Episode 12

*Talk Page*

The Final Struggle

Pezci gets up the nerve to help Scypho, but the Mirror interferes by extruding a remora's sucker and grabbing her head securely. Madam Louv sees this as an opportunity, and she and her boys come for the Mirror. She tries to remove it from Pezci's head by shaking and pulling. Meanwhile, Scypho stings the tentacle pulling at him into withdrawing, then he rises out of the trench and knocks down the Madam with an elbow. The worm in the trench comes up next and corners Madam Louv and her squid bodyguards. Scypho grabs up the Mirror and makes off with it, with Pezci, either unconscious or dead, hanging limply, still attached by the top of her head.

## Cast of Characters

* Pezci
* Scypho
* The Mirror
* Madam Louv
* Madam's bodyguards
* The Trench worm

## Synopsis

Despite recognizing the danger Scypho is in, Pezci gets the courage to come out of her hiding place and approach the trench. They grab each others wrists, and she swims furiously, pulling with all her might. The Mirror comes gliding in overhead on its pink wings as she manages to make some headway toward getting Scypho back over the edge. Just as the Mirror arrives above Pezci's head, it flips over and extrudes a giant blue-skinned remora's sucker. While she grunts with the effort of trying to rescue Scypho, he notices the Mirror and starts to say something. With the Mirror on close approach, Pezci sees it now and wonders herself what's going on.

Without warning, the Mirror attaches itself to Pezci's head with a sucking "shoop!" sound, covering the top of her head down past her eyes and effectively blindfolding her. Understandably upset, she releases Scypho and begins to wail loudly while flailing about. Scypho is pulled back down into the trench by the now growling but still unseen monster that all those tentacles belong to. He barely manages to grab onto the lip of the trench as the tentacle dragging at him tries to pull him down.

Swimming just above the reach of the forest of suckered arms waving about in the water, Madam Louv and her two bodyguards go after the Mirror now that Scypho is otherwise occupied, all three of them grim and determined. Just above where he struggles with the tentacle, Pezci continues to wail and struggle with the Mirror, dancing around wearing the Mirror like some strange hat.

Scypho uses his stinging tentacles on the suckered arm holding him, and his venom begins to have an affect.

Madam Louv and her squids try surrounding Pezci, but while flailing about, she stabs one squid in the body with the pointed ferrule on the far end of the shaft, and she catches the other with a hit under the chin with the shaft itself. Before Pezci can cause any other harm, the Madam grabs the Mirror just below where it's joined to the shaft, and declaring this is enough of this absurdity, she brutally shakes the shaft trying to dislodge Pezci from the Mirror.

At the trench's lip, Scypho is winning as the tentacle weakens from the venom, no longer able to pull and just barely hanging on. The jellyfish stings it some more, growling in turn at the creature below. The badly stung arm finally releases him and falls away, and Scypho comes over the edge looking for a fight. Madam Louv now is holding Pezci's shoulder down while she tries to pry the Mirror of her head, telling it to let go and hurting her in the process. Suddenly, Scypho comes up on the lady and smashes her in the head with an elbow strike, briefly stunning her. Laughing, he reclaims the Mirror, with the now quiescent Pezci dangling limply off the end. The bodyguards both stare at their stunned employer with open mouths, unable to deal with what they had just seen happen.

In the trench, the remaining arms finally react to the harm done by the jellyfish. They curl down for a moment and then slam violently on the ground at the front of the trench. The frightened bodyguards grab onto each other, screaming and holding tightly, and Madam Louv jumps up in surprise. Scypho is too wrapped up in trying to figure out what the Mirror is doing with Pezci to pay attention. With a tremendous scream, a horrific giant green worm, its many tentacles surrounding a round, gaping, fang-lined maw, comes up from the unlit depths of the trench. The useless bodyguards continue to scream, while the whale seems to be frozen in shock. Scypho slings Pezci's limp body over his shoulder using the Mirror as a handle, and he makes an escape stage left.

Surrounded by the worm's tentacles, Madam Louv calls the escaping merman a "blobbin', snolly, good for nothing, vagabond scumbag." She tells him this ain't the end and she will find him. He just swims away, quietly laughing, with Pezci looking like she's either unconscious or dead, still attached to the Mirror.

## Trivia

* On July 31, 2021, username Catswell voiced the opinion in the comment section that the sucker used by the Mirror looked like the top of a remora's head. There is evidence to support this conjecture.
* The sucker adaptation on top of a remora's head is the result of thousands of millennia of adaptations that reshaped the dorsal fin (the one on top) of the fish into a biological suction cup that it uses to hitch rides on other animals.