajo!! If we get outta this, maybe you can make something for Rita with all this." Nonon shouts over to her partner. "Not sure I'm skilled at sashimi but I can give it a shot." Shajo masks his uneasiness with casual chatter. "Wahhhh the whales are gonna eat us..." Haschen cries openly. The clerk is happily chowing down on some instant shrimp ramen and has some mild sunburns. Nonon is the first to spot the rented vessel heading for them and throws a wave. "I knew it! They must've sent some backup...! ... You ready to go back to work, Shajo? ... ... Shajo?" Shajo is distracted by something approaching from the other direction. Two somethings actually. "Nonon... Nonon! It's the Middle! FUCK." What is 'The Middle'? It seems to involve two large ships barrelling straight for the shrimp's fishing boat. A harpoon with a thick cable line collides into the deck of the fishing boat, right between the clerk's legs as pirates from one of the ship start sliding down towards the fishing boat, using a pair of hooks to slide down the cable. "CAPTAIN NONON!" A voice from a lady pirate wearing a large captain's hat, an eyepatch, and a red overcoat uniform shouts. "YOU'VE GOT SOME NERVE SAILING BACK HERE!" "Don't be a sore loser, Barb!!" Nonon shouts back. Meanwhile, on the other vessel... "SHAJO!" A buff, shirtless, and heavily purple-tattooed man steps up to the edge of the ship. "Your return means that you must pay for the insult of leaving the Family! Stay right there and you and your crew will pay according to the book of vengeance!" Across his shoulders are a slew of silver chains. "God dammit, Diego too!" Shajo shouts. "Fuck off, Nonon and I have a good thing going on, can't you just be happy!?" "Oh whew..." Haschen breathes a sigh of relief. "I thought that we'd have to worry about Whales too." Moments after saying this, the waters get a bit rockier, the sky a bit darker... Everybody on the shrimp-manned boat, including the shrimp-men, give Haschen ''such'' a look and she immediately goes back to crying.
UFO Gang	"It truly is a Great Lake," murmurs Minamitsu, sailor girl at medium, as she gazes upon the shores. She takes a deep breath - and lets it out. "It even smells kinda different." Her ship was not taken - it flies, of course, but it's also made of wood and somewhat underarmed and underarmored, even if one might disregard the potential cloud of intercepting fairies. But you can't count on those. NAZRIN, who would have been HELPFUL, is as a result DOING SOMETHING ELSE. (Besides, they had a map.) Instead, Ichirin and Unzan came along, leaving the group with two girls and one old man cloud to assist in this project. During the journey, there was an interlude. You see... Apparently -- "Stroke! Stroke! Bravest shrimp," "Daring seas and nets," "Twelve brave arms reach for the heavens," "A thousand thousand yet o/~" Ichirin remembered a relevant song. Her singing voice was a sort of glissando-heavy warble and she was accompanied by Minamitsu and Unzan with simple percussion on nearby flat surfaces. Ichirin remembers about five verses in this vein, all of which speak to the brave and inspiring nature of the noble crustacean. Outreach! NOW, THOUGH: A big pink cloud is floating over the boat, connected to a long diaphanous string, like semi-present cotton candy, which produces an extremely tiny old-man face near Ichirin's left ear. "Can you see them?" "...." "They're under attack?" Minamitsu, who had been eating some crackers she found, pauses. With a light of dawning hope in her eyes, Minamitsu says: "You mean... there's /unfriendly/ boats out there...?"
Rita Ma	Rita- in a simple white sundress and straw hat this time- is quietly tense the whole boat-ride over. She barely makes conversation. Her eyes keep scanning the horizon while she picks at her hat's loose ends. (It's the nature of Nonon and Shajo's jobs that they're often in danger. Most of Rita's loved ones have dangerous jobs, though. That's never stopped her fretting before.) So as soon as a boat comes into view, several things happen in rapid succession: Rita vanishes overboard, leaving her hat on the surface of the water. Thousands of feet away, a blue tentacle breaches surface by the fishing boat, slicing like a sword through the hostile ship's grappling cable. When pirates fall in from the snipped cable, a dark many-limbed shape prowls around them in the deep. And a foggily-filtered, seeping-up-from-deep-nerves voice murmurs into select heads: "Ms. Nonon! Mr. Shajo! Are you okay?! Who are these people? I thought it was just supposed to be shrimp..."
Odette Raskins	It's time for Odette's first mission as a proper member of the Trideag Association! Right? It may not be a formal mission, but she's eager as ever to prove herself on the field, both for Association-representing reasons and also to get a better idea of what's actually going on with Lobotomy Corporation. She makes sure to pack some extra power cells before heading out to join everyone else on the ship. The EMT is dressed in her usual jacket as always, but her looser and more comfortable uniform with the looser blouse and skirt combo has instead been replaced with a full-body envirosuit in white and blue, complete with a chunky spherical helmet (with the faceplate currently open) and high collar to keep the whole getup airtight along with a long gas tank on the back perfect for breathing underwater. By sheer coincidence, the shrimp cocktails from the other night are still fresh on her mind when she arrives to join the ride out to find Angela's missing employees. Hearing about anthromorphic shrimp people already had her mind going in incorrect directions on what they should look like, and it even led her to doing a bit of digging with the Watch's contacts within the city about the shrimp people. During that trip over, Odette continues mulling over what she's found. In-between humming along with Ichirin's shrimpy song, she recalls what she had heard and tries to rope whoever will listen into helping her figure out what to actually watch out for. "So about these shrimp sailors... I heard there's been a bunch of attacks in this area for a while now by mermaids. Er. Fish people? Fish people, since there's been a bunch of them already, and there's even been druggings and kidnappings like this before with mermaids. Um. Whales, too! A-and I think someone mentioned something about this being how... Nests behaved towards Feathers, too...?" She pauses, then shivers. "I can't see a whale kidnapping being anything other than them just eating everyone at once, though... So this thing with the shrimp people might be the next in line following all of that other stuff." Odette's never seen uncooked shrimp before, though, so she has to do a double take to even notice that the fishing boat even has the missing employees in the first place. "Is that what shrimp look like before eating...?" She asks her companions, glancing from side to side a few times before squinting forward at the sight of something else approaching. Larger somethings, even, and she lets out a distressed noise once she realizes there's two more ships aimed right at their rescue targets' boat. Even worse, Rita's dived into the water! Is she really planning to rescue them alone?! That means it's up to Odette to grab the pirates' attention, then, but how?! "H... Hi! Um. We were looking for these people, too!" She calls out to the pirate(s?) shouting from the two approaching ships, waving her arms high in the air wildly to try drawing their attention away from the fishing boat and wherever Rita's gone off to. "We've got some.. Uh. V-very important unfinished business with these people! So we're just going to take them and get that settled first, okay? Just... D-d-don't mind us, we'll be a minute!" And then she starts beckoning at the fishing boat to come closer, clenching her jaw like she's trying not to let how tense she is show through her face (that looks about as tense as it could ever look).
Angela	While technically not an official mission for Trideag, completing this job as an official Fixer may be acknowledged all the same. After all, the job IS from a Wing of the City even if their reputation has suffered recently--that's not nothing. ''Um. We were looking for these people, too!'' "I only care about Nonon, take the rest for all I care!" Barb shouts back to Odette. "Mm....They're all associated with Shajo. No can do, chica!" Diego shouts. "Are you with them? You'll have to be punished accordingly!" He's pretty casual about saying something like that. The Lake, Minamitsu might realize, is really more like an ocean. Diego is largely ignoring her, but Barb is squinting at her uniform, wondering what kinda kid stole a uniform like that and is doing all the way out here. Other pirates seem concerned about the pink blob but more are shouting about an upcoming ''Wave'' even as Rita dives into the water proper. Several things do indeed happen at once. First, the blue tentacle. It easily rips through the grappling cable and the pirates tumble into the water. Most of them tumble near where Rita is prowling but as the cable violently swings around, one pirate is flung further away from the others by a significant distance. The pirates let out shouts about a whale being present and abandon swords, cutlasses, and muskets to pull on gasharpoons. They launch an initial barrage of harpoon shots down into the water below where they thing they see Rita's shape but a second group is holding their harpoons at the ready--waiting for another tentacle to emerge. The pirates that fall near Rita immediately panic. One shoots a musket down at Rita. Another tries to shoot at Rita with a musket and blasts his own foot off open due to miscalculating where his kicking legs to keep himself aloft are goin to be. A red plume erupts around him in particular. Then, telepathic communication! Nonon responds immediately without reservation: 'Ahhh! We're fine for now! These guys are just some old enemies of ours. The Twinhook Pirates and the Middle.'' Shajo is a little slower, less used to it. 'The Middle's my old gang, yeah, leaving was against the rules. Try to avoid harming 'em or you'll be their enemy for life.' Diego hasn't sent any of his own enemies just yet, his own ship coming to a stop. Harpoons are being readied but they don't attack Rita. They seem to be waiting for something... The waters are insanely difficult for most to swim in, though Rita has no trouble, particularly as the waters spin faster and faster, the sky darkens further, and a whirpool is rapidly forming between the three boats. The lone pirate there starts to freak out even more and-- --Well, Rita probably knows well in advance as to why. As the waters grew heavier and the storm started closing in--out of nowhere and with no warning--a second sea monster has joined her in the waters. She can see them clearly, though for everyone else their first indication that something else is there is the giant bulbous hand of luminescent blue and black ichor that rips out of the water and snatches the fallen pirate before pulling him back down, Harpoons from the Middle nailing it in three different places before it dips into the water. There's less one singular mental voice from the whale so much as a swarm forming a singular overmind. Rita can clearly see that the hand is not so much as a hand either, so much as numerous monstrous krill, some with two arms, some with several, pushing out of the 'hand' in numerous locations and there's countless numbers of them. Some of the fish-eyes look at Rita down there in the water. Lonely? Lonely? Lonely? Lonely?
Rita Ma	Blood in the water. Rita 'breathes' it in, and her eyes defocus with the ice-cold prickling of her bottomless hunger. A small lucid part of her wracks her brains for reasons not to eat the bleeding pirate. I didn't set out to kill them- but they're trying to hurt Nonon and Shajo. It might give me a bad reputation- but I'm deep enough nobody has to see. I could-- Just then a harpoon pierces the water to hit one of her tentacles. Jolted in pain, her body moves on its own-- 'Try to avoid harming 'em or you'll be their enemy for life.' Rita freezes guiltily in the middle of picking her teeth with a rib. "Oh. You could've started with that, Mr. Shajo." In for a penny, in for a pound. Depth is a defense against any projectile; Rita darts deeper than the bubble-streaks of the piercing harpoons can reach, then angles under the Middle's ship where the deckhands can't fire. Boats are helpless underneath. If she can just cut them open-- Lonely? Lonely? Lonely? Lonely? Oh. Rita isn't breathing down here, but something hitches in her chest anyway. Looking down at the Whale's vast amalgamated shape puts a cold feeling in her. It's too strange to place. It's too familiar for comfort. Mr. Olivier thought I was like this? One long tentacle of hers reaches down, gently pulls an embedded harpoon from the Whale's hand, and lifts it back up to her face. Rita deliberately licks the monstrous blood off it, biological connection established with a taste. Time to see how easily it'll recognize a crown. "Obey me," she 'says', whispering to nerves in the deep language of hunger and instinct. Whatever kind of hierarchy the whale recognizes, Rita tries to force herself into its pinnacle. "Attack the big pirate ships. Leave the boats alone."
UFO Gang	"Well, I don't know about eating," Ichirin answers Odette, "but I do think that shrimp change quite a bit when you cook them... I shrimply didn't want to focus on that when I remembered the song." Her voice gets quieter. "There were a few other verses that are kind of... culinary." A pause. "Simply," Ichirin corrects herself. BUT THEN: A BLUE TENTACLE! Ichirin seems to spot this and hops in the air, flying forwards over the water. Minamitsu watches her go for a while, and then looks down at the waters themselves. A storm is rolling - abruptly - sliding into the water. When the deck pitches, Minamitsu finds herself toppling to the side and hits the ground with a splash! Floating upside down, drifting slightly downwards with her anchor ornament proving to be something of an anchor, she turns around... and sees Rita and the Whale. Her mouth hangs open for a moment. AS FOR ICHIRIN, she floats over. Bobbling in the winds, yes, and with a lot of improbable near-topples, but Unzan huddles up and they seem to be supporting each other! As she reaches a place more or less above Nonon and Shajo's boat, she puts her hands on her hips. "I think all of you should take a deep breath and consider a nonviolent sol" a nearby roll of thunder and howling wind drowns out the rest of what Ichirin was trying to say. She's going on, though! She's even clasping her hands together! Does she even know it can't be heard? (For the benefit of those who could read lips or hear /real/ good: 'solution to our difficulties? These two are lost wayfarers, and meant no harm! This is simply a chance meeting. It took a small ACCIDENT to make it happen. An accident!')
Odette Raskins	"I only care about Nonon, take the rest for all I care!" "They're all associated with Shajo. No can do, chica!" Which one is who again? Face-blindness has always been a bit of a curse for Odette without more time to get used to them. When they're named by the pirate leaders, she's instinctively looking at the clerk and Haschen instead of anyone actually being named. "S.. Sorry! I can't do that, because I've got...." She can't just use the same line again. Even apologizing is making her seem less tough and intimidating! Quick, she needs to come up with something to get her sea credibility back, and to make sure that neither Barb nor Diego realize that one of her newest friends is in the ocean right this moment! "Are you with them? You'll have to be punished accordingly!" "Punished?! B.. but we didn't do anything!" She cries out in protest, visibly losing her nerve even as she holds her arms out a little more to her sides and widens her stance to look slightly larger and operate on bear-intimidation logic. "What kind of messed up logic is that? I-I mean, you know Shajo, so you should be.. Uh. Punishing yourself, too!" Luckily for Odette, many things happen at once! Unluckily for Odette, they're shooting into the water and throwing stuff into it, and that's where she saw Rita going. She knows (thinks) she only has a moment to act before her new friends gets torn to shreds (inconvenienced), but it might already be too late when she sees blood rising from the water (from the guy that shot himself). In a visible panic now, Odette's immediate reaction is to whip an empty glass jar straight from her bag towards Barb's face, actually managing quite the accurate throw even from that distance (if she's close enough for it to not just land in the water). "H-h-hey! Landlubbers! You're.... Your moms suck! Wh-why don't you..." Already realizing she might be in over her head, Odette's inwardly cursing at herself right about when she sees that there's more strange things happening in and around the water. The whirlpool is a terrifying sign already, and the appearance of both the tentacle and the giant hand have her screaming unintelligibly while falling back from the shock of seeing unknown somethings nearby. Even worse, she finally realizes that Minamitsu and several other pirates have fallen into the water, and she quickly scrambles around the deck of the ship ferrying everyone here to look for life-preservers and other things she can throw out towards them. "Q.. Quick, grab on!"
Dysnomia	Dysnomia doesn't ride with the rest of them. The reason will be...at least to Rita...kind of obvious. She's still bleeding. Following around with the boat, Dysnomia takes to the sky, a serpentine shape overhead, its size hard to gauge. Was she close, and small? Or far away...? The mystique vanishes, when they finally engage. Dysnomia falls toward the ships in a dive, pulling UP before she hits the water, swirling about overhead. A mist falls upon Diego's crew, and they find their harpoons struggling to hold their harpoons straight. One of them feels a cord of mist clasp hold of their boot, dragging them toward the boat's edge, and the water, teeming with beasts. A waiting threat, lurking in the fog. Even airborn, Rita can surely taste it; a flavor something between the mother whale in Dysnomia's world and the intoxicating flavor of humanity. Dysnomia's thoughts slipped into Rita's little rescue conference call, still a little strained. "I'll worry about Diego's ship." She says, mostly to Rita, but also to keep the rescuees informed. "What do you need to get off that one?"
Angela	''Oh. You could've started with that, Mr. Shajo'' She gets an embarrassed reply: 'Oh the pirates are probably fine--and so long as the Middle don't recognize it's you... Just don't want you getting dragged into our trouble. Sorry, I'm a little frazzled.' He lifts Haschen up and kicks the clerk until he stops eating ramen and pulls him up along as well. The shrimpmen run around the ship with their hands over their head. "Wait!" Nonon shouts. "We should take the net with us so Rita doesn't go hungry!" "Uh that's probably alright but--yeah it'd be nice." Shajo says, looking at the growing pool of blood in the water. ''What do you need to get off that ship?'' "Oh! Yeah, that's perfeect!" Nonon says, offering Dysnomia a full net of various local sealife. "Can you bring this over to the other ship?" Water is sloshing heavily onto the small fishing boat and it's likely to be pulled under the waves at this rate. Diego keeps an ear open and cups his ear as Ichirin starts speaking. "A non-violent...sun?" Diego asks. "No there's more she's saying..." He squints. "No clue! TRY YELLING LOUDER! Ugh. But this is getting out of hand quickly..." ''So you should be. Uh. Punishing yourself, too!'' Diego considers this logic, reaches towards his pinky, and wrenches it until there's an unpleasant sounding snap. "Your turn!" Several cables now are being launched out towards the rented vessel even as Mia YEETS another Middle Member into the water to...well, it's a bad place to be. ''Odette throws a jar at Barb??'' The jar shatters against the side of Barb's face who jerks her head to glare at Rita. "You threw a jar at me?? Then, louder? "YOU THREW A JAR AT ME?!" Bleeding from her face she takes aim with her pistol and just shoots right for Odette's center mass. "Shit! We gotta get to your ship and get outta here! Even if the Whale doesn't get us, that whirpool might!" Nonon shouts. ''Time to see how easily it recognizes a crown'' ''Attack the big pirate ships. Leave the boats alone.'' The Whale's eyes flick towards Minamitsu and they look about ready to reach for her when Rita gets a taste of its blood (it's black as ink) . It stops. The hand turns to look at Rita again. It suddenly rears a fist towards the MIddle's ship, slamming its 'body' into the hull, puncturing it middlingly as it starts to take on water. It's not sinking yet but that's a pretty sizeable hit. Diego swears and orders the ship to start turning itself around. The whale looks back to Rita. Join us now? Join us? One Is All All Is One. Lonely Lonely Lonely... One of the krill creatures reaches out with a claw towards Rita's cheek, still embedded in the rest of the creature's body. The Whale will do what Rita wants, but it's still lonely. Its desire remains even as it obeys. One of the mermaids that got dislodged surfaces on its own, catching Rita's sunhat with its head as it wades there, skreeeing threateningly at everything. Never be lonely again. Again. Again.
Rita Ma	The Whale's eyes flick towards Minamitsu And a tentacle reaches through the blood-murky water to wrap around Minamitsu's waist. It's clammy-translucent, unsettlingly strong but sluglike-boneless, everything you wouldn't want to graze your ankle in a lake. It's-- --lifting her up towards the surface, still near the pirate ship. "Be careful," Rita's voice says in her head. "That thing still isn't safe." A moment later, with her eyes upturned towards the surface: "Please get all the employees off the fishing boat, Ms. Mia. The boat we came on is fine. I'll be busy with... something else." Relief undergirds the nerve-prickling telepathy, but there's anxiety there, too. Sometimes understanding something better makes it less scary. Sometimes it doesn't. Rita almost, sort of, halfway gets it, especially with Mia's blood spicing the air and perfuming the water: a loneliness like hunger; a hunger like loneliness; never being sated because togetherness becomes one becomes alone. So this is why Nonon hates them. Her blood still runs cold while she leans away from the reaching claw. "But I'm not lonely," she thinks at the whale, bleeding through to Nonon and Shajo and Mia, and she's surprised to realize she isn't lying. "If you want to not be lonely, we have to stay two." Her hopes for it grasping that concept are dim. But she pokes it with her sandal to make certain it won't corrode inorganic matter or anything, and then stands atop its back when she feels a little more confident. "Surface," she orders. That should make a nice display to scare off the pirate ship too.
Dysnomia	The cords latch hold of the small little fishing boat. It's caught--It's all over for them now, surely. But then, with their foes in their grasp, why did it feel like doom draws nigh? Much of the swirling mist congealed into a shape that defied definition, except for the burning eyes. Its face shifted, and...Opened, into a wide maw, as a light shone from behind it, outlining razors shaped teeth?, but if they imagined those the greatest hazard, they were quickly disabused. A jagged line of plasma arced from the maw, burning through each of the ropes they'd tried to anchor to the boat, too cleanly, too well-timed to be anything but deliberate, measured intent. Where plasma touched the water of the lake, it sparked, boiled, superheated too fast for the lake itself to dissipate it. Those eyes in the fog locked on Diego now, and there was a bone-deep warning growl, sounding from...Everywhere. The message was plain. "Can you bring this over to the other ship?" She hadn't the time or the inclination to argue with Nonon, now, but she could make a condition of her own. "Then whoever can, keep hold of the net. Like your life depends on it." The mist twisted and twined into the shape of a great claw? seizing hold of the net full of fish like a child might take hold of a bean bag. It wasn't a easy gentle ride; she simply yanked the net from the shrimp vessel in a sudden burst of motion, only to briefly stop over their own vessel--and then dropped it, from about five feet up. "Please get all the employees off the fishing boat, Ms. Mia. "Copy that, Rita. I'll do what I can." The employees of the shrimp hear, in a rougher voice, as more claws manifest out of the mist. "Don't struggle, if you want to live." Maybe they picked up on her intent from watching her seize the net, but she doesn't wait for their consent. She seizes them wherever she can find them, chasing them down, or ambushing them with more hands where they run, if she has to. She has faith a lot of faith in her grip. But, stuck on rescue duty like this, she can't help but be distracted.
Odette Raskins	"Your turn!" Odette recoils in horror as Diego just breaks his finger like it's routine, arms tensing up in front of her while her entire upper body scrunches up and she steps around rapidly just to try and get that sudden tension out of her body. "What in the.. Gah. Wha. Wh-why'd you...? I-I didn't mean like that! It was a... Riddle...? No. Figurative! J... Just stay right there! I'll get-ugh. Oh geez." Good thing she's still got her bag, or otherwise she wouldn't have anything to help treat that break. She just needs to get over there first, but then there's still Rita and Minamitsu in the water, all those pirates, the whirlpool... "YOU THREW A JAR AT ME?!" Still sucking in air through her teeth as she paces around trying to shake horrible noise out of her head, Odette shudders one more time as she forces herself not to look at Diego's hand by looking over at Barb instead. "O-of course I did! Your guys are shooting at my friends!" Alas, that proves to be a rather bad idea as well when she looks over just in time to see the pistol aimed straight at her. Odette gets that deer in the headlights look as she just barely registers that there's a gun pointed somewhere near her, and certainly not enough time to get down before Barb fires. She does flinch, at least, bringing her arms up defensively in front of herself and jerking away like that might actually be enough to protect herself. It isn't really that useful at all, of course, but she doesn't notice right away until she notices a somewhat familiar feeling in her side. It's warm, it's wet, and there's an burning sensation that forces her to look down at her side where there's a suddenly bloody spot that wasn't there before. "D... Did you just..?" Odette mumbles out before staggering away from the side of the ship facing Barb, one hand pressing against the wound while the other fumbles around clumsily with her bag. She gets as far as digging a bag of damp gauze out of her bag before slumping against the edge of the ship on her non-shot side with an agonized hissing noise. "Wh-what kind of.. Crazy person shoots someone for a jar?!" Howling in pain briefly, Odette promptly dumps its content right onto her wound, leaning sideways over the edge to make it a little easier to plug up the wound. She's still bleeding around it, but at least she's not leaking even more into the ocean than she already did leaning that way. Silver lining: It does give her a chance to see Minamitsu surfacing thanks to one of those tentacles from earlier. She hasn't made the connection to Rita just yet, but it's still enough for her to recognize Rita's tentacles as a friendly something or another. Better yet, Dysnomia's here to retrieve the shrimp employees, and even the fact that she's getting truly hands on with them doesn't bother Odette too much. "Th.. Thanks, both of you! Ugh... D-don't worry about roughing them up too much. I've got-ow. I can fix them up! Come on, Miss Minamitsu, you too!"
UFO Gang	Minamitsu turns her head to regard Rita and the Whale. Her hair drifts in the tempestuous currents. She looks, and she seems, if anything, calmer here than she does on the surface. She blinks once. But then eyes look towards her and a tentacle grasps at her, which she doesn't resist. The tentacle probably feels like it's moving a corpse... because it is!! Minamitsu hooks an arm through the lifesaver as she topples onto the fishing boat deck, adjusts her hat, and hops back up. "Thanks!" she says, handing the lifesaver back to Odette: "I guess I should'a told you. I already drowned, so don't worry about me if I fall in sometimes. I kind of rolled with it, since I could tell stuff was happening. But I think Miss Ma is talking with the big thingy." "I never saw one QUITE that big," Minamitsu muses, before looking over towards... ICHIRIN. Ichirin can tell the situation is degenerating quickly. Nobody seems to have shot at her with either a gun bullet or a danmaku bullet; she puts her hands on her hips and puffs out her cheeks in passing frustration, before muttering some kind of Buddhist prayer to herself. Then -- she flits down! The pink cloud follows her, clearly under its own power, and turns to address Nonon and Shajo. "Alright," she begins, before SUDDENLY: HUGE FRIENDLY CLAWS. Ichirin beams. "That's way better than what I'd hoped to do. Yeah!" She claps her hands twice, and starts floating in the air. "I'll cover you in case they try anything!" 'Cover you' in this case seems to involve flying off at a modest angle and slightly higher altitude... But Unzan turns his dread gaze towards the enemy ships. In the storm, pink mist curls into vast fists. He rumbles, like thunder. (Even if he'd probably just try to swat away incoming harpoons. He might not be fast enough to do anything about gunshot, though.)
Angela	''Odette complains about being shot'' "I'M ALREADY DOWN ONE EYE! YOU THREW A JAR AT MY FACE!" Barb yells back. Mia has a plan and that plan is to use one of the shrimpmen's fishing nets to..yep! Catch everybody on the ship in one very large net filled with seacritters and now human-critters. She swoops that very same net over to the rented boat--which is in considerably better condition, dumping everybody and a whoooole lot of fish onto the deck. The ship is so far able to resist the whirlpool but it isn't going to be able to for much longer. It's getting worse, far worse than whirlpools would normally get. As the Middle Ship pulls away, it is clearly intent on using those cables to pull the vessel into the whirlpol (the fishing boat is pulled underneath the waves moments later). But then Dysnomia is able to cut the cables in a smooth motion and the boat snaps free, the sudden slack resulting in a push away from the whirlpool. It's still going to need to start gunning it in a moment--it's stronger than a silly little dinky fishing boat but it's decidedly smaller than the pirate ship and the Middle's own vessel. Dysnomia roars at Diego, which gets him to frown--the Brothers and Sisters of the Middle aren't cowards, but the growling effect has an unsettling effect on the rest of his men and there's murmurings about whether keeping it going is really viable. Nothing matters more to these people than the Book of Vengeance but... Odette gets a chance to check the injuries of everyone on board. It's mostly a bit of bumps and bruises from the fall, some ice packs and bandaids oughta be enough. Unzan seems intent on matching the local storm with his own...powerful... cloudness!! Nobody on the other ships know what to make of Unzan and he's starting to unnerve the pirates. A pirate jogs up to Barb and says to her, "Don't think we can handle this strong too much longer, Captain..." "No..." Barb says. "I won't let Nonon be swiped out from my grasp agai--" Moments earlier, Rita communes with the Whale of the Porous Hand. That seems to be the hive mind's name. And she has now a rather keen understanding of the Whale. ''Togetherness becomes one becomes alone.'' And yet... ''But I'm not lonely.'' Nonon clasps her mouth with both hands and cries joyously. "She's so sweet...and cute...and wonderful and..." "Ahah...yeah she's great..." Shajo says. Their words are, roughly, what they are also thinking.
Angela	The Whale quietly takes this in. A finger reaches out and collects the fallen krill-man with Rita's hat-on and sticks it into one of the open holes along its middle knuckle. Its shrieking quiets down into a faint whimper. ''If you want to not be lonely, we have to stay two.'' ..................... Show...us. Rita's foot sinks into th creature a little bit--but it does not try to absorb Rita. Perhaps it interpreted 'we have to stay two' as a command. The monster seems confused by the concept. But it also seems to understand as the former humans who make up the creature dimly recall shattered human memories... They let out a warbling wail as one as the Hand surfaces once more, growing and lengthening as it towers far above the rented vessel you brought along--and even above the two ships that were hunting Nonon and Shajo! The wail grows louder now that there's air. The Middle and the Twinhooks don't take it as a cry so much as a roar and that's enough. Diego stares at Rita, crossing his arms. "...Star of the City... That was no joke... It was no Calamity but..." He spins on his heel. "About face, Brothers! Sisters! We're leaving! We'll have to clear our Book of Vengeance another day!" Some harpoons are still flung at the Whale as the ship flees but Unzan's able to readily knock them out of the air. Naturally, the TwinHook pirates follow in quick pursuit. "...I'm gonna smell like fish forever..." Haschen whines. Nonon punches her in the ribs lightly. "Hey. Not cool." Haschen looks to Rita and she blushes fiercely as she says, "I'm gonna smell like fish forever...!" Like she's excited about it. Shajo sighs. "Thanks everybody. I'll make some sashimi."
Dysnomia	"About face, Brothers! Sisters! We're leaving!" There's another low sound, like and unlike the roar, lower pitched. And it carries with it into Diego's crew an intrusive thought, in a voice so unlike that of otheir own. "Wise." Let them think she was just another facet of their City's new star, if they really wanted, if it got them out of there. Mist coiled and buoyed around their rented ship as it pitched and roiled in the great lake. It was as if great hands? had seized hold of it, steadying it against the violent pressure of the waves, like a child grabbing hold of a paper boat to keep it from capsizing in the ripples. "She's so sweet...and cute...and wonderful and..." "She's something, alright." She allows fontness to bleed through in the telepathetic transmission, and then; "Rita. If you need support, I'm here." She took herself down low, in a sweep, just above the water...in easy reach. A deliberate exercise of trust. A reminder that Rita was, indeed, not like this whale. That she was not, even here, alone.
Rita Ma	"Show you?" Rita stifles a little surprise as she looks down into one of the Whale's many eyes. She hadn't really expected it to want to learn. "Um... I can try?" But then she's breaching the surface atop its back. The seafoam hides her brief undignified wobble from squelchy footing and a sudden lurch. All the Middle and Twinhooks see is Rita impassively glaring down from atop the monster, with her polite hands-clasped-behind-back demeanor and a dozen tentacles swaying slowly in the breeze. Though she looks only at Diego, that clammy, spinal-cord-tingling telepathy reaches out and grazes the crews of both ships. Without any attempt to soften it for comfort, it feels like a near miss whistling past the ear; chocolate for dogs and onion for cats, something that could core you out if only you were a little different. "Hello. Ms. Nonon and Mr. Shajo are personal friends of the Trideag Association. I'd appreciate it if you were kind to them, okay?" Too much blood in the air, but she isn't talking with her mouth; they don't need to hear her swallow drool. "In return, I'll let you sail back home. I hear you have good memories." When both ships have turned around, Rita sighs in deep relief and exhaustion, slides down the Whale's back as if it were a skate ramp, and lands on the rescue boat... face-down. Her tentacles splay out limply around her. One reaches for a food source, finds Odette's ankle, and then changes direction to snag a raw shrimp from the net instead. Crunch, munch. "Ms. Nonon... Mr. Shajo... that was really scary," Rita burbles out loud with her face smooshed limply against the deck. "Please don't get in trouble like that again, okay?" For Mia: "Thank you. But you've been doing a lot for me already, haven't you?" And for the Whale, in the tone of a tired feeble smile: "See? Just like that. I'm careful with them, and they're nice to me. ... I'm sure you can be careful too. Push the boat away from the whirlpool to start, okay?"
Odette Raskins	"I'M ALREADY DOWN ONE EYE! YOU THREW A JAR AT MY FACE!" "W-well! I'm sorry, okay?! I-I just saw your guys shooting my friend, and I.. I panicked, okay?!" Odette blurts out angrily at Barb, although it's not clear who she's even angry at. She might just be frustrated instead, and that... That's probably directed at both Barb (for the actions of her pirates) and herself (for the panicking). She breaks eye contact eventually, turning her attention instead towards everything else going on. There's bruises to cover up, breaks to splint, instant-ice packs to distribute, and even more (un?)lucky souls to pull on board to safety. She's still favoring her own companions, of course, but pulling any lingering pirates onto the ship just ends up happening naturally even though she has to pause every now and then to jab herself with a syringe full of painkillers to keep working. "I already drowned, so don't worry about me if I fall in sometimes." "Wha... O-oh. I'm sorry to hear that. Did you develop an immunity somehow?" Odette asks Minamitsu in utter bewilderment after helping her back onto the ship, hissing again in pain and pausing again to catch her breath. Even if the bleeding has mostly stopped, the pain certainly hasn't faded just yet! "Or did you go through some kind of special training to... Er. Not drown ever again?" "But I think Miss Ma is talking with the big thingy." Odette's gaze goes over to the water again, and she opens her mouth slowly while trying to form a coherent thought about what she's seeing. The only thing that comes out is a scream, of course, when the Hand surfaces so much higher than the rented ship that the fear of getting crushed comes right back to her from sight alone. The wailing noise doesn't help one bit, and the terror hitting her at that moment keeps Odette from immediately noticing that the Middle and the Twinhooks are on their way out. It's only when she sees Rita's familiar silhouette up there, though, that she stops herself from looking like she's about to start crying. "Mis... Rita? Did you do this?" She asks, barely louder than a whisper as she holds a hand up towards Rita and the Whale. She's not sure how exactly she's tamed that giant, but just seeing that is enough to push the terror out of the EMT's mind. Instead, she's filled with a sense of relief, then more panic when she sees Rita sliding down the Whale's back. She's going kind of fast, isn't she? No time to think, just soften the fall. Odette forgets that she's just been shot a minute or two ago, though, and moving into position to try and soften Rita's impact with her own body means reopening that wound and sucking in air painful to try and not scream again. She jsut masks it a little between biting down on her lip and pulling her helmet's faceplate down for a good ten seconds first. "Hghhrnhh... Y-you okay, Rita? I got... M-more meds if you need them. And can you help me with the.. Shot? I-is it still bleeding?" She really doesn't want to look down, neither at her gunshot wound nor at the octopus or whatever she's feeling on her leg.
UFO Gang	"Hey, take it easy!" Minamitsu protests to Odette. "I -" Minamitsu pauses, and blinks once, and then makes an extremely rough finger-gun towards Odette. (Minamitsu has only seen guns about five times.) "Sppecial training. Exactly!" she says. (Upaya, Minamitsu tells herself. Upaya!!) Unzan glowers at the pirates, even as Ichirin keeps on flying -- turning her head periodically. An occasional huge cloud palm swats, accompanied by very small (relatively speaking) "yeah!" or "nice one!" from Ichirin. And as they descend, Ichirin says with a sunny tone, "And in the end, nobody got..." Ichirin lands. Minamitsu coughs, with a :/ sort of expression. Ichirin doesn't finish her sentence. There is awkward silence. "Sashimi!" Ichirin says, with a punch of the air. "Yeah!!" agrees Minamitsu!! (Minamitsu will doubtless try to talk to Rita later, but she could tell there was vast, subterranean -- subaquatic? -- communication happening, even if she could not, for the life of her, tell what it was.)
Angela	Diego scowls but he's rightfully convinced this battle is tougher than one he can win at least. Battling this one on the sea is a fools' errand. Barb meanwhile is now no longer concerned with hunting Nonon down for the time being, she's now determined to track Odette down and really tell her what for and drag her to her ship and something something she'll figure it out later and-- THEN she'll hunt Nonon down. Yes. This is the plan. ''Ms. Nonon... Mr. Shajo... That was really scary.'' "Aww Rita... we'll do our bet. IT was kind of a big accident..." She casts a glare towards the clerk who has fallen with a squid sitting on his head. "It was so sweet of you to come for us... But it was nice getting to visit the Lake again! GA hA HA!" Nonon moves to help Rita up to her feet, spin around in a circle and concurrent hug before setting her back down again. "Don't eat it all now, Shajo's gonna make some sashimi! Chewie said you liked sashimi!" ''See? Just like that. I'm careful with them, and they're nice to me...'' We remember.... It sounds sad. Standing with one another... Falling together... We remember... We...remember... The giant hand sinks back down underneath the water and for a moment it looks like it's just leaving the area as well, or at least just leaving the ship alone. And then... The hand pushe forward--a little roughly, but certainly gentler than the other ship. It presses and presses against the hull until it's got enough distance from the whirlpool to put put put back the way it came. "Oh damn...if we can get to the next section, we can probably get away from the Waves... Thanks... uh..." She realizes she's about to thank the whale and realizes she's maybe changed a lot from who she used to be. "...We've had a pretty weird life huh, Shajo?" "That's what makes it worth living, Nonon." Shajo grins. "I mean, that and your morning greetings." He winks to her throwing a wave back to the Porous Hand. It lingers as it watches the little rented vessel pull away. ''Sashimi!'' "Sashimi!" Haschen shouts excitedly. "Sashimi!" Nonon agrees. And then Shajo follows. The clerk continues to have an octopus on his head but all in all it's a safe trip back.
Rita Ma	Rita's face smushes right up next to Odette's blossoming gunshot wound. She stares at it for a moment with comically dead-flat eyes. She does not inhale the scent. "noou," Rita says pathetically, from the very dregs of her lungs. Her eyes scrunch very tightly shut. "you just spilled ketchup on yourself, Miss Odette." That's what it is. That's all it is. Don't think about it.... Eyes still scrunched and cheeks puffed with the effort of holding her breath, Rita lays a hand on Odette's chest and pulses a little bit of glowy stolen life-force into her, dulling the pain and closing the wound. Thankfully, Nonon is there to rescue Rita from that hell. She clings to her like a life-raft. "Sashimi..." she murmurs, like she's in a desert and has just seen an oasis. "And thank you, Whale. See? These people all like you, now. Does that feel a little better?"