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Snippet #2824784

located in The shrouded claws, a part of The Multiverse, one of the many universes on RPG.

The shrouded claws

A dense jungle full of some of the worst predators in the land.

Setting

Characters Present

Character Portrait: Treda Character Portrait: AUK-53 Character Portrait: Adapa Character Portrait: Belle LeTroix Character Portrait: Apada Character Portrait: Guss
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Footnotes

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Treda did not respond to Adapa's chirping, but something else did. As the anomalous Belle took a moment to reflect on her past before working her magic and patiently using her intelligence to undo the knotted tails, a strange phenomenon took place. The other 11 adapises had gathered around her, forming a sort of protective circle around the goddess and their king. But they weren't looking around. Instead, they seemed to be focused on Belle and the five or six young adapises whose tails had become tangled and glued together. They were watching closely, observing what Belle was doing and occasionally glancing silently at one another before continuing to observe.

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Apada and Fat Guss watched and listened. There was mostly only the sound of silence, with the breeze and the noise of the jungle causing the leaves and long saw-like grass to rattle and sway. There was a low rumbling, and Fat Guss looked down and rubbed his large round belly. Was he hungry again already? Fat Guss had just eaten a whole basket of mulberries before everyone showed up. He looked up at the demonstration again, watching Belle reverse engineer one of the Xamoyoadapiformes' most complex knots. The adapises had mastered the art of knot tying, but were now getting schooled in how to untie them. Some of the squirrel-like primates seemed to be lost in gaze at their own weapons and simple primitive costumes, which their inner-tree civilization had grown their entire culture and perception around for at least 200 years, if not longer. They were beginning to look at the knots they used to fashion such gear and question their own designs, seeing and retaining what Belle was teaching them.

They were learning and remembering what they see...

Fat Guss could feel the low rumbling again and looked down, rubbing his hand across his belly. He started to look up at the top of his seed staff, uninterested in the knotwork so much as the seeds themselves, trying to determine if he was still hungry. But then something strange began to happen. The rumbling got stronger, deeper and louder. "Guss, stop farting." Apada whispered, nudging Fat Guss with his elbow while his focus was fixed on Belle's craft. Fat Guss turned slowly and looked at him with a fixed, blankly awkward expression as the lower rumbling sound continued, the vibrations getting more intense. Fat Guss looked perplexed and speechless, staring at him. "Guss, wha-" Apada was about to elbow him again as he turned to look at Fat Guss, who was staring at him with a stupid look on his face. The rumbling was getting stronger, and by now Apada was beginning to feel the vibration also. Fat Guss began to shake nervously, his seed staff beginning to rattle slightly as Apada's eyes suddenly widened.

His ears perked up, and Apada turned around and gazed up at the giant banyan-like tree that was 150 feet away, looking at Adapa from a distance, who had been distracting the Xamoyan turtle by chirping and barking. Apada whistled through his buckteeth, catching Adapa's attention before chirping at him to stop barking. Adapa listened quietly, still looking at Treda cautiously while flicking his tail in spontaneous rapid gestures. But as the jungle began to move and he started to hear breaking branches and foliage, Adapa's ears twitched and his tail froze. There was a creaking and creeping, methodical high-pitched sound that sounded almost unnatural and mechanical. "Tchs... goddess? Chts tskcs, can we go faster?" Apada asked, seizing Fat Guss's wrist to make him stop shaking the seed staff. The slow, methodical creaking and buzzing of machinery became louder as it drew closer.

Suddenly all of the adapises in the small clearing were focused on the tall grass, close to but not exactly on the same paths they had come from. The grass to the tiny rodent-like lemurian lorisideia seemed like giant walls made of enormous green shoots and saw-like ferns, taller than themselves. But what was walking through the shrouded claws, partially rusted and covered in vines, was even taller than the grass. Fat Guss wasn't starving, and he didn't have gas at the moment. The rumbling sound was being caused by something larger and more dangerous trudging through the jungle, maybe even more dangerous than Treda who was already a massive predator. Adapa saw it first from his flattened perched gaze 10 feet above the turtle in the tall tree, and remained frozen, trying to figure out what it was that he could tell was nearing his position. Adapa couldn't smell anything different in the air which might suggest another lifeform was nearby, and found it difficult to see its full figure even as the unsuspected intruder approached within 10 feet of Treda, stopping abruptly.

It was an Automation Unit Killdrone...

AUK-53 as this more modern unit was called, the anthropomorphic cybernetic machine was carrying a high-energy rifle, wearing strange gear while making unusual noises. None of these things were familiar to anything else in all of their experience in the shrouded claws, and immediately Adapa was terrified, darting around to the back of the tree while climbing up higher and peeking around from the other side to focus solely on AUK-53, now staring directly at him without moving, starting the same process of his ritualistic staring contest all over again. "Gr-Greetingszzzz" the drone soldier or resistant fighter said as it stumbled upon them and detected their presence.

AUK-53 switched through its internal camera-sensitive cyber vision, detecting very little if any difference in the signatures at first before spotting the nest and the king on infrared, but on thermal setting he detected several heat signatures, perhaps more than he had bargained for when he entered the shrouded claws or the whale's belly. There was life hidden everywhere, camouflaged in plain sight, some smaller than the adapises, and some even larger than the turtle. Some had feet and some had wings, but almost none of them were bipedal, apart from the mostly arboreal giant great apes like Xamatopithecus or the small semi-bipedal primates like Xamoyoadapis, in this case, the small sentient and sapient loris-like rodential primates that were living inside the enormous banyan-like tree which towered even most of the other large giant trees which formed the jungle's dark canopy.

As he switched to infrared, the mammals and warm-blooded animals became invisible to AUK-53, but some of the exotic flowers and plant life became more vibrant and noticable, as did Treda's skeleton and Adapa's nest. As he switched his lenses and turned his spectrum back to the thermal setting, AUK-53's eye-like cameras started to detect the Xamoyoadapises quite clearly again through their colorful change in heat signatures, but their nests became invisible. Luckily for the adapises, their nests were in the core of the great tree, where it was very cold and damp, lacking any sunlight and too thick to detect with heat sensors. Adapa himself, however, stood out like a sore thumb, a bright contrast to the color of the tree he was poking his head out from behind to stare silently at AUK-53 with unblinking eyes, his tail beginning to dance and flick wildly side to side like a flimsy snake or tree branch, twitching with very rigid, sudden flickerings without rhythm or consistency, distracting any predators from his head or body as the other adapises 150 feet away from them started to scatter and hide, including Fat Guss who was the first to run for cover, stumbling and running into the brush without looking back.

But Apada and a couple of the more courageous xamoyoadipses stayed behind, waiting for Belle to finish her magic. Apada gripped his spear tightly with both hands and stood guard, determined to protect the king and goddess from whatever dangers might occur. Apada turned and looked up in the distance at the great giant home tree, but he didn't see Adapa this time. Adapa had finally changed positions and moved to a different spot, which caused Apada to breathe more heavily as he tried not to panic, turning to look at Belle. "No likey this feeling." Apada said quietly, looking down at the king. Meanwhile, Adapa stared at AUK-53 as it spoke. He thought he could understand what it was saying, but it sounded different, unnatural. Adapa didn't say or do anything, just stared at AUK-53 silently, trying to determine what to make of it as the drone soldier's form and shape became more visible to his more naturally, slower adjusting eyes which were unfamiliar with the drone.