Hey y'all! While reviewing some of my chapters I noticed some inconsistencies ... [th_015_orz-v2.gif] I seriously wish I could edit chapters. Speaking of the chapter I think I'll try and consistently keep them longer as some of them were way too short for me. I'll try and keep all of them above 1000 words. Story progression heck yeah! Anyways here's the chappy~ enjoy!

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Juggling the stick and yelping Ricardo pushed it into the fire pit before the slight breeze could steal it. He threw as many sticks as he could into the growing fire as fast as he could. As the flames leapt higher and higher along with hope in his heart. Soon a roaring bonfire fought the wind in front of him. He grabbed two solid sticks and rooted around the bottom of the campfire in search of hot embers. Eventually he found a nice sized glowing ember and he carefully moved it towards where grace still lay helplessly against the tree.

"We are going make it though this! Screw this world it's just you and me girl!!"

With the horribly done bandages off, Ricardo psyched himself up as he moved the red hot ember towards her bite wound. He could almost imagine her writhing in her mind as her body flailed a bit in her unconsciousness.

*Tssssss....* The sizzling smell of flesh burning persisted for while before Ricardo finally let up and the ember fell into the sand. Ricardo had a pretty good internal clock and reckoned that about under an hour of earth time had passed by since they got out of the sub. From what he knew of cauterizing wounds closed, it was a pretty old method of stemming the flow of blood and he only managed to remember it from some action movies he saw.

He never knew able to see what happened after the wounds were cauterized except that blood clotted and bleeding stopped. Unfortunately, during the attack Grace let go of the medical case that had important medicine like antibiotics in case her wound wasn't completely healed. The only left was the clothes on his back and soggy food from the sub. (Author note: He did not lose those sandwiches as I may have previously mentioned.)

Taking a breather from all the stressful situations that had continuously happened, he let out a great sigh of relief. Through the rapidly developing events Ricardo hadn't exactly managed to look around at his surroundings. The sandy beach that he was currently on seemed to scretch endlessly to the left. The black body of water was most definitely an ocean. To the right a rock cliff seemed jut out out up and cut his immediate view of the beach. It looked like he could climb the cliff if he wanted. 20 meters inland from the water line lay a dense exotic looking jungle. It reminded Ricardo of some of the beaches he explored in Hawaii as a member of the NOAA. However, the jungle looked incredibly strange and had a large mixture of different types of plants. Some of them looked like they oddly didn't belong in there or just didn't even look at all like any plant he had ever heard of.

What really made Ricardo surprised was the strange sky. The sun was currently at a twelve o'clock position. In the time that he had gotten out of the sub and now the sun had remained in the exact same position in the sky. It seemed stuck in the same position. After a while of observing the sky he noticed that it was slightly gray colored shimmered and rippled oddly. The sky seemed unnatural and gave Ricardo a sudden sense of foreboding.

Ricardo knew that the soggy sandwiches would last him about a day before he would need to rely on himself to find food. "Damn, if only Grace were awake then I could figure out which plants seemed edible. We could have a breakfast of champions tomorrow.”

Today he designated his time to building a crude shelter for himself and Grace. Without a suitable cutting tool like an axe Ricardo was forced to try and break off branches with his bear hands. As a mechanic Ricardo was relatively in shape so gathering material's for the frame besides driftwood was no problem.

Ricardo spent a large majority of the day building the crude shelter. He had no idea where he was even if the time worked differently, but eventually he managed to set up a shelter near the fire.

(Author note: First time uploading an image here... hope it works. )

While he was tending to the fire, large beast howls started going off in the forest. The noise echoed throughout the trees and spooked Ricardo into almost falling in the fire pit. About an hour later of giving Grace water and TLC without any warning the sun abruptly and quite literally shut off like a light, leaving only a dim glow upon the world. There was no steady change between day and night.

The night sky held no twinkling stars or a lonely moon, just the dim glow from sun was left to illuminate the night. Nighttime sounds occupied the airspace and Ricardo was just getting some sleep when he noticed a small white box that had just washed up on the beach. Knowing exactly what it could possibly be he stood up and darted out towards it. The night wore on as small insects created a background symphony for the sleeping humans.

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The next day

Ricardo was picking up on good survival skills. He trekked through the forest occasionally marking trees and making small piles of debris wherever he went as Grace the protective urge that Grace needed him. After a while of slowly and carefully adventuring he managed to stumble upon breakfast. Up in the trees rested a pretty large nest that probably contained bird eggs.

Flexing and limbering up Ricardo eventually with a grunt leapt up towards the nearest branch. Doing his upmost to get to the eggs and not endanger himself in the process he was about to reach the top before he heard a sharp cry and the sound of wind being pushed aside. His word turned upside-down and felt sharp pain in his back.

*ARGH!* Letting a roar pain Ricardo, now struggling on the ground heard another sharp cry and quickly rolled to the side. *Crunch* Something pierced the ground where his head used to lay. Looking over he spotted a strange brightly colored bird struggling to pull beak its beak out of the ground. (Author note: Is it a Pokemon?!)

Ricardo tried to grab the things neck but was cut up by its feathers as the creatures feathers seemed as tough as iron and sharp as daggers.

Swearing, Ricardo waved his hands around like a madman. Ricardo looked around for some tool and found a long stick. *This bird is dead meat!* he thought as he circled around the wildly flapping bird to stare in its eyes.

The things big eyes stared back at him in complete unbrideled fury. Without any hesitation Ricardo jammed the stick into one of its accusing eyes.

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Back at camp

Ricardo looked down at Graces small pale face and reapplied some extra anti-bacterial cream to her wound. With the medical case recovered Grace was in much better shape. He carefully stored the eggs inside the makeshift shelter and turned towards the high rock cliff. Ricardo lugged the iron bird around on the end of the stick. It had a wingspan of that of an eagle and a hooked beak that looked like flying dagger. If it had been flying around and didn't get stuck in the ground, he'd of been torn up by thing. Luckily its sharp peak got wedged in between a rock and a hard place.

Unfortunately, the thing was way too hard to crack open and get at the meat. He tossed the bird into the fire pit, but after a while of no changes, Ricardo decided on another plan. He would bring the bird to the top of the cliff and drop it down onto the rocks below. Hopefully, the force would break the iron birds hard outer shell like an egg. Afterwards, he could use its feathers as weapons for whatever things he encountered here in the future. At the same time he could survey the land around him and hopefully see signs of humans. With one last indescribable look towards Grace, Ricardo slowly padded away away from camp.

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Author note: This chapter was built around its story progression, eventually you'll see a glimmer of where I'm taking this story, but for now watch as man fights wild.