Food Chain (Worm/Evolve Quest)

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How are they here? How did they find me? I haven't left a trail at all and have been sneaky! The only time I got spotted was after eating those rodents, there's no way the Uprights managed to track me from that alone, right? I can figure it out later, they are here now, and I have to figure out what to do.

The growing pain in my greater mind starts to grate on me, a weariness filling my body and slowly chipping away at the food in my stomach as it grows stronger.

I am bigger now, and they managed to find me once already, so I decide it's time to test myself against them and the best method of attack is an ambush. Uprights' don't have armor, not like that small water thing, so I shouldn't have a problem at least injuring one of them enough that they bleed out. Quickly moving back down to the inside building's roof, I curl up and watch the pair's approach, listening in but mainly watching for the best point to initiate my attack.

"... armor? Don't wanna take…" Their voices echo though the open building as they get ever closer. The bad technology's pain continuing to build, part of me wants the relief of braking it, but killing them is a more pressing issue. I can always break the stuff after they're dead.

"It's small, the instability of the Poké Ball shouldn't be an issue."

"You say that, but it was smart enough to play dead."

"I don't know if I would say that makes it smart. Opossums play dead, right? I wouldn't exactly call those the height of brain function."

"Fair enough. Now, how did it destroy the node? We hid it pretty well, and it is completely silent."

"If I had to guess, it would be the lights. I wanted to get rid of them, but it wouldn't run internal checks right without them."

"Tinkertech."

"Tinkertech."

"What's the scanner say?"

"The smart spectrometer is telling me that it is definitely still here, so keep your voice down."

Them slowly stepping inside lets me get a solid silhouette of their scent and movement through the air. I am pretty sure the two of them are making their way to the towards where that piece of painful technology was, navigating the rows of machines easier than I thought they would be able to when choosing the nest. They are also still on the other side of the building from me and their target is between me and their chosen entrance, meaning they will probably not be coming over here. So I have to get closer to ambush them.

Sliding off the building I am on, I hear them continuing to talk, getting significantly quieter but still echoing all around, as they move, though my focus is on staying out of sight, so I can't listen in. Dipping and darting around, I come up with the idea to abduct one of them and drop them, they aren't too much bigger than me, so I should be able to do that and the Uprights don't float so it should hurt them pretty good. The problem is there aren't many perches for me to try that, and none that I can get to without alerting them. Getting closer is starting to hurt and make me hungry though…

Adapting the original idea, they walk around on two legs, so if I were to hurt one they wouldn't be able to walk and would be easy targets! So if abduct one but aim at the leg and pull it back when go back to my starting spot they should be stunned for a moment! That would give me a chance to get some hit in on them, or go after their pair… Oh! Phantom could go after the Abducted one, and then I can Blast the other!

Slithering under a row of machines, I finally see two of them with my crest, which hurts and makes me hungry, and I want to attack and run away, and watch them examine the broken pierces of the thing I just destroyed. The one that grabbed me is standing up while the other one is crouched down. Both of them have some metal armor added on, though it doesn't cover their whole bodies, and have a lot of spots that spike my pain to glance at. Being so close hurts, and I want to get away, but I already made up my mind, so I silence some clicks of discomfort that want to surface and start channeling the web at the standing Upright's leg.

Steadying myself one last time, I dart down the tunnel of energy and arrive just behind the Upright. Bringing my claws and blades down, but mostly around, I try to sink into the leg only to be met with some resistance. Not enough to stop the smell of blood from hitting me right away, but enough that my small attacks only dig in a little. The Upright barely has time to react before I am being pulled back along the energy, my grip incipient to bring my target with me, but I do feel them shift just as planned.

Pain roars though me from that proximity but can't let it bother me right now. Bursting from the hiding space, I split and send my phantom towards the kneeling Upright, while I pull the energy deep into me and their its channels. I Warp forwards, landing between both of them, and let out a shriek of anguish as I am surrounded on all sides by the bad technology and the feeling of my skin bubbling up before being expelled. The relief of the energy leaving me briefly overpowers the pain and lets me recover a lot faster.

Turning to my Upright, who fell over, I pounce and start to slice and claw at their face, meeting the same result as my grab on the leg. I am getting though, but only a little bit. Despite the small amount of damage, they start to yell and thrash, hitting my side with something hard enough to dislodge me. It also sends a wave of agony thorough me, stunning me and making me let out a roar against the edges of their minds in pain.

Regaining control over myself, I see that my target is trying to get up, so I slam my body into them, knocking them over. Darting another back, I start to slash and claw some more but can't get through at all now. How their skin isn't thick, I can see that, and they have some armor on, but I am aiming at the places without that armor—

My world shrinks to nothing but white-hot agony pressing into me from all sides. Crisscrossing my skin like a root system of pulsing pain that makes my body thrash uncontrollably and both me and my greater mind scream—

I am abruptly back inside what was my nest, laying on the ground. Quickly forcing the world's energy to lift me up again, the pulsing pain making both my hearts beat wildly is still there. Both of the Uprights seem just as stunned as I am, and I spot a half white, half red ball slightly smoking on the ground between me and the Upright that I sent my Phantom after. I decide that I don't want any part of this after all, my whole body is twitching in pain and the technology radiating off the two isn't something I can force out of my mind anymore.

Darting towards the nearest door I can, hear the Uprights behind me recovering, and I abandon a notion of stealth as they give chase. Before long I come to an interesting space between the buildings, I'm not fast enough to climb up the side of one with them following me, and take a second to take in the area.

Straight ahead, I can smell and hear a large gathering of Uprights, probably the same one I spotted when scouting the area around my nest. To my left, I can hear a high-pitched roaring sound on repeat that is headed this way. To the right, I can smell that wolf and blood place I avoided when looking around as well.

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This might feel a bit forced, but all the parts have already been laid out or hinted at as much as I have been able to. Welcome to the first real point for a plot to develop, only took 27 chapters.

(reminder, it is still the middle of the day)
Which direction do you go?
[X] Forward, towards the group of Uprights.
[X] Backwards, towards the pair.
[X] Right, towards the smell of wolves and Uprights and blood.
[X] Left, towards the high-pitched roaring.
(Votes are done in the approval style, where you can vote for more than one option that you like.)

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"Leet, go karts!"

"What are you— That could work!"

I don't have time to think through the options as I hear the two Uprights getting closer, so I just dash to the left. Slithering along, I barely notice as my knees keep scraping against the stone ground, the deep pain across my whole body getting in the way. Whatever that was hurt, and I am hungry, and I couldn't even think while it was happening.

As I keep moving, I hear a low growling sound behind me slowly getting louder, which is also making the pain in my greater mind start to build again, feeling just as fresh and raw as before. Unfortunately, as I keep moving there is a slowly growing sense of pain from my chosen direction, but it is small, compared to just being near the two Uprights behind me, and somewhat familiar? I don't have time to sit and think about it, though, so I just brush that feeling aside.

My journey is brought to an abrupt halt as I round a corner and find myself looking into an open area with a couple of armored Uprights, too many to count quickly but not enough to be called a lot, as well as some of the metal boxes with wheels I have seen moving sometimes, though these have white and green lights flashing on top. There are a few points of dull pain in the group of Uprights, telling me they have some of the bad technology, like they did last time I saw this armor. The high-pitched roaring noise also seems to be coming from the wheeled boxes, but that isn't what my crest is drawn to.

All of them are looking at two weirdly colored Uprights, which immediately marks them as Alphas in my head. One of those Alphas is wearing red, and smell confirms that they are the one that I saw on that hunting expedition when I was looking for a nest. The other one is wearing a dull green, but their face and abdomen have blue and white and red thin armor around them.

I slowly back up on instinct, though some of the Uprights are already turning—

My spines feel as something is rushing towards me from behind, and I toss myself to the side, painfully hitting a wall as I do. I see something not-quite round white and green thing race past me and slam into a few of the Uprights. Spinning around, I see my pursuers riding something and approaching faster than I can move, looking at them hurts. At the same time, activity erupts from the Alphas' group with lots of loud roars and communication, I think.

Stealth thoroughly gone, I buy some time by sending my Phantom at the pair before barreling to the side, moving away from both parties. Of course, it isn't that simple.

One of the Uprights point one of those things that hurt to look at towards me before launching some white-yellow goo my way. I pretty easily dodge to the side because of the distance and continue forward, trying to put enough space between me and everything to start climbing a building. They don't let up, though, and I have to keep dodging, which is pretty easy because their aim sucks. A really loud series of Booms behind me nearly makes me turn around to see what happened, but the constant pressure to not get caught by the slime being thrown my way doesn't let me. Which is good, because if I did, that would—

The red Alpha is suddenly next to me making noise, but with everything going on I can't dedicate the brainpower to listen. Lashing out, the Alpha easily bounces away from my blade, which makes it sink into the black stone ground of the wide path we're on right now. I pause for barely a second as I look at where my blade punctured the stone, it hurt a bit, but not nearly as much as it should have. I'm bigger now, that means stronger, right? Can I just sink my claws into the red rocks of the buildings? That would mean I can just climb up!

I have to cut my thinking short and quickly dart backwards as the Alpha makes a grab from me, still making noises. I roar at them, but that too has to be cut short too as a heavy net is thrown my way, too big and close to dodge on my own I quickly channel energy up into and through my body. Spinning my body around, I Warp back the way I've been moving, noting that the goop has since expanded, before the energy from the Warp bubbles up and explodes out.

That seems to make the Alpha stop for a moment, and I take the chance to catch my breath a little. I'm not used to moving around so much, and my body still hurts, my hearts are racing, and it is getting a bit hard to keep track of everything. I can see and smell and hear that the other Alpha with more colors is talking or fighting with the pair that were chasing me, I can't tell which. My brief respite seems to be over as the Uprights start turning the thing that, hurts, and I just want away, launches the goop towards me, so I start looking for which way to go. The expanded goop is blocking my right and if I follow along it, I would come across the red Alpha, behind me is a wall—

Bigger, stronger, up! I forgot. Quickly turning around, I test the theory and find that yes, I can sink my blades and claws into the red and gray stones without issue. No more need to slowly chisel footholds, and the pain is barely noticeable to the rest of my body's aching. I quickly start ascending, unable to dodge very well while moving up the wall, I ignore the wet sticky feeling that hits two of my tails.

In no time I reach the top and pause to breathe again, tiredness noticeably creeping in, but I still have a lot of fight in me. Bringing my attacked tails forward I see the yellow-white liquid is expanding, so I try to wipe it off with a claw but that just gets my claw stuck as it keeps expanding a bit more. It then rapidly hardens and is light enough I can still mostly move without issue, but it is making my tails stay bent up towards my claw, which is rapidly growing uncomfortable.

Before I can start to figure out how to break it off, there is another series of loud Booms from below. Then just like last time the red Alpha appears, this time I can see him jump up and land in front of me though but that doesn't make any sense. Uprights don't have the legs for that and even if they did, they're not heavy enough, they don't have enough muscle, to do it!

The Alpha starts making noises again, but I am paying attention to their body as they raise their arms up high to appear bigger, to intimidate me. Even though I know what they are doing, it still works, and I immediately raise my blades up too, letting out a click-click-clicking hiss in warning. I try to pull my arm up to flair out to the side, but just end up tugging on my tails. My crown finished reforming, the spiky formation ready for another Phantom if I need it.

The Alpha lowers their arms keeping hands still forwards towards me and keeps making noises, communication I remember, as I try to figure out what to do.

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This was a bit tricky to figure out, but I think it turned out decent. And with this, we are past anything I have planned, this vote is the point where things diverge beyond recoup and as such the vote will be longer than usual.

Next step?
[X] Try to calm down and listen, not that you can understand them, really.
[X] Try to fight, the armor on this one doesn't seem as tough as the two Uprights' were, but you couldn't even get through that…
[X] Try to flee, you just want away from all this.
[X] Write-In:
(Note: Write-In's must be simple in direction or concept. Your votes are instincts, not complex thoughts.)
(Votes are done in the approval style, where you can vote for more than one option that you like.)

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The idea of fleeing tugs at something ugly deep inside me, something that says I should be on top, I should be the Apex. But it is quiet compared to the pain and panic rolling through me that is yelling I need to get away. The red Alpha in front of me is still making noise at me as I slowly back up, trying to buy time for my Warp channels to realign.

The Alpha takes a step forward, and I decide that I can't actually wait. Splitting, I fling my Phantom at them and dart to the side, not bothering to see how effective it is. My spines' feedback has dulled, and my whole body feels overexerted beneath the crisscrossing lines of white-hot misery.

My floating balance is thrown off by the white-yellow sap that the Uprights flung at me, because sap is the only thing sticky like this I can think of, but it isn't bad enough that I can't hover across the short distances between buildings as I flee. I can see that my Phantom is doing its job and distracting the Alpha as I make it a few buildings away. I can't fight like this, restrained, tired, hungry, and in pain, so I turn to stealth once again.

After making it a few buildings away, pushing my low flight speed to its limits, I choose a random space between buildings to drop down. I don't have time to climb down nicely and so the fall hurts my knees as well as the bent, trapped tails that are being pulled up into an odd position. Dismissing the sensations isn't as easy as it would have been a bit ago, the fight has started to drag on longer than it should have, and it is getting harder to hold onto the rush of battle that lets me keep moving and ignoring all the animal parts of me that are urging me to do things that will get me killed.

I feel my crown start to reform which tells me my Phantom has disappeared and sure enough briefly casing my attention towards the Alpha I can see that they are moving this way. Moving way faster than and Upright should be able to, again using muscles that aren't there. I duck into an overturned green metal box, hiding myself in the discarded materials and rotting organic things, watching the Alpha move across the roof gap above me and not slow down.

I can't relax yet, though. Quickly pulling myself out of the improvised hiding space, I contemplate moving back to the big pond of water, but that is on the other side of the fight, so I dismiss that idea and press forward further into the unknown, needing to get further away before I can even hope to relax.


I don't know how long I traveled for, at some point I zoned out and let my instincts take over. I had to pass across some of the wider spaced between buildings, the ones with black stone instead of the grayish stone, and I know I was spotted a few times. It was unavoidable, there are dozens of Uprights everywhere I look!

Eventually I managed to get away from the huge crowds of people, but the area I manged to get to isn't much better. All the buildings here are short and spread super far apart, they aren't made of the red stones either, instead they are made from a thin material I can't identify. On the bright side, though, this area has green! Grass, and trees only, but it's still green! Part of me wants to roll around in it, though I have to suppress it in order to stay hidden.

I end up in a small house that is in the corner of a patch of grass that itself is separated with a short wooden wall. The sun is almost gone, hidden behind rapidly darkening clouds that spell a deep storm coming, and I am pretty sure the slightly darker world help me stay hidden. Hidden enough that I no one should be able to spot me through the whole I squeezed through.

Looking around the dark space with the rapidly fading light, I see the walls have lines of metal in weird shapes all over them, as well as a flat metal thing in the center of the room with four small wheels on the sides. I look at everything for a few seconds but abandon the attempt because none of it makes sense.

Tucking myself into a corner, underneath a wooden platform, the sound of rain on metal starts to hit the small building's roof, blocking out the omnipresent Upright smell with the scent of non-salty water. I won't be able to sleep, with the battle behind me, all my pain and tiredness and hunger and everything else I pushed away is flooding into me. I can't sleep, but I can rest a bit at least, and curled up like this the stone-thing binding up two of my tails and my right claw is almost unnoticeable. Almost.

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This chapter was no less challenging to nail down. Hopefully works out how I am aiming for it to work out. Also, Wraith has once again evaded a majority of plots I had spooling up.

What do you do now? Your nest is gone, and you are in a new place, still somehow still in the Upright's nest.
[X] Try to make your way back to the water, though the Uprights know you were there now…
[X] Try to get the yellow-white rock-sap off your tails and claw.
[X] Just rest. Nothing should know you're here and you need it.
[X] Write-In:
(Note: Write-In's must be simple in direction or concept. Your votes are instincts, not complex thoughts.)
(Votes are done in the approval style, where you can vote for more than one option that you like.)