The gelatinous blob spasmed violently. Its pseudopod shot out not in panic, but with a wet, precise thwack that sealed over Chiari's mouth an instant before the air above her head fractured. STAUST's usual gentle glow shattered into a migraine-spike of crimson text:
[CHAT FUNCTIONS LOCKED - ADMINISTRATOR OVERRIDE].
The words didn't just appear; they crawled across her vision, leaving afterimages of corrupted code.
Mr. Fin didn't move. He congealed. Every obsidian scale on his vast body locked into place, transforming him from a creature into a cliff-face of absolute black. His dorsal fin didn't just bristle; each filament stiffened and hummed at a different pitch, producing a dissonant chord that vibrated in the water like a plucked nerve. From his gills came no mere sigh, but a pressurized geyser of brine that hit the thick air and froze—crystallizing into a swarm of jagged, floating runes that spelled
[DO NOT ENGAGE WITH ELDRITCH MARKETPLACE].
They tinked together with the sound of icicles in a slow-motion avalanche.
Beyond the membrane, the void itself had changed. The formless dark was now a tapestry of invasive attention. The silhouette of User NightSnack was no longer a passive shadow. It had manifested—a vast, spiraling impression of a shell, from which thousands of slender eyestalks had extended, each tip pressing against the bubble's skin. Where they touched, the membrane bulged inward in perfect, sucking circles. Each stalk left behind a smudge of iridescent, psychic drool that sizzled as it evaporated, releasing not scent, but sound: static whispers that bypassed the ears to coil directly in the brainstem. ...flesh-of-artist... synaptic-heritage... a worthy garnish...
"Mr. Fin?" The blob's pseudopod peeled away from her mouth with a sound like tape being torn from skin. Her own voice sounded thin and far away, drowned by the sub-audible hum of a thousand watching eyes. "I'm sleepy and have no bed. Can you use bubblepoints to buy me one? Did we win any or get paid for our rice?"
A chime—a sound like a single, pure drop of water falling in a cavern—cut through the static. The STAUST display, still glitching with admin lock warnings, flickered and resolved into a crisp, transactional line:
[JUDGE SATIATION: MINIMUM THRESHOLD MET. AWARD: 5,000 BUBBLEPOINTS. DEPOSITED TO: OWNER ACCOUNT.]
The gelatinous blob, which had been a protective hemisphere over her feet, flinched as if struck. It flattened against the luminous sand, its body rippling into a frantic, mimetic script written in trembling loops of its own substance:
[OWNER-CONTROLLED ECONOMY. SUBSISTENCE-LEVEL ALLOCATIONS. NO LIQUID ASSETS FOR NON-ESSENTIALS.]
The words gleamed with a sickly, bureaucratic yellow before being reabsorbed.
"Bubblepoints," the shark hissed. The word was a physical thing, a lance of cold pressure that made the water momentarily viscous. His tailfin, a weapon of shadow and scale, lashed out. It didn't strike the STAUST display; it passed through it. The holographic numbers shattered into swirling pixels before reforming, now stamped with a glaring, padlock icon:
[5000 BP: LOCKED TO C'THULLUS ACCOUNT].
His pectoral fins—each as wide as she was tall—twitched with a dancer's repressed frustration toward the pearl-rice bowl. The dish still glowed, but its light had dimmed to a weary pulse. The star-shaped scorch mark at its center now wept thin, continuous trails of steam that carried the forlorn, salty scent of a tide pool at dusk. "Land-grub. Listen well." The shark's voice didn't drop; it sank, descending into a subsonic rumble that vibrated in the fillings of teeth she didn't have, in the marrow of her bones. It was the sound of continental plates grumbling. "Points buy expansion. Survival metrics. Gauntlet licenses. Not pillows. Not—"
His dorsal fin jerked, a blade of living obsidian slicing toward the membrane. The thousand imprints of NightSnack's eyestalks throbbed in unison, their static whispers surging into a chorus of wet, clicking offers. The blob, in a frenzy, oozed more of its substance into a new, crude sign held aloft like a shield:
[NO REFUNDS. NO EXCHANGES. ALL SALES FINAL.]
It was aimed directly at the fading, psychic drool-stains.
"Then buy me the fluffiest pillow and a shark pajama," she said, the demand cutting through the cosmic tension with the absurd, sharp clarity of a child's logic. She paused, pondering the chitinous click of Mr. Fin's scales. "No, I rather want a shrimp one." A faint, satisfied nod. "Shrimple solution for crablicated problems."
The silence that followed was absolute and profound. The static whispers ceased. The distant abyssal currents held their breath.
Mr. Fin's gills—the slatted vents along his majestic sides—did not simply snap shut. They imploded inward with a wet, final THWACK that echoed like a vault door sealing in the deep. The ripple of force from the motion traveled through his body, making every one of his obsidian scales shiver and realign with a sound like a hailstorm on a slate roof. For a moment, he wasn't a shark, but a sculpture of pure, offended darkness.
The gelatinous blob spasmed, mid-formation of its
[NO REFUNDS]
sign. Its surface bulged, then extruded a new, frantic pseudopod that slapped against the bubble's membrane with the sound of a wet ledger opening. Iridescent fluid spread, forming a shimmering, official-looking receipt:
[BUBBLEPOINT PURCHASE LOG]
[5000 BP SPENT: 1X ABYSSAL MEMORY FOAM PILLOW (TERRIFYING DREAMS INCLUDED) | 1X SHRIMP-CHITIN PAJAMA SET (EXOSKELETON NOT INCLUDED)]
The items materialized not with a flash, but with a sick, organic GLORP.
The pillow landed half on the sand, half on her lap. It was the color of a deep-sea vent's smoke, and it writhed. Its surface wasn't fabric, but a compressed membrane etched with the faint, screaming faces of a thousand cephalopods, their tentacles woven into the foam. It was faintly warm, and with each subtle pulsation, it emitted a psychic whisper of endless falling through dark water.
The pajamas unfolded from the air like a discarded crustacean shell. They clicked as they settled—a series of hard, carapace-like segments dyed a vibrant, cooked-shrimp red, connected by bands of resilient, silky black membrane. The shirt had a tiny, plated tail on the back. The pants ended in pointed, chitinous fins. They smelled of ocean depth, iodine, and a hint of lemon—the ghost of a seasoning never applied.
User NightSnack's lingering eyestalk impressions pulsed violently, their hunger refocusing. The static whispers coalesced, gaining diction, drilling into the bubble with renewed avarice:
[OFFER STILL STANDS: 1.5M BP FOR ARTIST-CLASS ORGANIC. TRANSPORT AND TAXES PRE-PAID.]
Mr. Fin's tailfin flicked, a gesture of supreme, cosmic dismissal. The motion sent the STAUST display spinning like a flipped coin. It landed showing:
[ACCOUNT BALANCE: 0 BP | NEXT GAUNTLET CHALLENGE IN: 23 HOURS, 59 MINUTES, 47 SECONDS].
As the numbers settled, the last sizzling traces of NightSnack's drool evaporated entirely, leaving behind only the phantom, noodle-shop scent of overcooked udon.
"Putting this on is more complicated than it looks," Chiari mumbled, wrestling with the chitinous plating. The segments were smooth and cool on the outside, but the interior lining was unexpectedly, deeply soft—a fleece-like membrane that radted a gentle, biological warmth. She finally managed to wriggle into them. The armor clicked and shifted with her movements, not restricting, but moving with her, like a second, articulated skin. She held up a hand. Two long, flexible antennae, tipped with fluffy red tufts, sprouted from the back of the wrist plate. She wrinkled her nose experimentally. The antennae twitched in perfect sync.
A jaw-cracking yawn overtook her. "YAWN! Can you tell me a story for badtime, Mr. Fin? Or I can not sleep."
She curled onto the writhing pillow, which immediately molded to her shape, the screaming cephalopod faces softening into murmured, wave-like patterns. One shrimp-antennae brushed a patch of luminous sand, sending a tiny cascade of glowing grains skittering. In the profound quiet, the only sounds were the soft, worrying click-click-click of her new pajamas settling and the low, subsonic grumble emanating from the wall of cosmic shark now standing guard between her and the hungry, watching void.