I Am A Carnivorous Plant

My new coat looks super cute on me! Shui even hollowed out the skull and removed the lower jaw, so I get to wear the top as a little hat if I need to! Although actually, I feel a bit bad about putting something on top of my wonderful little flowers, so I’m probably not really gonna put the hood up… But still, options are nice! Options make the world go round!

I had to cut off the arms to make holes for my tentacles, but now they’re all nice and unrestricted, and the coat isn’t weighing them down at all where it presses against their base. I also had to uh… pull off a few tentacles so that I could tie the coat shut, which wasn’t my favorite process, but had to be done. I’d considered stealing the tentacles I needed from that stupid traitor Shui while I was still mad, but in the end I realized it felt wrong to do that to a baby, and let it go. Thank you, mom, for my moral compass, yadda yadda yadda.

But yeah, new coat! I’m super duper warm in this thing! And I can still move how I need to! I gotta be a bit careful to not move too wildly and mess the thing up, though. There’s a total possibility that I get cut up fighting something and shred the damn coat, too… So actually, I guess I gotta be more careful about dodging, now.

Man, having things is hard!

No wonder I never wore anything before this!

Well at least I’m not gonna freeze my plant-bits off anymore.

~~~

It took me another hour of wandering through the dark mountain terrain before I found more wolves. This time they were all too busy eating something to really notice me, though. Ah well, it doesn’t matter if they see me coming or not! I enjoy playing the part of the sneaky little assassin just as much as anyone else~!

I snatched two of the big wolves away and broke their necks with my tentacles before any of them could even react. I have to be on the offensive here instead of letting them come to me, unlike last time, if I wanna make sure my coat doesn’t end up very damaged. I’m used to casually tanking some hits, but if I don’t wanna freeze or waste more time making new coats, then going on the attack is definitely the play!

Let’s see, there’s about three left, so I can just-

“Oookeeek!!!”

Suddenly there was a bunch of screaming, and I could hear the sounds of things charging in our direction. The wolves turned around towards the noise as fast as they could, but it wasn’t long before two hulking figures came crashing through the foliage of the trees and flung themselves down at the wolves, completely pancaking two of them, while the third wolf ran off with its tail between its legs.

These big things… Look like yetis? They’re wide, and gorilla-like, but somehow have a bit more of a humanoid figure than a regular ape. The way they swung down from those trees sure was monkey-like, though! I don’t even know how the trees were capable of supporting these big guys; I mean, if they stuck their arms straight up, they’d easily be able to climb onto the roof of a house without even jumping!

Hey… Hear me out, here. These guys are big, the wolves were afraid of them, and their fur is this interesting white-ish blue color with plenty of frosting on the tips. They’re icy-icy yetis, basically. …Do you think that maybe these guys might be the Ice Guardians that the giant snake was talking about? Maybe I’m jumping to assumptions here, since these things are literally only the second thing I’ve met on this mountain, but like… They just look special, you know? And something about them just screams to me that these things are gonna be tasty. How could my gut be wrong?

Oh, and for the record, these yetis weren’t exactly on the nice side. As soon as they saw that the last wolf bounced, they immediately started attacking me instead. Well, they’re probably the apex predator around here or something, if the wolves’ super scared reaction means anything. They probably don’t like that I’m here in their hunting ground, hunting up their food! I know I certainly wouldn’t appreciate it, if I were them.

Welp, I came to fight and eat things here anyways, and there’s all the more reason to, if these things are the Ice Guardians that I’m looking for!

The left yeti was the first one to try and jump at me. The mountain is sloped, and although my roots don’t work like real legs, boy do they still struggle going up an incline quickly. The yetis seemed well versed in getting around though, and jumping down the mountain is, of course, wayyyy easier, so you can understand why I was at a bit of a disadvantage here, right? There were actually plenty of medium-sized trees scattered around the place, so I was able to take a page out of their books and monkey around using them, but fighting something for the first time using its own tactics is never really the best thing to do, and uh… Yeah, the thing caught me pretty easily. It didn’t catch much of me, just a couple of my tentacles, but those got ripped out before I could even metaphorically blink. If they weren’t able to so conveniently rip off from my main body, I’m pretty sure I would have lost a chunk of my torso as well, along with the tendrils it took.

Obviously I grew the tendrils back once I shook myself free from the yeti, but less tentacles, even temporarily, means more slow, right? So it was inevitable that I got caught again. It’s been so long that I had to worry about my speed against something; Not even the big-ass crab overpowered me in speed this much before! Sure, the crab managed to slice off my tentacles a few times too, but that was just because I was stuck there at the mouth of its cave, trying to poke at it while dodging. I wasn’t actively running around like I am now. Besides, when the crab and I had our big wrestling match on even ground, I was plenty fast enough not to get hurt!

But now, here in this one on one game of tag with the yeti, I actually feel like I’m going to be killed if I get caught.

And catching me is very very likely.

I’ve already tried last time when it grabbed onto me, but the yeti’s muscles are surprisingly too strong for my tentacles to restrict. Me, who could uproot trees just a few months ago without any assistance! If I had a chance to root myself and use a bunch of vines, then maybe I could overpower the thing, but there’s absolutely no way that I’ll have the time to do that before it manages to rip me the hell apart and kill me, so that was completely off the table. So then what’s left? Running isn’t working, and rooting, which should in theory make me stronger, is off the table, so then what can I do? I could try summoning the corpse babies, but I don’t think they’d make much of a difference in the might of this thing, and even if I brought out the treant in its adult form as a last ditch effort, using all my resources move, I’m pretty sure it would only delay the thing for a little while before all of my stuff ran out. Heck, honestly I’d be scared that it would make the second yeti, who’s still busy over where the wolves got smashed, come join in on the fun, so I really don’t wanna have to try summoning anything at all!

Well, I hate doing this, but I guess this is the last option I have. If this doesn’t work, then I’m gonna have to have a serious brainstorming session on how not to die in the next minute.

Pleeease don’t decide to look over here while I’m doing this, second yeti! It would really blow if you joined in right now and got in the way!

So to make this little plan of mine work, I had to let the yeti capture me. Its gigantic hands barely had to open that much to grab onto me, and if I had bones they would have been completely crushed right now, but at least it didn’t immediately start ripping me apart. I guess since it was able to firmly capture me, no ripping was necessary? Or maybe it was just that it had learned after seeing me grow back the tentacles it had been ripping out so far. Well either way, from the way it opened its large, ape-like jaws wide and came right for my face, it looks like it was planning to bite my head off. Understandable. If I were it, I probably would have done something very similar.

Too bad this is the exact worst thing it could have tried to do right now!

While it was busy stretching open its mouth, my mouth opened faster, and my inner mouth tentacles (which I’ve woefully neglected using for quite a while now) sprung into action. They opened up, shoveling loads of my stomach acid directly at the yeti’s face and mouth, and some of the acid even managed to get into the yeti’s throat. It’s obvious to say that the yeti never got to complete that chomp that it was setting up for~.

I guess these things aren’t all that resistant to pain, because as soon as my enzymes got to sizzling its sensitive face bits, the thing dropped me like a rock immediately. It crouched onto the ground in agony, clawing at its face desperately to try and get the acid that was burning it off, but all it did was also burn its fingers. I quickly came closer, pouring more and more acid onto its head in waves, and dodging away when the thing swung wildly at me. If I had ears, they’d probably be bleeding right now from how loud and shrill its sounds of pain were.

With the yeti so screwed over, there was no way that the victory wouldn’t be mine! Stupidly enough, though, I wasn’t able to kill the darn thing with my tentacles. I tried stabbing, clubbing, strangling, all kinds of good things, but the yeti’s hide was just too strong for me, and its muscles in its neck were too thick. Besides, strangling it meant that I had to get a whooole lot closer than I wanted to, you know? I just wasn’t very confident while doing it, so maybe my heart wasn’t fully in it, and that's why I failed.

Oh well. At times like this, Shui has become a favorite of mine for a reason. I choose you, Shui-chu! Kill this stupid thing for me; I have another yeti to demolish!

Yeah, I guess the first yeti’s cries made the other yeti finally stop whatever it was that it was doing and come over, but this time I was nice and prepared with my roots in the ground, waiting for it. They’re fast when they fling themselves around in the trees like monkeys, but after playing tag with that first yeti for a while, this second yeti was looking very very predictable, you know? It was easy to tell exactly where it was going to have to go, and if I knew that, then it was over for this yeti for sure.

A latticework of crisscrossed vines suddenly erupted from the ground, creating a net and entangling the surprised yeti who was sailing through the air and couldn’t stop itself. This yeti was a bit smaller than the previous one, and although it was actually doing a super great job at tearing at my net, it didn’t quite have as much power as the previous yeti had. It was easy to keep making more and more vines to encase it, and with it being stuck, the explosive stabs from my spring vines were very very precise. It took a lot more stabbing than I would have liked with how thick their hides were, but I managed to kill it off eventually, so I’ll take it.

After double checking that I’d fully killed off the second yeti, I went back to check on the first. Shui had done a good job at boring through the yeti's neck, although it did look like it got smacked and squished a few times. Luckily it was just its bush-body that took the brunt of the hits, and not its little mouth with its drill-teeth, so there wasn’t any costly fixing and replacing that needed to be done, although its faux seed, made of my little bleeding heart that served as the core of all of these little summoned babies, was looking pretty torn up. Ah well, it didn’t matter; Shui had already managed to saw through the things jugular, and pint after pint of blood was being pumped out of the now still yeti, so I was sure the job was done.

You did a good job, dog, so go ahead and rest.