Some days are no fun. This one lacks context because the striped squid doesn't have a strong understanding of why its world boils with rage. It makes for shallower waters, but the process takes days. It's swirled around a funnel of water reaching the sea floor. It gets tossed this way and that through the air. Somehow, it manages to find every rocky protrusion between it and the shore. In a moment of peace, it comes to itself, reshaping to four limbs with a torso between them and its head. That humanoid shape rapidly experiences the opposite of peace near the bottom of the ocean. It swims up up up, not fighting the lateral pull, and nearly breaches the surface before its lungs are breached with water. The limbs slow then stop, and the corpse sinks lower.

The squid carries on with grim determination. It is what it is, it can do what it can do, and the rest is up to the ocean. The ocean's in a bad mood, and it cycles through death and life and death again. Sometimes it only comes back for a minute. Sometimes it takes hours and hours to die again. When it's stranded on the shore, it lacks the strength to pull itself up the beach. Instead it burrows into the sand, pulling more and more over itself until little shows.

A slick spot no larger than one handspan acts like a window to the squid below. It thickens protectively over that vulnerable flesh nearly the same color as the black sand. In time, it recedes to reveal a human looking face, unconscious but breathing.

The only time Murderbot has seen anything like this glowing monstrosity has been rather recent—gray skinned alien-remnant infected people that were no longer themselves but only serving something alien and dangerous. It's seen fauna across a wide range of worlds, large hostile fauna even. It's seen multiple mouthy bits. It's seen tentacles. It hasn't seen that many eyes on one thing. It has no idea what the large fauna is, but that tentacle is definitely passing someone up along its suckers like a conveyor belt. The mouth isn't as tall as a person, but it sits in the center of the tentacles, sharp and hooked, opening and closing with enough force to guarantee a person is never in one piece again. 

That's how Murderbot ends up running toward the horrific monstrosity with its large projectile weapon in hand. It waits until its close to fire repeatedly at the same point on the tentacle, higher up than the person riding the worst ride in recent memory. The flesh tears away, more than halfway through. Murderbot grabs the narrower end it's near and pulls. The limb goes taut, and everything halts for a moment. To a shriek Murderbot didn't realize water based fauna made, the tentacle comes off, spilling blood into the shallow water. It's still pulling with all its considerable strength. The tentacle, person and all, whip back from Murderbot. It releases it, and the whole thing flies through the air up the beach and away from the ocean.

One Murderbot. One monstrosity.

Sure, Murderbot's pissed, but it doesn't have armor on. This thing can clearly inflict a lot of damage. It does what SecUnits are good for—securing their clients. It races up the beach after the person, grabbing them without concern for however oriented they are. There isn't time. It's racing fauna without any kind of flyer or vehicle to reach. "Fuck fuck fuck fuck," it swears under its breath. What a good idea, Murderbot. Like it hasn't experienced enough forced shutdowns recently. 

The fauna chases them.

Local clothes with pockets isn't hard to acquire, and Murderbot prefers almost anything over the 'we caught a new one' welcome outfit. It sweeps through the boardwalk to get a sense of the immediate area. There's a whole city. It's large, and something twisting inside it dislikes ending up in some dead end. It isn't sure why. Dead ends likely have fewer people. It opts to trust its instincts since its memories are still rebuilding themselves. 



Once the sixth person aggressively offers some kind of seashell, sea glass, or sea weed related hair piece, it accepts that not having one marks it an outsider and attracts attention it doesn't want. It also has no desire to stick a piece of the ocean that spat it out into its hair. Not that long ago something organic and goopy and gross was there. It approaches a table of wares the way humans might regard unexploded ordinance. It carefully touches nothing, in case that somehow obliges it with displaying the item prominently. It's all too much—too big, too loud, too complicated, too many fragile pieces that could explode far easier than its head. It feels like wearing a knife point pressing against its head. Who does that? (Humans, the answer is always humans). Which it is. It's a totally normal nothing to worry about human. That's what it wants the humans to think, so it needs to press some kind of aquatic death instrument to its skull.



It finds the plainest piece across three tables. Its slow regard and eventual approval offered to the person behind the table, as determined by its rejection of the other vendors, sparks an incredible level of joy, and the hairpiece is practically shoved forcefully into Murderbot's hand. Its fragile construction saves it skin to skin contact. It approximates a smile and makes a show of putting the thing into its hair to the distinct pleasure of the person before them. 



It continues down the boardwalk and notes a thirty percent drop in looks its way with a forty percent drop in the length of the looks it does get. The right call, clearly. It misses the stores in the space stations where it could obtain whatever it needed to purchase without talking to a person. It could have been worse.

What's more incredible, given the large fauna coming from the ocean, is how undisturbed the festival area seems. Perhaps the shells provide protection? Some marker the fauna respects? It cannot ask without revealing itself, which leaves Murderbot with only a growing list of unanswered questions.

[ Contact me at inoctavo or silyara#7604 on Discord to plot other options. Permissions here.