A cold wind jostled David awake as he hung from a thick branch high in the gnarled-looking fruit tree he’d found the day before. He grumbled a bit and unwrapped his wings from around his body, having remembered seeing bats at the zoo do it and finding it incredibly comfy when he tried it himself. The world was mercifully dark as he looked around with only a few yawns and stretches interrupting him. Everything was unchanged from how he’d left it, tall green grass, sparse flowers, and the occasional bush that dotted the clearing his fruit tree dominated the center of.

David waddled sideways a bit on the branch until he came into range of one of the odd orange fruits the tree grew at an insane rate and delicately snapped it up, careful to let the juices fall away to the ground as he ate. He glanced at his tiny readout and was happy to see he was fully recharged.

–Health: 30/30–

–Stamina: 130/130–

David pushed away the depressing thoughts that he’d carried to sleep with him, more than a little annoyed to find his anxieties had politely waited for him to wake up before resuming their activities. He couldn’t help it, the whole situation sucked. He’d been doing pretty well, he thought, right up until it had been time to try and sleep. Something that should have been easy had become a doom-flavored spiral of what-ifs and maybes. He didn’t know what had happened to his Mom, his Dad, his friends, or even what had happened at all really. One minute he’d been worried about emergency alerts, asteroids, and paying rent before being melted down into some sort of bat-dog-thing. Some of the details he remembered didn’t bode well for the entire rest of humanity.

First was the almost game-like ‘System’ that seemed to be controlled by…someone? Overseer Omega? That implied there was an Alpha, and that was more than a little ominous of a name for the duo in his opinion. Probably not good. Secondly, he remembered his traits being randomized. He suspected that his new body was the result of those traits somehow since it all seemed to track. Flight, echolocation, nocturnal. Yeah, that sounded like a bat. Easy enough. But if he was small, that implied large or maybe even gigantic was a possibility. If he could fly then maybe others would be stuck underwater, or even underground. ‘Special’ was particularly concerning to him, especially since he had discovered exactly what it was that Echolocation did.

He hiccuped out a few pulses of sound and managed to retain his grip on the branch as the waves came bouncing back to him, building an incredibly detailed map in his head of the wedge of meadow he’d been looking at. David could see the details just fine, even in the dark, but the image it built in his head was incredibly detailed. He knew exactly how dense the grass was, and could feel the location of the boulders and stones hidden by it. And he knew a small furry something was darting through the grass away from him, somehow alerted to him pinging it. As the more distant waves returned he was suddenly aware of a trio of small dragonfly-like insects that continued without noticing him in the slightest.

If my little F special does all that, I’m pretty sure the rest of them are just as strong. For all I know that little rat thing can shoot acid out of its– Wait, how do you even tell the difference between…people…and these weird monster-animals?

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David dropped the rest of his fruit, suddenly losing his appetite. The fruit bounced wetly off the ground below him and rolled away into the grass unnoticed. He frowned a bit as he puzzled it out before he eventually decided to just yell at people and see if they yelled back if worst came to worst. David was pretty sure that just being near him when he used Screech would probably blow someone’s ears out, or at the very least hurt them bad enough that he could fly away.

“Bah! Gotta just…keep moving I guess. Maybe level up more. Hey, do you have any more quests? Eh?”

No happy little chime answered his question so he decided to just give up and go look for something to do. He allowed himself to drop from the branch where he hung, swinging his feet downwards and opening his wings to catch the air before floating to the ground. He was amazed at how much his wings still felt like hands, just wrong and weird. Flying felt a bit like swimming, except if you had huge paddles for your hands and the water constantly tried to drop you. David was slowly getting the hang of it though, and he squeaked with victory as he drifted to the ground to land as gently as a leaf for the very first time.

–Flight has leveled up!–

–Gained 3xp–

Oh, really? I actually have to get better at it before it lets me get better at it? What a ripoff.

David huffed with irritation before letting out a few more pulses of Echolocation, getting a feel for the area around him before launching himself into the air and clawing for altitude. He quickly climbed, double, then triple the fruit tree’s height into the air. Quick wingbeats brought him up out of the low ground the meadow was situated in and above the tops of the towering pines that made up the bulk of the forest. He leveled out and caught some of the wind rustling the branches and allowed himself to glide a bit as he peeked at his readout, glad to see he still had a comfortable amount of stamina.

He nodded to himself happily and continued to glide, staring up at the thick cloud of stars above him. Despite everything he thought they were pretty, and was comforted by the fact that he could still see all the old constellations he remembered his Dad showing him as a kid. Orion, the Big Dipper, Taurus. All right there, just like always. Not mutated into weird monsters like everybody else. David shook his head and refocused, looking down over the sea of trees. He turned, wheeling back over the meadow before he flew too far away, striking out in the opposite direction. He repeated this a few times until he felt like he’d finally figured out how to turn safely.

Okay, be able to get back? Check. Remember where the meadow is? Check. Time to see if this actually works.

With only a little bit of hesitation, David began to pulse Echolocations down into the trees below him, only slightly disoriented by his covering ground and the mental map overlapping with what he saw, just slightly delayed. He kept this up for some time, flying in a loose figure-eight pattern around the meadow before he finally found what he was looking for as he once again disregarded the notifications that began to pile up.

–Flight has leveled up! x2–

–Gained 6xp–

–Echolocation has leveled up! x4–

–Gained 12xp–

Huddled at the base of a pile of rocks, tucked almost entirely inside a narrow crack in the stone, was a large scaly something. A large scaly something that was clearly attempting to stack up smaller rocks in front of the gap with tiny useless arms.

“Bingo.”