Scoria 34: The Planet of The Invertebrates
Chapter 2 (The long awaited Electric Boogaloo XD)
The Scorpinok chief led Cari up a algae tower. She was shocked at how well they could climb them, almost like monkeys in a way they climbed. The other Scorpinoks started clambering up the tree as well, the female from before grabbing Toni and Tiara and placing them on her back with her tail, being mindful of her stinger. After climbing up to the canopy of the algae tower, the chief stopped, and let Cari step onto a stiff branch. She looked onwards, and fount herself staring at a village high in the trees. They were made of algae, just like the trees, and it looks like they were actually cut from the trees themselves. The female arrived and put Toni and Tiara down. They two awed at the village. The male got their attention and lead them to a large algae tower, which had it's top chopped off. It was big enough that the whole village could fit. The three humans stepped onto the large top and sat down next to where the chief stopped. The rest of the Scorpinoks gathered behind the three humans, sitting down in a tribal manner. The chief looked at the three before he began to speak.
"Nisam se baš dobro upoznala s tobom. Moje ime je Gulfam, a ja sam glavar plemena Hidden Node."
"He said his name was Gulfam, and he is the leader of the Hidden Mouth Tribe," Toni translated.
"Ostat ćete sa svojim ljudima, dokle god vam treba. Imate li nekoga od vas pitanja," Gulfam asked.
"He told us we can stay as long as we need, and asked us if we had questions," Toni told the other two.
"Ask him how he can speak Croatian. I'm really needing to know," Cari asked. Toni turned to Gulfam and translated her question to him. He nodded, and motioned the three humans to stand. They did so, and they followed him down a long walkway to a lone hut. He pushed the algae leaf door aside, and Toni and Cari gasped in shock. It was the wreckage of a lone, man-made, but familiar satellite.
"V-Voyager...how did it end up here?"
"Ova stvar je pala s neba i sletjela tamo gdje je vaš kontejner bio sada. Počeo je igrati ovaj čudan disk koji se nalazi na strani objekta. Oštećeno je u nesreći, ali uspjeli smo kopirati ono što nazivate "hrvatskim" jezikom. Sada ga koristimo kao glavni jezik, ali koristimo naš drugi jezik kada susretnemo nekoga koga nikad prije nismo vidjeli," Gulfam explained to them, Toni translating it over to English for Cari and Tiara to understand.
"Oh..." the four went back to the tree top and sat back down. Gulfam stretched as he listened to all the other questions Cari had that Toni translated for her. Toni was getting annoyed at this point, and put a finger over her mouth.
"That's enough," he told her, panting. Cari smiled at him and blushed in embarrassment.
"Sorry, I kinda get a little carried away," she told him. Toni rolled his eyes as she turns back to Gulfam.
"Reci mi ... kako ste završili ovdje," the chief asked them. The three humans looked at each other before Toni began to explain everything to him. Gulfam listener carefully, not speaking until Toni finished.
"Pitanja?"
"Ne, razumio sam sve," Gulfam told him. He got up and stretched his tail a little. "U redu. Ako su sva vaša pitanja odgovorena, trebali bismo vas odvesti u novu kolibu."
A few hours later, the chief came down from the algae towers, carrying Cari with him. He let her put her feet on the ground before stepping down himself. She quickly rushed over to the pod they crashed down onto the planet in, and began to search around inside. She was looking for something, and Gulfam wondered what it was. Cari pressed a button inside the pod, and a compartment on the outside of the pod opened up, revealing a strange device about the same size as a notebook. Gulfam tilted his head at it while Cari hit another button. It unhitched the device from the pod, putting it gently on the ground. Cari picked up the device before she began to scroll through it. Gulfam appeared by her side, looking down at the device as she passed by a multitude of names of objects.
"Što je to?" Cari did not understand Croatian, but she figured he was wondering what it was.
"This is a creation tablet. It allows me to, well, create things. I find a certain amount of materials required to make an object and it automatically takes them and starts crafting the object I want," Cari explained. She knew he didn't understand English unlike her, but she thinks he got what she was saying. She continued scrolling a little bit, and finally fount what she was looking for. A translator. "Perfect. All I need is iron, copper...and phacochurnix armor and blood? The heck is a phacochurnix?"
"Znam što je to. Dođi samnom." Gulfam grabbed her arm and began to drag her back up the algae towers and to the village. There, he lead her to a large hut, surrounded by some sort of blue algae. He opened the door and let Cari step in. A storage building. Food and other supplies were neatly tucked inside, and she suspected the blue algae kept the place cool, like a big refrigerator. He pointed at a wall, where multiple vials of a greenish-red liquid and exoskeleton-like armor could be seen. She grabbed the armor and one of the vials while Gulfam grabbed a few iron and copper chunks that were in a pile on the other side of the room that they used to make weapons. She began to fiddle with the creation tablet again, and selected the translator option for making. In a jaw-dropping display, the vial, the armor, and the iron and copper Gulfam selected began to float into the air, where they suddenly went light speed and began to collide together. Three translators were created, and they floated gently onto the table. Gulfam looked at the small devices in shock as Cari picked up one of them, putting it on her ear. She fiddled around with the settings a little bit before she turned back to Gulfam.
"Thanks for the help," she told him with a smile. Gulfam shrugged it off before walking out of the hut, followed by Cari. She went back to her hut that Gulfam had designated her and the other two, and entered. She fount the two simply lounging around, with Toni almost falling asleep before she opened the door. He gasped in shock and fell out of his algae-wood made chair. Tiara smirked before she looked back over to Cari.
"Hey guys. I got these," Cari told them, holding out the two other translators she created. Tiara took one while Toni looked at her with a dead-panned look.
"Really? Translators? Wouldn't you have wanted to make, I don't know, spare oxygen tanks!?"
"I know that, but the oxygen masks we have on right now will still be useful for another six weeks, so we are fine until then," Cari reassured him. Toni sighed before taking one and putting it on his ear, along with Tiara. Cari helped get the translator to the setting she wanted while Toni did it himself. Cari hoped that this would work so that Toni didn't have to keep switching from English to Croatian and back. Her thoughts were interrupted when they heard what they thought were gongs going off. Cari told the two to stay put while she went out to investigate. She discovered a few male Scorpinoks had returned, carrying large algae sticks that had weird creatures attached to them.
The creature was about the same size as her, with six legs, a small mouth, three eyes that look similar to a spider's, long antennae that seem to almost reach the ground, and a pair of orange wings. Multiple seem to have been killed and brought back after a hunt that was going on at the time. Maybe these are the phacochurnix the creation tablet was talking about. She noticed Gulfam watching over the hunters as they continued hauling their prey towards another area of the village. She approached him.
"Are those hunters?"
"Yes." Well, at least the translator worked. "We got lucky by capturing five of them. That's enough to feed our village of three hundred for a while," Gulfam continued.
"Are those phacochurnix," she asked him.
"Yes. They are a primary source of food for our village. They breed quickly in their herds, so we have a long lasting supply that we can haul back," Gulfam replied.
"Oh good. I was starving," Cari said with a smile.
"Tell your siblings that preparations for a feast are starting. It's to celebrate your arrival," Gulfam told her before walking off. Cari looked at him weird, because Toni and Tiara weren't her siblings, more of siblings of friends she had before...
She was going to miss her friends. She had no idea where any of them are. Did they survive? Were they captured by those pirates and forced into slavery? Or did they make it on the pods and fled the destruction and looting of the Ark? Only time will tell. She just hopes they survived.
And that's it. I thank you for reading this chapter. If you want to see your ideas used in this story, give a review of your idea and I will try to put it in. Oh, and sorry if this chapter sucked. I tried.
This is Sporedude135, signing off...(btw, little mermaid XD)