A dented can bounces and rolls into the road after being lightly kicked, leaving a trail of unfinished soda behind as it stops under a streetlight that flickers every few minutes. Haste sighs as he carries his overstuffed bag of cup noodles and canned soup wrapped around his right wrist, letting it laze to the sides of his calves. Headlights light up the road as he walks away from the store he both works and does his weekly shopping. As the cold air sneaks into his thin hoodie, he shivers and stuffs his free hand into his pocket, thinking to himself. "I really just need to buy a coat, I'm starting to get tired of freezing to death on my walk home." He looks upwards as the apartment complex he's currently staying at comes into view, leading Haste to think the same thing he does every time he sees the building on his walk towards it, "Why does the complex have to be so far away? This bag's actually heavy for noodles and cans so I'd really like to get inside a building before it tears." Haste pulls the bag up to his waist as the haunting thought of it ripping comes to mind and hurries his pace, hoping to avoid such a cosmological disaster. Cars and trucks still roar past Haste, blowing hard bursts of wind towards him, ruffling his already worn-down hair in the gusts. Through some messy speedwalking, Haste starts making notable progress while focusing on getting to his rented room as soon as possible; suddenly though, a loud truck horn blares from behind him as he stands next to an alley, the horn tenses a surprised Haste up as he yanks the bag up to his torso; not too soon after, the horn echoes away through the darkness of the night as the truck that rung his ears with it flies by.
Haste lets the bag laze back down to his legs as he yells angrily, "Jeez! What were they even honking at?! The car half a mile ahead of th--!" Haste is interrupted by the sound of a tin can hitting the sidewalk, luckily not busting open, unluckily however Haste immediately takes notice of the fact the large truck blaring its horn had made him miss the fact his bag tore open at the bottom. A few soup cans and cups drop out and roll around the sidewalk or into the darkened alley between an abandoned brick building and a seemingly empty warehouse. "...I hate this." Haste calmly spoke, his eyes showing no emotion while he let out a discontent sigh and rubbed his forehead, trying to suppress his anger and annoyance, "All right! Whatever!" He complained to himself in mutters as he decided to take care of the stuff that went into the alley first before it rolled too far in. He took the first steps into the alley, hunting down the soup that already rolled pretty impressively deep in. Graffiti of random shapes and letters littering the dusty walls, too hard to make out under the shade of the adjacent buildings, but Haste can make out the tin soup can just fine, its metal body reflecting the streetlight shining in from just outside of the narrow space. It was resting beside a dumpster, some flat cardboard, and a few bottles of either liquor or rum. Stepping over a bottle of the same shape Haste makes it to the dumpster; grabbing his soup with his hand that doesn't have an empty bag still attached to it, he's successfully able to stop it from escaping any further. Yet when he's trying to pull it towards himself, something happens to grab back. A human hand grips his wrist tightly, Haste can yank his hand free with some struggle though, with the soup as a bonus. Haste lets out a very audible "What the--!" In the same moment, a shambling man clumsily steps out holding a rusted kitchen knife, he does a cutting motion at haste as he speaks, slurring his words whilst he does, "You git back you- you damme tennejer" Haste defensively raises his hands, dropping the soup can as he complies to the command and speaks calmly, hoping to defuse the situation a bit. "O-okay man, I got it, I'll just back up like this, okay? Nice and slowly...?" The man jabs his knife into the air, relatively far from where Haste is standing, but still close enough to scare Haste as the man gets illuminated by the moonlight, letting Haste see for a split second that while the man is covered in rags with a scraggly beard adorning his face that sits under a gray eye and broken teeth, he's a lot more ripped than Haste ever expected. Every step Haste takes back the man takes one forward, eventually, the man speaks again as Haste starts getting closer to his escape, "Don't you talck 'bout my daughtar that wey, youu scumm!" Haste snaps back with a reply to the man's random demand, his hands going to wave a bit before he stops them, "What? Look dude I di--!" The world around Haste slows as suddenly something rolls under his feet, in an instant his vision is no longer focused on the man, instead, he's looking up at the starry night sky as his entire body catches what feels like an eternity of air time. Haste's body soon slams against the concrete path as he gets winded, feeling the air fire through his throat and out into the world around him, he starts gasping and trying to roll over as he hears glass shatter and the man yelling, "You fuckin' rat!" The man lunges onto Haste as a cup of noodles burst under his knee, the rusted knife catches Haste's eyes as its orange color cuts through the black sky he was painfully gazing at, Haste sees it raise over the man's head, both hands gripping the handle as he moves almost robotically, only for the man to immediately launch it down on Haste, who tries to maneuver out of the way, twisting his neck to avoid the stab, only for it to pierce his chest, between his ribs. It feels as if he got a heavy punch delivered into his chest, but the blood that flies as the knife is ripped out makes him all too sure the knife did just puncture him. Adrenaline tries to numb the pain and give Haste enough strength to force the man off of him, but the man is too heavy for Haste to wiggle out, the man stabs again; as if he's running on adrenaline or bloodlust, the second puncture is delivered below his ribs. Haste is finally able to let out a scream of pain as it does, but the man doesn't stop stabbing. Haste tries squirming, clawing, and punching all to no avail as the man stabs into Haste's chest again, striking a rib as the knife slides off of it and angles into more of his muscle. Haste screams more as he fights harder against the man, still to no success beneath the assailant's strength, as the man stabs more Haste suddenly can't bring himself to fight anymore, letting his arms fall to the side as pinkish blood leaks out of his mouth, through the pain though, he feels oddly comfortable, the yelling goes silent as he feels a sudden urge to close his eyes; as if he's just pulled an all-nighter, a familiar feeling that's welcoming in the sudden fear of a painful death, so he complies, letting his eyes shut, even if he realizes this will be the last time they do, he'd rather not die fighting. His struggling breath escapes his damaged lungs as he lets a blanket of cold air cover him and falls to rest.
Birds chirp as he pushes his eyelids against each other, forcing them shut, trying to be ready for death to take him, but the moment of peace empties rapidly, and refuses to comply with his acceptance. "Wait..." Haste opens his eyes as the blur coating his vision fades and the man's weight disappears. Trees cast shadows around him, but form an opening that he lays under while blades of grass brush against his cheeks, and the warm wind blows his torn, baggy clothes. A clear sunny day looms over him contrasting greatly with the starry night that was there beforehand. Haste feels his breath come back as he rubs his neck slowly with his right hand, no longer with the ripped bag tied to it, "What in the world..?" suddenly the calm disappears from Haste as he sits up and vomits, all of the fear empties from him as he coughs up the pressure he felt under the man's weight, his guts that once were destroyed start readjusting to being able to expand once more. Once the sickness passes, he shakingly stands up, wiping barf off of his mouth with a sleeve, and attempting to ignore the blood rushing from his head downwards, making him even more nauseous. He pats his chest, feeling scars in every spot he felt the knife stab. Pulling his ripped-up hoodie and shirt up to see the scars, he sees each is fairly large and very noticeable. "I'm okay? But-- no that doesn't make any sense! Where am I!? Hello!?" Haste calls out to the trees that he thought were normal at first, but while his calls ring out to nowhere, he realizes they're way taller than he expected, maybe he didn't notice because of his readjusting vision but the canopies loom incredibly far above him, almost like the redwood trees he's seen in photos, accept these trees look much browner then them and have no pinecones littering the ground nearby, instead, triangular leaves surround him in their place. "What is going on..?" Haste murmurs to himself as he picks up a leaf, "I died, right? How did I get here with all my wounds healed? Was I kidnapped from a hospital?.." Haste drops the leaf as he looks around, the grass in the forest is short enough to be below the soles of his shoes, interrupted by spots of taller patches where the suns able to shine down better, mottling the forest floor like polka-dots. The spot he's in currently is one of these occurrences, but even so, the sun still barely reaches it, only allowing the grass to grow slightly below Haste's ankles. "No, that can't be it, I mean what even are these trees? I thought redwoods were the trees with needle leaves or whatever, not the wider ones like these." Haste walks up to one of the trees, he realizes how wide the trunk is as he puts a hand on it. "Some kind of new species or something? No, people would notice these giants before me, so I guess that means..." Haste looks up and his suspicion is almost perfectly confirmed as he sees two stars looming above, one a bit behind the other, but both smaller than the one he knows but, still split to his wonder. "I was reborn..?" Haste remembers reading or watching stories of characters being reborn in alternate worlds, the genre was starting to boom really, if you watched any anime or read any manga you'd be forced to come across one of the typical tropes. "So I'm in a new wor--" Haste is cut off by a different humanoid scream and some nonsensical yelling. It's still clearly a shriek of agony though, no matter how distorted it may be, "Another person!?" Haste starts running immediately, burning on an instinct to find somebody else as soon as possible, having turned on a dime to do so. He still needs to get used to his body feeling fine again before he can fully sprint towards the source though, that and the fact he had just looked directly at two suns, his running is wobbly, though it's still being boosted by adrenaline. He hears almost the same scream and babbling again and is pretty sure it's coming from another patch of sunlit grass ahead of him, he focuses on running as he looks down to make sure he doesn't trip on anything.
Making it into the clearing with a hop and a stumble; Haste is met with nothing, however, still determined to find whoever produced it, he calls out to the source with his hands cupping his mouth, "Hel--!" Suddenly, a smooth tendril wraps his leg from the trees and yanks him, knocking him down as he's quickly pulled into the trees by it, looking up he sees a large creature in a spider-like stance, its light brown ovular body held up by two arching legs in the front lifting it about eight feet off of the ground, a dark green ball sticks out the front with holes covering it that each looking like a circular eye, both sit above a large hole full of two rows of teeth on both the top and bottom; of which the tendril is extending from, pulling Haste in, Haste squirms onto his stomach and digs his hands into the dirt as he kicks at the tendril with all the strength he can muster into his one free leg, he feels it release its air-tight grip, allowing Haste to turn back around and face the assailant. A camouflaged monster steps out of the brush, repeating the same scream and nonsensical cries Haste heard while rushing over. Haste quickly gets back up and freezes as his fight or flight instincts flow from his mind to the rest of his body, he, of course, chooses flight, rotating completely as he runs at his max potential, sprinting away from the beast. He leaves no gap for thinking as he runs, jumping over roots and evading trunks. While he does, Haste can hear the monster closing in on him, the tendril whips a tree behind him, cracking loudly as it damages the trunk, the sound flinches Haste and trips him over a stone sticking out of the ground. As he rolls and tumbles into a bush, it badly scratches his skin and clothes.
Haste rubs his head and is about to get up but freezes over, seeing the camouflaged monster repeating the same scream as it looms between the trees in front of Haste, searching for him. As Haste gets further into the bush he hears a loud belch-like roaring from his left in the forest, the first monster clearly hears it too, taking a seemingly defensive stance as it bends its legs to get lower to the ground, facing the direction of the roar. Meeting it and Haste's sight, a much larger beast emerges, about fifteen feet high, yet still dwarfed by the trees. It walks on two legs extending from its torso and angles its wide neck to add to its height, it has crimson-red plate-like scales covering its body and a thin tail sticking far out. The tail adorns black feathers protruding from both sides of it all the way down, almost like a birds tail but each feather is very long and wide, unlike a bird though, where they have dozens of layered feathers, only two layers of these large feathers stick out from the tails sides. It makes the belch-like roar towards the other monster once more, opening its mouth and letting Haste see each of its large and spiked teeth as if all of them are canines, it closes its jaws back up with two audible locking sounds and the monsters begin a stand-off, facing one another in piercing stares. Haste quietly speaks as the monsters get ready to fight. "Oh god, I need to get out of here before they--" But it's too late, the spider-like monster fires its strange tendril at the second monster, trying to whip its thick neck, it connects but the scales easily deflect the whip as the first monster retracts the tendril, the second monster; clearly angered by the attack, stomps at the spider-like one, and tries slamming its head on it, only for its target to suddenly hop onto a nearby tree and fire its tendril at the other monsters left eye, connecting again with a loud whip crack as the second monster recoils with a roar only for the first one, almost mockingly to mimic it back at the second one, enraging it more. Haste has decided against running suddenly, instead, his curiosity managed to overtake him, keeping his eyes on the battle of unknown beasts. He watches in fear and awe as the second, recoiling monster whips its tail at the first, causing the spider-like one to jump to another tree to dodge it, but somehow planning for this as if it baited the move, the second one widens its jaws and slams them down on the first monster mid-air. Its teeth split the first one in half instantly, dropping a body bleeding viscous yellow blood onto the forest floor as the victorious monster simply swallows the other half without chewing like a snake, Haste is bewildered as the piece travels down the throat of the monster before it leans down to do the same to the second half, again swallowing without chewing, after the other half slides down too, the monster lets out another belch roar and stomps away, shaking Haste to his core as it does, luckily going the opposite direction though, leaving Haste in astonishment.
"Woah... Did- did that just happen?!" Haste puts his hand on his sweating head as he looks at where they just fought, there's nothing left of the monster that lost, only stomp prints of the winner. "I need to get to safety asap..." Haste gets out from the bush and swallows his gut as he walks in the opposite direction of the victorious monster, ready to go from grass patch to grass patch.