FB | Ch. 6 - The Malerpzerp

The earthquake in my neck of the woods wasn’t caused by tectonic plates—it was a malerpzerp.

Now, how do I describe a malerpzerp? Imagine a turkey walking on stilts. Now mash it up with a lynx. Now give it three eyes, five legs, and sprinkle it with decorative foliage. That’s a malerpzerp.

Hard to picture? Don’t worry. All you really need to know is: it was huge. If it stepped on the stick I was eating, the stick would snap—and I’d go from beetle larva to beetle jelly. Spreadable. Probably not marketable.

The good news? I was basically a breadcrumb to it. The bad news? So are sprinkles, and people still eat those.

So I did the only thing that made sense—I leaned against the stick and held my breath like a kid hiding under a blanket from a monster. Call me a fool. Or a tactical genius. Either way, I lived.

The malerpzerp didn’t even glance at me. Just strutted past like a model on a leafy catwalk and vanished.

I exhaled. Hard. Possibly loud enough to be heard three blades of grass over.

Camouflage helped, sure—but against something that big, it was like showing up to a missile strike with a butter knife. I needed somewhere safer. Somewhere less steppable.

I set my sights on the nearest redwood skyscraper. Aka: the “hopefully-no-one-steps-on-me” zone. 

They loomed on the horizon, and yet, as I walked... I wasn’t getting any closer.

Fortunately, I had snacks to keep me focused. I sniffed my way from buried bark bit to bark bit.

+2 XP

+2 XP

Thanks to my [Timber Tummy], I was raking in experience.

Then it happened.

Congratulations! You've reached level 2.

You’ve gained one skill point.

I banked it for later. Never know when you’ll need an emergency upgrade. Also, I’m indecisive. Don’t judge me.

With the existential terror temporarily paused, I started thinking about the big picture.

I had to give those aliens credit. They went full chaos mode and still somehow played it smart.

They accidentally nuked all the bugs on their planet and needed a whole new ecosystem. Managing every tiny detail? Too much work, even for them. Rebuilding with brainless bugs? Too slow.

So what did they do?

They looked at humans, thriving in icy wastelands, scorching deserts, and cramped apartments with sky-high rents, and said:

“Now that’s an adaptable species.”

Then they scooped us up, tossed us into a mutant game engine, and crossed their weird alien limbs, hoping everything worked out.

The choice of insects they gave us to choose from was just a rough estimate of the kind of ‘build’ we wanted to have. They just hoped that we kept growing and adapting.

So there I was, managing five things at once. (And they say men can’t multitask.)

One: chewing bark like it was kettle corn. Two: contemplating my new career as an unwilling intergalactic park ranger. Three: looking awesome. Four and Five: it was something important, but I forgot.

That’s when I spotted it.

Movement. Another creature. About my size.

Definitely not human. This thing looked like a walking bridge. Two legs. One massive, arching body. A head-ish lump on top filled with holes. If a jungle gym and a flute had a baby, you’d get this guy.

You could also say it looked like a torso with arms and no legs, but I prefer the Frankenstein jungle gym description. 

It was munching on a grass stalk, which marked it as a herbivore. That helped my nerves.

I grabbed two wood chips and slowly approached.

“Hello?” I called.

It jerked back, startled by my presence. I secretly gave myself a thumbs-up for choosing stealth. It made me sneaky enough to observe and then approach undetected.

The jungle gym didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just blinked—maybe? I started eating one of my own chips for demonstration purposes. “I come in peace. See? Crunch, crunch, crunch. I eat wood. Chill.”

That did the trick. It relaxed a bit. 

Now that we were friends we tried communicating.

I talked. It waved. I offered snacks. It munched grass. After a few minutes of mutual head-tilting, we silently agreed to give up and parted ways.

Still, the encounter shook me.

The aliens had said they wiped out the bugs. So... what was that? It couldn't be a native insect. Could it? Had the aliens lied to us?

I chomped another chip, deep in thought.

Earth had, what, a billion, a billion and a half insects per human? If the ratio was similar here, even with eight billion of us abducted, we were nowhere near enough to restart a planet’s entire bug life.

Unless there were only six aliens on this planet. 

Then it hit me.

The Giants were serial kidnappers.

When humanity wasn’t enough, they just grabbed another species. Then another. And another. Like galactic Pokémon trainers.

Astronomers back on Earth used to wonder if there was life among the stars. They who’d have thrown a parade over the discovery of a single alien microbe—meanwhile, our abductors had a whole interstellar catalogue.

How many alien civilizations had been turned into beetles, worms, and crunchy compost munchers?

None of them would speak my language. The jungle gym had tried. Nice guy. 

But I had a feeling not everyone would be that peaceful.

I think that was the moment I decided.

I would eat. I would level. I would get stronger.

Because if I didn't grow, I’d end up as someone else’s lunch. That or the jelly in someone’s sandwich.

Ch. 5 - Stickler

INDEX

Ch. 7 - The Promised Land