Chapter 2: Welp, waking up sure is a dream come undone

Now, where was I?

 

The wind whizzed past my ears as I snapped out of the pain-induced-stupor I had put myself under. I had been contemplating many things while under, but most of all, was the fact that I talked to a glowing blue firefly in my imagination that was not a figment of my imagination, that then, for absolutely no reason at all, threw me over the literal edge of the world.

 

Oh right. I am falling forty nine thousand feet straight down.

 

[Distance to Surface- Forty two thousand feet and counting.]

 

I did not need to know that, discount siri-in-my-head.

 

[Estimated time of arrival at the surface-]

 

Don’t tell me, I do not wanna know that right now. Tell me something useful!

 

[...]

 

[Your velocity, shortly before arrival, will be 93.9271 kilometres per hour, or 26.0909 metres per second.]

 

Wut?

 

[Adjusting for stupidity.]

 

Being American is not the same as being stupid, damn it!

 

[Calculations complete.]

 

[You will hit the ground at 85.5989 feet per second, or about 58 miles an hour] Why can’t the one dude who interested me have an ordinary brain?

 

I heard that! Also, can I survive that? Siri?

 

[...]

 

Oh come on!!! Is there nothing here that can somehow be used to help me?!

 

Do I got a magical pocket on me that I can use to jerry-rig an impromptu helicopter?(A/N to those who don’t get this reference, bite me, I dare ya.) Nope, no magic pocket on me, at least, that I can feel with my hands.

 

My eyes refuse to open for some goshdarned reason. It ain’t like lasting [About four minutes] more will do it any good… You were open when I had started to fall. Why in the name of a burnt out wick have you decided to glue your protective covers shut? Give me some protective covers that can shield me from danger till I meet my gruesome death in four minutes.

 

…

 

HEY! I asked ya not to tell me that! Why in the name of a pelicans shitty backside did ya tell me the ETA?

 

[Exact ETA remains undisclosed.]

 

[A rock shall meet an egg in roughly three and-a-half-minutes time.]

 

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. (hey, don’t look at me. I don’t got the brainspace to think of colourful alternate words.)

 

Any last words? Maybe of the variety that will allow you into the kind of afterlife that doesn’t make the people in it wish for an afterlife?

 

How is that supposed to make sense? Dunno. My mind carried me places. But to the crux of the matter at hand. Or at sky.

 

You are blind and bereft of any possible ways to survive. All you got on you is your… What is that? A blanket? No, it’s got a hole in it. A sweater? No, it’s got only the one hole in it.

 

It’s a poncho. A what now? A poncho. Ya know… the warm fuzzy clothes used in cold places?

 

…

 

The stuff they always showed Clint Eastwood wearing in standoffs?

 

Ohhhhhhh! Gotcha. Now, whatcha gonna do?

 

What else? I’m praying that death truly means I can reach the end of that goddamn tunnel. Do you know how many ‘me’s have told me they saw some light at the end of some goddamn tunnel when I wiped them out? I do not. But there were certainly more than ten.

 

Speaking of which, where are the rest of the ‘me’s? Why the heck am I the only one pestering ya? And why in the blazes is me speech pattern’s gone all outta whack? I dunno what sort of mischief you wrought unto me you damn blue glowworm.  I swear on all that is pure and righteous to swat away at ur annoying buzzing light.

 

Yep, this joke’s gone on long enough. Fall asleep already you damn pest of an interesting find.

 

 You goddamn flying sonnuva…

 

Zzzzzzz

It is said that all good stories start with a bang. This story starts with the reason for the bang falling from the sky at thirty miles per hour short of turning back time using a certified classic vehicle.

 

Unlike what would have been expected in other places, this place was a tiny bit… special. Three inches before the U.F.O- Unidentified Falling Object impacted the earth and got disfigured to the point where it would be difficult to differentiate the insides from the outsides, a soft golden field rose from the earth and cushioned the object, breaking the fall while still allowing not a single grain of dust to rise from the point of impact.

 

The thing, which was wrapped in an overly large piece of cloth, stayed still inside the sense of security provided by the last remains of its last life.

 

[Congratulations. You are the first to discover this island. What do you wish to name it?]

 

Suddenly, there seemed to be a storm brewing over the previous cloudy, yet still extremely blue skies. The clouds darkening ominously and thunder rumbling in the distance.

 

The faraway thunder disturbed the lone tenant of the so-called poncho and caused it to speak unintelligibly to the air for a few syllables.

 

You are reading story By Strength And Guile at novel35.com

[Roger. This island will henceforth be called Dvarka.]

 

Instantly, the faraway thunder ceased, with the sky again showering endless positivity and light to our protagonist, who would not wake before the changes caused by the rapidly changing environment and a… catalyst caused.

 

Not far from the resting place (RIP, our unnamed main character.) of the person trying to emulate a slime, was a cave. In the cave, there was a door. Through the door, there was a hallway, through which lay many traps for the unwary, untrained, and the plain old unlucky.

 

At the end of the trial, lied, you guessed it! Another door. Through this door however, there lay a sleeping old man with a weird hobby of killing young kids for kicks. Of course, this description might lead to some form of protest from the old man.

 

But what can an old dude written in specifically for a training arc do to the narrator introducing him to the audience? It is not like I am a physical entity, capable of being harmed.

 

The old man flicked a finger, and suddenly, I could not sense him anymore. How annoying. Anyway, back to our protagonist, sucking on her thumb in the middle of nowhere! How am I gonna move the plot forward?

 

(Several head-scratching moments later)

 

Damnit! I give up! Hit the fast-forward plot-contrivance button used by lazy authors in second-rate books! Hopefully being self-aware helps us a bit…

 

One fast-forward button being hit later…

 

I woke up with a blistering headache. Not that that is anything new. What was new, however, was that I woke up in my bed. Extremely unusual for me. Usually the bastards would pester me to high heavens for their turn by now.

 

I tried to bring my hand up to over my head, where I usually leave my phone, only for my hand to slap me.

 

What?

 

Oye! Y’all! At least have the decency to ask before you hijack a body part. But this is new. Usually I would just get booted once you decide to start having fun. Hello? Oye, y’all ghosting me now?

 

I mean even more than normal? Seeing as you are all ghosts in my head? Am I making sense? Whatever. You don’t want to talk? Fine. Be like that.

 

I sighed and dragged my unnaturally soft hand down my face. What? Why was my hand so soft? Sure, I don’t do hard labour for a living, but my hand feels as soft as my four-year-old niece’s. Why in the name of Mickey Mouse’s springlike tail are my hands so soft?

 

I pried open my very tired (I do not appreciate being woken up on a weekend, thank you very much) eyes just a tiny sliver to look at my hand and snapped my eyes open, as far as they could go. If someone were to look at me, I’d wager that they’d see my eyes fall right out of my skull with how far my eyelids rose. My eyebrows probably met my hairline, like a socially inept yet extremely emotional animated father character’s.

 

I forgot my tiredness and shot up from my sleeping position, my back completely vertical, in stark contrast to my lower body, which was still comfortable under my sheets. I stared at my-hand-that-is-not-my-hand and hoped that blinking would solve all of the inconsistencies-

 

Wait. Since when could I just sit up from a sleeping position without help from my hands? What in the good name of tomato soup as the de-facto soup choice is going on?

 

First off, my hands, they are not the hands that I had when I last slept. The fingers are daintier (that is the word right? When something looks smaller and more delicate at the same time?) for one. But the real kicker was that the bloody fingers are the wrong lengths.

 

I had a fascination with my fingers with my fingers as a kid, I wanted to know why some fingers were longer than others. The habit of admiring my fingers when stressed never left me as an adult. So I know exactly how my hand looks.

 

The hand that I was moving about was not my own. My thumb is not that long and skinny, I have a bit of a hammer shaped thumb, but now it just looks like an artificially made thumb made after the image of a generic ‘perfect’ thumb.

 

My fingers, too, were different. Thumbs do not count as fingers. Humans have four fingers and one opposable thumb. That will be my little tidbit of information for the day. My middle finger is longer than I remember, in comparison to my other fingers, my index finger is now my second longest finger, not my ring finger.

 

That was not all either, the curvature of my fingers were different too. My hand felt so… unbound. I never noticed it before, but my hand felt different, more… liberated? Is that the right word for it? Yep. That is what I’m rolling with.

 

That wasn;t the only thing, however. My thumb could now go on an upside-L shape, which I most certainly could not do before.

 

Enough talk regarding my hand. I also apparently no longer need my glasses, as I could see my hand without them all this time without realising. Why in the hell did this even happen? Is this some rare sickness I get to name?

 

Will I get to meet the Avengers in my hospital bed- Wait, I ain’t no kid. Damn for the passage of time being equally cruel to all. I would have liked some signatures too.

 

“Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit”

 

I froze as I let out my normal morning greeting to the world at large. My voice sounded… different. Like someone somehow filled my lungs with helium, while also somehow altering it to sound cutesy, instead of a looney tunes impression. What in the name of a hyuk is going on?

 

First my hands are different, I can see clearly again, I got a clear head for once, and absolutely nothing makes any sense whatsoever.

 

I got up from the (it ain’t my bed, seems obvious in retrospect, I mean, the resemblance to a generic hotel bed is incredibly uncanny.) bed, and immediately fell to my left. Apparently, it was not just my hands or voice that was different, but my entire body.

 

For one, I had all of my toes! I had lost my left toe to Mark some time ago, the dude’s hunger pangs were wild to say the least. The pain had brought forth Bruce, who in turn broke my hand, which brought forth Steph, who was actually of some help and called the ambulance for me.

 

Real nice of ya to put me under a shit ton of debt before I even got to the hospital, Steph! I really appreciate it!

 

The extra toe really knocked me off-balance, hence me falling over. Best I can tell, either I’m just as large as I was in my last life, which is frankly extremely unlikely, given that I was 6’2, with a build that looked neither buff nor fat, and that the bed, which should be, like, two feet off the ground if it  really is a generic hotel bed, comes up to my chest.

 

Did someone half-assedly ‘Honey, I shrunk the kids’ me? What the hell dude. Uncool. Maybe that is why I look different too? Did I get mutated? Do I got superpowers? I should try…

 

“Umm, Abracadabra!” Nope, got zilch. Um, “Shalakazam!” still nothing. “Bippity, boppety boo!”

 

“Boo!”

 

“Aargh! Who said that?” The person who added the extra ’boo’ was nowhere to be found. Was it my imagination? No, that guy went off for a hike with the others.

 

Was that wooden door three feet away from me always there? God, how sleepy am I? Why on goddamn earth am I so hunkered out that I can fail to see a literal huge-ass door in front of me.

 

“I said that, but I think you do not expect me, Look down, large human.”

 

Wut? Where is the mysterious voice coming from? I looked down, and before me, in stereotypical dreamworks animation ‘old and wise mentor style’, standing on two feet with a cane, was a tiny-ass turtle. About a quarter my height.

 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Why in the name of hell-”

 

Next time, On Turtle Ball X-