Your lips curling into a self-assured smirk, you decide to go with the first option: fantasy, reaching up and tapping that choice with a finger. The list changes into a pair of sentences.
YOU HAVE CHOSEN 2: PREHISTORIC.
PLEASE GET COMFORTABLE AS YOUR EXPERIENCE IS PREPARED.
You raise an eyebrow. There’s that word again. Experience; not watch. However, you quickly shrug it off, thinking that it’s probably just an attempt to hype up a probably dumb movie.
Waltzing back to your chosen bed, you again flop onto it before wriggling into the comfiest position attainable with the TV in view. You settle with your hands underneath the back of your head, with a pair of the large, extremely comfy pillows offered by the room underneath them in turn, and you look over at the screen.
The sentences change again.
GOOD.
BEGINNING YOUR PREHISTORIC EXPERIENCE…
A second passes, and the words disappear, but this time, no new words come to take their place. Instead, the entire screen turns a lavender color with the white silhouette of a simplistic bunny in the center.
It stays like that… and stays like that… and stays like that… and stays like that…
What the heck? You think to yourself with a yawn. What’s taking so long? Is it busted? Maybe you should go up to it and check to see…
You yawn again. This one is much, much stronger. You’re eyelids feel so heavy; you’re body, so at peace. Why ruin this over a stupid TV?
Maybe, you think as your breathing stabilizes into a tranquil rhyme, your chest so serenely rising and falling, it’ll have fixed itself after a short nap.
Yeah. A nap seems good. You could definitely do with a good nap. A good…
Your thoughts sink into the encroaching darkness as your eyelids flutter shut. Your last blurry glimpse is of that white silhouette bunny, resting in the heart of it’s lavender sea…
…
It was supposed to be simple.
Your team were only supposed to be here for an hour, max, to collect some samples of the area’s plant life for study back at base. Your twenty-four member group had exited the portal and quickly split up into six groups of fours: five to search out the plants and one to stay and one to guard the portal home.
You had been assigned to a search team, Bravo. It only took about half of the afforded hour for you and your teammates to successfully find and collect your portion of the desired plants, without so much as hitch. Things were looking good.
Though, at one point, you had been certain you had caught a glimpse of a reptilian eye watching you from the shadows.
Things began going down hill, and fast, when you returned to the portal – or what was left of it. To your horror, both the control console and the portal frame had been ripped to pieces, many of which now lay on the grass around it, but some of which had disappeared. Your team had arrived just in time to witness the poor machine’s death throes, coughing out a few pathetic sparks from their exposed wiring in a dying gasp, and then all signs of life left it.
To make matters worse, there was no sign of Alpha Team, the team tasked with guarding the portal, anywhere. The only traces of them your team found were scraps of their uniforms and chunks of their weapons scattered on the ground; worryingly, stains of blood, which looked relatively fresh; and most hauntingly, drag marks leading into the forest, as if one of Alpha Team had sunk their hands or claws into the earth in a vain attempt to stop their abduction.
Your team all quickly agreed that none of you wanted to stay here any longer, but, in a three-to-one vote, you decided to wait for the other teams to return before you got out of here. You all thanked the stars when Charlie and Echo Team showed up soon enough, but Delta Team was a no show.
Or at least, most of Delta Team was…
“R-Run!” Came a weak and haggard voice from the trees.
Those you heard it – you and two others – looked towards it. It was Dominic, a gray-furred wolf man who had been assigned to Delta Team. He was battered and blooded, and looked like he could barely stand.
Before any of you could ask what had happened or move to him, he yelled out at you again. The desperation in his voice was palpable. “Run! Run! B-Before they-”
He didn’t get to finish. From the shadows behind him, a scaly beast rushed forth and planted it’s three-fingered, clawed hands upon the wolf’s shoulders, seizing him. Then, in less than a second, it threw up it’s head, opened it’s long mouth wide, and brought it down, turning poor Dominic’s words to muffles as everything above his neck was engulfed in that carnivorous maw.
You all stood frozen in fear at the merciless display. Unconcerned by the audience, the creature pushed it’s head down further on it’s prey, shoving more of your unfortunate colleague into it’s waiting insides, before lifting it’s head up high, the wolf dragged into air with it.
Dominic’s head and shoulders made a large, wriggling bulge in the beast’s scaly throat just underneath it’s head; a bulge that only grew in size as more of him, his chest, arms, and hips, were forced to join them it the almost skin-tight confines. His legs, still outside but surely not for long, kicked weakly to no avail, and when they too were drawn in. His shoe-covered feet, the last trace of him to the outside world, wiggled futilely in the air. With one last toss of it’s head back, the beast ushered them to the back of the mouth, clacked it’s two rows of sharp teeth together in a satisfied fashion, and then swallowed. Loudly.
The struggling bulge that was now Dominic slid quickly down the beast’s neck despite his best offers of resistance. Soon it met with the beast’s body, and just as quickly was squeezed on through. The beast’s stomach expanded and dropped as the wolf dunked into it, coming to dangle just over the ground between it’s two arms and two legs. All while, you, and no doubt your remaining colleagues too, could hear his low, muffled screams and yells as he was consumed entirely.
It’s prey devoured and tucked away snugly, the reptilian beast bolted back into the cover of the trees and their cast shadows. It was fast and nimble, even with it’s wolf-filled belly jostling and swaying underneath it, as if it had done this many times before, and vanished from sight into the environment.
You all stood in silence for what felt like hours, though it could only have been a handful of seconds. Finally, you managed to squeak out, “What… What was that…?”
“A raptor.” Breathed Richie, a middle-aged dalmatian man and the mission’s leader. Voicing a prior knowledge of the creature that had eaten their comrade caused everyone’s eyes to drift towards Richie. But Richie’s drifted towards the trees. “They’re… rarely very alone.”
“So… Run…?” Suggested Chelsea, a cheetah woman, in a hushed, frightened tone.
Richie - and everybody else - could only nod.
So now you’re all running. Running through the wilderness of this ancient, alien time. Searching for something, anything, that could work as a visible refuge from the creatures that had taken your coworkers. Once you had found that, you could work on finding a way home.
Being just a regular human, and a short one at that, you unfortunately found yourself at the back of the rushing group, unable to keep up with the animal people naturally built for great bursts of speed.
Thankfully, you weren’t alone there: on your left is Darla, a pudgy and obviously out-of-shape, black and white-furred cat woman, wearing an angry grimace on her face as she sweats, while on your right is Ross, a naturally blubbery and slow, brown walrus man, managing his heavy strides much better than the cat. Darla was the member of your team who had voted earlier to leave without the others. Probably because, you suspect, she knew she’d be at the exposed back if something like this happened.
“Well, guess the… three of us… will be… raptor food together, huh?” Huffs Ross with a joking chuckle, clearly trying to lighten this horrible mood. Unfortunately, it doesn’t land at all. In fact, it seems to send Darla into a bigger panic.
“Screw you, Ross!” She hisses at him.
“This way!” Yells out Richie from the front. He points towards a building surround by a barbed-wire fence in the distance. “There’s an abandoned research outpost other here. It’s not much, but it should be able to tide us over til we get a way out of this time period!”
“No!” Yells out Chelsea. “That place was abandoned for a reason, right? It probably couldn’t stop those things!” She points in the opposite direction towards a cave in the base of the mountain. “We should go for the caves! The system there is extensive and spacious! We can easily lose em if they dare try coming in after us!”
Chelsea changes course before Richie can retort, blitzing with incredible speed towards the caves. The dalmatian growls beneath his breath, before turning to the outpost and sprinting towards it. The rest of the group skid to a halt and look between the two options. Quickly, one-by-one, they make their choice and start running towards their decided location.
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