"AAAIIIIII!"
Eleanor plummeted from blackness, arms flailing, legs striding, eyes big, hair whipping backwards. Far, far below her appeared to be snow-white rolling mountain ranges amidst lakes. Or so she thought. She could clearly see blackness off to the sides, as well as the extremely bright sun over yonder. Therefore, thousands of feet below her, were clouds amidst the blueness of a sky. The mountain ranges would be below the rolling clouds, sunlight reflecting from oceans.
Although she could not breathe at an altitude of well over a hundred and sixty thousand feet, her slug kept her alive. She felt her skin and flesh swelling, bulging from such pressure, but yet again, her little slimy friend attached to her stomach stabilized her body. Nevertheless, Eleanor was in quite a lot of pain, feeling as though her bones and muscles wanted to burst through her skin. It was like having bad period cramps, but everywhere.
Falling from the mesosphere would take quite a while. After Eleanor exhausted her lungs of air from her scream, well, she still had at least four minutes of freefalling before reaching the ground. Every breath she took was nothing but feeling her blood rushing upwards, the pain of pressurization of her tissue, and the total terror of suddenly being in a skydive without a parachute, was rather unpleasant.
Eventually, after a couple minutes of skydiving at over six hundred miles per hour, Eleanor reached atmosphere that had colour. She dove into the whiteness of clouds, and soon beheld mountains, jungles, rivers, lakes...
Hunh, that's...really beautiful, actually... Eleanor thought to herself, for a second forgetting about her freefall. But her skydive of horror commenced anyways. At least she could breathe again, sort of, wind feeling like it would blow her face off her skull.
As she dove, the mountains, lakes, jungles and rivers shrunk and receded into the horizon. Just a few thousand more feet to go. Eleanor then saw peculiar structures, which looked like Mesoamerican pyramids, walls, and towers, a portion of which surpassed the jungle canopies. The structures appeared to be overgrown ruins, clearly indicating Eleanor was not where she used to be.
Able to breathe and regaining her senses fully, Eleanor braced herself as she crashed through the canopy. Branches shattered, flocks of birds flew away, lizards and squirrels scurried, leaves and twigs and things rained to the ground, but Eleanor was nowhere in sight. As a few trees swayed and endless leaves shook, dark purple lights rippled. Eleanor sat on a branch, looking down, panting, her hair a complete mess. She looked up, seeing the hole in the canopy she made, below it a series of broken branches of gigantic trees.
Huh... That was quite the fall. What on earth happened... She dropped her head and shoulders, then put her hands on her brow. Dizziness, soreness, and swelling churned throughout her lithe but strong, long body.
"Wooahh... I think I need to lie down," Eleanor mumbled, rubbing sweat off her face. It's quite hot in this place, and seemed to be morning. Various jungle birds and insects chirped and sang, the birdsong echoing everywhere beautifully.
Turning around on her branch, Eleanor lied down on her front, resting her cheek against the bark, letting her long arms and longer legs dangle. Quite an uncomfortable position, but she slept like the elongated baby that she was, lulled by birdsong and breezes.
Eleanor lied on her branch, gently snoring. With a snort, she woke up, wondering where the hell she was. The first thing she saw, directly across from her, a black panther sleeping in the next tree. The big cat yawned, stretching her legs out. Done yawning, the panther stared back at Eleanor with a pair of big, circular, yellow eyes.
Eleanor smiled. "Hey there, beautiful."
The two girls just stare at each other. After several seconds, the big black cat licked her paw.
Eleanor sat up on her branch, hair still crazy, and looked around. She was perhaps a hundred feet from the forest floor, feeling quite safe up there. The region was quite moist and hot, clothes sticking to her sweaty skin.
"Fffhhhnnn!" Eleanor scrunched up, hands on her abdomen. "Ugh! Period cramps... Ooowooo-uhhh..." The pain was absolutely horrible. Eleanor grimaced, lips parted, eyes shut tight, teeth clenched. "Uhhh... I better not bleed into my new clothes, and I don't even have a tampon..."
Eleanor teleported down to the forest floor. She painfully and slowly limped around, looking for a nice spot. She hoped her impending menstruation would wait a little more. Her agonizing waddling led her into some leafy ferns, and she barely had enough time to pull her jeans and panties down to her ankles before the stream of runny blood leaked.
Not even Plasmids could make girl problems go away. She almost whimpered as her body ejected the unwanted matter.
"There better not be anyone watching..." Eleanor whispered to the ferns, listening carefully, but there was just the echoing birdsong. And drizzling blood. A bathroom would have been way better, but this was all the privacy Eleanor was getting. To make things worse, flies and dumb bugs buzzed to the scene.
After a dozen leaves, Eleanor figured she was done. But, she straightened her back too quickly, and a little more blood oozed out, so she quickly ducked again with a grunt. After another dozen leaves, her bodily needs finished. Once she slid her panties and jeans over her small bum, Eleanor stepped out and looked around.
"Now, where am I, and how did I get here? Huh...like I'm ever getting an answer." Eleanor rolled up her sleeves. "So, what have I gotten myself into this time?" She sighed. "Oh well, no point sitting and wallowing. Looks like I ended up in Latin America. I'll find civilization sooner or later..." Eleanor walked along nowhere. "...I hope."
Eleanor spent the next few hours wandering forth, lost and alone, but not afraid. The jungles were thick and immense. Even grasses, flowers and ferns frequently towered over Eleanor, forcing her to push them aside to squeeze in-between them. The canopy was so damn thick, that at times she could not even see the sun.
As she wandered, Eleanor kept turning her head. She did not know why, but she had a feeling she was being watched. She even heard branches creak once in a while, but nothing happened.
Every now and then, she would teleport upon large branches to scan her environment, but that only revealed endless arrays of more branches everywhere. So, sometimes, she would teleport atop the canopy, standing tall atop the jungle. Though, there was just a horizon of treetops. She could not see any structures, either. Nevertheless, she teleported down, though the feeling someone was watching her remained.
A while later, Eleanor noticed something amiss with the trees. Some trees had been broken asunder, as if a great force ripped through them, often near the trunk. Such damage left behind tall splintered trunks, and sometimes the top half of a tree lying on its side. Since none of the trees had lost their leaves, the damages would have to be rather recent. Occasionally, she saw short grooves in the ground ending in diagonal holes, as if something had dove into the ground at an angle with great force. Oddly enough, all such holes came from the same direction.
After half an hour of walking and observing trees snapped in half, Eleanor heard running water, which shot her out of her little investigation.
"Oh! Good!"
Eleanor soon found a river flowing along a series of mossy ruins overgrown with vines. The ruins seem to have once been giant chunks of towers, as they had stairwells. Tiny waterfalls leaked out holes in the ruins here and there, and the remains of an ancient highway made the ground toward the river flat.
Kneeling before the river and cupping her hands in the water, Eleanor drank her full. She also put water in her hair to cool down, and rinsed her face and arms. Sitting on her heels, and placing her hands on her lap, she relaxed—a spear landed before Eleanor, splashing a little water onto her and making her flinch. She reared and went to her feet, looking up the shaft of the spear, which was at least twelve feet long. A bronze spike was socketed over the butt, glinting in the sunlight.
A moment later, something huge leapt from above, landing in the river, splashing water everywhere. Not knowing what was going on, Eleanor wiped the water off her face, then formed a floating fireball over her palm. To her surprise, the huge thing did not retreat, walking through the water and grasping the spear.
What was remarkable about the huge thing, was both how it looked and how it was lacking in looks. It appeared to be nothing but a floating nervous system, brain, and eyeballs, all glowing blue. A transparent, bluish aura surrounded the nervous system, creating lineations in shape of a huge bipedal creature. The glowing, translucent outline was perhaps nine feet tall, hiding a beast that breathed deeply and heavily. His translucency allowed him to appear as the colours of the jungle around him, but the silhouette-like blueness was noticeable up close.
The ghostly creature pulled his spear out the ground, stabbed it into the forest floor at Eleanor's side, then scraped a line between her and the riverside.
"So, I'm not allowed to drink from the river..." Eleanor remarked quietly, analyzing the translucent beast before her.
He does not smell like roses... No ADAM, no Plasmids... Yet, he clearly possesses abilities that could only be possible with ADAM... Unless, it's something else. Hmm. Seems to be a mix of counterillumination, bioluminescence, retroreflection, nervous chromatophores, cerebral photophores... This is a biological stealth system...
The beast grunted at Eleanor, leaning over and pushing her back. She stepped back, but raised her hand containing the floating fireball. The beast also stepped back. Eleanor did him a favour and charged her Plasmid, causing the flames to double in height. Grunting aloud, the beast spun around, landing on his hands and standing on all fours deeper in the water, keeping his spear underwater.
"There's a good boy. You keep your distance from me, and I won't have to hurt you."
The translucent creature lowered, dipping his muzzle into the water.
"Tojt azd venri?" the creature deeply growled.
Eleanor raised her eyebrows. Did he just speak?
The creature cocked his head, then stood upright. He stuck his spear into the riverside and crossed his arms. His aural lineations rippled... Eleanor's eyebrows furrowed, and her eyes widened once the beast's natural stealth systems dissipated.
What was revealed seemed to be a huge, bipedal monster covered with dark blue scales becoming brighter towards the belly. He was quite reptilian in appearance, having a thick tapering tail as long as he was tall. Rounded were his torso and hips, neck thick, eyebrows ridged, limbs long, no heels, small palms, and eight fingers and eight toes per limb ending in curved claws. However, his skull structure was like that of a panther, and even with his mouth closed, a pair of fangs curled over his lips. He had large, circular, blue eyes with large slitted pupils. The veins in his eyes faintly glowed blue. Having both a muzzle and a forehead gave him a rather evolved look, though scales removed any possible expression.
The beast cocked his head in the other direction. Despite his large size, he moved with rapidity. He blinked with translucent inner eyelids, as if expecting something, yet unsure what. "Venri azd...waea?" the beast asked, speaking with a voice so deep and so guttural it was hard to notice the syllables or pronounciations.
Eleanor held her forehead. "No...this can't be real..."
The beast gripped his spear with both hands and leaned on it.
"Okay, I was walking towards Mother and Zachary, and then...I began falling from the sky? That... None of this makes any sense..."
"An vits'qio azd wushia vaeti'ullovah. An tugo'qio azd vus cnu wishwa. Xeqio beil'qio venri chas, mohto oanan'chas, azd venri balar liliyu?" the creature continued, then made a gentle growl. "Lortdu venri hohtof cnu fmahan, liliyu?"
Eleanor dropped her arm. That's not gibberish... Since he was not possessing Plasmids, clearly a being not born from Rapture, she could not merge her mind with his and understand him; any form of effective communication was hopeless. "I...I can't speak your language," was all Eleanor could say, then heard echoing screeching.
The beast flinched, lowering in the water and looking up. Eleanor looked up as well, and saw, what appeared to be, flaming rockets. Echoes of booms sounded moments later. Many flocks of birds quickly flew out the trees.
"Artillería!" the beast growled.
Artillería? Eleanor thought to herself, wondering what that could mean. After a second of thinking, the next word kicked in. Artillery...
Rocketry screeched as a few dozen rammed into trees, bursting into flames or bouncing off and continuing to spew fire out the backside. The smell of smoke rushed, followed by crackling noises.
"Ohgshar!" the creature warned.
"That must mean fire!"
Whoever was launching rockets, clearly intended to start a forest fire...in the area Eleanor happened to be standing in.
A huge splash suddenly came from the river, the beast jumping out of the water. Eleanor heard a whooshing noise and a nearby tree trunk exploded, sending the top two-thirds of the tree falling over. Eleanor shielded herself with an anti-gravitational Plasmid to block the shards of wood. The beast seemed alright, his bulky, scaly body withstanding the woody shrapnel.
More booming echoed from far away. Eleanor looked up, seeing explosions in the sky, debris raining. Then, she saw something surprising. Up, high in the sky, appeared to be several zeppelin-like vessels, ranging from large to huge, complete with wooden tails, motors and engines. All the aircraft had massive red drapes cover their fronts, for whatever reason. The largest ones made booming sounds, firing what sounded like naval cannons.
Eleanor had walked into a damn war zone. When she looked at the creature, he seemed to glare at her, so she shrugged at him with big eyes. "What?"
"Tugo o!" The creature beckoned. "Tugo o!"
Follow me.