The Trap

Pokemon intent on capture: Krabby
Rank Medium 10-20k characters
Character counte ~10.1k characters
Also: this is my half for the art+writing collab event! @Magikchicken is doing the other half

The sea and shore have always been a source of comfort as well as its home for Kalasag. Miles open of open, fresh air has always been inherently pleasurable. Food was abundant and he never needed to move. Life for this krabby was relatively peaceful. Nothing really changed, at least here. There was a city a few miles south of of the beach and the humans were particularly active around here come summertime, but otherwise it was peaceful seventy-five percent of the year.

Anyways the summer air brought the tourists here and the beach was abuzz with bathers, children playing in the sand, their parents lazing about. There was tons of crumbs from picnics and garbage strewn about feeding the wingulls that lived there in great numbers. It was your average summer getaway. Kalasag never liked it however, and he generally disliked the amount of humans there, but it did provide here a nightly buffet of trash in the evenings when the humans would disappear.

Kalasag normally hid under one of the many piers on the beach during the summer days to avoid direct confrontation with any of the people. The wingulls around didn’t mind the people and Kalasag could never understand why. He guessed that the allure of all the trash leftover by the humans was too good to pass up before letting it all spoil. Occasionally, he even observed that some of the humans fed the wingulls there! He always thought of them as common beggars anyway. Though, he was also secretly jealous. He attempted to beg off of the humans many times before but it never really worked. Most of the people he interacted with would cower from his sharp claws and ugly appearance.

One hot July day, however, his hiding place was thwarted. It was about noon and the sky was crystal clear, with of course several wingulls flying overhead, a boy about thirteen spent made a very large sandcastle. It was about half his height! After about two hours of working, reworking, digging barriers to keep the tide out, it finally looked like it was complete--except one part was missing: it needed shells for the final touches. While the beach had tons of loosely buried sea shells, there weren’t any around that were quality enough in the vicinity of the boy were satisfactory enough to be chosen.

After about fifteen minutes of a dogged pursuit of beach shells, he investigated the sand piles around a nearby pier, thinking that they were close to the sea but protected. This pier also was Kalasag’s hideout.

Kalasag could see it a mile away but was petrified; he didn’t know what to do when he saw the human walking towards his hiding spot. He ferociously dug into the sand to protect himself before the human boy had a chance to see what he was doing. Unfortunately for Kalasag, it was a little too late as the boy observed Kalasag dig his little sand burrow.

The kid was intrigued, but nevertheless, he had a mission to do and started to dig in the nearby sand for sea shells. After a few minutes, Kalasag peeked out of his burrow to see if the kid was still there, but the human was. Petrified of what might happen, Kalasag quickly popped back into his impromptu burrow. It was a little small and the edges of his pincers were partially uncovered and it looked a little silly.

Unfortunately for Kalasag, the kid’s search for the sea shells drew him closer to Kalasag’s burrow. The boy was intensely focused on finding those beautiful shells. Eventually the boy’s search did lead him to the burrow where Kalasag automatically clapped its incompletely buried pincers as a warning. That shocked the kid a little but he continued anyway, probably thinking that Kalasag wasn’t dangerous.

“Ah, ha,” yelled the boy as he found a few clean, unbroken shells.

The outburst, however, startled Kalasag whose burrow was less than a yard away. He jumped out of his burrow, shaking off the sand. He crawled out of the burrow looking at the boy intensely, claws extended. The boy noticed this and was surprised at the aggression from the the little krabby. However, he didn’t seem to be afraid of the crustacean. Kalasag continued to snap its claws, but the boy continued to react in an unintended way, which frustrated him.

“Aww,” said the boy as he stuffed his shorts pockets with the shells he found and pulled out a small, black device from his pocket and pointed it to Kalasag.

“What’s your name?”

Kalasag continued snapping his pincers.

“Hm… I’ll call you Kalasag!”

Kalasag grew frustrated and ran to the boy and tried to clench one of his legs, but the boy saw it and moved out of the way too quickly.

“Woah! Watch it,” he yelled.

By then, Kalasag was out from under his pier and in the broad daylight where the other humans could see him, but he didn’t care. He wanted that pestering human to go away. The boy put the device back into his pockets and ran off with the shells he collected. Relieved that the boy ran away, Kalasag returned to the safety and comfort of his makeshift burrow in the sand under the pier. Thinking that he scared off the boy, Kalasag sat down in the burrow and tried to take a nap.

However, moments later, Kalasag was quickly awoken when he felt his burrow shake. The sand flew off in the wind and quickly found out that he was on a plastic, red object that stuck onto a wooden rod. The object was moving fast and Kalasag could barely get a grip. It was too scared to move and hunkered down into place. It saw his home go farther away each second.

Kalasag thought, “What is happening?”

Kalasag was eventually let down inside a wooden enclosure. In it was a massive castle made of sand. Once Kalasag was released he looked up to see the boy holding the object that carried him! He ran to the edge of the enclosure and tried to burrow his way through the sand, but ran into a wooden floor under the sand. It was a giant, wooden box holding the crab.

At this point Kalasag gave up trying to escape. He looked up to the crystal clear sky and saw a wingull passing overhead and sighed.

He thought, “This is the worst.”

He heard the boy screaming off in the distance that grew clearer as he spoke, “Mom, mom, look over here! I’ve finally finished it!”

“Ok,” said a bored female voice.

Their voices no longer seemed distant, “See! Look at that! It did that myself!”

“Wow, impressive! I see that you’ve also found a friend!”

“Oh yeah, I totally found him over by the pier. I thought he would be the perfect, finishing touch to my masterpiece!”

There was a brief pause. Kalasag walked into the sunlight since there wasn’t really enough sand to dig a burrow.

There was chatter from amongst the humans. “Oh, do you think he’s hungry,” the mother asked.

“I don’t know; maybe,” said the boy, completely oblivious to the fact that he trapped a live pokemon just for decorative purposes.

“You know you’ll have to release him back into the wild sometime,” said the mother sternly, “we should at least give him some food to make his time worth it.”

The boy begrudgingly agreed. This boy appeared not to be a trainer at all. Kalasag was annoyed at the thought of becoming a pet and hoped that his torture would end soon. Kalasag walked over to the shadow of the large sand castle and sat down on the thin layer or sand. The castle looked like it was drying up but still held its shape.

Moments passed and the boy returned with a few pieces of bread and tossed it in there for Kalasag. He was napping at that point, waiting out his torture. However, the bread slice was promptly taken by a perusing wingull, much to the boy’s annoyance. The boy seemed to notice that Kalasag was napping and left for a while to play in the ocean.

After about an hour, the shadow of the sand castle had moved and constantly exposed to the sunlight wore on Kalasag. The sand castle had signs of drying up as well. Parts of it were crumbled and shells fell off. It was a miserable experience for the little krabby. Desperate for some sort of shelter, it attacked the thing the humans probably valued most: the sand castle. Kalasag dug its way into the large mound of sand and it toppled in a large enough mound of sand to burrow into. The sand from the center of the castle was moist and refreshing while the sand from the outside was dry and warm.

Another thirty minutes or an hour or so the boy returned and let out a cry seeing his precious sand castle in ruins. The boy’s cry awoke Kalasag from inside his burrow, but he didn’t care one bit. The sand was still a little moist and cool so Kalasag was fine, at least for the time being. If he had to Kalasag could leave, but this burrow was nicer than staying out in the hot sun. He especially loved the tidal sand being moist and cool for hot summer days and the wet sand was a suitable substitute for the real deal. He knew he would have to come out eventually as the sand would dry eventually, but all was good.

Just as he settled back into sleep, he felt another rumble. Kalasag thought, “Here we go again,” as his temporary, sandy home crumbled away and saw that he was on that red object again. This time fearing nothing, he shook some of the sand off his body as he was lifted out of his enclosure and over to the beach, there he made a leap for joy and ran as far away from the boy as fast as possible. Though, being a small crab, he couldn’t run very fast and the boy caught on very quickly.

As he ran, he couldn’t help but think about what the boy’s intentions were, but there wasn’t any time if he wanted to get away! The boy managed to catch up to the crab and dove for Kalasag’s head. Unfortunately for Kalasag, his claws couldn't reach from behind to fight back, so all he could do was squirm to get loose, but that clearly didn’t work.

Soon after, though, he heard a scream from the boy’s mother, “STOP! Leave that poor thing alone!”

“But mom…!”

“No! That is a poor creature! Let him go! He doesn’t deserve that kind of treatment!”

“Okay…”

The kid let go of Kalasag and gripped by the elbow, pulling the boy up. Kalasag heard them walk off in the distance. He was petrified.

That was the worst day he had ever experienced in his life up to that point. What was that kid’s problem!? After the sun set, perhaps the allure of the trash was too much for him and started north, away from that beach, never to go back. And in his time away, he found a cleaner, and empty beach devoid of most humans except for an occasional surfer. The sand was rockier and there were more places to build a sturdy home here. It was much happier than that nightmare of a sandy beach and more importantly, a refuge away from that crazy person who trapped him in an enclosure.

 

Claiming!

 

I completely forgot to notify it here.

Graded! Just waiting on Curation!!

 

Okay. So. I've had this grade stashed away for almost three months! I finally have the go on posting it. Although, until the Art Curation has gone up you cannot claim. I'm so sorry for the wait on this grade!

LENGTH
Krabby - Medium (10 MCR)
Actual - 10601

Checks out. Nice.

INTRODUCTION

The introduction did the basics of world establishing, and it even did a good job of portraying our protagonist to the reader! In fact, I really enjoyed the focus on Kalasag’s personality here. I really enjoyed how much is shown about our protagonist in this aspect.

There is one downside though: It feels as if there is nothing really happening to Kalasag besides the occasional invasion of humans onto his beach. From my perspective it seems as if the narrator is saying “twenty-five percent of the year sucks, but the other seventy-five makes up for it.” It seems like the humans are a simple nuisance that Kalasag has learned to avoid.

STORY

The story overall is pretty simple. That isn’t a bad thing whatsoever though. I’m going to spend my time talking about the details within the story rather than the story itself. This is because the actual story is solid and does its job as a medium story, with a few odd inconsistencies.

The details within the story connect and make sense too, but something stood out pretty blatantly while reading: it felt rushed.

Every single action seems to happen within paragraphs of each other. You can see within the story how fast some things take place with little detail put into them.

A good example of this is when Kalasag gains his name: Kalasag.

It felt really weird from the perspective given to us that Kalasag was called Kalasag before he even met the boy. It makes sense to keep with this single title so it doesn’t confuse the readers, but it definitely comes off as odd, and even breaks the fourth wall a little bit. It pulled me out of the story and made me go “Wait what? That wasn’t his name already?”

Another example of rushing through is when Kalasag is released at the end of the story. The entire ending is summed up in a single paragraph. And leaves me with more questions. Were there other events that lead to this? Was Kalasag planning to leave before this and was it the final straw?

Kalasag may be the protagonist, but it feels as if he is a witness in this story. He has no driving force and the only choice he seems to make is leaving the beach he finds so torturous during the summer.



GRAMMAR

Right away in the introduction we have “Miles open of open,“ I believe I’ve warned you about this before in your WaR 2018 story, but please take the extra time to double check your writing.

-

“Anyways the summer air brought the tourists here and the beach was abuzz with bathers,”

Needs a comma after the “Anyways,”

It should read:

“Anyways, the summer air brought the tourists here and the beach was abuzz with bathers,”

The use of anyways was used correctly as you’re going back to the original thought that was interrupted.

-

“It was about noon and the sky was crystal clear, with of course several wingulls flying overhead, a boy about thirteen spent made a very large sandcastle.”

I think the underlined statement is supposed to say “A boy spent his time making a very large sandcastle.”

Nonetheless, in its current state, it feels like you lobbed two sentences together for no reason. The section about the boy seems like an additional statement not tied to the prior ones.

It could read much better as:

“It was about noon and the sky was crystal clear, with of course several wingulls flying over a boy at about the age of thirteen years making a very large sandcastle.”

OR

“It was about noon and the sky was crystal clear, with of course several wingulls flying above in the sky. Below the crowded sky was a boy at about the age of thirteen years making a very large sandcastle.”

Both should give some idea. One example helps connect the vision of the boy to the scene, while the other example ends the sentence and continues the thought in another for easier reading.


-

“It saw his home go farther away each second.”

This could be an issue only I’m seeing, but what is “It?” The object that captured Kalasag or Kalasag?

-

“After the sun set, perhaps the allure of the trash was too much for him and started north, away from that beach, never to go back”

I think I know what this is trying to say, but I’m not quite sure.

“After the sun set, the allure of trash was too much for Kalasag and drew him north, away from the beach to never go back.”

THE VERDICT

I want to pass this. The story is solid, the main character has personality and so does the antagonist. Sadly, the inner details seem too rushed at the moment to really consider this passable. I’ve warned you of this before, please reread your stories. I see a lot of glaring grammatical errors (the ones I showed above,) that could be really easily fixed if you went back through and read them. I get it, I read over errors a lot, I’ve had quite a few in my stories and even my grades, but it feels like you aren’t taking my advice into account on this. Sadly, Krabby was not captured.

But! You can always edit! In fact as always I'd love to see you edit and make this story refined!