NOTE: brackets indicate another language being spoken
The next day, Kaki, Seventeen, and three other villagers travel deep into the crimson jungle in search of where the arachnid may have settled.
It is by the height of the afternoon that they finally reach one of the 'nests of darkness' - a large mass of web built into a large dead tree, a black void in comparison to their vibrant surroundings. Kaki steps forward and urges the group of Tatinarteans to stay back.
"Let me handle this," Kaki says, mostly to Seventeen. "It's untreated, so the silk will stick to you like tar."
She raises a hand and summons a blazing dagger of scarlet energy. She then carefully sticks her gloved hand into the web, using the dagger as a lamplight to illuminate whatever was inside.
Instantly, three tightly bound carcasses are revealed - two being smaller and clearly Tatinartean, the third more humanoid. The villagers gasp at the sight and avert their terrified gazes.
Kaki grimaces and withdraws her hand.
"Looks like we found some of the missing."
Seventeen leans in and peers at it like an important archaeological find. "Looks like the two locals have been here for a few weeks, the other one's only a few days." He points vaguely to the humanoid one.
"See how the webbing around him is glistening and the ones around them is more caked." Leaning back, he puts up a barrier around the entire cocoon, and jerks his arms back, dislodging it from the tree. Attaching a smaller cord of barrier to it he pushes it up above the canopy like a balloon, and ties the cord around his wrist.
"This should follow us wherever we go, when we get somewhere clear we can give them a proper burial."
"Woah," Kaki says, her eyes bulging at the technique. She nudges him with an elbow and mumbles, "You should show me how to do that sometime."
She steps forward again to speak to the villagers, telling them they are bringing the bodies back to give proper burial, which they tearfully concede to. She turns back to look at Seventeen.
"We should keep going. There's likely more to be found out-"
She stops, hearing something amiss. She puts up a hand to motion for everyone to be silent. She hears it again - something like leaves rustling at a constant rhythm.
"What the hell is that...?"
Suddenly, they hear a hiccup. One of the villagers snaps in its direction and aims their weapon, where slowly, a familiar amphibian child's figure would emerge from a not-so-inconspicuous fake bush.
{ Pepsi? } one of the villagers exclaims, before the three rush to them and take them into their arms.
{ I just- } Pepsi hiccups loudly. { I wanted to help... }
Kaki sighs deeply, rubbing a temple with her fingertips. "I suppose a change of plans is in order, then."
For some reason, his heart flutters when she elbows him. "I can try," he says before they're interrupted by Pepsi's sudden appearance.
"Ah fuck," Seventeen mutters, putting up another barrier around Pepsi and attaching another cord to that barrier, and handing that cord to Kaki. "You take the frog baby on a leash. I've got my hands full with the corpse balloon."
Pepsi and the few villagers collectively gasp when they're scooped up into the barrier, their crying ceasing almost immediately. They wiggle their limbs and flap their hands, unused to the sensation of free gravity at first, before giggling and beginning to bounce around like a ball inside the barrier.
Kaki takes the end of the cord from Seventeen, finding it strangely solid, much like her own techniques.
"Perhaps not a change of plans," she says, her brows raised. "Let's keep going, then."
They continue through the thick jungle for a few miles, finding no more of the webs of darkness when they reach a pond next to a clearing.
"We should rest for a bit, maybe set up here for lunch?" Seventeen says, holding his hand above his eyes to shield them from the sun.
He lets the barrier fall from around Pepsi, who immediately tries running off in a random direction. Quickly, he scoops the child up in one arm. "Pepsi, if you're going to hunt with the big kids, you have to do what we say."
Seventeen looks down at Pepsi who looks as though they're about to burst into tears again.
"Oh c'mon, don't cry," he sets them down on the ground and kneels down to be eye level with them. "I know you can't understand what I'm saying, but..."
He pauses and looks up at Kaki to translate.
"You're a good kid, you obviously care a lot about your fellow villagers, and it's good that you want to help. But you have to be a good little tadpole, and follow our every instruction, or something bad might happen to you. And Kaki and I would literally never be able to forgive ourselves if that happened."
Kaki steps over after having updated the Tatinarteans, looking between Seventeen and Pepsi. She sighs a little when her gaze settles on Pepsi, reaching down to put a hand on their shoulder, reiterating Seventeen's little lecture word-for-word.
{ We just want to bring you back safe to your mimi. Understand? }
Pepsi looks at both of them with glistening eyes, before slowly nodding in understanding. Kaki huffs, remembering when she was a girl who needed to satiate her need for fun through exploration, before leaning down to address them with a wagging finger.
{ ...Now, you can explore, just don't leave the clearing, } she tells them. { And stay within eyesight. }
Pepsi seems to brighten at that, before giving them a little salute and bounding off towards the pond, immediately peering into the water. Kaki comes around finally to stand beside Seventeen. She looks quite a bit happier than usual, a far cry from their conversation the night before.
"I think that went pretty well, huh?" Kaki says, crossing her arms nonchalantly. She looks up to the sky, spotting dark clouds approaching from the distance.
"Hm." Her brows furrow a bit at the sight. "Hopefully that's just a bit of rain."
"Yeah, we're naturals at frog wrangling." He looks up to the sky after she mentions it and frowns "At least it'll cool off this humidity for a while," seventeen says wiping his brow. Suddenly the villagers start making a commotion across the clearing.
"Ah crap, what now?"
They run over to where the group is, and one of them starts yelling in their language at Kaki frantically. Seventeen can't tell what they're saying but, when he looks to where they're pointing he almost can't comprehend it.
"IT'S THE SPIDER!" he shouts, running up to the villagers, he puts up a barrier around them and himself, keeping his promise to let Kaki deal with it.
From the depths of the crimson jungle emerges what could have easily passed for a monster from horror stories. It's as large as a car and sickly grey in color, with ten eyes and spotty mounds of dark fur covering its cephalothorax and abdomen. It travelled sideways and stood on six legs instead of eight, as one pair of legs were as thin as antennae. Its pedipalps seemed to be claw-shaped but severely deformed, bright red in color. Venom drips from its quivering fangs as it approaches, quickly, almost too quickly for a creature of its stature and size.
Clearly, it was starved, and acting irrationally.
Kaki leaps up in front of everyone to meet the arachnid head-on. In one hand forms a dagger of energy, the end of which she grabs with her free hand and stretches into a rope in one move.
In the next moment, she lashes the whip out at the arachnid before it's able to get too close, sounding a deafening snap through the jungle. The arachnid implodes on impact.
Pepsi is lost in the chaos and runs further into the jungle in terror.
They eventually trip and fall over a raised root, falling flat on their face. They crawl onto their elbows, trying not to cry again, and huddle against the trunk of a young tree. They look up, seeing an ever-familiar red fruit - a staple in their village.
Sniffling, they reach up for it, simply wanting something comforting.
A shrill screech sounds, breaking the short silence after Kaki killed the arachnid. She whirls around in the direction of the sound, and her face falls to absolute terror.
"By the gods," she exclaims, already rushing in its direction. "PEPSI!
Leaving a barrier up around the villagers, Seventeen dashed after Kaki into the crimson abyss, but before he could catch up with her he heard what could only be her voice crying out in agony.
"KAKI!" He called out, looking around until he saw her pitch-black uniform buried beneath a bush. A second arachnid, this one a bit smaller than the one she had killed just a moment ago, laid slain across a small alcove from her.
She was holding Pepsi in her arms, clutching onto them like a life preserver.
It immediately became clear that she had been bitten, something that was probably blood oozing from the meat of her thigh. Seventeen raced up to her. Kneeling, he picked up Pepsi out of her arms.
"Pepsi! Go back to the others!" The amphibian stared at him blankly, almost catatonic. "NOW!" Pepsi snapped out of their daze and nodded before taking off in the direction he had come from.
Hastily, he rips open the legging covering the bite on her thigh. Looking at it, it's not as bad as the man from yesterday's was.
"Kaki! Kaki are you okay? Are you with me?"
It may not have looked that bad right then, but it was quickly becoming apparent that she was having a bad reaction - the bite site was already turning bright red and swelling, with two distinct fang marks punctured into the meat of her thigh.
Kaki tries to bring her head up in response, but only manages to let out a strangled yell at the intense burning pain shooting through her entire leg. Tears spill involuntarily down her cheeks, and she claws at the ground fruitlessly for relief.
If she were able to say it right then, she would have compared the pain to the day she lost her eye.
"Fuck," she spits between clenched teeth, breathing deeply and trying not to hyperventilate. "Holy fuck."
"You're having some kind of allergic reaction, please Kaki try to stay calm, I know it hurts." He's trying to follow his own advice and stay calm too, but it's getting worse by the second. Briefly, his fingers flutter over her wound, trying to decide what to do.
"Okay Kaki, I'm going to do something really weird. It's going to hurt, maybe worse than anything else you've ever felt in your life. But it's the only option I have with all my medical equipment back in the clearing."
Untying the scarf from around his neck, he repositions to be lying on his stomach, perpendicular to her thigh and the wound. Seventeen clears the area around her wound of any debris or fabric, all the while Kaki howls in pain. Like ripping off a bandaid, he lunges into the infected area and starts sucking the venom out of it with his mouth. He's had to do this before on the island, they were even trained in the proper way to do it, but it was only ever to be a last resort.
Most venoms were distributed through the muscular system, so sucking it out could do damage to the muscles surrounding it. He really hoped he wasn't too out of practice, he didn't want to hurt Kaki in the slightest. He had become fond of her, maybe even...
Seventeen sits up, done with the venom removal. It had taken longer than usual, as this was a lot more venom than he had ever removed before. But it was done. Turning away from her he spits venom out of his mouth in the specific way he had been taught to so that none was left behind to poison himself.
When he turns back to her, she seems to be more aware than she was before, which was excellent and earned a beaming smile of relief from him.
"Kaki..." he breathes, and the next thing he knows he's leaning in and pressing his lips to hers.
The pain of the venom being sucked out of the wound was blinding. She clamped a gloved hand over her mouth to muffle her shrill screams, and while it may have just taken about half a minute, it felt like an eternity to her. When it's over, the pain backs off to a sting, still painful but much milder than what it was earlier. Still, it all left her with a wicked headache, and she kept fluttering her eyes in an attempt to blink away the stars flashing in her vision.
Kaki weakly props herself up on an elbow and rubs her burning eyes, finally able to keep them open and see straight. When she looks up, she sees Seventeen looking down on her, the waning sunshine framing his silhouette like a halo. His face is serene at first, but then he breaks into a bright smile at her. In any other situation, she would have been incredibly flustered, but she was too exhausted, and could only tiredly wonder at his beauty.
She's so lost in staring at him that she doesn't register that she isn't just looking closely at him, but he was getting closer to her. Her face churns in slight confusion until she finally realizes what's happening.
"Seve-"
Her voice is muffled by his lips meeting hers. He's warm and feels remarkably alive against her, despite his languishing otherwise. Unexpectedly in the moment, she melts, her eyes falling closed as she returns the kiss without thinking, her fingers touching his cheek.
But the kiss is as sobering as the rain that begins to pour down upon them.
In realization, Kaki exhales sharply and pulls away, her hand still clutching the side of his face.
"Wait- Wait, wait..." she says, breathlessly.
She blinks several times, looking past him to four figures barely visible in the downpour. She recognizes them to be Pepsi and the other three villagers - they must have come back for them.
Her head turns toward the dead arachnid and stares at it for a long moment.
"There was... There were two... this entire time..."
It's a messy kiss, born from adrenaline and relief, but he can't help but revel in it. It's not very dynamic, they pretty much just sit there with their lips touching each other until her fingers go up to Seventeen's cheek and he tries to deepen it, but right around that moment is when Kaki breaks it and the villagers + Pepsi come running up. He hovers above her for a moment as the rain starts coming down harder, and she makes the remark about the spiders.
Falling back on his knees, he inhales deeply for the first time in what must have been half an hour.
"Do you..." he heaves. "do you think they hunt in pairs?"
Kaki gulps deeply, trying to catch her breath even with the rain inhibiting that effort.
"They're capable of it, but... I am not so sure in this instance," she answers. She sits up fully now to point at its bright red appendages. "You - You see the pedipalps? They're supposed... to be able to use them like hands. But I think... with whatever the breeders did, they lost that functionality, and..."
Her gaze rises, seeing the red fruits hanging just above the arachnid's corpse-like an omen.
"They've adapted."