I woke up in darkness with the vague sense of being smothered, I clawed and pushed out of the stifling covering and was greeted by bright light and the sounds of a forest. The air was refreshing and the sun was warm. It was hard to be optimistic with the kind of sendoff I had received but everything else was quite cheery. Normally I would welcome this sort of thing, but right now it felt like a morning person being obnoxiously chipper before I got my coffee.

Alright, let’s see what I look like. I look down at my body and see a pair of massive praying mantis claws, a quick wiggle confirms they are mine. By turning my head around, and I mean all the way around, I confirm the rest of me is similarly designed. After looking at my surroundings I also confirmed I was insect sized as well. It seems “tree monk” is a smart**s name for praying mantis. I am a bug.

Okay, this stinks. You have heard of waking up on the wrong side of the bed, right? That inexplicable feeling of knowing that the day is going to be terrible? I was born knowing things were going to suck, and thanks to this, I knew that it was completely warranted.

I began to walk around on the funky styrofoam lump I had pulled myself out of. On the bright side moving seemed pretty instinctive, on the downside, I am a bug. The lump I was standing on was the size of a football, at least I think so, my sense of scale is a bit off from having been turned into a bug. It was attached to a branch well off the ground and the surroundings seemed fairly safe for now. On the other ...claw, I am a bug, so pretty much anything can eat me, and I hear plenty of birds and buzzing insects that were potential predators. Birdsong is less enchanting when it is coming from something that wants to devour you. Now I understand how Hopper from Bugs Life felt.

flexing my arms experimentally I tried to remember everything I could about praying mantises..

Okay first, it’s mantids, mantises just sounds stupid. let’s see, I know they fly, they use camouflage, eat anything they can catch, Oh yeah and aren’t they cannibals?

*swish* yikes!

It’s really awesome that my new body can detect air currents, otherwise I would have gotten it shredded by my sibling. I ducked forward and turned to face it while backing away, my familicidal sibling tottered unsteadily after me arms waving aggressively. Oh you want a piece of this? bring it on! I was not in the mood for this and jumped forward, snagging it in my arms, lifting and squeezing. It writhed fiercely but I began chomping away and in a moment it stopped struggling. Ha! that’s what you get. I was still chewing for a while before I realized I had nearly finished eating him. evidently my instincts are stronger than I thought, or I am just that hungry. Either way this fellow is surprisingly tasty, and as I eat I feel stronger with each bite.

Out of the corner of my eye I see another baby mantis push up and approach the nearest source of food, which just so happens to be me. Ah well, eat or be eaten I guess. I am willing to fight, after all if I don’t I’ll just get chased, plus I’m still hungry. a quick grab and some well placed bites and I was on to my second serving. As I ate baby mantis number two I paid more attention to the feeling of nourishment. Yup, eating these definitely makes me stronger, I don’t seem to be getting full either, and I just ate twice my bodyweight. I was so busy puzzling through this that it took me a while to notice that more and more baby mantids were hatching…

“Seriously you lot, wait your turn!”

*Munch* *crunch*

“No! back off!”

*whff* *crack*

“WHY ARE YOU ALL CHASING ME!?”

One long fight later and I am standing alone among the twitching remains of my homicidal siblings. at first it had been hard going, I was forced to kite them and use them as meat shields, but as I took bites to deliver the coup de grace I got stronger, faster and bigger. Soon I was twice the size I used to be and could kill them with just my claws, it got a lot easier after that. By the end all that remained was a ton of bodies piled atop the weird egg sack thing, and somehow I am still hungry. Ah well, waste not want not.

*munch munch munch*

I’m not sure how this power up thing is working, I must have eaten about a hundred of the bodies and I only grew three times my original size. What's more there is still about half of them left. Grabbing a decapitated mantis in one claw and munching absentmindedly I began to take a closer look at my body. How did I manage to fight with this body anyway?

My claws were spiked monstrosities only metaphorically similar to human arms. Plus I was working with an extra set of legs but I still somehow managed to move and fight effectively. Whether it was instincts or nerve ganglia or some other reason I could only guess. Still, I wasn’t complaining. I tried stretching this way and that, my body seemed harder but more flexible than it was before.

Ah wait, didn’t Dave keep praying mantids? It wouldn’t surprise me, he would keep anything in his house if it had too many legs and was creepy enough. He was a great guy even if his hobby was a bit odd, the rest of us avoided his house just because of the sheer number of creepy crawlies he raised. The unbelievable amount he kept actually made his house smell, although he managed to avoid getting the stink on his clothes.

Frankly I was regretting avoiding his house, I could only make do with what I remembered of the facts that he would spout when you got him drunk. I don’t know how many girlfriends he lost because of that hobby but at least the trivia might help me now.

I was almost done with my meal, maybe a little more than a dozen were left. Picking up one of the mostly whole bodies to use as a comparison I realized I was a little more than four times bigger. Looking closer I realized that not only was I not any fatter than before, but other than size I was no different from my former siblings. I was kinda bummed, it seemed that mantis nymphs only had wing buds, so I wasn’t going to be flying for a while.

Despite retaining my nymph body, I was now big enough to snip my food into bite size chunks fairly easily. Wait a second, My arms are spiked; they don’t have edges to cut with, so how am I doing this?

Raising my left arm I can definitely see that it now has a saw toothed blade instead of spikes. This surprised me because this was the first physical sign of change I had other than size. I held up the chunk of mantis I had in my other hand to compare its arm to mine and noticed something odd. Wait a second, my right arm is still spiky, why are my arms different? Dropping my meal I held the two claws up, as I watched my left claw seemed to shift, the sharp edges shifting back into the interlocking spines they originally had.

It took a bit of experimentation but soon I figured out how to shapeshift my arms, they retained the same basic structure, so hands seemed impossible for now, but I could give them blade edges, spikes, barbed spines, even straighten out the end into a pointed spear. I could even change the color, or form stripes or dots at will.

Okay, this is actually pretty cool, I wonder if I can do this with the rest of my body? Spinning my head around I pictured spikes emerging from my back and, sure enough, like magic I had little spines popping out of my body. Completely transforming my shape isn’t possible, but with this my offense and defense are pretty good, not to mention using this for mimicking my surroundings. I guess this settles it, I am not an actual praying mantis…

…Tree monk is still a stupid name.

For the first time since I was reborn I was in a good mood. I had finished my meal and discovered my body’s capabilities to some extent. As it turns out, even though I am a bug I’m a pretty awesome one.

I think it's time to explore, so I’d better give myself some camouflage. flattening my body to hide my shadow, roughening my skin and giving myself the color of bark, I climbed off the egg sack and held myself close to the branch it was attached to. Yeah this looks about right. Being able to turn my head one hundred eighty degrees meant I could check my impromptu disguise quite effectively.

I had three major goals: stay alive, find people and get stronger. my first and last goal were made a bit complicated due to Lady Luck’s influence, I was pretty sure that the reason all the hatching mantis nymphs attacked me instead of fighting each other was due to her interference. On the other hand I had gained some nice benefits so I couldn’t really complain ...much. Either way I could expect little surprises like this fairly frequently, so I could only make the most of my circumstances.

I do remember Her mentioning people, so I had high hopes of finding them, but low hopes of interacting with them on a meaningful level. I am a bug after all.

As I scuttled along the branch I tried to find a decent vantage point to view my surroundings. I will say this; bug legs are the best for climbing, even crawling upside down is easy as pie. I soon reached one broken branch that stuck out farther than its neighbors and clung to the end. For the first time a got a decent look at the world I was reborn into.

It was breathtaking. The trees were all massive skyscrapers and from my tiny perspective, each one was an entire world. Each one was buzzing with life, literally. Thousands of insects crawled or flew about, each going about it’s business. there were hundreds of birds as well, all bigger than me, flitting from branch to branch while singing, each one trying to drown out the rest.

The strangest thing that stuck out to me was the bees. There must have been millions, if not billions. Most of the trees I could see had either flowers or fruit, and each was attended by a massive swarm of bees. If that wasn’t enough they seemed to be much larger than normal bees, at least I think they were, it was hard to tell with my new size. Of course they could be tiny and it wouldn’t matter with the numbers they had. The world literally thrummed with the sound of them buzzing about.

...yup, this is hell. It’s quite pretty though

Oh well, time to find something to eat. I really wanted to see how big this power up ability I had would let me get. Although being kaiju size would get a bit awkward I should at least get big enough that I wouldn’t have to worry about being bird food.

One thing I did know, I was NOT going to try to hunt the bees. Hunting something that is bigger than me and has a poisonous sting is one thing, but I wasn’t about to fight a million at once.

I made my way back towards the trunk of the tree, keeping an eye out for a suitable victim or a good spot to ambush. I toyed with the idea of staking out a flower or some fruit, but the flowers seemed to be monopolized by the bees and there wasn’t any fruit on this particular tree that I could see. As I got closer to the center a large beetle came into view. Yes, you’ll be perfect.

I admit it was a lot bigger than me, it looked a bit like a rhinoceros beetle but from my perspective it was the size of an elephant. It’s not the size of the bug in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the bug. You will be a feast.

Conveniently, the big fella had his back to me, he was also dull and slow looking, this was going to be easy as pie and also as delicious. I wasn’t in the mood to play fair so I approached quietly from behind. One good stab through the head oughta do it.

As I got close enough I matched the beetle’s slow, trundling walk. When I was ready I made a leap, landing in the middle of his back. When I landed the beetle reacted and began bucking but I was already prepared, treating his head like the target for a carnival strongman game.

I swung my arms down as hard as I could with my sharpened claws like twin pickaxes.

You’re mine!

*Ktink*

“huh?”

My claws bounced off.

My claws bounced off!

The numb stinging in my claws was the only result of my full power swing to the back of his head. I didn’t even leave a mark.

While I was standing on top of his back looking like an idiot the beetle wasn’t idling around, he jerked suddenly, bucking me off. Spinning around he aimed his curved horn in my direction and crouched low.

“Uh, hey this isn’t what it looks like…”

He wasn’t in the mood to listen. He was also surprisingly fast.

*SPAK*

First thing I felt was the horn slamming into my torso like an almighty hammer, then with a jerk upwards he fired me off into the distance like a cannonball.

*pak*

*pak*

*pak*

I flew so fast that I shot through the leaves in the way. I’m pretty sure I left my silhouette as holes in some of the leaves, cartoon style. The rhinoceros beetle knocked me clear out of the tree we were in, and I fell to the forest floor.

Working wings would be great right about now.