"Blegh."

Trinitite grimaced, pushing the freshly-downed tree away from her. She'd thought the rod-straight trees would make perfect planking to repair and brace her flight deck, but when she'd bitten in, she'd been overwhelmed by a strange, sticky substance that stuck to her hands and gummed her teeth together. She'd keep some of the strange wood in her hold, but if she actually wanted to use it it would need to dry and… be treated, somehow. Hopefully her fairies could figure things out once she got some actual resources.

Frustrated, Trinitite stood, her aborted meal disappearing in the darkness. It was midnight, and a low blanket of clouds ensured she was walking in pitch darkness. With only the glow from her eyes to guide her, she was having trouble making distance. Focus on the trees and bushes ahead of her, and she would find herself tripping as the rough ground pitched up and down. Focus on her feet, and by the time she'd noticed low-hanging vegetation A branch would be painfully jamming itself into the hole in her deck. She tried to keep an eye on her compass, but as the ground got more treacherous it became harder and harder pick a direction and stick with it.

On top of it all, if she didn't find food soon it wasn't going to matter. She had plenty of fuel left. Thanks to the ride the fishermen had given her, she'd been running on only one boiler and had much more fuel than she'd predicted. It was going to take a while before she had to worry about that, but she couldn't use oil for repairs and rations. There were plenty of creatures, but without giving her position away with guns or aircraft she had no idea how to hunt them. Maybe she could lay some sort of trap…

Contact, astern!

Trinitite spun at her lookout's call, her tentacles flailing to prevent her from falling in the uneven terrain. There, startlingly close to The Abyssal, a pair of eyes reflected the light from her own.

Trinitite froze, her boiler pressure spiking as the carrier returned the thing's stare.

"EHAAAAAAAaaaAAA!"

Alarms blared in Trinitite's mind as the unnatural scream filled her awareness. The carrier lept backwards, replying to the scream with one of her own. What kind of creature was this? Was she getting stalked by another Abyssal? Perhaps she'd run into some supernatural entity that lurked in these woods, and her trespass was about to be repaid. Despite bristling with weapons, covered in armor, and enough horsepower to break a stone in half, she suddenly felt vastly outclassed.

So she ran.

Almost immediately, a weight fell on her back, claws wrapping around her shoulders as she realized how terrible a mistake she'd made.

As the abyssal was thrown to the ground, she found visions of her princess passing through her mind. Fangs dug into her hair, hooking around her ear as she slammed into a particularly sharp rock. Was was finally going to manage what the Navy could not?

I'm sorry, mother.

…Hold on, the thing's claws weren't digging any deeper, and the creature's dull teeth had failed to pierce her skin. A fang had hooked into her ear, and while it hurt it wasn't tearing anything.

Trinitite wasn't nearly flexible enough to reach the monster on top of her with her hands. Her tentacles were free, however.

The creature recoiled, scrambling against Trinitite's cape, but it was too late. She'd gotten a solid hold of the the thing's neck.

It was time for some revenge. As an added bonus, it seemed Trinitite wasn't going to starve this week.

"What do you think?"

Mark Little was too old for the military, and even if he wasn't he probably wouldn't have signed up. National parks weren't seeing as much attention as they once did, but keeping them safe for future generations was vital. The war would eventually end, and when that happened people would appreciate having a national park to return to.

This, though…

"I'm not sure."

Mark, along with his partner Jess, had been called in by a backpacker who'd been babbling about 'strange noises in the night' and a 'really weird carcass.' When they'd first responded, the Rangers had no doubt he was just some college kid who saw his first dead deer. If he hadn't sounded so scared when he'd called them over the radio, the pair would have taken their time. When they were approaching at the backpacker's claimed location, though…

Both rangers agreed that finding parts of a Mountain Lion spread a mile from either side of the Queets river qualified as 'weird'.

Now, the two park rangers were pacing with the backpacker, following a trail that had been left in the woods. Where it wasn't marked by gore, shattered branches and overturned stones marked the creature's path, more than one bush suffering where the thing decided to shoulder through it instead of around.

"I've never seen something like this." Mark came to a stop, kneeling next to a shattered rib. "Nothing out here crushes their prey."

"Nobody's this picky about fur, either." Jess added, bending over a strip of ant-covered skin. When the backpacker knelt down next to her, she turned to address him. "What happened, again?"

"I was in my hammock…" The man stood, pointing downslope "...over there, when I got woken by this horrible screaming noise. I'm fairly sure it was this mountain lion."

When the park rangers had found the man, he was kneeling near the remains of a leg, bear spray clenched in one hand and radio in the other. His sky-blue jacket had made him easy enough to find, and it's hood was down, despite the rain. As they inspected the carnage, he kept looking away, eyes darting between the distant trees.

"It seemed pretty close, so I reached for my bear spray, but before I'd gotten ready I heard this big crack, like someone had ripped one of the trees in half. I had trouble getting back to sleep, but it was quiet for the rest of the night. If I hadn't stumbled upon this I wouldn't have called you."

"I'm not sure I can make a ruling on this." Mark replied, standing and patting the hiker's shoulder. "We'll take some pictures, then escort you back to the station, right?"

The hiker nodded. "Yeah."

The clouds above brightened as the two rangers collected evidence, the hiker nervously sticking to the pair.

A hip, also shattered.

Another bone, marrow removed and its fragments covered in unfamiliar scratches.

A muddy footprint, bare and disturbingly human.

Mark hadn't been certain when he'd started viewing the carnage, but the more he studied the site, the harder it had become to deny it.

"We need to close the park." He stated, interrupting the silence that had settled between the three.

"You're thinking this is…" Jess asked, trailing off as she examined another section of discarded fur.

"Yeah." Matt added, looking up at the hiker. "Sir, it seems that you've survived an encounter with an Abyssal."

The man's face went pale, his imagination no doubt painting all sorts of terrible ways last night could have gone. Matt had to agree. Somehow, one of those genocidal things was loose in one of the most popular national parks in the United States. Did the military know?

If this mountain lion was the first victim, who was next?

"...And I'll kneel down,

"Know my ground,

"And I will wait I will wait for you..."

The airwaves in Human territory were cluttered with… Trinitite wasn't sure what. As she made her way southwest, she started picking up more and more transmissions, growing as she ascended ridges and fading as she wandered into valleys.

The Abyssal was completely flummoxed as to the purpose of these. They didn't follow any communication protocols she knew, and all the noise they were making certainly didn't help get their message across. If there even was one. She was fairly sure there was some meaning to the weird babbling that emanated from her receiver, but when Trinitite tried to focus on what was being said she just found herself frustrated by pointless vaugeries and repetitions.

"...I can feel the rain reminding me,

"In the eye of the storm, You remain in…"

Who would put so much effort into ensuring the ravings of the insane were broadcast for everyone to hear? From the sheer number of these transmissions she had to guess they were either extremely common or incredibly powerful. Either this… alien habit was endemic among humans, or they were willing to build and power massive transmitters for the sole purpose of transmitting it.

Was it for navigation? No, they had that 'GPS' thing that had to be much more reliable.

Was all of this information so useless? She couldn't stop sifting through them, but these transmissions were giving her a headache.

Maybe that was because of her hunger. The creature that had attacked her was tough, stringy, and didn't sit too well on the Abyssal's digestion. Briefly, she wondered how it would have tasted if she'd let a human cook and prepare it, but she quickly suppressed the thought.

Although, this was going to be a stealth mission. Perhaps entertaining such thoughts would be useful.

The animal also wasn't nearly enough to keep her fed. She estimated it gave her another week, after which she wasn't sure what the plan was. The human navy was fairly large- and apparently it was a fraction of a much larger population, even when grouped with the Army and Firebringers. She'd have to figure out how they got their food and copy that.

"...I've got to be free!

"Free to face the life, that's ahead of me.

"On board, I'm the captain, so climb aboard…"

If she could make it, that is. Even with her food supplies depleted by the gunfight off the coast, she had thought she could make it to the port across the western bay. However, the dense mountains she was walking through significantly increased her travel time, and while she'd seen thicker vegetation in the south pacific she'd never tried marching through it.

That meant, even with her latest meal, she wasn't feeling confident about getting to the distant port. Add in another encounter with the Navy, and even if she got out she was going to starve.

She still wasn't any better at hunting, unless she was willing to give away her position by shooting. If things got desperate, she was still armed, and the way she saw things risking detection was better than guaranteeing a death by starvation.

"Come on, dance, jump on it

"If you sexy then flaunt it,

"If you freaky then own it…"

Okay, what did that even mean? What kinds of machines produced those noises? She was loosely reminded of the strange tunes and calls she'd heard from birds over her life, but she didn't pretend to understand those either. Radios were for conferring important information to distant individuals. Without the safe use of her aircraft, listening to their transmissions was the closest thing to actual reconnaissance she was going to get, but the surreal nature of these broadcasts was making it hard for her to think straight. Was everything in this collection of frequencies as weird as this?

"...the most disastrous war policy we've seen since Vietnam!"

Hold on. This person was speaking in a natural, if animated tone, and seemed to be discussing the war.

Perfect.

"Coming up, we've the defense industry's aggressive lobbying in Congress, as well as a deeper look into our refugee crisis. You're listening to the Ron Martin show, see you after these messages."

More of the strange noises came up, but Trinitite stayed on that frequency. The transmission was fairly faint, meaning while she wouldn't be able to hear it while she crossed this valley, it seemed the most useful transmission so far. She'd listen in for a few hours, and hopefully she'd get an idea of what she was running into.

"The future of printing is here!"

…or she might get more confused.

That's right, folks, I'm bumping up my chapter batch count from 2 to 3! This is done so you can catch up to where my fic is faster, and thus I can better implement your feedback from reviews and PMs. At the new pace, you should catch up to SB/my first draft around chapter 17 (plus a few complete and planned interludes).

This chapter I reminded myself why I never listen to political talk radio. Mentioning certain political topics in the future (refugees, immigration, etc) will be unavoidable, but in a effort to both give an even-handed portrayal (and not straw-man any particular point of view) I won't be approaching it through radio.

Anyways, when I started writing this I wasn't too exited about portraying "fish out of water" jokes. I've read so many GATE fanfics that writing a character oohing and aahing at everything they run into seemed pretty cliche. However, an abyssal has a much different outlook on civilization and culture, as well as several ways to experience it that just aren't available to your average "trapped in the real world" fantasy character, as well as powers that mean they won't be impressed by everything. That's got me a bit more exited to write, really. It should be pretty unique.