Spictopus

The old reached his filthy hands into the tank, and hoping for the best, the fishes bit their moist lips excessively. Just as the man pressed the clicky button, they were transported.

It was water, but not the water they knew. Because they had all grown legs of some sort, and gravity worked just like the outside surface world there. They could walk, and it would take them a bare 15 minutes exploring the dimensions of ambling, crawling, walking, jogging, and finally, sprinting. It would later appeal to them that Mr Squid (what they substituted "kento" for) had teleported them to the first of their trials. Isaac, the first one to regain his hazy wits, looked around, scouring for his teammates, he could see four other blurry figures, so he assumed the other one must be somewhere else.

They regrouped and convened.

After what felt like an age to them, the trial finally began.

"Do you think that was it?" Timmy responded to a sonic boosh.

Isaac struggled to make sense of what he was seeing. It looked like two large, broken umbrellas were fighting. Soon his brain figured out what he was looking at, and he could not unrecognize what he saw, no matter how hard he tried or how badly he wanted to.

The spider was a little over 10 feet tall and at least thirty feet across, with long spindly legs and a body covered with thick, black fur. It cast away the roof of sand as easily as a man in a sauna would cast away his towel, and the fishes, like the other men in the sauna, instantly wished it hadn't. Shawn's mind was paralysed with fear. Isaac and Timmy seemed equally speechless. Karl was suffering no such problem.

"A giant spider?! Seriously?! Damn you, Mr Squid, you idiot! Just when I think I couldn't respect you less, you go and pull this!"

Everything stopped moving, like it was a program as a small live feedback box opened, comprising of Kento surrounded by an assortment of spices and herbs, lying on a sofa.

"What's the matter, Karl? Don't like spiders?"

I got no problem with spiders, but I hate cliché! Giant spiders are in everything! They've been done to death. If this is the best you can do you shouldn't have bothered."

Mr Squid looked genuinely confused and more than a little hurt.

"But it's an aqua trap-door spider. Every time you see a giant spider, it's spinning a giant web. Nobody's done a giant aqua spider. That's a new idea."

"Just because nobody's done it doesn't mean it's a new idea. It might just mean that it's a bad idea." Karl explained. "Think about it! The monger said that the monster comes out every two weeks. Well, if it's a trap-door spider, that means it's here, hiding in its hole all the time."

Mr Squid frowned "I didn't think about that."

"You didn't think at all. You need a monster, you brain spits out the words "big honkin' spider", and you called it good. You gave no though to the fact that it came to you so quickly because you've seen it a thousand times.

"Well, it's only been used so many times because it works so well." Mr Squid said.

Karl replied: "I've got two things to say about that. One: just because a giant spider work might work in this case doesn't mean that something original wouldn't work as well or better. Two: a spider doesn't work in this case. Not at all! Spiders don't have bones! We were told by the monger to bring back the bones. You've given us a monster that has an exoskeleton! That's a hard outer shell, which means no bones!"

Mr Squid smirked and shook his head: "What about octopuses? They don't have hard shells?"

Karl asked, "So what? Octopuses aren't spiders."

"Yeah, they are. They're the spiders of the sea."

"No, they aren't!"

"Huh? What?" Mr Squid sputtered. "How are octopuses not spiders?"

"What do you mean, how are they not spiders?"

"What do you mean, how are they not spiders? They're not spiders in the same way that you're not a spider!" Karl shrieked.

"But they've got eight legs," Mr Squid explained. "Octo means eight. That's why Doctor Octopus has eight robot arms."

Karl shook his fist and sprayed saliva as he shouted, "No! Doctor Octopus did not have eight robot arms! He had four normal human limbs and four robot limbs!" That equalled eight, like an octopus!"

"Or a spider," Mr Squid said, thinking.

"Yes!"

"Because octopuses are part of the spider family."

"No, they aren't, and this conversation is pointless anyway because octopuses don't have bones either!"

Mr Squid said, "Eight legs, no bones, but you're sure they aren't spiders."

Shawn cleared his throat, then said, "Actually, marine biologists will tell you that octopuses have six legs and two arms."

Karl said, "Let me handle this, Shawn." Without looking back.

Mr Squid pinched the bridge of his "nose" and close his eyes for a moment; then he said, "Look, okay, you have a point. Giant spiders have been done before, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to do something new with it."

"Like what?" Karl asked.

"Maybe it'll attack you in a way you aren't expecting."

"It's a spider." Karl said, flatly. "I'm pretty sure it'll involve webs and venom."

Mr Squid smiled slyly and said, "Maybe."

It's a spider!" Karl yelled again. "What else can it do?! Did you teach it kung Fu?!"

Isaac leaned to Timmy and said, "Oh, a spider that knows Kung Fu, that'd actually be quite cool, wouldn't it? I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of an eight-legged roundhouse kick."

Timmy said, "Nah man. Aren't you listening? Spiders have two legs and six arms."

Shawn said, "That's octopuses."

Timmy rolled his eyes. "And octopuses are the spiders of the sea. Come on, keep up guys."

Shawn was about to respond, before he noticed that both Karl and Mr Squid were staring at them."

"Sorry," Shawn said. "We'll discuss this later. Please, continue bickering."

Mr Squid struck a conciliatory tone. "Karl, look, I know that you don't think much of these quests. That's fine. You're entitled to your own opinion. Complain all you want-just just know that your going to be complaining while you're completing the quest, or dying in the process. No amount of whining will get you out of it. Right now, that means fighting my giant spider. And just to remind you, the spider can, and probably will, kill you. Remember, from here on in, as per your suggestion, everything can kill you…"

Hy guys, just to let you know that I am almost definitely not dead, and I will be posting again.