Castaway Planet

Galactic Calendar 259872/ 2000 [ Sol Year 4387/ Day 154 of 365. Sol standard year]

Days after of Crash landing/ 2

Uninhabited Island / Clearing of ‘Vine Beast’

Galactic Standard Time / 900

“MOVE!” Jinn bellowed as he called up his aura. Al and Sara moved to the left as Racha pulled Paige to the right. Jinn stayed where he was, watching the creature coming closer. He jumped up when the creature was halfway to him, aiming to get over the creature and attack it from behind. As he passed over it he saw that the vines, the one he had damaged, seemed to be healing. Five of the vines shot towards him, he slashed through them, the creature screeching in pain as it plowed into the earth.

He landed near the hole the creature made when it ‘woke up’. Jinn risked a glance to look down at where the vine beast had come from. He didn’t want to be caught flat-footed if this thing had a mate or young! Looking down into a pit a good twenty feet deep, he felt horror and revulsion within himself at what he saw. Around where the beast had to have been sleeping, the ground was covered in bones. He hoped it was a trick of the light, but something was glittering down there, things near bones that ended in hands.

He forced his head up but then he saw something else, something that sent a shiver of hope through him. The trees had been so tall that they hid it, but there it was a large rocky cliff face. It had to be twenty feet high, and there, at the base near the right was a darkness that had to be a cave. Activating his nanites in his eyes, he saw that the mouth was four feet wide.

He turned and looked at the vine beast, and his nanites told him that it was over ten feet wide and twenty long. All they had to do was get away from it, make it into the cave, and hope it was long enough for them to escape the vine beast. And that was a good point; someone should look into that first. But who? Jinn turned his head as the vine beast threw its head back and roared, and for a moment his vision flashed white a split second then it was back to normal. He shook his head and looked at the sides, his eyes widened as he saw what was happening.

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“What the hell is that thing!?” Sara exclaimed in horror as the creature screeched as the vines on its back withered in what, pain or rage?

Sara had studied every scrap of information she could get her hands on to help her learn to be a healer. And this thing was like nothing that she had ever heard of. In all the knowledge of the Federation, gathered and discovered by the scientific force of all worlds, nothing ever recorded even looked anything like this. A life form that had plants growing on its back, and if she wasn’t wrong, a life form that could control them? That was impossible, fungus and spores could control parasite meat life, but a meat life form that could control plants and make it part of its bio-system? This was beyond the realm of practicality and into the realm of science fiction!

“The thing that made the rows of bushes! It must have created this place to funnel prey to it!” Al bit out as he pulled out his rifle.

Sara paled in fear, wondering just how that was possible. Her eyes found Al’s, and she saw just focus and rage in them, nothing else but the will to get through this. Before she could say anything, the vine beast reared its head back and roared, a savage scream that rattled the human's bones as they braced themselves.

As Sara blinked, she heard a strange sound, turning she paled in horror. The bushes were all moving into the earth! As she stared in shocked horror, Sara remembered Racha had said vines came at her. Her eyes slowly moved upwards and saw three of them moving towards her and Al. She followed the vines to where they came from and saw nothing but trees that the vines went down. She paled in horror as she saw no flowers on the trees, something that she knew was impossible. Then she realized what was happening, and she screamed in terror and fear. “It’s controlling the plants!”

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Racha gritted her teeth as she realized the truth in Sara’s yell, and suddenly old events crystallized. A few old battles with ‘rogue’ Ancients suddenly made sense. She had always wondered how they had done what they did, but plant control? If that was true then a lot of other things had to be true as well.

But that didn’t matter right now, to fight and survive did. She slashed out with her knife and cut through one of four vines coming at her and Paige, the other three going after her. One was already around Paige’s right arm and as the other two went for her legs she slashed out with her knife in her left hand. The blade almost made it to the vine around her arm before one of the two attacking her legs went around her arm.

Before Racha could do more then make a single step towards Paige, the two vines were cut through by something.

As Racha blinked, a presence materialized behind her. “Good, you two are still alive.”

Racha reacted and tried to pierce whatever was behind her, only for something to block it. Racha glared into the eyes of Jinn as he looked back at her with empty eyes.

“You have to stop doing that when I appear like this,” Jinn said dryly and Racha glared back at him.

“Then stop doing that! What are you doing here?! Shouldn’t you fight that thing!?” Racha asked and Jinn looked at her with a hard glare.

“We need a way to escape. Beyond where that thing came from, there’s a cliff face with a cave. I think we can get out through it, but someone needs to make sure it’s not a dead-end,” Jinn explained and Racha looked from him to the recovering vine beast.

“Keep that thing off us, and we’ll call you when we’re done!” Racha exclaimed as she ran, grabbing Paige and pulling her along.

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The creature shook itself as it tried to get back to its feet. Nothing that it had ever experienced had ever prepared it for this! Its life was normal, it scared little food things to its special scent, it got so sleepy, it killed them and ate them, that was normal! Instead, something had stung it awake, and its thrashing awake had destroyed what it was using to hide! Now when it woke up it saw the five big little bitters and clawers there, so it attacked them. But instead of dying like food should they wounded it! This was why it always just killed them after it got them asleep, this was so wasteful!

And if they got away, then they would come back and kill it! It could leave of course, again! But that was the last resort, it had lost its den once before, never again! This time it would win, it would feed and kill all of those big little bitters!

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Jinn smirked as he dashed at the vine beast with his aura active, his bloodlust rising. He was big enough to admit that he love the challenge of battle, how the chance of fate affected everything.

As the vine beast looked at him it opened its mouth and a long pink tongue shot at him. Jinn ducked down and dodged it, slashing up with his blade as it passed over him. He slashed the tongue in two before he moved faster towards the vine beast.

In a moment he had reached it, moving along its side he slashed out with his blade and created a long gash along its side. As the vine beast roared in pain, Jinn had already moved passed it, running towards Al and Sara.

He could see that Sara had a vine around her neck, and Al was hacking at three around his right leg as they pulled him towards a tree.

Jinn made it to Sara and slashed through the vine holding her! Before she could react, Jinn grabbed her, spun around a few times and threw her towards the hole the vine beast came from.

Al had cut through the vines attacking him and gotten out of range before Jinn made it to him, a smirk on his face as he faced his friend.

“Al, you’ve really paid attention to those lessons on self-defense back on the ship!” Jinn said with a smirk and Al ignored him as he looked at the vines around his arm, the same look he got when his nanites were looking at something.

“AL!” Jinn barked and Al looked up and laughed a little. Jinn just huffed and shook his head before he heard the vine beast get back to its feet. “No time, get to the far end, there’s a cave beyond where that thing came from, we might escape through! I’ll dance with our new friend, go!”

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Paige wondered how her abilities failed her, she should have felt that thing! She should have felt that thing, at least the sense of hunger it had! But all she could feel was pain and rage from it…….. that meant it wasn’t trying to kill them for food. Then it was fighting them so they wouldn’t kill it! But if it was capable of feeling all that, why could she have heard it while it slept?!

“Don’t blame yourself,” Racha ordered, and Paige looked up at her. Paige discovered that they had made it to the cliff face, and the cave was right before them.

“Even the best agents have times when things slip past them. What matters is trying to be better the next time. And I bet you’ve never tried to find something that was hibernating right?” Racha asked and Paige blinked, not having heard that term ever.

“What do you……. Not important. I can’t hear anything from in there, but if it controls plants, it might sense things through them. We need to make sure that tunnel is clear of, well you know,” Paige said and Racha nodded and turned towards the cave, turning on the lights under her rifle as she did so. As the light went out into the darkness, it revealed a long stone corridor that continued. Just beyond the light from her riffle, there was a brightness a good three feet from their light beams.

Racha nodded to Paige and gestured towards the vine beast, getting a nod in return.

Running towards it, Racha moved her rifle’s light beam around, seeing nothing beyond a few blue mushrooms here and there. So far she couldn’t see anything that might be used by the vine beast to spy or attack them, but then this whole thing was out of her experience. But as she ran, her mind wandered as she looked over everything that she had figured out.

First; the abilities that Sara, Jinn, and the two creatures, the paralyzer, and the vine beast had to be powered by the same source. The fact that Sara and Jinn developed powers here, was the one thing that she couldn’t figure out. There had to be something that she was missing, something that she didn’t see! If she could bring back that knowledge, then the Federation would probably enter a new golden age.

But for now, she had to find out if they could escape through here!

Finally, she reached the light and saw it was from a turn in the tunnel that went to the right. Reaching it she grinned at what she saw, they could use this to escape the vine beast!

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Jinn dodged another tongue lash from the vine beast, this time it was coated in black blood! As it hit the ground he saw smoke start to rise from the grass but no fire sparked. He dodged to the right he spared a glance to see that Al and Sara had reached the cliff. Good, he only had to handle this thing for a few more minutes then.

He landed to the right of the vine beast and heard something slithering in the grass. He didn’t wait, he just jumped to the right and spun head over foot, seeing five vines come toward where he had been. That was the third time it had used that trick to try and get them, and he wondered if the vines from yesterday were from smaller beasts. If this thing was as big as they could grow, then that would track if smaller ones preyed on the flying worms and the lizard things they saw.

He saw Paige run out and gesture for him to come over as Al and Sara moved past her and stopped at the edge of the cave mouth.

“MOVE IT BRO! WE’VE GOT A WAY away from that thing!” Al called out as he cupped his hands.

Jinn grinned and looked at the vine beast as it turned to look at the cliff face, and then he felt a spark of horror.

He put the thought away and poured every bit of the energy fueling it into the aura, and it grew larger as it carried him faster to them. It canceled itself automatically when he reached the others, a look of fear on his face. “RUN!”

Without a word Al, Sara, and Paige ran into the cave mouth, Jinn followed behind them and they were all in moments before the vine beast was halfway to them.

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Sara looked ahead as she ran, the terror she was feeling lending her speed. She had seen Jinn fight a giant humanoid bug and that paralyzer thing yesterday, and now he had been scared, and that terrified her. As the group reached the turn, Sara prepared herself for whatever horror was ahead of them, but all she saw was a ten-foot tunnel with vines over the mouth that the sun came through.

“Ready?” Jinn asked and Sara nodded before she looked around, a frown on her face.

“Wait, where’s Racha?” Sara asked and laughter from Racha came from beyond the vines. Sara took a deep breath as Jinn walked through, the others following before only she was left. She moved after them, ready for anything but what the others found, the view took her breath away.

The tunnel came out on top of a tall hill a few miles away from a forest to their right. To their left was another forest in the middle, miles off in the distance was a waterfall that fell down a good twenty feet into a river.

They could see for miles, their eyes tracked the river all the way to the ocean.

“Perfect, we just need to make it to that river and follow it. We can probably save a lot of time if we use it, maybe make a raft or something,” Al said with a smirk as he thought up a design to use.

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Jinn just frowned as he looked around listening with one ear, something was bothering him. The cave led out onto purple grass just outside the tunnel mouth, and the cave itself was sticking out a foot from the hill. Behind and above it was a slop that went up about ten feet until it ran into a cliff face a good thirty feet tall.

Jinn paled as he saw what looked like a vine moving a little on the side of the cliff face and cursed. Before anyone could speak they heard something slam against something loudly, and they felt a vibration. “We’re still in range, move! To the river!”

As one they started running after him. As he led the way towards the central jungle, Jinn felt that spark of fear again. That creature in the clearing had understood what the others being there meant, and it was fear and rage that Jinn saw in its eyes. That meant it could remember, that meant it could think based on what it knew or learned. But the bones in the pit meant that it might have been eating other intelligent life forms. And the one thing his trainers had right about the galaxy, there was nothing worse than one who would eat the flesh of those that could reason.

If this planet had one life form that would do that, there might be more. But all they saw were pods from their ship, where had the other stellar travelers gone? Were any still here in hiding on other islands? One thing was unmistakable, this place was more.

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Back in the clearing, the vine beast looked at the cliff face and slammed its body against it a few more times before it stopped and huffed. It turned around, letting its mind wander. The big little bitters had escaped after all, and that meant it needed to claim a new den. If the rest of the regular little biters came, it would die. And that was against all that it knew, it ate it wasn’t food!

It stopped and looked at its bed, a feeling of regret going through it. It had claimed place after a hard battle, and it still bore many of the wounds from that fight. All it could do was control the green things, it couldn’t throw its will at other creatures anymore and its legs were still healing from the poison. Still, it was at least halfway healed, and the newcomer hadn’t come to its den, and that was good, that meant the others around here would still be hiding. If it found one of them and killed it, then it could take their dens! And if it had a new hunting area, it could grow stronger and bigger! One day it might even be as big as its big sibling, and then it could kill it and take all its power, be the ruler instead.

As it thought about everything, a shadow passing by made it crouch low and whimper until it saw that it was just a cloud passing by, not what it had feared. The invader wasn’t here, that was just a sky shadow. As it got back up, it looked around before heading off to the north, away from the clearing with the escape capsule, the river spider, unknowingly going towards the paralyzer beast and its destiny.