I wanted to be many things when I grew up. Little me saw all sorts of futures on the horizon, anywhere from a ‘reality star’ making bank off my fucked-up childhood to a world-renowned rocketeer, making any other thing my name would call to mind seem trivial in comparison. Maybe even convince people it was just a sign of genius, manifesting in an odd way, like all of the off-key savants of old. I dreamed big. I wasn’t the most talented or the smartest ever, even when I had so much time to myself, and the sensation surrounding my odd cognitive condition died a bit too fast to monetize, especially with my parents’ urging. Dreaming big could be outlandish, and when you’re a kid, it feels like you can be anything you want to be, even if you know deep down that you really can’t. “World-Renowned Scientist” and “Old-Media Celebrity” were just the tip top of a very, very long list.

All that being said, “Professional Bug Wrangler” had never found its way onto that list. In fact, I don’t think it had ever even crossed my mind. That was probably for the best, too, since I was doing a pretty piss-poor job of it. The giant insect hadn’t bothered to take note of the fact one of the annoying little pests attacking it had jabbed a rifle into its flesh, still charging full speed ahead. In some ways, that was a blessing, since if it started bucking like a bull at a rodeo, I’d have went flying almost immediately. As it was, the undulations were light enough that the carbine’s barrel only jittered about slightly, wedged at an angle between the creature’s outermost innards and shell. In other ways, it was a curse. The insect never stopped moving, and the breakneck speeds meant my dangling body spent pretty much the entire time trying to yank itself free from the death-grip I had on my rifle, and man were my arms getting tired. It was a strain the likes of which I had never felt, like even the bones of my poor arms were going to pop right apart, joints be damned. Naturally, my fingers would give long before that ever happened- the first time the bug hit a turn, they nearly did.

All in all, though, it was exhilarating. Not many people got to ride on the outside of a train, especially one going at full speed. It would have been fun if it wasn’t so damn excruciating, and if I’m being honest with myself, it’s probably fun even then. At some point, the pain had become a simple fact that I noted dismissively and shoved to the back of my brain, which is actually pretty weird now that I’m thinking about it. The simple fact I had time to think about how little pain I felt while my arms practically tore themselves apart is kind of mind-blowing to me, the same girl who would have spent five minutes nursing a stubbed toe back on mother Earth. Still, even in the dulled state I had slipped into, it was hard to ignore how much my arms were hurting when the bug went into a big turn. The human body just wasn’t made for that sort of stress, and my human body was going out of its way to make that abundantly clear.

Teleporting up and falling onto the giant insect’s back wasn’t my best plan, but it had been damn satisfying. The last time I had teleported, I was nearly incapacitated. This time I felt light-headed and queasy, which wasn’t helping things, but I still managed to perform quite a feat of acrobatics right after the magic. It almost made me feel competent, like I had done something really cool. Almost being the operative word, since now I really don’t have an easy way to escape. If ‘not passing out’ was my metric for success, I passed with flying colors, but ‘long-term survival’? Not so much. Teleporting to the Cultivator and accepting the black-out or vomiting would have probably been the right call. It wasn’t easy to make decisions like that on the fly, though. At least, that was the excuse I had to keep telling myself.

It was good fun to watch the Jungle fly by. More importantly, it was about the only thing I could really do to pass the time on the bug’s back. At first, the scenery seemed monotonous, but there was a sort of pattern to it all, readily visible in part due to the way the crystalizing beam paired with the steamroller of an insect had cut a cross-section of flora out of the environment. The most interesting part was passing by places where a wider swathe had been cut. After all, it had been running all along the Jungle before I hopped on board, and in the time I’ve been riding on its back, it made a few loops. In some parts of the trail, there were only thin slivers of trees and grasses and bushes to seperate the path. In others, it eschewed a divider entirely, and instead of a narrow trail it was more like a double or triple-wide clearing. From time to time, I’d see a few survivors hiding and gawking up at me and the bug as we passed on by. It was hard to count since I couldn’t really tell if I simply saw the same few people four or five times while the insect circled about, but there had to be at least twenty survivors so far, which was a pleasant surprise. If that many people were alive, maybe at least one could find me a way off this thing.

At the moment, the bug was tromping through the clearing, running for the other side. It was a sort of respite to not have to worry about speedy turns for a good while, but I wouldn’t have time to relax once we got to the other side.

The bug never got to the other side. It stopped and the world tumbled around me, inertia having its way with whatever forces had been acting on my body only moments before. I only had enough time to unbrace my arms and tug as my head damn near flew right into the butt of the carbine protrusion, swinging barely around it as my body slammed painfully down onto the shell for one final time. Now that I had time to look, I could see bruises crisscrossing my arms and legs. I filed that fact away in the back of my brain, somewhere mashed together with other important thoughts like ‘do not ride giant bugs’ and ‘do not step straight down on pointy things’. The breather let the pain catch up to me just a little bit, but it still didn’t feel quite right, like it was illusory rather than the intimate agony I deserve for all the abuse I put my body through.

It suddenly occurred to me that the carbine I had been using as a grip all along was still prepared and loaded. That realization tore through my brain, cutting off all of my unnecessary worries and fears and the logical bit telling me to simply count my blessing and hop off the insect-train while I had the chance. Instead, all I could think about was the exhilaration and fury that had swept over me at the start of the entire encounter, the fever-pitch we had all reached in that first attack. The urge to contribute, to help kill the damn thing, was strong enough to convince me to pull the trigger before I even knew what I was doing.

The gun had been wedged in through the chink in the bug’s exoskeletal armor and lodged thoroughly in the thin matter and muscle matter lying below it, and with my own weight levering it, the barrel went from pointing nearly straight down to a sharp angle, one steep enough that it had been getting hard for me to hold on. There was a muffled ‘bumpf’ as the gun fired, and the bullet must have shot through at least four of the creature’s body segments. It shook almost immediately.

It was easy to treat the big bug like it was just a simple thing, as though it just slid about like a snake about the ground, but I was reminded of the fact that it actually had tons and tons of strong, chitinous legs the hard way. The creature shook, legs contracting and undulating, and for a moment, it all bowed inwards. I had to catch myself as I slid, smooth exoskeleton uncomfortably hard to brace against as the inclination shrank lower and lower. Just as I started to prepare to drop off the side and roll to the ground, the sinking stopped, and the legs expanded, springing the segment I was on, as well as several of those nearby, into the air. I lost my grip, tumbling aimlessly off as it bucked, and that was that.

I had to be at least sixty feet into the air by the time I stopped ascending. The flight was fast, so incredibly fast, but there was just a moment of weighotlessness and clarity right at the top that I was still clear-minded enough to enjoy. I could see the clearing, which had been singed and doused in crystalizing rays and generally ravaged by the fight’s proceedings. I could see the increasingly distant Jungle, hiding behind the remains of all the foliage we had demolished. I could see the people hiding so far away within the trees and bushes, beady little eyes staring up at me as I flew. I could see the bug’s head not more than feet from my own as it pulled itself up into the strange, cobra-like posture it preferred, rapidly ascending to the insane height such a large thing could muster.

That moment passed, and I began to fall. I swung my arms and twisted, hoping to ball up, but that was easier said than done. The descent quickened, the smooth arc of my fall dropping me towards a rough patch of dirt a good distance from the creature itself. My stomach turned, but for some reason, my brain couldn’t quite decide whether or not it should have panicked. A black tide rushed along the ground like ink splashed from a well, smoothing over the dirt and giving it an almost metallic sheen, uniquely and perfectly black like carefully polished obsidian. The black color was broken by intense cyan and purple lines that danced across it, zipping from end to end like lasers in a strange sort of array. Eyes wide, I fell the rest of the way, but there was no impact.

When I hit the ground, I just stopped. My neck wasn’t snapped, my bones weren’t crunched. Hell, I wasn’t even jarred. The strange black surface caught me like a web, frantic movements doing little more than inevitably pulling my body down onto it. Just as quickly as it appeared, it disappeared, and suddenly I could pull myself up again. My gaze followed it as it dispersed, the neon-luminescent lines rushing back to their source. Off in the distance stood a number of people in overblown robes, aligned in a curved line formation, like a lens with me as the foci. It was the Imposter’s merry band, the so-called ‘Programmers’ that I had never actually seen in action before. Each of them had one arm outstretched with their fists extended in my general direction and the other arm perched on the shoulder of another robed Programmer, following a sort of chain inwards towards the Imposter herself. Though, that was the only way I could really recognize her- most of them had their hoods down, but hers was atop her head, concealing her features.

A few of the ones near the edge of the lens fainted outright. Their neighbors reacted quickly, dragging them unceremoniously back into the Jungle, fading readily into the increasingly dim twilight. The remainder of the Programmers, still conscious and seemingly unperturbed, simply lowered their arms. Well, except for the Imposter. Instead of lowering her arm, she flipped her fist over, pointing right back at me. Not to me, I realized, but past me- she was pointing at the Bug. It hadn’t simply stopped moving when I shot the gun, not at all. Instead, it was twirling about and hunting for the creature that had wounded it so suddenly, and I wouldn’t have long to stand there and gawk before it saw me.

I scrambled to my feet, tumbling into a run. I got a good head-start, but for such a massive creature that wasn’t saying much. I looked over my shoulder only to see that it had finally noticed me. Its frantic movements stilled, sound fading, and its insectoid face was just looking down at me, staring intently at me while I ran. I stopped looking, instead doubling and redoubling on my efforts, running full-tilt ahead.

I couldn’t see behind me, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t hear the bug coming. It slammed itself into the ground, angry little legs slicing at the dirt as it toppled down. Whatever head start I got was trivial in the face of the creature’s enormity, and I could almost feel how close that first drop was. My only saving grace had to be the way it had coiled up- after its’ first attempt to crush me, it had to untangle itself. It chased me, sure, but the process meant it was slow enough that a runner could at least keep pace, hardly the bullet-train speeds I was used to. The dark was really setting in now, sun trying to dip completely under the horizon at an almost visible speed. The twilight had endured, but I was running in the night at best, guided by the dying embers of the Jungle and forced to haul ass by the realization that even if I couldn’t see, the creature behind me probably could.

The Adventurer made this sort of thing look easy. One night, I tried to sleep on the roof of one of the new, barely occupied housing complexes in the City of Man, and I got the rare opportunity to see her run in the city. Apparently, she actually got faster after breaking her legs, or so the story went- getting to the city so late meant I missed quite a few crazy things, and the girl was responsible for half of them. I got to see why, first hand. She practically flew from rooftop to rooftop, what little ‘jewelry’ (particularly shiny remnants of the things she killed or helped kill) the girl wore glimmering in night. By the time I had really noticed her, she had parkoured half way across the city, and when she hit the biggest obstacle in the city- the chasm- she cleared it in what felt like a single jump. The Adventurer could scale buildings in the dark, leap large ravines in a single bound, and probably outrun a bullet if she ever got the opportunity.

I could hardly stay upright. The ground was nearly level, but ‘nearly’ and ‘breakneck sprint’ meant I had to take wide, deliberate strides to avoid catching my foot on this root or that molehill. It took a small miracle, but I kept my footing, scratching out what I thought was a decent pace. For a moment, I even though I’d get away cleanly. One of the creature’s spiky legs dropped from the sky, skewering the dirt just barely in front of my foot. I realized with a start that it was above me, that not only had the huge bug caught up, but also that if I had actually kept a better pace, I would have been made into an impromptu shish-kebab.

It dug out the segmented leg, wiggling it free of the ground. I ran to the side, hoping to get out from under it. Its head had been above me, which could only mean that its dangerous mane was more than close enough to strike, so I dodged pre-emptively, diving as far and as fast as I could. I felt sudden bursts of wind on my back as I fell, a tell-tale sign of exactly how close I’d been to getting a newer, shinier complexion.

It wasn’t like I had a plan. I just dove, hoping for the best. It was about the only thing I could have done, but it didn’t leave me with many options. The only one that seemed to reliably get me away from the bug was to teleport my ass right back to the city, or at least to a pocket of human survivors at the cusp of the Jungle’s edge, but there was absolutely no guarantee I wouldn’t get to the destination and die horribly from the exertion using my particular ‘magic’ seemed to cause. If my lucky break earlier was indication, either my supply of mana got way better or shorter distances mean less vomiting, so what would a hundred meters mean? A thousand? Would I just arrive and start coughing up blood, or would I already be dead by the time the ‘shaking’ started? Thinking about it that way, sacrificing names for the ability to teleport anywhere up to tens of kilometers wasn’t such a bad deal, even if it was only once.

Teleportation was out. What about running again? I hadn’t outrun the bug when it was agitated enough to make mistakes, so why would I be able to escape now, when it was so close and so determined to get me? Running wasn’t the best option, even if it seemed to be only other one. There might have been a way if I was in better shape, maybe utilizing the way it seemed to turn a little slowly, even if it was obscenely flexible for its size. My body was battered during the prolonged trip on its back, though. Even trying to push myself up with my ragged arms was taking forever, giving my thoughts time to wander and meander through the itty-bitty list of ways I could try and get out of this mess.

With some effort, I flipped myself over, looking back at the thing chasing me. More accurately, looking up at it. I hadn’t got very far with my impromptu slide, but it was just far enough to force it to turn about to face me, which it seemed reluctant to do. I hadn’t really got a close look at its face, but that was probably for the best. The oversized centipede-thing was far more imposing than I gave it credit for, doubly so in the dark and with such dramatic affects as slowly turning to face me.

I suddenly got an impression of the Gorgon. For obvious reasons, I can’t really say which one, but I stumbled on her story in my spare time. The bug’s mane writhed and twisted into knots like hundreds of two-meter-long snakes, swinging with every motion of its head. The creature had incredible mandibles that seemed to glisten with just a tinge of the red discoloration of the crystalizing goo that smothered its surprisingly unaffected tentacles, giving it the intimidating look of a blood-drinker even if I was pretty sure it hadn’t so much as eaten a single living thing all evening. Its face was still visibly cracked by Jim’s forcible incursion, but wind clotted it, and the nasty fluids finally stopped draining from the hole. All in all, a creature I wouldn’t care to run into even if it was just a normal little bug, let alone the monstrosity it was.

It encroached ever so slightly, segmented body trailing along just a step forward as its face swept over to look down at me. The bug chittered and its mandibles swung open and shut, the creature's odd demeanor made me feel like the creature was gloating. Even the thought of that gave me a difficult dilemma: either I had long since gone insane and I was humanizing a monster, or it was far more sentient than we had given it credit for. I had to consider exactly what was going on here. Presumably, the situation was something like this: A bunch of annoying little flies had swarmed onto the big thing’s turf, and it was just about to swat the most elusive of the bunch, and it was quite satisfied by that fact.

If I had the luxury, I’d probably enjoy joking around about how strange that role reversal was, but I hardly had time to drag myself backwards, kicking at the dirt with my legs and pulling with my startlingly fragile arms. The Gorgon stalked a little closer, undulating wave of legs fading away into the darkness, another reminder of the enormity of the thing that would kill me.

A number of fireflies sparked to life in the distance, just visible in the periphery. It was a beautiful contrast, the little gnats of light appearing just as the pitch-black insect was about to swallow me whole. I considered the poetry of it for a moment, appreciating the spectacle I got to see in the last moments of my life, but then I remembered that anything bright enough for me to see from so far away couldn’t be fireflies. The lights went from the unearthly green hue they started with to a red-hot glow, each little particle turning into baseballs and eventually the huge beach-balls of fire that I got all too acquainted with at the start of the evening. They were the magically-powered blasts of the horned people we had been fighting, and they were flying right for the bug, the very same bug that still hadn’t realized the danger.

It seemed to gleam from the way I relaxed that something wasn’t right, even if it couldn’t pin down what. With none of the deliberate drama it had been channeling moments before, it swung to follow my gaze, just in time for its anterior in general to get hit, including its face. It recoiled with the impact, wheeling itself backwards and swinging itself into the air, waving its conflagrating face like a torch in the night. Some of the rare uncharred flora in the clearing were caught by sparks from the initial blast or by the few stray fireballs and lit up too, casting the area into some semblance of light once more- revealing two men, standing side by side.

One was quite a bit younger than the other, though if you guessed which one you’d be wrong almost every time. The General, no, the Tyrant stood resolutely in the miniature inferno, shoulder to shoulder with the Cultivator, who had no doubt had some part in their appearing act. I flopped down, suddenly endlessly tired, but with some effort, I managed to wave up at them. The Tyrant was nothing like the General I had the misfortune of talking to over the past few days. He normally wore a face somewhere between constipation and regality, depending on the day, and his demeanor would shift on necessity, usually ranging from care-free and a bit nerdy to stoic and improbably competent. Now, though, that was all gone. He was all business, all of his lithe musculature twisting and tightening like he was ready to leap into action, face contorted into a fierce grimace that belonged more to a supervillain than any General I’ve ever seen. He didn’t so much as flinch or react when I waved, just staring intently at the big bug that was panicked and trying to snuff out the fire, mutilating a poor stretch of dirt in the process. Meanwhile, the Cultivator’s placid and flawless expression disappeared, replaced by an almost wry grin, and he happily returned my wave. The Tyrant’s hand shot into the air, and for a moment I thought he actually was about to return my greeting, but instead his hand contorted into a number of increasingly awkward positions, only a select few of which I could hope to recognize. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, he put his hand to his mouth and whistled, a piercing sound that rushed out in every direction.

The gunners, or what remained of us, filed out of the tree-line, gathering in plain sight for the first time in the entire engagement. It would have been an intimidating display if it was bright enough to really see them all, and for a moment, I thought that the Tyrant was just hoping it’d be enough to just burn the bug and scare it away. Betraying my expectations, though, out came the horned men, emerging as a pack, immediately identifiable by the oddly luminescent tattoos crawling down their arms and necks. For a moment, I thought I could see our own mages, but it was hard to tell if I had just imagined it, their robes hardly contrasting to the night. That wasn’t all, though. To the contrary, essentially the entire retinue of New World conscripts, shining armor of the Gomen and green skin of the Goblin alike distinct in the night, swarmed from the Jungle, as though they had never left. Which, actually, was about what the General’s initial plan has prescribed, though the way things had changed probably demanded a little improv, even if the Gomen and Goblins weren’t so good at it.

Reinforcements had arrived.