Ba-bum
Ba-bum...
Ba-bum...
Jade Jaeger held her breath and tried her absolute best to eliminate any and all sounds. Curling up as much as she could in a small hiding spot beneath the roots of a large tree as some...Thing was sniffing around her home. She was scared. Terrified actually.
Just a few weeks ago she was watching movies in her house under thick blankets to keep away the winter's chill. How did it end up with her finding herself in the middle of an Amazonian forest filled with monsters and fighting for her life?
The beast was unlike anything she had ever seen before, it was like someone had hit the randomize button on a creature creator game and made the result into a real living nightmare.
It was covered in grey fur with hard spikes sticking out of it like a porcupine. Its eyes was a beady yellow too large for its head that bludged out on the side as if a frog, and it's long shout opened as wide as a crocodile with the teeth to match!
She felt like crying and would've prayed to the Gods if she didn't know for a fact that they were a bunch of dickheads who would laugh at her situation. They tossed her ass in this godforsaken forest, they took her from her family and home, and they turned shoved her into the body of a damned snake! She wouldn't give them the satisfaction of knowing they beat her, one day she'll get them back for everything they had done with interest!
Suddenly broken out of her thoughts she could hear the beast's ragged breath as it drew closer, could feel the warmth of its breath as it sniffed around the tree, and smell the scent of decay it gave off. She was frozen stiff and if she still could she probably would've cried. She'd have to find a way out of her current crisis first before any plots of revenge.
The birds had long since left sensing the superior predator, it was so silent she feared it would be able to hear her heart trying to burst out of her chest. She heard it drag its feet on the ground and some light scratching of claws on treebark. Even that soon grew faint and disappeared. Had it left?
She didn't move and counted her lucky star. That demonic mutant of an anteater was the size of a German Shepherd! She waited a couple more minutes before relaxing her guard. It was her first mistake.
She had peeked out from her hiding spot and did a scan of the area. She couldn't see anything and so assume it had left. Not paying attention to the odd tracks was her second mistake.
She left her home and went to go about her day's business. She still had to find food after all. That was her final and almost fatal mistake.
The Anteater was more clever than she had given it credit for. It knew damn well where she was, but couldn't reach her under her tree, so it had pretended to leave to lure her into a false sense of security. She fell for it like an idiot and it had costed her badly. As soon as she fully emerged, it pounced on her with a ferocious screech. It had slammed her into the ground and then used it's front paw to knock her heavily into a tree.
While she didn't actually know if the back of her skull had fractured from the impact, it sure felt like it. Evidently, the creature didn't feel like letting her off so easily. Dizzy and disorientated, she couldn't defend herself as it came back for round 2.
It had closed the distance quickly and opened its jaw wide to take a bite out of her, one that would no doubt either snap her spine or sever her clean in half. Thankfully she managed to instinctively wrap her body into a coil. The extra thickness to distribute the force had saved her from a painful death, but she had still terrible gashes upon her back and sides.
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Quick as the cobra she now was, struck at the only weak point she could from her position. The eyes. She lunged with at it with reckless abandon. This was life or death. Her fangs easily punctured the thin membrane as she gorged out its left eye, thick blood and sloppy chunks of it flooded her mouth, the scent horrid and nauseating, but she held on.
She jerked and pulled with all her might until with a wet splosh it pop she tore it clean off, it howled in sheer agony as it slammed itself onto the ground and surrounding trees. As soon as it's maw opened wide enough she quickly threw herself onto the ground and hide in the tall grass. She stayed a moment to watch the beast's rampage in madness. It was quite satisfying as she swallowed the remains of its eye vindictively.
She would've loved to stay and watch it some more, but she had to leave before other predators were attracted by the scent of blood and the loud noises. She had to suppress a hiss of pain as she slowly crawled away to find a new home to tend to her wounds. She refused to die in this freaky forest. Under the cover of the thick canopy above, a small brown snake disappeared within the tall grass barely holding onto its life as blood made a trail behind it. Just another day in her new life she supposes.
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It has been five very long and brutal weeks since she found herself in this new world. She had been one amongst a dozen others who were given the "privilege" of receiving blessings from the gods and had acquired miraculous powers to give them a head start to "influence the world". They didn't give a damn how they did it, and it seemed they picked a large variety of people for the job.
They didn't have much time to interact before being tossed into this world, but she knew one of the other was a police officer judging from their uniform and another was a nerd in some cosplay outfit.
The powers they got were all unique, and it seemed she got the bottom of the barrel.
It gave her increased regeneration speed, which was fine and dandy... if it wasn't for the fact that EVERYTHING IN THIS FOREST COULD ONE SHOT HER!
You have to actually survive to be able to heal, and even getting grazed by anything would cripple her. She healed faster than average, but it wasn't to the extent of a comic book character, more of small cuts healing in a few days than a week. While that might sound like an impressive 50% decrease in time, larger wounds obviously took longer. A broken bone that would take 2 months to heal wouldn't directly take only 1 for hers, but rather maybe 5-6 weeks.
Basically fricking useless.
The Mutant Anteater, as she had decided to name it, had absolutely mauled her the first day she had arrived. She suffered from severe blood loss, a concussion, and multiple torn muscles. Every twitch sent fire racing down her back, and every brush of the wind pure agony. She was delirious from a high fever and spent days on the verge of death, only surviving thanks to pure luck and willpower. She had subsisted on morning dew and insects. She felt pathetic and disgusting just remembering those days. She spent weeks just to recover enough to move without feeling like she wanted to die.
Jade wonders if the others were in similar circumstances as her? Were they also turned into animals? Were they nearby or scattered across this new world? In the end, she supposes it didn't matter. She didn't have the time or energy for such leisurely thoughts, she needed to find more permanent shelter and source of food.
Even the goddamn plants tried to eat her. She didn't have a hope in hell of taking down anything in this forest, so she had taken the first two days observing the other animals and hiding. Marking down danger zones and which plant seemed edible. Even then she had almost died more times than she could count. She had gotten sick attempting to eat some small berries. They had the same appearance as blueberries but tasted oddly sour and bitter. An unpleasant taste, to be sure.
She had found them while stalking some rodents. It had gone into a clearing with many large bushes full of the things. She deemed it safe enough for consumption as many manners of creatures gathered there for food. The fact that she was now a snake and had a new and different biology and digestive system didn't occur to her until later. It took some experimentation, but she found that if she mixed only a small amount of them with insects in a roughly 2-8 ratio than she would be much more full of energy. Of course, it still tasted terrible. However, that was her only true success at a more reliable and alternative food source.
One time when she took a bite out of a plant, it bit back. She had been badly wounded and couldn't leave her new home, a small hole in a tree she had found, for days after that. A careless mistake she never repeated.