After quite the chaotic start, the day seems to be going quite smoothly for Meg and Mari as they patrol the streets of Auguste. That being said, “patrolling the streets” in this case mostly just refers to the two of them spending of the day quietly wandering the town and following Meg’s nose to all manner of food stalls while taking in the sights, as well as a few other stops to repce Mari’s furniture that had broken earlier in the morning, and some new outfits for Meg after she ripped a huge tear down the side of her pyjama top when she moved her arm a little too quickly.

  But, for as much as this excursion has helped keep Meg in good spirits, she can’t help but notice the strange shark skin on her body has continued to spread out from her arm. The sleeveless crop top and baggy jeans Mari brought her from Auguste’s new sportswear line, which just so happens to be the same outfit she wore during the charity concert, are a good choice as far as letting her move around without having to worry about another wardrobe malfunction, but it does little to hide her condition. Now that they’re well into the day, and the grey skin has started to poke out from underneath where the top ends on her left side, she can’t help but wonder how much time she has until there’s not a trace of regur skydweller skin left.

  Meg does her best to try and enjoy this time together regardless, even if she can’t help but notice the posters and merchandise all over town that sport her image, or at the very least, the image of the person she looked like up until the st twenty-four hours. For some reason, that sight has been causing some increasingly odd emotions to start swelling within her.

  She and Mari have now found themselves taking a leisurely stroll past a small fishing pier near the water, carved out of solid stone and sticking out past the sandy shores nearby. Mari stays close to her side, having almost never let her out of her sight the entire day, and while she hasn’t mentioned Meg’s condition since they met with the crew this morning, Meg can tell she’s scared of what’s going on.

  “This is really nice, isn’t it? Just the two of us.” Mari gazes up lovingly at Meg as she holds on tight to the taller girl's arm, keeping their bodies close together to help deal with the Autumn chill in the air.

  “Yeah…” Sorry, Mari… You must be absolutely terrified of what’s happening to me. Why else would you be holding on so tight? “I’m gd nothing’s tried to attack us today.”

  “I bet if anything did attack you’d be able to beat them no problem, though. Especially with how strong you are now, Meg.”

  “Maybe, but I’m more than happy to not have to find out.” Especially since I’ve already failed to protect you twice already…

  “I’m happy to just wander around like this as well. Auguste’s really doing well right now, isn’t it?”

  Meg smiles, happy to change the subject. “Yeah, it’s come such a long way with your help, Marri. I remember when this arear was just a bunch of trees with not a building in sight, and just look at it now!”

  “Huh? That… doesn’t sound right.”

  “Really? What do you mean?”

  Mari suddenly looks a little concerned. “Meg, they started developing this area, like, two hundred years ago. Some of these buildings have been here for way longer than we’ve been alive.”

  “W-What? Arre you sure?” Meg stops in her tracks with a worried expression.

  “Definitely, I saw the records myself when I helped city hall organise their archives st year.”

  “But… But…” Meg puts a hand to her head as the headache suddenly returns once more. “I… I can clearly remember… I saw this parrt of the isnd from the ocean once… There wasn’t anything there… It was… just how it always used to look? Ngh…” She grunts as she tries to ignore the pain and focus on the image in her head, until someone takes her hand.

  “Maybe we need to take a break, we’ve been wandering around all day, after all.” Mari says as she looks into Meg’s eyes.

  Meg takes a breath, noticing the headache starting to fade just as quickly as it appeared. “That might be a good idear, yeah… Sorry about that, I’m not sure what’s going on, but I know I remember something like that.”

  “Maybe you had it mixed up with a different part of town or something? There are a few other spots around the isnd that we only started building on in the st few years.”

  “Maybe… I can see it so clearly, though.” Meg looks calmer than she did a few moments ago, but no less confused.

  Mari gives her a sweet smile before starting to guide her along by the hand. “Well, why don’t we sort it out over some ice cream? There’s a shop nearby that has the new-”

  “Mari, there you are!” A Draph man in construction gear calls out as he runs over. He does a quick double take when he sees Meg, which certainly does nothing to help calm the girl’s nerves, but whatever thought runs through his head at the time never meets his lips. “We’ve run into an issue on the site.”

  “Huh? What site?” Mari looks at him with confusion.

  “The cave-in under that old building in the nightlife district, I’m part of the excavation team.”

  The Erune can barely hide her annoyance at the interruption. “Why is there an excavation team there? We weren’t gonna bother until we found the other piece of the primal core!”

  “Well, we kindar did find it, I guess…” Meg says sheepishly as she holds her left arm up.

  “I mean, yeah, but we can’t do much with it while it’s stuck inside you like that.” Mari turns back to the worker. “Who authorised this job?”

  “It was the mayor, ma’am.”

  “Ugh… why would he… Whatever, why are you coming to me instead of him? I’ll have you know I’m on vacation this week.”

  “I did. He, uh… told me to talk to you about it, Mari..”

  “Can that man not solve his own problems? Tell him I’m busy, and that I’ll look into it next we-”

  “Marri, maybe you should hear him out. If it’s about that building it might be important.” Meg says.

  “But… our vacation…”

  “It’s okay, we can go get those ice creams when you’re done. They’re not going anywhere. I’ll just wait over there by the water, okay?”

  Mari looks at her with sad eyes, but Meg simply gives her a soft smile, and she lets out a long sigh in response. “Okay, fine. I’ll do my best to keep this quick, okay?” She then looks to the man once more with a very nonplussed expression. “You better have a good reason for this.”

  As the two begin to discuss the situation regarding the cave in, Meg quietly walks off in the direction of the pier, her smile fading after she turns away from Mari. She does her best to ignore the nearby tourist who is confusedly looking at both her, and a poster of her in a nearby shop front, as if they’re struggling to tell if the woman walking past is in fact the same person or not.

  Meg walks down the pier, where no one else is around, and looks at her left hand. “Arre you there, Ursur?”

  The shark emerges from within her, and Meg can’t help but notice how the recent changes to her arm make it impossible to tell where Ursu ends and she begins as the sharky flesh simply gives way to yet more sharky flesh.

  “Sharrrk?” Ursu says with little emotion in her voice.

  “I don’t know, I just wanted to check on you, I guess. You haven’t really come out at all in the past day and a half unless you’re hungry.”

  “Sharrrk.”

  Ursu’s response irritates Meg. “What do you mean ‘that’s all’? You really haven’t been yourself since this whole thing starrted! I’m worried about you! Heck, I’m worried about both of us! Where’d you even find that primal sharrd?”

  “Sharrrk…”

  “Don’t just say it doesn’t matter, look at what’s happening to us, and to all the other sharrks! How am I meant to expin to the others where some of them have ended up!?”

  “Shark Sharrrk.”

  “I’ll call on you whenever I feel like it! Where do you get off, telling me I don’t have a good reason to bring you out!? I want to talk to you, Ursur!”

  “Sharrrrrk.” With one st disinterested reply, Ursu recedes back into Meg’s body.

  “Ursur! No, Ursur!” Meg grabs her forearm, as if she can somehow stop her from hiding away once more. “Come back out again! Ursur!”

  When it’s clear that the shark has no interest in re-emerging, Meg finally lets go, an upset expression appearing on her face.

  “Ursur… please… I miss you…”

  Having been shut out by one of her closest companions, Meg can’t help but let the dark thoughts swirl in her head.

  I just don’t get what’s going on… Everything just keeps getting worse, and nothing I try is fixing it! I don’t know what to do anymore…

  I just… want things to go back to how they used to be…

  “Ughhhhhh! I don’t mind helping out, but not on my vacation! Can’t the mayor keep it together without me for just one week?”

  Mari sighs as she walks down towards the water. Having finished speaking with the member of the excavation team, all she cares about now is picking things up where she left off with Meg.

  “Now, where did she get off to? She said she’d be down this way somewhere, didn’t she?”

  The Erune scans along the water line, searching for her beloved, but her eyes go wide in shock when she finally locates her on the nearby pier.

  “...Meg?”

  Meg is just standing there motionlessly, facing the water as a dozen or so sharks fly around her in such tight circles that there’s nowhere for her to move.

  “Meg!” Mari calls out as she starts running over, but the woman makes no indication that she heard her at all.

  “What’s going on!? What are they doing to you!?”

  “Shaaark, shaaark, shaaark…” The sharks all softly call out in unison, chanting together as they trap Meg where she stands.

  Mari gets close enough to make out Meg’s face, but she’s just looking down at the water despondently, still ignoring whatever Mari’s saying.

  “Meg, can you hear me!?”

  Mari wants to reach in and take her hand, but for as much as they don’t seem bothered by her presence, the sharks offer no opening for her to get past, and Meg herself doesn’t take any notice of her either. Whether it’s due to the sharks, or something else entirely, Meg seems to be completely shut off from the world around her.

  “Shaaark, shaaark, shaaark…”

  Mari looks around in a panic, trying to figure out what’s going on and what she can do about it, until she looks back to Meg and the sharks, nodding as she steels herself for the only course of action she can think of that doesn’t involve leaving Meg on her own while she searches for help.

  “Okay, I’m coming in, Meg!”

  Mari holds her arms out in front of her face to protect herself and she charges the barrier of sharks with as much force as she can muster. Unfortunately, her efforts amount to very little, as she’s pushed back the moment she makes contact with one of the sharks, their strength far outweighing her own, and she yelps in pain as she nds on the rocky surface of the pier, scraping her right arm across the ground in the process.

  “Aaah!”

  Suddenly, Meg looks in her direction. Mari’s cry managing to break her out of whatever spell she was under.

  “Marri!” She tries to run over, but the sharks still fly all around her, blocking her way. Meg looks at them with confusion, having not noticed them at all until now, before starting to panic at the sight of Mari in pain before her.

  “N-No! STOP! LET ME THROUGH!”

  Suddenly, the sharks simply stop what they’re doing and fly off. Meg runs right over to Mari without a second thought as the Erune slowly sits up, tenderly holding her arm. All Meg manages to do is kneel down and move around nervously, wanting to help but not having a clue how to do so in the moment. “Marri, a-are you okay? Y-You… you’re ble-… ble-... the blo-..”

  A small amount of blood trickles out from where the damage is the worst, and for some reason it drives Meg into even more of a panic. There’s something about the sight of it rolling down Mari’s arm, and the smell as it meets Meg’s nose, that’s making it hard for her to think, let alone speak. Like every bone in her body is screaming for something, but she can’t understand what, and no matter what she does she can’t focus on anything except for that red liquid, gently flowing out from Mari’s arm like a-.

  “Ngh… I’m okay, Meg…” Mari looks over her wound for a few moments before pulling a handkerchief out of her pocket and wrapping it around the worst part of the wound, wiping up the blood in the process. “It’s just a bad scrape. We’ll need to buy some bandages on the way home, but I’ll be fine. Guess that’s what I get for trying to py hero huh? I should really leave that kinda thing to you, hahaha…”

  Meg blinks a couple times and shakes her head as she returns to her senses, but she can’t help but keep panicking considering what she just saw happen. “B-But Marri, you’re… h-hurt… I-I-I let you get hurt…”

  “Really, you don’t have to worry. I helped a local clinic a couple months back when both of their nurses got sick, and I can promise you that this isn’t a big deal. At most I’ll just have to keep an eye on it for a few weeks. What about you, though? What was going on back there?”

  “M-Me?”

  “Yeah, did those sharks do something to you? It was like you couldn’t hear me at all.”

  “I don’t know… I was…” Meg stops for a moment, trying to recall the events leading up to Mari’s injury. “What… was I doing? I remember trying to speak with Ursur, and then she said some pretty rude things to me, but… I don’t really remember much after that.”

  Mari looks very confused as she listens to Meg’s answer. “Wait… you understood what Ursu was saying?”

  Meg simply stares back at her bnk-faced until she finally realises what was so strange about the situation. “Wait, you’re right! That’s… That’s not normal… is it? Why didn’t I realise that myself?”

  “Are you sure you’re okay, Meg? You’ve seemed pretty out of it for a while now, even before whatever it was you were just doing…”

  “Y-Yeah… I’m sure. Just… a little tired, like you said earlier. Now come on, let's get you those bandages.” Meg gently helps Mari back on her feet, who then proceeds to brush herself off a bit.

  “Okay, don’t forget the ice cream as well! Then we can- Crap!” Mari suddenly yells out, looking at her right hand.

  “Wh-What is it!?”

  “The ring’s gone!” In all the panic of what happened, Meg hadn’t noticed until now, but the pstic ring is indeed missing from Mari’s finger. “It must’ve fallen off when I fell down!”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll find it!”

  The two of them search that part of the pier, but there’s no trace of it anywhere.

  “Oh no, it must have fallen in the water. That’s such a shame…” Mari says sadly.

  “In the water…” Meg looks off the side of the pier with a troubled expression, deep in thought.

  “...Meg?”

  “...I’ll be right back, Marri.”

  “H-Huh?” Meg dives right into the water without giving Mari a chance to respond. All she can do is walk over to the edge herself and wait for her to surface.

  “That’s very sweet of her, but there’s no way she’ll be able to find it down there. When she comes up for air I’ll tell her she doesn’t have to bother.”

  …

  “Aaaaany second now…” She says after waiting a while

  …

  “...Meg?”

  Well over a minute passes by without a single sign of Meg, and the worry quickly sinks in.

  “Oh no, no no no no no! D-Did something happen down there?”

  Mari readies herself to jump in the water, but stops herself before taking the plunge.

  “No. If there’s something in the water that’s too dangerous for even her, then I don’t stand a chance, especially with my arm like this. Ohhhhhh what do I do!?”

  Mari flounders around the pier trying to find something she could use to help, knowing very well that every moment she wastes reduces her chances of helping Meg, and her panic only greatens.

  “I-I shouldn’t have let her jump in there! Wh-What if she doesn’t come back up!? What if she’s-”

  Suddenly, Meg bursts out of the water as she jumps back onto the pier, spshing a lot of cold salt water all around in the process.

  “Found it!” She says with a wide smile, holding up the ring. “Sorry it took me a while, a current had already picked it up and I had to swim pretty farst to catch up to it and-”

  Mari practically rams into Meg, wrapping her arms around the rger woman to hold her tight. She buries her face into Meg’s body, making it hard for her to figure out what’s going on at first.

  “W-Woah! Is… everything okay, Marri? You’re gonna get soaked if you hold onto me like that.”

  “Why were you down there for so long, Meg?” She says, very clearly upset. “I thought you drowned or something!”

  “Was I down there for that long? I didn’t even notice… It’s like rst night all over again…”

  “Did something happen then as well?”

  “I wouldn’t say something happened so much as… it didn’t, I guess. I never noticed until I got back home, but I barely came up for air at all the whole time Ursur and I were in the water. I think this sharrd might be making it so I can breathe underwater or something.”

  “Well I wish I’d known that before you jumped in, Meg. You really scared me with that stunt of yours!”

  Meg’s seen Mari get upset before, but never like this, not directed at her. “I’m sorry, Marri. I really keep screwing things up, don’t I?” She says guiltily. “I just figured the ring must have been important to you. I’ve seen how much you wear it, and all…”

  Mari sighs. “It is, but it’s not so important that it’s worth risking your life over. I know you mean well, I just want you to be careful, okay? I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to you...”

  “You… don’t…?”

  Mari finally looks up at her, with a slightly grumpy frown on her face. “Of course I don’t! That ring’s only important to me because it was a gift from you, you know.”

  “R-Really? I-I’m so sorry, I had no clue…” Meg straightens herself up a bit. “I promise I’ll try to be more careful in the future, Marri.”

  “Thanks, Meg. I know you didn’t do it on purpose.” Mari finally lets go of Meg and takes the ring from her, putting it back on her finger where it belongs, before letting a small smile appear on her face again. “Well if you want to help me feel better, you better help me get some bandages and ice cream! We’ll need to dry you off as well, so let’s go find us a towel first!”

  “Yeah! Of course!” Meg finally smiles again herself as she follows Mari back down the pier, and into town.

  I didn’t realise Mari saw me as such an important friend. I suppose that’s at least something, but still, I just keep failing to do right by her…

  “How’d you manage to find this thing anyway?” Mari asks as she stares at the ring.

  “I dunno, it just kindar… smelled like you. It was pretty easy to find because of that.”

  “It what?”

  Meg’s eyes go wide when she realises what she said. “O-Oh! N-No it wasn’t that! I just got l-lucky I guess! Let’s go get that stuff!” Meg says, running past a very confused Mari.

  Meg walks with Mari back towards her apartment as the sun starts to set. After a quick stop at a local store, Mari’s arm is now properly bandaged, and both women are equipped with an ice cream in hand.

  “So, what did that guy want to talk to you about earlier, Marri?” Meg asks after a while.

  “Oh right, I almost forgot about that after everything else that happened. Apparently the excavation team can’t even begin to get down into that cavern.”

  “Wow, was the cave in that bad?”

  “Not even that, they can’t get past the statue thing!”

  “Really? Didn’t we just push it open? I mean, it took all of us to do it, even Ursur, but still…”

  “Yeah. I don’t know why, but it’s just not budging for them at all. They said they were thinking about using explosives to get past, but I put a stop to that right away. We do not need to make that Ukupanipo guy even angrier by blowing up his shrine, or whatever it is. So they’re just gonna put a hold on the operation until someone figures out what’s going on there, which is what they would’ve been doing in the first pce if the mayor hadn’t stuck his nose into things…”

  “Huh… Guess that means we need to head over there ourselves then.”

  Mari shrugs. “Yeah, but not right now. We can talk to your crew about it tomorrow or something.”

  “T-The c-c-crew?” Meg says, suddenly looking very nervous again. “W-Why do we need to talk to them t-tomorrow?”

  Mari turns to her with a smile. “Because I want to spend tonight focusing on you! You’re still so stressed out, so I want you to sit back and rex while I take care of dinner and everything.”

  “O-Oh, thanks Marri!” Meg immediately starts calming back down again. “Dinner does sound pretty nice, actually.”

  “Great! So what do you want? We can grab whatever we need from the markets near my pce.”

  “Well, haha…” Meg chuckles as she scratches the back of her head. “Would you believe me if I said I had a bit of a craving for fish right now?”

  “Then we’ll just have to buy all the fish you need, hehehe!”

  Meg looks downward, smiling softly. “...Thanks again Marri, for all of this.”

  “Anything for you, Meg! Don’t worry about a single thing tonight, I’ll make sure you’re well taken care of~” Mari beams at Meg before biting right into her ice cream, which is shaped like a crude drawing of Meg’s very own face.

  “Ahahahaha…” Meg nervously chuckles. I really wish that ice cream was me right now…

  Meg then gives her own ice cream, hers being Ursu themed, a bite, only to let out a grunt as she winces in pain.

  “Arrgh!”

  “Are you okay, Meg!?”

  “Yeah, sorry. I think I just bit into the gumball eye a bit too harrd.” Meg rubs her jaw for a moment. “My jaw’s been a little sore all arfternoon, to be honest.”

  “Well I hope it’s nothing too serious! Let me know if we need to get you some medicine or something!”

  “Yeah, I’ll let you know, Marri.”

  The two of them walk off towards the market, looking forward to a nice night in after the chaos of the st few days. With any luck, tonight will be just what Meg needs to feel better.

  She can’t help but feel a little concerned as she walks past yet another banner with a picture of herself on it, however. For some reason, the smell of Mari’s blood lingers in her mind. Even now, some time after the wound has been treated, she just… can’t stop thinking about it, no matter what she does…

  SyntaxSpeedway