Cryptotrappers!

Cryptotrappers- The Ninja in Green

Just as dark spots had begun to overtake my vision, I was sent careening to the ground as Sid slammed his shoulder into the Mantis Man's side. The green terror stumbled, but remained firm, and gave a hissing roar with mandibles spread to Sid. Cracking his knuckles and neck, Sid turned back towards me and Randy.
"Run deeper into the forest. I'll keep it distracted here. We need a hole away from water if we want this to work."
"Sid-" I began, but before I could go further he cut me off.
"Just run. Don't look back. I'll find you."
As Sid charged the Mantis Man with a roar, Randy pulled my arm away before I could act, looking directly into my eyes.
"He knows what he's doing." Randy reassured me, with a confident expression. "Just do what he says."
Beckoning Seth, I turned and ran into the shrouded woods alongside Randy. We ran until we grew tired of the sound of our own footfall, and then we waited. We waited for minutes that felt like hours, looking out into the forest for any hint of friend or foe. But there was still no sign of Sid.

After about fifteen minutes of sitting around and waiting, Randy sighed, slapped his thighs and stood up.
"No point in just sitting here." Randy relented. "Let's start digging."
I furrowed my brow in response.
"I mean, he said he was buying us time, right?" Randy replied, feeling around his outfit. "So he probably wants us to start making some progress while he's distracting it- Damn it, we left everything back there didn't we?"
"So, we don't have shovels, darts, food, buttons... anything?" I asked, exasperated.
"In total we have one glove, two dead rats, one Phoenix, a bit of mud-soaked rope, one tranquilliser gun and four darts- actually this ones bent so make that three darts."
"What do we do?"
Randy shrugged, before grabbing a large stick from the ground and beginning to scrape at the soil.
"We dig, with our hands, sticks, whatever we can find. It'll be slower, but I don't want to be the one who has to tell Sid that we just sat around doing nothing whilst he was making time for us to work."
"Fair point." I admitted, as I began to scratch away at the ground.

A while into digging, long enough for me to break down in sweat from the endeavour, I took a break to check in with Seth, who'd been perched on a branch watching the forest while we worked.
"No sign yet, huh?" I asked, not expecting a response. Looking out into the trees, I wondered if the Mantis Man was watching us somewhere, silently with its oversized eyes. I turned to see Randy approaching us, seemingly taking a break too.
"Come on Sid... where the hell are you?" he muttered, staring pointlessly at the forest, before turning to me. "Exo, can't you get Seth to fly around a little to see if he can find him? I'm starting to get worried..."
Deciding we could at least try, I signalled Seth to fly and he soared into the forest. With nothing else to do in the meantime, we continued to dig.

I could tell that Randy was starting to sink into concern, and that was obviously something I didn't want. So to take his mind off things, I began to make small talk.
"How's digging?"
Randy sighed and wiped his brow.
"Same as it was twenty minutes ago. How's digging for you?"
"Can't complain!" I sardonically smiled. This wasn't working, so I continued asking questions.
"Hey, Randy, can I ask something?"
"Well, I haven't exactly got anything better to do than answer."
"What was the Cryptotrappers like before I showed up?"
Randy smacked his lips as we continued to dig.
"Well, unsuccessful, in a word. We saw things, sure, but never captured anything until we went after that Bigfoot and you showed up. But it was fun, too, sometimes. Like the Tsuchinoko incident... that is if you want to hear about it."
I was curious, but didn't want to let on that I was too curious.
"Well, since we've got nothing else to talk about..."
Randy smiled, for the first time in a while, as he began to reminisce.

"It was about a year back now, maybe a year and a half. Eva had read an account of somewhere in Japan where alcohol had been going missing. She had her suspicions that it was a Tsuchinoko, so the three of us had set out to try and lure it out with some high quality alcohol of our own. Things got boring, we... delved into our own supply and, well we started to pour our lives into each other, so to speak."
"Go on?" I pressed, not even bothering to hide my investment anymore. Randy took a break from the work as he continued
"Eva, well, she told us about her parents. Scientists, both, of some sort. They worked in this cryptozoology firm that she didn't go to deeply into, but apparently that's where she spent most of her childhood. When she was about four, her father came to tell her that they had to go, and then, well they vanished. No note, no getaway, it was like both parents had just... stopped existing. She didn't tell us what happened next, she just told us that she found her father's last notes before she left that place, stuff about making a breakthrough in something, and about mimicking life, very out of character for him according to her. That's about all she got to say before we all woke up the next morning with the worst headache I've ever experienced."
"And what about Sid?" I asked, unthinkingly.
"Sid? Well, Sid didn't say much to us that night. Just that he was a different person now and that who he was didn't matter. Honestly, I don't think waterboarding could get anything out of him about his past... seriously, where the hell are you, man."
The conversation had ended. The hole had gotten deep enough as to where getting out was an issue, so I tied the one bit of rope we had around a tree and continued to dig deeper.