Limitless Evolution As a Snake

Right, okay, thanks for that. Anyway, more pressing issue: how the hell am I supposed to get out of here with Hana just standing there staring at me like I’m dinner, or a get-out-of-jail-free card?

[System: Easy, my sentient zip tie. Make a distraction, cause a scene, do something. Also, quick side note, you look very sweet in your little bunny onesie.]

Shut up old mate, I need to get out of this. How is a snake meant to wear this anyway? I can just slither out.

[System: No, keep it on; I like it.]

I don’t have time to unpack that, mostly because Hana’s ears twitch and she’s looking at me like she already knows I’m cooking something up. Fine, a distraction. I don’t have arms, I don’t have fire breath, I don’t have anything except a body that fits through gaps a rat would call cozy, and apparently a very cute onesie that makes me look like a fleece burrito with a bunny ear glued on top.

So I do the only thing that makes sense: I throw myself off the edge of the table.

Not a dive, not a leap, just a boneless little sideways slump off the table edge. But the instant I make contact with the paper cup tower, [Squeaky-Toy Impact] fires, and out of my tiny snake body comes a sound like God himself stepped on a dog toy: one hundred and ten decibels of pure squeaking that punches through the break room like a flashbang grenade stuffed inside a children’s bath toy. Every single person grabs their ears. Hana grabs her ears. For three full seconds, the whole room is just people blinking at each other in ringing confusion, and I am already moving.

And I am gone, a tiny red streak vanishing under the gap beneath the vending machine, ears flopping on my stupid hat the whole way. Thermal Camouflage kicks in the second I’m in the shadows, my scales shifting cooler, dimmer, blending into the grey of the floor tile like I was never there at all.

I hear Hana’s footsteps, unhurried, almost bored, like she’s just going through the motions of a chase she already knows the ending to and fuck that; I don’t look back. I slither along the base of the wall, past crates, past a golem’s foot the size of a small car, through a gap in a busted pallet that no grown thing could ever fit through, and for one glorious moment I feel something like freedom.

[System: There it is, mate. That’s the stuff, proper little Houdini.]

Shut up and let me focus.

The gap opens into a maintenance corridor, and I spot a pipe immediately, a wide corroded thing bolted to the wall at knee height, and I nose into it without breaking my slithering pace. It’s dark, and it smells like rust and something dead, and I am absolutely fine with that. What I am less fine with is the way my tiny appendage hand-stubs keep catching on every single interior seam like they have a personal vendetta, snagging and releasing and snagging again the whole way up, my useless little T-rex situation contributing nothing except drag. Behind me through the pipes and walls, I can still hear Hana, not even running, just walking.

The footsteps keep coming, slow and patient and completely unbothered, and something about that, the total lack of urgency in them, makes my scales prickle. My heart is still going absolutely feral in my chest. I can feel it in my jaw, I can feel it in my imaginary tail. The adrenaline is wearing off and what’s replacing it is this horrible creeping awareness that I am a very small snake in a very crazy situation, and she is still just walking. Go away, please, I’m borderline begging. I am so tired. I just want to get back to my little dog bed in the middle of the crossroad of pipes.

The pipe eventually spits me out into the crossroads, my crossroads, the one spot down here that actually smells like something other than rust and despair, and I could genuinely cry. A few rats scatter the second they see me, and I don’t even have to do anything menacing; they just take one look at a red noodle in a bunny costume and decide today isn’t the day. Cowards. Smart cowards, but cowards.

And there it is, my dog bed. Sitting in the middle of the crossroads like a monument to good decisions, fluffy and gross and mine, and I pour myself into it like water finding the lowest point in a room. Oh sweet Jesus, I made it home.

I lie there for a solid minute just breathing, replaying the whole thing in my head: the coffee tower, my new family, Hana’s bored little smirk, that whole cursed sprint through the walls of the warehouse, and something occurs to me that wasn’t there before.

Am I not shaking?

Old mate, I’m not freaking out right now.

[System: Yeah, I noticed. Good on ya.]

Like, a few days ago that whole thing would’ve had me curled up in a ball somewhere sobbing about how I used to have hands. Now I’m just tired. Just normal tired, not oh-god-I’m-going-to-die tired.

[System: That’s growth, mate. You’re getting used to this whole "small vulnerable murder-noodle" gig. Bit grim when you put it that way but yeah, that’s you toughening up.]

Huh. Neatly wholesome, I’ll take it.

I don’t remember actually falling asleep; I just remember being awake and then not being awake and then being awake again, and when I open my eyes the crossroads is exactly the same, dark and damp and smelling faintly of my own dog bed musk, which I’ve decided to be proud of instead of disgusted by.

Old mate, why do I still feel like I’ve had four coffees?

[System: Oh yeah, that. So, quick heads up, whatever you eat or drink is probably gonna sit in your system for about a week.]

WHAT?