Splatroad: Before Time - Artifact Adventures

Ancience

Ancient Artifacts and Where to Find Them...was a book that sounded an awful lot like an old book humans used to read, at least from what Sakura remembered from learning about humans in squid school. Even though their species didn't use magic, the book was supposedly called "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them", and was about magic creatures from some made-up fairytale back in human times. Well, this book was similar to it, but instead of creatures it was about...well...artifacts. And being the wisdom trait she was, Sakura had read up on it to study its artifacts in case Captain Cuttlefish sent the group out to fetch another artifact. When the day surprisingly came, Sakura was ready and prepared to inform the hero group about what the artifact was.

The targeted artifact was "The Draconic Earring", which, as its name suggested, was an earring that allowed the user to transform into a draconic creature...even though the base form was a Sea Monster looking creature instead. As far as Sakura was concerned, Sea Monsters were just a larger variant of lizard that technically weren't considered "Dragons", but Sea Dragons in general could come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, so she supposed she shouldn't look TOO deep into it. What mattered was that the group again had to seize the relic before any other force could. Unfortunately, King had a tournament coming up so he wasn't able to tag along this time. He wasn't exactly considered an agent though, he was more of a helper that assisted with his turf and battle skills.

Savannah had a job interview of sorts and ALSO could not help Amber and Yuki out with their spy information, but that was okay because Sakura had a good amount of information already. The Squidbeak's destination was Cockatrice County, a location VERY far away from Inkopolis. It had taken around 3 days to get there with the vehicle transport the agents took, and they had to stay in hotels during the nights. The place was notorious for its special jewelry market, where many things both priceless and beautiful were put up for sale. Amber had suggested that the group check the place out, since there could be a variety of relics on there, or even the artifact they were looking for.

Captain Cuttlefish on the other hand had not tagged along and instead opted to help search for other locations with Amber, in case Cockatrice County was not the location with the Draconic Earring. At the moment, the Squidbeak was exploring the town to have a look at what was going on. The residents were mostly aquatic reptilian creatures like sea snakes and sea turtles, but there were others like mutant sharks and larger fish as well. The Squidbeak asked if any of the residents knew about the Draconic Earring, but they'd all said no or ignored them. Something was wrong, but finding out what it was would be tricky.

"I haven't gotten anything, have you?" Fissure asked.

"Nope, nothing..." Firefly sighed, defeated.

"I wonder if there's some kind of underground area or something," Scythe suggested. "Some hidden area like an underground temple, away from prying eyes!"

Queen shrugged as Spitfire shook her head.

"Well maybe-"

Suddenly, a loud piercing scream broke though the air.

"THIIIIEEEEEFF!"

The Squidbeak directed their attention to the source and saw that there was, indeed, a basilisk lizard thief with a bag containing several pieces of jewelry running away from a stall being run by an old woman Inkling. They immediately took after them without hesitation, and once the thief noticed he had people on his tail, he booked it out of there. The crowd of citizens that had gathered around to buy merchandise tried blocking his path, but he was too quick and agile. The Squidbeak had to dodge the citizens as they followed him, though needless to say they were a lot more clumsy. The citizens were large, and they had to use squid form a lot to weave in and out of the differing body shapes.