He was a goddamn baby dinosaur. He couldn’t believe it. There had been no mention of this in the promotion materials. Not the slightest hint in anything he’d read online. He turned around to find his prison was in fact, a large pale egg, half of it shattered into pieces and scattered across the ground. He had no way to judge his relative size to a human, but if he had to guess his back was barely at knee height, and the jungle in which he found himself was clearly a place for giants. Then the game reasserted itself, in the form of a UI notification.
[Chat Request From: whiteRabbit]
Before he could answer it, another request came in.
[Chat Request From: TheBig_t]
Without hands to gesture, initially he wasn’t sure how to actually use the interface, but a small flick of his nose turned out to have the same effect as swiping with his hands. With a few gestures he merged the chat requests together.
“Hello?” Marcus’s voice came through, clearly agitated. “What the hell is going on?”
“We’re baby dinosaurs.” Erik said, “I just crawled out of an egg.” He was surprised to hear a noise come from his own mouth as he spoke. It wasn’t words. That part of the chat function was internal. Many games had a sort of telepathy-like chat function. VR rig was plugged directly into the brain after all. He was forced to set the curiosity aside as his friends continued.
“Yeah, me too.” Marcus said.
“Egg?” Sarah’s voice joined in, a tense quality that Erik recognized. She was stressed, but trying to sound calm. “That explains a few things I think. I’m stuck.”
“Just break out.” Marcus said. “That’s what I did.”
“It’s not that easy.” Erik could hear her calm starting to fracture. “The damn thing won’t-” she cut off, presumably trying once again to struggle her way free, and as she did Erik thought he heard the faintest sounds of something shuffling and scraping. Then it stopped. “Damn it.” She complained over the connection.
“Try again Sarah, I think I heard you.” The scraping sound came again, and Erik forced his small body forward through some undergrowth, low hanging branches, thistle covered weeds scraping uncomfortably at his face and sides, though there was no true pain. VR systems likely would’ve turned pain off entirely if it wasn’t necessary for context.
He managed to work his way into a small clearing, adjacent to the one he’d hatched in, at nearly the same time a tiny two-legged lizard arrived from the opposite side, stumbling free of the undergrowth and trying to shake off a vine that had entangled itself around his leg.
“Marcus, is that you?”
“Damn skippy.” he said, by way of acknowledgement.
“Get me out of here.” Sarah said, on the verge of panic. The large egg wobbled back and forth with energy, but showed no signs of breaking.
“I got you.” Erik said, rushing forward on four legs he stopped, and delicately tapped the horn bud on the end of his nose against the egg's surface. When that didn’t do it, he tapped again a bit more forcefully. The egg fractured and then quickly began to split. A small clawed hand poked out of the gap in the shell, scrabbling wildly at edge, breaking pieces away until Sarah managed to push her raptor head out through the gap. One large, yellow slit pupiled eye fixed on him.
“That was unpleasant” Her voice came across the connection, at the same time her little raptor avatar made a chirping sound.
“Yeah,” Erik agreed, and his own avatar grunted.
“Are you guys making those noises on purpose?” Marcus asked as he approached, and his baby t-rex gurgled low in its throat.
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“Looks like the chat function is tied to the in-game audio. When we communicate, our avatars make noise.” Erik said, accompanied by a series of snorts. Sarah wriggled the rest of the way free of her egg and stumbled a bit as she stretched her legs, trying to acclimate to her new body.
“What reason could there possibly be to include a feature like that?” She asked, letting off several high pitched chirps, and before Erik could begin to speculate the answer became self-evident. From the far side of the clearing another sound came, deeper and resonant than any of their own. A curious chuff-chuff-chuff that Erik guessed was a deep inhalation. The three of them turned as one to look, as a long thin snout parted the vegetation, and two amber eyes stared at the the three of them, flicking from one to the other. As Erik looked back at the creature, an info box popped up his screen
Identify
Species: Kaprosuchus
Disposition: Hostile/Predator
Age: Sub-Adult
Species Information: ?
It’s jaw opened and it made an awful, low hissing sound, like a demon house cat the size of a car, but it didn’t move, and neither did they. The predator stood, looking in on them, and they stared back. Erik wasn’t sure how long that went on. His mind kept returning to the unnatural stillness of the creature as it considered them. Like it had become a statue, content to merely observe.
Eventually, it seemed to grow bored as its head pulled back, vanishing once more into the foliage. Seconds turned to a minute, and then to two before anyone moved or spoke. Erik was just about to start signaling the other two to follow him, when Marcus broke the silence.
“What the hell was-” Marcuse started, his little Rex avatar again made that strange gurgling sound and the Kaprosuchus exploded from the foliage, barreling straight toward him, and Erik called out.
“Run!”
The three of them turned and plunged straight into the undergrowth on their side of the clearing, struggling their way through, and underneath his feet Erik could feel the ground tremble as the crocodile from hell gave chase. He had no doubts it would’ve caught them quickly if they were out in the open, but their small size and the dense vegetation was buying them time. Not a lot of time, as the monster crock had already overtaken them, its long snout sweeping aside plants and vines with each swing of its head, trying to root them out.
As Erik struggled, trying to stay ahead of those deadly jaws, the ground vanished from under his front feet, and before he had a chance to backpedal, he tumbled forward, sliding down a dirt slope, tumbling end over end until he managed to get his small flat feet under him. Once steadied, he saw streaks of dust as Marcus and Sarah also fell. Marcus tumbled uncontrollably, rolling on his side, his tiny arms scrabbling ineffectually at the air with each turn. Sarah on the other hand had managed to turn her fall into a controlled slide, her raptor balancing easily on it’s small legs. Erik moved over to Marcus, to intercept him before he could fall straight onto a pile of rocks, and Sarah joined them a moment later. The baby T-rex finally got his feet under him, started to shake off the dirt that was clinging to his dull red skin, like a dog might shake off water.
“What the hell was.-” He started to say again. Sarah and Erik both cut him with a sharp. “No!” and all three of the baby dinosaurs made a collective mash of noises.
Chuff-chuff-chuff filled their ears and they all looked up to see the Kaprosuchus looming over the sloped bank, looking down at us. The dull green scales of his armored body standing out sharply against the sun-baked dirt of the hill. The Kapro, tired of the stare down quickly this time, and with legs far too long to belong to a crocodile, began to charge down the hill, galloping like a horse made of nightmares, and again they ran.