literature

Ceri and the Boomstick

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There was no escape this time. Once she locked on to you, there was only one thing that could happen. Run, and you'd just be captured tired, because Ceri had webshooters now!
The chestnut-haired dridder's eyes sparkled with glee as her latest invention passed test after test. She could even build a web without climbing a tree! ...at least, she could if she was coordinated enough.
That's not what she was up to today, though. Today, she was people-watching, and this time nobody was running away from her. This time, she spied a lone traveller sitting on a log. Middle-aged, solidly built...he had the bearing of a man who had survived a lot more than any human would be expected to. His clothes looked a bit too fresh for him, implying that he had obtained new ones at least once after coming to Felarya, and a large metal rod recognizable to most -but not Ceri- as a shotgun crossed his back. He lit a cigarette and began to do something that resembled relaxing.
Ceri didn't like cigarettes. She had heard a lot of humans mentioning that they caused all sorts of nasty-sounding things, and when she got close enough to one, the smell was terrible. Her hazel eyes flicked to a webshooter and she grinned. Time for another test.
It would be so cool if she could pick off his cigarette without touching him. She lined up her shot as well as she could, her spidery lower half making it difficult for her to get closer to the ground. When she was convinced that her aim was as good as it was going to get, she fired.
The man immediately dove backwards over the log and pulled the shotgun from his back. Ceri's web hit the cigarette...and the log...and the man's arm. She had forgotten to switch the nozzle to "Pinpoint" aim. Had she been given thinking time, Ceri would have reeled the man in and finally had some company, but before she had even fully processed what she had hit, the man's shotgun gave off a bright flash, a sudden blasting noise, and something that utterly shredded the thin cables that were restraining him. Startled, Ceri jumped back, accidentally yanking the log into herself.
Rubbing her forehead, the spider-girl adjusted her hat of leaves and bark and scanned the area for the man. All she caught was a glimpse of him vanishing into the forest. He was fast. Something told Ceri to give up on catching him. Besides, now she had a question for Vern. With one last regretful look at the now-disaster area, she skittered off towards the dock.
Sure enough, her flaregun-armed friend was there, only instead of fishing, he was currently staring down a mermaid. And it wasn't Izumi. Worried, Ceri rushed across the dock, putting her discovery that jumping is faster than skittering to work. By the time she arrived, the mermaid was already in mid-lunge, and while Ceri only intended to shove it back, her panic kept her hand in a fist. Her blind swing ended up hammering the mermaid a decent distance away.
"Whew!" the fisherman exclaimed, "Thanks, Ceri! That might have been the end of old Vern. One question, though, when did you get so strong?"
The dridder recoiled slightly. Had she really just done that? The mermaid was retreating, leaving a reddish tint in the water from her newly broken nose. This was the second time Ceri had made a fully-grown mermaid appear helpless. "I...I don't know?" she replied in a daze.
Vern studied her. Her arms, rather than the slender, graceful appendages he was used to on Felaryans and especially expected from Ceri, were visibly toned, though not bulky. After all, she had spent nearly every day of her life carrying armfuls of firewood, if nothing else. "Nevermind. I think I figured it out," he told her, "so, what brings you here? Spider-sense tingle?"
"N-no. I just wanted to ask you about this blazing metal stick thing one..." then it dawned on her, "Hey, wait, you know Spider-Man!?"
The fisherman chuckled. "A man doesn't live as long as I have without getting his hands in a few things. I have a few of those comics back home. Feel sorry for whoever owned the backpacks I got 'em out of..."
Ceri was impressed, excited, and saddened, in that order, before recalling her original question. "Um, this man I saw had a strange metal tube thing across his back, and when I accidentally hit him with some webbing, he made this flash and this sound come out of it, and the line snapped. What was that?"
"Heh, heh, heh...sounds like your ever-faithful basic boomstick, Bitsy," Vern replied, obviously recalling something exciting, "s'one solid gun. Barely even have to aim. Just one click and BAM! Whatever's troublin' you ain't around no more...'course here it's not nearly as handy, but it sounds like it got that guy out of a jam. Or should I say web?"
Confused, the dridder questioned further. "What's a 'gun', Vern?" she inquired, "I've heard people wishing they had one...but you make it sound like they're not all...boomsticks?"
Vern took out his flaregun and began an explanation. Ceri's unyeilding curiosity extracted from him the nature of gunpowder, firing mechanisms, and basically everything there is to know about the mechanics, purposes, and operation of guns. Over the course of the conversation, Vern caught ten fish, demonstrated his flaregun on the same mermaid, and got a visit from Izumi.
Ceri was enchanted. In her mind, guns never actually killed people, they were just superpowers in sticks. She imagined how cool it would be to be able to punch stuff down from across an area, or make things explode with her mind. She wanted one! But where would she get gunpowder...?
It was made of sulfur, charcoal, and saltpetre. Apparently, just heating wood when there was no oxygen around would provide charcoal, sulfur is in volcanic rock, and saltpetre was in cave walls. Unfortunately, this meant that it'd be just a bit too difficult for Ceri to get any of them. She couldn't even make sulferless powder. Vern had also mentioned that there were other explosives, though...
Noticing Ceri's troubled expression, Vern spoke up. "I've had to make my own flares for a while, Ceri," he told her, "so I know a few tricks that'd probably only work here. Felarya's a bit more 'resourceful' than Earth."
The dridder perked up. "Really? You'll help me!?" she asked excitedly. She still had a hint of a crush on Vern.
"And you can even have the Spider-Man comics," he answered, "just promise me you won't use any humans for target practice, okay?"
"Yes, sir!" she chirped as he led her into the forest.

Soon they came to Vern's house, a mid-sized shack type building that blended in quite well with the forest. It wasn't much bigger than Ceri's body. "Wait here," Vern joked as he disappeared into the house, "I'll be right back."
Ever curious, Ceri immediately lowered herself to crawling height and peered in the window. Of course, a gargantuan eye in place of jungle scenery was a bit conspicuous, but Vern had anticipated this, anyway. He didn't mind letting Ceri see him take a staircase down into his "basement".
While waiting for Vern's return, the spider-girl pondered all of the wondrous gadgets below her very feet. She may have been clueless about some things, but she knew that if Vern had a secret area, it'd probably be super cool and house everything he wanted to keep safe from predators should one stumble upon his house.
Vern came back holding a massive jar of a strange crystalline powder. To someone of Ceri's stature, though it may as well have been dust. "What is it?" she queried, putting on her goggles (currently equipped with the magnifying lenses) to study it.
"Well, ordinarily I wouldn't tell this to a girl but this is dried bug juice," he replied, chuckling at the slightly repulsed expression on Ceri's face, "Specifically, Boom Bee. See, those buggers explode when they want to hurt someone. It's just as suicidal as a regular bee attack, but a lot more effective. This is what gives my flares their kick. Izumi can attest that it works, I'm sure."
Ceri gently took the jar from him with her thumb and index finger and frowned. She was always so much bigger than everything that interested her! "How do I use it...?" she asked, beginning to feel like an airhead.
"A simple spark works on those. I've seen you make those, Miss Firestarter," he informed her, "the trick is to do it while the stuff's inside the gun's chamber. Of course, I can't very well get enough to keep you supplied, but...you're part spider, right? Mind doin' what spiders do best and helpin' me catch a few bees?"
She blushed and nodded before taking a thread out from her webshooter. It was nice to not have to twist around to get some of her own webbing. After a little bit of weaving, she had formed a small (to her) web and he told her the best place to put it. "We can work out a better system later," Vern told her, glad he wasn't at risk of running out of ammo, "good luck with your gun, Ceri!"
"I can figure it out," she told him, "I create things." She loved the way that phrase sounded. Thanking the fisherman, the giantess carried her new tinkering fodder into the jungle and back to her cave.
Once she was home, she put the jar down in her corner of items, including her alternative lenses, crystals, and stone knives. She suddenly got the sense that she was a packrat, and after a few moments of pondering how to be more organized, she noted the self-made cloth she was keeping her normal goggle lenses on.
She pulled out some more webbing, made a firmer cloth, and pasted it onto the front of her shirt to create a breast pocket. She then switched the lenses in her goggles and tucked the magnifying ones into the pocket. Overall, there was virtually no change, but Ceri felt better.
Next order of business was designing a gun. All it needed was a place to hold the powder, a place for bullets and more powder to go in, and a way to spark the powder chamber, right? She doodled on the dirt floor of her cave, spider body “lying down” as much as spiders can.
What gave off sparks? Flint rocks were too big to put into a pistol, weren’t they? Ceri casually grabbed a flint knife and what she thought was just another stone, but after scraping them together, she realized it was a crystal. Crystals could scrape flint.
Curiously, Ceri tried it again. She held out the edge of her knife and quickly dragged the crystal’s point along it, producing quite effective sparks. Her eyes lit up. This was perfect! Now she only needed to fit one flint into her gun!
Returning to her drawing, Ceri began sketching all of the possibilities. She could have some sort of pendulum thing, but that wasn't very safe. She could have a slot to put it in, but that took too long. Some didn't spark right, some didn't spark when she wanted them to, and every single design she came up with had some immediate, depressing flaw.
With a groan of aggravation, the girl flipped onto her back. Inventing things was hard. Bored, she casually tossed one of her less-impressive flint rocks and watched it roll awkwardly along the floor before coming to a stop.
Then she considered what had just happened. That rock's momentum had made it push off of the ground most of the time. It was only because it was jagged that it wasn't all of the time. It was only rolling in the first place because she made it roll. What if...
Excited, Ceri rolled back over, stood up, and hurried over to the rock. If it was totally round, it would always grind against the crystal when rotated. After another doodle on the ground to confirm this, she grabbed another flint and began chipping at the rock. She finished four hours, ten devoured fruit, and one small fire later.
The result was a smallish stone disk with indentations in the sides. Ceri had planned ahead and decided that she would need something to fix the stone in place. For starters, an actual gun to put it in. Looking over her designs, Ceri found that a lot of her models were based on Vern's flaregun. After all, she had only gotten a good look at two guns in her lifetime, and one had been in motion for all three seconds she was able to see it.
While a flaregun wasn't quite as cool-looking as Ceri had hoped, she was still inspired. Maybe she could make a shotgun or something later. Right now, though, she wanted to get started. It was getting dark, but that didn't stop the perky dridder from carving out for herself a good block of wood from a log before going to sleep. Just before she fell unconscious, she noticed that dirst didn't feel very nice on her skin. She would make bedsheets for herself tomorrow, even if she didn't have a bed.

The next morning, she tucked one of her stone knives into her bark-and-leaf belt and brought her giant wood block over to the dock. She only had enough powder to test whatever came out once, so she wanted it to at least be perfect in theory. As she had hoped, Vern was there again, this time chatting peacefully with Izumi. As Ceri approached, she realized that they were talking about the mermaid she punched out yesterday.
"It was hilarious! She kept wiping her nose and saying that she would have won if she had seen it coming," Izumi was enthusiastically explaining, "and so I ask how she missed a dridder the size of the dock rushing towards her, and she glares at me and swims away!"
Vern laughed before looking back to Ceri. "Looks like you're getting a little spotlight in the underwater," he commented, "first dridder to bust a mermaid's nose in a long time, it looks like. Thanks again for saving me, by the way. So, what can I do ya fer?"
Ceri blushed at the idea of being famous. Especially for something she did accidentally. "I...um...I wanted to know a little more about guns..." she murmured shyly, "I know what I'm working with to make it spark, but I don't want to build it wrong. I'm carving it out of this block of wood."
She held out the block she had carved for herself as though it needed to pass some inspection. "Can you help me?" she asked in a voice so innocent it sounded like she was faking it.
Vern chuckled. "Well, of course I can help, Ceri," he answered, amused by her shyness, "Izzy here can probably also lend a hand. After all, she's met her share of gun-toters, right?"
The mermaid nodded in reply. She had been wanting a chance to be close to Ceri ever since she revealed that she ate people. "I can carry that block for you," she offered, holding out her arms.
The dridder smiled. "That's okay, I've got it," she replied as she headed back towards the beach, "it'd probably make it hard for you to swim, anyway. Do you know how guns are built?"
Izumi pondered this. She had recived a few welts from guns before, so she knew how much they hurt, but she had never bothered to thoroughly study any of her victims' weapons, personal hoarde of pretty swords aside. It did, however, occur to her that if a human gun could injure predators, Ceri could accidentally kill someone with one as big as her hand. "Maybe we shouldn't try to make this one perfect..." she suggested nervously.
Picking up on her concern, Vern suggested that Ceri only make this one a "prototype". Ceri, never having heard the term before, immediately bombarded the poor fisherman with questions until she was satisfied. Her first gun would also be her first prototype.
As Izumi and Vern sighed with relief, Ceri sketched out her favorite design idea so far in the sand. It was basically Vern's flaregun on the outside, but the flint wheel would be placed at the back, where the hammer was on Vern's, and since hinges weren't a very practical explanation, it would be loaded from the front, both for powder and shots. Another reason to give it the flaregun tip.
"Looks simple enough," Vern commented, "the only hard part will be carving it...and finding something to coat the inside so it doesn't burn..."
Izumi raised her hand energetically. "I know!" she exclaimed, "I've seen this sort of tarry stuff on the bottom of the lake, and when it's wet it oozes, but when it's dry it becomes a coat on whatever it's leaked on, and it doesn't burn."
"How do you know all of this?" Vern questioned suspiciously.
"What? A girl gets bored. Anyway, I think it's made of some dead plant. A lot of smaller creatures rip up seaweed and stuff to make nests, and when they get eaten, the nests just decompose."
Ceri's eyes lit up. "That sounds perfect!" she cheered, "Now all I have to do is carve it...but...the inside will be hard..."
"Yeah," Izumi chipped in, giving Vern an innocent look, "if only we had someone small -say, bite-sized- who could go in and help with the details..."
The gruff fisherman sighed. "Can't say no to a pretty woman so long as she's after something you don't mind losing," he grumbled, "I'll help you out, Cer, but you owe me."
The dridder was thrilled. "Absolutely! Thank you!"
The next few hours consisted primarily of carving, smoothing, and for Izumi, watching the block of wood into a horn-ended gun. Despite usually appearing somewhat out of shape, Vern easily pulled his weight even in comparison to Ceri's youthful vigour. Apparantly, holding up a fishing rod for hours on end was as effective at building muscle as carrying wood. One lengthly, coordinated process later, a rough version of a flaregun with two connected chambers inside lay before Ceri.
"You have to teach me how to do that sometime," Izumi said with amazement, bringing out some captured fish, "but for now, I imagine you're both hungry. Here. I decided to do something useful while I watched."
Ceri shrank away from the squirming water-dwellers. They still disturbed her when still alive. Vern, however, didn't have this problem, as he immediately began discussing how to prepare them with Izumi.
"I have some powder I discovered makes good seasoning," the mermaid offered while Vern considered how they should be prepared. A short, dridder-less discussion later, several headless seasoned fish were slowly baking on a rock in the sunlight.
As her stomach growled, Ceri reflected on her squeamishness. She was afraid of killing, but she would probably have to learn to eat living things sooner or later, right? As it was, she was probably malnourished, as she found herself to be starving whenever long-term concentration was broken, and while there was vegetation to eat, it was good to have a backup plan, and fruit got boring. Perhaps if she began with creatures that only harmed people, like how Izumi had sworn to only eat malicious humans...
"C'mon, Bitsy, even artisans have to eat," a gruff voice broke into her thoughts. She looked down to see Vern carrying a baked fish in both arms, already showing a few bite marks.
The fisherman chuckled as she turned green. "I'm just messin' with ya, Ceri," he comforted, "this sucker's been gutted and cleaned. I may be more of an animal than you are, but I'm not quite as much of one as Izzy just yet."
It felt strange to be called less of an animal than a human. Ceri looked down at her spidery lower body. It gave her impulses sometimes. It wasn't just an alternative pair of legs. She was on the verge of a major philisophical debate when her stomach growled loudly enough to evoke a giggle from Izumi, and she quickly resolved to eat something first.
For the first time in her life, Ceri held a simple lunch discussion with people. Nothing melodramatic, no interrogations, just conversing with her only two friends. She loved it. Conversing was so engaging to the dridder that she barely gave the decapitated fish a second thought as she tossed them into her mouth.
They discussed many things. What it's like living under water, how a lot of mermaids Izumi knows act childish, the trick to catching fish bigger than yourself, how to make a flare, what it's like climbing walls, and why Spider-Man's so exciting.
Ceri felt good when they were finished. It was that feeling of acceptance that proved to her that they were her friends. Another few hours were spent smoothing out the flaregun and perfecting the inner chambers, then Izumi's plant sludge was carefully poured inside and the gun was left to dry on the beach under a blanket of web.
As everyone sighed with satisfaction and turned to head home, Ceri giggled a little. She loved making things. Friendships included. Tomorrow, maybe she'd make another.
Ta-dah! Ceri's back!
Yes, yes, copyright stuff. Even though I didn't use the name, Felarya->Karbo, and even though I only used the name, Spider-Man-> Marvel.
Anyway, I don't ahve much to say, except that this one took me a LOT longer than it should have. I also ended up doing it in segments, so if it feels fragmented, it's not just you.
I'm thinking of starting another series up soon, with an eight-legged girl who DOES eat people. Dun dun DUNNN!
© 2009 - 2024 Dante8411
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MetalNazo's avatar
great story I hope theres more to Ceri's storythem what I've read so far but to sum it all up great job well done pal:D