Cest La Vie (Worm/MTG/Jurassic World)

Thoughts? ( Im really shooting in the dark here with post GM taylor and easing into the plainswalker bits(what she was feeling was Green). Like, should I have tried to add in her explicitly ignighting? Am I rushing in with noticing the Mana? I dont know.)

There was nowhere else to look but up. My eyes were wet though, the points of light blurry.

But there were so many. So many stars. Just a fraction of the universe. So vast. So… infinite.

We were all so very small, in the end.

The first bullet hit me from behind and I slowly toppled.

The second hit me before I could fall, before there could be any pain.

-I-

Something light brushed across me. Warm and airy, like a spring breeze. But... violent and unrelenting. Then it moved, flowed, over and around me. It was everywhere, it...

-I-

It was humid. That was it, that was the first thing I noticed before being hit by the distorted senses from millions upon millions of arthropods.

The sudden influx of information was almost crippling and for a moment I was back in the hospital, thinking I'd lost my mind as I tried to understand what I was seeing and hearing and feeling. But then it was gone in another moment, the excess of information shunted away as it was processed into something I could partially understand.

I saw. Not the hospital, a forest.

No. A jungle.

But…

One eye snapped open while the other stuck, gummed up; the lashes pulled but the eye remained shut. I stared up through my glasses at the blue, cloudless sky as the tops of trees swayed in an overhead breeze.

Two gunshots echoed in my head. Contessa. But this wasn't that forest, on that world. It was daytime, and then it had been the night.

What had happened?

Reaching to the sky with a yellow-gloved hand, appreciating the smoothness of the act for a moment, I landed a red and grey butterfly on my finger. "You're still there though, aren't you Passenger?"

Letting the butterfly go free I let my control slacken and the sounds of my new swarm re-joined the chorus of the jungle.

She did shoot me, though. Even in my half insensate state, I'd felt that— I remembered that.

Some details were blurry, but I remembered enough.

Decisions. A thousand decisions. Good and Bad alike. So many of them I regretted in hindsight, I would have done things differently if I could. But the last ones, leading up to killing Scion, those more than any other… not those, not when they had let us win and not when they led to saving everyone.

But I was a monster. I was under no illusions otherwise and I'd given Contessa my answer, so why...

My suit peeled away from my skin in places as I sat up and the straps of my flight pack unit sagged on my shoulders. I felt at the back of my head, but… nothing. I glanced down at my space where my arm should have been only to see a rounded stump terminating just above where my elbow should be.

Oh. Yeah.

It was Gone. Crushed by Sveta, burned off by Lung, and healed by Panacea so it wouldn't pop.

I reached back with my left hand and felt through my hair to my scalp where I knew she'd shot me. My hair was matted, thick in places with dried and tacky blood, but… I probed at my scalp and found two spots the size of dimes. Still sensitive.

"'I win'." I snorted and shook my head. The hydrostatic shock alone would have… should have…

I shouldn't be alive. But I was.

How though, or who? Panacea? Riley?

She hadn't left me there to die. Why? I'd done more than enough to deserve it… more than enough.

I swallowed thickly and closed my eye.

Why couldn't she have just let me die?

Why leave me in the middle of some jungle instead of in a cell or somewhere I could interact with-

Something brushed against my arm; warm, light and airy, but violent and unyielding.

I dove and rolled, filling the air around me with fliers to attack… nothing? But I knew what I'd felt and that hadn't been nothing.

Eye narrowing, I gathered and flooded the air with fliers for hundreds of feet around me; from the lowest shrub to the highest branch. Still, nothing. That did little to settle my nerves though, and only after spending a few minutes scouring the jungle did I relax and disperse the swarm.

It hadn't been nothing, but… maybe whatever it had been was less than I'd perceived it out to be?

Maybe I was making a mountain out of an anthill.

Or maybe, I was just jumping at what I thought was there. Tilting my head back I looked up to the sky again. And… maybe that was why I was here, instead of being in a jail cell. I could think clearly than I had for… however long it had been since I asked Panacea to change my power, but maybe I still wasn't all there. Maybe I wasn't safe to be around.

Or maybe, this was some way of hers that would force me to decompress after everything I'd done. A way to let me get my head on straight?

Well, that was a bit out there, but it had worked for Panacea… Kinda? Maybe? She'd been a… well, a wreck was a nice way of putting it before being sent to the Birdcage. But after her time there she seemed to have settled down a bit. Or at least figured things out.

Although, she'd had people around her. Super villains and psychopaths, yes, but still people... and her father

Dad. Was he Ok? Did he survive Scions rampage? Did he— I stopped and quashed that train of thought before it spiraled out of control.

He would be fine.

It might be a lie, I didn't know, but I would believe it until I knew otherwise. And then… I could deal with it then.

Besides, while there was nothing I could do for Dad, Lisa would somehow figure things out and set something up for him. And if anything, Dinah would at least be able to tell him I was alive.

So… at least he would know.

I just needed to focus on surviving and my... vacation. Yes, vacation. It was such a nicer term than 'prison sentence'. Because that's actually what this was, wasn't it.

Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. That was all I had and all I knew, though; maybe.

Well, not entirely. The corner of my lips turned up in a wan smile.

A spindly-legged shape descended from the canopy on a shimmering golden thread and I held my hand out again. A Golden Orb Weaver, and more specifically a Nephila Clavipes— the Banana spider. Which meant, if conditions were similar to Bet, then I was likely somewhere near the equator or in Central America— or more likely another earth's Central America.

That… well, it wasn't the worst place she could have left me but certainly not the best. I was likely in the middle of nowhere and hundreds of miles from anything — presuming anything existed on this world — but at least it was a middle of nowhere that had some of the highest and most diverse insect densities in the world.

I could work with that, I probably wouldn't have much free time, though… that might have been the point. I grimaced and put the arachnid on my shoulder where I directed it to start working on my hair.

Well, if that was the plan she didn't leave me with much, but at least there was that.

Then I lowered my gaze to the jungle floor and stared at the brushed steel thermos I'd noticed while searching. Contessa's thermos.

As well as that and whatever I had stowed away in my costume of course. With how chaotic things had been after the Rig fell I'd just cobbled together whatever costume bits were available; there ought to be a few useful bits in the various compartments.

Still not much to work with though.

I sighed and rubbed at my gummed up eye. But what else was new. Taking my hand away, I blinked a few times and glanced down at my hand to see red streaks and flakes on the yellow dyed silk.

I touched my face and felt the dried blood covering my skin while the orb weaver struggled to pull at some my hair that had been clotted together. Yeah, this wasn't going to work.

Picking up the thermos (empty) I tromped into the jungle, making for a small stream with some freshwater crabs in it.

While I made my way through the trees and surprisingly sparse low-lying vegetation, I picked up a number of orb weavers to work on my hair. A few were males, but mostly only females so far. As they were the larger of the species they would be more useful of the two at the moment and I could just gather more when I needed them.

Not that I couldn't use more, but rather… I had no need to. The jungle was absolutely teeming with insect life. Why build a swarm and bring it along when I could just create one from local resources?

It was… refreshing. They came into my range, and they left my range. I could just let them act as they would and didn't need to bring them along to keep my swarm populated.

Before long the tree line began to thin a bit as I came up to a narrow, shaded corridor where a mostly dry riverbed had cut through the jungle. At the center was a narrow stream of water four or five feet wide.

It was shallow and slow moving, but clear and clean looking with small rocks covering the bottom… More of a brook than a stream, actually, or at least it was until the next rainy season came.

Searching out a good spot to kneel down, I set the thermos aside and dipped my hand into the water; cool, but not cold. Splashing my face a few times I rubbed at my skin before splashing a few more times and the brook turned pink. Then it washed away and I repeated the process, eventually peeling my glove off when it soaked through to use my bare hand.

Only when the water ran clear no matter how much water I splashed and no matter how hard I rubbed my skin did I feel my face was clean. All that remained was my hair— my hair, which the orb weavers had been able to make little progress with.

Glancing along the brook I found a suitable rock to sit on close to the water and settled down.

Sending the spiders to rest under some of my back armor panels, I wet my hand and ran my fingers back through my hair.

I wasn't sure how long I combed and pulled at the knots and tangles in my hair, but it wasn't enough; the strands stuck and clung together as if they'd been glued and… I pulled my fingers out of my hair and sighed. This wasn't working.

Taking off my glasses I set them aside and folded forward to dunk my head into the stream.

The splashes had been nothing, actually submerging my head in the water I found it was much colder, but not too bad. And when I came back up, the water that ran down my neck was a pleasant contrast to the humidity and sweat beading beneath my costume.

Wringing out my hair as best I could, I began dragging my fingers through the wet tresses. The dunk had loosened up much of the trouble the dried blood had given me, but not entirely. I hissed as I pulled a little too hard at a knot and leaned forward to dunk my head again, this time combing through while my hair flowed with the brook and the water ran red.

When I came back up and combed my fingers through the umpteenth stinging knot I stopped. Why was I even bothering?

I didn't need to do this. I needed to find food and shelter so I could survive… but was it too much to just have a bit of normalcy? If only for a bit? We'd won, Scion was dead, was it too much to ask for a bit of… I tried to think back. When had I just had a moment where it wasn't necessary to plan, or prepare for something, or think about fighting, or worry about the apocalypse?

I stopped running my fingers through my hair. I couldn't remember. Back in Brockton, surely, but… before Leviathan? Before the locker? Before Emma turned against me? Before Mom died? When, though?

...Summer camp?

Slipping my glasses back on I looked around the dry stream bed and listened to the brook flow and burble over the rocks while the trees creaked in the wind and the birds sang.

This was almost like that, in a way.

A fat possum scurried through the bush a few hundred feet away and the moment was gone.

Except for my powers. Except for what I was getting my swarm— from my passenger.

I pushed back at the sensory input until the senses of my swarm dulled. Then I kept pushing and pushing and my range shrank. I brought it closer, and closer, and closer, and closer… until it was only me. The swarm was still there, of course, it would never really disappear, but it was muted and distant enough that I could pretend it wasn't there for a moment.

Closing my eyes I slowly breathed in, smelling the clean, uncontaminated air; the wet rocks peeking up from the brook; the water flowing; the loamy scent of damp earth and… A bit of ozone? I opened my eyes to stare up at the slivers of sky between the branches and leaves overhead.

Still clear, but maybe there were thunderheads I couldn't see?

A bush shifted at the edge of my range, but I automatically quashed the sensory information from my swarm even further.

Rain. That would be nice. With how humid it was, it was probably sometime around summer here and a good summer storm would be a nice contrast to the humidity.

A sudden tremor shook the rock I sat on. I lost the delicate barrier between my swarm's senses and I fell, and— oh.

Hot, fetid breath blew over me as the creature snorted and slowly eased its bulk through the tree line.

I slowly turned to look at the impossibility with my own eyes

My eyes first caught on the stubby little arms tipped with sharp claws held close to the massive, mottled green chest — almost like it was a praying mantis — then drifted upward to the… to the teeth that overhung its huge lower jaw.

I glanced down to the giant, three-toed, birdlike feet as if eased forward a bit then back up to its teeth as its maw parted.

"Oh Granny, what big teeth you've got..." I couldn't say what prompted me to it, maybe the ludicrousness of the situation, or maybe a bit of hysteria over it all. But whatever the reason, it seemed to trigger something in the Tyrannosaurus and it let out a deafening roar.

I choked the air with my swarm and ran.