Jin ducked down into the cave and crouched below the low-hanging webs. Despite Cassie's energizing pep-talk, Jin moved slowly. He was careful to dodge every web, even sliding on his backside when the webs were too thick to duck under.
Takeda chafed at the slow pace. It took a considerable amount of mental preparation to fool himself into being ready for the caves. Now that they were moving slow, he felt his will-power go to waste, ebbing away no matter how hard he mentally tried to hold on to it.
By the time they reached the bottom, he was pulling moist, stale cave air into his lungs and remembering just how badly he didn't want to be there from their first venture down into the spiders' lair. Jin drew himself to full height with a sigh of relief, then turned around and helped all three of them to their feet. He dusted himself off.
"Okay. Let's go." He pointed to the right and led the way towards the wide open area where they found Lao's hat when a familia rhythmic clicking echoed thorough the cavern from further ahead.
Jin stopped, throwing his arm out to bar their way as though they hadn't already stopped. He cocked his head to the side, listening to the clicks and the silences between them. He turned back to Cassie and held up a finger, raising his eyebrows.
"Just one?" his message read. "Maybe two?" He held up another finger and flipped between both numbers to ask the question.
Cassie listened for herself then nodded, holding up a finger. "One."
He held out his hand and made a 'gimme' motion with his fingers, and Takeda reached for the glowstick from the loop on his belt. He slapped it into Jin's hand, and Jin cast his own bo staff away to clench the glowstick high in one hand and Raiden's staff in the other.
He inched forward, motioning for the others to follow him. He kept his eyes up and his neck craned back to watch the ceiling, while Cassie instinctually turned to watch their backs. Takeda's heart started to race at the thought of a hot, fuzzy body landing on him. Stabbing him with its barbs. Biting him with its fangs. The needle-like hair scratching at his face and arms. He took as deep a breath as he could muster and let it out slowly as they crawled one step at a time towards the opening.
Finally, Jin ducked under the archway. He wheeled his arm from the left to the right, illuminating the surrounding areas before suddenly whirling to the right. He stifled a sound of alarm, and Takeda put his fists up, ready if a spider jumped out. He braced himself and saw a spindly leg and fuzzy body making its jaunty movements in the glowstick light, casting deep shadows on the ceiling.
Jin backed in to them, and they retreated back under the archway.
"Should we try to blow past it?" Jin whispered.
"Maybe," Cassie said. "Or we could try to kill it. We have the jump on it. We could get it before it gets us."
"I'd rather not start a fight if we don't have to. It may call others towards us and then we may be in trouble."
"Right," Jacqui whispered. "Don't forget how close we're getting to that first major room."
"Let's go past it," Takeda agreed. The less they had to fight, the better he decided.
Jin searched all of their faces for their final decision, and at everyone's nod, he turned back around. Standing tall and tense with Raiden's staff held protectively out in front of him, he maneuvered through the archway facing to the side to keep his eye on the spider. He waited for a moment, then motioned the others through.
The spider crawled across the ceiling, clicking and snapping, with its body half-turned away from them. It was doing something with the egg sacs, Takeda noticed. He couldn't tell what at first, but as his eyes adjusted to the darkness he saw that the spider was making webs and weaving them with its front legs. It attached a bit of the webbing to the sacs and detached, landing on the ground. The four of them scooted back and Takeda mentally cursed at the shuffle of their feet on the dirt, but the spider didn't seem to notice. It fastened the other end of the webs to the ground, then crawled back up and repeated, attaching more next to it.
"Let's go," Takeda projected for everyone to read. "I don't know what it's doing, but it's not caring about us. Let's go, and someone watch our back."
"If I had to guess, it's making pathways for the spiderlings to use when they hatch. Some of them are ready, by the looks of it."
"That's really interesting, but could we not care about that right now?" Takeda urged, gently shepherding their group towards the other end of the clearing. The spider crawled back up the ceiling, and made a move for the egg sac to their left, finally spotting them. It paused, beady eyes staring them down.
"Let's . . . back away from it-" Jin whispered slowly.
BAM! BAM! BAMBAMBAM!
Takeda jumped a foot into the air, crying out in surprise. He ducked, circling all around, looking for the threat. All he saw was Cassie, holding her gun straight out, and shooting at the spider.
"Stop! Stop, stop!" Jacqui yelled, hands covering her ears from the loud gunshots. "Cassie! You'll bring more to us! Stop!"
Cassie didn't hear. Or maybe didn't care. Her pale face and dead-panned eyes never blinked as she nearly emptied an entire magazine into the spider in front of them. The first few rounds ricocheted harmlessly off its hard shell body, but Cassie reached up and clasped the gun with both hands, gritting her teeth against the pulling of her stitches. Each shot drew closer and closer to the spider's face until she hit home, the bullet blasting through one of its eyes. It screamed, curling in on itself as it fell from the ceiling, twitching once before lying still. Cassie pushed past them, standing over it, and shot it several more times in the face until the gun clicked empty.
" . . . Now, why did we do that?" Jin asked after the gunshots faded into the length of the cavern.
Cassie lowered her arm and groaned, massaging it around the wound. "'Cause fuck 'em. That's why." She discharged the empty mag and it clattered onto the spider's exoskeleton, then she reached into a pouch on her suit and pulled out another mag, sliding it into the gun. She cocked the pistol and put it back in the holster.
Jin rolled his eyes. "Oh, sure. I try to use Raiden's staff to help us, and you get all mad. But you're allowed to just shoot a spider that wasn't even attacking us, alerting every single one in the cave to where we are-"
"I'm not even mad about that anymore, Jin. Calm down," she said, rolling her eyes. "I think if they wanted to come after us, they would have by now anyway. Listen. No spiders."
Takeda sighed. "Can we keep going? Please? We're wasting time." They were supposed to make a break for the open cavern again.
Jin threw his arms up. "Whatever. I always get in trouble for shit." He strode ahead and they followed behind him into the tunnel. They ducked under the webs, and when they emerged, they passed the carcasses of the spider that attacked Cassie earlier. He watched her face, and saw her tired expression morph into one of hesitant, flighty fear. He sent out a quick wave to read her.
" . . . these fuckers even twitch. I'm going to lose my shit . . . "
Jin stomped straight past it, but Takeda cut a wide arc around it, getting as close to the wall as possible without getting caught in the webs. He took another glance at her, and saw a shred of relief there as she realized she didn't have to feel silly.
The closer the four of them drew to the first area, the louder the waterfall-like sound grew. Takeda quickly tried to recall how many spiders he thought there were before - and realized there were too many, like a sea of brown and black. Constantly moving and swirling until the shapes blurred with the darkness and with each other. All he could recall was fighting two spiders. Just two, out of an infinite number. Jin seemed to understand that as well. When they reached the corner and he turned, the area stretched in front of him, but there was a moment's hesitation before he made the move into the area.
He lowered the glowstick, relying on the natural white light - a literal beacon in the darkness. They poured in behind him, careful to stay close to the wall where they found Raiden's staff. All four of them kept their eyes up, raised to the ceiling, and Takeda knew that despite his fear heightening his perception of the caves, he wasn't far off the mark. All the spiders were still clicking, chittering, crawling on top of each other and all around the walls, spinning webs and staring. The sea was still roiling, and he dreaded the moment when they realized the four intruders were there to hurt them. The four of them would be quickly overrun if they suddenly became smart enough to team up like he knew they could.
He shuddered, a violent motion that shocked through to his core, and shook his head. "What now?" he asked, hoping to distract himself from the mental images.
"Cassie, check the top left corner. Takeda, top right. Jacqui, check these few on the right here, and I'll take the back left."
"Anybody need light?" Takeda asked. "I've got a couple more glowsticks."
"Nah, we've all got flashlights," Cassie said. "We probably should've saved that glowstick there, too, but . . . " she trailed off, shrugging her shoulder. "I didn't think about it at the time."
"Well, it is what it is," Jacqui said. "I'd actually rather save the flashlights. Who knows how long-" She cut off abruptly. "I'd just rather save the flashlights."
"It's only for a second," Takeda said. "Just use your flashlights."
"Actually, no need!" Jin said from the corner behind them. While they were talking, Jin already began investigating his corner of the area. "Come over here." The four of them followed after him, and crowded around his position. He was holding the glowstick high and illuminating an even narrower tunnel that twisted sharply to the right, leading at a slight downward slope.
"I figured there'd be something here," Jin said. "Everyone ready to go?"
"Hold on," Cassie said. "Wait. We should've done some planning stuff while we were still above ground but I didn't think about it for reasons," she said, gesturing to her shoulder. "We got lucky last time that we ended up in a string of tunnels that led back up to the surface. We may not find that here, on this side. It looks like it goes down further. So, what we need to do is set this as a rendezvous point. It we get lost, let's agree to make our way back here to regroup."
"I don't think this is necessarily the best place," Jacqui said. "Rendezvous points are supposed to be easy to find, like, at a distance and in all terrains and stuff. We won't be able to see this point from anywhere further in the tunnels."
"Well, you can see the natural light when you're coming up on the corner," Cassie said. "I was thinking we could use that. Plus, I don't think we have any other option." Cassie turned to gesture to the rest of the room. "We can't see either exit to the graveyard that we know of from here, so the graveyard is definitely out of the question. We don't have any other major area to use, with the exception of that room-place where we found Kung Lao's hat, but it's going to get further and further away the more we go down here."
"That will also happen to this place," Jacqui argued.
"I mean, yeah, but the difference is this is a center hub. Both cave systems that we managed to discover have stemmed from this place. And an exit stemmed from this place before it was cut off."
" . . . Can you move the rendezvous point?" Takeda asked. "I don't know if that's, like, military practice or whatever, but that's what we would do in the Shirai Ryu. Once the recon came back and we had details of the location, we would set a primary and secondary rendezvous point. If for some reason, you couldn't make it to the first rendezvous point, then the secondary point was just as effective. It was another place that we could pull out of the mission easily from."
Jin jabbed Raiden's staff into the ground and leaned against it. "Sure, but we don't have any recon of this place. And there's only four of us. We could accidentally set a rendezvous point that has no viable exits, or leads to a dead end or something. Or, only one of us could end up at a rendezvous point and then it's pointless anyway. I was thinking, what if we only stick to the right wall? That way, if we do need to beat it out of there, all we need to do is make left turns until we reach here."
" . . . That's . . . not a bad idea-"
An unfamiliar scratching sound that Takeda never heard before scritched against the wall behind him. He jumped, rolling to the side and throwing his fists up, and the others followed suit, spinning around and looking for the threat.
" . . . Did you hear that?" Takeda asked after it had been quiet for long enough.
No one answered. Jin raised the glowstick and shone the light on the wall slowly. The arc of light crawled up the wall, and Takeda kept his eyes on the edge of its shadow, waiting for whatever it was to lash out. It never came. The same scratching sound startled all four of them, this time coming from somewhere above them. Jin lit up as much of the ceiling as he could, but the glowstick couldn't reach very far the higher the ceiling climbed. Still, Takeda couldn't see anything in the blackness. No movement, or body shapes, or anything.
The scratching chafed in different spots all around them, at times squealing like nails on a chalkboard, but no threat ever made itself known. After Takeda's heart fluttered in his chest he whispered, "We need to move. I don't know what that is, but I don't want to find out." He was afraid to speak any louder than that.
"We still need a plan-" Cassie began.
"Let's just move," Jacqui said. "Let's follow Jin's plan and stick to the right hand side."
"If we hit a dead end, then we go back one turn, and stick to the right wall past that point. If we reach . . . let's say . . . three dead ends, then we rendezvous back here and try the left wall."
"Three sounds like a lot," Jacqui said. "Make it two."
"Fine, two," Jin agreed, nodding. "That'll make the map easy to make when we reach a stopping point, too."
Takeda's nervous energy had him hopping from foot to foot. "Can we go? Please?"
Cassie thought it over for a moment, eyes roving around the cave as though she could see the threat through the walls. She nodded. "Okay. I'm good with it."
"Alright. I'm still good to take point," Jin started. "Rearrange yourselves however you want."
As Jin turned and made his way into the tunnel with the glowstick, the three of them shuffled after him. Takeda ended up bringing up the rear, with Cassie and Jacqui as the two other points of the diamond formation. The moment they turned the corner, the scratching sound stopped. Though it was definitely a bad idea, Takeda dismissed whatever it was. Jin reached to his right and tapped Raiden's staff against the wall, then trailed it along with them as they walked, occasionally tapping it. As they drew further in, Takeda thought the orange glowstick grew brigher, but as he raised his eyes he saw the yellow light emanating from a lit torch, jammed deep into the rock of a pillar rising up from the ground and supporting the cave roof.
"Look!" he said. "Torches! Someone's been here!"
"There's another one up there," Cassie said, cocking her head forward. As they looked, another entrance was glowing and flickering with a torch that was set somewhere further down the tunnel.
"That's good news, right?" Jacqui said, glancing up at Takeda with hopeful eyes. "They're not burnt down that far, which means whoever lit them was here pretty recently! It could've been Kenshi or my dad."
The thought of human existence - and extra light sources - lifted Takeda's heart so much that most of his fear seemed to melt. All they had to do was keep going, for just a little farther, and hopefully they'd find Kenshi. They'd find Kenshi and Jax, and whoever else was holed up there, and they'd be able to get the hell out of there.
He pushed ahead of Jin and forged their path ahead, skirting to the right of the pillar, as they passed, he saw another body suspended from the ceiling by its legs, but he dutifully ignored it. Even as the little yellow boils and pustules wriggled and moved inside its skin and mouth. They ground underfoot started to crunch, harder and more often, and he knew without looking what was underfoot.
If he was smart, he noted, and observant, he would tell himself that there were more bones because they were going deeper. He knew he would tell himself that there were more spiders because it was deeper, and that these people had been dragged back here and picked clean.
He didn't particularly feel like being smart or observant at the moment. He just wanted to find Kenshi.
He stepped into the recess on their right and had to shield his eyes from the torch light. There were large, loose boulders piled high, and barring his path was another rock slide that had solidified into a makeshift door.
"Jacqui," he said, "you gotta come clear these."
"I'm on it."
She snapped a switch on her gauntlets and they whirred to life, glowing blue with the energy inside. She shot tiny charges into the rocks, shattering and breaking them until there was enough room for them to get past. Takeda helped her clear the larger debris by hand while Cassie and Jin looked on.
"Heh! Hey, watch this!" Jin said. He picked up a loose pebble and threw it at the ground. Takeda watched the arc of it, and it landed in the ribcage of a skeleton that he had missed earlier. It rattled around inside before slipping through the back and laying still.
"Jin, that's so immature," Jacqui grumbled. He picked up another rock and entertained himself, and every pebble he threw reminded Takeda of that scratching sound. It seemed to worm its way into his thoughts. He knew something was off about it, but his refusal to address it only made his apprehension worse. It didn't sound like the normal spider sounds. It sounded sharper. Somehow, more threatening. It sounded like something with claws, scratching at the walls where they were. And either it had friends, or was very fast and was darting around them. Either way, neither bode well.
"Jin, knock it off!" Takeda hissed, and the rock that was already in the air clattered to the ground and rolled. Stuck on the back end of it was another sound. That different sound. "Shhh!" On instinct, he ducked low to the ground. "Listen. I hear it again."
Skrrrrrtch! Skrtch skrtch! Followed by a rattling sound. It was gone for a moment, and then started up again a ways away from them.
"That's not a spider," Jacqui said, and he was thankful someone else realized it. "It's . . . like it's in the walls."
"Let's hurry up," he said. "I think it's following us."
He and Jacqui worked more hurriedly, until the door was completely free of rocks. Takeda helped Jacqui to her feet and Jin took the lead again, The next area was a tiny clearing, with a small shred of natural light that luckily reached all ends of it. They could easily see the torch up ahead, leading them further into the depths. There were entire piles of bones, like a discard area for the spiders when they were done feasting, and more than a few bodies hanging from the ceiling and rotting on the ground. As a formality, they still kept to the right hand wall, and Takeda swore he could hear the scratching on the back end of their footsteps. As they neared the next section of tunnel, the wall on the right hand side suddenly turned inward, bottle-necking the path. As they shifted to accommodate it, they passed a carcass - the first spider carcass that the four of them hadn't killed.
It was half a carcass. Only the large, bulbous rear end of the spider was left, and its legs were scattered all around it, like little L's. The inside of the carcass was picked nearly clean. Scoured out.
There was something else there. Something that ate the spiders.
"We should get out of here," Takeda whispered. "We gotta get out of here."
"Just a little further," Jin said. "Hopefully." His voice sounded small. He was staring at the spiders' empty husk. The hair on Takeda's arms started to bristle, and he could feel a fight coming on. He double-checked and made sure that his whips were good and ready to be released, and that his kunai were there at his hip, ready to be used if he needed them. He had stored the explosive ones in his pack when they were topside, afraid he would accidentally bring down the cave with one.
The next area had no natural light. Only the torch that they quickly left behind them that left their shadows to grow taller and taller in front of them. The occasional scrape and tap of Raiden's staff on the wall kept them close, and as the wall loomed in front of them, the staff squelched against the wall. He froze, tugging on Raiden's staff, and when it refused to budge he winced.
"Aw, man . . ."
He tugged on it harder, and it pulled away with a wet sucking sound and a deflated hiss. A rotten stench of death instantly filled the entire space, and all four of them recoiled, and Takeda's eyes started to burn and water. The smell of putrefaction traveled right down his nose and cling to the inside of his throat, making him feel as though he swallowed it. He retched, turning away, while Jin quickly grabbed one of the pieces of loose fabric hanging from his clothes and covered his nose and mouth. He raised the glow stick and illuminated one of the bodies hanging from the ceiling. Jin had accidentally jabbed under its armpit, and a black-ish green sludge xpoured out of the hole and splattered onto the cave floor.
"Fuck . . . " Cassie said.
"Sorry. Didn't mean to do that. Just didn't see him there," Jin muttered. "Anybody got a cloth or something I can clean this with?" he said, waving Raiden's staff. More bodily goop flung off of it in every direction, and the three of them backed away to dodge it.
Nobody answered him, so he instead scraped the end of the staff against the cave floor. Takeda knew that even if he managed to get all of it off, the staff would still stick for a while after. "Awesome," he thought bitterly.
"C-come on," Jacqui said through her hands covering her mouth. "The faster we get away from this the better." They maneuvered past the body and kept to the wall, even as it turned sharply to the left, giving the right side of the room a distinct square shape.
Another scratching sound reached them, echoing from across the room. They froze, and Jin held up the glow stick as far as he could, but it couldn't reach the opposit wall. Cassie's hands fumbled for something, and she cursed under her breath before her flashlight clicked to life. She shone it directly across from them, waving it back and forth dizzily to try and catch any sign of their pursuer. She tried the walls, the ground, the ceiling - and though there were spiders on the ceiling, they ducked away from the beam and seemed to shrink back into the shadows like they were afraid.
Even with the light, the scratching continued. Once on the right, once on the left, back to the middle.
"It is in the walls," she shuddered. "R-Raiden? Uncle Jax?!"
There was no answer, and the scritch scritch squeak stopped. Cassie swallowed thickly. "There's something after us. I don't know what it is, but there is definitely something after us. We gotta move." Her voice was shaking, and so was the beam on the wall. "Fuck. Okay, okay, okay. Jin, don't drag the staff along the walls anymore. You might be leading it around us."
"Got it. Everyone, weapons ready."
Takeda fed a length of his whips through his hands and Jacqui powered up her gauntlets again. Jin, Takeda noticed, was feeding a small bit of power to Raiden's staff. Just enough to get it to glow with energy. Takeda hoped he would know how to use it.
COVID-19 Quarantine Day 19 for me here near Pittsburgh, PA. One of my jobs, a video rental store, closed for the time being while my other job, a major telecommunications company, is staying open though my particular store closed. I'm being sent to another store in the area as of Monday and I'm not excited for it. I'm nervous, but I think eventually everything's gonna be okay. I hope you all stay safe amid this pandemic.