《Slimegirl Survival》


 1.1 Sa?s膩ra

    It should have tipped me off sooner, no longer hearing the beeps dominating my life for the last six months. No life support, no oxygen tubes, no hums of machines keeping me alive. And no pain?


    *glglglg*


    I tried to yawn, to stretch, to feel around, to open my eyes but nothing happened. I couldn¡¯t move my arms or open my eyes!


    *purupurupuru!*


    Calm down, I told myself, taking stock of my situation. I could hear and feel and move a little, though moving felt abstract and alien. The key to survival is knowledge.


    I listened. A small breeze rustled through lots of foliage, probably trees. Insects of all kinds buzzed and chirped and cicada-clacked around me. Birds and animals moved and flapped and chirped and growled. Nearby, in no clear direction, I could make out a waterfall or fast moving river. Something hissed next to me before shuffling off into the brush. The heat of the sun pushed me to realize it was sweltering, the humidity like a steam sauna with hot mist sprayers.


    Welcome to the jungle.


    I groaned mentally. I am going to have that song stuck in my head for at least a week.


    What is wrong with my body? The rocks and dirt poking into skin informed me I wasn¡¯t wearing any clothing. The oppressive humidity drenched me like a fire hose; yet, after months of hospital, I relished my elation and sense of freedom. My arms and legs didn¡¯t feel numb, just missing. Nothing made any sense.


    Part of me was telling the rest of me I should panic. In my mind I seated myself at a large round table, a circular string of halo lights hovering overhead in the large and mostly dark room. One wall shows a map of Earth with blinking lights, everything in black and white because ¡°why not go full Kubrick?¡±


    ¡°Ms. President, there are one or two points I¡¯d like to make, if I may?¡±


    Guess I better stop worrying and love the psychosis. I nod to myself dressed up like a US general, my other self also sporting the short hair of George C. Scott¡¯s Turgidson. I almost felt my head to see if I was bald but reasoned I can be myself here, no need to take this to extremes.


    ¡°One, as far as we can reasonably ascertain, the last place we were in was our room at the VA in DC.¡± I looked around the table and saw the other members seated were other versions of me, dressed in suits or military dress. ¡°Two, our father is currently a colonel in the Marines and aide to the Secretary of War, meaning we have MPs standing outside our door at all times. Three,¡± I held up my hand, waving it vaguely for emphasis, ¡°we have seen first-hand what a fanatical terrorist group is willing to do, is capable of doing, to the families of combatants.¡±


    And I did know, memory briefly flashing to the butchered remains of a six year old girl, her pieces neatly organized on a wooden table soaked in blood, her eyeless face streaked in dried tears. I pushed it away, going back to the war room.


    ¡°It doesn¡¯t add up, General¡± I say, looking around the room and getting various looks of agreement or dissent. ¡°If we are a hostage, where are our captors? If the terrorists are done with us, why are we alive? If we are a mutilated example, why is there no pain? If we have been rescued, why are we in a place clearly not DC?¡±


    ¡°There is no other explanation!¡± the General shouted.


    ¡°We could be dead,¡± another at the table interjected, dressed like my pastor in that dated purple sports coat he liked to wear. ¡°Any moment now we could hear a choir of angels.¡±


    ¡°Or the screams of the damned,¡± a me with glasses and decidedly cynical attitude mumbled.


    ¡°Or--¡± yet another me spoke up. No one sat next to her, as if they wanted to distance themselves from my¡­inclinations. She was quickly cut off.


    ¡°You shut your whore mouth!¡± General Me shouted as she got up from the table and thrust an accusatory finger towards the solitary me. ¡°We are trying to have a rational discussion here!¡±


    ¡°What about any of this is rational?¡± the solitary me asked, folding her arms under breasts decidedly larger than I was used to. She had elven ears and dark blue skin and wore armor with as much coverage as my government-run insurance. ¡°How else do you explain going from cancer and pain and a hospital to no pain, no hospital and jungle?¡±


    ¡°Terrorists!¡±


    Soon the whole table was shouting and I¡¯d had enough. While daydreaming I¡¯d been busy, testing myself as much as I could. I found I could roll around and had moved a few feet along the forest floor. It didn¡¯t feel right, like I was smaller or had turned into a ball of some sort.


    Something was rotten in the state of Denmark.


    I¡¯m not insane, at least I don¡¯t think I am. Two years since I was diagnosed, in and out of the VA until six months ago when I became bedridden. Unable to do much more than lay down and drift around in my head, sometimes catching snippets of scenes from old movies I liked watching. Sometimes I¡¯d be awake enough to see my father in his Service uniform, praying over me or simply looking at my face with the saddest of smiles. I¡¯d asked one of the corporals and he¡¯d told me dad had spent every waking moment he could get away from Mad Dog to be near me.


    With nothing to do and an unfortunate abundance of imagination, these head games were how I kept the boredom of dying at bay. I was in an impossible situation with impossible problems before me and my mind fractured over the typical response of panic and despair. How can someone who has been dead be scared?


    *purupuru purupuru*


    I tried speaking again but it sounded like bubbles whistling through oil. I tried moving and found I could hop around a bit with effort. I paused, a sense of dread falling over me.


    Maybe I knew, deep down already. Maybe the Blue Box had come and I couldn''t see it. Maybe I was projecting something about missing my mother and Freud was standing behind me smoking a cigar. Or¡­


    No¡­ I thought, the theme from Dragon Quest starting to play in my head.


    ¡°I¡¯m a slime?!¡±


    Frustratingly, it came out as *purupururu!*


    ¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª


    There was so much I wanted to do, so much I wanted to test and experience, but my training from the Army Corps of Engineers and my survivalist father forced priorities down my geek girl throat.


    Let¡¯s go full Sherlock, I thought, calming my rising agitation and hoping I wasn¡¯t about to be killed by some ambitious adventurer. If I actually am dealing with the impossible, I can¡¯t waste time trying to find out the why or what or any other liberal arts garbage. Needs before wants. Whether I was a slime or just paraplegic and hallucinating didn¡¯t matter. Until I could conclusively know differently, I would progress on the assumption I was a slime because the evidence leaned that way and I had zero other workable theories.


    Which brings me to problem one: safety. Normally, the first step to safety is a secure, defensible and hidden shelter. I had no idea how hostile the local fauna and flora were, what kind of weather I should expect or prepare for. It was Columbia summer hot right now, but will it become Siberian winter cold tonight? I didn''t know.


    However, a shelter and security would have to take second place. If I could not find a way to see or accurately assess my environment, building a hut would not save me. I needed eyes.


    *blp¡­blp¡­blp*


    Even though I had no desire to be eaten by the hissing thing, I remember it had made a rustling sound as it went into some foliage. I did my best to hop in the direction of plants and move out of what was an exposed position if I was getting so much direct sunlight. Each hop was nerve wracking, wishing I had feet or hands to feel where I was going instead of making each move like I was taking a leap from the lion¡¯s head to prove my worth!


    Three hops in the stone and dirt turned to course dirt, more hops into grass with tree roots. Finally, I felt the shade of something overhead and was brushing past leaves with each bounce. While the hopping didn¡¯t feel too tiring, it did emphasize I was getting hungry and thirsty.


    Great, I wanted to mutter out loud, what does Jello eat? Rolling along some roots under me, I put myself at the base of a large tree and tried to emit a stealthy aura.


    For the first time in my isekai life, I tried to feel out my body. I might too quickly accept this was a new body on a new world, but until I could prove otherwise, this was my ¡°impossible however improbable¡± conclusion. With a bit of effort I found I could flatten myself, bending and molding into different shapes. Incredibly hard to describe, the closest I can think of is when you are bored and shirtless and you start bloating or rippling your tummy like its some kind of ocean, only with your whole body. Honestly, I think I spent hours at this because the air cooled and I inferred it was dusk or twilight now.


    I was determined, though, and my shape changing had two goals. First, I created an amoeba arm I could stretch out and feel around with. It helped me realize the tree had some space underneath its exposed root system and was a much better place to hide in. I shivered a bit when I squeezed under the roots and plopped onto cold mud. The second goal was trying to mold parts of my body into something resembling an eye.


    *puu¡­puu¡­*


    Tired, starving and apparently breathing hard, I think I almost had it. Creating a bubble by folding part of me over myself, I lined the edges of this bubble with tiny feelers. I remembered from college biology how the eye uses rods and cones to translate light into something humans can visualize. While this went against all the science I had in me - my body obviously lacking an occipital cortex - the more I worked on this the more I discovered my world of darkness was starting to gain shapes of gray. Running with the maxim If It Works, I kept playing with my bubble until I realized I could see.


    Not well. Everything was in stark black and white without gradation and very, very blurry, but it was something. Using my arm technique, I hooked a root and crawled out of my hole to get a look around. Either it was nighttime or I still needed to tweak my eye, there wasn¡¯t much to look at. Some grass, some bushes with frond-like leaves and lots of tall and gnarly trees. Also, I must''ve used a warp whistle to Giant Land because everything looked huge.Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.


    ¡°Skeee!!¡±


    PAIN I was hoping I could forget shot through me like IED shrapnel, sudden and sharp and burning. Lurching away from the tree with a sickening schlep and hopping as fast as I could, I spun my bubble eye around and got a face full of nightmare.


    Crawling down from the tree was the body of spider and the head of a butterfly stuck on top of chitinous neck, its curly proboscis dripping bits of me. Not a fat or bulbous body like an orb weaver, more elongated with segmented plates like a centipede. I had a sinking feeling this was the natural predator of the slime species. It was also about twice my size if I and crawling quickly towards me.


    ¡°Skee skee!!¡±


    It made that high pitched screeching whenever it shot out its proboscis, maybe some kind of natural pneumatics, but I was desperately stifling my curiosity as I hopped around in erratic directions to avoid being slurped. I held no illusions of fighting this thing, it might as well have been a grizzly fighting a toddler. I made for the sounds of water. With legs like it had I doubted I could out climb it, but maybe I could out swim it.


    Who am I supposed to be, Michael Phelps? I thought, sounds of river coming near a stone outcropping I deduced was my spawning point, the butterspider close behind.


    You got a better idea, brain? I asked, making the final hop over the edge of the rocks and felt the insect monster¡¯s hairy proboscis brush against me. I will be happy to hear any¡­


    I¡¯ve made a huge mistake.


    There was a river. About two hundred feet down. Oh joy.


    Panicked, starving, leaking and possibly poisoned, dad managed to save my life.


    ¡°Remember, Vanna, the more you spread out the slower you¡¯ll fall.¡± He then slapped my back and pushed his twelve year old daughter out of the C-130¡¯s bay doors.


    Flattening my body as much as it could go, I kept shifting my weight to keep parachute-shaped and floating down instead of spinning. I couldn¡¯t keep my eye¡¯s shape, so everything went dark and all I had was the roar of rushing air to hear. Too soon, I hit water and the shock knocked me out.


    ¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª


    ¡°Graduates, alumni, professors and administrators of BAC, it is my singular pleasure and privilege to speak to you all today.¡± The man speaking may have been only fifty years old, but his olive skin was rugged and tanned while his short-cropped curly hair was still mostly black. His prominent nose had been broken numerous times on a long face held up with a strong jaw. He was attired to the nines in sharply pressed Marine Blue White Dress - including hat and saber. However, it was his eyes shining with unshed happiness that stood out on his stern features.


    ¡°Niceties out of the way, I want to take a moment to talk about the singular greatest disappointment in my life: my daughter.¡± He said this with a wide smile and the seated students let out a light laugh. ¡°Rather than join my beloved Corps - the United States Marine Corps - and follow the example I and her late mother set, she up and joined the Army.¡± He said it with mild derision but he was still smiling, which got a bigger laugh.


    ¡°Honorably discharged Second Lieutenant, platoon leader of a combat engineering element for two tours in Iraq, recipient of the Purple Heart for throwing herself on an IED and saving a squad of six soldiers, Vanna Hadassah Milton recovered from her wounds and now joins the rest of you graduates cum laude with a Bachelors of Architecture.¡±


    ¡°A disappointment,¡± he paused, looking directly at me on the front row, ¡°because she decided she wasn¡¯t going to follow in my footsteps; instead, becoming better that I could ever hope for.¡±


    I woke up slowly, my father¡¯s face fading as I took in what I could. I felt sand under me yet was mostly covered in water, gentle waves lapping against me. While I could hear the river, it wasn¡¯t loud, thinking I¡¯d gone far downstream to a calmer portion. Still hungry, still felt the burning injury from the bug, I was exhausted.


    Come on, time to woman up, I thought, rolling as much as I slowly could in the sand. You gonna let an overgrown mosquito and some small creek do you in?


    I didn¡¯t feel thirsty anymore, in fact I felt bloated: probably osmosis. Hunger, though, started to sharply sink its teeth into my gelly body. Forming my eye, I was happy to discover it took only a moment as if instinctual remembering what I had crafted. I was on a small bank at the bottom of a gentle, rocky slope leading to jungle. What caught my eye was an open patch of dirt near the sand where I clearly spotted worms wriggling in and out of the damp earth. If I had a mouth it would be watering.


    I rolled and lightly hopped, stomping on top of the first cluster and finding eating to be easy. The outer film of my body opened up and pushed the worms in again and again. Thrashing inside of me I clenched tight to keep my food in me, but in almost no time I felt the fizz and sizzle reminding me of strong cola. Then they were gone and I felt like I''d finished a Jamba Juice. I tasted a salty mucus with the light crunch and a bitter, sour flavor I did not care for. I must be severely acidic if they dissolved this quickly. All that was left were bits of dirt I easily expelled.


    *purururu*


    After three more clusters and as much worms as I could find I sighed in contentment. Most would have been disgusted by eating worms but I had gotten rid of my gag reflex years ago during long survival treks with just me and dad. Bugs Are Protein was the motto to live by during long nights in Guatemala.


    The heat of the sun broiled me, must have been knocked out longer than I thought. It reminded me step two should be shelter because avoiding another butterspider sneaking up on me while I slept was a huge priority. I figured those Lovecrafts lived in trees and meant the forest was right out. Examining the beach I tried to see what I could use here. The slope was mostly rock and moss and the bank was sand and dirt, but I could hear something in the quiet. A dripping and¡­echo?


    Following the noise I found a crack in the rock. Barely a few inches wide, distinct echos sounded in there. Sucking in my gut I shimmied inside and prayed I wasn¡¯t about to find the butterspider breeding nest.


    Down down to goblin town, down down to goblin town¡­ Now I wondered if I was actually going to meet goblins. The crevice had me scraping through stone for about five feet before opening into a twisted corridor. The sides were smooth, windswept, like the slot canyons in Southern Utah and Arizona, reaching up ten and twenty feet to a stalactite riddled ceiling. There was plenty of light but my blurry eyes couldn¡¯t track where it came from. I hopped along on wet stone and went down the snaky decent until the cave expanded into a large space after possibly an hour of bouncing.


    A forest of mushrooms surrounded a pond in a room about the size of a college lecture hall. Some of the mushrooms glowed brightly - which explained the light - satisfactorily allowing me to see with my simplistic eye. I wondered if God was looking out for His little girl so far from home, I had no other explanation for the coincidence of finding such a perfect shelter in the midst of wherever I was.


    Thank you.


    Right, I thought, mentally clapping my hands and rolling up sleeves, time to get to work. I have shelter, water and food. Gonna climb my way up Mazlo¡¯s pyramid.


    At least, I think I have food. Hopping to a small toadstool nearby, I covered it in an arm and plucked it into me. The fizz came and went faster than with worms, a light snack easily absorbed. I tasted the meatiness commonly associated with shiitake mingled with a sweet and fruity flavor like ripe cantaloupe. If I could cry I would because even before coming to this world it had been months since I last tasted food, an IV my only sustenance. Worms don¡¯t count. Next, I demanded chocolate.


    Focus.


    I might be out of immediate danger, but I needed to learn more about me and about this world. Build a stockpile of supplies, make tools and weapons, secure this location in case butterspiders aren¡¯t the only monsters with slimes on the menu.


    Going back to old memories of classes on biology, I tried adjusting the tiny tendrils in my eye, compressing them smaller and smaller and folding ridges into them. As I did, my sight slowly cleared, color filtering in. I molded the shape of the eye, adding a second concave film inside to act as a lens. My sight sharpened, becoming filled with rainbow colors as I discovered the mushrooms had reds and greens and yellows and glowed in a soft myriad. The stone walls were white marble with streaks of blue and the pond was deep and crystal clear. Another ten minutes and I had another eye with much appreciated depth perception.


    Next, because I boiled with frustration being unable to talk my problems out, I got to work on a mouth, tongue and voice box. The mouth and tongue were easy, didn¡¯t even feel unnatural as I licked the outer film of my body. It was the first time I touched myself and I felt as smooth as glass, covered in a light film of mucus. Stretching my tongue to the utmost I jabbed the burning hole the butterspider poked in me, a healing dimple. It probably had some kind of anti-slime poison slowing my ability to reform and seal.


    The voice box was harder. I couldn¡¯t remember how a voice box looked, actually, but I had played the oboe in high school and was familiar with reed vibrations between my lips. Forming the familiar double reed of an oboe behind my small mouth, I sucked in a large breath of air and stored it as a bubble lower inside me.


    ¡°eeEv¡­¡± The air escaped too quickly, I took in another breath and tried again. ¡°Eveeriii bbuuuu¡­¡± I was moving the tongue but it wasn¡¯t forming the sounds like I wanted. I adjusted the roof of the mouth and fattened the film around the hole to make lips and teeth shapes.


    ¡°Eeevery beff yuu taaake!¡± It sounded nothing like my voice, high pitched and musical instead of nuanced human speech, but I couldn¡¯t be happier. It was hard, like juggling while doing taxes, but I believed I would eventually need to communicate so practice continued.


    ¡°Evvvery movve yuuu maaake!¡± I thought I might want to avoid attracting attention, lowering the volume as I hopped around the edges of my cave. ¡°Sumting suumting I¡¯ll bee waching you.¡± I am going to miss iTunes.


    ¡°Noow, tim to separraat the wooomen furom the gurls.¡± It was getting easier, maybe instinctual on part of being a slime or magically assisted by this world, I might never know. Whatever was letting me adapt, I couldn¡¯t rest on my laurels. A pair of eyes and a mouth are not what set women above beasts. I needed hands and legs if I was going to do more than survive.


    Forming my amoeba arm, I kept it outstretched as I worked on poking tentacle feelers out. Fingers, flexing them in and out as I kept the memory of my hands in the forefront of my mind. Flex, adjust length and thickness, unflex, add layers of film to simulate joints and tendons. Flex, unflex, flex, unflex. Hours must have gone by because I had to break for food and water twice while I worked on the intricacies and complexities of hands. During my second break I got a happy surprise when I found small white fish in the pond. They tasted like the most tender ahi sashimi.


    ¡°All I need is rice and soy sauce.¡± My speaking was getting better and better, even if I sounded ethereal and musical. ¡°I guess soy sauce is made from soybeans? Might be worth the effort and experimentation if I can find soybeans.¡± My thoughts were wondering as I kept working on the small hand. It looked like a hand, but still didn¡¯t move quite right, my tweaking getting more and more minute.


    I also noticed I was purple shaded, I think. More violet but I could not be sure, the mushroom lights too colored to clearly determine my own. Inside the purple I saw swirls of red and brown: they were small and hard to make out so I shelved my curiosity for now. I was also leaving a thin slime on every surface I touched. This cave was quickly looking like the sewer from Ghostbusters II.


    It might seem silly for a slime to work so hard to try and look human, but I think time was well spent. I knew how to do a whole bunch of things to survive, to build and make, but either I could relearn how to do all those things as the useless Wonder Twin or I could train myself to become more human.


    My hand clenched into a fist, shaking towards the air as I grinned and thought I might have a chance to live. To thrive.


    ¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª


    Though she did not know, eight days had passed since Vanna Milton died and a slime was born in the jungle. It was near noonday, when the crystals above shone their brightest that out from a hidden crack in the rocks next to a river a purple blob spilled out. Splashing into the sand, with a mass nearly double than she had at her rebirth, it took only seconds to form herself into the rough shape of a purple woman.


    Not the shape Vanna Milton remembered, of a short and stocky thirty-five year old Italian girl from Virginia with curly hair and a plain face. Too many hours playing video games and reading erotic fantasy novels tainted her own self image and created the caricature standing there. Lithe, molded like the mesh of a female body builder and runway model, drawn by a perverted comic book artist with impossible proportions, it was a wonder she could stand upright with those globes jiggling in front of her chest atop a waist as thin as her arms. Thick and powerful thighs held disproportionately long legs, but with a height only two feet in total.


    Eyes as big as any CLAMP heroine fluttered open and flicked the residue slime out of the way to look down at her hands. Abnormally long fingers with too many joints flexing naturally as she formed the final multiple layers of film throughout her body to give it the proper form and movement. Her head was topped with thin tendrils looking like her curly hair had looked, maybe a reminder of who she had been. Finally, elf ears thrust out perpendicular from her head ala Lodoss War, the effect effort of nearly half a day for something cosmetic, but what otaku girl hasn¡¯t wanted to be an elf?


    Lastly, the final adjustments settling into place, she was both clearly naked and also anatomically correct to the last detail. Not knowing when or if she would find other life, she had prepared some considerations for modesty. Made from badly tanned skins of a green boar found nearby, she had a mini skirt and top at her feet she quickly put on, adjusting her dimensions a little so they fit snuggly. Picking up a crude basket made from reeds and a spear made from the stalk of a red plant that looked and acted like bamboo, she made her way up the slope to the jungle while singing softly to herself.


    ? Welcome to the jungle, we got fun and games. ?

 1.2 Spiders And Flies

    I didn''t say anything.


    I wanted to. I have a tendency to mutter and mouth whenever. My old squadies used to slap me black and blue because even deep in hostile territory - any noise meaning getting shot - I still mumbled bad puns. So when I make a point I am not saying anything, there is a reason more compelling than getting shot keeping my lips locked.


    ¡°Skee skee skee.¡±


    Seven butterspiders surrounded a yellow slime forty feet under me. The slime must have been two hundred pounds of quivering jelly, five or six times as large as any of the chitinous nightmares skittering around it, but it was losing badly. About a dozen holes leaked slime innards and it wasn¡¯t hopping around anymore, just shaking a bit and blurping in pain whenever one of the butterspiders went for another slurp.


    Part of me felt sorry for the poor slime. After all, I had lured it here. The perfect bait for my trap.


    So long, suckers. Get it? Because they have those long proboscis¡­whatever. Yanking hard on the Tumble Hitch secured to the branch next to me, five vines spun out and loosed the several tons of rock I had secured in nets above the clearing below. There was a low whirring and clacking sound as the vines ran through the rough stone pulleys I had crafted, but after days of studying the alpha predator bugs of the forest, I had properly predicted their reaction: they looked up and paused. Any skittish prey would have jumped and bolted at the sound, which is why they didn¡¯t realize the threat until the rockalanche hit them all.


    *kerSQUISH!!*


    ¡°Boo-yah!¡± I howled and appropriately fist pumped, the entire forest drowning my victory shout with their uproar. Stepping off my branch, I fell to the ground with a little splat and made my way to the moat I had surrounding the trap while I reformed my feet back into shape. Swimming wasn¡¯t an issue, I was naturally buoyant and the moat wasn¡¯t wide. On the other side I made sure to thrust my spear into the head of two twitching bugs, the rest directly hit with larger rocks and not even twitched. Yellow, viscous slime was coating everything, the rocks having pushed the slime¡¯s guts out in every direction, a filmy husk all that remained under the largest pile.


    ? Doo doodoo, doo doodoodoo doo ?


    ? Walk without rhythm and it won¡¯t attract the worm, ?


    ? If you walk without rhythm - uh - you never learn, yeah! ?


    I had the whole Walken swagger going, grooving to Fatboy Slim and whatever lyrics I remembered. Nothing could stop my victory dance, this had taken sixteen days to plan and execute and it came together without a hitch.


    ¡°CLAAAAAA!!¡±


    ¡°Aaaaahstupid jinxing wubba lubba forest!¡± I screamed, jumping back over the moat and waving my spear overhead to keep the Giant Death Bird from eating me. Never gotten a good look at this creature, last time it swooped down out of nowhere and hoisted me above the tree tops before I was able to wiggle loose. No good, four talons grabbed me and brought me into the air.


    I screamed again, more shrieky whistle than melodic voice, almost a dozen claws the size of footballs digging into my film and spilling my juices out. ¡°I don¡¯t even know if you¡¯re the same bird from last week! Diediedie!!¡±


    Silver feathers and white blood spilled all over me like delicious country fried gravy as I kept stabbing up into the belly of the this crazy bird thing. Must have been enough for it to drop me. We hadn¡¯t cleared the trees so I only fell less than a hundred feet but I hit too many branches and splashed into dirt and tree roots, completely losing form.


    I didn¡¯t want to move. While I no longer had bones to break or organs to rupture, I kept my body in humanoid appearance and function through hundreds of layered films, essentially using pieces of the stronger outer skin of my slime body inside myself to simulate a human body. When I suffer major trauma - like falling to the forest floor after being pincushioned by some mutant bird - all those films inside me burst. Having one disrupt and burst is like getting punched in the face by an angry drill Sergeant. When I hit mud and roots, hundreds of them broke all at once. Honestly, wanted to pat myself on the back for not blacking out.


    *puru!* I swore, trying to return my aching body to a body instead of a puddle. It took twenty minutes. Pain and exhaustion were warring for first place, reforming like this from scrap super tiring and I hadn''t eaten in hours. Too bad about the gravy bird blood, what was left on me more muddy slurry than usable material. I settled on what I call my Gumbi, simplistic and one eyed, no mouth because I was running on a clock at the moment. Pausing, I pushed out the dirt and twigs stuck in me from the fall, the sense of relief like popping a juicy pimple washing over me, my jelly jiggling in satisfaction.


    Looking around, I spotted one of the markers I had been leaving around the jungle in an effort to avoid getting lost. A simple stick with an arrow pointing towards the next stick in a path and two numbers; it wasn¡¯t perfect, but it let me know I¡¯d only flown about half a mile and my goal was due west a hundred yards.


    Don¡¯t get angry at the jinx, I thought, picking up my clothing and grumbling bubbles at my broken spear. Keep cool and nab the prize. Got more spears at base. Only a half hour later, the crystals up above dimming towards dusk, I was halfway up a large and twisting tree and grinning like a fool (no mouth yet but I got the lips on because I wanted to grin) as I reached over and gently snatched nearly two weeks of constant effort.


    It looked like a wasp nest, a dozen or so combs all sealed in a hard, orange substance that glowed very faintly in dim lighting, a substance the so precious I had no comparisons in this world. About as big as me, the entire nest was more awkward than heavy and giving off a lot of heat. I wasn¡¯t expecting heat so I nearly dropped it, the film compatible to my skin giving off little sizzles where they touched the combs. Wrapping my hands with my leather clothing I got a better grip and slowly made my way down the tree with my prize.


    Time to cook. I thought in my best Walter White.


    ¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª


    Twenty Days Previous¡­


    ¡°I miss Amazon.¡±


    Sitting in the sand on my beach outside my cave, I was using a sharpened, flat stone to flesh the latest green pig hide I¡¯d obtained. Fleshing - the tedious work of scraping any remaining meat and fat off a skinned animal hide - was never something I loved doing. Dad had me tanning my first deer hide by age eight and I remember throwing up then crying the entire time.


    ¡°Stop crying,¡± he told me, adjusting my grip on the two-handled knife so the blade didn¡¯t angle into the hide. ¡°This isn¡¯t Bambi. Bambi was a boy deer, this is a girl deer.¡± Thanks Colonel: I cried harder thinking I¡¯d killed Bambi¡¯s mom.


    ¡°I miss ordering things and getting things and not being forced to make things.¡± I lamented, pealing off the last bit of fat and throwing the white mass into my meat basket. I flopped the skin on top of the four others and picked them all up, heading towards my cave entrance. I still had a little daylight from the crystals overhead, though probably not a lot.


    Yeah, crystals. I was in a giant jungle with some trees reaching hundreds of feet into the air, mountains and cliffs in the distance looking thousands of feet tall with snow on some, a salty body of water with no end in sight I found two days ago a few miles down river, and what I first thought was sky I could now see was the roof of a cave so far above me it might as well be sky. No sun, just large crystals shining a pinkish light hiding behind big, fluffy clouds. These crystals would grow brighter until ¡°noon¡± then fade into mostly darkness at ¡°night¡± and start glowing slowly brighter at ¡°dawn.¡± It was longer than 24 hours, my gut telling me a day was closer to thirty or thirty six hours, but I couldn¡¯t be sure until I got to figuring out how to make clocks.


    ¡°I miss ordering an employee to ¡®do this¡¯ and having someone else do something.¡± The crack leading to my cave had been shaped and widened, letting me walk through sideways with the skins held in front. Still hard to find, the entrance angled against another rock and could only be seen when standing right in front of it, but I no longer had to deform and form to get in and out of my home. I set the skins down once the cave opened up into its winding hallway and went back for my skinning stone and meat basket.


    ¡°I miss those same employees laughing at my jokes because I was the boss.¡± Loosening my knots, I braced the vines against the rocky hook and pulled the vines tight as I lifted a large stone slab over a lip it rested on overhead then slowly lowered the slab into place in front of the crack, the last bit slipping and falling into place with a loud boom in the cavern. A few thousand pounds of marble, there were hundreds of feet of vine and twenty seven pulleys to distribute the weight, allowing me to open and close my door in under fifteen minutes.


    ¡°Vines are looking a little frayed,¡± I muttered, studying the netting I had made around the stone and leading to my pulleys. ¡°Gonna need to figure out a fast way to make rope soon.¡±


    Picking everything back up, I made my way into my now secured cave. It had gone through some major changes since those first jumbled days I spent trying to get myself together. I¡¯d discovered something in those opening days, something that has given me a direction and goal to aim for. That discovery let me create the hallways and rooms I had branching off the main cave, let me create the growing pile of pulley wheels I had stacked in the corner, let me make the furnace cut directly into the rock I had in one corner.


    A discovery about this world. A magical discovery.


    ¡°I miss my books, Internet, movies,¡± I said, more subdued, dumping the skins and basket next to my salt hole. I decided I was done, flopping down next to the salt water hole I made to cure the skins. ¡°I miss people and¡­¡± I couldn¡¯t shed tears, but the overwhelming sadness came anyway. ¡°I miss you, dad, mom.¡±


    I stayed like that until exhaustion put me to sleep, gently sobbing.


    ¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª


    When I was still learning, trying to get a handle on what I was and where I had been put I didn¡¯t leave the cave until much later, so I wasn¡¯t sure how many days it had been from my birth. This morning, my finger etched the thirteenth hash mark since I started keeping track.


    ¡°You need some alone time, Vanna,¡± I said, putting the skins I¡¯d left out last night into the salt water and weighed them down with a rock. ¡°This body is begging for a test drive.¡±


    ¡°I am alone,¡± I answered, imagining two of me in my kitchen back home. One of me wore glasses, sweats and a grimy tank top. The other was decked in crimson, lacy, revealing lingerie, including matching stockings and garter. My old ¡°I¡¯m working from home¡± and ¡°I need some action¡± outfits. Both of me were seated at my small table, eating omelets.


    ¡°When has that ever stopped us?¡± Sexy Me asked, slowly lifting a fluffy bit of egg dripping Sriracha to her pouty lips.


    ¡°We are in a hostile world trying to survive,¡± Working Me replied, pointedly ignoring the food porn going on across the table and just putting omelet in her mouth.


    ¡°Didn¡¯t stop you in Argentina.¡±


    ¡°Uuuuugh!¡± Working Me looked up at the ceiling and shook both her fists in the air. ¡°I was young and horny and it had been two months! I was starting to get ideas involving wild goats!¡± Working Me paused, taking a breath. ¡°Besides, I¡¯m thirty five now, not some sexually frustrated teen.¡±


    ¡°Those green boars seem¡­well equipped.¡± Sexy Me was smiling suggestively, uncaring about non-sequiturs.


    ¡°I am not screwing the second half of a Seuss book!!¡± Working Me shouted, throwing her fork down. ¡°I am not that desperate.¡±


    ¡°¡­yet.¡±


    That final word from Sexy rang a little too close to home, bringing me out. I was in my worm farm, one of the rooms I had dug out of the marble. About the size of my old apartment, a simple square of five hundred square feet with a low ceiling, the room consisted mostly of a pit filled with dirt and compost, each corner having a bundle of mushrooms planted to keep the room lit. The walls and floor of the pit were lined with red bamboo - long and skinny trees (or reeds, don¡¯t know much about bamboo) plentiful along the bank of the river and an excellent building material. When red bamboo was heat treated it got very hard and the worms couldn¡¯t chew through it, unlike the marble.


    Those worms I found the first day were not earthworms, though they have the same general shape. Now I could see color I found them blue and yellow striped and covered in a thin slime that reacted faintly to inorganic materials. I was calling them stoneworms and they were how I cut through stone and made tools.


    ¡°Why do they taste like aspirin and fried liver.¡± I mumbled as I reached down into the pit and grabbed a large handful of the wigglers. Grimacing, I took them in through my hand and watched as they sizzled inside of me, the bitter taste hitting regardless of where I dissolve them. I¡¯d found I could focus and hurry the process along, the worms digested in under a minute. I reached back down into the dirt, repeating the process ten more times before pulling all the stray dirt and shooting it back out into the farm.


    ¡°Bleh!¡± I dry heaved. Walking over to a bucket filled with water I slowly poured around as much area of the dirt as possible and spreading another bucket filled with torn up leaves and grass over the top. The reproduction cycle of these worms was crazy, my farm able to replace the hundred worms I just ate in about three days. Even if I ate them all, though, I was finding them common in patches throughout the jungle. They subsisted on mostly plant matter but their ability to dig through solid stone was the number one reason I created this farm. I say dig but that thin goop they were covered in defied science.Stolen novel; please report.


    I know, ¡°defied science,¡± says the slimegirl.


    My first farm was a fail because they just dug holes out of their pen. The second didn¡¯t fair much better, eating my bamboo up. Only after I figured out the bamboo hardens from fire treatment did I start work on the farm.


    ¡°Bubble bubble toil and trouble,¡± I said, sorting my inner slime to get the material I wanted into place, a large brown blob moving up my arm and traveling to my breasts, where it joined other blobs of various colors all packed close together.


    I didn¡¯t come with a rulebook, tutorial, Blue Box or sassy imp to tell me what was going on here. I wasn¡¯t the summoned hero pulled from Earth to fight the Demon King and given a magic weapon by the moe but inevitably sexy princess. From day one everything I have learned has been through luck, trial and error or inference from reading too much web fiction. There was no ¡°get everything figured out and start my harem¡± when I arrived. So when I ate those worms on the beach, I didn¡¯t know I had special slime powers and had distilled their essence.


    I don¡¯t have a better term for it. Alchemy, maybe? What it means is any time I¡¯ve eaten anything I take in their mass and add it to my own - though not on a one to one scale, more like eating and putting on weight. I probably had three times as much mass as I did when I woke up, putting my height in human form at around three feet. It was frustrating how slow it was going but I found the green pig meat was helping speed my mass absorption greatly. On top of gaining mass, I was seeing discolorations in my body left over that didn¡¯t feel like foreign dirt or sand. They felt like part of me but not, totally weird.


    It took days to work up the courage to figure it out. The largest blob at the time was colored red and I expelled it into a corner of my cave. Nothing happened, thought it was how needed to poop from now on. When I tried using some of the skins to mop up the mess I heard hissing. Looking at the hides I saw it was eating through the skin slowly; there was some smoke and a reaction. Previously, after seeing how quickly I dissolved food, I tried to go full Alien and extract some of my inner slime to use as a weaponized acid. Come to find out, there must be an internal chemical or magical reaction because once my slime leaves me it is no more harmful than an old episode of that Nickelodeon TV show.


    I continued the experiment, eating everything I had been eating until I found the mushrooms were leaving red splotches. Brown was the worms, white the fish, green the pigs. I got nothing from eating red bamboo or tree leaves, though I couldn¡¯t be sure. I haven¡¯t figured out what the pig or fish essence did but when I combined the brown and red, something happened.


    ¡°Less daydreaming, more working,¡± I chided myself, having spent too long staring at nothing. Grabbing the water bucket (I use bucket loosely, it being more like a large and deep marble bowl), I went down the hall to the pond and filled it, bringing it back to the farm for tomorrow. I brought the other bucket out and put it next to the passage leading to the door, ready for my mulch run later today.


    Pulling a vine, I open a small flue at the apex of the ceiling to let the smoke out when I got to work. I then started on second breakfast, eating about a third of the mushroom around the pond and plucking a large one and shaking it around the pond to plant some more. They would be fully grown in two days.


    ¡°They really are magic mushrooms,¡± I said, savoring the sweet taste I got from the last shroom before taking the large red blob in me and storing it next to the brown in my breasts. I went over to my pulley station and got ready for work. Taking bits of both blobs, I moved some of each to my hands as I picked up a chunk of marble and some flat sheets of red bamboo, placing them in front of me.


    ¡°Two parts brown, one part red.¡± Combining them, I feel my arms getting hot, quickly coat my palms with the concoctions. Seeping it through my outer film, my hands feeling a hot burn, like touching boiling water. The reaction is instant, clouds of white smoke streaming out like steampunk leaky pipes and the marble in my hand is reduced to a small disk. The process is very quick, like a blowtorch to styrofoam, only seconds to get the rough shape, a few more seconds to smooth it as round as I can get it, then the final touch as I jab my finger in the center and spin it right round baby right round.


    Red bamboo is very pliant if soaked in water shortly after cutting it down, soaking it changing the durable wood to the flexibility of wet cardboard. The shoots are soaked, cut and unrolled onto a flat piece of marble I have, then marble bricks are placed on top so I get, in only a few hours, flat(ish) wood planks. Heat treatment prevents water from soaking into the wood afterward and the new shape is permanent. Work intensive, these wooden sheets are vital to making the housing for my pulleys.


    Two rectangles, two thick slats, stack the rectangles on the slats so it looks like a thin box with two open ends, narrow and lengthen my finger to punch four holes in the corners and a larger one in the center. Four thin dowels that I roll and taper on one end and a larger tapered dowel and I¡¯ve got all the pieces cut just as the burn in my hands settles down to a warm heat.


    ¡°Neeeeeeed metal,¡± I whined, prepping my hands for round two. Had to cut out seven more before I started on putting them together. ¡°Sooooo tired of making these things only for them to work half the time.¡± My first attempt at a door had fallen on one of my legs and took me hours to slowly inch it out. Easily in my top ten of worst pains.


    Couldn¡¯t be helped, only so much weight can distribute onto wood and stone before something broke, no matter how complex my compound pulley systems got. A bit of iron would drag me out of the Stone Age and into the Industrial Revolution.


    Two hours later I was pounding the last tapered dowel into the final pulley with a round stone for a hammer, finishing my pulley-making for the day and moving myself into the hallway for my next project. Stripping off all the bits of clothing I had, I lamented the state these hides were in. Stiff and ratty, I couldn¡¯t truthfully call them clothing. Tomorrow, after taking the hides out of the salt and putting them in a tannin tree bark mix I had, I should have proper leather to work with this week.


    ¡°Manners might maketh the man, but clothing maketh the woman.¡± I mourned my rags even as I warmed a little, my previous conversation coming back to me, naked body on display.


    ¡°Later.¡±


    Stepping into the room next to the worm farm, I took the rest of the red and brown, mixed it, and spread it all over the front of my arms, legs, and body. This room was only partially finished, the rough outline already etched with the center only partially cut out. I was on fire, my outer film burning up with the reaction these essences made, the entire space exploding in white smoke as I quickly walked around the room.


    When I ran out of my alchemy, I was laying on the floor and losing form, exhaustion greater than any PT turning me into loose ooze. I had cleared about a third of the room, though I hadn¡¯t yet dug down to raise the roof or slowly smoothed out the walls. One happy accident I attributed to stoneworm mucus was whenever I burned away stone, it fused the surface it touched like a strong concrete, making cave ins unlikely. I still made sure to leave columns at appropriate intervals but every little bit helps.


    ¡°¡­puu¡­get up¡­puu¡­got more¡­puu¡­to do¡­¡±


    I took my time, putting myself back into shape and crawling out, a white haze still hanging in the air but quickly dissipating and running up the open flue in the main room. I stood when I got to my clothing, putting them on and shuffling back into the main hall.


    I dipped a leg into the pond and drank a gallon. Early on, afraid of what lurked in my pond, I¡¯d taken a few glowing mushrooms and swam down. It was deep, at least thirty feet and I found a strong current coming from and going out two black apertures. Unwilling to get lost, I swam back up. No tentacle monster, but doesn¡¯t mean one can¡¯t suddenly show up, either.


    Taking a slab of green pork off a shelf I¡¯d cut into the wall, I shoved half my body weight of Hamton shoulder into my stomach and relaxed as I dissolved it, meat and bones and all. Not the best, tastiest meal I could be eating, it was like a ham smoothly: not quite right in flavor or texture but very filling. In the future I wanted to cook, season and enjoy food, but right now it was fuel.


    ¡°Fuel and some green essence I have no idea does what.¡± I told myself in irritation, gathering the things I¡¯d need for my trek outside today. Stone knife, spear, large basket, mulch bucket. Wouldn¡¯t need much, only got a few items on my list today.


    ¡°Time to harvest some vines.Yay.¡± I said without enthusiasm, picking up everything and making my way out of the cave.


    ¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª


    Vine harvesting had been my primary objective. These vines hung from most of the trees in this jungle, some over a hundred feet long and miraculously all the vines I have found uniformly the same one centimeter in diameter. In the beginning, after I had gotten my body together and I was starting to tentatively explore my new world, my love of Brendan Fraser¡¯s George Of The Jungle came through and I knew I had to try swinging on one. I did, it was awesome right up until I ran into the tree, but after I cut a vine open I learned this was no ordinary plant.


    First, it wasn¡¯t grass green, these vines are neon green with veiny streaks of gray running through them. The gray is a tough thread and it weaves in and out of the layers of the vine, a cross section looking like the rings of a tree. It was as flexible and as strong as nylon rope of the same size. At least, for about a week, when the vine dries out and starts to crumble. I¡¯d only had my door for three days but the discovery I¡¯d have to replace all those vines once a week was already forcing me to plan on something else.


    Back on topic, I had been harvesting some vines atop a tall tree when I heard my least favorite sound.


    ¡°Skee!¡±


    ¡°Democrats!¡± I cursed, dropping my knife and spinning around, nearly following my knife to the ground on the thick branch I was balancing on. Where the branch met the large tree, fifteen feet away crouched my nemesis. Eyes now properly working, I could see the chitin carapace of the bug was vivid orange, each segment catching the sun like a mirror. The legs were a paler orange and its black head had crimson, segmented eyes giving my trypophobia a run for its money. It was slowly coming at me, likely realizing I had nowhere to go but down.


    Good idea. Looping my arm around one of the vines I hadn¡¯t cut yet, I spun it around my hips and repelled off that branch as quickly as my slimy hands could take me. Both hands busy, I couldn¡¯t give him the finger, so I stuck my tongue at him as his creepy poolnoodle-mouth started licking the residue I left on the branch.


    Hitting dirt, I jumped over to where I¡¯d left my spear and brought it up, pointing at the bug. It, apparently not thinking my stick was a threat, proceeded to follow down my same vine as skillfully as any spider in its web.


    ¡°Come on, Straw Face, your mouth is illegal in California!¡± Yeah, it has been years since Iraq, my fight banter was a little rusty.


    Butterspider don¡¯t care. ¡°Skee!¡± it replied, joining me on the ground and looking at me like I was going to be delicious. It was still longer than me but I think I outweighed it at this point.


    No point in waiting. Juking left, I stepped right and lunged, my spear aiming for where the neck connected to the body of this monstrosity. It was fast, probiscus shooting over my left shoulder where I had been feinting. I got close enough to its red eyes to see hundreds of me grinning like a madwoman as I thrust my weapon forward. Only red bamboo with an angled point cut into it, the heat treatment had made my spear hard and strong enough to bury the entire point into a tree trunk when I practiced. I was honestly expecting this fight to be over with skewered bug right now.


    *clnkSNAP!*


    The tip of my spear shattered, splinters flying, some fast enough to stick in me. I had hit that carapace dead on and instead of breaking it was a little dented, otherwise pristine. Shock froze me, the sound my spear made like a mallet hitting sheet metal. Metal?


    ¡°AAAHH!!¡± I screamed, my surprise costing me, the butterspider taking advantage and sticking its proboscis into my left eye. I shook with ataxia seizures and I could feel its suction drinking me while I flailed my arms at its face and pushed it away. So much pain lightninged through me as I got its sticker out of my face, my inner slime gushing out fast enough I could feel myself shrinking. Covering the leak with a shaking hand, I crab crawled away over the tree roots. The butterspider was having its own problems, spinning in place and shaking its head in erratic motions. Maybe it was sensitive in the eyes and I got a lucky hit in.


    I was getting tired, unnaturally so. Terror jolted me back on my feet despite the numbing haze. Not only an anti-coagulant but also a sleeping venom. I may only have seconds to act before I closed my eye and found out if I could die twice. Taking a stumbling few steps, I fell onto the back of the bug and wrapped my legs around its neck. It started convulsing immediately but I held on. One hand still busy keeping my insides inside, I formed the other into a simple spike. Pushing the remaining specks of red and brown into that spike, I watched and waited for the reaction to start up as I rode this bucking bronco.


    ¡°Orkin says hello!¡± I shouted, stabbing my hand into the back of this thing¡¯s furry head, punching out one of its eyes in a rush of green and black smoke. We both collapsed to the ground, my vision swimming in and out as I felt myself loosing control and going back to simple blob.


    My last thought, getting a blurry glimpse of the dead insect before blackness, was I hope it didn¡¯t have any friends.


    ¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª


    It had friends. I woke up sometime later next to the carcass, weak and small; I think as small as when I rebirthed here. I couldn¡¯t see and forming an eye was slow going, but I could hear numerous pneumatic skees in the distance. Getting my crap in gear I formed an eye and found the battlefield empty. Part of my face still burned but I no longer leaked, though the purple gooey ground was testament enough to how much I had lost before coagulating. No sign of the bugs but I would not survive another fight, I had to get out of here.


    Glancing at the carcass, I paused as immediate survival warred with long term survival. I might not get a better chance to study this thing than right now.


    Screw it, I thought, building myself into a simple claymation figure, two stumpy arms and two stumpy legs, the arms ending in Lego clamps. Can¡¯t get a lot of fine motor skills to work and I can¡¯t move fast, but this form is better than hopping. I grabbed one of the vines I had cut down before all this happened and started wrapping up the dead bug with a couple of simple half hitches. Taking the other end of the vine and throwing it over my shoulder, I started the long and slow trek back to the cave, dragging my victory booty behind me.


    It was night when I got back, having to stop multiple times and dig up some worms before moving it a few more yards. I didn¡¯t have the strength to close my door, hoping I wasn¡¯t going to wake up tomorrow playing the part of a Capri Sun. I just grabbed the largest piece of pork I had left, wrapping as much of me around it as I could and drifted off to sleep, dreaming of some green eggs to go with my ham.


    ¡°God, I¡¯m sorry we haven¡¯t talked in a while.¡± I said after waking up and starting the process of forming my body, laying amid the mushrooms around my pond. ¡°This hasn¡¯t been what I was expecting.¡± Understatement. ¡°And its not like I read about slimegirl reincarnation in the Bible.


    ¡°But I¡¯m here, alive and safe and cancer free. Yesterday I was complaining I didn¡¯t have any metal and yesterday I discover a possible source of metal. I might even chalk it up to coincidence, but I know better. Thank you.¡±


    For the rest of the day I spent my time taking apart, absorbing and dissecting my enemy. Its carapace was copper, simple and pure copper, explaining the orange color. I have no idea what they ate to get so much copper, my understanding is they ate slimes and - unless I was missing something in my diet - slimes don¡¯t eat a lot of copper.


    ¡°Magic,¡± I muttered, stoking my fire as hot as I could make it, setting a piece of carapace on a shelf next to the flames. I wasn¡¯t expecting much, bamboo can¡¯t generate enough heat to melt copper, but I wanted to be as sure as I could this was actually copper and not some mystical resin. Getting the fire going was irritating because I was twice as tall as I was now when I made it and so I had to drag over my bamboo flattening bricks to create a booster stool.


    I¡¯d cut off some goopy flesh and slurped it down, ecstatic when after I finished the meal there was a sliver of orange essence. I couldn¡¯t immediately determine what this new essence would do but I was excited to get testing later.


    ¡°I need to hire a maid,¡± I said, surveying the mess of parts scattered around my main cave. It wasn¡¯t like I had a workroom made yet. The abdomen was yielding the most information, a large sack connected to the anus filled with a heavy lump of solid copper. It must have hardened when it died, somehow able to keep it in a liquid state and secreted for, I guess, nest material?


    ¡°It builds nests?¡± I asked, the germ of an idea forming. ¡°If I get them as babies, can I make a butterspider farm?¡± I¡¯d have a renewable source of metal. Once I figured out how to get my fire hot enough I could really jumpstart my plans.


    All I need is the perfect trap.


    ¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª¡ª


    Back in the present, while Vanna gathered two intact and now unguarded butterspider nests and placed them into a secured room she planned on using for her copper farm, thirty miles away a group of creatures were plodding their way through the jungle on a large and well-traveled road. These creatures were part of a caravan, a long train of carts holding stacked cages containing a menagerie, all either struggling to be free or resigned to their fates. Large, hulking and reptilian creatures in chains slowly pulled the carts under the whips of their drivers.


    The leader of the caravan, an enterprising but aging male, anthropomorphic frog, had heard the loud crash in the middle of the jungle when Vanna released her trap. He was curious, but decided his cages were full of enough fodder for market right now. No sense risking what he had for maybe getting something more.


    Next time he came through this jungle, though, he planned on finding out if there was anything out there worth capturing.