Have you ever been carried so solidly that the weightlessness and gentle rocking made you sleepy? I'm used to the multiple Military Carries that this new sensation keeps me down and not wanting to move or wake up, wanting to go back to sleep…. What was I doing again?
Twitching every muscle and bracing for the pain that followed from hitting the ground, only for no pain to rush but one of my hands refused to stretch.
Oh yeah… I had initiated an Armor Lock function on my glove! Sighing with relief that it was still active, when my situation finally kicked in when the gentle swaying had suddenly stopped.
Wait…
Swaying…
Was I being carried…
By whom?
This gentle sway… Those knuckleheads couldn't carry like this!
The arm was way too big to be theirs… too large to be the New Bees arm…
Could it be the silhouette that was following them?
Cracking her eyes Fan started to see what would be described as a horror movie.
Darkness! That with faint streaks of light through the dense canopy of the forest. Four badly tall and short mutated beings are all different from each other, yet they move as if one, and only one still kinda looked like a human who was holding her with ease in one arm.
The human looking one stood as tall as seven foot tall while slightly hunched forward, red eyes, like the Spartan, looked back at her in pain and hope as he lowered himself to her five foot three size.
As he did so she noticed, this mofo had her helmet hat on his head!
As his hands touched the ground a deep gutral scratchy voice painfully sounded, "C-co~py? B-bo~ss? I go~t y-you?" The hope in his eyes pleaded with her as his body slowly inched forward as if she was mesmerized into standing still.
He stopped as she shook her head as she tried to re-evaluate the situation.
The search targets talk! They are taller than expected! They seemed more primal and animalistic than what was described by Shanna! Wasn't there five of them? Was he always this close?
As she calmed her breathing down she was about to start talking when her helmet suddenly started to sing a repeated phrase through the Armor Link that only she could hear, prompting her to stiffen up and bolt as fast as her high Agility would let her.
{Run, Rabbit, Run, Rabbit, Run, Run, Run! Hide, Rabbit, Hide, Rabbit, Hide, Hide, Hide!}
The mutated beings watched as her calm demeanor and resolve slowly yet quickly suddenly became filled with fear as she bolted quicker than their reflexes.
Loud yet quietly they rushed her like hunters chasing prey as their minds became muddled with self screaming in pain as they moved and their reason was starting to fade as the small being in front of them ran with her all as she dodged and weaved like she was born in the forest!
A soft skittering sound of multiple beings was heard as it closed in on the whole group. Mad intricate clicking sounds sounded like it was scolding someones, as the four abomination paused in fear and laid down as the human looking one mumbled in fear as it laid on the ground,
"No~ h-ha~rm d-do~ne! Fe~male f-fast!"
Skittering was heard as a large shadow passed over the four of them as it raced off faster than them and almost bulldozed into Fan who did a panic-dive-slide to save herself.
Fan heard the warning song, Run Rabbit Run, as she was the one who set it up like that. It was nostalgic from her past as she hides stuff from her teammates, not wanting to lose them like before.
Running with all her might she harder more points to her Agility as she became faster as she navigated the forest with ease thinking to herself,
'This would be like back then… if it was Umbrella's version of zombies instead of wild heavy tanked mutated ones that could speak!'
{Run, Rabbit, Run, Rabbit, Run, Run, Run} Came from behind her to the left, so she dodged right as the four started to become erratic and wild.
Their stances as their clumsy bulkiness tried to catch her small frame as they seemed to lose control and became wild! Panicking and cursing on why Shanna wanted to find these beings when they seemed faster and stronger than even the Special Corps of soldiers! What was her boss thinking! These were mutated monsters who could wreck three bases by themselves!
The song suddenly faded and was faintly off in the distance behind her as if they had suddenly stopped.
Pausing to catch her breath Fan heard inhuman clacking and chittering, that reminded her of an altered version of a 'dead space' hidden species sound, as if something was cursing as it rapidly made its way in her direction. Seeing a large peculiar silhouette her body froze as if slow motion was activated!
"What! The! Hell! Is! A! Spider! Doing! Here?" The massive dark furry spider larger than a Frostbite Spider bulldozed in her direction.
Seizing with fear of a spider that large as her body wanted to move but couldn't. Red human-like eyes with blue irises were looking at her as it made its way to her. Locking eyes, she became conflicted, as they had small eye chat as they both seemed to be in slow motion sync.
Starting to run again, Fan leapt out of the way as slid down a slope as the massive mutated fluffy like spider stood at top the hill with a human gaze as it click clattered away as multiple smaller furry beings leaped from its back and chased after her as they wove a net between them as they flew past her entangling her securely in the non sticky thread that was almost like silk.
Fan crossed her arms in front of her face as her legs came up into a ball as the thread worked its way around her like a blanket.
Thudding across the Forest floor was a surprisingly soft landing as the bundle was pulled to a stop by a multitude of small furry spiders high-fiving with their hind legs.
Fan was slowing her breath as she heard loud clicking and hissing before the bundle rocked was dragged back up the hill as the little guys worked in perfect unison as if they were controlled as a single entity.
Multiple sets of eyes joined the furry large spider atop the hill as Fan could faintly hear a distorted tune getting closer as a musky scent in the threads made her sleepy, {Run. Run. Run. Hide. Rabbit. Hide. Rabbit. Hide. Hide. Hide. Run. Rabbit. Hide. Rabbit. Run. Hide. Run}
The dragging feeling stopped as Fan could feel something picking her up through the threads as she became upside down before blacking out.
The humanish being with her hat had picked her up and placed her bundle atop the giant spider as the smaller ones covered its back and the bundle with ease as the giant spider clicked its large mandibles as it moved in the center of the group as they headed deeper into the thick of the forest heading towards the mountain range at a steady pace.
Engines could be heard circling above the thick canopy as the Bees were looking for the Beehive.
"I Swear I Heard It!" Hornet cried over the coms as he scanned every scan possible to try and find the source.
Tank shuddered, "Why does hers have to be so~ creepy?"
"Yo, now we know she doesn't have her helmet on! But I can not pinpoint her!"
"Y'all she must be on the move! She'll get to higher ground and then we'll be able to pick up her signal!"
Sighing with relief, "Yeah… she's the toughest one out of us all when it comes to survival!"
"Bro… isn't this the 'Monster Forest' we were warned about by the academy?"
"Y'all should be more worried about the monsters once they make her mad!"
"Should we rush to get the mission done first? It should give her time to reach a spot high enough for our radars!"
"Bro this forest shouldn't be this active against scans! It's uncanny how it reflects scans on all frequencies!"
"Make a note in the logs! We have a job to rush! So let's push it to the max!"
"I'm pre-setting the Plexus so we just have to Tag n Go to save time!"
"Y'all I'm sending a notice to our drops in her name that we will be doing flybys to improve some birds for the month to come and have a few out and ready!"
"Great idea! Let's pretend they are hitting other spots to cover more ground so no one will think our girls went missing!"
Someone punched their consoles in anger, "How'd we lose both of the girls in such a short amount of time?"
Three birds hit the sound barrier as they bolted to hit the other scattered bases so when the girls surfaced they could say the mission was successful and for them to rest.
Unknown to them as they left the beings physically sighed in relief as they switched their fast but awkward march into another direction.
The human-like one took off her hat and was examining it while checking the giants back at the covered bundle and wondered why the female went from relief at the sight of it to very afraid before running.
Could there be a warning system inside the hat that had warned her of danger? He flexed the flexible fabric hat before thinking that it was more sophisticated than the giant spider's threads.
The giant spider clicked his mandibles and the human-like being hung his head as he apologized in his head but thought mentioned how he couldn't rip the hat with all his strength.
The giant spider huffed and continued as they entered a large caver, hidden by the overgrowth of the underbrush, as they entered many partially humanized spiders came to greet them with food they had caught and prepared.
They could chatter in spider language, telepathy, and human speech… even though it was patchy sometimes.
Difference between them was the amount of human head and torso one had as they had the abdomen of a spider proportionate to the human section and had yellow eyes with red irises.
The human-like one thought then like maids as they tended to him and the other three to soothe their pains so they wouldn't need to move.
It hurts to move.
A lot.
But he pitied the giant spider more than the pain it caused him to move.
He had it worse than they did.
He still remembered what happened that day.
What was supposed to be the final test for their academy, turned into a nightmare and disaster.
He lost track of time since they made it to the forest.
He still remembered his leader's broad human back as he led the group to the final test, with pride and jokes they made on the way about seeing each other on the other side and joking about who was going to be stronger after the test…
If he knew they were just used as human test subjects he would've encouraged his leader and squadmates to flee.
They could've survived in the mountains as cadets and grew up as a family…
Instead of that lab they were so used to…
They should've ran...
Like rabbits they should've escaped and hid! He blamed himself for wanting to do the challenge.
As the maid partial spiders guided everyone to their own dwelling and the smaller ones skirted off somewhere he saw their physical confusion at the small bundle on the giant spider's back.
Grunting in pain he awkwardly made his way with his leader's side.
Placing a large hand on his broken scarred furry skin of a back, he patted gently as they walked to a cave he was preparing to be his own that could fit his largeness as it seemed he wasn't done mutating.
He grabbed the bundle off his leader's back as he moved and got so comfortable at the far end of the darkened cave that even with night vision it was hard to see his leader.
Placing the bundle in front of him at a small distance so he wasn't right on top of her, he realized that the little ones had returned with a familiar looking skin he had molted some time ago.
Pain and tears flooded his eyes as he saw his leader attempt to look somewhat normal for the human…
It wasn't going to fit… the sadness in his leader's eyes made him feel regret at the choice so long ago…
The explosion of multiple bodies… The panic and pain as his body twisted and swelled and shattered as his mind became sharper and sensitive to everything… The screams of his fellow cadets… The very few who escaped being hunted down like they had expected it to go wrong in the first place…
A maid partial spider who seemed to be the second in command of the spiders next to his leader came forward and stroked his boss's head.
He crawled atop his leader's head and donned on the top part of the skin as the smaller ones hopped in to fill the gaps. The second had clicked something and his leader raised two of his front feet that had hands and slid them into the arms part as the smaller ones shifted around to smooth out the surface.
Mentally noting how his leader's human molt looked almost completed, he noted some spots that needed to be fixed and the smaller ones shifted around to fix it till his molt looked human again.
Thick clicking was heard as some of the partial spiders opened up the bundle and her sleeping form was revealed.
As fresh air filled her lungs she groggily rolled over with a softly glowing ball tightly grasped in her hand.
Mumbling softly and dreamily as her head flinched every so often as she slept like a nightmare of some sort. With his enhanced hearing her whispers were like a soft song,
"Run… Rabbit… Hide... Rabbit… Run... Hide… Run..."