Filia began to notice how different Little Innsmouth felt during the day. Maybe it was the loss of the wandering party crowds that had made the place feel lively, or the afternoon light now exposing the cracking, sun-bleached paint and splintered wood paneling on every building but the district had a very different, almost dismal atmosphere. It was as if everything was made of cobbled together driftwood. Few windows seemed to have glass in them and it was clear in the daylight how battered and termite eaten most of the boardwalks really were. It made Filia uneasy and she became careful which planks she stepped on. The only thing that wasn't run down and rough were the people, at least, not towards Minette.
"Good afternoon and Dagon's blessings, Minette." A kind eyed old woman with a luminous anglerfish lure said from her ground floor window. "How have you and Nadia been?"
"Dagon's blessings to you too Mrs. Anten! Things have been well, I just wish she'd give me more of a heads up before sneaking off..." Minette let the burlap sack over her shoulder drop slowly to the ground as her and the old woman talked. It made Samson scoff quietly under Filia's straw cone hat.
"I don't believe it. She spends twenty minutes talking to the first pruney tart she comes across, and now she's gonna do it again? What the crap is this?! Doesn't she realize we got two bodies to dump!?"
Filia sighed as she dropped her rear onto a wooden bench near the water, letting her bagged criminal fall near her feet like any normal luggage "I guess the people in Little Innsmouth really are chummy with each other."
"I don't like it. It's too chummy, everyone we see gives her a big smiling 'hello' and waves like some Leave it to Beaver shit. It's cultish and- Wait, was that a pun? Sweet Trinity, you spend one evening flirting with Nadia and look how she's rubbed off on you."
"Shut up, it was not!" Filia clenched her fists and yelled up towards her hat,
"Bet that's not the only way you want her to rub off on you."
"Holy shit, shut up! Shut up! Shut up!" Filia pulled her hat down hard over her cackling hairdo as she almost screamed, making a Dagonian passerby shoot her a very strange look as he sped up his walking. It made Filia turn as red as velvet and try to hide her face in her hands.
"Hehe… Just ignore him," Samson said, "He looked like he was part flounder anyways. Bet he gives that look to everyone. Now," Filia's hair lightly yanked at her shirt sleeve towards Minette, "Get me closer to her and I'll start kicking her till we get moving again."
"No! I don't want to be rude!"
"I know you don't want to be rude, that's why I'm offering to be rude on your behalf. I'm a generous guy, I know."
"We aren't doing that." Filia said sternly before feeling the bench she was sitting on shift as a large… Man? Woman? An isopod in a bowler hat and suspenders sat down next to her. They were a large fellow, their lower pair of arms holding a bag of potato chips open as their upper pair brought the little snacks one by one into a pair of small, horizontal mandibles. They seemed to be staring out into the bay in front of them, at least, Filia thought that's what they were probably doing. Their wide compound eyes had no pupils, so whatever they were looking at was hard to discern. It was then that Filia remembered Yu-Wan's comment about meeting people. "I'm gonna talk to them." She said.
"What? What makes you think that thing can even talk with that nasty bug schnoz?"
Filia ignored Samson, "Excuse me," She said, scooting a bit towards the large sea-bug. They slowly tilted their head in response, not slowing in their rapid snacking, "Um, hi! My name's Filia." The big fellow didn't seem to respond. There might have been a twitch in their antene, though that could have been the breeze, "I um, like your hat!" Still nothing. Filia was getting a little freaked out, looking at her reflection in those big black bug eyes. She tried to remember that thing Minette kept saying to everyone they passed, "Uh, Daton's blessings?"
The bag of chips fell to the floor as the isopod stopped working their mandibles, chip crumbs falling out like a dusty golden waterfall. There were a series of small girations and strange clicks traveling up all throughout their chitinous body as the isopod fell forward onto all six legs and didn't merely scuttle quickly away, but scuttled quickly away up the sheer wall of the building behind them, leaving little chip dust footprints up the building's exterior.
"Did you actually just screw up their greeting that bad?" Samson said, genuinely impressed.
"Is messing up that guy's name really that offensive?"
"I'd say you'd be lucky if you didn't have one of those fatwa-death-sentences on your head by the end of the day."
"WHAT?! But it was an honest mista- Oh, you're worthless!" Filia shifted her tone as soon as she could make out sounds of Samson chuckling. It only made him laugh harder. Filia could feel her hat rocking back and forth as Samson cackled away, tears from his hidden, yellow eyes making her bangs look wet and sweaty. "Minette, can we get going?" she turned and asked finally out of patience.
"Oh! Sorry! We'll uh, catch up more later Mrs. Anten. Please say hello to your wife for me." Minette said hoisting her sack, but the old woman didn't go back inside. She shifted her gaze to Filia as she rose from the bench and raised an eyebrow.
"Your friend over there is rather quiet for a bar hopping tourist." She said to Minette while surprising Filia with a sinister smile of sharp, pointed teeth.
"She's not a tourist Mrs. Anten. Filia's, well… I guess a friend." Minette said it like she wasn't fully convinced herself.
"Ah! My mistake Filia," A slight blush came over her wrinkled cheeks, "but we don't get many land-folk who aren't here to get drunk and cause trouble." Her eyes then trailed to the burlap sack Filia had at her feet, "Oh, you know, that's actually very nice of you to help Minette with her delivery. I see her making these trips to the carpenters all by herself with these heavy sacks all the time-"
"Wow, uh, great story Mrs. Anten, but look at the time!" Minette said, fake laughing as she ushered Filia and her bag away as quick as she reasonably could.
"See you at the neighborhood potluck!" The old woman called to Minette as she left.
"Well, she was certainly a character." Filia said nearly tripping as the plank she stepped on creaked and dipped into the cold sea water. The state of Little Innsmouth only got worse as they got further from its restaurants. The homes surrounding Filia were little more than crude shacks made from discarded boats and built up with plywood. Dagonian children in faded, torn up clothes dove from the ship decks and swam around under boardwalks laughing and playing until they saw her, and drifted away quickly and quietly into the great maze of floating shanties. There was a very deserted feel to these streets, but it was only because people would immediately go inside when they saw Filia walking down the street. They weren't ignoring her though, she could see squinting, distrustful eyes watching her every move through the slats of the hovels. She wasn't welcome here, that much was obvious. Filia leaned in towards Minette and asked quietly, "How does a tourist town hate their own tourists this bad?"
"Well, this street would be especially bad. There's no shops or restaurants here so the only time outsiders come around here would be to stir up trouble."
"What about the streets that just hate us the regular amount?" Samson said.
"We don't hate-" Minette stopped speaking abruptly and thought for a second, "Well, yeah I guess that's true. It's probably like how a drug addict hates their drugs," Minette casually said before thinking about her words again, "S-sorry! That was too dark. Uh, what I meant, um… We can't really get jobs in the city proper. I don't know if the Medici started it or what, but Dagonians aren't really allowed to work anywhere, unless you count those exotic dance clubs." Minette shivered, revolted just saying it, "So we've had to make money starting our own businesses and I guess our food's the only thing that caught on. Still, that doesn't mean our patrons are nice. Guys like the ones we just dealt with come around more often than not."
"Clearly," Samson said, "That old lady back there mentioned you make these deliveries to the carpenters often. Either your guy's really do get a lot of shit heads, or you just really like stabbin' an' baggin' people."
"Samson!" Filia said, appalled. "Don't casually accuse her of being a serial killer!"
"I mean, it's a compliment if you think about it. Minette's good enough with her knife throws that she could reasonably be slaughtering people on the regular. What do you think, Minette? It's a compliment right?"
"I uh… Oh look, here's our stop!" Minette said relieved, quickly rounding the corner away from Samson and his host.
"She's dodging the question." Samson said, "I can't think of a more typical serial killer response."
"Well it's not right to be..." Filia slowly stopped talking. Alone on that corner Filia could hear the cold ocean breeze blowing through the plywood cracks of the surrounding shanties in a thousands quiet howls. It was like being alone in a bog of cut reeds, but she wasn't alone. Here each one of these thousand reeds held a family, and each one was terrified of her. "Samson," she whispered, "I don't think I like Little Innsmouth anymore."
"Kid, cool it." Samson said, noticing her sweating through her shirt, "You got me backing you up. Any fishmen try and flop at'cha and we'll fillet 'em."
"It's not that I'm worried about. I guess I just wasn't ready for this place to be…" Filia just gestured towards everything around her, "Is there some way we can help them?"
"Oh yeah, sure. Lemmy just use my special attack that ends racism."
"Samson, please!"
"I'll follow it up with my super move that ends poverty too. Will that make you feel better?"
"These people need help, Samson. Why the hell can't you take that seriously?!"
"Because you aren't, Filia! What makes you think there's absolutely anything I can do to help these poor saps. We can't punch the nothing out of their bank accounts, so unless you have some miracle you can pull out of your ass, then just drop it!"
"... But didn't you say that if someone beats the skullgirl, they get a free wi-"
"FUCKING DROP IT!" His shout echoed across the harbor, the dead silence of the terrified neighborhood broken only by the voice of what must seem like a psychopath yelling at herself. Filia said nothing more to Samson as she hurried along after Minette, disgust and embarrassment smeared across her face and an unconscious criminal still slung over her back.
The only thing notable about the carpenter's store was that it was on land. Little Innsmouth's squalor extended out over a little peninsula with some ramshackle apartments and warehouses, creeping towards the mainland. The store sat alone in front of a cracked and faded parking lot, tall and lonely, with a fetid green dumpster on the side that looked like it was slowly melting into the rest of the sickly colored store. The sign outside the building was brown and faded, the only way Filia could tell this was their place was Minette was struggling to hoist her goon bag into the dumpster.
"Should you help her?" Filia asked Samson.
"Heck no. I don't want to be caught on any cameras around here, and keep from talking to me around this place. I don't want this fish-militia to know I'm here anymore than I want others to." As they approached, they could see Minette was clearly struggling. She was red in the face straining under the weight of her payload as she tried to push it up the side of the tall dumpster, but she put on a forced smile for Filia and Samson, "I-It's no problem. J-just drop your bag here and I'll take care of it!"
"You sure?" Filia asked, not at all convinced, "I can help."
"I-It's fine. If you wanna help, you could head inside and let them know what we're dropping off. They'll want to keep it brief. Just tell them you have two pine bunk beds with broken slats on the bottom.."
"...Huh?"
"He'll ask if he can come by on thursday or friday, and you need to say 'as early as the sun rises,' exactly."
"...I'll just repeat myself, huh?"
"It's code Filia."
"Ah. Gotcha!" Filia pointed at Minette with some finger guns and made a little clicking noise, hoping on some level it would make it seem like she knew what she was doing, but then her bag slid off her back and the criminal she was carrying hit the pavement with a hard thud.
"...Are you sure you got this?" Minette asked. There were an awkward few seconds of staring at each other before Filia quickly nodded and shuffled into the store. It took all of Samson's self restraint to not let out a pained sigh from the second hand embarrassment.
Inside was really all that Filia expected to see. Dusty tools shelves and flooring textures were on display in a grungy, dimly lit single-room store. There was an insanely muscled, scary dagonian man in a tank top behind the counter. Totally expected. Even his wide, hammerhead shark face wasn't all that surprising. If anything, she would predicted something scarier like a great white. There was only one thing in this scene that caught Filia off guard, maybe two.
A woman leaned with her back against the counter, her low cut orange mini-dress giving Filia a far too enamoring sight for her to remember why she just walked into this store, and her diamond patterned thigh-highs hugged her shapely legs perfectly. The rest of her outfit, while it didn't seem strange to Filia given all she'd seen, would have been instantly recognisable to anyone else who'd spend more than a few days in New Meridian; her pointed jester like high heels with little skulls on them, cream-colored, kimono-like sleeves detached from the rest of her dress, and a very baggy collar or closed loop scarf that wrapped loosely around her shoulders and the ends of her enormous, bodacious, Filia-brainwashing breasts.
Filia stood there staring dumbly as the woman's plush, teal-painted lips smirked in surprise. "Well, there we have one, and you were saying you don't have that many customers!" She said to the shark man behind the counter. The woman beckons Filia forward with a poofy, orange hat she held in her hand.
"Oh shit. Kid, don't..." Samson whispered from under Filia's hat, but she couldn't hear him as she happily walked up.
"Hi!" She said a little too enthusiastically, "I'm Filia!" She said with a bright smile, but then slowly became nervous as she realized she couldn't think of anything else to say. Maybe she should compliment her lovely pair of… eyes? Her lips? Filia wracked her brain for something to say, but she was coming up short. She really hoped her nervous sweating wasn't too obvious as she tugged at her collar.
"Filia, wonderful to meet you. Now tell me," her smile and tone were flirtatious but Samson could feel the malice behind them. "what brings a girl like you to a place like this?"
"Well, uh…" Filia bit her lip. Would this woman be freaked out if she mentioned the two unconscious guys in the dumpster? So far everyone Filia's met in this town has been pretty stone cold when it comes to dispatching mobsters, so maybe not? That didn't mean it made for comfortable small talk though. What did Minette tell her she was her cover story? Something about the bunk bed at Yu-Wan's?
"You don't need to say anything to her." The shark-man behind the counter said to Filia before glaring angrily at the woman, "Now listen Miss Big Shot, I put up with you loitering here all day, but harassing my customers is something I won't abide!" He flashed his serrated teeth in a terrifying grimace.
"And I told you, I'm not loitering!" The woman's calm demeanor gave way to anger, "I have a performance tomorrow night at the Cirque des Cartes, and I need something dangerous to juggle! You know, buzzsaws and the like? The kind of tools a real carpenter would have!"
"OUT! NOW!" The dagonian's shout ringed in Filia's ears as this monstrous shark stared down the defiant woman. She looked up unafraid, fingers dancing on the rim of her innocuous puffball of a hat. Sweat beaded along the back of the Dagonian and Samson as they both readied for the worst, but then, to the relief of everyone but Filia, the woman let out a sigh and began a slow march to the door, not taking her eyes off the clerk.
Filia's mind was racing seeing this woman leave. She'd hardly had a chance to talk to her! Filia would accept it if she did something stupid and embarassing that drove her off. She would feel crushed for maybe a day or two, and probably binge eat enough candy to pop a button off her shirt, but she'd accept it. No way was she going to accept losing this one shot at a hot, normal-human looking friend all because this clerk was angry he couldn't fill her order.
"Wait!" She called out as the woman put her hand on the door. Her piercing, slate grey eyes turn on Filia, along with Samson's and the cashier's.
"What are you doing kid? Let her leave!" Samson whispered furiously.
"Uh…" Filia still didn't know what to say. Why was talking to cute women so damn hard? She was a decent looking woman herself damnit! Just relate. Relate, Filia told herself. Relate to women. Women. "Women." Filia accidentally blurted out loud.
"..."
"..."
"Did you just call me back so you could say 'women'?"
"What are you doing Filia!?" Samson whispered in a panicked voice. He was going to beat the shit out of her. If this Medici leg breaker in front of them didn't beat him to it, no, even if she beat the shit out of both of them, Samson would still beat the shit out of Filia.
"Uh… Yes, I said it. Because..." No one was more confused about what Filia was saying than Filia herself, but she could do something with this, she knew she could! Filia thought back to her conversation with Samson when she first woke up. Just be yourself or something? "Slipknot." Filia blurted without thinking again.
The silence lasted several painful seconds, before the woman mercifully replied, "You mean the band?"
"Y-yeah."
"I love those guys!" There was a genuine twinkle in her eyes as she said it.
"Y-you do?"
"Yeah. They clearly put a lot of artistry into their music, but it's also something you can just jam out and have fun to!" Filia felt ascendant hearing that. All of that awkward torture had been worth it for this one moment. A human being who likes her favorite band! "What about them and women?"
Oh shit. Filia wondered if talking to people was supposed to feel like some kind of high-stakes strategy game, but she'd come this far! "Well… You wanted to know what I was doing here, right? Well, I'm…" Victory was so close. Filia knew she was just a few right words away from not looking like a psycho. Her eyes darted around the room for something to draw off of, inspiration for her magnum opus of a 'normal-person-at-a-carpentry-store-for-something-involving-Slipknot-and-women' sentence. Her eyes settled on a shelf of paints, and there it was. Filia calmly walked over and heaved a large paint can off the shelf with it's color labeled 'Flesh'. "I was going to make some custom costumes for an all women cover band of Slipknot!" She patted the can proudly. Filia couldn't remember ever feeling prouder of herself. Granted she only remembered three days of her life, but it still counted.
"Wow, that's pretty damn cool!" The woman said. Filia had to fight back the urge to jump up and down in childlike glee, "So do you make costumes in your spare time or something?"
"Nope! I never have, and I know nothing about it!" She readily admitted. It didn't sour her mood in the slightest though. She was having a conversation! And not a conversation with some creepy seabug stuffing their face, a real conversation with a real fucking babe!
"Damn, gutsy of you to dive into a new hobby like that." Filia couldn't hold back a little squeak of excitement at the praise, but thankfully no one seemed to notice it, "You know, back at the-" The woman stopped mid-sentence. Filia was worried her squeak had weirded her out but she was actually looking back at the muscled, snaggletoothed clerk with a dirty glare again. "Wait, is this some kind of trick?"
"W-what?"
"You trying to get me to lower my guard or something? Vitale told me about people like you." The woman said, suddenly furious. Filia didn't know how much of this was directed at her versus the clerk, but either way she was very confused. "If you think I'm falling for your tricks, you've got another thing coming!" She whipped out her hat and moved to place it on her head, giving Filia a view of the small, long horned skull mounted on the front of it. There was rustling as the shark-man dived into the back room in a blind panic. Samson bit back a curse and tensed up Filia's hair into several tendrils, ready to unleash a flurry of blows when this woman stepped within reach.
"I-I'm sorry. I feel really out of the loop." Filia nervously said, the weight of the heavy paint tin in her hands starting to tire her. "Did I pronounce something wrong again?" Filia tried to re-adjust her grip on the can, but the nervousness and sweaty palms through her off balance and she slipped with a weak, "W-wha?" clean off her feet and into the shelf of paints next to her, knocking it down with a loud crash, and sending leaking cans rolling everywhere.
"O-oh my goddess," instead of putting on her hat, the woman lowered her arms and ran quickly to Filia's side, "Are you okay? I'm so sorry, I thought you were some kind of threat." She said stooping over Filia.
Part of her felt like that should have hurt her pride, but she was in too much actual pain to focus on that "It's fine... I'm good..." Filia lied. She was covered in a rainbow splatter of different paints and her head was throbbing, but Filia didn't want to worry her. She tried getting to her feet but her arms and legs gracelessly slid out from under her with each attempt to get up. On her third or fourth splattering against the floor Filia rolled onto her side, rested her head in her hand like she was just casually lounging in a paint puddle and said as casually as possible, "So uh, what's your name?"
The woman let out a snorting chuckle before pausing thoughtfully, "Wait… You don't actually know me?"
"Um… Sorry, I don't think I heard you give your name before."
"No, I didn't but," The woman bit her lip, clearly confused. "people are normally nervous because they recognise me from my shows. If you don't know me, why were you so-" She gestured to all of Filia.
"Well, maybe I'm just this charming to everyone?"
A cute little snort slipped out of her again, followed by the faintest blush, "No I- hehe... I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that. Here, let me just..." Before she knew what was happening, Filia was scooped up bridal-style as the woman tucked her against her soft, curvy body. "There we go! Wow, you're lighter then you look. I could toss you across the city if I wanted, no muscle hat required." Filia would have been confused or maybe even a little insulted by that comment if she wasn't still trying to process how close she was being held.
None of them knew in that moment that Samson was inches away from stabbing this woman through the chest with a dagger-sharp tendril. He knew it would be easier for them in the long run with the Medici's top enforcer taken out, but he could see through the fibers of Filia's hat the sickeningly sweet way these two were gazing into eachothers eyes and he knew he'd need to hold back if he and Filia were going to be able to trust each other. Still, the urge to drop such a major player in the Medici's game was beyond tempting and he knew he'd regret it.
"Your dress!" Filia said, feeling awful seeing her goopy paint coating stain the woman's outfit.
"No biggie. I keep spares back in the limo. Gotta be prepared when you're a performer." She took a quick look towards the counter to make sure the clerk was still missing while she leaned in and whispered, "between you and me Filia, this place isn't on the up and up." Filia just nodded, and the woman continued cheerfully like she hadn't whispered anything, "I'll even loan you a dress when we get out. Now, are you sure the name Cerebella isn't ringing any bells?"
Filia shook her head before replying, "I've recently learned that my memory isn't as great as most. Should it?"
"Haha, nah. No, it shouldn't." Cerebella grinned giddy as she headed for the door of the gloomy shop, Filia still cradled in her arms, "This could be fun I think. Have you seen some of the clubs in downtown Meridian?"
"I can't say I recall ever even being downtown. Uh, you know you can put me down now, Cerebella?"
"And watch my clumsy new friend slip around and hurt herself on the pavement? I don't think so!" As Cerebella sauntered away, the bell above the shop's door chiming as she left. she was being watched carefully. The hammerhead clerk stood with a small team of three other carpenters, guns drawn and ready for what they were certain would be an inevitable fight to the death. He watched the situation through a crack in the back door.
"What are they doing?" Minette asked anxiously from behind the rest of the trained fighters, keeping a firm and steady grip on her pistol. She'd been brought in through the back door when she happened to be noticed by the carpenters so she could stay clear of whatever was happening in front of the store.
"I'm not sure," the hammerhead said confused, "They're just... leaving together."
"Leaving? W-we should follow them! Filia might be in trouble!"
"Looks like she's having a gay old time with her new bestie. Are you sure we can trust this girl?"
"I'm... well, y-yeah. I'm sure."
"Confident as always, aren't you Minette?" Their discussion was interrupted as someone climbed down from the carpenters' makeshift sleeping quarters in the basement behind them, stretching her scarred arms over her cat ears.
"Meow's it going team?" Nadia asked, the whole backroom turning at once to face her in a frenzy. "Wow, jumpy today. What I miss?"