Dustin uncurled himself slowly. He was stiff and sore, but unharmed. That was a first.

Looking around as he brushed the dead bugs off of himself, he couldn’t help but be amazed at the change in the landscape. They had eaten everything.

The trees were stripped bare close to thirty feet up from the ground, and he could see skeletons of things that had been caught in the swarm. Why had they not killed him? As he glanced at the PED, he noticed that his arms were covered in thick shell plates. Then he noticed he was completely naked. The belt with pouches and the rest of his outfit were gone.

Horror washed through him, as he reached between his legs and found nothing. Where had his twig and berries gone??! Cupping himself, relief washed over him as he realized they were safely contained behind a flap of skin with a thick plate of its own. Rubbing his face, he laughed softly to himself. Scooping up one of the dead bugs, he decided to see what his PED could do with it. Now that they were dead, he didn’t mind the nasty things as much.

(GENETIC MATERIAL ACQUIRED. ANALYZING. AVAILABLE EVOLUTION OPTIONS: FANGS, WINGS, REDUCED SIZE WOULD BE REQUIRED FOR WINGS.)

“I’m not interested in any of that,” he said, looking around. It should be relatively easy to travel at the moment. How often did these things swarm like this? Was it like the locusts back home, or did it happen more often? He had a hard time believing that. There wouldn’t be as many critters trying to kill him if that were the case.

Making his way through the eerie forest, he spied several of the foxes with three tails, snapping up the bugs. They paused to watch him as he went on, then continued with their feast. He didn’t think he was going to get anything worthwhile from them.

“PED, will I be able to go back to being human?”

(ALL GENETIC EVOLUTIONS ARE PERMANENT. IN ORDER TO RETURN TO A PREVIOUS STATE, HOST WOULD HAVE TO ACQUIRE A SAMPLE OF GENETIC MATERIAL.)

He paused, then cursed. That meant the Dustin that had been sent to this planet was gone. He would never be able to prove it was him, unless…

His mind raced. His mother had been a hopeless drunk after his dad died, but before then, she had been a loving and caring mother. Except, he remembered she kept his baby teeth in a jar. He thought it was gross and had asked her why she did it, and she refused to answer him, only laughed. If he could get his hands on that jar, maybe he could turn back into the man he had been. But how?

Starting back up, he saw a glimpse of water ahead, and decided some fish sounded good. As he got closer, his pace slowed. There was a small beach here, something he hadn’t seen yet, and lazing on the beach were countless numbers of creatures. Drawing closer, he realized they were the same things as the lizard fish that had tried to take his leg off.

He stopped fifty feet back to watch them. They only had two legs to pull themselves with, like seals almost, and long tails that dragged behind them. Their mouths were huge, too big to be able to close completely. The needle thin teeth he remembered, were sticking out over their lips, causing them to drool all over the place.

How did they swim like that? Those mouths must cause some serious drag.

Shaking his head, he decided he didn’t care about that. What he did care about, were the eggs they seemed to be laying in the sand. How long would it take them to finish? Could he sneak up behind one and dig out another nest without getting attacked? He weighed his options, and decided to wait.

Off to the side, he saw several other things were waiting as well. The bone tailed foxes were lined up, laying down and watching. He kind of thought they were cute, but knew they were going to be after the same eggs he was. Looking back at the beach, he decided there were probably going to be plenty of eggs to go around.

Hours passed, and more and more creatures joined the wait. There seemed to be a type of agreement among them, not to attack each other, and Dustin was glad. He didn’t think he could take some of them, and none of the trees around him had limbs close enough to the ground for him to grab and climb. As the sun started going down, the last of the lizard fish slithered back into the water, and the hunt was on.

Dustin dashed forward with the quicker creatures, digging like crazy. His toughened skin and claws made digging a lot easier then he had thought, and it took him no time at all to find his first batch. As he reached for the first egg, one of the other, larger predators, pushed him to the side and started slurping them up whole. It was the four-legged dinosaur he remembered seeing from his burrow under the fallen trees. It’s bright purple and neon green hide shined in the setting sun.

He reacted without thinking, biting the thing on the leg. His teeth sunk into the thick hide, and he tasted a thick bitter flavor as its blood rushed into his mouth. Letting go, he jumped back as it went to bite him, but faltered. Everything on the beach stopped what they were doing as it stumbled and fell. It convulsed for a few minutes, then went still.

Tilting his head to the side to look at the leg where he had bit it, he saw black lines radiating out from it. So, he must have gotten venomous bite from that snake thing he had killed. He looked around at the other creatures on the beach, but they had all gone back to digging and eating. Picking up some of the eggs, he ate them. They were slightly fishy in flavor, but not bad. By the time he was done with that nest, and ready to move to another one, most of the first comers had finished and run off. The second wave had arrived, and they were much bigger and more aggressive.

Pulling out his knife, Dustin moved to the dead dinosaur and started skinning it instead. He wasn’t feeling like eating anything else raw. It was time to have a cookout, and dinosaur leg was on the menu.