Special Needs Forces

The next morning the shield-dude that Melisanda mentioned arrived. Captain opened the door for him and was in a slight shock because the guy was big and buff and he didn't look like an inhabitant of this planet at all. Because everyone on this planet was about 160 cm tall by default.

"Uhh hello" the Captain greeted him.

"Good morning!" the new guy exclaimed enthusiastically, “My name is Dalton Coveney but my teammates call me Tanager. I mean they used to call me that but they don't anymore because my entire previous team died to a monster but now you can call me that because I’m joining your team!"

Captain was a bit overwhelmed because it was probably the first time in his life that he saw a personification of the emoticon ‘colon - capital D’, but he invited Tanager in and called the others to meet the new teammate. Calling the other members meant shouting "COME HERE" out loud, so it took a while until everyone gathered. In the meantime Captain decided to introduce himself

"Okay, so I'm Captain Biel and I'm the captain here, you can call me Captain and-" and in the middle of the sentence he heard an alarm-notification that Melisanda is calling "-and wait a minute ..." Captain was about to leave the room to see if they had new orders and leave Tanager alone, but then he saw Tawny come in so he told him to show Tanager around the base and introduce him to everyone. Then Captain left to see what Melisanda wanted and Tawny was beginning to regret that he was the first to come in the room because he didn't like talking to strangers.

"Hi new buddy, I'm Tanager, it’s nice to meet you"

"Oh shit, you are taller than me" commented Tawny who until today was the tallest of the team

"It is true!" Tanager agreed with Tawny.

"Uhh, okay, Captain told me to show you around so-" Tawny began, but then Lukier came in and Tawny threw the task of showing the new guy around on him. Lukier accepted willingly because he liked to talk to people and was the life of the party. While Tanager was being shown around, Captain was talking to Melisanda about the mission.

”Okay, there’s a new job for you. In the village of Strawberry Field someone noticed that vegetables started to disappear." Melisanda started explaining, but disappointed Captain interrupted her

"Come on, have we really gone so low that we have to watch vegetables grow?"

"No, it's probably some earth monster eating them from below, so you have to go there and take care of it"

”Okay, that works. Vegetables are food, without food there is no life, if we don’t take care of it, humanity will starve so we have to act quickly. "

"I wouldn't put it like that, but-" Melisanda began, but Captain had already left the room.

Captain told the team they were going to save the vegetables of Strawberry Field and the entire team of 6 went to defeat the vegetable villain. When they reached the town where the vegetables disappeared they went to the field where the vegetables disappeared and it turned out that there was a big hole in the ground.

“This is not one of those dark tight holes I want to go into" commented Scott, and he deliberately built the sentence that way but everyone ignored it like every time. Captain ordered to descend into the hole and look for traces of this ugly bastard who wanted humanity to die to death of starvation by devouring all the vegetables in the area. The team walked along a large underground corridor dug by a large underground monster until the corridor split into 2 tunnels. Captain thought splitting into 2 groups would be a good idea because thanks to the fact that they had a sixth person in the team they could divide into two equal teams. So Captain, Lukier and Frezja went left and Scott, Tanager and Tawny went right.

The first group, the one with Captain, Lukier and Frezja, had much more luck when it came to finding the monster because they could hear digging sounds coming from their tunnel. The sounds were probably made by the monster, because what else could be making them. In addition, their tunnel didn't have many branches and they found what they were looking for quite quickly. There was indeed a monster at the end of that tunnel. At first it didn't notice them at all. It was turned away from them, minding its monstrous business, digging a tunnel like an excavator. It noticed something was wrong only when the team started shooting at it - then it stood up and started chasing them because they pissed it off. It was a bit like a scary runaway scene in games but in this case you can't load a save file if you stumble and fall into the monster's mouth.

Meanwhile, the group of Scott Tawny and Tanager was walking along corridors that seemed empty and the team didn’t know if it was better or worse. Certainly more scary because it had the same vibe as walking around a spooky house when you know something is about to jumpscare you but you don't know when. Scott stuck behind Tanager most of the time because Tanager had a shield. He also tried to start some conversation so that it wasn't so quiet in the tunnels, but Tawny told him to shut up because there was an echo and the monster could hear them before they could hear it. After a very long time of wandering through the tunnels, their corridor split into two other passages.

"So what now?" Tawny asked

"We can split up again," said Tanager

"There are 3 of us and it will be uneven when we split up"

"Wait, I'll just ask Captain what he thinks about it, maybe he'll let us turn back and go home or something" Scott said and took out the walkie-talkie

"Captain, we can’t find any signs of the monster activity here and the tunnel has split in two again, what are your orders?" The other part of the team heard in their radios while running away through a narrow tunnel in front of the monster that was slowly catching up with them. Or rather, they heard every other word because the monster was loud and sounded like crying damned souls. Captain would like to answer whatever was said to him on the walkie-talkie, but it was absolutely not the time to reach for it and talk.

Scott waited a moment for an answer, then repeated the message and waited some more. They stood there in the middle of the split tunnel and waited for a reply for quite a while, Tanager was beginning to worry that they might be in danger and Tawny was getting bored. Scott and Tanager kept talking, while Tawny heard some faint scratching in one of the passages, so he went to check out the source of the sound and shone his gun flashlight into the abyss of the tunnel, and the abyss then showed a row of sharp teeth and before he could react and pull the trigger, the inhabitant of the tunnel pierced him right through with a long tentacle-like tongue. That was when Tawny said, "AAAAAAH" and that got Scott and Tanager out of the conversation. Scott's first instinct was to jump up like a cat and hide behind Tanager's shield, and Tanager quickly ran up to the monster and slapped it in the face with his shield. Then the monster released Tawny, hissed, and fled down the tunnel.

As for the second part of the team, they were still running away from the monster. Eventually though, Frezja thought they couldn’t run like this all the way to the exit because the monster was slowly catching up with them so they would probably get caught very soon. So she turned around and shot the monster in its open mouth. That stunned the monster and it fell over. Hearing the shot, Lukier and Captain stopped running, but they didn't see much because when the monster fell on the ground the whole tunnel was filled with sand, dust and other ground particles and for a second the team thought the whole tunnel would fall apart. During this smoke bomb, they heard only screeching and then heavy footsteps receding, and as the dust fell to the ground, they realized the monster had fled.

"Ha, it can’t run or hide from us now!" Captain exclaimed

"So far, we've barely managed to run from it, Captain" said Lukier gasping for breath

“Well, now it’s running away from us and we have an exit on our side and there’s a dead end on the monster’s side"

"Except that the monster can dig itself out"

"Well then let's quickly follow it before it does." said Captain and they were about to go kill the escaping monster when they heard another signal from the radio and just now they remembered that Scott tried to say something before and they didn't hear what.

"Captain, this is quite a serious matter, because I think we found the monster and-"

"Don't worry about that, we have the monster here and we're going to kill it right now"

"Uhh... oh shit... then there must be more than one monster here because the one from our tunnel killed Tawny"

"Whaaat?" Frezja exclaimed "How did it kill him, what happened?"

"He's not dead yet," said Tanager

"I'll be right there" said Frezja, who was a bit worried that something bad happened to Tawny because, by the way, he was quite a good friend of hers and it would be sad if he died.

"Okay, let Frezja go and we're going to kill the monster" Captain said, not over the radio

"But didn't Scott mention there was more than one monster in these tunnels?" I think splitting up isn't a good idea” said Lukier

"Do as you wish but I won’t look for the monster when my friend is bleeding out" Frezja said and ran the other way and Captain and Lukier looked at each other and decided she was right that a friend had a little more value than a monster that eats vegetables and then they ran after her.

They got to the second group’s tunnel in a few minutes because they were running fast so that Tawny wouldn't bleed out but he wasn't holding on well because he had a hole in his torso. Tanager looked for first aid tutorials on the internet but the internet did not have any details for such a specific event in which a monster pierces you with its tongue. The internet only diagnosed it as cancer so Tanager just stopped the bleeding with his jacket, although it didn't do much because the blood continued to pour. But maybe at least lying on the jacket instead of a dirty ground was a minimal comfort for Tawny's agony. Anyway, when Frezja saw him in such a state, she was scared because it seemed that he was dying and it was a hopeless situation because in a dark cave she wouldn't even be able to sew him up.

So she told Tanager to take him to the ship because Tanager was probably the only member of the team who could freely lift Tawny and additionally carry his shield which also weighed a lot. After reaching the ship, Captain took the helm because Tawny was apparently a bit indisposed. Captain's flying license had expired, because since Tawny joined the team, he was taking everyone everywhere and now Captain was a little afraid that the air police would catch him. At this point, the team was happy that they had a second pilot, because otherwise they would get stuck in the open air or worse, they would have to call for help and humiliate themselves in front of other teams even more. But at the same time they weren't happy either because Tawny was dying. Frezja did everything to keep him from dying but there was not much she could do because although they were no longer in a dark cave, a flying vehicle is also not an ideal place for medical procedures. Not long after they flew to the base and took Tawny to med bay, he lost all vital functions which made him die. Everyone was sad about it, and Frezja was the most sad because, firstly, she failed to dedicate him to the state of stability, and secondly, it was her friend who died. Captain was sitting depressed in the captain's room and he did not want to fill out the report because the mission was a total disaster and he was ashamed. Normally, if it was a movie, now there would be sad music in the background and there would be a montage of touching compositions, but unfortunately it's not a movie.

Frezja was still sitting in medbay over Tawny's corpse and lamented that it was impossible to save him when Tanager barged in. 

"Do you need something?" Frezja asked. At that moment she wasn’t in the mood to be comforted, or to talk, or anything else.

"No, I thought I would come to console you because the loss of friends can cause sadness, I know because I had it myself and it was not fun"

"Pf, are you asking everyone if they need consolation?"

"Well, Captain is being cheered up by Lukier, and Scott told me that it would cheer him up if I left him alone, so I left him alone and I hope he’s feeling better" Tanager said and now Frezja got even sadder because poor Tanager had good intentions and he was getting brushed off in such a rude and obvious way. But on the other hand, she understood Scott because she would probably have replied similarly if it weren't for the fact that now she knows what happened. Nobody deserves to be brushed off twice in a row, so Frezja decided to answer kindly, even if she didn't feel like it.

“I would feel better if our friend hadn’t died"

"Oh..." Tanager said sadly, "Wait, I have an idea!" he exclaimed after a moment and ran out of med bay. After a while he came back wielding an onion.

"What are you doing?" Freesia asked

"Yesterday I was watching a marathon of animated movies and I watched three and in two out of three it happened that when you cry on someone who died, that someone stops being dead.“ He explained as he sliced the onion with the pocket knife he had taken from his pocket.

"What was in the third movie?"

"A kiss of true love but I doubt Tawny has known me long enough to love me," Tanager replied

"Uh, Tanager it doesn't work like that" Freesia said, a bit disappointed but Tanager kept doing what he started and started crying from Onions and cried on Tawny's corpse and Tawny woke up.

"What? where... I- what happened?" asked Tawny, looking around the room and then he looked at Tanager and Frezja confused. 

"Whaaat?" Freesia said

”Yes! So magic exists! " Tanager exclaimed

"But you were dead. How...?"

"Exactly..." Tawny remembered that he had been stabbed by a monster earlier, so he took off his torn clothes and it turned out the wound had completely healed and there was only a scar left. "What the...?"

”Wow, I didn't know the magic from movies had such power! I mean, I knew it was powerful because in the one movie the guy was stabbed with a dagger and survived, but it's some really strong magic, I'm surprised doctors in hospitals don't use it. " Tanager gasped, “Maybe it's just me who has healing powers? Maybe I should become a doctor in a hospital? I'm going to tell Scott about it! " and Tanager ran off and left Tawny and Frezja alone in the room.

"Okay, will you finally tell me what magic he’s talking about?"

”There is no magic, there has to be an explanation for why you’re not dead. I mean, I'm glad you’re alive, but what anomaly caused you to wake up after your organs failed?”

Tawny had lost enough blood to fill a pool with it. Okay, maybe not, it was hyperbole, but he really lost a lot of blood and his organs were punctured and there was no chance of the thing that just happened happening.

"Do others think I'm dead?" Tawny asked, interrupting Frezja from trying to examine him.

"Oh hell, right! Wait a minute, I’ll tell Captain that you decided not to die before he sends the report” and Freesia left and told both Captain and Lukier because they were in the same room and they were both as surprised as Frezja and Tawny. Fortunately Captain was procrastinating filling the report earlier because now at least he could say that no one died, only that the monster escaped and that's it. Kind of a failure, but much better than Tawny dying during the mission for real. After a while, the whole team gathered in med bay to see with their own eyes that Tawny was alive. They started asking him about various things, but he didn't have the strength to answer all of that, so he told Frecja to kick them out of the room and that's what she did because Tawny might be alive but he’s still weak and sick.

The next day, Tawny talked to Frezja more calmly than before and it turned out that the monster with whom Lukier, Captain and Frezja were fighting was a different type of monster than the one who stabbed Tawny. The monster in the first group was large and armored, with a few weak spots on the soft neck and tail, and the monster in the second tunnel was smaller, spiky and striped. Freesia then opened the official online monster directory and found the one she fought on the species list, but no "smaller spiky striped monster" matched the one Tawny had seen. It looked like it was some undiscovered species of monster and Frezja suspected that it might have some healing properties in its saliva or something but there was no way to confirm it because to be able to confirm it she would have to do some research on the monster and the monster was undiscovered. There was also no way to discover it because it escaped, but so far at least they were happy that Tawny didn't really die and should recover in the near future.