Tsuchinoko Hatchling

The hatchling looks much like its parent shrunk down: a worm with a spot-patterned serpent body and a mouth ringed by tentacles, here lined with three rows of teeth. Even so it still outsizes the ordinary Mongolian Death Worm Okarun read about, which only reach roughly one and a half to two meters.

Following the Byakuja Village Incident, Naki stumbled onto the deceased serpent's eggs and the Kito Family hatched one, fattening it on livestock. Because its diet never included humans, the hatchling lacks its parent's deadlier gifts, the suicidal psychic waves, the electric shocks, and the poison mist. Naki dried it down to a tiny size, then smuggled the shrunken worm aboard a plane bound for Shimane, where Momo was traveling.

Two traits define the hatchling. Its body responds to dryness, collapsing to a fraction of its size when vacuumed dry and swelling back to full mass once wetted, which is how Naki revived it mid-flight with spilled cologne. Beyond that it is largely a brute instrument: Naki steered it by the tentacles, stuffed it with frozen sharks, and made it regurgitate them at the Typhoon Human. The cryptid eventually blew off the worm's lower half and Momo's group rode it skyward, but a giant shark swallowed both worm and Kitos whole. The Evil Eye then kicked that shark clear off Earth, landing the hatchling and the family on the Moon, where they wander its surface as Naki again swears vengeance.