Gravity as it would turn out was a personal attack on Andy.
Andy had spent his entire second life in water. Not only in water, but in so much water that up and down really had no meaning at all. Moving around in 3 dimensions was fine because water was gentle, water was forgiving, and water was supportive. Water never, not even once, grabbed you by the full mass of your body and slammed you into the ground because you had the audacity to stand on a wet rock.
Gravity did that.
His first time dragging his body onto shore air hit his skin, gravity pushed down relentlessly and the sun hurt his brand new eyes. While in his last evolution he’d been graceful and buoyant he was now the heaviest, clumsiest, most pathetic excuse for an amphibian he’d ever encountered.
He was the size, by his estimate, of a large mouse. In water, the weight of that, while clumsy to move, had been nothing. On land, it was everything. His four legs, which had propelled him through the water, however clumsily, now splayed outward under the unfamiliar load of having to actually support his body. He laid upon a rock in a belly-down sprawl that resembled more of a dropped pancake than a functional organism.
“The newly evolved frog,” he narrated, chin pressed against the wet stone, spread eagle, “Is having issues adjusting to bones and a lack of pseudopods or tentacles.”
His lungs, which he’d attempted to use half a second too soon, were busy expelling water and gasping for oxygen. As his air sacs finally expanded, drawing in atmosphere that his brain processed as a wet earthy smell.
He could smell. He breathed in deeply through his nose taking in the muck, and dirt and beautiful smell of greenery both rich and organic. Emotion swelled in his chest and his exhale came out in a shuddered sob.
He could see less clearly here than in water but he still could see, and smell. A bird called from a tree, and various insectoid noises trilled from the nearby grasses and reeds. He could hear as well. It was glorious, it was beautiful, it was overwhelming.
He sobbed on the rock until his throat hurt and he was ready to try to oppose gravity once more. The nearby shore was rocky and mossy. Insects crawled over surfaces with the efficiency of creatures that had figured out gravity quite a long time ago and were not even vaguely concerned about gravity.
Andy watched them with envy. Then with the calculating interest of a predator. Then he remembered everything he’d gone through so far. He had been nothing in a soup of bigger nothings and he made it out. He steeled himself, gritted his teeth (Well top teeth against bottom jaw.) and stood up. It took seven attempts.
Attempt one: Andy stood up on the mossy rock, lost his balance and slipped. He hit his jaw against the rock and rolled off splashing back into the lake. He was embarrassed but luckily no one of consequence was around to see.
Attempt two: Andy climbed his way back onto the rock, hugging it once he made it to the top. With a deep breath he pushed himself up, and somehow his legs became twisted underneath of him, where gravity once again dumped Andy back into the lake.
Attempt three: Andy got his back legs straight as his front legs refused to stop hugging the rock. If anyone had been watching they might have likened it to downward dog the back legs trembled under the new weight of Andy’s body and gave out where he crashed once again onto the rock before falling back into the water.
Attempts four through six were all very similar involving various configurations of legs-wrong, no balance, and face meeting rock that he was choosing to think of as learning experiences.
[MINOR INJURY: LEFT HIP FLEXOR. REGENERATION ACTIVE. ESTIMATED RECOVERY: 3 HOURS.]
“Three hours to recover from doing the splits on a mossy rock. My previous bodies handled extinction events and almost being eaten. My current body can’t handle moss.”
[BY ALL MEANS, BLAME THE MOSS]
“Excuse me? Are you finally responding again? Can you give me some tips, System?”
[QUERY NOT RECOGNIZED.]
“AHHHH, you’re the worst.”
The System remained quiet. On the seventh attempt Andy managed to get all four legs underneath of him and as he began to wobble his head bobbed down and the horn acted as a kick stand. And that’s how Andy found himself standing on a mossy rock offshore in a large lake looking upside down between all four of his trembling legs.
A giant fish swimming toward Andy from behind was all the motivation he needed to get locomotion in gear. He inched forward using his horn as a cane and watching with great displeasure as the fish got closer and closer.
Andy, butt up in the air, knees locked, hobble click hobble click hobble clicked faster and faster toward the shore. He could see the fish getting closer. Closer. Closer.
Everything went dark.
Andy was inside the fish and then he’d been spit out and was swirling through the water. He closed his eyes waiting for the world to orient and when he opened them it was still dark. He was now head first inside the fish's mouth. Struggling side to side was causing abrasions on his back and abdomen. The fish began swimming, Andy could feel the acceleration and the water rushing past his back legs that were still outside the fish's mouth.
Andy’s horn lit up the inside of the fish's mouth. He could see the fish’s gills working. Andy swung his head up into the top of the fish’s mouth. The horn embedded deep into the fish’s skull. The fish stopped swimming and started trying to spit Andy out.
[CRITICAL HIT!]
[HORNY STRIKE: DAMAGE BONUS +25%]
Inside the now flailing fish, Andy braced himself. He pulled his head (and therefore his horn) down and then he swung it up into the already damaged fish’s tissue. The fish stopped jerking and began twitching. With one more strike Andy finished it off.
[HORNY STRIKE: DAMAGE BONUS +25%]
[LARGEMOUTH BASS: DEFEATED]
[+28 XP NEW SPECIES BONUS +10 ]
[SURVIVAL BONUS +5 XP]
[XP: 33/1600]
The shore was better than anything Andy had experienced in the water.
In the lake, life had been a limited palette. Up here, it was staggering how complex it was. Plants grew in all shapes, sizes and colors. The sights, sounds and tactile textures were almost enough to overwhelm Andy.
The hunting was excellent. Insects and arachnids were the perfect prey for a small frog-like amphibian with a horn. He referred to himself as frog-like because after catching a glimpse of his reflection he really didn’t know how else to refer to himself. He was a brownish green cross between a salamander and a frog. He was longer than a normal frog but could and was fairly good at jumping. He had a sticky tongue that he could use like one might expect a frog to have. To Andy, it was just a sticky pseudopod and he was very good at using it because of this.
His horn was just as devastating on land as it was in water. He could launch himself at the chitinous exoskeletons of insects. One good strike and the carapace cracked open with a satisfying crunch. The insides were slimy yet satisfying. And it may be his new taste buds talking, but he loved the variety of flavors.
He was headbutting insects to death. Just really going at it. Full commitment. He was the world's most passionate frog at a metal concert. Headbang. Thonk. Cronch. Dead bug.
“The horny frog,” he narrated, while he perched on a rock with the remains of a beetle stuck to his horn like a grotesque hat, “has adapted remarkably to his terrestrial environment. Note the use of the unprecedented horn as a primary hunting instrument. This behavior is rather unique among amphibians but appears to be making quite the statement in this area of the forest. The horn, which I’ve come to refer to as ‘Little Andy ", is serving as both a weapon and utensil. Watch as he pierces his prey and then conveniently holds the remains in place until he’s ready to extract them with his tongue. It is the world’s most disgusting kebob.”
The horn, as he discovered, was also useful for digging. The ground near the shore of the lake was soft enough that the horn could penetrate and lever it aside. He used it for unearthing burrowing organisms. (worms, grubs, even some larger prey that resembled crawfish.) On one memorable occasion, he wedged open a stubbornly sealed mollusk. He basked in the delicious sweet and briney meat.
After one particularly fruitful morning he was feeling Andy laid on a rock, sunning himself and relishing in his very very full belly. A chill ticked up Andy’s neck. He sat up and looked to the right. Swaying grass where something had been was all that Andy saw.
Other amphibians avoided him. He noticed this as his territory expanded. The amphibians who would lounge together in the muck scattered any time he approached. Whether they saw the horn, or its glow, his unique hunting style he didn’t know. But he did know that he was the weird frog. The horny guy with a glowing party hat that no one wanted to talk to. He tried projecting thoughts at them, whether they heard him or not was a mystery because he never received anything back.
At every stage of my existence he thought, watching a group of frog-like things hop away from his with haste, the universe find a new way to make this joke. Horny cell, horny colony, horny jellyfish and now horny frog. The punchline keeps landing and I’m the only one in the audience. He paused mentally trying to shake off his frustration. Now that I’m not the only one they’re literally running away from me. This is like before high school prom where literally no one wanted me to ask them but they also didn’t want to tell me that so they’d scatter when I’d show up. At least now I have a cool horn.
Loneliness surfaced for the first time in a long time. It was a minor blip that Andy shoved deep down swallowing the lump in his throat and ignoring the pain in his chest. But nevertheless it persisted. He no longer could be lonely due to solitude, but perhaps because he was the only one around that knew what lonely meant.
[XP: 433/1600]
[NEW MECHANIC UNLOCKED AT TIER 4]
[SEXUAL REPRODUCTION: AVAILABLE]
[YOUR ORGANISM HAS DEVELOPED REPRODUCTIVE ORGANS COMPATIBLE WITH SEXUAL REPRODUCTION. MATING WITH A COMPATIBLE ORGANISM OF THE SAME OR SIMILAR SPECIES WILL PRODUCE OFFSPRING WITH COMBINED GENETIC TRAITS.]
[NOTE: OFFSPRING FROM SEXUAL REPRODUCTION MAY INHERIT EVOLVED TRAITS INCLUDING HORN MORPHOLOGY.]
[COMPATIBILITY SCAN: NO COMPATIBLE MATES DETECTED IN CURRENT RANGE.]
Andy stared at the notification for a long time. Sexual reproduction available. His frog-ish body had developed the biological machinery for sex, and none of the amphibians around were even compatible. That is if they didn’t run away at his mere presence. The universe had given him the equipment and no one to use it on. Again. This was literally the truck situation all over again except instead of a condom in his pocket it was a beetle dripping down his horn and instead of a crosswalk it was a mossy rock and instead of Megan it was NOBODY because he was a freaking abomination.
“NOW?!” He scream-projected at the System. “You unlock sexual reproduction NOW? I’ve spent who knows how long literally splitting off parts of myself and now I can reproduce, and nothing around is COMPATIBLE!? You’re doing this on PURPOSE. Where are the rest of the sapient creatures? Why do you want me to be alone?”
[QUERY NOT RECOGNIZED.]
“Oh, now it’s ‘query not recognized. How freaking CONVENIENT! When you want you can certainly say something snarky and almost pass for someone I can talk to, but when you don’t it’s just silence or QUERY NOT FREAKING RECOGNIZED.”
Andy’s chest heaved with so much anger and anxiety that he was having a hard time catching his breath. Darkness seeped in at the edges of his vision.
“When I’m a mythic tier unicorn I’m going to find whoever, or whatever built you, and we are going to have words.”
[HORN (AMPHIBIAN): GROWING. TRAIT CHAIN: 4TH TIER. KEEP GOING.]
“Was that a taunt? Are you taunting me? Or… encouraging?”
The System said nothing.
Andy sat on his rock, a horny frog-like creature with unlocked but unusable reproductive organs who glowed and had a grudge against the architecture of reality and watched the sunset. It was blurry, a smear of colors of which Andy just realized red was missing. But he still loved the sight. The horn glowed on his head, which he found oddly comforting. Somewhere in the distance, over the water a shadow moved against the fading sky.
That aerial predator was still out there. He felt it in his jellies that this was the same one he’d seen previously. He also knew he would meet it eventually. Andy wasn’t quite sure what made him so positive about this and he tried not to think about it.
The sunset faded and stars began to come out. After weeks of being on land the sight of those tiny points of light in a deep dark expanse still hadn’t gotten old. None of the star formations were familiar to Andy.
He sat looking for familiarity and felt small, and very very alone. He had a glowing horn, and fully functional reproductive organs he couldn’t use, and he was going to sleep alone in the muck next to a rock.
Tomorrow, he would stop feeling sorry for himself and he would hunt.
[XP: 443/1600]