137 Man vs Savage land (part 1)

I was used to waking up in pain. This wasn't because of anything specific, just a combination of factors. I was used to having muscles sore from workouts, bruises from training, some… stuff from Jen that we both never ended up regretting.

But I'd never woken up with pain shooting up my arm like fire. It blew up in my head with blinding whiteness. I was soaked, my legs felt cold, and I felt like I'd been both drugged and somehow not drugged enough.

"F-Fuck! What the hell?!" I moaned around a mouthful that felt like blood. My head was spinning as I blearily opened my eyes. I felt like I was being stabbed over and over in my arm, the anguish hitting me in waves. The pain in my head didn't help either. I coughed up some water, with tasted just a bit bloody. My helmet had snapped on at some point. That had probably saved my life if I'd ended up in the river. My armor had a small supply of air that it could provide me even without power to use the rebreather.

When I finally was able to see, I looked down at myself.

"...Shit," I mumbled quietly.

My right forearm was broken. It was bent at an unnatural angle, almost at the center of my arm. It was going purple at the bend. I instinctively tried to bend my fingers.

"Fuck!" it felt like lightning flowing into my body from my arm, carving chunks out of my nerves. My eyes snapped closed as I took big deep breaths of air. Damn. Damn. Damn.

I tried to rise, to sit up. I felt a rush of relief at the fact I could move. When my legs felt cold I'd been worried I'd snapped my back as well as my arm. Even if it would have been temporary with the help of the Omnitrix to let me shift into Swampfire to heal, I was still-

My thoughts stopped when I got a good look at myself. My armor was just… ravaged, I suppose would be the word. It looked like it had been melted while it was on top of my skin, with pieces gone where it would have protected my thighs, stomach, lower arms, and portions of my feet. I still had my clothes underneath, but even my helmet looked like it had been through a lava pit.

What the hell!? Why was my armor melted? Why was the rest of me fine, what… oh fuck. Anti-Metal. Somehow, someway, I'd encountered anti-metal. And if my armor was like this...

"Oh no," raising a hand to my ear, I began to speak quickly. "Creel, Fantasma, can you guys hear me?" Not even static. "BRIDGE! Hello, anyone, this is Dial! Can anyone copy?!"

Nothing. My HUD didn't pop up to show me anything either. No GPS to follow, no radio on either my quantum comm or normal comm. Whatever had melted my armor had also taken apart the computer.

I struggled to sit up completely as I thought fast. Okay, my armor was gone. My arm was broken. And-

The Omnitrix rested on my arm. It had been through hell. Portions were devoured, melted, pitted. It was still attached to me, but the portions that functioned as the main watch were a wreck. And the light… it was white. Bright and pulsing.

What the hell does that mean?!

I tried to use my right arm, only to bite back a scream at the pain. Since the Omnitrix rested on my left hand, this was a problem. I forced myself to bring my left arm to my right, but even with the Omnitrix right next to it I couldn't force my fingers to move without wanting to scream, and even then, only about a centimeter. Instead, I brought the Omnitrix up to my face. Feeling almost childish, I pressed the Omnitrix to my forehead. Nothing. I brought it to my mouth and tried to twist it. Other than aching teeth and the flavor of alien metal in my mouth, I got nothing. In a fit of frustration, I pressed the Omnitrix against a rock.

"Come on you dick! Don't quit on me now-" I slipped, hitting my broken arm on the ground. "AHHHHH!"

Okay… focus. Don't let the pain distract you.

I was lost in the jungle. My focus had to be on survival first and foremost. If I couldn't use the Omnitrix right now, my easy out to any of this (Swampfire to heal, Astrodactyl to get back to the cliff, NRG to nuke anything that stopped me). I had training on how to deal with broken arms. Best to put it into play.

I pulled myself to my feet, wincing at the feel of water dripping from my jeans. That was gonna be itchy.

A small laugh bubbled out of me. Armor and Omnitrix melted, arm broken, lost in the jungle, and I was worried about my legs getting itchy? Freaking ridiculous.

What was first? I had to set my arm. Thankfully, I was friends with a pair of good doctors.

Flashback

"If you must do it," Jemma Simmons said with a slightly sour look on her face. "And if there is no actual doctor around…"

"Jemma, I promise, if there is a doctor, I'll have the professional set my bones," I said with a grin.

We were sitting in her lab with Bruce working nearby. I'd come to bother the two in my continuing bid to learn as many useful skills as I could for hero work.

Jemma sighed in relief, which I found slightly offensive. "Okay, I can teach you then. The first thing you want to do is make sure nothing is protruding from the skin. If the arm is bent…"

Take your arm and straighten it back into place as carefully as you can. Get ready for a shit-ton of pain.

I took my right hand in my left. The sting that followed was enough to make me hesitate. I looked up at the blue sky through the trees above, trying to let the beauty of the jungle and the sound of the river. With a solid movement, I brought my arm back into place.

"AGGGGGHHH!"

When the spots left my eyes, I was lying back in the mud again. "...I'm doing this wrong."

The jungle didn't give me any response. Dick.

I rose back up to sit up, reaching for the sword on my back. When I took it off and brought to look at, I found myself wincing at the sight of my trusty blade.

It looked less like a sci-fi longsword and more like a beat-up machete with the tip have melted.

"Damn it," I looked over the blade. "I loved this sword, man. Not enough to name it, but still."

Still… If it was sharp.

As an afterthought, I also pulled my gun off my back, only to wince. Yeah. That was even worse. It was pretty much a big piece of square metal melted around plastic. I was probably lucky the magnets in my armor were still working.

I got up to get to work. I fought off my frustration with the situation all the while.

The first ingredient to taking care of a broken arm. Two pieces of wood, preferably flat. A bit of hacking with my half-melted sword got me two sections off the side of a big jungle tree. It kind of sucked, just slicing out two chunks of wood, but I'd worry about the ethics of it when I wasn't trying to survive.

Once I had two pieces of wood as long as my forearm, it was time for the second ingredient. Pieces of cloth, long enough to wrap around a limb several times. I took my sword and after a hell of a lot of trouble working around the melted sections of sword and armor, I got the bottoms of my jeans cut off without slicing myself.

I had to be careful about getting cut. Jungles were cesspools of disease. And this being the Savage Land, I was probably surrounded by viruses that no one had ever heard of in millions of years.

Once I had the raggedly cut sections of jeans in my hands, I cut them into several long strips. I tried to be careful, but also fast. Getting my right arm secured was important. But getting it done before night fell was even more important. I only had a few hours of sunlight to see in.

The second I had several long strips of denim, I took the two pieces of wood and placed one on the back and one on the underside of my forearm. The fucked up thing about my arm was that, based on what I could feel of the break, both bones in that arm had been cleanly snapped. I don't want to explain what it's like to take a hold of your arm and feel the bones just… cut into two pieces under your fingertips.

"That is so gross," I mumbled. It was still kind of interesting to feel that.

I wrapped the arm once the pieces of wood were placed, looping the denim around and around while making sure none of the pressure went on the spot that had been fractured. Enough to keep my arm still without furthering my injuries.

I messed up the tie at one point. Working with only one arm, ya know? I cursed quietly, untied it, then put it back. Once done, I made a crappy sling out of the remains of denim.

It was a shit splint and sling. But it would work until I could get to safety.

I took stock of everything. Okay. Armor and Omnitrix weren't working. Well, unless…

Taking a moment to rub the Omnitrix against a tree to try and turn or activate the dial got me nothing. And it was still White?! What the fuck did that mean?!

Whatever. I'd have Tony or Fitz take a look at it if it didn't just fix itself… Please fix yourself.

I didn't want to get depressed while in the middle of survival. But the thought of the Omnitrix being broken, the fact it wasn't responding at all? Goddammit. What was I worth without the Omnitrix?

Flashback

"You need to stop thinking that," Nat said as I lay on the mat. She'd kicked my ass once again, as always, and had stopped to let me take a breath.

"What, that the only reason I'm an Avenger is that I have the Omnitrix?" I asked Nat.

She scowled down at me. I shrugged while lying down. "What? It's true. If I didn't have this thing, Maria would have me in a room just writing notes on upcoming threats every day. I wouldn't be an Avenger, I'd be a desk jockey."

My favorite redhead squatted to look down at me. She was upside down from my perspective but still face to face with me. "If you keep thinking of yourself as useless without the Omnitrix, why are you even trying to train?"

"...I don't want to be useless," I admitted. "I want to be worthy of this life I've got now."

Nat stared down at me. "...Then shut up. Stop whining about how useless you are without that watch and start doing something about it."

"Yes, sensei," I tried to joke.

Nat grinned, flicking my nose.

Stop being depressed and do something useful. Maybe not the healthiest thing mentally speaking, but it would work for the jungle.

Okay. My armor was useless technologically speaking, but I still had chunks of metal protecting my body. Melted hunks, but better than nothing. My sword was melted, but it was still good enough to slice things even with the tip having been turned to a big chunk of metal. And I had clothes. Which, despite what you think, is a big deal. My simple shirt and jeans (Well, jean shorts now) were protection from the elements.

Okay, I'll admit it. I was trying to think only on the bright side.

I needed a better weapon. Something to make up for my melted sword. But that would be a waste of time right now. Better to focus on getting home. I'd floated down the river. So walking upstream should get me home. If I found something like bamboo, or maybe a good straight sapling, I could make a spear.

I started walking, my sword out in front of me. I stayed close to the river, trying to keep in the open where a quinjet would be able to see me, and got ready for the hard walk ahead of me.

Walking through the jungle was hell. It was hot as fuck even when I had to risk walking through the water. Several times I had to use my sword as a makeshift machete to hack through the undergrowth, which was exhausting. Chopping into wood takes energy you could be using for other things. Sweat dripped off my beard and shirt. My broken arm was a hassle. I was working under half my power.

As I moved, I 'blazed' a tree every once in a while. Blazing was the practice of slicing just a bit of either side of a tree with your blade, always at eye height. It's usually done to mark where a hiking trail was. In my case, I was trying to make sure of two things. First, that the jungle didn't confuse me to the point I ended up circling. Second, that anyone following me would know where I was headed.

"Fuck me," I said to myself. "Fuck me, fuck this jungle, fuck the Savage Land…" A buzzing sound drew my attention upwards. "...Fuck."

A bigass bug was flying near me. I lifted my sword hesitantly. It looked like a mosquito for a moment. I prayed that it wasn't. Not because it was big, well partly cause that, but because they carry diseases.

It flew down lower. I breathed easier when I realize it was a dragonfly. A dragonfly with meter-long wings. It was almost pretty. Its wings, while clear, fluttered a rainbow of color when the sun passed them, and its thorax was a bright fluorescent blue-green. It drifted down towards me. I raised my sword, only to blink when it landed on the melted tip with its spindly legs. It was heavier than I expected. It was also kinda… cute. Its wings fluttered as I watched it before it took off.

I continued.

Further down, another bigass bug scared the hell out of me. It came zooming out of the forest like a bullet out of a gun, rushing past. I stared at it as it went. It looked like a moving carpet of segmented scales, with dozens of small legs under it. It was fast as hell, dodging the rocks and trees easily. I watched it zoom off into the undergrowth with a sigh of relief. It was huge, man. Longer than I was tall. Maybe it had been a herbivore and that's why it hadn't attacked me. Either way, it was tense seeing an insect with that many legs as big as a person go rushing by.

As I walked, I kept remembering everything I'd learned about jungle survival.

Flashback:

Nat and I were standing in the lab with Bucky. The former Winter Soldier and current Avenger was speaking while a hologram floated in front of us. "Your first issue with survival in the jungle is not the poisonous animals like snakes or predators like jaguars and crocodiles. You should be careful about them, sure. Even the smallest animal can cause serious harm or even kill ya."

He waved a hand. The image of a small brightly colored frog popped into life. "You touch one of these, for example? You spend the next few hours hallucinating before you die from the poison that entered your bloodstream."

He glowered at me. "You can get dehydrated when the humidity and heat bleed you dry. If you're injured, that gets worse. The body starts spending calories and water to heal itself. Then there are diseases like malaria to make it worse. Walking through the jungle is worse. The combination of undergrowth and constantly checking for poisonous or dangerous wildlife is a horror show."

"...Why is it whenever you describe something, it's like I'm getting training advice from Satan?" I asked with wide eyes. Nat chuckled behind me.

"Because I've been to hell," Bucky growled. "And if you listen, I can help you learn how to get out," he swiped the air, the hologram shifting again. "The jungle. The jungle is the enemy. More than anyone hunting you, more than any animal. The jungle is first. It will surround you in green hell, disorient you, hide threats and help alike in its foliage," I was starting to get flashbacks to Jumanji. "So focus on the fundamentals. Water. More important than anything when it comes to survival. In the jungle, you don't want to get it from rivers without boiling it first. So instead, you get it out of trees first and foremost, leaving the option of boiling for later. The best plants to get water from are..."

Remembering that advice, I kept an eye out for the plants around me. While doing that, I ended up encountering more wildlife.

A scorpion. An inky-black scorpion the size of my leg. And it was busy.

I stared at the thing as it stood atop a rock. In its pincers was a rat as large as a cat. The thing was twitching in the big arachnids pincers. The scorpion's beady eyes watched unfeeling as its prey died in its pincers, that massive stinger raised high.

I hesitated on seeing it. The scorpion didn't seem to see me. But all I could think about, seeing it, was food.

Scorpions are full of protein. Protein is probably one of the best things you can eat out here in the jungle. They also use venom to dissolve their prey and suck up the remains, which means they don't carry tapeworms or other parasites. But the fact it was the size of my leg and had a stinger the size of a carpenter nail made me hesitate.

I could have tried to chase it off and eat its prey instead, but the rat was currently full of venom as it was. The scorpion, oddly enough, was the better option.

"...Fuck you jungle," I finally said quietly.

Okay. How to catch a scorpion? Bucky had run me through that… on normal scorpions. Not giant things like this. If I'd had another hand, I could have held down its tail with a long stick and stabbed it in the head with my sword while it was pinned. Well, crushed its head in with the pointed tip, I mean. The sword may not have been pointy anymore, but it was basically a hammer right now. But with my arm broken, my options were limited.

The fact was, I was lucky. This scorpion was probably waiting for its prey to die before dragging it to its lair to let it dissolve into goop it would suck in. I wasn't sure why it hadn't picked somewhere more secluded to wait but I wasn't going to complain.

Bucky had taught me to see scorpions as food. Now I had to take advantage of that. No time for traps. My armor was thickest on my legs. With that in mind, I came up with a plan.

I crept closer, slowly, small bits of shooting pain coming from my arm whenever it got jostled. It was a struggle to keep calm. Everything about the situation felt so stupid. Attacking a scorpion, a venom-filled ball of armor and rage, with plans to eat it, knowing it could kill me. But I'd rather eat it than anything else. I didn't know what plants in the Savage Land were poisonous, so I couldn't risk eating any nuts or berries, I needed food now, so eating a rat or other mammal that could be full of bacteria raw was dumb when scorpion was so much safer to eat raw. And it was here. That was the biggest thing. The scorpion was here, I was hungry, and I needed calories to move through the jungle.

I got about fifteen feet behind it, making sure to check the area around me before I crouched. The last thing I wanted was to sit on the primeval equivalent of poison ivy. Or the gympie gympie plant, that nightmare so intense they named it twice.

I raised my sword. I had to do this in one smooth move. Incapacitate the tail, stab down with the melted sword. Incapacitate, stab.

I took a deep breath in. "...Okay."

I rushed out. The scorpion, startled by the loud motion I made behind it, raised its tail and turned around in a rush, dropping the rat, which continued to twitch as it landed on the rock and rolled off. The scorpion's black armor glistened in the light. It made a sound, something like a hssss sound. I was on it in moments. I tried not to scream as I moved, focused on breathing instead.

Oh shit, it was huge! It was getting ready to stab me, it's tail tensing. I needed to stop it now!

I kicked out first. My foot smashed into the tail. The tail hit the tree, stinger section wiggling under my foot. The scorpion hissed. I stabbed down at it in a panic. My sword bounced off the rock instead. The tail wiggled under my foot again, the scorpion flaring pincers at me, the right pincer scratching against my armor.

"GRAAAGH!" With another scream, I brought the sword down again. It crunched against the scorpion's armor, barely scratching it. It scratched at the rock, tail wiggling. I lost my mind, stabbing down at its head again and again, hitting it as hard as I could while keeping my boot pressed against the tail to try and keep its tail pinned. "Die, just die already, come on!"

One, two, three times, I kept hitting it until I lost count, the sound of a clump of metal bashing into armor filled the air. Then there was a crack. The scorpion let out another hiss. One of its pincers caught in my melted armor, scratching my leg. I brought the sword up again, stabbing down. The armor collapsed under this blow, crushing the things head at last. I raised the sword again and stabbed down one more time. My sword went through the head, scratching the stone beneath. The scorpion wiggled for about a minute before stilling at last.

"...Fuck me," I said one more time. Better be careful. I might have been getting repetitive.

The laugh that came from that internal joke sounded a little insane coming from my lips. I kept my boot where it was a moment longer. When I removed it, the tail fell limply to the ground.

I stared down at the corpse for a moment. My stomach was feeling tight and sore, so the thing was looking a lot more appetizing than gross, even with its head crushed and white, almost cream-colored, goo pouring from the wound. Still, the civilized human in me hesitant at the thought of eating a bug.

Still. Bucky had told me a thousand times. If you have food in front of you, eat it. Don't expect it to pop up again.

With that thought in mind, I raised my sword and sliced at the tail, aiming for just under where the venom glands would be on a normal scorpion, right at one of the joints where the armor was gone. The edge of my sword was sharp enough that I managed to slice off that section of the tail in a single chop. Venom poured out of both sections, but it stopped very quickly. I was going to have to be careful. The venom lost any of its ability to be, well, venomous, when it was cooked, but I still might be allergic to it. Last thing I needed. I tossed aside the stinger section and lifted the body of the scorpion to look it over. I needed something small to eat. The claws would do.

I took the right claw and chopped it off, then smashed it open on the rock. I stared at the creamy flesh inside. After a moment of disgust, I grabbed a piece out and shoved it into my mouth.

It didn't have a flavor. But god, the texture was just awful. Like swallowing warm wet pieces of carpet. I forced it down, then kept eating, keeping my head on a swivel. Didn't want some allosaurus to sneak up on me as I chowed down. Soon I had emptied out the entire claw of any meat.

"...Slimy, yet satisfying," I chuckled to myself.

My stomach felt much better. Still hungry, but not starving.

The sun was still pretty high in the sky. I had to keep moving. One it started to come down, I'd worry about fire. What I needed now was water.

I took off my belt and wrapped it around the tail and claw so I could carry the body, then moved on.

Further on down the river, I was starting to wonder what the hell was going on.

First, I couldn't see the cliff I'd fallen off of no matter how far upstream I went. Second, I hadn't seen nor heard the quinjet, which had to be looking for me. Hell, Fantasma had magic! Why hadn't she just done a tracking spell or something to find me?

I kept moving. Worrying about it when I couldn't do anything was fruitless. I knew I had to go upstream. As long as I kept moving, I would be able to get to the cliff. Just keep steady. Cut through the undergrowth, keep moving.

About an hour of walking later, I found treasure.

Bamboo. Wonderful, wonderful bamboo! The greatest thing someone lost in the jungle could find that wasn't a fully stocked kitchen attached to a machine gun.

"Oh baby," I mumbled to myself, rushing toward the thicket as carefully as someone could rush. I kept clear of any leaves and kept an eye out on the area while I walked up and pressed a hand to the side of that cool green stalk, one as big around as a large jar. Pressing an ear to the bamboo, I shook it. The sound of water sloshing around inside was a godsend.

I took out my sword and began to chop at the side of the thing. Bamboo is sometimes full of water. Clean water, water you don't need to boil.

There is no way to explain how relieved I was to see liquid splash across my blade. I sliced it in half and watched the whole thing fall. I hefted it up and cut a small hole in the side with a couple of chops. Bamboo is set up in sections, like… I don't know, like a bunch of pipes that were closed off from each other and left as stacked chambers?

Whatever the case, I tipped the bamboo over and felt water pour into my mouth. If felt so cool, slipping over my lips, filling my cheeks, and slipping down my throat with each swallow. I drank the whole of that chamber, then cut a hole from the next one and emptied that as well. When I was done, I felt amazing.

Okay. Dehydration wasn't a problem now. I had food at my side. And with the bamboo, I could make a weapon. Nothing fancy, but with bamboo, I didn't have to make something fancy.

I took my sword and choose a bamboo stalk that wasn't thicker than my wrist or thinner than my fingers, just big enough to hold easily. Once I was sure it was a healthy stalk that wasn't rotted through or something, I sliced it off. I cut it to be just a little shorter than me. After some thought, I decided against cutting holes out to drink more water from. I did this to another one. Cleaning off any branches and rubbing off the leaves where they grew off the seams, I soon had two long sticks of bamboo.

Next, I took my sword and brought the edge against the end of one of them. It was tough working one-handed, but with plenty of water and my scorpion meat to keep me full and hydrated, I was able to keep focused on the task.

Once I had one side split into different sections, I took off one of my shoelaces.

Flashback:

"My shoelace?" I asked Nat, confused. She was watching as I bench pressed. With a lot of work and constant effort while Steve shouted at me to work in the nicest way anyone had ever shouted at me, I was very proud to say that my bench press had gotten to three hundred pounds. And my pecs looked a lot more like they were actually made of muscle, so bonus!

"Yeah," she said, pacing back and forth. "When you live as we do, you never know what will end up being useful in some way. One part of my training is that whenever I wear boots, I use 550 paracord instead of normal shoelaces."

I lifted the weight off my chest with a big breath out. "That's an awesome idea!"

She moved to smirk down at me. "Glad you think so. You gonna start carrying a knife around now?"

I shook my head. "Nah. I've always got my sword."

She rolled her eyes at me. "Idiot. Also, this is too easy for you now."

"What do you-oof!"

Nat hopped up to sit on the bar. While I was holding it.

My arms shook for a moment under the added weight. "Are you crazy?!"

"Be prepared for anything, remember," she said, sounding amused. "Besides, you knew I was going to do it."

"...still though."

Not gonna lie. My sword was great, but having a much less cumbersome knife would have been great. Still, that might well have melted as well. At least I had the paracord to fall back on.

550 paracord isn't some new thing that came out of Starktech. It's been around for a while. Pretty much every survival guy in the world recommends having it over any random sort of nylon rope. It's immensely strong, for one thing. For another, it has a casing surrounding seven nylon strands of cord. The casing can hold 200 pounds of weight. The strands can each hold about 40 lbs, to make 550… Wait, my math might be off. Damnit. Well, look, the point is, the stuff is tough, from casing to all seven strands and it's easy to take the paracord apart for a thousand different applications. And because of its design, you get three times as much cord as you would if you carried most any other type of rope.

I took mine out of my left boot and cut off a long section of the lace. I needed it for several things, but thankfully my loving and very mean mentor had me tie in PLENTY of cord.

I put my boot back together, then took that length of cord. Putting a small ring of bamboo in the spear I was making, I tied it together around the core I made out of that ring, making sure the prongs I'd made were sticking out nice and solid. After they were secure, I sharpened each prong with my sword as carefully as I could. It was a bitch to do one-handed, but soon I had a four-pronged spear. I took the other side and simply chopped it at an angle, sharpening that further. I didn't waste time with the prongs on the other stalk, only cutting it at an angle. I did it to another, and another, until I had about twelve long spears of wood. Leaving the pronged one aside, I stabbed the rest outward in a half-circle.

Night was coming. I had to make a shelter. Better to be in the bamboo, where there was water and supplies than to continue on in hopes I'd find my way home in the middle of the night.