Turns out 'something big' is an understatement. Multiplied by a hundred.
There's a herd of Hippostripohorpotamuses charging at us, and the field that we're standing in, that I got a bad feeling from... is coming to life. As in, the ground around us is revealing itself to be thousands. No, millions of palm-sized crickets with.... "porcupine heads?"
"Quit staring and move! We've got to get out of here before one of those quills stabs... us." Seeque looks at me with disgust as I awkwardly chuckle and shake the prickly cricket off of my foot. "You've killed us both."
"Hey! it was your idiot of a dad who bound us together and sent us-" I'm cut off by her running off and getting yanked back toward me. I feel like my arm is just about torn out of its socket, but am rather proud to see that even at a full run she wasn't able to knock me off balance. "This bond is stupid. The moment we get back, we're having him remove it." I say with a savage aura beginning to make itself known around me.
Abruptly, I feel myself filling with power, and could almost swear that I hear the faint cackling of an evil laugh...
Not questioning the strange blessing I've received, I do the obvious thing: I turn Seeque's arms into black, leathery wings, and hop on her back with a yelled, "Fly! Now! Before we both die!"
"I'm going to kill you!" She howls at me, but still does as I ordered, and we take to the skies.
... but so does the ground.
Or rather, the swarm of porcupine crickets.
"Fly faster!" I yell frantically and unconsciously tighten my grip, drawing a strangled noise from her. "Oh, sorry." I quickly loosen my arms and let her breathe again. "Go that way!" I point at the biggest tree I've ever seen and lean toward it.
She resists at first, but then goes along with it when my displaced weight almost makes us flip.
We fly in that direction with what I can only assume is every ounce of speed she can manage, while the swarm stays just a few arm spans behind us. And they're gaining.
I tear my eyes off of the approaching swarm when a shriek lets loose from my ride, and look ahead to see a gargantuan mouth becoming bigger and bigger.
Somebody else shrieks, (hopefully not me) and I let go of Seeque to shove her face down and lean forward with all the weight I've got, sending us into a steep dive.
My vision shows purple around the edges at the amount of G's we pull from the insane speed we're travelling toward the ground with. After half a second I stop pushing her head down and instead wrap my arms around her chest and lean back with all of my weight, reorienting us toward the tree. Our downward trend continues, however, with her frantic flapping not having any effect.
"Hey. Calm down."
She shrieks again in what can only be a response to my suggestion.
"It's alright. I've got your back, OK? We just gotta go thataway a ways and land on that big ol' tree. See? It'll be easy, and on top of that... it'll be fun!"
She might have earned herself the name banshee with all these shrieks she's shrieking. Did she forget how to speak? And that last one sounded particularly disgruntled.
But it works.
She's able to regain control of our descent and send us flying at a fast pace toward the tree again. I let out a whoop of joy and then suddenly remember that we're being pursued by a swarm of monsters, and a giant mouth might also have been added to the list.
I look back up just in time to see the big mouth... yeah, it's just a massive piece of flesh with a giant mouth, finish swallowing the last of the swarm. It doesn't even have wings. How the hell is it flying?
I'm distracted from my thoughts by a huge shadow falling over us. I look around and let out another joyous whoop when I see that it's a branch of the tree we were headed toward, and that we're about to enter the massive foliage of that tree.
We fly in silence for several seconds before coming to a surprisingly smooth landing on one of the smaller branches (Smaller as in it's only wide enough for a basketball court to be placed on it longways instead of a football field sideways).
Seeque immediately throws me off with some judo move and begins yelling. "Change my arms back, right now!"
"Oh, now you can talk? Niiiice. And what if something attacks us and we need to escape again? I won't do it." I turn away, cross my arms and close my eyes. I know I look like a stubborn toddler. I feel like one, too.
"Yes, you will! You will change my arms back right now or I will grab you, fly up, and drop you!" She takes a threatening step toward me, and the timer for her change in physiology runs out right at that moment, enveloping her in a cloud of purple smoke and changing her wings back to arms.
But I don't see it, so I continue speaking. "I won't change you back. This is payback for slapping me."
"What?! Ugh. You are so- Ugggghhh!" I hear a stomp behind me. Now I bet she looks like the toddler.
"What kind of a mission was that, anyway?" I turn to face her and throw my arms up. "Is your dad trying to... hey, the timer ran out? Lame." I blink. "I mean... you're welcome."
"You are. You are so, so, SO ugggghhh!"
"Yeah, you already said that. Oh, and you're welcome for saving your life earlier, too."
She reaches her hands toward my head with a murderous expression, and I kinda feel like she wants to rip my skull in half.
Abruptly, her hands drop to her sides and she sighs heavily. "I... thank you. I'm sorry I'm so upset. I'm just annoyed that I wasn't able to complete the mission." She looks at me sideways. "And that I'm stuck with you, the most idiotic little worm on the face of the planet." Then she looks around at the tree we're on and gestures at it, her voice rising to a yell. "And that we're stuck in the middle of enemy territory with no idea what we're supposed to be doing!!"
Something she said caught my attention. Well, several things she said caught my attention. But one thing in particular... "you don't know what the mission is?"
She rolls her eyes. "Well no duh."
I roll my eyes back. "Isn't it obvious?"
"Stop trying to act smart. You're failing miserably."
Ouch. "The mission..." I pause for dramatic effect. "Is to find the nearest mod breaker-or Jester- if that's what it takes, and break this bond from hell we've got on our wrists."