ArkinIt's been a few days now.
Food hasn't been a problem. You're pretty sure Caterpillars are supposed to be herbivores, but the large fangs suggest otherwise for you. You've had some leaves as well as some birds you've managed to catch and you can't say you've felt anything wrong in your stomach, so it seems as if you can digest basically anything. You also found a river, so drinking water hasn't been an issue. You miss the convenience of modern technology, but all things considered, being lost in the woods hasn't been all that bad. Usually.
You're a Caterpillar. Not just any caterpillar, mind you, but a caterpillar nonetheless. Your legs are stubby and numerous, and you still aren't all that comfortable walking around on them, much less running for your life from a pack of hungry wolves. One wolf would have been fine. You can deal with one wolf. All you'd have to do is spit webs at it until it's completely stuck, then either bite a vital point or throw a big rock at it. You got that first part done just as another showed up, and then another, and another, and now only the head start afforded by bluffing with the spots on the side of your body is keeping you alive. It didn't take long for the wolves to catch on once you bolted, but you think it's too late to start standing your ground now.
The tree roots of the forest floor cause you to stumble over and over, but the rest of your legs keep you upright and moving. Even so, it doesn't feel like enough as the sounds of the wolves continue to draw ever closer. Your stupid caterpillar head isn't made to look behind you while running away, and your anxiety starts to mount as you realize you're not going to be able to lose them. You didn't want to get yourself stuck up on a tree all day long, but it beats getting ripped apart and eaten alive. You go to the nearest tall one and climb it, defying gravity with your weird velcro feet and come to rest on one of the lower branches, a dozen feet up, staring down at the newly formed encirclement of barking dogs. You've never owned any pet other than a goldfish, but you're pretty sure you're more of a cat person.
You take some time to catch your breath and evaluate your options. The higher branches of the tree you're on that could actually get you onto other trees don't seem thick enough to sustain your weight. You'd think the dogs would get bored and leave, eventually, but after a few minutes of waiting they still seem content to bark at you from below. As time passes, you start to get bored and annoyed. You spit some sticky webbing at the dogs to try to get them to go away, but some of the wolves always break away from the collective in order to aid the victim in tearing it up and eventually going back to barking. You already spit out quite a lot earlier, and you don't think you can immobilize all of these wolves, so you rule that out as an option that is available within any reasonable amount of time. Eventually you just shrug as much as a caterpillar is capable of shrugging and decide to climb higher. Maybe they'll give up faster if they can't see or smell you at all.
You climb up as much as you can so as to obscure your figure in the canopy. You are mostly green, after all. As you do however, you misjudge the structural integrity of one of the branches and it snaps. You figured you'd be lighter, given how you can walk on walls so easily with just feet velcro, but it's the very same feet velcro that is now dragging you down, off the tree, into a metaphoric pit of literal wolves. Your life doesn't flash before your eyes, but you do feel miffed that you're going to die because you were too fat. You've been made fun of for being a beanpole your entire life and now the operating tables have turned. Metaphorical operating tables. There certainly were literal operating tables back in that lab, but getting turned into insectoid wolf chow was less 'unethical surgery' and more 'Captain America's zappy chamber'. At least you weren't turned into a literal beanpole, but you can't say this is much better.
Time seems to slow down as you fall towards the fractal of snapping jaws, and it stays that way as one of them leaps up and bites down on your tender fleshy nape.
The next moment is a blur as you come crashing down hard on the forest floor and the back of your neck bleeds profusely. The pain is debilitating, but the offending jaw that bit you is already gone somehow. You desperately struggle to get your bearings as you scramble to your feet, which suddenly feel far less numerous. You panic a bit at the foreign sensation, but either you don't have good pain receptors there or you have some insectoid adrenaline keeping you from feeling it, so you prioritize taking stock of the wolves eyeing you from a short distance away with spooked looks on their faces. For some reason they've backed off, which doesn't make any sense to you until you finally realize that you are now covered in fur.
You look down at your little paws with a mixture of bewilderment, excitement, and exasperation. You didn't know you could be anything but a big creepy bug ever again, but discovering that whatever happened in that lab has made you even freakier than you initially thought makes you mentally groan. Next thing you know you'll shapeshift into Frankenstein, or maybe you actually will become a literal beanpole, or both at the same time. Who fucking knows? Sure as hell not you!
The wound on your neck must not be as deep as it feels if you have so much time to think about complete nonsense while the novelty of shapeshifting into a wolf wears off and the
real wolves close in on you with a decidedly predatory look in their eyes. You try to communicate with them with little yips that, if you do say so yourself, are absolutely adorable, but suddenly becoming a small wolf evidently has not granted you the gift of wolven speech. You theorize animal speak is mostly contextual, but either way it seems the pack isn't looking to adopt.
You rack your brain trying to think of something to get yourself out of this mess while the wolves are still being cautious enough that you
have time to think, but it all ultimately leads back to this fucked up life you're living right now. You went from a caterpillar to a bigger caterpillar to a small wolf. The pattern doesn't even slightly hold, so either you can transform into something else again, you can transform back into a caterpillar, or... you're just fucked, really.
You try as hard as you can, tensing your body as you stretch out, standing awkwardly on your hind legs as if doing so is supposed to help you turn into a bear, but nothing really happens. You figure it has something to do with how you were bitten right as you became this, but there's not a lot of options for you at the moment, you already know Mosquitoes don't count, and trees can't bite. Out of desperation you even bite the bark of the tree you fell off of, which, while distracting for the encircling wolves, accomplishes nothing but putting a bad taste in your mouth. At this point you have half a mind to attempt putting on a show for the wolves like a court jester trying not to get beheaded, but to your luck, you find that a simple focusing thought once again renders you in... your disgusting and useless caterpillar form.
The wolves seem to have stopped giving a shit about your freakish parlor tricks as they leap at you in earnest, and you only barely manage to put two and two together in time to vanish before their very eyes. Metaphorically.
Turns out you can even go back to your tiny caterpillar form. It's a simple matter from there to hide within the fallen leaves littering the forest floor as you sneak away.
The closest thing you have to a home in the woods is this cave you found behind a small waterfall. The magic of it is partially ruined by how obvious it is, but on the upside you can get into it without getting wet and other animals don't seem interested in it because of the noise of the waterfall. It's also adequately deep to stay dry, albeit its inner confines are dark and seems to lead to the center of the Earth with how deep it goes. You've only slept in it once, since you've been wandering downstream in search of civilization, but it's convenient enough that you'd like to come back here if you're unable to find anything. You're still not sure how you're gonna work around the whole 'freak of nature' thing, but maybe if you can find someone to communicate with you can win human rights in court and work at a circus freak show for a living.
...You sigh.
For now, you just lie in the shallow end of the water pooling at the foot of the waterfall, trying to get your wound clean. You can't exactly dress it considering your lack of opposable thumbs or sterile materials, but it luckily doesn't seem very deep. Your wolf form
is smaller than your larger caterpillar form. Maybe suddenly shrinking minimized the damage?
You have too many blessings to count for someone in as shitty a situation as you are. When you've done all you think you can for your wound, you shake off what water you can before realizing that transforming into a smaller form and back can displace most of the water on you, drying you right quick.
You feel too hungry to be wholeheartedly continuing your journey just yet, and while you would normally look for food on your way, it might be nice to just stick around for nightfall while you have the cave. You could just eat some leaves, but you're in the mood for some meat, and what better prey than those damned wolves from before?
It takes a while, but you eventually manage to track some of them down. You can tell the others are nearby, and you silently curse their relaxed formation. Aren't packs of wolves supposed to stay really close together? It certainly would have saved you the trouble earlier, but now it should be their downfall. This time you aim for their annoyingly loud maws and seal them shut before they even notice your presence. Like that, you are able to dispatch then one by one, though you stop at just two because you're frankly just here for the food.
You wrap one up in a cocoon like a spider would and kill the other. Animals being treated below humans goes without saying for the continued function of human society, and your instincts simply tell you that it's kill or be killed. Maybe you had some hesitation when you decided to eat an entire bird, but any you might have had before is long gone now. All it takes is a bite on the neck to end the wolf's life, but what you don't expect is suddenly becoming enveloped in a golden light as soon as you do.
The first time it happened was overnight. You were asleep, suddenly waking up comparatively enormous, and you even started getting concerned you were going to end up a kaiju. The second time was a mess. You had your eyes shut in anticipation, and even if you could see, it would just be a spinning blur of gnashing teeth and feral, hungry eyes. Well, and light apparently, because gaining a new form seems to come with a light show. For a moment, your own light hurts your eyes enough to force you to shut them, but when you open them again, it's already over.
You have wings now, apparently.
You're rather shocked you didn't need to go through a chrysalid form, but it's ultimately a relief. The idea of melting yourself down was making you nervous. You hurry back to the cave and toss the wolves inside before examining your reflection on the water.
You seem mostly the same size, though your wingspan is probably three meters already. They're not the prettiest, but at least they're an amber color instead of a dull brown, and they even have some rather mesmerizing eye patterns. Seems you're a moth, not a butterfly. You're glad you got a wolf form before this one, because the existential dread of being an ugly moth forever probably would have gotten to you. It might have even been worse than your first night as a caterpillar, which you're pretty sure was the worst night of your life... Okay, maybe nothing's topping that one, but you toss the thought aside before you dwell on that night for too long.
You somewhat belatedly realize that you should be able to fly now and immediately begin trying it out. You smash your face directly into a tree and decide to put it off until after you've eaten that wolf. As you're eating, you ponder the conditions for the acquisitions of your forms and realize that maybe killing more wolves will get you more forms. Before even finishing your meal, you switch to your wolf cub form and do your best with your tiny jaw to bite the other wolf to death. It eventually succumbs beyond a shadow of a doubt, which troubles you, since you didn't get any new form in the process. You decide you need more wolves to experiment on and, after finishing your meal, take off in search of yet more of them. Flying is still a bit too difficult for you, but you keep trying anyway as you clumsily throw yourself through the trees in search of them, as well as any other prey unfortunate enough to catch your eye. THIS MOTH HAS TEETH.
For the first time since the start of med school, you stay up late into the night, trying all sorts of different things to no avail. You realize with some guilt that you probably went overboard on that wolf pack, and you end up having to dispose of the excess wolf carcasses by burying them, not wanting to attract any untoward curious wildlife. When you're finally finished burying bodies in the middle of the night like a serial killer, you decide to sleep off the issue. You still have a few restrained live wolves to try things out on for tomorrow.
The next morning, after breakfast, you decide to take a different approach. You wrangled the wolf and killed it all in your caterpillar form, giving you a moth form. While you've killed more wolves already in all of your forms and eaten them in every which way, they remained tied up and defenseless because of your moth form. Your moth form doesn't seem like it'll evolve any more, but if you released a wolf, would they then be valid for evolving your other forms?
Look, you're grasping at straws here. You clearly evolved after scoring a kill so you can't think of anything better to try, and it's something you're going to need to understand in order to properly live out the rest of your life as whatever the fuck you are now.
You go through with it, reasoning that you can just change back into your moth form and shoot webbing at it if things get dangerous. You use your weird moth teeth to rip through the bulk of the webbing on your penultimate wolf, then back up, leaving them to struggle free the rest of the way themselves as you get into position to block their exit. You then change into your wolf cub form and hope that the half day or so of leaving it without food has done more to reduce its strength than the desperation and hunger has done to render it viciously ravenous. You could always starve it longer and try to fight it when it's weaker, but you value your time, okay? You could always try again with your last wolf when they get weaker if this one bolts, or even find new opponents in the woods.
When the wolf finally frees itself, it predictably runs towards the exit, the source of the only light in this cave, seemingly trying to ignore you. You are just a small wolf cub after all; nothing like the weird insect monster that put it in this mess. You refuse to let it go without a fight and leap at it, clamping your jaw directly on its neck as it passes by. Like a dog that refuses to let go of a tug rope, you end up hanging off of it, completely suspended above the ground. Perhaps not expecting such viciousness from a pup or just scared after the ordeal it's been through, it yelps and staggers before rectifying itself, letting out a low growl and trying to crush you with its body weight. When it fails to loosen your grip it goes back to making yelping sounds as it panics, unable to get you off with its claws or teeth. Left with no clear option, it gives up and leaps directly into the waterfall.
It gets much harder from there to keep biting as the current washes you two down the river, but you at least managed to prepare yourself for holding your breath in time. It seems that you're dragging the other wolf down, because for the most part, you both remain under the water's surface as you're carried downstream. You close your eyes and focus on nothing but holding on tightly as the wolf flails about, but eventually the flailing stops, and with it, you feel the size of your jaw grow.
You ditch the other wolf and manage to doggy-paddle your way to the river bank a new wolf. Just like before, you've skipped all the intermediary steps and gone straight to adulthood. Not only that, but you seem to have made surprisingly good progress down the river in the process. You try out your new form by continuing onward in it, relishing in finally being faster than that wobbly excuse for a gait you had in your caterpillar form. Finally achieving practicality, you can also finally enjoy having a mundane number of limbs for extended periods of time. Hell, it feels so nice that you break out into a run. All-fours isn't nearly as hard to adapt to, and you pick up a nice, cathartic stride. You start to space out as you simply enjoy your newly improved running capability before being snapped out of your reverie by something that smells really good. It doesn't smell quite the same as your wolves. After that river ride, the wolf you came here with probably doesn't smell great right now, though you're not sure where exactly it's gone off to. You follow the (good) smell, which strays a bit from the path of the river. You weave your way through the trees until you come across a small pond, the source of the smell. A ways away, you spot some shirtless dude with a sword next to what remains of a freshly cooked deer, no doubt the source of the smell. It's then that you hear it.
"Come at me goat fucker! Hyaaa!"
You're terribly confused, both at what he had to say and what he was doing, but you weren't about to let the only living human you've seen since those explorers slip through your fingers. While it seemed as if he was out camping, he had to have come from
somewhere, and somewhere is exactly where you want to go. You stalk over towards him, only catching a whiff of his blood over the overpowering smell of cooked meat when you draw closer. Maybe you should have been able to earlier with your weirdo wolf nose but it's been a long time since you had cooked meat. You stop and observe from behind a tree as he swings his sword at nothing over and over again, quickly recognizing the wound in his side as a bullet wound.
This, unfortunately, raises more questions than it answers. No sane person is camping in the woods with a bullet wound unless they're a criminal, right? Still, you hesitate for only a moment. It doesn't really change anything what kind of person he is if you can get him to lead you back to human civilization. You get closer still to him. You wish you had something to offer him, like that wolf floating down the river, or a way to dress his wounds, but so far the only leverage you have is being unobtrusive, so, in spite of the appetizing remains of that deer being present, you sit stoically on the side, waiting for him to finish whatever the hell he's doing. You had wolf for breakfast anyway. Does that make you a cannibal? You didn't eat it in your wolf form, but...
Ah, forget it. You don't want to think about how fucked up it is that you're here now as you are. You'd rather ponder the connection between the guy's sword fetish and that bullet wound.
...And, he's noticed you. Okay. Don't mind the wolf staring at you like a voyeur, he just wants to stalk you all the way back to town, absolutely nothing to be concerned about.
Noctis
Carlyle
Fetzen
Lewascan2
LuckyBlackCat
Crimson Flame
koi
