Countless particulates drift through the air, stick to your membrane, wet your body.It's noisy. A stream roars as it cuts through the ground below you, drowning out the chatter of the pursuers, subsuming the clank of their boots. But you still hear them. You still know not to stop.The gratings they run on screech under their pressure. You know, instinctively, that there are six feet following you--three of them. Metal scrapes against metal as a door forces its way open and you catch sight of them. They're warm.
>>6413612They're gaining. You flee as fast as your tubules allow, propel yourself forward off the grating without waiting to sense what lies ahead. You find yourself airborne, momentarily, launched over the gap from instinct alone, until you bang across the grating on the other side, flipping. You recover, but you've lost something. They've heard you.Panic has compromised you. You have failed. You have lost.But you won't lose more, so you pull your disjointed thoughts together, so you push yourself forward again, push yourself with more care. You have learned. You will not make another mistake, you will not panic from the screeches that pursue you.After countless carefully considered motions you round a corner. In front of you lies something warm. Something delicious. Something irresistable. Your conscious mind loses control as hunger overtakes and you leap, you pounce, you--->EAT IT>DEVOUR IT>CONSUME IT>resist
>>6413614>DEVOUR IT
>>6413614>>EAT ITNo vore
>>6413614>DEVOUR ITLo, let us feast!
>>6413622>>6413627>>6413636You don't hesitate for even a moment as your hunger carries you forward. Your body engulfs its head, absorbing it into your membrane, unconsciously feeling, for a brief moment, its pulse quicken as its heart pounds against its chest. Your membrane cleaves its head straight off of its neck, and your body gets to work, breaking it apart piece-by-piece. Your digestive enzymes pull out its hair, rip apart its flesh, tear into its brain, crunch down on its skull, devour it from a famine you've only now learned you have. And then it is gone. You can't even think to stop yourself, despite feeling that you should slow down, that you should pace yourself, as your membrane covers more and more of its body, as it tears apart its skeleton, its spine, its viscera, as it becomes yours. Your lungs. Your heart. Your brain.Something has been lost.
>>6413911Something has been gained.You're a ball of fluff which has known nothing but warmth. You spend nights curled up against your parent's soft underbelly, needing naught but the life it brings, wanting for nothing. Wanting for nothing until you're grown too large to eat from its bosom, and that is when the life you know truly begins. You eat the delicious rodents your parent brings you during the day and sleep together with it during the night. Soon, you are large enough to be sent off to hunt on your own, and you aim to return what you have been given.Your hunt brings you far from the home you've known. The comparatively safe and cozy carpeted floors are replaced with tile, then sheet metal, then grated steel. Each step you take requires consideration, forces you to move your paws one by one so as to not slip between the gaps. You instinctively feel the inherent danger of uncertain footing. The air around you has changed, and your breath is now wet, each inhalation full of the mist which permeates the world around you. It brings with it a certain uncertainty, and your movements further slow as you become sedated with each breath. It smells, too. Each breath carries a host of smells. The strongest is chemical, something imitating the flowers your home has, but not quite identical. It's derivative. It's unpleasant, but only unpleasant in an uncanny way. The smells beyond that, though, they are atrocious. They reek of excrement and death. You're surrounded by the results of life's end, discarded without even the decency of burial.The nearby grates roar as something bangs against it, and you long for your parent. This expedition has been too long. You have learned much, your ignorance replaced with a certainty that the world outside your home does not welcome you. You turn to flee back from which you've came, but before your eyes is the very fear this new world has bestowed.
>>6413914You are that fear. Your body shakes in terror despite your conscious mind's realization that you do not pose a threat to you. The moisture clings to your fur in a way that it didn't to your membrane. You're damp. Your balance is off. Your ligaments are new to you but old to your body.The world around you remains unchanged but inside of you it is new, it is different. You see more but you hear less. The world is now composed of colors, many you have only seen in the memories of what you once were. You lay, paralyzed as you take it in. You are in a metal coffin. Piping carries much which you can't see, flows in ways you can't imagine. You see the curve you walked past. You see a door to your side. You see a ladder. You see the rush of filth-water below your paws, see the unspeakable which fills it. It courses down and out, moves beyond your line of sight, perhaps it moves forever. The grate you stand on, too, seems to span forever. You cannot estimate how long it would take your new body to reach its end.You feel each breath, feel the air rush into your body. You know that your lungs are inflating, that the oxygen they take in is processed and pumped into your blood. But you don't feel that part. You feel the moisture wet your insides. Feel the air current that your respiration brings. You taste it as it moves through your body, you taste the smell.And it's paralyzing. You remember smelling, but you do not remember smelling. And how lovely it is, to sense something for the first time. To learn that something you could never imagine existed all along. How revolting it is, to sense. How revolting it is to know such a thing as revolt; to know something can even be lovely.A boot stomps on the grating. Two boots. Six boots. They are coming.But they are not ready. They do not know that you have changed.You--->Wait for them, unmoving>Hide from them>Run from themWrite ins are welcome! Feedback on if the art actually adds to the story is also welcome. I'm not an artist but I felt like scribbling.
>>6413916>Run from them
>>6413916>Hide from themI like the art
>>6413916>Hide from them
>>6413939>>6414070>>6414072Fear overtakes you. It begins in your brain and snakes its way across your spine, spreads throughout your body. It paralyzes you, for a moment, until you start to shiver as it commands you to flee.You bite down hard, sealing your jaw shut, grinding your fangs as you breathe quick and ragged as you try to regain your self from the fear. You will not panic. You have learned.You overcome your unfamiliar body's command to escape, to run. You're smarter than that. You know that they will pursue, no matter how far you go down the endless walkways. And you also know that they're close.You will not outrun them. But you may just outwit them. You use your new and unfamiliar senses to probe your surroundings for a hiding place:>You see a door to your side, left slightly ajar. You can't see much through the crack but it appears to house all manner of compartments. Hiding inside would be no problem, but you don't know if your body could squeeze through the gap. You doubt you could force it open, either.>You see a small tunnel covered in a loose grate. It looks like it would fall off with the littlest nudge. But it would be loud.>You see a ladder which leads up to a cylindrical housing. You might be able to climb it, but it clearly wasn't made for your body. And they would need only look up to find you.>There is a pipe leading down under the walkway. You could climb down onto it, but they need only glance down, through the grating, to see your body. It would leave you with little room to escape, too, save for leaping into the sludge below. Still, you know you can get to it without any risk.>Write in (feel free to be creative and stretch the canon a bit, so long as it's plausible)
>>6414110>Nudge the grate off the tunnel and then climb down the pipe
>>6414166I like this. Going with this unless someone objects before rolls/writing finishes.Give me some 1d100s.
Rolled 13 (1d100)>>6414172
Rolled 3 (1d100)>>6414172Check out my secret automatic 100 absolute focus dice roll technique HYAH!
Rolled 22 (1d100)>>6414172I only need ten percent of my power to pass this roll..
>>6414196>>6414204>>6414236I'm scared, anon...Writing!
>>6414422The vent is the obvious hiding spot. It's spacious, large enough to fit the relatively small form you inhabit. You don't know if they could follow you into it, but you doubt it. They're big.The problem is the grille. You know you can knock it off, but you aren't confident that you could do so silently. And even if you did, they would surely investigate an open vent with a nearby, discarded grille.But you don't have to go in it. It would be simple, to intentionally alert them to its presence, so you can hide somewhere else.But where else would you go? The nearby door is slightly ajar, but it seems too hard to force open, and you doubt you could squeeze in. Your body is small, but it is not that small. There's a ladder leading up, but you don't know if you could climb it, and slipping from it would be dangerous. Mostly, you're aware that you don't have much time until they arrive.The best option is the pipe below. It's large enough for you to comfortably sit on, and, despite its rotundity, you're confident in your ability to balance on it. It looks simple to climb down, too.You've made your plan.Now you must act.You steel yourself, take a deep breath, and jump up to the vent. It comes off with a small nudge of your paw, clatters down to the grate below with a clang! You recoil, a bit, shocked by the noise despite anticipating it, and that recoil is enough for you to slip off the exterior of the vent. Before you know it, you've fallen down to the walkway below.It doesn't hurt, much--you land on your feet. But it disorients, forces you to take a moment to calm the panic it brings. A moment you hardly have.You scramble to the pipe, your heart pounding harder and faster than this body's ever has, adrenaline coursing through you. You jump up the walkway's railing, then down, to the first connecting rung. Your paw bumps against the corner of a bolt and the pain causes you to slip, slip and fall down to the lower portion of the pipe, the section below the walkway.You scramble to get a foothold, uselessly clawing at its metal exterior. It helps you little, leaving only claw marks, and you slide, slide down, slide all the way until--Dumb luck saves you. Your lower paws find purchase on a rectangular compartment built into the pipe. Your upper legs completely lose their grip on the pipe as you finish your slide down to the lower bit.
>>6414455Your heart is going to explode. You're breathing fast and ragged and loud. You can hear them coming, their boots clanking against the walkway, they're so close.Thump-thump. Clank. Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump--Your heart is out of control. You can't breathe, you can't take in enough air, you need to calm down, you have to. But you just can't do it. You don't have control. Your body is unfamiliar, you are afraid. They are here. They are above you.>Roll 1d100
Rolled 44 (1d100)>>6414459
Rolled 61 (1d100)>>6414459
Rolled 12 (1d100)>>6414459
>>6414460>>6414472You need to calm down and you can't you can't stop thinking about them they're too close they can hear you they know they--The air isn't getting to your lungs fast enough and your vision is fading. You know that this panic isn't yours. You know that it's your body's. But you are helpless to stop it, helpless to supplant the primitive endocrine system's commands with the logic of your brain. You command it to take deep breaths but it still comes out shallow, you urge it to cede control to its owner but it refuses.It refuses for now. But you are not one to hand yourself over so easily. You are strong. You can learn. Your breath slows, a little. Your vision returns, a little. Instead of short and fast it turns deep and slow, each deliberate breath calming you more, restoring a little bit of your control. You are not a scared animal.You've soon recovered enough to assess the situation. They are still above you. Six feet. Four small, two large. One of the smalls is inspecting the vent, bending over to check inside. The other small is glancing up the ladder. The large one is glancing around, seemingly on guard. They are making noises, too. Your body recognizes it as speech, as communication, but you cannot understand it.One of the smaller ones points down to you. Your heart begins to pound. But you push the panic out. This is still your body. You don't know that you're safe from them, but it seems they can't get to you here. Their bodies are too large.But you don't have a lot of options, either. The pipe you are on leads nowhere. All you can do is-->Wait>Attempt to climb back to the walkway>Jump>Write in>>6414517Finished writing just before this, sorry. Maybe for the best with that roll.
>>6414522>Jump
