Understanding the danger he is in, regardless of the either of the possibilities, he makes haste, carrying both the blades in his hand to the entrance.

[There are 2 possibilities, Either the damn thing is still alive or a beast, big and bad enough to come into its lair to steal its corpse, is around. Neither bodes well for me. Although, if it isn’t as vengeful as the wolf, I might have a chance to be ignored once I’m out of its business. I pray that it’s the second one! Please let it be so!]

By now he’s nearly there at the entrance, moving as fast as he can, eager to make it out of the claustrophobic and uncomfortable place.

[In either case, I can’t fight right away. These blades need some cleaning. They’re filthy as fuck and this much dirt may clog the mechanism in my arms.]

As he is distracted by those thoughts, he steps on an unseen rock at the entrance and trips over with the arms caught beneath his own torso and his legs sprawled in a weird way, a most awkward position.

[Freaking hell! Arrghh……Ugh?!]

Halfway through cursing his own clumsiness, his eyes see something he dreaded to see. He could see the paws of the beast that should have been slain. His face goes blank from the absurd situation he is in. Caught in an awkward position, unable to fight, no usable weapons on hand, all in a horrifyingly bad situation he didn’t want to face, he slowly makes eye contact with the best, expecting death after that. But he sees only confusion in the eyes of the beast. It catches him by surprise that there is no vengeful hatred or much of the intelligence he has seen in its eyes before. Did the beast forego vengeance and turn to peace? Is it the punch to the head?

But that hope only lasted a moment before the wolf opened its mouth revealing its maw and massive canines. expecting the inevitable, he tries to get up quickly out of reflex, only to hit the roof of the entrance against his back, making him collapse promptly from the pain. The beast closes the few feet quickly and approaches his head, as his eyes widen in horror at what’s to come, the beast flicks out its tongue and starts licking his helmet covered face.

“Huh?!!”

Instead of the eyes of a predator, he’s surprised to see the eyes of a puppy excited to meet his master. Which makes no sense whatsoever considering how it was trying to hunt him for the past 3 days. He is momentarily at a loss for words or actions. Until the wolf turns around to pick up a big rabbit in its mouth and dropping it off at his feet, wagging its tail, almost looking like it’s waiting to be pet and praised.

“Uh?!’

With nothing but confusing filling his brain, he could only make surprised sounds, unable to process what is happening before him. He remains still in that awkward position, staring at the fierce looking, huge beast, behaving like a puppy in front of him. After waiting a solid minute for its ‘master’ to praise and pet it, the beast whines from disappointment induced sadness.

‘hnn…nn…hnn’

Finally sobering up from that act, he quickly moves to get up and out of the burrow, still tense and cautious despite how the dog has seemingly swapped to an entirely new personality from before. He approaches it inch by inch to ‘touch’ its head, with his armoured gloved hand.

As soon as his hands lands on the wolf, it is overcome with happiness and starts shaking its tail furiously and barking in happiness. He slowly calms down after a few minutes. Until his stomach growls loudly and the beast once again motions towards the rabbit it had bought.

Although he’s still confused over how the beast survived and why it is so much more docile now compared to before, he decides to take up on its offer and cook the rabbit to fill his stomach first.

Once a simple fire pit is setup and he has finished cleaning his blades from clean leaves and the rabbit fur before it got bloodied from the skinning, he roasts the meat over the fire. Normally, such a blatant display of meat would be a problem in such a forest, but he was too tired from the recent events and moreover, the baddest beast around seems to be somehow tamed, besides him.

As the meat is roasting, he takes a better look at the beast beside him now. It is covered full of injuries both severe and minor from the 3 encounters. A beast it might have been, but he winces at the unhealed, now about to fester wounds he sees on the beast. He knows they will need to be treated for the beast to truly survive the week. As part of an emergency supply, a small vial of general-purpose antibiotics and healing nanites, stolen tech from the green heads and repurposed to work especially effective on humans but still reasonably effective against other mammals, is contained in a secret chamber on the suit, designed to be hidden from superficial checks from the invaders.

[Normally it wouldn’t be that big of a deal to use up some of the nanites as I also need to use some on myself, but it requires the core suit systems to be booted back up and considering my pitiful little remaining power, I was hoping to entirely skip it. Besides, why should I save this….thing….that tried to kill me multiple times for little reason and even if it is more docile now, what guarantee is there that it wouldn’t change back to its former self after a while?]

But after briefly considering letting the beast die or only be given the regular antibiotics, which would still imply very little survival chance, he notices the beast trying to roll over besides him and wincing from the pain due to one of the heavy injuries inflicted on its ribs, it flinches and whines. Pain evident in its eyes as it curly up into a ball and goes stiff as it tries to deal with it. He couldn’t help but reflexively show concern and pity.

[Dammit man! You have gone soft now that the invasion is at an end.]

“I will probably regret this later”

Mumbling a few more self-derogatory lines, he finally makes his decision to help the poor thing.

He quickly readjusts the position of the roasting meat and motions for the wolf to come closer. Once it’s close by, he does his best to remove any major dirt and debris in the open wounds, earning a few whining noises from the pain but surprisingly, he doesn’t see the beast even moving away or shaking its body too much as he is doing it. Showing surprising obedience and trust at his new ‘Master’ Which only further confuses the man.

He made sure the beast is clean enough, at least as much as he could clean without any water available anyway. Once the meat is done, he quickly cuts a couple pieces and sets it aside. He had to hold down the instinct of the now salivating beast as soon as the meat is taken off the fire. He takes a deep breath and performs a full boot-up process, quickly unlocking the secret chamber and retrieves the medicine vial. He also takes a sample of blood from the beast to reprogram the nanites before quickly shutting down whole thing. He was glad that the beast didn’t seem to have noticed the needle prick from his hand that he placed on a relatively uninjured area on its body.

Now, with very little power reserves, he knows the suits is nothing but a comfy heavy armour with just enough juice for a few full powered strikes by partial activation. The next time he fully activates the suit, would be it’s last. Hopefully, he can find civilization by then and contact his people.

He puts a single dose of antibiotics and one capsule of nanites that had been reprogrammed for the wolf into a piece of meat that is now cold enough to eat and presents it to the wolf. It delights at its master offering food and quickly chows it down wagging its tail furiously.

[Man, what’s with dogs and their tails?]

‘Chuckles’

“Slow down! Good boy! Eat slowly. I’ll save some more at the end for you. That was a big rabbit you bought for me”

Now having eaten the nanites and antibiotics, in about a day, things should start to heal up. He proceeds to eat his own medicine and along with one of the nanite capsules that were already pre-programmed to his body. After the meal and feeding the spare meat to the wolf, he decides to explore a bit of the surroundings. Especially considering he explicitly avoided the surrounding area when he last went out. He motions for the beast to follow him after a brief rest.

He tries to communicate water with the beast, only in vain. He decides it’s best to go to the monkey-fruit area for now to deal with the intense thirst.

The two figures of both a man and a beast limp through the forest floor and reach their destination uneventfully in about 1.5 hrs. His mouth couldn’t help but salivate at the sight of the fruits littered on the floor. He grabs a couple and proceeds to eat them after briefly cleaning them. He offers one to the wolf which takes the first bite reluctantly only to be delighted at the delicious, juicy fruit. And proceeds to eat another before being stopped by the man, since he isn’t so sure wolves are supposed to be able to digest too much fruit.

He collects all the fruit he can and wraps them in large leaves collected from the floor that the monkeys must have been responsible for. He gets an idea as he sees the juices flow down his lips from biting the fruit. Once he reaches the now new ‘home’ for the both of them, he makes a smaller bowl like container with a couple of the leaves and squeezes a few fruits over it, filling the bowl with some of the juices. He shows it to the wolf only to get a confused stare back. He shakes around the liquid and drinks some to show he is implying water. Unable to find any success, he goes for the last resort, setting aside his dignity as he places it on a stone, kneels before it and proceeds to lick it like a canine would, finally seeing the reaction he was hoping for in the wolf, he kicks away the leaf bowl and buries it along with his shame before following where the wolf is taking him, excitedly leading ahead.

After a relatively difficult terrain with thicker underbrush, they finally reach a slightly hidden spring with a small pond of water and a creek going further into the thicker, more difficult, jungle like terrain. He spots a couple more deer from their side of the forest taking a drink. He quickly shifts to see the wolf’s reaction as soon as he notices them, afraid that its instincts might take over. But that proved unnecessary as both the predator and prey only had a brief moment of eye contact before the prey just moved a bit away from our direction and them ignoring each other after that.

‘Sigh’

[There seems to be some unspoken rule here. Probably means there aren’t a whole lot of other options for the water sources nearby. Good to know]

The joy of finally having access to water quickly pushing aside any other thoughts, he quickly takes off his suit, the padding underneath and other clothes inside. He is bruised blue and black all over the body, explaining why he was aching all over. The wolf seemed momentarily taken aback from the ability of its master to strip off his hard skin but quickly recovers and moves to the shore of the pond to join its master.

[Ah… that is so relaxing. Its been so long since I’ve actually had a shower. I better wash up my inner layers too. They absolutely stink!]

[I’m sure she would be very unhappy to see my lazy side when I meet her again.]

With a smile on his face and affection showing through his eyes, reminiscing his partner whom he couldn’t wait to meet, he washes some of his clothes that he is able to and cleans up all the wounds on the wolf thoroughly. After filling his stomach with as much water as he can along with his canine friend, he carries his washed and unwashed clothes along with the now free suit on his back to their home, It’s already sunset by the time he gets back.

After setting up a fire pit and skinning a deer that the wolf had caught somewhere along the way, he sets up the meat to roast over the fire pit as he hangs the wet clothes to dry besides the fire. He’s wearing a Silvery white padding under-suit.

[God! How long has it been since I relaxed like this? Even after my miraculous survival, it has been nonstop anxious moments. I finally feel alive again after all that! I guess I now finally have the time and energy to tackle the questions from the morning.]

[First of all, I’m now sure something changed in the wolf after that final fight. It seems to be over all less intelligent and less vicious/vengeful at the same time. While it still seems to retain some memories, it didn’t even flinch at my blades or any other weapons I used to hurt it the other day. So, my best bet is short term amnesia. I did hit it on the head. It’s possible I damaged part of its brain. I can only hope the nanites do something to make sure it doesn’t become impaired and even worse over time.]

He gets up and shifts the position of the meat over the fire.

[This is still a strange creature. It’s pretty big even for a wild wolf. It’s much bigger than even the biggest tiger I’ve ever seen, its eyes have an unsettling red tint to them. It was relatively smart, at least before I punched it upside the head. And that strange habit of collecting a skull of some animal and weird colourful rocks! I’m not sure what to make of it. Did the green bastards leave some sort of parting gift, introducing mutations in our ecology? They have been experimenting on the life on our planet for some time now. I sure hope I’m just over thinking things but if not, I’ll have to bring it up at our next council meet. Regardless of the veracity of my hypothesis, the clean up is going to be one hell of a messy, long process.]

[Hmmm…. maybe I should try and take the wolf with me for further study. I’m sure that would easily determine if it’s a ‘natural’ mutant or their handywork. But It’s going to be difficult to safely take it to towns or cities. Well, I’ll figure it out when I do find some damn civilization!]

After a few more times of adjusting the meat, it is ready to eat. He proceeds to cut the meat into sizable chunks to feed it to the wolf and takes a small portion for himself.

“Well, fortunate or unfortunate for you, you survived. And I apologize for beating you into stupidity! If you remain a good boy, I promise to look after you too. Although I’m more worried about you hurting other people when we find them. I guess I’ll need to teach you a few things if this is going to work out.”

After the meal, the man and the beast huddle together for the night, safe in the idea that there would be no animal stupid enough to approach them.

[Huh… now that I think about it, this is the first night I’m going to be sleeping fully relaxed without having to worry about falling off a tree or being afraid of wild predators.]

-To be continued