Leviathantale Mermay 2022 - Pearl Edition

Day 14: Shore

Gaster just got a call. A couple of fishermen had reported to the harbor guard that something was stranded on a hard-to-reach beach and he didn't want to pass up the opportunity because if what was reported was correct, he could come into possession of a new project.
He yelled at his staff to hurry up and attach the water tank to the truck. Who knows how long the project has been there!

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Ccino had misjudged the tide. He thought he had a little more time to snooze on the warm, shallow sand. Unfortunately, it didn't stay that way and when he woke up again he was lying half dry on a shore, the sea a few meters away. The puddle he was fortunately lying in was slowly getting smaller and his gills were filtering out less and less oxygen. He wouldn't be able to stand it here much longer.

The sun burned his bones and dried out his ecto more and more. His signature spots, which define him as a catshark mer, turn white in the sun and his senses become blurred.

A gush of fresh seawater is dumped over him and Ccino snaps out of his comatose levitation. His gills immediately fan him with fresh oxygen and Ccino takes a deep breath. His gaze, still blurred, he directs to the one who had just saved his life.

A skeletal monster in a black and white smock stands over him, a metal bucket hovers next to him in two floating hands: "Good, you're alive."

In a raspy voice, he addresses his rescuer: "Thanks... Can you carry me back to the sea?" A wry smile was on his skull. "I'm sure I'll find something to thank you with."

In hindsight, one is always smarter if he shouldn't have trusted his supposed rescuer.

"I've got some ideas that you'll be very useful to me with." Ccino should have recognized this at the latest with this grimacing grin, nothing good is emanating from this skeleton. But his still fuzzy mind leaves him lazy and careless, even when two other land-dwellers  come with a large stretcher and lift him into it, he does not recognize his precarious situation. Only when these land-dwellers moved further and further away from the saving water made him become more and more restless.

"Uh… people? The sea is in the other direction!”

The large skeletal monster runs after them and scowls down at Ccino with an interested twinkle in his eyes: "Oh no! You will be of no use to me in the sea. You are coming with me and you will help me with some experiments.”

Ccino's eyes go out. He's at the mercy of this skeleton. If he had known sooner he would have just given up there in the puddle, he would have jumped out of the stretcher and maybe the sharp cliff would have spared him the suffering that was to follow. But Ccino didn't want to die and maybe when the experiments are over, this skeleton will let him back into the sea.

He is thrown into the truck's tank and the skeleton monster looks through the window. “Welcome to the team Project Cc120. I'm Doctor Gaster and you're mine now. If you don't obey me, there will be penalties that will make you wish you died in that puddle! Good cooperation!"

The gloomy face twisted into a grin is the last thing Ccino sees before the tank was covered and he sat in complete darkness. Its fluorescent glow flickers anxiously. Had he been thrown from a sea full of dangers into a tank with a piranha and he would choose the sea a thousand times over.