It’s a $%@#&?! Miracle part 1

The clearing had become a chaotic scramble of desperate, clumsy care, filled with anxiety and fear. It really is a nice side dish for after a great battle, much like an after-dinner mint. The triumphant roars of battle that should have been there never came and were replaced by the low moans of the wounded and the sharp, hissed instructions of those trying to help.

"Hold still, Danny, just... just let me clean it," a boy with rough, bark-like skin said, his voice trembling as he gently dabbed at the deep, oozing scrapes on Danny North’s arm with a strip of his own tattered shirt. Danny, the massive Musk Ox hybrid, just gritted his teeth and nodded, his body shaking with shock.

Nearby, Rita Causey worked, her pale face beaded with sweat as she focused on the task before her. "Jack, if you don't stop moving, I can't get this tight enough!" she snapped, her voice sharp with a fear she couldn't afford to show. She was spinning fresh, thick layers of her silk directly onto the bloody, makeshift bandage on his shoulder as she was now binding the wound shut.

"It hurts, damn it!" Jack Sutton snarled back, though his voice lacked its usual bite, and his face paled beneath his bristly fur.

"I know it hurts!" Rita retorted, her own exhaustion forgotten in the face of her friend’s pain. "Now hold still before you bleed out all over the place!" They weren't doctors or nurses; they were just scared kids, their human instinct to help overriding the monstrous terror of the moment, their arguments a strange, desperate form of care, and other muddled emotions to keep their sanity in check.

"And now for my favorite part of the show: the damage report!" The Great I announced, my voice booming with theatrical relish. "Let's tally the broken pieces, shall we, Humanity? See the true cost of their pathetic 'victory'? Look at them, playing doctor with bug-spit and dirty rags! Such touching, futile empathy!"

The heart of this desperate field hospital’s efforts was the still form of Winifred Weiss. She lay where she had fallen, a crumpled heap of iridescent armor and limp limbs as if a marionette had been placed on the bed before them.

Brett was already at her side, his earlier, furry and sorrowful expression only reflecting his silent anguish, now. He gently ran his fingers lovingly through her hair, his armored hands surprisingly tender, his eyes fixed on her still face. Mallory was beside him, her sobs now quiet, desperate whimpers as she clutched her mother's hand.

Ms. Linz knelt opposite them, her own face full of exhaustion and worry. "She seems peaceful, at least," she stated, her voice a ragged whisper.

Brett nodded, his gaze never leaving his wife's face. "She is for the moment. But I don't know what is truly going on. I fear that she isn't just sleeping, but she could be in a coma. I wish. I wish the school nurse were at that dance with us and here now. However, that is selfish and basically cursing someone to be like us and in the same situation." He tenderly tried to steady his wife in a comfortable position and placed a hand near her mouth to check if she was still before getting up to hold his daughter in his arms and looking back at Ms. Linz with tired eyes. "The snake hit her with its head... it threw her like a rag doll into the trees. I am happy that she is still here with us."

The other students who weren't seriously injured themselves moved, tending to the others with injuries or worse than their own. The sight of Brett Weiss, the silent, unassuming man who had just dispatched a monster with a single, horrifying strike, now a grieving husband, kept the others at a respectful, wary distance. They offered help, but no one dared get too close; the memory of his lethal power was becoming a palpable, invisible barrier of fear.

Once the fighting stopped, the silence that fell over the clearing was almost worse than the screaming had been. The only sounds were the low moans of the wounded, the rustle of students moving with dazed, mechanical motions, the cries of beasts in the distance, and the natural sounds of the forest.

They began cleaning up the ruined camp, their movements slow and dazed. Two students worked together to move an overturned log, their eyes constantly, nervously flicking towards the figure of Brett Weiss, who was still beside his unconscious wife.

Gail Southernland was sitting by herself, listlessly picking at a torn leaf, trying to make herself as small as possible. She felt a presence nearby and looked up to see Silas Blackwood observing the scene, his multiple dark eyes gleaming with an unnerving, analytical calm.

"It's an elegant solution," Silas murmured, his voice a dry rustle. "The venom acts directly on the central nervous system. Far more efficient than brute force. Many of us have vonoms and poisons that nature and evolution have crafted for millions of years within us, but don't use them because we don't understand how, fear, or hurting those around us, or being ostracized for using them." His eyes moved from her to looking at the dead snake, before sitting down next to her, holding his knees between his arms as his spider legs spread out supporting his posture, simply waiting for what she would say back to him.

Gail flinched at the word "efficient," the memory of her own monstrous hunger for blood still fresh and nagging at her mind. "Elegant?" she whispered, her voice trembling. "It was... horrible."

Silas turned his head, his multifaceted gaze focusing on her. It wasn't a threatening look, only appraising what was before him. "It was a successful application of a biological advantage to neutralize a superior physical threat. From a survival standpoint, it was perfect, though, look around you, and we see the unsteady glances of many students. I wish we could celebrate the man as a hero who helped us stop a threat before another life was lost."

"But he just... lost it," Gail said, hugging her knees. "He saw his wife get hurt and he just... snapped. Is that all we are now? Monsters that snap and break down to lose control of ourselves one day?"

"Gail, you shouldn't fear or hold yourself in contempt. The man didn't lose control," Silas corrected her quietly. "He willed his instinct to act on his rage. There is a difference." He paused, then added, "Fear is a natural response to a threat. The threat is now neutralized. Continuing to feel fear is a waste of energy and misplaces where we should focus our energy and time. I do understand it. That fear and need to find an outlet." He turned his gaze back to the camp, getting back up, leaving Gail to grapple with his chilling, pragmatic logic.

"Are you watching, Humanity? Are you taking notes?" The Great I commented, my voice a low, appreciative purr that dripped with condescension. "You applaud your roaring brutes and charging boars. Such messy, intimate violence. Your species has always preferred a more... final touch. The cold steel of a blade, the beautiful, impersonal finality of a weapon that erases its target from a safe distance. That is your true art form.

But that's just noise. That's theater. True power, the kind that ends fights before they've truly begun, doesn't need to announce itself, and if it is loud, then it is a grand show of force and power. It just explodes, taking all with it or waits, silent, venomous. But I wonder what my favorite little freak is thinking right now, seeing a real predator in action. How wonderfully pathetic, I can picture it now."

Nearby, Shirou and Katy were helping to gather the scattered remnants of their supplies. "He didn't even hesitate," Shirou muttered, his own hands still trembling slightly as he picked up a sharpened stick that now seemed like a child's toy. "Mrs. Weiss went down, and he just… ended it. One shot. After everything that we all go through, how does that make sense? How have we even been able to defend ourselves till now?"

"He was protecting her," Katy said, her voice quiet but firm, her cat eyes watching Brett with a complex expression of awe and apprehension. "That's what you do for family. You don't think, you just act."

Shirou nodded, a flicker of his old, earnest self showing through the grime and terror. "Yeah. A guy's gotta protect his girl. That's how it should be. It's just that I am frustrated. We have these new bodies, but we don't know how to use them. Some of us have claws and pinchers, quills, venoms, and can fly. But what are we even doing? I mean, look, all I have is this sharpened still and some rocks. If many of us didn't gain a strength boost, I think a lot more of us would have died already."

Katy glanced at him, a small, tired smile touching her lips. "Shirou, although understandable, you worry too much. It's more than that. It's about being a team. Supporting each other, watching each other's backs, even when things are, you know, like this. We will come to understand ourselves better with time. I mean, isn't that what life is about? We learn and grow every day after we make mistakes and grow a little more each day." She gestured vaguely at the blood-soaked clearing, the giant snake corpse, and their own monstrous forms.

Shirou managed a weak grin, touched by the sight of the grieving husband, and sighed. "Guess they really meant it when they said 'in sickness and in health'... in 'giant snake attacks' and till death do us part."

Katy actually chuckled, a soft, weary laugh. "I guess so. It's about being there for each other, no matter what. That's the whole point, right?"

"So," Shirou said, his voice suddenly a little too loud as he awkwardly changed the subject, "when we finally get over those mountains and away from the killer soldiers and other monsters with this forest... what's the first thing you're gonna do? After you take a shower and many baths for, like, a solid week?"

Katy actually chuckled, a soft, weary squeak. "Pizza," she said without hesitation. "A giant, greasy pepperoni pizza that's so hot it burns the roof of my mouth, and if it doesn’t exist in this world, then I will be the first one to make it or have it commissioned to be made with whatever money we make in the future. And maybe a movie or a play. A dumb comedy, about nothing."

"Sounds like a date," Shirou said, his voice softer now. "My treat. We'll find the cheesiest things ever made."

"You're on, Sky," Katy replied, the brief, shared dream a tiny spark of warmth in the cold, terrifying reality. "Just be sure that it isn't any of your jokes."

The warmth of their conversation faded, leaving a chilling vacuum in its place. Shirou looked down at his own hands, at the short, dark claws that now felt less like tools and more like weapons. The small change of mindset sent a small shiver down his spine.

He’d used them to fight, to scramble, to survive, but it had always felt like him, Shirou, making the choice. What he had just seen from Mr. Weiss was different. It wasn't a choice; it was a reaction. It was as if the man had vanished, and for one horrifying, lethal second, only the Cone Snail, a predatory monster, was left.

A cold dread, sharp as a shard of ice, pierced through him. It wasn't a question anymore, but a sudden, sickening certainty. There seemed to be something else inside him, too. A fox. A fox that he was unfamiliar with and that seemed alien to him from what he knew or understood. He could feel it sometimes, a low hum of instinct beneath his own thoughts as if something primal and not his own will wanted to get out.

It was there in the way his ears twitched before he was consciously aware of a sound, the way his senses thrilled at the scent of prey and blood during the hunt. A feeling he quickly and shamefully suppressed. He remembered throwing the rock at the multi-limbed monster, the surge of savage satisfaction he felt when it hit its mark. Was that him? Or was it the fox?

He looked over at Mr. Weiss, now just a grieving husband, and a new, more terrifying thought took root. What would it take to make his own switch flip? What would happen if Katy were the one who fell? Or George? Would he just... snap too? Would the human part of him, the part that joked about pizza and movies, simply vanish, leaving only a snarling, mindless beast in its place?

The monsters outside were a known threat. But the monster that had just saved them, and the one he now believed he knew was sleeping just behind his own eyes, was a different kind of terror entirely. They were a part of them after all.

Once the first wave of panic passed, a kind of numb, focused chaos took over. The students scrambled to help those who couldn't move, their desperate first aid attempts to save lives a stark contrast to the massive, dead snake that dominated the clearing.

While the wounded moaned, the uninjured adults and teachers huddled together, their eyes fixed on the mountain of pale flesh, their voices a buzz of whispered questions.

"Okay," Coach Roberts started, his voice rumbling that cut through the tension. "Let's spitball. The hole is blocked. We can't get to the water. What are our options?"

"Our first option is to recognize that we can't stay here," Mr. Decker interjected immediately, his dolphin-hybrid features etched with urgency. "The smell of this kill; it's a dinner bell for all life around here. Every predator and scavenger for miles is going to be investigating. And if any soldiers are in the area, like we have all been fearing will inevitably seem to happen, a commotion this loud will have the same effect."

"We can't just shove it. It's too heavy," Jack Sutton snarled from where he was being treated nearby, his voice tight with pain and frustration. "But... the web-spinners... their silk is strong, right? We get them to anchor lines to those big trees over there, wrap them around the snake... we can use the trees as leverage. Get everyone strong pulling on the lines... like a pulley. It's our only shot."

"Look at the size of it, Jack," Ms. Linz said, her voice heavy with weariness. "I don't think we have the leverage or the strength to pull that off."

"Then we tear it apart," Carlos Alfonsi, the Wolf-hybrid, growled. He lunged at the carcass, trying to rip into the hide with his claws, only to have them scrape uselessly against the thick, armor-like scales with a sound like metal on stone. He recoiled, shaking his hand in pain and frustration.

"What if we just... push it back down?" a younger student suggested, his voice small and hopeful. "Widen the entrance a bit, and let it slide back in? That would clear the hole."

Mr. Decker shot the idea down immediately. "Absolutely not," he said, his tone sharp. "First, the impact could cause the entire cavern ceiling to collapse on top of the water source, blocking it. Second, we have no idea what Brett's venom will do to that water. We could be poisoning our only hope of survival. And third, we have no idea what else is down there. For all we know, we'd just be ringing a dinner bell for this thing's bigger, meaner relatives, if not other monsters, without us setting up the necessary defenses first, like we do for all of our camps."

"Listen to them! 'Shove it!' 'Cut it!'" The Great I announced, my voice a silken caress of pure, unadulterated glee. "Such brilliant engineering solutions! They might as well be suggesting they flap their arms and fly away! The sheer, breathtaking stupidity is a balm for my soul. Their capacity for snatching failure from the jaws of victory is a constant source of delight."

Coach Roberts, radiating frustration, approached the carcass. He placed his massive fingered hands on the snake's flank and pushed with all his might. His muscles bulged, his feet sinking into the soft earth from the strain, but the mountain of flesh didn't budge. It was like trying to push over a building.

"It's no good," he grunted, stepping back, his breath coming in ragged heaves. "It's dead weight. Tons of it."

Ms. Linz, her face pale, looked around at the surrounding forest, her swan-like neck craning with anxiety. "Decker's right. We can't stay here," she said, her voice tight with a new urgency. "The smell of this... this kill... it will carry for miles. We fought off one monster, but its body is a beacon for every other predator in this jungle. And the soldiers..." She didn't need to finish.

They were caught in a horrifying dilemma, facing a shortage of supplies and the injured, too.

The cool, clean air they had felt wafting up from the hole just moments before was now completely cut off, replaced by the stench of blood and the toxic gas from the distant swamp.

To stay meant a chance of being discovered by either monstrous scavengers or soldiers. To flee into the jungle without water again was almost a death sentence, if not prolonged suffering. Their only path to survival lay on the other side of an immovable object.

The despair in the clearing was a tangible thing, a cold, heavy blanket that smothered all hope. They were trapped, their victory a cruel joke. But Jack Sutton, his face pale with pain and exhaustion, refused to accept it.

He shoved away a helping hand, not wanting to lean on another for help in this moment, forcing himself to his feet with a sharp grunt that made him see white stars as his vision seemed to darken slightly for a moment. "Stop... just stop staring at it," he growled, his voice low with pained rasps that cut through the miserable silence.

He glared at the massive snake corpse, then at the hopeless faces around him. "We're not dying here." He turned his head to look up, his eyes locking onto Steve Birk, his towering figure, who was inspecting a tree. "Steve! Your and the other’s silk that we have made as a cord that kept us from falling earlier! Is it strong enough to hold this thing? Stop playing with that tree and look at me! Give me an answer, dammit!"

Steve, the Millipede-hybrid, who had been quietly assessing the situation and inspecting the nearby trees' need for what Jack was suggesting since earlier, nodded slowly, his technical mind already running calculations. "The lines we used before? Individually, no way. Not for this weight. But if we braid them all together... combine Rita's coarse stuff with Gwen and Silas's stronger thread... we could make a few thick enough cables. It's... theoretically possible, yeah. I mean, we will have to act as the heavy machinery, but that is what the pulley system was used for. We should be able to accomplish this task."

"Theoretically isn't good enough!" Carlos Alfonsi, the Wolf-hybrid, snarled, his amber eyes flashing with desperate impatience. He gestured sharply towards the still, unconscious form of Mrs. Weiss. "She and the other injured don't have time for 'theoretically'! We need a plan that works, not one that's just 'possible'!"

"We'll work with what we've got. Keep your temper under control, young man. It's the only shot we've got to work with," Coach Roberts grunted, his gaze shifting from the immovable corpse to the determined faces of his students. He made a decision. "Alright. We can and will do it. Silk-spinners! You're on rope duty! I want the thickest, strongest cables you can make, and I want them A.S.A.P.!"

"Look at them, a little flicker of hope!" The Great I commented, my voice dripping with amused condescension. "They're going to play engineer! With bug-spit, brute force, and a little human ingenuity! It's like watching one of your pathetic cartoons where the fools try to haul a piano up the side of a skyscraper with a single, frayed rope. You know what happens next! The rope snaps, the piano whistles down, and CRUNCH! A spectacular, comical failure as the people below become stains on the ground. I can hardly wait for that crunch."

A new desperation surged through the group, fueled by the simple, powerful need to act. The silk-spinners — Steve, Silas, Rita, Gwen, and a few others — set to work immediately, their spinnerets and saliva producing a river of silk. They worked frantically to focus their different threads, weaving together under Steve's precise direction to form thick, shimmering cables that seemed impossibly strong.

Meanwhile, under Coach Roberts's command, the strongest hybrids — George, Danny, Vincent, a couple of ant hybreds, and the Coach himself — began the perilous task of securing the lines.

The plan was a desperate feat of primitive engineering. They took the thick, braided silk cables and wrapped them multiple times around the trunks of the largest, most deeply rooted trees at the edge of the clearing, creating several solid anchor points.

The main cables were then run from these anchor trees, passed underneath the snake's massive head and the thickest part of its body, and then looped back towards the main group, creating a crude but effective pulley system. This allowed them to pull away from the dangerous edge of the pit, using the massive tree trunks as a fulcrum to redirect and hopefully multiply their collective strength.

Getting the lines around the snake was a waking nightmare. The creature's scales, slick with its own blood and fluids, offered almost no purchase or groove to hold onto. "I can't get a grip!" Mallory Weiss yelled, her roadrunner feet scrabbling uselessly on the pale, curved surface as she tried to drag a heavy cable over its neck.

She slipped, sliding down the massive flank and landing on the ground with a pained grunt. Katy, her lynx claws finding slightly better grips between the scales, hissed in frustration as she tried to secure a line. "It's like trying to free climb a mountain made of polished marble tiles!" she snarled, digging her claws in deeper into the small gaps to keep from sliding off the grotesque, shifting landscape of the corpse.

It required a combined effort, with some students acting as human anchors while the fastest and most agile scrambled over the dead behemoth, their hands and feet sinking into the still-warm flesh, the stench of its innards a constant, gag-inducing presence.

Steve Birk approached Coach Roberts. "Coach, just pulling won't be enough," he said, his voice rasping. "The friction from the ground will be working against us. We will need rollers."

Coach Roberts looked at him, then at the snake, then at the surrounding trees. Understanding dawned. "Rollers," he repeated with a nod. "Right. You heard him! George! Danny! Vincent! Find Otto and David, and get them to make the initial cuts, before you knock them down. Get us some straight, sturdy saplings or thick branches back here quick! We're making a conveyor belt!"

The strongest hybrids, their own wounds momentarily forgotten, moved. They had Otto and David make the initial cut into the trees, then they threw their immense weight against smaller ones, the sound of cracking wood echoing in the clearing.

They dragged the fallen logs back, where others with claws, mandibles, teeth, and sharp rocks frantically stripped the branches along with David Fundus, who ate it away, creating a series of crude but effective rollers. The task takes up half the day.

The plan seemed to be filled with holes from their lack of understanding of engineering, as expected. Once the silk cables were ready, they were secured around the snake's massive head and neck. Coach Roberts coordinated the most dangerous part. "Tanks! On my mark, I need you to lift! Just for a second! Just high enough to get the first log under its head!"

With a collective, earth-shaking roar of pure effort, George, Danny, Vincent, the ants, and the Coach himself strained, their muscles bulging as they lifted the front of the colossal corpse. It was only a few inches, but it was enough. Other students scrambled to shove the first log into place. They repeated the process, laying a path of rollers in front of the snake.

"It's on!" Katy yelled, leaping back from the corpse as the last cable was secured and adhered to the flesh for good measure by Gwen and Silas’s sticky threads as well.

"EVERYONE!" Coach Roberts bellowed, his voice echoing through the clearing. "GRAB A LINE! FIND YOUR FOOTING! Alright, listen up! This is just like tug-of-war back in my gym class, except if you lose, we all die! On my count! ONE! TWO! THREE! PULL!"

A collective roar of effort erupted from over a hundred throats. Every student, every teacher, threw their entire weight into the lines that had the energy to do so. Muscles strained, claws dug into the earth, and the thick silk cables groaned, stretching taut as harp strings. For a long, agonizing moment, nothing happened. The snake was an anchor, a mountain of dead flesh defying their desperate, collective will.

"IT'S NOT WORKING!" someone screamed, their feet slipping in the mud.

"AGAIN!" Coach Roberts roared, his own face purple with the strain. "TOGETHER! HEAVE!"

They pulled again, a wave of desperate wills surging through them. The silk ropes sang with tension like guitar strings. The massive trees they were using as anchors creaked, their roots groaning in the earth. And then, with a sound like tearing earth and sucking mud, the serpent's head moved. An inch. Then another.

It was working. It was actually working. What hated, rotten luck! Fueled by a fresh surge of adrenaline and a wild, disbelieving hope, they pulled again, and again, their grunts and shouts a single, unified rhythm. Slowly, agonizingly, the colossal corpse began to slide, its immense weight carving a deep trench in the clearing as they dragged it, foot by painful foot, away and out from the hole.

The colossal snake corpse lay in a deep, muddy trench of its own making, its head a good twenty feet from the now-clear hole. The crude log rollers they had used lay splintered and crushed under its immense weight. The students and adults collapsed where they stood, their bodies screaming in protest.

The thick, braided silk ropes, frayed, stained red, and stretched, fell from their raw, bleeding hands, pooling in the dirt like lifeless objects that they were. For a moment, there was only the sound of ragged, desperate gasps for air. They had done it. The path was clear.