Crashlanded Phoenix

Object C-04 "Rex"
HIM Phoenix Crash Site

I sat on the muddy ground and gazed in the direction of what used to be a great ship belonging to the Empire. It's glorious wings cutting through clouds and engines capable of bringing anyone anywhere on our Rimworld. It was now merely a wreck, rendered inoperable. I was by no means a mechanic, a scientist or an engineer, I was simply a soldier. However, I knew a lot when compared to a generic soldier, all thanks to intensive training and studying. I could tell, using my limited knowledge, that this bird wouldn't fly anytime soon, though I believe anyone with common sense could come to that conclusion.

It ceased to rain a few minutes later, my water collector was still in shambles and I made a mental note to myself to build a new one tomorrow once the sun comes up. I held the piece of metal I took out of my back in my right hand and looked at it's surface. I could partially see my face being reflected in it which included my short and naturally snow white hair, though calling it white now would be quite a stretch as the mud and jungle filth in general took away the original whiteness they usually had.

I took a long piece of cloth which I earlier ripped out of the right leg of my pants and wrapped it around the base of my metal piece to create a safe handle for my hand. The rather durable cloth proved to be a decent way of protecting my hand from the edge and making it far more comfortable and handy to use than earlier when I first got it straight out of my back. If I had to measure it, I'd say the piece was around 4 centimeters long and 1,5 centimetres wide. The edges were very sharp and could easily cut through flesh or plant matter. I poked the tip with a finger and saw a tiny amount of blood come out of the poked spot which I promptly licked away.

I got up from the ground and walked over to the pile of vines I left by the branch on which my clothes hung and took a few of them with me back to my sitting spot. I while carrying them in my hands and over my shoulder I noticed that some of these vines were more somewhat brown and felt rather wooden to the touch, while the green ones felt quite soft, flexible yet firm to the touch. "You may be more useful than I thought," I said to myself before sitting down on my ass' print in the mud.

I put the vines away beside me and began to sort them into two separate piles, a brown pile and a green pile. I had to avoid using my metal tool, as I wanted the vines to be as long as possible which meant that I had to use my hands if any of the vines got themselves tangled. This was when I began to notice slight issues with my fine motor skills in the synthetic arm. On top of not being able to use tools which were contained within it, it now also seemed a bit unresponsive. I'd have to take a look at this once I got access to some proper tools and a cleaner work environment.

Half an hour later the last of the vines was untangled and sorted away onto one of the two piles, during this time I came up with a few ideas regarding those vines. I could use them to build a hammock for myself to rest in or a primitive pulley system to get into the ship and hopefully scrounge anything useful out of it. I put these ideas aside for later, in case I'd plan to stay in this one place for longer than a few days. Keeping in mind my less-than-ideal condition, I thought that these vines may be useful for making weapons I could use for hunting or defending myself. A slingshot was my first thought, but chucking huge rocks would be much more effective if I did it with my own bare hands instead of using a sling.

I got up from the slightly less muddy ground, which resulted in my legs being covered in the aforementioned mud and began to walk towards one of the bigger jungle trees. I grabbed a few mushrooms from my supply pile and chewed on them while slowly going step by step. These fungi weren't much, but at least I had something edible in my mouth to distract me from my situation. I just about reached my destination when a great idea popped up in my mind. "A bow!" I exclaimed loudly to myself.

I carefully climbed up the tree that would become my sleeping spot for tonight. I grasped one of the branches and pulled myself up, steadily going up and away from the ground. I stood up after pulling myself up and looked around, I didn't know what I expected to come out of this because I still didn't see anything other than this damn jungle. I took a deep breath and looked up, just a bit farther up and I could get onto one of the tree's biggest branches.

The next branch was too far away from me to grab, my head sunk and I took another deep breath to concentrate. I took a couple steps back, carefully balancing on the branch and readied my hands. I then ran and jumped, my arms stretched out to grab my destination as soon as I got into range. My hands grasped my target mere seconds later and I once again pulled myself up then stood up while looking up. "Fuck...this is harder than it should be," I said to myself.

The rest of the climb was quite easy for me and after around 3 minutes I reached the big branch I was aiming for. I laid down on it and looked around once more. "Jeez..this place must be really huge," I saw nothing but leaves and trees all around me, I could barely even see my own ship. This made me feel slightly troubled, because how would I ever find my way out of here? Though this also meant that I could probably safely leave my ship behind for now. I made myself comfortable, which didn't make my resting place any more comfortable to sleep on and began to doze off.

Infiltrator Nr. 8
Somewhere in the Everfree Forest

I slowly yet steadily made my way through the jungle, every step taking me further away from the camp and deeper into the dark clutches of nature, yet it also brought me closer to my goal. The enthusiasm I had when I left the camp was pretty much all gone by now, replaced by feelings of uneasiness and the need to quietly traverse the landscape. The green thicket swallowed the sky long ago and I could barely see what was in front of my eyes, leaving my horn as the only source of light which I didn't dare use.

Occasionally I heard the chirping or buzzing of some jungle insects hiding away in even darker and deeper spots, away from sight and away from potential dangers while I was out in the open, alone and unarmed. Yet the sounds made by those insects brought me a sense of calm and reassurance that I wasn't alone in my struggle, that I wasn't the only one afraid of what's hunting out there in the open. I quietly swallowed, I should stop thinking like this before I start regretting this even more.

CRACK I heard a loud cracking noise that scared the living tartarus out of me and I jumped into a nearby bush. I shook in fear and couldn't control my frantic breath at all, the shock overwhelmed me like nothing before. I laid on the ground in the bush for a few minutes, listening in for more noises while trying to maintain some semblance of composure. I carefully poked my head out of the bush once I was sure that nothing around me was moving, all the while breathing quickly and shaking. I looked around and noticed a broken branch in front of the bush I was hiding in. I breathed a long sigh of relief as I realised that I spooked myself. "You are a damn moron.." I said to myself and got up after calming down and continued my journey.

That is until I heard noises once more, ones that weren't a result of my hooves stepping on things instead I-

STOMP. STOMP. STOMP.

It felt as if the ground quaked around me! I dashed away and hid in a hollowed out jungle tree log. The stomping grew louder and got closer to me, I once again shook in fear and despair on the verge of bursting into a desperate run for my life. I covered my mouth with a hoof to stop myself from breathing loudly and hoped to make it alive.

"STOMP. STOMP." It felt really close to me now, close to my hiding spot. One wrong move and I'd be-

"STOMP STOMP STOMP STOMP STOMP"

The monster was on the move again after stopping...I felt my very being shake with every step of this creature, yet the stomping grew quieter. This meant...it was going away! Or at least past me! I survived! I made it! Oh bless you whoever watched over me this very moment, I owe you for saving my life in this unforgiving place! I crawled out of the tree log that served as my hideaway and looked around. I got up once I was certain that nothing was coming towards me and resumed my journey while quietly hoping that this would be the only encounter of this night...

Object C-04 "Rex"
HIM Phoenix Crash Site

I woke up once the first daylight rays of the bright sun flashed over my eyes, as if to tell me that I should wake up early if I wished to survive. There was no alarm clock ringing in my ear and no comfortable bed to keep me from getting up, so I opened my eyes and sat up on the branch that served as my bed for the night followed by a long yawn. "Yaaaaaawn, at least my back doesn't hurt." I said and moved my head around a bit, causing satisfying sounds as things popped back into place.

I turned my eyes downwards towards the jungle ground below. "I didn't think I was that far up. Oh well, that's not an issue for me." I smiled and carefully stood up on the branch, preparing to leap down to the ground. I fastened the vine wrapped around my body that held my non-functional arms in place and jumped down shortly afterwards. I felt the air envelop my body as I rapidly descended, resulting in me feeling the next closest thing to a cool breeze. I kept my stoic yet confident facial expression and loose knees as the ground got closer and closer and then...

"CRASH OOOOOOOMMMPFFFF!" Instead of landing like a glorious hero who jumped out of a dropship straight into a great battle, I crashed face first in the dirt leaving a big imprint of my body in the ground. I groaned in both pain and annoyance while slowly getting up from the ground, once more covered in dirt and disappointed at my less than endearing display. I wiped the dirt off my face with a hand and some leaves then felt a warm liquid flowing out of my nose and down my face, which I quickly deduced to be blood pouring out of my broken nose. I firmly grabbed it with my synthetic hand and set the nose back into place with a rather audible crack. I breathed in and took in the smell of a fresh morning, which I felt would lead to an overall good day despite a bad start.

First things first, I walked up to the tree with the branch that served as my clothes rack and took my cleaning rag shirt which I then used to clean my face and nose some more before cleaning my hands with it. It wasn't raining anymore, it must have stopped raining sometime in the middle of the night since the ground was still somewhat wet. Since it wasn't raining, I couldn't wash myself so I'd remain a mud creature for a bit longer. "Good thing that I made sure to drink before going to sleep." I said to myself while putting the slightly muddy and bloody shirt back on the clothes branch.

With my basic morning hygiene routine out of the way, I moved on to the remains of my broken water collector. I collected the parts that I deemed usable for other possible projects of mine and tossed the rest onto a new trash pile. While there, I also took a couple mushrooms from my mushroom stack. They felt as looked bigger while also being more squishy. I ate them one by one and found out that they must have absorbed some water overnight. Some rummaging through my resources later and I had gathered the materials necessary for a new collector, then I returned to the spot of the old construction and with some effort and more attention to detail, built a slightly better water collector. "Still not as good as the ones in the standard kit." I sighed.

I returned for a moment to the self-made crater underneath my tree to retrieve my precious piece of sharp, durable metal. With no sharp rocks, fletchers or survival stores close by I had to make do with the only sharp thing that wasn't part of the ship or too big to be usable, like the boarding pad. I sat down in the shade of a big jungle tree, by my pile of green vines right next to the pile of wood and sticks. I was too big to hunt small creatures and too weak to hunt anything that could reasonably pose a health hazard to me, with a bow...and one arrow...I'd be able to somewhat pick and choose what to hunt from the safety of trees. I smiled, full of pride at my great yet slightly flawed idea and got to work.

Infiltrator Nr.8
Somewhere in the Everfree Forest

By the time that morning had come, I had a few more close calls with various predators that scoured the Everfree for their next meal. A couple times I had to resort to using my magic to conceal myself from them as I couldn't find any appropriate cover in time... This was a grave mistake on my part... Yet I somehow made it out without as much as a scratch, although my hooves were beginning to ache a bit. Who knew that walking and trotting through the jungle would cause that. A part of me couldn't wait to get back to the camp to tell my fellow infiltrators about my various misfortunes.

I felt immense relief upon seeing rays of sunlight pierce through the jungle thicket, that sight to behold filled me with energy and determination to push on and keep marching forward so that I may return as soon as possible. Not to mention the fact that most if not all hostile fauna has scuttled away into unexplored parts of the Everfree once the sun came up, which made the travel much safer. I couldn't accurately tell the current time of day or my exact location, all I knew was that every step brought me closer and closer to the place where something big has crashed.

I didn't know how much longer I'd have to travel and perhaps what I'd find there was just an uninteresting meteor that fell from beyond the skies, perhaps I'd make a great discovery that would allow us Changelings to bring Equestria to its knees once and for all and I'd get hailed as a hero! Or...maybe something dangerous has landed there? What if it was one of Twilight's magic experiments gone wrong? ...I had to stop thinking about it before it got too deep into my head... I shook my head then took a few deep breaths before continuing with my journey to the unknown.

Object C-04 "Rex"
HIM Phoenix Crash Site

It took me a good while, but after some struggling and more than a few unfortunate failures I managed to construct a bow good enough to fire an arrow with and hit something that was more than a couple meters away. At least I hoped so, because I wouldn't truly know until I got to test it out in the field. The arrow itself was as simple as it gets, a single chunk of metal attached to a straight stick. I had no feathers to fletch the arrow with, so it'd have to remain unfletched unless I somehow manage to shoot down a bird in this place.

I strapped the bow around my shoulder and got up, it was finally the time for me to go farther away from my camp than just a couple dozen meters in one direction. I had a small theory that basically stated that most animals close by fled after my ship crashed, this might explain why so far I have remained unbothered by predators even when I was wounded. I turned towards the sun and began walking forward, past the big, leafy jungle bushes and into the depths of the jungle.

I walked in a line for several minutes straight, trying to get away from the crash site in hopes of finding a good spot to lay low in and wait for some oblivious creature to walk past me and end up as my dinner. I held my only arrow in my right hand, occasionally glancing at it to admire my primitive craftsmanship with what few resources I had around me in this forsaken place. Suddenly, I heard something move in or through the bushes far away from me. It was a faint noise, but loud enough for my genetically modified ears to pick up.

Adrenaline flowed through my veins as the sound slowly moved closer and closer to me. This was my chance and I had to make it count, who knows when I'd have an opportunity like this one?! I looked around myself, put my arrow in between my teeth and swiftly climbed up one of the nearby trees while on my adrenaline rush. I climbed up high enough to be out of the direct line of sight of whatever could be going in this direction then took my bow out and prepared the arrow.

Around a minute later I saw something black, maybe slightly grey, come out of a bush. It didn't take me long to realise that this was a motherfucking insectoid! Even this place had those damn bastards roaming around! I bet it came here to look for some snake it could grab and drag back to its hive to turn into insect jelly for its brethren. Insect meat wasn't what I planned to eat, but I am not going to be picky here.

I aimed my bow at it and pulled the vine string, that's when I also took a slightly closer look and noticed that it didn't look like a common spelopede or megaspider. It was black instead of the common brown-ish colour and it had some sort of holes like a block of Swiss cheese while the horn looked like someone glued a lightning onto its forehead instead of it being curved like horns of most insectoids. The biggest difference was that it looked like an equine! I'd have to take a closer look at this thing once I was done, in the meantime I adjusted my aim and let go of the bowstring, causing the arrow to fly right for its head....

Infiltrator Nr. 8
Close to the Everfree Crash Site

I encountered several bushes in my way with no way around them, I hated to make noise in this place for obvious reasons but I had to go through them to continue onwards. Leaf noises filled my surroundings as I made my way through bush after bush, a minute later I managed to get out of the last bush that stood in my path. I stopped for a short second as something told me that I was...being watched, I decided to keep walking like normal but I couldn't shake off the feeling that something was observing me... Maybe if I paid no attention to it then it would leave me alone and would find something more interes- "THUD"

Object C-04 "Rex"
Somewhere in the jungle outside the crash site.

The arrow flew straight through the chitin of the insectoid's head, leaving a hole I could see through from the tree branch I stood on. The insectoid fell on the ground without as much as a single noise coming out of its maw.... The head landed in the mud, spraying green blood and brains across the jungle ground as I smiled at my successful first shot from my makeshift bow. "I'll be eating good tonight!" I said excitedly and climbed down the tree to not repeat my mistake from earlier then approached the corpse of my prey.

My first observation was that it didn't have any overlaying chitin plates like in insectoids commonly found all throughout the world, instead it's chitin seemed to be far more like skin. I touched it with a hand, this insectoid's chitin was far more flexible yet still as durable as regular chitin. I then put my hands inside one of the holes and found that they weren't wounds and instead were for some reason a part of this creature. Perhaps this was a bizzare form of cave or night camouflage?

I was about to pick up the dead insect when I suddenly felt... something strange. Something odd was tugging at me, tugging at my very being as if trying to tell me something. I don't know what it was but the tugging became weaker when my hand stopped touching the dead body, whic meant that something inside was causing it. I quickly traced where my arrow landed and separated the blood covered metal chunk from the arrow shaft. I turned the corpse over onto its back and with few swift moves cut its stomach open the long way along the entire stomach.

I took a deep breath and shoved my right hand deep into the still warm depths of the insectoid's body, causing it to spray green blood which covered a big portion of my arm, face and torso after my sudden, forceful entry. I wiped the blood off of my face with my synthetic hand while my other hand moved around the guts of the insect. The tugging became stronger whenever my hand moved closer towards it's chest area. I then began carefully maneuvering my hand while gauging the strength of the tugging I experienced.

The tugging stopped once my hand reached the insectoid's heart which was still beating for some unfathomable reason! I firmly grabbed it with my hand and pulled out with one swift move, causing even more blood to spray everywhere upon the exit of my hand. I held my hand out in front of myself and looked at the heart, it was still beating even though it was no longer inside a body...

I don't know why but...I felt compelled to just..... "CHOMP" I took a huge bite out of the heart, then another and another, the entire heart was gone mere seconds after the first bite. It tasted good, much better than I thought it would! Insectoids usually taste slimy or oily but this one had a unique sweet taste that I have never encountered in my entire life. I looked at the body once more, I noticed that the insectoid's meat wasn't the standard grey-ish olive colour and that instead it was a somewhat bright shade of green! On top of that I felt much more energetic after consuming the beating heart, I must have somehow consumed whatever kept it beating! I had to return to my camp first though before checking out the effects, so I picked the corpse up, threw it over my right shoulder which caused it to be even more covered in green blood and set off back "home".