Chapter Text
Ow...
Sue’s body ached as she tried to breathe, each strained gasp pushing her closer to awareness. More and more senses chimed in by the moment, coming together to paint a picture of her immediate surroundings—one that only fueled her growing anxiety.
The smell of wet grass and dirt from up close; the sensation of cold mud covering her left side; no sounds except for distant forest ambiance. She must’ve gotten knocked out by something, and spent the last however-long lying unconscious on the ground. Trying to remember what had happened before all this yielded nothing, not helping any.
She was making her way along a hiking trail and looking around for somewhere to sit down and eat lunch. There was a loud bang some distance away, and then...
...this.
There was always a risk of unexploded ordnance in the area, but she doubted this was it. If she’d been close enough for an old bomb to knock her out, she was close enough to have taken enough shrapnel to her person to never wake up again.
Pleasant mental imagery right there.
Regardless of what exactly had happened, Sue was awake now. Birds were chirping and leaves were rustling, so she had to have still been in the woods. Which just left getting up, checking her body for injuries, making it through the rest of the trail, and reporting this whole... blast event to the authorities. And getting a bath.
God, could I use a bath right now.
Well, no time like the present.
With a painful grunt, Sue placed her right hand on the ground for leverage. She then pulled her legs in, rolled onto her stomach—
“AGH!”
—and shrieked at the cold shock that went through her body in response. It felt like she’d been splashed with freezing water, forcing her to finally open her eyes.
And scream at what she saw.
A massive red spike jutted out of her chest, its tip stained with fresh mud. Sue gasped, trying to push herself onto her back and get a better view of the grotesque piece of shrapnel—only to feel the same freezing shock from behind, making her shriek. No matter how hard she craned her head, she couldn’t spot the source of the painful sensation, leaving her to feel blindly along her back. She lifted her hand, trying to reach over her shoulders, and froze at the sight before her.
This was not a human arm.
It was... green, a muted shade of green. Its forearm was wide, much thicker than the unnervingly thin upper arm. It had three short, muddy, fingernail-less fingers, the middle one sticking out further than the other two. Afraid of what she might see, Sue attempted to clench her right hand—and the unnatural limb in front of her obeyed. The rightmost finger bent at an angle, akin to a thumb, turning the malformed hand into an equally off-putting fist.
The sensations of her thumb, index, and middle fingers rubbing against mud and each other brought on a horrifying realization that she tried to fight off, especially with her feeling absolutely nothing from her ring fingers and pinkies. A glance down revealed that this spike and these monstrous hands weren’t the only things that were utterly, horribly wrong with her. The body she was looking at was not human, and definitely not hers, and the sight below her waist was especially hard to wrap her head around.
What are these?
Her legs were thin and white, with small, toeless feet. They were obscured by many flaps of white and green skin; the colors matching the rest of her body. They were smeared with mud, long enough to go past her ankles, and sprouted from somewhere at the waist.
Sue had no idea what kind of bizarre alien body she was hallucinating, but it was just that; it had to have been just that! Just a vicious nightmare; she just had to wake up and she’d be alright—
Her thoughts were cut off by a gust of frigid wind, felt throughout her entire body. Her legs, her midriff, her three-fingered hands, the buffeting flaps that brushed against every inch of her skin. Even the chest spike joined in on the fun with a reprise of its cold shocks, leaving her shaking. The wind also helped Sue notice a sight her brain had blocked out as effortlessly as it had her nose. A lock of green hair covered the center of her vision, stiff enough for the gusts to only briefly sway it.
“Whghat—GHA!” she tried to mutter, before choking on her own tongue. Not even her mouth was right, its different dimensions unfamiliar enough to trigger her gag reflex. She clenched her eyes closed again.
This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening, THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING!
Any semblance of having a grip on the situation evaporated as her breaths turned shallower and faster. The barraging wind only picked up; the warm tears leaked down her cheeks. But this wasn’t her body or her cheeks; none of this was hers; none of this was real! It wasn’t her; it couldn’t have been her! This was some Area 51 escapee whose eyes she was seeing out of, it must’ve been! She had a future ahead of her! A shaky one, yes, but a future all the same!
She couldn’t be this, this freakish creature...
Sue curled up as she wept in panic, not even the wind giving her any reprieve. She had done nothing to deserve any of this, especially not this body she had found herself in. The inability to recall what had happened before she woke up here only fueled her despairing rage, expressed ineffectually through slamming a deformed hand against the muddy forest floor.
Soon enough, she’d lost track of how long she lay there, with only mud and tears keeping her company. Despair and anger burned up inside her until there was only an ashen numbness left. Numbness, and surrender. Guess she was a freak of nature now. Some incoherent alien out of a video game, doomed to die in here—
No.
Her body tensed up at the thought, a snarl twisting her expression. She might not have had anyone to live for anymore, but she’d promised herself that she would carry on and make the most of her situation, regardless of the circumstances. Granted, she didn’t foresee ‘getting transformed into a mutant’ as a possible circumstance when she made that promise, but it didn’t matter! She was stronger than this, goddammit!
Dad would’ve wanted me to be, at least.
Sue opened her eyes, capitalizing on her surge of anger-fueled motivation, and tried supporting herself on her right hand again. Her muscles screamed in protest, but eventually yielded as she pulled her legs in and put the other arm to use. Before long, she arrived at a very muddy, very sore, but ultimately successful position on all fours.
Halfway there.
She took in the sight of her new arms as she gathered her strength. The sheer size disparity between their parts was unnerving, making her feel even more deformed than she no doubt looked. Any further observations could wait, though. It was time to actually get up.
With deep breaths, she counted to three. After bracing for whatever might happen, she pushed herself up and rose into a kneeling position, toothpick legs wobbling painfully underneath. She worried if they’d be able to support her weight, but there was only one way to know for sure. Sliding one leg forward, Sue looked around for anything she could lean on in the immediate vicinity, with a nearby tree looking like it’d perform that task splendidly.
Don’t fail me, tree.
Sue grunted, pushing on the ground as hard as she could as she brought the other foot into position, at least for a moment, before losing her balance. A few stumbled steps later, she half leaned on, half ran into the tree she had previously sized up. Thankfully, the laws of physics did not spontaneously break in those ten seconds, and the tree held. She also avoided running into it spike-first, which, if earlier was anything to go by, would have hurt a lot.
Breath by breath, Sue slowly regained her bearings, legs aching with each little twitch. Her arms shook, but gripped the tree firmly, giving her ample time to think through her next steps. Getting back to the trail was a straightforward enough goal to start with. Though, judging by her recent experiences, she doubted it’d be any less of a struggle than scraping herself off the ground had been.
The questions about what would happen afterwards didn’t lead anywhere pleasant, either. Anyone she ran into would be unlikely to react to her new appearance any better than she had. And if the difficulty of basic movement was any clue, this body was about as suited for combat as that of an infant. If anyone, or anything, got aggressive with her in this state, she was as good as dead.
Maybe the green coloration meant that she was poisonous now? Not that it would help her while being attacked, but she’d take her attacker down with her at least, eh?
Eh...
If she wanted to avoid getting shot by the first hunter she ran into, she had to be able to convince them she was an actual person. Her previous attempt at speaking didn’t go well, but the situation demanded persistence. Not that she had any other choice anyway.
With a deep inhale, she felt around the inside of her mouth before giving vocalizing another go. “Mhy n-nhame ish Shue.”
Far from ideal, but at least she wasn’t choking on her own tongue anymore. And was maybe even somewhat understandable. She hoped. A few more attempts at speaking yielded largely the same results. Her new mouth was just different enough to make vocalizing the exact sounds she wanted a royal pain, especially when tired.
And hungry.
The chaos of realizing she was in a whole new body distracted her from many sensations, chief among them hunger and coldness. They weren’t the only ones, though, far from it—and she had barely any idea how to describe some of them.
It felt like something in her body was being tugged from all around. Each individual tug was so faint she wasn’t even sure it was there, but they combined into something she could sense clearly. They varied in intensity and... the emotion they gave off, as incoherent as that sounded when stated out loud. The more she concentrated, the more of these tugging sensations she felt. There were too many of them to investigate them all, but she could at least try to focus on the ones that stood out the most, and hopefully figure out if they meant anything.
Something distant in the direction she was facing... maybe angry?
Another, way off to her right. Afraid? Thrilled?
The sensations were almost beyond description. Sue could feel emotions in them, but they weren’t her emotions. It was almost as if they existed on their own, independent of anything physical.
Curiosity, nearby. No, not just nearby, right behind her—
Sue gasped, looking over her shoulder. The tiny clearing remained empty, with the only addition to the scene being a sparrow or some other small bird sitting on a nearby low branch, busy eyeing her out.
I know, birdie, I look like I took a bath in nuclear waste...
Guess the weird tugging sensations were nothing important. She’d probably just hallucinated them in her exhaustion, assuming her mind remained unchanged between the two bodies. Sue really, really hoped that assumption held true, now that she thought about it. Though, considering she wasn’t craving brains—or whole human bodies—it most likely didn't. Thank God.
The only thing worse than taking the body of a monster would’ve been becoming one.
With somewhere between a reassured and a distraught sigh, Sue braced herself for another attempt at walking, shifting her weight from one foot to another. Balancing on essentially just two points proved tricky; much trickier than walking should be. But, somehow, not impossible. Hopefully, she could maintain a regular pace once she got going, however sluggish.
All that remained now was grabbing her bag and heading out on a trek home. She hoped.
Returning to normalcy in a body like this was out of the question, but catching the interest of some government agency or another beat trying to live as what was essentially a cryptid. Especially with this body having traded any ability for self-defense for... yeah. With how powerless she now was, she had to have been at much less risk of being experimented on, right?
The world’s thinnest silver lining helped little as Sue looked around in search of her bag. There were no traces of it anywhere in sight, nothing but a monster-shaped imprint in the mud and some shrubs. She knew all that trying to shove her ID into someone’s face would've accomplished was making them think she got eaten by this pale, spindly thing, but she needed it all the same. Even if only for when the authorities found her.
I have to find that fucking bag. My life might depend on it.
The extra motivation was enough to get Sue moving again after her long pause. She only barely maintained her balance as she pushed on. The resulting march was slow and painful, legs aching as if she’d run a mile—but it’d be at least half a dozen of those before she’d make it back to the nearest town.
Refusing to let that fact settle in, Sue kept going in her alien body, one step at a time. Each one a minor achievement considering the circumstances, but an achievement she’d need many of if she wanted to get anywhere. A visual scan of the nearby area only confirmed what she’d already feared: her bag was still nowhere to be seen. Hopefully, making it back onto the trail and backtracking from there would help her find it. If it indeed was a blast that had knocked her out, her bag couldn’t have been too far away.
Though, now that she could think about it some more, Sue remembered wearing it before all this went down. Considering she got turned into something halfway between a Martian and a creepypasta monster, her tattered memory was obviously insufficient. Then again, it was the only thing she still had. Not even her clothes—
The abrupt realization made Sue freeze as she processed the reality that she was, in fact, naked. There was no trace of her purple tee on either her or the surrounding ground, and the same went for the rest of her outfit. Guess the clothes-likeness of these weird flaps must’ve deceived her consciousness into thinking they were an actual dress or something.
She wasn’t just a monster, but a naked monster. At least she didn’t have any breasts to be hanging out for everyone to see anymore. Considering the circumstances, however, having yet another bit of humanity taken away from her wasn’t particularly uplifting.
Sue pushed on with renewed vigor, gritting her teeth while trying to distract herself from another breakdown—and pain worked just as well for that as anything else. Though, as she marched on, wincing every other step, it soon became apparent that even this cobbled-together plan would have a spanner thrown into it. She was sure she’d at least be able to spot the path from the nearby hill, but it wasn’t anywhere in sight. What she did spot, though, was much scarier.
There was a small group of what looked like gray wolf pups off in the distance. Something she’d rather stay well away from even in her usual body, let alone this freakish one. Thankfully, they didn’t notice her, allowing for a hasty-ish escape in the opposite direction.
Hope the path isn’t that way...
Left with nowhere to go aside from ‘forward,’ Sue focused inward, splitting her attention between the indistinct forest ahead and the extremely distinct body she now inhabited. The more she examined the jutting red spike on her chest, the more she doubted it was just some piece of shrapnel. It wasn’t bloodied, it had a somewhat regular shape, and it didn’t hurt when left undisturbed.
Sue took it upon herself to verify that last observ—ow. Guess it really was the spike itself that hurt when touched. Its sensations felt like they came simultaneously from her chest and her spine. She reached a hand behind her shoulders, confirming her earlier hunch about there being another, likely identical, spike sprouting from her back.
All of that only raised more questions. What kind of creature would just naturally grow extremities like that? What was their purpose, even? Could be the answer was just ‘some mad scientists made it this way to spite her,’ which, while unsatisfying, was as good as anything she’d arrive at through idle pondering. If nothing else, she would at least secure a double kill if she ran into something chest first.
After chuckling at her morbid thought, Sue shifted attention to her oddly shaped arms. They looked misshapen, and she was curious about why that was, feeling along her right forearm with her left hand.
God, these fingers are so off-putting. Why don't they have fingernails!?
As she examined her new body, a couple of things quickly became apparent. One: the forearm was just wide and thin; there wasn’t any fatty padding anywhere. And two: this skin was smooth. Guess it was expected with her not having body hair anymore, but the utter pleasantness still caught her off guard. Her new superpower, being nice to the touch. Except for the painful spike thing.
Yay.
Her torso grabbed Sue’s attention as she glanced down at her lower half. The green skin on her arms and chest was kinda patterned like some sort of cardigan. If nothing else, it at least fit into the theme of this alien body looking oddly clothed. Her midriff was really thin, unnervingly so. She was far from overweight back in her human self, but this body almost looked like it was being bound with an invisible corset. Curiously, it didn’t have a belly button either.
Before Sue could ponder any further, an abrupt yank interrupted her. She tripped, only barely catching herself from falling, before looking over her shoulder. The culprit turned out to be a small, prickly shrub, a small patch of the green-white skin now hanging from it.
Guess that answered whether these flaps felt anything. And whether there was any magic in place that would keep them from getting stained with dirt and grime just by walking. Negative, and negative.
Fantastic.
Washing these wouldn’t be a bad idea if she ended up running into a stream. Then again, was there even a point to that, considering they’d just get dirty again before she knew it? Probably not, but if she had to be a monster, then at least she wanted to be a clean monster—
Above her, very alert.
The intense tugging sensation snapped Sue’s head upwards. Before she could even consciously process the feeling, the creature flying towards her captured the entirety of her attention, leaving her gasping as she stumbled back.
Despite her major, Sue considered herself a relatively outdoorsy girl. She found most wild creatures neat, even if she knew well enough to avoid them. Butterflies were extra cute, fluttering from flower to flower with their many colors.
Butterflies half her size, however, were fucking terrifying, especially when they were buzzing at her loud enough to sound like a growl. To the best of Sue’s knowledge, they weren’t carnivorous, but she wasn’t about to learn whether that fact extended to this mutated one. She took off with a frightened shriek, running as fast as her deformed legs would allow. Which wasn’t exactly fast, but thankfully the discount Mothra wasn’t keen on following her, sending her off with a low buzz. Not that there was enough non-panicking brainpower left in Sue’s mind to consciously notice that.
Her flight of fancy was cut short by the devious appearance of a tree root, positioned perfectly to lay her out on the dirt. Subconscious reflexes twisted her body to the side mid-fall, sparing the spike from taking the brunt of the impact.
It still hurt, though.
A dull pain pulsed through Sue’s left side with every breath while she grabbed her bearings. Judging by the lack of any further buzzing, flapping, or other animal noises more threatening than birdsong in her immediate surroundings, she was in the clear now. She had absolutely no idea where in the woods she was anymore, how she would get back to the path, or even if she was still in the same forest to begin with. One thought, however, occupied her exhausted mind most of all.
What.
The fuck.
Was that.
Was her joke about having gotten dunked in nuclear waste true, and it had happened to more than just her? Were there other mutants out there that wouldn’t be so passive when confronted with defenseless prey? Did she have any chance of surviving in what was increasingly turning out to be hell on Earth!?
She was gonna try no matter what—being eaten wasn’t exactly on her bucket list—but the odds grew more dire by the moment. There was always the possibility that the ‘butterfly’ was just a one-off freak, just like she presumably was, but she had a feeling that wasn’t quite it.
Speaking of feelings.
The sensation she felt right before that thing appeared; that tugging she’d initially dismissed. Was it actually some kind of spider-sense? She could feel it even right now, pointing all around and mostly too weak to make out in detail. Did it point out threats? No, not threats, unless that bird where she woke up was a threat. Maybe living creatures—wait, did that bird look normal? She couldn’t quite recall.
‘Sensing creatures larger than insects’ sounded accurate enough. It was still nonsensical, oddly specific, and she had absolutely no idea how it even could work. Regardless of how little sense it made, however, it was likely to be her only saving grace here.
Behold the Spindle-Woman, whose power is being even more of a recluse than most computer science students.
The dry chuckles that followed only brought on more aching in her chest. A reminder to get going again if nothing else, lest something sneak up on her while she was enjoying the less pleasant kind of mud bath. Well, assuming her sixth sense worked how she thought it did, nothing could truly sneak up on her. Still, if anything fast enough ran up to her while she was still scraping herself off the ground, she was a goner either way.
Not that she could walk swiftly enough for that to stop being the case even once she was up and walking again...
Let’s just—let’s just get going and avoid everything that moves.
Sue winced every other step as she resumed her trek, the soreness not making for a good walking companion. It was that or getting eaten by whatever else might’ve lived here, but knowing that helped little. A limp, combined with having to keep a mental watch for anything that moved, slowed down her already glacial pace even further. Her magic sense didn’t give her a way of distinguishing friend from foe, but she doubted she’d find many of the former in here.
What she ended up finding plenty of—mainly through an astonished realization followed by a stealthy getaway—were many more of those mutants, of all species and sizes. Caterpillars the size of her hand, slowly crawling along trees? Check. One-legged, red-eyed birds glaring at her every time she looked at them? Check.
Very poisonous-looking purple rodents with fuck-off big teeth scampering their way around? Check.
It seemed whatever messed her and that butterfly up had affected most of this place. Maybe the blast she’d heard was a biological weapon now sweeping its way through the forest? Sounded about as plausible as every other idea she’d had. No matter what had happened to them, the resulting freaks were too small, or at least thought themselves too small, to try having a bite at her, much to her continued existence. In any sort of direct brawl, she was dead to anything that wasn’t one of those harmless-looking green caterpillars.
And even that one would likely be a close matchup.
Eventually, growing hunger reminded Sue of its presence. The unpleasant sensation posed the question of what the hell this body even ate. Meat was out of consideration. She wasn’t in the state to hunt any, plus without a fire she’d have to eat it raw and—no. Just no.
*stomach growl*
Not yet, at least.
That left either fruit or the abundant greenery, but the latter wasn’t arousing any more eagerness in her than raw meat. She would need to forage for berries, maybe edible mushrooms, without any idea of what was poisonous to this body.
As she pondered the ethics of checking the edibility of wild plants through feeding them to the purple rats, something colorful caught her attention. It was stark enough to make her flinch before she could focus, and gasp once she finally did.
Peaches. Or at least, something that looked like peaches. Sue had no idea whether whatever the hell had mutated this whole place had also affected the plants, but she wasn’t gonna pass up possibly the only edible fruit in this entire forest. As she stared hungrily at the treeful of goods, however, a problem presented itself. One she was very familiar with, and which her transformation hadn't helped with at all.
She couldn’t reach.
Even the lowest branch was just barely out of the range of her jump. If she still had her boots and gloves, or even just a body that didn’t feel like it’d break on a whim, climbing up the tree would be an option, but alas.
No fucking way am I walking away from here empty-handed, not with my life on the line.
Looking around the forest floor, Sue soon found a large stick to enact her Plan B with. No matter how hard she whacked the branches, they just bent and refused to yield, quickly burning her determination into frustration. She tried again and again, accomplishing nothing except tiring herself more and more.
Just break, GODDAMMIT!
Sue put all the strength she had left into one last thwack—and was finally rewarded. She barely dodged the falling branch with a quick shuffle, before the entirety of her attention focused on the mouthwatering bounty hanging off it. It wasn’t even the one she had initially aimed at, but that didn’t matter.
She was famished by now, and there was a feast to be had.
It could’ve just been hunger and exhaustion meddling with her perception, but Sue could swear these were the sweetest, most scrumptious peaches she’d ever had. Juice dripped down her chin as she wolfed them down one after the other, each bite bringing her relief. Eventually, she remembered to keep sensing for any critters creeping up on her.
Clear.
Back to eating now.
In no time, most of the branch was picked clean, and what was once fruit became blissful fullness. The delightful fruits felt like they’d relieved some of the constant aching filling her body, though that might’ve just been her sitting down and taking the weight off her legs. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, calming down as much as she could while keeping track of the living beings around her.
There was some excitement a decent bit off to her left, but nothing else near.
Were these emotions she sensed... actual feelings of nearby creatures? It felt like the most reasonable interpretation of that utterly incoherent ability. Huh, maybe that was it. Maybe she’d been unknowingly thrown into the panels of the first issue of Spindle-Woman and was just waiting for an equally absurd-looking villain to present themself and toss several pages’ worth of exposition at her.
Fantasizing about these insane possibilities couldn’t have been good for her mental state.
Sue turned her head skyward, trying to clear her mind. She could just about make out the sun’s position through the treetops. Without cardinal directions, it was impossible to tell the exact time, but with how high the sun was, it had to have been close to noon. Which made no sense.
It was around two in the afternoon when she took a break before—before all this must’ve happened. Yeah, this had to have been the next day. Sure explains why she was so hungry. She had to say, the local fauna were taking the changes like champs, no doubt helped by a lack of self-identity or any higher thinking capacity. Plus, none of them seemed to have drawn the short end of the stick anywhere near as much as she had—
*bwoosh!*
The sudden blur dashing in front of her knocked Sue onto her back, taking her out of her idle pondering. Reflex made her twist her body to avoid landing on her spike as she tried to focus on a dark gray... fox? Wolf? Whatever it was, it had red accents in its fur, and—
“HEY!”
—and it was holding the branch with the remaining peaches on it in its mouth.
After some indistinct shouting in the creature’s general direction, Sue had to call it for what it was: an embarrassing loss. Soft rattling filled the clearing after she kicked what was left of her bounty away, furious at the little shit for nabbing the rest of her meal. With how hard it was to get just one branch down, securing another was unlikely to be possible.
On second thought, strutting around with a branchful of food and precisely zero capabilities for self-defense was asking for trouble, to put it lightly. It would let Sue finally achieve her lifelong dream of being a full walking meal, including dessert, for anything large enough to realize it could just run up to her and start chewing. And so would staying here, right next to the abundant fruit tree.
Let’s get moving.
At least her legs didn’t ache as much anymore. Her mind immediately sprang into action, fantasizing about what might happen next on her way through the mutant forest. Maybe she’d be saved by some special forces that wouldn’t gun her down on sight? Maybe she would see more of whatever had caused these mutations dropped on the surrounding landscape and black out again? Before her imagination could swallow her again, a different tangent had caught her attention, a very unnerving one.
She didn’t sense that off-black fox approach at all.
Whatever her tugging sense was, it was downright screaming at her when that butterfly showed up, yet it remained dead silent this time. And it’s not like it didn’t work anymore; she still felt it pointing all around. Were there creatures she couldn’t sense at all, then? That would’ve been terrifying enough on its own with how frail she was, but this one was also fast! It could have easily caught up with her by now if it’d tried.
A mutant that not even the mutant-sensing mutation could sense, and fast enough to nibble all the meat off her legs before she could even try to kick them off.
Peachy.
With her speed disadvantage, her top priority was getting as far from the little dark-colored thing as possible. The peaches had helped with her hunger for sure, but they didn’t come close to solving her thirst, making finding something to drink priority number two. And afterwards... the day might have still been relatively young, sunset a good few hours away at least, but securing a shelter was vital. With danger lurking around every corner, Sue was more than willing to play it safe on that front.
She wasn’t sure what a shelter like that would even look like, though. A natural cave would work, but those were likely to either be already inhabited, or worse—have their occupants not be immediately visible and crawl out at night to enjoy an alien-shaped takeout on their front porch. Served with extra mud and half-digested peaches.
There wasn’t a whole ton as far as alternative choices went. Any burrow big enough to fit her could’ve similarly held something venomous, her claustrophobia aside. Trees weren’t known for having the space for anything bigger than birds to sleep on either—not that climbing on one felt possible with how frail her body was to begin with.
Something more makeshift could work, like a tent made of leaves, similar to what she’d heard her scout friends describe when she was younger. Just had to take it steady and hope that an answer would present itself.
The only other option was panicking, and she’d had enough of that one for a good while after her breakdown.
With her stomach filled, Sue’s trek went by calmly. While marching, she realized some critters she’d seen earlier were pretty common. No-good purple rats, oversized green caterpillars, these disturbing brownish squirrels with perpetually full cheeks, and a few others seemed to be commonplace. Which raised further questions.
Did every critter of a given species get mutated in the same way, and these overly-toothed rats all used to be the same species of forest mice? And, more urgently, did that mean that other humans in the vicinity also became whatever she was right now?
Sue wasn’t sure which potential answer to that question filled her with more dread. The mental image of finding a friendly soul only for them to be just as powerless as her and dying together with them out here, or stumbling upon someone that had turned into something much more monstrous, much hungrier, and with much less of their humanity preserved.
Option A was less immediately terrifying, but it was nothing if not a close matchup.
Speaking of terrifying things, spiderwebs.
Sue didn’t think herself an arachnophobe—at least, not a severe one. It wasn’t fear as much as it was just... wanting to keep a respectful distance between herself and spiders. All spiders. Thankfully, almost all she was ever treated to were the occasional landmarks of their presence. Glossy webs between flowers, in the bushes, or at the mouths of various small burrows.
NOT in between trees half a dozen feet apart, larger than her bed, and dense enough to immobilize her if she took a single step too far.
Sue inched backwards as her mind raced on—just what kind of spider could even spin something this big!? The question made her imagination feed her many a horrible sight, icy dread shooting down her spine. In hindsight, she probably shouldn’t have expected spiders to be excluded from whatever had befallen this forest. She only had her own mind to thank for that, for trying to shield her already tenuous sanity from the thoughts about spiders larger than her head.
And then, she looked up.
Several of them hung motionless from the thick canopy above her. Light green bodies roughly the size of her pillow, red mandibles. No doubt venomous as all fuck. If she got caught or bitten by one of those things, she was a flappy goner, even if the markings on their abdomens looked like smiley faces.
Thankfully, despite what had to have been the loudest gulp in history, they didn’t immediately all set upon her. After shuffling off to the side, Sue broke into the second panicked sprint of the day, only barely stopping herself from screaming in panic. She ran as fast as these spindly legs could carry her until her lungs refused to comply, forcing her down to a crawl. A nearby tree eventually let her body catch a breath—but not her mind, brain still going a mile a minute about what it just saw.
Her already tattered sense of psyche didn’t appreciate this place also having massive, lethal, and likely predatory spiders. The prospect of sleeping anywhere that wasn’t behind a multiple reinforced door suddenly became even less alluring—and so did just walking around, for that matter, since death could come from above now.
Sue kept her pace down even after she’d regained her bearings. Partly because of exhaustion, but mostly because of wanting to pay closer attention to her mental senses, just in case there was another of these spiders waiting on a nearby branch.
The resulting paranoia did not make for a particularly good walking partner.
Thankfully, she wouldn’t end up running into any more sudden threats. The couple of creepier-looking insects were given a wide berth, fortunately uninterested in eating her flesh. A distant noise eventually caught her attention, the kind she recognized well enough to let herself get excited in response. Her eyes went wide; her steps gained an extra spring to them. Even her mind sobered up from its fearful haze, the sound lighting a fire inside her.
Running water.
The stream was tiny, clear, and only just deep enough to drink from. One quick check with her tugging sense later, she kneeled on the stream’s bank and got to quenching her thirst, finding the water delightfully cold. The sixth sense warned her each time something approached down the river, making her back well off until it passed by.
A purplish serpent more than merited that response, but what followed it was much more... dubious. Sue could only blink as her newfound superpower warned her about a lily pad, of all things. Still, she backed off a step, eyes glued to the plant as she wondered if it would do anything but be an inanimate lifeform. It didn’t.
With a clear stream came an opportunity to inspect her new body some more. The lock smack dab in the middle of her face remained close to her head as she stared straight down at her reflection. Her attention was immediately taken by the sight of her eyes. They were massive and fiercely red, and not even in the fun, stoner way. The eyes that, if she’d seen them on any other creature, she would’ve assumed it to be a demon.
Who knows whether that isn’t what I really am right now. I sure don’t feel like one, at least.
After she’d gotten over her infernal gaze, her attention shifted to the spikes on the sides of her head. Touching them revealed that these either were her ears, or that’s how her brain interpreted them. Despite their sticking out like this, she knew they could bend and lie flat against her head, letting her lie down on her side.
Trying to imagine how she would sleep if she could neither rest on her front, back, nor sides left Sue staring blankly into the middle distance. Guess there was at least that bit of mercy in her situation.
With her thirst quenched and flaps rinsed off, Sue headed downstream. The tiny river gave her somewhere to go. It might’ve been only about three feet across and shallower than most kiddy pools, but it would lead to larger and larger rivers down the line and, eventually, a settlement. After all, that’s where they got built. Paying the modicum of attention in her history classes finally paid off. Though, not even her sneering teacher would’ve wished for that knowledge to become relevant under such dire circumstances.
Maybe I can even make it somewhere civilized by nightfall!
Alright, that was way too optimistic considering her track record so far. The moment of sobriety forced her to regain her cool and put the warm hope far back enough in her head to not burn her up in despair, but still close enough to keep her motivated. Eventually, she even stopped running away as critters swam down the stream beside her, though she still kept a cautious eye on them and their emotions. Most of them were just curious and confused, fair enough, but a few were also reassured by her presence, weird as that was.
The only creature that could’ve conceivably been reassured by her current appearance was Marvin the Martian, and only because it meant he could find himself a mate.
Strangling the part of her brain responsible for mental imagery like that just became that much more tempting of an idea.
Despite wishing she had some mental eyebleach on hand, Sue couldn’t deny that the weird thoughts made the trek much less tedious. No matter how out there they were, they let her mind wander away from the bleak reality while the spindly creature she was controlling made its way forward on autopilot, only occasionally needing Sue to check her senses for any potential threats.
She certainly didn’t expect most of her march to be so peaceful, considering the sheer outlandishness of the creatures around these parts. Not that she was complaining, of course. Guess since everything here was armed to the teeth with fangs, claws, or venom vicious enough to murder in one swipe, nothing wanted to be the initiator since it would get wrecked even if it won the scrap?
Mutually Assured, uh, Devouring.
Intense fear and thrill of the hunt, ahead and to her right. Just as she pondered about nothing trying to eat her all day.
Sue’s breaths sped up as she turned to make it across the body of water, away from the encroaching terror. As tame and shallow as the stream was, its coldness didn’t help any, leaving her thin legs numb as she waded through it. Before she could worry about the possibility of hypothermia, she realized that the hunting sensations were getting closer and closer, her eyes shooting wide. Her body broke into a sprint on its own as she climbed onto the other bank, her mind barely paying attention to where she was even running as she craned her head to keep track of the approaching chaos.
Hey, it’s that dipshit fox thing that stole my peaches.
Whatever it was, it was running beside another fox. One much more eye-catching, bright yellow with a red tail tip and... ear fluff, a rather generous amount of it. If not for their situation, Sue would’ve stopped to consider the hygienic implications of such an unusual fur formation—but it had to take a far back seat in her mind for the time being.
Her entire focus was dedicated to running and panicking, and much the same was true of the foxes. The yellow one’s mind was filled with enough terror to freak Sue out, and she wasn’t even the one actively running for her life. The gray one continued to be silent on her inner radar, but a quick glance confirmed it was no less terrified than its companion.
The sight of their pursuer made her almost faint there and then.
The spiders she’d previously seen filled her with dread, despite being immobile. This one was much bigger, much redder, and even had a horn to underline just how much one should not fuck with it. Quite a few too few legs, too, but that observation was quickly pushed aside.
Sue was not interested in joining its prey in getting eaten, narrowly dodging a tree before deciding to hide behind it and observe the rapidly ending chase. The tattered pieces of knowledge she remembered from her biology classes included spiders producing their webs from their backs, not mouths—a fact that this one conveniently overlooked.
It struck true with a glob of silk from its mouth, knocking the two foxes onto their sides. It left them tangled and feebly trying to break the webs binding their limbs, screeches of fear from Sue’s sixth sense turning almost deafening. The beast of a spider slowed down as it approached, savoring a successful hunt. Every part of her body wanted to take off and run for the hills, run until she couldn’t anymore, away from that beast.
But she couldn’t.
Feeling this tiny fox, this child crying in fear for its life kept her from running. A deeply subconscious impulse she had no name for or comprehension of forced her to act, to do something, anything to help this little one in need. She fought that impulse with every fiber of her being, tried to run away—but it wouldn’t relent, forcing her to take the shakiest and most dreaded step in her life, toward strife.
The foxes were already making progress in breaking out of the webs. They likely just needed the beast to be distracted for a moment, and they’d be on their legs again. Just a moment of distraction, which Sue could provide.
Fortunately for her conscious decision-making, currently feeling like it was trapped in a car with a maniac flooring it against the traffic, not even this inner impulse would force her to provide a distraction with her own body. A quick glance around her spotted a fist-sized stone, just right for the task at hand. She didn’t expect to have enough strength in her to throw the pebble anywhere near as hard as she did, and certainly not enough to strike the fiend with any meaningful force—though she could only estimate the latter from the loud screech that followed.
She immediately ducked behind the nearest outcropping after committing to the throw, hoping beyond hope the insect would be too dumb to connect the dots. The mortal fear that saturated her sixth sense finally faded as it swiftly ran away, soon replaced by an equally intense relief and joy.
But that wasn’t the sensation Sue was focused on.
Anger; seething fury at a meal opportunity dashed, at being struck off guard. Rage, rapidly making its way closer, filling her body with freezing dread at the realization.
Fuck.
Fangs dug into where her head was just moments prior, only striking dirt. The maddened shriek that followed hastened her further, panicking mind and a pursuing threat pushing her to run faster than ever before despite her bodily exhaustion.
Still nowhere near fast enough to outrun the fiendish spider.
Sue’s feeble last-ditch attempt to strafe around a tree was interrupted by the beast’s own Lunge, knocking her out onto her side. Suddenly, all she could see was its screeching head towering over her body as it reared for a bite. She flailed her legs as she closed her eyes, thrashing in desperation. She felt something hard cracking under her kick, heard an ear-splitting cry—
An instant later, all these sensations were eclipsed by the burning, stabbing pain in her other leg, spreading through her body with every heartbeat.
That’s what I get for trying to be a hero...
Before she knew it, her entire body felt like it was on fire, leaving her too tortured to even scream. Within moments, it all became too much to bear, the harrowing realization of her upcoming death staring down what remained of Sue’s consciousness. Distant cries and nearby steps all faded into a muted noise that then flickered away, together with the rest of her.
And then, there was only darkness.