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A pained keening echoed in the cavern, quite ruining the triumphant mood of the pair returning from a successful shake-up and snitch session. Scurry's antennae perked, first with interest and then fear as she recognized the source of the sound. "Hustle! Somethin ain’t right, and it sounds like it's comin' from my stash," she commanded, and the big breaker bot lurched forward with fresh haste.
As they approached, Scurry noticed signs of fighting: pins, a couple cracked bone shields, shattered rocks, a crushed body, a couple weird spears with hollow points, splatters of hemolymph, and – her claws twitched at the sight – scattered rosaries. But she also noticed a length of Ensconce draped unmoving across the scene, including another body, and leading into one of their tunnels. Spying some concerningly colored puncture wounds in a couple of their segments, she leapt off Big Crunch's shoulder, ran over, and, poised to beat a quick retreat, poked Lengthy's side.
There was no response.
She poked again, then pressed, then kicked sharply at the join between two segments. No quick flinch away, no abrupt rush of mass toward the assault, not even a twitch of reaction.
Her shell felt cold with dread and then alight with fury. What good is keeping a great wormy beast to protect her stash if they're going to flop over and die when someone tries to intrude!
The keening noise came again, weaker this time, drifting out from the tunnel.
Well, alright, so they're not dead yet. But they'd better die soon, or they're going to wish they were for the tirade she'll hurl at them for slacking off while she was away!
It was a bit of a gamble, but she figured she knew which hidden chamber things were going down in, whatever those things were. Those things had better not include stealing her stuff! She pointed. "Big Crunch, go around that way and start digging into the crack Lenghty was griping about a while ago. Do it quiet-like, but don't take more'n three minutes."
As the breaker bot clomped away to obey, Scurry hurried into the tunnel. She clambered around, beside, and over the inert body in the cramped space, and even though she had determined they weren't responding, she felt a thrill of alarm at her action. Any other time, this would’ve been a death sentence with Lengthy sensing an unwelcome touch and instinctively twitching their body against the intruder, pinning and suffocating the idiot bug if not crushing it outright. She knew this response happened even if Lengthy was asleep.
And because this wasn't happening, things must be pretty dire. If you're dead, I'm going to kill you, she thought irritably as she struggled to squeeze past a kink in her friend's body.
While making her way along the tunnel, she began to notice small, disc-shaped bugs with thin limbs, many clinging with pincers to the softer joins between Lengthy’s segments. She swiped her snitch pick, dislodging those in easy reach, but she left many in place, not wanting to slow down too much. She needed to get the lay of things before Big Crunch made its entrance.
Her sneaky, squirmy, stealthy skills did not fail her, and as she moved soundlessly towards the lighter opening of the tunnel ahead, the voices of the intruders, clueless to eavesdroppers and to their approaching demise, came to her.
"-ould've at least tried to stab that a little higher up," one voice grunted, straining with the effort of their current task.
"I'll let you wield the massive needle next time, aye?" spat back another, also laboring.
"Fat lot of good that'll-- WHOOP!" exclaimed the first voice simultaneously with the sound of an impact and followed by a second impact of a body thudding onto the floor.
Someone laughed, a reedy sound that might have been from a third bug.
After more scuffling, the second voice triumphantly shouted, "Gotcha!" and then commanded, "C'mon, you fuckers, grab 'em." Sounding muffled, Ensconce whimpered.
Scurry frowned in concentration, thinking as she continued to creep closer. This tunnel, she knew, opened about halfway up the wall of the chamber ahead. It would be a good vantage point for directing Big Crunch once it broke in. So far, it sounded like there were just these two – maybe three? – bugs, but that shouldn't be right. Lengthy could take care of a few bugs, especially if they were encroaching on the stash. There were also the little pinchy bugs, but what effects could they have when up against Lengthy’s mass? She thought these had to be beast hunters. They were prepared for this encounter, so the little bugs factored into their plan to take Lengthy down...
The sound of ripping fabric brought Scurry out of her thoughts. Staying within the shadows of the tunnel, she scrutinized the scene below. Two beetles – one a bit taller and bulkier than the other but both rather spiky, strong, and rough looking– leaned over Lengthy’s head while the long bug lay limply on the ground. A large, spear-like needle stuck out of Lengthy’s side a segment behind their second pair of arms, and there were more of those strange, disc-like bugs clinging to Lengthy’s slack arms and body or crawling on the ground around them.
“Eugh, what’s wrong with its face!” the somewhat shorter beetle jeered and tossed Ensconce’s wrappings aside, and the attached decorations jangled sadly against a pile of metal shards.
“Ain’t got one, seemingly,” answered the third bug, though Scurry couldn’t determine where they were.
The burlier of the beetles, owner of the second voice, barked a laughed. “Ohhhh~ Once we process this beast, we’ll feast for ages and still have more’n enough meat to sell. Whatcha ya think about that, beastie?” she sneered and kicked Ensconce who made a pitiful attempt at a growl, eliciting more laughter.
Grimacing, Scurry drummed the tips of her claws on the part of Lengthy in the tunnel with her. These bugs seemed less interested in her goods than expected. Really, what good was a hoard if bugs weren’t going to covet its contents? Silly question. The hoard was handy for much more than that. The jealousy of other bugs was just a fun bonus. But she wanted her hoard to be protected, and these bugs were threatening to take that protection away.
The beetles below continued to taunt Ensconce as they pushed and dragged the beast into a straighter line. They began to discuss if they should kill it now or try to keep it alive to better preserve the meat, but just then, Scurry, antennae suddenly erect, looked to a wall partially obscured by a tattered fabric artfully draped over the rough stone. The muffled but approaching sounds of grinding rock came to her, and she knew the other bugs would hear it soon, too.
Using Lengthy’s body for cover, she stealthed over the lip of the tunnel’s mouth and started to climb down. Her maneuver became significantly less stealthy when she felt several simultaneous pinches in her legs and one of her arms. She hissed with surprise and pain and tumbled the rest of the way to the ground. Numbness seeped into her limbs from the disc-bugs’ tiny pincers even as she swiped them away with her snitch pick.
The beetles, alerted to Scurry’s presence, looked up and exclaimed, and the third bug, shape mostly obscured by fabrics, leapt out of nearby shadows. Some of the small pincer bugs scuttled out of layers and folds as the bug with the reedy voice purred, “Well, well, well, if it isn’t-”
“BIG CRUNCH! GET IN HERE!” Scurry shouted loud as she could.
The room fell silent for a beat.
The cowled bug froze. The beetles looked at each other then took a step towards Scurry, who had time to wonder if Big Crunch had heard her.
Then with a thunderous crash and a whistling roar, the wall burst open, and the bot charged in.
Steam and dust swirling and the tattered fabric drape caghting on one shoulder like a cape, Big Crunch made for a heroic and terrifying sight.
Quickest on the uptake and moving nimbly despite their wrappings, the shrouded bug sent their swarm of disc bugs to climb between the joints and immobilize the bot so the others could take it down. Unfortunately, any little bugs that managed to climb onto him rapidly fell off with smoking feet and seared bellies.
The beetles worked together, demonstrating training for and experience of taking down formidable foes. They managed to survive longer than many, but without any backup or greater weapons, they still fell, becoming twin smears of hemolymph on the cavern floor.
Seeing the tide turn, the cowled bug twisted around and started to sprint for one of the tunnels. With her least-numb arm, Scurry performed an expert throw of the snitch pick, snagging fabric and pulling the bug off-balance long enough for Big Crunch to stomp over and slam a claw-pick down onto them. Instead of hemolymph oozing out, countless more of the disc bugs burst from the clothes, scattering in every direction until they disappeared into tunnels and cracks.
Scurry shuddered at the sight but managed to shout, “Yeah, you’d better leave ‘fore you all get stomped!” Then she huffed and rubbed at her legs. “Hey, Big Crunch, c’mere. My legs are numb from those stupid pinchy things.”
Big Crunch, steam still streaming from its horns, took care to step on any little bugs left between him and Scurry. It held out the less messy of its claw-picks to help support Scurry as she wobbled her way to Ensconce. “Hey, Lengthy! You still with us?”
---
Through a haze of venom and pain and helplessness, Ensconce recalled the past couple of hours in fragments. An intruder, a heated talk, feelings of crawling on their shell, many many many tiny pokes, a strange numbness, more bugs, a frantic fight, poisoned spears and great pain, retreating, hard to move, hard to think…
Then somehow, the bugs had been inside the tunnels with them! There had been more pricking and spearing and pain.
Somewhere outside, they had felt another poke, a different poke, a… familiar poke? But they couldn’t move their body to investigate, and when they had tried to call for help, they couldn’t make their body form the words, so what came out was an awful keening sound. They might have felt embarrassed by it if the situation hadn’t been so dire.
Ensconce had numbly felt as Scurrie made her way through the tunnel, and they had thought distantly that she was lucky they were unable to move. They had struggled again, wresting one last attempt to do harm from their leading few segments, the only ones they could somewhat feel and partially control. Despite managing to knock one of the beetles aside, they hadn’t accomplished anything, and after the larger beetle and the pinchy bugs got to them, they were fully immobilized.
Blearily, they had watched fragments of the fight. Rocks flying. Bugs running. Their stash scattering. They hadn’t been able to see Scurrie, but they had heard her giving some orders, and they had felt the breakie-bot whistling and stomping and smashing as it obeyed.
And now they lay here wondering what would happen next. They couldn’t move, and they couldn’t see anyone from their position, even with as wide a view as they had right now. Then they remembered that they weren’t covered! They tried to say something but only managed to rasp and growl in panic.
“Sheesh, calm down. You’re safe now,” they heard Scurrie say from somewhere behind them, but they couldn’t agree. They tried frantically to bring their arms up or to coil around their face or to reach for one of the beetles’ cloaks, filthy though it was. Though none of these actions amounted to anything, they did manage a few erratic muscle twitches.
“Hoy, Big Crunch, take that cape off and toss it over ‘em.”
Ensconce felt the heavy fabric drop onto them as a distant sensation, and in the subsequent darkness, they calmed. Their attention drifted a bit, words said but drifting past them without registering, but they snapped back to focus when the fabric lifted, just enough for them to see Scurrie’s face.
“Hey, you’ve got a spear still stuck in ya. I’m gonna have Big Crunch yank it out.”
Their eyes widened in alarm.
“Oh, calm down!” she huffed with exasperation. “I’m gonna make sure ya don’t bleed out after. Best we do it before you get anymore movement back.”
They narrowed their eyes suspiciously, but what could they do about it, really? They squeeze their eyes shut in anticipation for the pain.
Luckily, the general paralysis and numbness worked in their favor this time, and the spear didn’t hurt as badly coming out as it did going in, though they caught Scurrie muttering disapprovingly at the hole it made.
---
Recovery for Ensconce was a blur. A tingling, writhing, maddening blur. Feeling and mobility returned to them unevenly and in spurts, and they spent days feeling like they were being poked beneath the shell by tiny pins and needles at various points throughout their body. And they had a lot of body to feel that for.
Scurry tolerated them as best she could, which meant that she regularly told Ensconce to shut up and stop complaining and not make her regret helping them out. All this caring for the bug who should’ve been protecting her stash was such a drag and really eating into her potential profits.
Luckily for them both, Ensconce recovered relatively quickly, and with the exception of some scars, some broken items, and a much bigger and all the less desirable hole in the wall, things were back to normal.
Well, there were a couple things that changed.
Ensconce had some new additions to their personal collection: a jar of pseudoscorpions, a collection of new weapons and fragments of shells, a vial of poison. Curiosities and reminders.
And Scurry had something new too: a very shiny pearl rosary, given to her by her friend. A thank you.