Chapter Eleven
Obviously I launched a counter attack.
I wasn’t just going to let someone steal from me right in front of my eyes!
A group of my tentacles came forward to slap the bear’s paw away, while the rest wrapped around the deer the bear was grabbing for, to keep it in place. I’m pretty strong now, but I’m not, like, bear strong, so my slap didn’t really send the bear’s paw sailing away like I’d hoped. Still, at the very least it did send it a good enough distance away, so I’m not complaining, although it is a little frustrating.
Hmph.
One day I’ll be strong enough to launch the whole bear away with one slap!
You’ll see.
You’ll all see.
Yeah so anyways, the bear already managed to sink its claws into my deer before I slapped its hand away, so it actually managed to tear off the bottom half of my deer, the little (big) thief. I guess now that it knew there would be something trying to fight it if it stayed, it decided to drag away my one and a half deer to eat back at its home. To be fair I would have done the same, I mean a deer and a half is already a plenty good enough steal for barely any work, right?
But you know what?!
I really hate thieves!
Especially ones who don’t even need to steal!
I mean look at that thing, I’m sure it could get all the deer it wanted, all by itself!
You big lazy asshole bear!
Just for this, I’m killing every bear I come across from now on.
Congratulations, you’ve doomed every bear in this big damn forest with your actions today!
I hope you’re happy!
~~~
Although my tentacles aren’t strong enough to beat off a bear in hand to hand combat, they’re sure as hell strong enough to drag around two and a half deer. I’ll admit, I didn’t really have a plan when I grabbed the rest of my deer and ran out. Honestly I just… You know. I had a thirst for revenge! Like I said, no one’s just going to steal my food right in front of me and get away with it! If I’m going to eat every god forsaken bear in this stupid forest, then I might as well get started now, right? Sure, I’m kind of way too small and delicate to actually beat a bear head on, but if I… If…
Well, maybe having a plan first would be nice.
~~~
I found where the bear lives by nightfall, so at least I know where to find the awful thing. This time I perched as high up in the tree as I possibly could so that in the incident of a surprise bear attack it can’t just reach up and pluck my deer away again. One of them became my dinner, so I only had a deer and a half left for breakfast time. It wouldn’t be enough to fill me up in the morning, but if I could make a good enough plan, then I’d be having a delicious feast of bear afterwards anyways. Luckily for me, the bear lived in a small cave on the side of a cliff, so it wouldn’t be sneaking off without me noticing it very easily. …Hopefully.
Plan plan plan.
I have all night to think of a plan, but hmm…
How does a small plant fight a big bear, exactly?
I doubt my poison would work very quickly, right?
And those claws are pretty sharp, so it’d tear through me like paper, easily.
Honestly I had a long unproductive night of wiggling my tendrils around in vain and running in circles trying to think. I came up with a lot of different half ideas, but they all had at least one super awful flaw with them that totally wouldn’t have worked out in the end, so I guess none of those would do.
Ah, will this one be truly impossible? Am I simply not ready yet?
I only have one sweet little plant life I think, so I should treat it preciously.
Perhaps I should stop being such a wrathful bud and learn to grow past such things~.
Yeah, maybe I’m just mentally trying to give up since this seems so hard.
Welp, I’ve wasted this whole night and the sun is starting to come up. If I was gonna do anything to this bear it would have to be soon, so I could catch it while it was sleeping like most of my prey. Can I even call this thing prey at the moment? I mean it’s more like a straight up rival or opponent than something as simple as ‘prey’ right now. Ugh.
Let’s eat to calm myself down.
Goodbye to the last of my hard earned bunch of deer~.
Oh.
So, coincidences are always like this, or maybe it’s just that I’m some kind of a mad genius. Maybe it’s even God guiding me or something. Whatever it is, I’ll take whatever I can get, okay? For whatever reason, I burned the tip of one of my little tentacles while tossing food into my garbage mouth because I was distracted and forgot to actually let go. Plunged the thing right into my digestive juices and started to digest myself. Ain’t that somethin’? Can’t say it’s the first time I’ve managed to pull that move off, but this time I think it came at juuust the right timing.
I know what I’m gonna do to that thieving bear now!
~~~
So really, I’m kind of throwing caution to the wind and risking it all for the biscuit right now. I’m sorry future me, but I suppose I’m just rash like that. Here I was hoping I could be a cool, calm, and collected type like in my last life. Ah, but alas, I am too passionate and beautiful for such a quiet life now.
…Yeah, sorry, so anyways, I ambushed the bear.
His little den or cave or whatever was pretty dark. Good thing I don’t see with my eyes, haha! There will be no obstructing this almighty plant today! No home will be safe from my appetite for revenge! I’m powerful and the world will learn not to piss me off! …Ahem, anyways, the bear never saw me coming. My little root-feet are actually quite quiet if I try, and I’m really quite light. Sure, the bear might have wiggled its ears once when I passed by it but I totally wasn’t scared or anything! Yup.
I circled around the odd looking sleeping bear a few times and studied it like it would have changed my plan in the slightest. Surprise, it didn’t! Plan A is still in effect! And what’s even better, there’s a few bones of the bear’s victims scattered around the place, so maybe I’m not going to screw myself over with this risky plan of mine as much as I (most likely) might have otherwise!
Well… No time like the present, right?
If I wait any longer the bear might wake up, you know.
First let’s slither my tentacles into place.
Careful, don’t wanna let the bear know what’s going on. Touching is a no!
Is every tentacle where it needs to be?
Am I feeling strong enough to pull this off?
Mmm… Let’s cross my leaves and hope this all pans out!
Three, two, one… Take a deep breath… Aaaand-
Attack!
By the time the bear wakes up enough to realize what’s happening to it I’ve already tied my tendrils around its mouth, neck, and joints! Effectively I’ve tried to hogtie its legs, although I won’t lie and say that I think that part of the plan is going to work. A bear is a bear of course, and as I’ve said before, in a contest of pure strength I’m no match. Even if I try and hold him in a way that he can’t put up a good resistance, his reduced strength would still be way too much for me. What can I do? I am but a baby plant.
But! Strength is not the stat that wins this mission for me!
Or well, it could have been, but I don’t have that option.
The stat that decides this battle will be dexterity instead!
When the bear inevitably resists and breaks out of my restraints, I just do my best to keep his legs busy. If he’s too focused on pulling away from the chains of my tentacles, then he’s far too busy to try and claw at the plant that’s currently perched on his back. The real problem is that I can only hold those legs back for so long until those sharp claws come into play and rip my tendrils to pieces, and that his neck and jaws are by no means weak. For this plan to work, I need to keep control of this thing’s head and neck! But if I get distracted too much trying to wrangle the front, then my attention elsewhere won’t be enough, and-
Yeah, I’ve just lost about a third of my tendrils.
It was gonna happen, so obviously I immediately started regrowing them, but that means I’m severely weakened on the whole ‘keeping in control of the bear’s legs’ front. The only thing I can do until my lost tendrils regrow is reallocate the remaining ones that were previously part of ‘leg duty’ over to ‘neck and mouth’ duty. Sure, the bear is free to try and claw at its face (and at me!) now, but I’ll just have to do my best to work around that. Like for instance-
Let’s actually do what I came here to do now.
The moment the bear’s paws finally make it to its face to scrape off my offending tentacles, I strike. My tendrils loosen up as I get into position, and I raise myself up and tilt myself over. My trash-lid mouth opens, and my secondary throat valve I developed all those rabbit killing days ago is willed open.
A bunch of my fizzling, acidic digestive juices pour over the bear’s face and paws.