All
bold words are the names of the cards played from Pulp Alley’s Adventure Deck or Horror Deck (
https://store.pulpalley.com/). I tried to work them into the story as directly as possible.
Please ignore the cluster of Deep Ones, I hadn't yet placed them and would use the water as the "holding pen" for pre-deployment.
Turn 1 A denizen creeps in from each spawning point and a third appears
from the shadows.
Yuri convinces Natsuko, their weakest fighter to move
toward the threat, while she takes care of it.
“Don’t worry, I’ve got this!”
After the little fib, she overcame
intense fear to take on the Deep One; bam-frying him with energized strikes.
Tsubaki rushed through a field of cargo and trucks; she alone with her own fears as went deeper into the fog. This close to the water front, she had to hold back panic as in a few steps she would be in the perilous deep fog…
Turn 2Failing his health check that Deep One Yuri took down is ready to puree into kamaboko!
Natsuko could
hear them coming! She froze up in the tunnel, her back flat against the wall and cunningly hid in a convenient Natsuko-sized empty basket until the terror seemed to pass… then darted out into the street as fast as a limping, unathletic girl with a definitely real golden monkey in her hand could! Glancing back, she saw Yuri had been true to her word and had taken down the nearest fishy foe!
Yuri was going to have a repeat of her last success, but seeing the second fish man instilled a primal terror in her and remembering that discretion is the better part of valor, she involuntarily decided to
run away!
“What are you doing here?!” Natsuko asked. “I thought you were taking out another one.”
“I didn’t want to leave you alone again,” she lied.
The peril welled up in Tsubaki and instead of facing it, she dodged the situation and stayed where she was on the edge of madness. Two fish-frogs came into view and charged her.
Unlike her sister, she fought the urge to
run away and stood her ground. Calmly, she aimed her index finger, like a child making a finger gun, at the charging beast. Spiritual energy flowed from her center and through the finger tip. Her
rei gun didn’t take him down permanently, but he flopped to the ground stunned. The second close the gap and she barely delivered a strike and counter strike, her small fists blazing with the same energy she’d fired at the first opponent. He was also stunned but would be back up soon.
The other Deep One followed Yuri and attempted to take her out but in the up close engagement, all he showed off was the deadly “my face to your foot style.” It was super effective! Unlike Tsubaki’s victims, this one also wouldn’t be getting back up.
Turn 3Two more Deep Ones appeared from the water’s edge before Tsubaki; the other two were regaining control of their bodily functions now that their bladders had emptied on her good shoes. Taking in her environment, she made a
remarkable discovery! Using all her brain power (and a bobby pin) she forced open a back door and escaped the killing field.
The empty pub emptied her out onto the street near the Russo-Japanese War Embarkation Memorial.
Natsuko momentarily thought her way was
blocked by Deep Ones, but it was a
red herring.
“That’s a cigarette stand. It doesn’t even smell like fish,” Yuri said. She was as afraid as Natsuko, but bad humor was her coping mechanism; at least for problems she couldn’t punch.
“Everything smells like fish!” She spat back before scampering onward. Yuri shot past, ready to run interference as planned.
The Deep One came at Tsubaki but she didn’t get
frozen and repeated the process from last time. As with last time, it merely stunned the foe.
Yuri wasn’t as lucky; neither she nor dinner could win and fought to standstill. Two more joined into the melee and though her attacks weakened, she took down one more but was trapped in the fight. The one that went down was just twitching though…
Two more Deep Ones charged Tsubaki and even her ranged attacks began to falter. A webbed strike sent her to the gravel but at this range her blast gets him right between the eyes.
“Bang.”
Turn 4Gathering her
determination (and holding onto it for later) Natsuko moved forward when another Deep One appeared
from the shadows! He tried to corner her, but she dodged below his briny grip and passed him! For good measure, the embarkation memorial bronze statue fell over for no reason whatsoever when she came near and scared the living daylights out of her. You’d think a falling statue would be a peril, but it wasn’t. (She did have to pass a check though, it practically fell on her)
Otherwise, the melees continue with bold sides making impressive misses and there’s no resolution in sight.
Turn 5Natsuko is feeling
alone in the dark.
Kowaika! But there was an
unexpected twist, she wasn’t scared. Nothing happened and she trudged forward, almost to the dock…
Melees continue unabated. Even Natsuko dodges a Deep One and stumbles onto the dock, this time not falling.
Turn 6Still feeling
alone in the dark, Natsuko almost suffered a lapse of reason, but shook it off. The ugly, rust bucket of a tramp steamer was in sight and standing impatiently on the dock of the bay was the captain, just wasting time while also impassively watching the fights going on well within pistol range.
“Aren’t you going to help?! My friends are in trouble!”
“They’re not my friends,” he shrugged. “And the fish folk leave me alone as long as I don’t bother them.”
“I was paid to get this monkey and the idiot attached to it to Sarushima.” Without listening to her protests, the girl was swiftly lifted up with a hand and tossed onto the boat like a sack of light potatoes. “Alright, Tenille- get us out of here!!”
Somehow, the day was saved thanks to a strategically placed
Unkempt Bush. There’s no way to safely work that into the narrative so I’m not even going to try. That was the check she passed for the plot point.
As the boat got up to speed the fish folk disengaged from the Hanamura girls and dove into the water after it.
“They’re gaining on us!” Natsuko cried.
“She’s just warming up, we’ll out run them,” the captain assured her smugly. “She may not look like much, but she’s got it where it counts.”
“Insurance policy?”
“Watch your mouth kid or you’ll be floating home.”
True to his word, the Little Scrap Pile-That-Could picked up speed and escaped the webbed clutches of the Deep Ones! Natsuko wondered if she could learn how to drive a boat by watching the captain and what’s-her-name.
The shore was once again empty; Yuri leaned against the fallen war memorial and caught her breath. She hurt all over and was bleeding from somewhere, but being alive was all that mattered. Tsubaki was also worse for wear and flopped down beside her. Yuri smiled at her sister.
Tsubaki smiled back, “say sushi, sashimi, kamaboko, aji furai or anything seafood related and I will finish you off here and now.”
Yuri’s smile widened. “…
basashi…”
Horse sashimi.
They shared a laugh then began a very long walk.
The Deep Ones are a mix of Pulp Alley / North Star (
https://store.pulpalley.com/product-p/n-h1001.htm), Brigade (
https://www.brigadegames.com/bg-cth102_deep_one_with_open_hand) (
https://www.brigadegames.com/bg-cth103_deep_one_with_club) and Adeavy Creations from an Etsy vendor but I forget which one.
ERRATAKamaboko is pureed fish reconstituted into a solid shape.
The
Rei gun or spirit gun was Yusuke’s main way of using spirit energy early in Yu Yu Hakusho. The girls aren’t physically strong but can channel their spirit energy through physical blows or firing it.
The Russo-Japanese War Embarkation Memorial is inspired by an actual memorial at Mojiko’s former port. Being the nearest major port to Dairen/Port Arthur, thousands of troops and horses passed through the port on the way to war. Today Mojiko has one of the nicest collections of Taisho (1912-26) buildings in Japan. Many of the real world bronze statues were melted down during World War II for war material or pulled down post war by the occupation forces as part of Japan’s demilitarization, which is a massive topic to cover in a foot note. I wrote about one interesting survivor of this period on my history & travel site, “The Well-Traveled Equestrian Statue of Yamagata Aritomo.” (
https://www.wayfarerdaves.com/?p=5430)
Kowaika is the West Kyushu equivalent of kowaii or “scary.”
Basashi is horse sashimi and is also pretty good, it’s the regional specialty of Kumamoto. According to Our Regional Cuisines, “Horses have a higher body temperature than cows and pigs, making it difficult for bacteria that can cause food poisoning to multiply, which is one of the reasons why horse meat can be eaten raw.” Apocryphally, its origins may lie in Japan’s failed 1590s invasion of Korea and Kato Kiyomasa’s troops being forced to eat their horses to survive.
February 14, 2013, 12:23:17 AM
