Chapter #2: A Happy Accident

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Rexxu runs at a full sprint (translated to scrub, imagine a quarter speed of a human dead sprint). Bush brushes bush as Rexxu tears through the forest. The forestry is especially disorienting when Fipna's scream comes from the first path he's seen since the start of the expedition. Rexxu finds multiple logs blocking him from the area, he pushes through a gap in the stacked nursing logs; entering a clearing.

Readjusting himself he tries to make sense of what he is looking at. Fipna hangs upside down stuck to a wall with a couple of other forest creatures. Just below and off to the side of her is a young qoanmoth, struggling in it's confinement. Its mouth honors a long set of pincers, the kind that squeezes the life out of trees–which they do often to build large nests like the one we are in. running further down its mandible its teeth are sharp, fit to grind and mulch just about any nutrition it can get its mouth on.

Obviously, Rexxu's attention is solely on this threat. it seems that the qoanmoth's wings are also stuck, the only thing making it impossible to devour Fipna.

Rexxu moves closer to understand what it is they are stuck to. Before he could, the qoanmoth's earwig-like body shook ferociously and with a disgustingly raw ripping sound, the sticky wall rips off their wings. The qoanmoth plummets to the earth and lands directly on its fresh injury, It's body reacts elaborately, and the qoanmoth screeches into the sky with a roar that shakes the wings pinned to the wall above.

Rexxu assumes a battle stance, but he knows the sheer scale of difference between him and this monster of flesh, even wingless there is no victory for Rexxu. His feet tremble into the earth and his leaves rustle as he stands before this beast. Qoanmoth is a behemoth-sized insect, they are also winged predators that often retreat to their nest with prey in to eat them. These creatures have the strength to spare. The qoanmoth are the dragons of the underbrush.

The qoanmoth corrects its awkward position with a couple of swings of its torso. It rights itself and turns away from Rexxu. Rexxu prays in place that it would leave, fortune never smiles on the scrub. Rexxu watches the qoanmoth begin to pace; it moves forward and to the left, then backward and to the right. It repeats that process twice before finally facing Rexxu.

Rexxu can't help but shake the shock of how inept its walking is. 'This can't be the qoanmoth that takes flight gracefully across the leaves of the great forest! Rexxu contemplates, 'All this time we just had to clip their wings?' Although he thought this he can't shake the deeply rooted fear instilled inside him from the countless instinctual scrub brain cells swimming through him. The qoanmoth shook its thorax and leaps for Rexxu.

"Rexxu, get out of there!" Fipna escapes her fear enough to command Rexxu. Rexxu doesn't heed her warning and stands in place, his brain stalls due to the monster in front of him. Rexxu responds to the lunge by doing something scrubs don't normally do in or out of battle. All five of the qoanmoth's eyes watch in disbelief.

Rexxu leaps to the sky... about a foot into the air. Only ¾ of the jump is required to scale such a beast. As it lunges down towards Rexxu's original location, Rexxu clears the grinding and snapping sets of teeth land lands just before the broken wing shoots. Rexxu has been preparing a nut in his mouth since the very first sign of trouble, waiting for an opening like this.

At point-blank range, Rexxu releases a nut with the pent-up power of an entire minute. The nut cracks under the pressure in Rexxu's tubular mouth. The power is not wasteful by any means; in its stead, sharp shrapnel launched out littering the entire backside of the qoanmoth. Its green blood comes up to the surface all over its backside immediately. The shrapnel begins to embed itself deeper with each of the qoanmoth's movements. The bug's muscles react spasmodically, clearly by pain.

Rexxu regardless of the wild thrashing of the beast Rexxu spends much time looking at the damage he inflicted. At this point the qoanmoth doesn't buzz in pain, instead, it lets out a full-scale roar. Bucking back, Rexxu finds himself much further off the ground than he has ever jumped before. Rexxu graces the canopy of the trees overhead before freefalling.

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