BOOM

Tatalia wasn't quite in the clear yet as the ground around her shook violently and she could hear cracks forming in the boulder above her. She was lucky she hadn't taken too long to think about what to do next or decided to just stay holed up inside the rock as it wouldn't last long.

Above her, Blue raised two gauntletted fists high in the air before bringing them down on the boulder. More cracks spiderwebbed out across the stone surface and chunks broke off and splashed into the mud around it. Blue was upset that they'd made themself bigger already and couldn't do so again for a while. Otherwise, they'd have just swallowed the boulder whole, but now they were forced to break it into smaller, more bite-sized pieces if they wanted to get it out of the way so they could keep chasing that annoying spider.

Another heavy smash came down on the boulder and finally reduced it to a pile of rubble that the ooze immediately started to consume, shoveling the chunks of rock into their slimy torso. Rocks weren't their favorite food, but this wasn't the meal they were looking forward to anyways.

With the boulder gone, they looked down into the hole beneath it, looking for the spider creature, but instead they saw that annoying Goblin! No wait, that annoying pile of spiders that looked like a Goblin!

"You! Where'd that big spider go!?" Blue asked angrily as they reached a hand down into the hole to grab the Goblin.

---

Gauntlets of Ginma
Bull's Strength
Baloth Muscles
Space Pocket

There comes a time in every adventurer's life when desperation hits its peak. When it does, sometimes all you can do is throw the kitchen sink and everything in it at the problem and hope something sticks, and that's exactly what Tatalia did.

A gauntleted hand was reaching down into hole to grab Tatalia. That was a problem, but there was a solution. Tatalia grabbed her entire bag of emergency "figure something out" supplies, and she didn't even bother to take stock of what was inside. Instead, she launched it upward toward the offending hand's owner with her spidery powers.¹

There was a lot of stuff in that bag.² There were caltrops, of course; very nasty, maybe not too effective against armor. There were glass bottles; everyone hates broken glass. There was powdered glass, sticky paste, tons and tons of loose camo cloth, more smoke powder, various metal anchors and spiky bits, hooks, wires, spidersilk, and of course the bag itself. Sure, any of those items would individually not be that much, but launched at a high velocity, they had stopping power and sheer chaotic effect on their side.

And then brilliance struck Tatalia's little thief heart. She piped up a response to the ooze's question.

"The big spider went into the water to get away! Now please leave me alone! Pretty please!"³

It was a convincing plea, though obviously it was a total lie. But on the off chance that the ooze still wanted to murder her, the goblin was going to run away.

Tatalia loosed the whole heavy bag at the ooze to buy time, and then she started digging horizontally. Suddenly, what was once a straight, thin tunnel down was an "L" shape, and what then it became a sort of "Ln" shape, and then suddenly Tatalia was zig-zagging and taking weird routes underground through rock and dirt, throwing up quick barriers behind her.

She didn't need to dig forever. She just needed to dig far enough to surface far enough away from the ooze to sneak off into the night, and she knew she could survive that long! The blindness he was suffering was fading, sure, but if he wanted to follow her inside the twisting tunnels - the pitch black tunnels where no light penetrated - then he'd have a very befuddling chase on his hands!

---

_{1. Improvisation Equipment; 2. Spider Silk Tattoo; 3. Smooth Talking; 4. Miner's Friends}

Blue was confused for a second as the Goblin threw a bag into their hand which stuck to their gooey palm like it was glued there. What was this for? A present?

They looked back down at her to see her as she shouted that the spider they were chasing had escaped into the water and then she turned and burrowed her way farther down into the dirt before making a quick bend. The ooze's echolocation travelled down the hole far enough to watch her for a while as she made a really weird shaped tunnel until she made a barrier in it that blocked them from seeing any further.

Blue looked around in a mix of anger and disappointment. They couldn't detect any creatures with their echolocation or see any with their sight returned. The big spider got away, and the pile of spiders... gave them a present, they guessed? They shoved the bag of junk into their slimy torso with a shrug.

"Hmph." Blue pouted, but there wasn't anything they could do now. They just turned and stomped back to the mostly destroyed bandit camp. At least there was going to be plenty to eat there, even if that Goblin wasn't going to be happy about it. Why did she even want them to not kill and eat the bandits? Didn't spiders eat people? At least the really big ones did, right? They'd heard about big spiders in Moonglade.

"Maybe I should go there next... I want to eat some giant spiders..." Blue thought out loud as they walked, already drooling at the idea. Their mission here was accomplished, even if it was sort of by accident. They'd clean up here and head out, getting their mind off that Goblin-shaped spider pile and the other big spider. But they'd get their revenge if they ran into it again, that was for sure.

---

Slimy Hands
Space Pocket

It took a good ten minutes of digging before Tatalia figured she was far enough away to risk poking her head out of the dirt. She actually poked her head up into a puddle of mud, leaving her sputtering and gagging as she crawled out of the muck and onto the shore of a mosquito infested pond. Buzzing gnats and worse leapt at her, and she was too tired to resist them. She just rolled over onto her stomach and heaved out the world's weariest sigh.

The poor little vanquished goblin, having only survived due to a blatant lie, luck, and what was either great mercy or incredible ignorance, could only imagine what would have happened if the ooze had caught her. She'd witnessed just how powerful that creature was. It- no, they; they were definitely sentient - could have probably squeezed the life out of her in a few seconds flat and eaten her if the ooze person so wanted to. She almost died.

It felt so wrong. Not the losing part; Tatalia knew she wasn't a fighter, after all. No, what felt wrong was that she- well, she hadn't wanted to fight. It didn't have to be a fight at all! All she ever wanted was to work together since clearly they had the same idea in mind! How had it gone so badly so quickly?

The goblin considered that question for a good, long time... and then she let out a sigh.

"It was my fault," she admitted to herself. "It usually is, isn't it?"

She could've done so many things differently. The ooze didn't seem wholly amoral, just... misguided? Lost? Very hungry? Tatalia didn't know what else to say sans that she couldn't let herself ignore how badly things had gone. She would probably never see that weird blue goopy person again, but... she needed to get better at negotiating. How could she be so stupid?

And she needed to brush up on her fighting skills, too. She could hold her own, but she wasn't an expert warrior. She was going to need something more than bravado and a dagger if she was going to defeat serious threats, and they seemed to be growing in number. Yes... She needed to train.

And where better to train than against those horrible spiders that turned her into a monster? Tatalia smiled to herself. At least that would be a fight she knew she could handle, and there wouldn't be any funny surprises this time, either!