The Dangers of Looking Too Close
(This is a short story that came to me after hours of playing Starcraft. I'm sure I got most of the details right, but I had to guess a bit at biology. What is here is stuff that makes sense to me. ^^)
The air was acrid with gun smoke and the discharge of high output plasma weapons. No matter the defense, The Zerg merely swarmed over them. It did not matter if it was [Terran](%5C ""Terran") or Protoss in design. The Zerglings always swept in first, activating our traps and depleting our ammunition. Then the Hydrolisks came in, pinning our troops down while the Ultralisks took out the rest of the defenses. And always floating overhead were the Overlords, seeing over the battle and dropping in reinforcements as necessary.
I am a hardened solder, a veteran of many fights. I have to tell you though; none and I mean none, of them felt as hopeless as this. It was as I was raising my gun to my head that I got the idea. The Overlords cannot see what is directly beneath them. It was their one and only blind spot. I figured that if I was fast, and I timed it right, I could replace one of the Zerg's in its storage pouch. The more I thought about it, the more I liked it. I way to make my inevitable death have meaning. It was an almost foolproof plan to get in close enough to do some serious damage.
A suicide run; one of my favorite kinds.
I waited for the perfect time to strike, namely when I could find one Overlord by itself. Then I staked it out, waiting for the moment when another Zerg troop would try to get into it. After about a hour, I saw my chance. A Zergling had wondered up and was looking up at it. I quickly, and quietly shed my bulky armor. I have no clue why I used the stupid thing anyway; it slowed me down, and offers very little, if any protection against anything. All I really needed was the thin underclothes and my gun belt. Free of the restraints of my useless armor, I moved quickly. In the moments before my plan succeeded, I marveled at how freely I could move. "The armor really is more a hindrance then a help...go figure."
My plan went off without a hitch. I slit the Zergling's throat, so it could not warn the Overlord, and took its place as tendrils shot down and wrapped themselves around me. In order to add to my deception, I held two knives in the knuckles of both hands, blades pointed downwards, simulating a Zergling's claws. The tendrils felt the blades, and after that gave them a wide berth. Just like I had observed countless times before. I struggled to make no sound as I was lifted up into the Overlord. It was torture. I could barely contain the excitement that was building up inside of me.
There was a brief moment where my stomach turned, and if I had eaten anything beforehand, I would have lost it then. The sickening smell that flowed from the sack that I was being drawn into was like someone had put a fish in the sun for a week and then took a leak on it. Thankfully, I got used to it pretty quickly. By the time that the sack closed up underneath me, my eyes had stopped watering and I was able to breathe normally again. I cracked a glow rod and gave it a shake, squinting in the dim light the chemical reaction provided.
I felt a tingly sensation on my skin. I looked down to see my shirt starting to dissolve. I watched, curiously as the shirt was consumed, but when the fluid touched my arm, it didn't burn. I also noticed that the dirt and sweat that had stuck to me was also being dissolved.
'Interesting' I thought to myself, 'so this thing is also the Zerg's showers? What else can this thing do?' I was soon to find out. Soon, I was naked, but that didn't matter much. I wasn't going to a party after all. I checked my equipment for signs of damage, and other then the leather grips dissolving away, they were fine. I grinned at the deceptively small orbs that I had adhered to my gun and belt. "Well, I'll say this about those freaky glowing eyed things. They sure know how to make grenades..."
Then the pouch I was in started filling with liquid. I tried not to panic, telling myself that it was just the next part in this thing's 'cleaning cycle'. As the liquid closed in over my head, I felt my panic rising. Just as I was about to run out of air, a tube like appendage shot out of the wall of the pouch and clamped around my head, covering my face, pumping the fluid into my nose and mouth. I struggled, but I was weak. Eventually I could no longer hold it.
The breath in my body escaped in a rush, and I involuntarily took a deep breath to compensate. As the thick fluid filled my lungs, I felt despair. I waited for death to find me, but as more and more of the liquid was pumped into my lungs, I felt revitalized. My head stopped spinning and my body lost the warning tingle of CO poisoning. The tube that had been covering my face retreated back into the wall of the pouch. Tentatively I took a breath. More of the liquid flowed into my lungs. 'It...it's like liquid breathing gear!' I marveled 'So that is how these things can travel in space!'
I felt something moving along my thigh and looked down. It was hard to see, what with the glow-rod that I had brought nearing the end of its life, and the thickness of the liquid I was now surrounded in, but it looked like another tentacle. I tried to move the glow stick closer, but my hand passed through the light. 'Idiot!' I chided myself silently 'Of course if the fluid can melt synthetics, it can melt plastic!' Giving up on moving the light closer, I reached down instead and felt the thing. As my hand touched it, it began to wrap around it. I did not pull away, favoring to see what would happen after. After it had wrapped itself around me, it became still.
'Some kind of...restraint?' I pondered.
Suddenly I began to lurch around violently. More tentacles popped out and wrapped me securely, holding me stable while the one I was riding in lurched some more. A few moments later, I hear a tell-tale sonic boom.
'I was right! It is a restraint! This is how the Overlords manage not to get torn apart from the inside by its passengers when we do a fly-by!' In my darkening hiding place I smiled. 'I am learning so much from this thing. I wonder what else it can teach me...'
The jolting soon stopped, but the tentacles did not release me. At first I just shrugged it off as a usual thing. But then I noticed that my arms were slowly being pulled behind my back. 'Now that is impossible for Zerg biology to handle.' I started struggling, lashing out with my 'claws' at the tentacles. I winced as I felt my arms twist, causing me to drop the knives. Fully pinned, I knew I was in trouble. Then I felt growing warmth pushing against my ass. At the same moment, a thick tentacle stretched forward and began to push at my mouth. I kept my mouth closed, breathing through my nose. What happened next was something I never expected. With a savage thrust, the tentacle at my rear thrust forward. I opened my mouth to scream, but the thick tentacle rammed its way into my mouth and down my throat, cutting off all sound I might be able to make. Not that is would have mattered. Since I was breathing a liquid, I would not have been able to make a sound anyway. Tears were forced from my eyes as both of the thick pieces of flesh thrust their way into my guts.
To Be Continued?