Limitless Evolution As a Snake

I lay in the mud like a cellophane noodle, smoking a little, wheezing a lot, covered in frog blood and acid slime that was already starting to itch in places I did not know I had.

The crowd said nothing. Not a cheer, not a boo, just a big fat wall of silence like everyone forgot how mouths work.

Yeah. That’s right, fear me.

Somewhere in there I start humming. Not on purpose, just keeps happening.

Totally planned that. The flailing, the screaming on the inside, the part where I basically threw my own body like a dart with no aim, all part of the plan.

[System: Mate, that was not a plan. That was a spaghetti noodle having a seizure. 10 out of 10 though, not gonna lie]

Ten out of ten. I’m going to need everyone to sit with that for a second; the system, my own system, looked at what just happened and went ten out of ten. I am a genius; I am built different. I am also lying face down in a swamp, but that is beside the point.

[System: I said the flail was a ten out of ten. You as a person are like a two]

Rude. I almost died back there, and this is the thanks I get.

I try to suck in a breath and mostly just suck in swamp gas instead, which is not great, but at this point my body is running on pure caffeine high and adrenaline anyway. Little puffs of steam come off my scales where the acid is still fizzing away at old frog guts. I probably smell like a chemistry class had a baby with a dumpster.

[System: Gaining IP and exp right now btw. Lots of it, not gonna tell you numbers though, that would ruin the mystery]

Cool, cool, love that for me. Very healthy way to run a system full of secrets.

[System: Speaking of mystery, you want double IP for the next fight?]

My whole wheezing little snake body perks up at that. Double IP. Double points, double whatever mysterious currency this thing uses to make me less useless.

Yes. Absolutely yes, I would trade a kidney for double IP, except I do not have kidneys anymore; I have a snake tube where my guts used to be, so the deal is even better now.

Wait.

There has to be a catch. There is always a catch; the system does not just hand out double anything for free. That is not how any of this has worked so far.

What’s the catch

[System: Next fight, you can only use squeaky toy impact and your body, no knife.]

I stare at nothing for a second. The mud bubbles somewhere nearby; a frog leg floats past.

Wait what. What do you mean my body, not my knife? my beautiful tail-knife? the one thing keeping me alive??

[System: Yep. Just you and the quack quack]

I lie there in the mud a second longer, letting that sink into my slime-soaked brain. No knife. Just noise and my dumb little body against whatever horrible thing crawls out of that gate next.

Uhhh ok. Sure, whatever.

The gate at the far end of the pit groans, metal grinding against metal like it hasn’t been oiled. Something scrapes and clicks behind it, slow and heavy, and my stomach drops straight through the mud.

Ah, I’m doomed.

The gate finally cracks open all the way and something big skitters out, and my whole brain just goes Oh no.

It looks like someone bolted a snapping turtle onto a blue crab and then dropped the whole thing in a sewer for ninety years. Garbage can lid for a shell, rusted and flaking at the edges like old pipe metal. Four thick legs that click against the stone like knives on a cutting board. And the mouth. God, the mouth. A beak the size of my whole body, and I just know that thing bites down at like three thousand PSI, because that is exactly my luck today.

It doesn’t wait around either. It sees me lying in the mud like a little transparent gummy worm and just goes for it, charging straight across the pit with its beak wide open like it already ordered me for lunch.

Great. Just me and the squeaky toy against the garbage crab.

The beak is basically kissing distance from my face and my brain is just gone, completely offline, nothing in there but static and the word *nope*, and I hit the button in my head that says [Squeaky Toy Impact] right as the beak is basically kissing distance from my face.

The world explodes into a sound so stupid it should not be legal. A big fat squeak, high and awful, right at 110 decibels, and it slams into that crab’s face like a sonic sledgehammer. The thing screeches and just stops dead, front legs buckling, pincers slapping up over the sides of its own head like it’s trying to hold its own skull together.

[System: Oh that’s DELICIOUS, mate. Shell sensors are basically its ears. You just full-volume screamed into its brain]

It stumbles forward blind, legs scrabbling everywhere, still clutching its own head like a toddler having a meltdown, and I don’t waste the opening. I whip myself flat and shoot straight underneath its front legs, slick and disgusting with frog blood and acid slime, basically a banana peel with a face.

The crab’s next step comes down right on my back.

It slips.

Oh, it slips beautifully. Both front legs shoot out sideways like a cartoon character on ice, and the whole garbage-lid body pitches backward, flipping heels over head except crabs don’t have heels, so it’s more like shell over beak over legs, all at once, midair, this big ugly rusted mass of turtle-crab spinning through space in total slow motion.

It comes down hard.

Right on the single rebar spike some idiot left sticking out of the pit wall.

There’s a sound I am never going to forget, wet and final, metal punching straight through soft underbelly meat, and the crab just stops. No twitching, no screeching, nothing. Just hangs there upside down, skewered, legs drooping limp on either side like a marionette with its strings cut.

I lie there in the mud, wheezing, steaming, absolutely covered in things I don’t want to name, staring up at my dead accidental sewer crab trophy.