"...Wow. You sure got yourself together fast. I'd think that shrinking to the size of a snake would be pretty rattling. Well, then again, I AM a snake now, so... Fair's fair," Hyng said, shaking his head. If he had arms, he'd at least shrug his shoulders, but, well...

Yeah. Snake problems.

With that problem solved at the very least, Hyng turned his attention to the two kobolds hovering overhead.

"...Damn, we're pretty short, aren't we?"

Shit, right. He was speaking though telepathy and not an actual voice. Had to get used to controlling that.

"A-anyways... Er... Yeah. Jeff and... Neix, was it? Alright. I'll keep those names in mind. Saffron, though... You know, in retrospect, if you're THAT small and naming yourself after a spice..."

He trailed off as Neix made her own bad followup joke.

"...You open yourself to jokes like that. But hey, what works, works, right? Though... Assuming you two kobolds won't suddenly go feral and eat us, we all still need to find some sorta food. Right. All in favor of finding a way out once spider-girl over there stops freaking out like someone-"

Hyng stopped his half-venomous remark when he heard the ever-so-slight sound of someone else introducing themselves. Well, the more people that could communicate, the better... Right? Otsune... Sounded Japanese. No matter.

The snake turned his attention to the source and found himself staring at some bastard child of a dog and a crocodile (or was it an alligator?). Wow. Chimeras, too? Did that even constitute as one...?

...

Well, whatever. No point questioning the weird shit that seemed to have happened to all of them.

"Otsune, was it? One more to the party won't hurt."

With that invitation out of the way, Hyng realized that he had... Forgotten the ending to his first remark. Damn.

"...So. All in favor of waiting for spider-girl to stop wailing before we head out?"

Thankfully, both the psychic snake, named Hyng, and Mox managed to calm some of the others down... why was it that the ones that still looked remotely humanoid freaked out the most? I supposed Mox was the exception, but still... I tried to get a word in more than once, but our group just kept talking, and, now apparently included a croco-dog... dogodile? Some bizarre mixture of those two things, named Ostune. We also learned that the tiny, flying girl was named Saffron, and her learning that she was tiny seemed to calm her down... and then Neix decided to make fun of my name, leaving me to only reply with "Well, I dunno, ask my mother, she gave me that name, and I'm even WORSE at naming things... but, no, I don't have any food on me... we should get out of here as quickly as we can. I have a feeling there's nothing to eat in this dark, wet cave unless you feel like gambling on eating wild mushrooms," I chuckled at remembering the last session I had in D&D, which included several varieties of mushrooms... and one character who decided to sample them all. Long story short, it ended hilariously for that character. The psychic snake had the right idea, asking if we were all in favor of leaving this place. I shouted "I am!... and yeah, name's Jeff," Pretty much as soon as he finished his question... of course, it was still very weird to me that a snake could not only talk, but do so telepathically. Of course, since I assumed he was in the same boat as everyone else, he also broadcast some random chatter to all of us, which may or may not have been intended to just be thoughts, and nothing else.

Following her introduction, Otsune expected at least some sort of acknowledgment from the other little monsters –such an act would definitively prove them sane, and on her level- but instead, a small girl who appeared to be half spider went into a noisy, stuttering panic. While she sympathized with the girl on some level, given that it proved her to be just as baffled by the situation as Otsune, she found herself irate with the drider’s high-pitched gibbering. Wah-wah-wah-wah, why!? Wah, wah, wah! thought the snapjaw, derisively. It’s not that bad. I’m not even half human, and you don’t see me complaining. Of course, she said nothing. In a time like these, venting her veiled stress on an easy target would help nobody. Otsune did her best to focus her attention elsewhere, as she felt that any attempt on her part to calm Ariana down would only exacerbate the problem, and listened to the displeasure of the kobolds. They, at least, didn’t seem averse to getting heated. The one who named itself Mox -Special snowflake, huh?- demanded that the others forgive him for his verbosity before trying his luck with the spider girl. Though he made a halfway decent attempt to take charge of the situation, pretty much nobody seemed to be paying attention to him.

Another critter, this one a blue snake, joined Mox in an attempt to bestill the bamboozled drider, calling himself Hing. Perhaps he was Chinese? Even if it’s only names, having a trace to the world I know is welcome. Otsune found herself distracted by the imp, proclaiming her name to be ‘Saffron’. Uh, okay. It seems to me like people would be wanting to preserve whatever ties they might have to the real world, not reinventing themselves at the first opportunity. Well, I guess this is a pretty big shift. Makes sense that some people would want to embrace the change.

Only a few seconds passed before one of the creatures noticed her for the first time. Given her tranquility, it didn’t really surprise Otsune that she might sink into the background, but receiving no attention until now caught her a little off guard. ”That makes at least two of us with a level head,” she told him in reply. Her eyes wandered over every member of the ragtag bunch of misfits. In addition to the shrill drider, Mox the goblin, Saffron the demon kindergartener, Hing the snake, Jeff the lizard-goblin, and Neix the other lizard-goblin, there were two odd cats and some kind of bird-girl. Something else lingered at the edge of the cave—a dark, sinister, hunched-over shape that put the snapjaw on edge. Some sort of gooey thing with a ribbon sat nearby as well, silent thus far. Otsune informed whoever was listening, ”This cave is quaint and all, but I am ready to leave."

"... Stops freaking out. Stops. Freaking. Out."

For a few moments, Ariana had been panicking. But now she was feeling rather angry. Okay, she could guess all these... things were people too. Which in fact made her quite a bit angry. Any nervousness and fear was shattered in a few moments with a storm of rising anger, fire burning up through the tiny girl's frame. The one who had tried to calm her down, now, was forgotten for the moment, as she furiously rounded on the others.

"WHY AREN'T YOU FREAKING OUT MORE?!" she snapped, pointing an accusatory finger, "You're all in the same situation as me, right?! Hell, I have it better then a lot of you! At least it's just my legs that are a spider! There's a snake, and dinosaur people, and... and... what the hell is wrong with you that you aren't freaking out?! Are you all idiots?!"

Ariana trembled for a few moments, then buried her face in her hands.

"I want to go home. I just want to go home. I don't want to have a spider for legs. I just want to go home."

"Why wouldn't I calm down quickly? Nobody's gonna eat me and being tiny and flying is better than burn scars," the imp pointed out. Then again, she had arms and legs whilst he... didn't. She was a bit jealous about the telepathy; people would probably have difficulty hearing her very well from a distance unless her lung capacity now had no bearing on volume. That might be kinda handy if she got a good opportunity to sing for a crowd, actually.

The expression she gave to Neix was more than a little peeved... but unfortunately, on her current body, it simply served to make Saffron look petulant rather than intimidating. She had the strangest desire to go round behind the kobold, find the end of their tail and... chomp. That'd show them.

It seemed the one barrier to their leaving was the upset spider-girl. It didn't seem like reasonable arguments were helping with that and Saffron couldn't pick her up like she really wanted to. She settled for flying over and giving the girl's arm a hug. "We're not gonna find a way home sitting in a cave, are we? Besides, your legs are pretty cool. Cutest spider ever."

"WHY AREN'T YOU FREAKING OUT MORE?!" Simba didn't know who yelled that but he could easily which direction it came from but it honestly was a good question. In his case though it was a combination of actively trying to stay calm and the fact that it beat drowning.

He turned to face the twotailed cat again. "Let me guess, you want to go and check that out?" In his eyes it was probably the smart thing to do, but who knew what those creatures were like and what they wanted so he decided to leave the decision to his conversation partner.

"Let me guess, you want to go and check that out?"

Calypso looked uneasily in the direction where she could hear shouting. It appeared that the creatures were multiplying in numbers, and truthfully, getting closer was the last thing that she wanted to do. However, if they were human at one point, perhaps it would be safe to get a little closer.

“I suppose we should.” She said doubtfully to her feline friend. “It would be best to find out if they are friendly sooner, rather than later.”
She puffed up her fur to make herself look a little larger, and flicked her tails for courage, before starting forward. She didn't know what was going to happen, but she was going to put her best foot, er paw, forward.

@VitaVitaAR@Raineh Daze

Mox rubbed his head in frustration. "How the hell am I supposed work with this now?", he thought. It was then that a small girl with wings decided to help out and hugged the spider girl, comforting her on the matter. She did have the right idea though, so Mox played along. "Yeah, the girl's right, having spider legs ain't so bad." He agreed, his hand crawling through the air as he mentioned the legs. "You could do all kinds of cool stuff, like walking up walls? That's fun right?" However, it was then that the spider started sobbing about wanting to go home. Mox sighed and felt sorry for the girl. He sat down next to her on her other side and crossed his legs. "Listen, whatever this is, it ain't home, and we ain't going home either. I had to die to get in this situation. The point is... if there IS a way home, it's not gonna be found cryin' and sulking around in this place, ya hear me?"

There were something inherently wrong with the situation she was in, but she wasn't quite sure why she felt in such a manner. Her eyes lazily opened as she woke, revealing to her the foliage that had somehow clumped itself over her form. Stifling a yawn, she moved to bat the flora away from her body with an arm, the drowsiness encompassing her mind concealing the vines that moved instead. Her vision now cleared, eyes half-lidded trickled towards the sound of voices, beholding the sight of a congregation of creatures. Mixtures of fauna and man, beasts of fantasy, monsters. That was what they were. The jarring sight was not quite so jarring, having seen such creatures in her dreams before.

Amelia rose from her place on the ground, instinct moving her legs even as the vines of her new body carried her towards her destined location. As she nearly entered the clearing, a sudden tug from the area of her abdomen stopped her from moving any closer than 10 feet towards the group, a curious feeling to be sure. Looking downwards towards her chest, she was surprised to see white wool where there once was pink skin. Even curiouser was the new apparent curvature of her body, hiding her stomach from her downwards view, as well as vines where her arms should be. The human turned monster deigned the peculiarities no mind, believing it to be a change caused by the strange dream. Instead, she lay back onto the ground once more, suddenly aware of the feeling of a vine of sorts beneath her belly, and observed the congregation from the sidelines. She would learn of her situation within the dream soon enough- Oh, look. A butterfly with a human body. Cute.

"There, there." Flapping her wings towards the rather agitated spidergirl, Khari tilted her head to the side before awkwardly wiggling her new appendages. "At least we're still alive and healthy. Even if we're not human anymore. Better to make the best of the situation and adapt faster since we don't know if there are hostile beings around this place. So in a way, getting used to this quickly would help out with our overall chances of survival than wasting time panicking." The words were said slowly but steadily, and the harpy herself was moving her body about in random movements to see what kind of range she could achieve at the same time.

The spider girl decided to shout at everyone, delaying our efforts to leave this cave even further, and I tried to respond, but, a couple faces I didn't recognize came into view. One was obviously a harpy, a strange mashing of bird and human anatomy, and, oddly almost always female... this one was no exception, and she tried her best at flying, but didn't exactly seem comfortable with it, while another, a sheep that looked to be attached to some vines, also came into view. I would have said something, but the sheep decided to fall asleep. The obvious joke of the sheep counting sheep was too obvious, even for the likes of me to blurt out. "Well... as soon as everyone's calm, we can get outta here... I feel like we're going to all need to work together, anyways against... er... whatever might await us out there, so we should be patient," I ended up saying, still somewhat impatient to just leave this place, and see the sun, again. I didn't care if I DID have sunlight sensitivity like kobolds typically did in the books, I just wanted to get out of this dark, gross cave, and see what this world looked like. Did it have a blue sky like mine? Did it have a singular moon, similar to Earth's? More importantly... life is clearly possible in this place, so, what other lifeforms might we meet if we JUST STEPPED OUTSIDE? While I was basically shouting in my mind to just get up and go, outwardly, I was just sitting next to the pool of water, somewhat closer to everyone else than I was, given that I knew they were at least friendly... though, I had to wonder if the snake in our group still possessed venom... a likely possibility, given his small size.

~Neix~

The female Kobold rolled her eyes at the spiders outburst. Wow, a bit of a whiny little brat. She shook her head, frowning.

"Wow, spider." She scoffed. "Don't get your cute little legs in a knot. You don't think we're all freaking out or want to go home?" She looked to the ground. "Because I sure as hell would rather not be a lizard, even if it's kinda cool." That was all she said to the spider, though. She didn't want to either upset her further, plus her whining was a bit annoying. "The others are right. We ain't gonna accomplish anything sitting around here, are we?" She then turned to look at a few of the others gathered she hadn't exactly met yet. Introducing herself at this point was probably moot, so she let it be.

Instead the Kobold walked a bit away from the gathered group, taking a seat and crossing her legs, folding her arms against her chest.

"As soon as you guys get your butt in gear, then we might be able to get on with this."

Simba knew that finding out whether or not the other creatures were friendly was a good reason to talk to them, but it was still a risk. "Yeah we have to find out some way, but we should still be careful. In fact if something happens you may want to hide behind me. My size should at least make me appear as the bigger threat."

While Simba hoped his companion didn't take his comment the wrong way he was more concerned about her getting hurt in case of a fight. Of course he was worried about himself too but he believed he was the physical stronger of the two. Nervously he made his way to the group.

... Well... the... tiny... tiny girl who had latched onto her to hug her was cute at least, even if Ariana wasn't exactly too capable of focusing on that sort of thing. For a few moments, she took a deep breath. Her legs were cool? Whatever, she still had a spider for legs and that didn't exactly seem very cool to her. She wanted human legs. She wanted to be home, not... here, wherever it was. Why would she even have a spider for legs?!

Then the one scaly guy said... said he'd died to get here. Ariana shook her head, eyes wide. No. She hadn't died. How could she have died? She was just walking home when... there was no way that could have happened to her at all.

... At the very least though the harpy said moving out of the cave was a good idea... Ariana, even in her moment of fear and anger, couldn't deny that... maybe it'd help. Maybe they'd get back home faster.

Then the other lizard thing spoke.

"... Oh... because EVERYONE's accepting it as freakishly well as you, huh?! You... stupid, scaly idiot!" she snapped, "EVERYONE should just forget their families or whatever instantly, right?! You just need to shut up!"

Fury had overtaken her fear now. Oh, because she was upset and wanted to go home she should be patronized and scoffed at?! Her main set of eyes glared daggers at the scaly thing, her hands balled into fists. It was only a small amount of rational thought that made her turn away and start to head out.

Only because it might help her get home faster.

"...Whoa. I can see this going about as well as I'd expect, which is to say not very well at all," Hyng said, shaking his head as he slithered out towards what he assumed to be the exit to the cave. "Still, though... Fuck, I died, then? What did I die- oh. Right. Explosions. Metal. Water. Damn, I'm an idiot."

The spider-girl was likely going to have to come to terms with that eventually; not just that she was dead, but also that returning to her old life would likely be next to impossible. It was strange enough that they had reincarnated (and that he himself owed his Buddhist parents an apology for denying that aspect of their faith), but that alone was already a gross violation of the laws of science. To say nothing of the fact that half of them were fantasy creatures...

Maybe the insanity of daily life had jaded him to some extent. There was a possibility that that was the case. At the very least, it'd explain why he wasn't having a nervous breakdown.

The exit to the cave they were in led to what seemed to be a larger cave, which was... Admittedly pretty annoying, but at least it explained the relative dimness of the light in there. This cavern seemed to branch off in a bunch of other directions, but two things caught Hyng's attention.

One: The exit of the cave was wide open, and it seemed to be early morning given the light streaming in.

Two: The ground was littered with corpses, both human and not. Blood, of course, was EVERYWHERE. Mostly dried, though. Mostly.

"...What the flying fuck happened in here...?" Hyng mused, noting that most of the corpses had their weaponry and armor stripped from their bodies; those that weren't bare were usually mutilated beyond efficient use. Most of the dead had wounds that were pretty clean-cut, all things considered, so... In essence, the answer to his question probably didn't need to be said.

"Actually, you know what? Never mind. I'm heading out to explore; hell if I'm sticking around this place."

With that said, Hyng navigated through the battlefield, attempting not to move over any of the corpses or blood. Be it out of respect or out of disgust, well... Either would do as an excuse.

The entrance to the cavern, at least, was considerably less in terms of being a bloodbath. Contrary to the dreary atmosphere of that hellhole, the grass around the place seemed to have been untouched. Which was... Strange, but probably not relevant to the situation at hand. Damned if it wasn't trampled on, though, but that was to be expected.

"So. Uh... We just wanna pick a direction and go?"

The forest seemed pretty tranquil... Well, for now, at least. Hyng wasn't quite sure if that was a good sign or not, but there were probably better places to hunker down in than a cave full of the dead.

~Neix~

@VitaVitaAR
@PKMNB0Y

Wooooow.

someone just went off the deep end. When did she ever say she was calm? The accusation just made Neix snarkier than she usually was. In fact, it sort of pissed her off and considering she already wasn't exactly in the most stable of conditions...well...

"Oh, excuuuuuuse me princess" She hissed at the spider. Huh, she could hiss. Good to know. "Not everyone has to freak out and be a whiny little baby like you do! I just graduated college! In fact, I had it pretty good. You think I want to fucking be here? Because I sure as hell fucking don't."

Yeah, okay, that was a little bit harsh but...well...she honestly couldn't help it. She just...well, she wanted to get out of here. That's what she wanted to do.

Turning away from the spider girl with a grumble, she followed after the snake ignoring anything else the girl or anyone else might have said for that matter. She didn't want to say anything else, or deal with them at the moment. Besides, as soon as she stumbled into the next room, her thoughts quickly turned into something else.

Something really bad must have happened here.

"Well, we missed a party." Neix mused morbidly. Too bad most of the stuff looked in fairly bad condition and looked like it couldn't be used with any degree of efficiency. She didn't linger though, she shared Hyng's sentiments of getting the hell out of dodge before whatever did this came back. She would rather like to not be made into lizard jerky.

"Well, we don't really have much of a choice, do we?" She replied to Hyng. "Hanging around here's a bad idea, and I don't think we're gonna find anything useful on the bodies." As morbid as that sounded, she'd steal anything she could from these dead schmucks if it mean she could survive better in...wherever the fuck this was.

As Simba made his way to the other creatures the group apparently decided to go somewhere else. Since he had no idea what else to do he kept following them, but he made sure to leave marks in case he wanted to go back to familiar territory. The lack of hands and the fact his claws weren't strong enough to leave easily visible markings in stone made anything other than the occasional pile of pebbles impossible.

When he approached the exit he noticed all the dead bodies and once again had to keep from freaking out, something helped by the fact that a lot of the corpses didn't seem human. Simba realized that if the group left the cave he might lose them so he and his companion had to hurry. "I think we should start running." He could only hope the others didn't take the sign of two catlike creatures charging at them as a sign of aggression.

More commotion with the panicked and now accusatory little drider followed the other creatures’ attempts to tranquilize her. Though unfamiliar with her new facial muscles –or lack thereof- Otsune managed a crude and rather leering approximation of a smirk, for she had been right, after all; some children made trouble not to get better but to get attention, and the show wouldn’t be over until she tired herself out. Until then, all anyone else would be doing would be to add fuel to the fire. Leaving seemed like a very attractive option to the snapjaw, and upon spying the snake Hing making his escape, she wasted no time plodding along after him.

On the threshold to the larger cavern, she froze. The sight of carnage strewn about the floor of the cave filled her with horror and repulsion. Her fellow reptile voiced what ran through her mind: staying in here was not an option. While he navigated through the mess, she opted to lope around the edge of the cavern, discerning the walls via the light streaming in through a promising hole on the other side of the slaughterhouse. In doing so she evaded almost all of the viscera, as well as a good heap of nausea. The dry wit of Neix did not reach her, but Otsune did reach the exit before her, and emerged into the dappled sunlight of a green forest. The whole scene marked such a drastic departure from the sickly spectacle seen only moments before that the snapjaw couldn’t help but feel at the complete mercy of the world. Of course, had she been human, she wouldn’t have been much better off, anyway.

Two more bestial faces in the cave exit made four new visitors to the forest total. Otsune cast an eye at Hing, Neix, and Simba, and found herself wishing they weren’t there. The whole situation came of as so confusing and insane that the presence of others only made it more unmanageable. Besides, what sort of help could she expect from them? Perhaps they would react to their new circumstances badly, or one of them would snap. The risks outweighed the possible benefits but a substantial margin, and Otsune decided that she would rather go off on her own. If one of them wanted to follow, well…she would cross that bridge when she came to it.

Slowly at first, she began to run. In truth she did not pick up much speed, since she wanted to be at least somewhat aware of where she was going. She judged that if she were human, the pace she set would amount to a jog, and to the best of her knowledge nobody ever jogged off a cliff. Regardless, she did not run for long. After pushing her way through a thicket of long grass, she discovered that she stood at the edge of a gulch. It fell for about five feet before turning into a mass of reeds sitting in molasses-brown water, buzzing with flies and stinking in a way her new senses couldn’t stand. Disgusted again, she backpedaled out of the long grass and began to follow the gulch to the right—the direction from which the barely-moving water trundled. As she moved through the underbrush, she realized just how adept her new body was at running: she didn’t feel tired at all. A jaunt like this would have at least left her haggard had she been her old self. When the ground began to slope upward beneath her, she felt as if she were in to something, and in short order emerged from a tangle of wildflowers onto the shore of a small lake. A look to the left determined that a beaver dam, or at least something similar in function, blocked the water from flowing down the gulch. The sun sparkled off the surface of the open water pleasantly, but all the same Otsune remained alert. She harbored no clue what might be waiting for her in this world, or from what direction some unforeseen threat might spring.

It didn't seem like the drider was responding well to our attempts to calm her down, and honestly, she had it pretty well compared to the rest of us. She was still relatively human, and, even if her legs were now a spider... maybe she was afraid of those? After her, and Neix's outburst, I figured it was nearly impossible to get to her. The others already left, with her trailing slightly behind them. I suppose becoming something you're afraid of is a pretty horrible fate... and even then, not everyone can handle situations as well as some people can. I thought as I stayed behind the main group, and tried to stay closer to her, smiling warmly, as if I still could, given my new appearance, to try to show her that I wasn't a threat. "Don't worry, everything will, at least, eventually, be okay, alright? If there's a way out of here, I'll help you get there. It's a good thing we're making progress, I'm not sure what would happen if we stayed in that room," I spoke as calmly as I could to try my best at calming her down, however, the appearance of dead bodies at this point may have made that hard... and even if I was more than eager to see the outside world, at this point, I knew that things wouldn't end well for her if she was left here, alone. I would have done something like pat her on the back, but, she was currently out of my reach, thanks to being on the ceiling for some reason. I almost ached to see what this new world could be like... but, someone else's current mental state, even if it was, honestly was somewhat logical, given the situation, and even it was if a little annoying to deal with, took priority over my own curiosity.

"..."

Any retort Ariana could have made died in her mouth as she came across the horrendous sight in the cave. Dead bodies. Horribly destroyed, cut apart... Her main set of eyes was wide in horror, her legs feeling weak. For a few moments she was utterly silent, unable to say anything in the face of such a terrible sight. She'd never seen a dead body before, let alone something like this... she felt cold, but then and unpleasant heat rose in her body as nausea kicked in and she felt ill. Unsteady on her eight legs, she wobbled forward and took a hold of a wall in one hand to steady herself, her other hand clapped over her mouth.

She could feel tears welling in her eyes from both the awful scene they had come across, and from the effort of fighting back just how sick she really felt.