The first thing Victoria felt was the rain showering her face. She tried to raise her right hand to cover her face but felt resistance, she looked to her right to see the obstruction and was greeted with the sight of a large black chunk of metal. Where had it come from? Victoria’s mind cleared and she understood exactly what was happening, the plane had crashed, the pilot had flown too low and had been taken by a flying creature, her right arm was trapped under debris. She flexed her arm, preparing to lift the debris and get free. Pain lanced through her, clearly it was broken. She turned onto her side so that she was facing the metal and brought her left arm around to seize the bottom of the wreckage, her right arm screaming in protest the entire time. The moist foliage brushing against her fingers as she slowly began to change, slowly becoming coated in feathers until they enveloped her entire body and with an agonising effort she lifted the debris off her arm just long enough for her to slide it out before letting it crash down again almost noiselessly in the moist soil. Victoria rose, grunting with effort and holding her arm close to her chest searching around for any of her allies, the dropship had been blown apart on landing and while she could not be sure about Cheshire or hera, she was certain that the brute had survived at least mostly in one piece.

after a search about as exhaustive as was possible with her current level of focus being greatly impeded by the pain Lancing through her arm she decided to take shelter for the night. She had been in hostile territory like this before, but it had never been quite this bad she wasn't sure if the trees were safe, the sky was almost dark and she couldn't see through the foliage, it was not unlikely that there was something up there, and she was not in the position to fight it.

luckily there were many parts of the drop ship that could be used to take shelter in, the only problem was they were conspicuous, luckily, she specialised in concealment. sliding herself into what must have been some part of a kitchen she cloaked herself with her feathers, allowing them to change to suit the environment around her. there was some sort of ration bars in a small drawer that had managed to mostly survive and so her first miserable night consisted of delicately removing the wrapping paper of meagre ration bars and praying that something would not find her from the little noise she was making, although the sound of constant motion and song from insect and bird along with other things that remained nameless echoed through the forest, never leaving a quiet second.

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By the time morning had come Victoria had come up with a plan. Judging by the direction the wreckage was facing, specifically the nose, which was facing towards their destination while crashing if her memory served her correctly, she would just have to follow that direction until she got to either her teammates or a settlement with humans in it, as Beowulf would be trying to evacuate it she had no doubt that she would be able to escape. however first she needed to deal with the imminent problem, surviving.

Victoria thought back on all of the stories that Mel had told her over the years, back then they were just cool stories but right now they were all the info she had about the dead zone. she concluded that once her arm was fixed, she should stick to heavy undergrowth. according to Mel that was how she had survived as larger monsters were unable to come near and the plants would avoid you if you fed them on occasion. She could already feel her arms stitching itself back together with an uncomfortable sensation, however one she was thankful for. judging by the rate of recovery along with prior experience Victoria would have to hold out for two more days until her arm was fixed. just two days feeding off nothing but ration bars and hiding from everything like a coward. after briefly stretching her limbs Victoria was about two sit back down and conserve her energy when she heard the breaking of branches and she realised the forest had gone silent.