When one gets surrounded by a horde of killer crustaceans, what kind of fitting proverb is applied?

Trick Question: There is no proverb; I honestly didn’t think there was a single one in any book that fit. I was fairly certain that they were unique, or I guess maybe it was just hard to find anyone who fought them and lived through the experience with enough sanity left to write one.

It wasn’t hard, though, so I came up with one.

When shrimped, make like a crab and scuttle.

I never said it was a good proverb.

I was using my grey matter for another task—surviving an encirclement of killer shrimplets. Stick with the program.

I considered just hucking a vial at that time, giving them some foamy cleaning action to scrub them from existence, but there were issues with that. One, I wouldn’t get many because they were all around me; two, they weren’t clumped up, so I would get even less; and three, if I threw one ahead of me, I would need to go around the area of effect, which would put me in the primordial soup.

I didn’t know what it would do, but nothing good was up there. There was a proverb for that one, fortunately, fuck around and find out. Those are good words to live by.

I ran; that was the immediate plan, followed by more of the same.

I know. Am I a tactical genius, or what? Being encircled? Just run. Can't take a gunshot? Just don’t get shot. Easy as.

Running was a half curse because they could hear my running and feel it through the ground, but they knew I was here, and I wasn’t about to stand still and hope they lost me.

I had no idea if they had object permanence, but one had to assume the worst.

Running forward, I assessed my best path forward, plotting it out in my head, gauging distance with my eyes and a bit of parallax.

I brought up a diagram in my head, doodling around it like I had a box of crayons and some plex.

I did the calculations, the best chance of survival: straight ahead! Issue: enemy straight ahead!

How do I change it, though?

I noted a spot where there would be less of the little shits, but they weren’t clumped up enough.

Spinning it over in my head, I reached into my pocket, pulled out my gun, swivelled the cylinder to the accidental plasma shots I had brought along and gave it my best running shot.

I aimed for the lone straggler on one end, and the gun barked in hand, hammer sparking putty detonating, hot bioplastic swelled through the barrel and was spat into the sepia air to claim its foe.

The shot kicked free of its sabot, and it flew true. The plasma capsule burst, showing the shrimplet with the surface of a star. The crackling cone was muted but just barely coloured a faded purple.

It was somewhat beautiful, and beyond my expectation, it did damage; the shrimplet it hit changed colour from one tone to another, its body steamed, and it dropped dead.

I fired a solid shot to double check, and it slammed home, spalling against the shell, doing nothing.

Plasma shot, my beloved.

I noted that down in my head, kinetic was no good against armour, and plasma was good against shrimp.

I would need to make some more, which would necessitate money and a place to make them, like my ship, but I was sure I could find something in a pinch. I just had to survive.

That was good, but I now had one shot, and I didn’t want to kill, as Pinky would put in, ‘one in a krillion,’ so I needed to clump them up.

I did the side-swivel maneuver, hopping back and forth, which caused them to sidestep as intended. It brought the whole front closer together, but the gap widened more than it closed, so I called that a bonus.

Checking my school house crayon drawing that was stuck to the fridge of my mind I decided to go for the opposite side of the front shrimplet pocket. If I shot down the middle, there was a chance they would fill it, but having two openings was less concerning if they were coming straight toward me.

Aiming to the other side to give me more options

I lined it up and split the middle between two of them because why shoot one when you could shoot two?

I did, and I watched the shot in all its glory as a plume that could melt the steel of a cart engine turned two full shrimplets into two 1/3 shrimplets. The functioning 2/3rds of a monster fell behind, as expected of them.

I pocketed my gun in my bathrobe and booked it. I sprinted like I was encircled by crustaceans wanting to taste my sweet, succulent, fatty tissues. I was going for distance, I was going for speed, and I got it. The only thing that could make me faster would be to get a few speed holes or drop the bathrobe, but I didn’t feel like streaking right now. That felt like a bad idea, and it would rid me of my pockets.

I kicked forward like a greyhound, first ziging one way, before I zagged the other way to widen the hole before I slipped past.

One of the shrimplets lashed out with a blade-like limb, pulling it from within its gaping hidden blossom. It slipped through the back of my robe, leaving a fine line of searing pain behind, but I powered through and was free of its reach before it could finish rearing up to get a second thrust in.

I dodged away from the 2/3, who punched at me with a ball thing and a tendril. The tendril slapped but did not grasp my behind as I passed out of its reach, and the ball fell short. It came out so fast it sounded like a gunshot, a wave of heat coming off it like a comic pugilist. My head tickled; there was a joke there, but I couldn’t figure it out fast enough for me to focus on it.

I passed them, though; I passed them with a new tan and a bruise on my ass, passed the yellow pussy blood that smelled like stagnancy and brine and old places. But I passed them, and that was what was most important. Surprisingly, the hit didn’t hurt as much as I thought it ought to, but it was still nearly enough to get me to trip on the uneven terrain.

Free of the Encirclement, but with the legion on my tail, I ran toward the next roadblock, the mega shrimp.

The mega shrimp were fighting Pinky, who was currently in the process of making of acquiring one of the shrimp's insides with its outsides. Not focused on me was all well and good, but her zipping had brought them partway out of their pools and onto the causeway, their thin limbs still wide around as my arm was like a stand of trees.

I could get through them without using resources, but I needed to avoid the legs. I could use one vial and get rid of the legs, but I did not have enough to deal with the tide behind me.

Hell, at least they weren’t focused on me.

I took my chances with the living forest that could core me like an apple. I read the way it was moving its legs and waited a moment before diving in, onward and upward.

Pinky swerved, and a leg moved, I rolled to the side, coming up a second before the legs slammed down where I had been.

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I looked around, trying to ensure I wasn’t about to be crushed again and saw its great maw.

Flickering tendrils floated, waving as if in an unseen tide, forelimbs raised and ready as it tried to knock pinky out of the sky, antennae waved, and inside the rows of legs close to me, a set of pincers next to a puckering quaking sphincter that was lined with row upon row of teeth.

It opened and closed like it was breathing.

It made me want to gag a little. It reeked much as their blood did. Stagnated water, rot, and brine. Like a saltwater pier that had been left without maintenance and had corroded in blackened timber and rusty supports.

But it also had a feeling from it like I had felt before. Like a song was echoing from its maw.

I pulled my sight away from the captivating horror, and slunk through, sighting questing tendrils that seemed to box me in.

Pinky hit it with something as I came upon the last third, and the shrimplets closed on the wall of legs. It let out a shrill clicking bellow before the world went silent, my ears running.

Confused, my touch came back crimson, the actual colour, bold red, despite the surroundings being bland. It came of as somehow more real when presented next to my skin blended in with the colour of the air.

I focused on it so closely that I bumped into a tendril.

Lilly shouted into my head, “Roll!” and I rolled—right in time to miss a claw snap through the area where I had been standing.

I stared at it, right at the claw and saw the tendril dart at me.

I ran; I ran like a little bitch. I couldn’t hear anything, but Lilly whispered suggestions into my head.

Situational awareness without a hearing was difficult at best. After all, I only had eyes on the front of my face, which, as good as they were, only properly covered one-third of my environment. I had peripheral vision, but that was crap. Hearing was the component that guarded you against everything else, and it was now missing.

I didn’t have enough time to regenerate through it or have it healed by one of Pinky's stims.

Muttering a jumbled curse that I couldn’t hear, I took in the legs, planned and dived as it moved as Pinky moved.

If that was the only movement, I would have been clear, but I wasn’t that lucky, let's be honest.

The thing kept moving.

A leg came down next to my head, and I scrambled. Hands and feet flailing as I got myself up and out from its legs, but they kept moving toward me as I ran, a foot coming down like a rod from god to slam a foot from me, a leg slamming down close enough that it clipped my hand as it came forward, I spun and ducked and shimmied and on I went until it turned back away from me. I could breathe for a moment, sucking down the stale air of the wound.

I couldn’t rest for long and was close to my destination.

The hill of noodles was before me, and the shrimplets had gotten into the legs.

They were smashed as they came, a quarter of them turned into reeking meat paste. I got moving as I saw it, climbing up the noodles.

As I climbed, they got through the middle and then the second set of legs, which may have been a third in total lost. Pinky did something. I didn’t catch what, but there was a shake that went through the ground.

Lilly chimed in, “One of the big ones is down,” and I kept climbing. It took me perhaps twenty seconds in total to climb up the noodles, but it was hard. The rough terrain couldn’t simply be walked up, not with my ears shot as they were, so I had to scuttle up on hand and foot lest I break an ankle in a crack.

Each noodle was thick as a thigh, with spaces wide enough that it would be hard for a multilegged thing like one of the shrimplets to climb, which would no doubt buy me time.

I reached the top, and my hand went into a pocket as I took in the sight.

One of the big ones was down; it had fallen flat on the causeway, blocking off any that were left behind. It was still moving, not dead, but close, and it had fallen on the horde too.

I wanted to complain a little bit. It felt like they were gaslighting me. Every time I looked, I swore there were 100 or so, but now there still had to be a hundred of the little shits.

At least now, there was no more coming beyond this number.

Go, Pinky, I thought before firmly grasping the vial of Insta-goo and hurling it down before the scuttling horde.

I almost fumbled it, as I did. My left hand was missing a fingertip. I hadn’t even noticed, and the moment I did, it started to sting like a mother fucker.

The vial did not care that I was missing a finger, it flew regardless, tumbling end over end, insides roiling like a storm in a bottle until it smashed against the webbed veiny floor. Pink foam splattered like a tossed birthday cake and began to do what it did: clean up messes.

It crew over and up the corralled shrimp things like moss on a rock, and where it touched it melted, their movement only pulling off more of their bodys. Behind the front rows that had been hit, the melting parts made contact with more shrimplets, and spread it further.

They turned to ooze, first a few dozen feet from the noodles, then a dozen feet, then melting forms begain to try and scale the noodles, falling as they fell to chum.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the box, quickly flipping through to the medicine inside and injecting one of Pinkys' healing stims. It felt terrible, but it would get the job done, even if it made me want to hurl a little as my body speedily patched holes.

Turning back to the horde that was melting, I started watching for how well it had worked.

Maybe half had been affected by it, many of whom had died close to the noodles, leaving a pile of still-foaming agents behind for any that would crawl up.

Deciding that I didn’t want to get hit, I threw the last one. A bold move I know, but I was a bold person and shooting fish in a barrel was just how I played.

It tumbled into the front ranks again, though they were closer now, only a dozen or so feet from the noodles.

Those ones were more of an issue. They did climb, and as some fell, they began to climb better.

Confused I looked down as my ears popped and the never ending chorus of clicking things returned, and noticed that the chum was building up. A few had been totally destroyed, but as more and more had died at the same point, a layer had begun to form a crust.

A ramp.

They were genuinely forming a ramp out of their own broken, melting bodies.

“Fuck that just isn’t fair,” I said to no one in particular.

“Its also rather unsanitary,” Lilly replied, “Hoe very in convenient. Were going to die, and were going to be covered in melted goo while they do it.”

She said it like she was talking about a stain on her dress.

“I think I’m rubbing off on you,” I told her, “That was very me.”

“That has been established already,” she told me, “I am a part of you. Though I think the opposite is true as well.”

“How so?” I asked while the shrimp got halfway up before falling.

“You're surprisingly self-aware at the moment. Normally, you’re a bit of a Duh- Dunce.”

“And you seem to have a bit more backbone, I like the backbone,” I told her

Well, if you don’t start moving, I’ll use all my backbone to chide you for killing the both of us. Please, if you would, start moving.” She told me pointedly.

I was going to ask her what she meant, but I had come here to check if there was an Anchor.

Quickly checking I found the lines, and traced them over to a small hollow a hundred or so yards away. Turning back to check on the tide I saw that they weren’t the only issue.

The big boy was getting up again. Not up for Pinky, but up to the noodles. Up to me.

Oh boy, it just always got better, didn’t it?

Fucking cursed luck.

I turned as the shrimp began to die on the crest of the hill and began to ‘run’ as best as I could over the treacherous terrain.

I did not like running the gauntlet when the viney floor had been closer to inches across instead of feet, but my gripers did as grippers did; I jogged in a stumbling manner toward the hollow, the great big thing pulling itself onto and over the noodles, picking up pace in a shuffled that made the world under me quake. The shrimplets were up as well, flinging themselves over the ground behind me, gaining on me as I made my way over.

“Fucking hell. Pinky! A little help here!” I shouted, stumbling, stepping, trying to go faster without breaking a leg.

“I thought you were; oh, good heavens, it's still alive? Well, I-”

“For fucks sake!” I cut her off, “Less talk! More action!”

She did, saying, “Forgive me, Sol, for I have shrimped,” and tossing a few vials down between me and the horde.

They hit, foaming up, the shrimplets running into the wall and melting as they ran, draining away into the cracks and crevices.

The big one also plowed through it and began to melt, but it did not slow down when it did; it sped up.

I stared in horror as its body began to swim on its own gooey trail. First doubling, then tripling its speed from sprinting to, oh fuck that’s a train.

It seemed to push its insides down and ride on its own melting. It was killing itself to get one of us.

I did sprint then; I ran as fast as I god damn could, making a break for the much too-small hollow, that was now far to far away.

I got across a third before it was close enough to attack me, and I had to get creative as to how I got out of the way of thrashing tendrils, but despite hops, rolls and sprinting my ass off, it was still faster than me, and delta-V was the only thing collisions cared about.

It collided with me; my back was slammed by a part of its shell, my feet dangling on the floor. It pushed my leg through a hollow, my ankle twisting as I was hurled along with it toward the small hole in the wall.

It was terrible but I was pulled up and away from the cursed ground by a helping tendril as it tried to shove me in its maw.

I shot it, my hand training on it fast as lightning. The solid shot didn’t do shit against the carapace, but I suppose even a bee sting hurt enough to draw away from something, and the tendril reared back.

Ten yards from the hole, panting and sweating, ankle unresponsive, I held on , slipping down the carapace.

And then came the hole.

I didn’t know what the stone beneath was, but it was solid as steel. Like loading a shot in my revolver, the mass of the creature, the impossible momentum of it hitting a denser medium caused a great sheering sound.

I was sent tumbling forward as the shrimp came to a sudden juddering halt, its exterior drawn away as its core was plunged into the hollow.

I landed roughly, nearly snapped my neck but didn’t snap it and landed flat on my back in a well-lit room, dizzy, bleeding, and sore but alive.

A voice that was neither Lilly nor me called out, “Oh. Hello, Hello, Finger,” and I did my best to ignore it as I groaned for another stim.