Chapter Text
Gruzzer jerky...again. ʸᵃᵃᵃʸ
This unseasoned stick of dried meat was frankly awful, tasting barely like shrimp and lacking any of the juiciness and fat that she actually liked most about this livestock bug. But sadly it was all the blue furred beetle had to snack on. After some time internal grumbling she, with her hooked claws latched onto the meat, brought it up to her exposed mandibles impatiently chewing the shrimp tasting gruzzer.
It had taken Noah some time to get used to not having such well jointed fingers to easily pick up things, it took her what felt like days just to figure out how to pick up a geo she was luck enough to find. Eventually she got the hang of it when she stopped trying to use them as human limbs and appendages and associated them with various objects. Her claws like metal grippers to grab something just out of your reach, her legs like jointed stilts, her abdomen wasn't that hard to get used to though it still felt weird to have, and her wings as...well wings honestly Noah never tried to use them much since it took a lot of effort to flap these purple beauties. Mostly resorted to using them as a cloak of sorts. After Noah got used to her new body in all honesty she rather enjoyed it, no visible sex, a excuse to do t-rex arms constantly, two wonderful magenta pearls of eyes and best of all she lost the paunch of her human body. Returned to a thin figure!
However there was one issue with this new body that got Noah many odd looks. It was a common sight for a bug to wear a mask but it was also just as common for a bug to only look like they had a mask honestly the whole thing was deeply confusing for her, at this point she mostly went off the limbs more than faces. Her mask was different instead of it being light gray and mostly featureless, Noah's mask was silver in color made of a spade-shaped metal engraved with various swirling patterns, covering the rest of her face and covering her shoulders into a engraved snail shell connecting to the base of her wings. Following the pattern were three empty notches, one to the lower left corner, one in the lower right, and a occupied slot near the tip part of the spade filled by a single round trinket jutting out slightly, a ball with a smaller ball in it's center.
Though most of the villagers were used to the ornate mask now, the more common looks she received recently were ones of disappointment and irritation directed at her simply for eating a snack. Noah always hated those looks, she did her fair share-
Weeellll now I am at least
Even then deep down she knew it was barely even that, but still she grew bitter and resentful that her treatment had changed so much since she first came stumbling into this little part of the crossroads.
When she first arrived in the Crossroads Noah was understandably freaked out, at first trying to see if she could wake herself up from what HAD to be a dream but she quickly gave up on that possibility as she struggled to even stand. It was awhile until she no longer had to rely on crawling and could stand straight wobbly wandering forward to hopefully find anything to eat, and thankfully for her not even a throw away was a small village, later finding out it was along secondary road. When this strange bug practically collapsed onto the village street to her own surprise Noah was immediately helped up by two round bugs, she didn't get a good look at them until they set her down on a metal bench but there was definitely something so familiar about how they looked. A week with no food and no water plus still not being used to using your own body made for a terrible time recovering. Thankfully not only to bug bodies heal faster than human ones, it seemed Noah made a quicker recovery than usual though the fact that she was still off balance in her beetle form made the others think she still needed more time.
It didn't take much longer for Noah to get used to moving her new body, and thankfully the villagers let her take up residence in a old hut with a downstairs no less! Insides she found the fossilized coins called Geo, which both confirmed her suspicions planted by how the local bugs looked and also shattered her denial of her being in her favorite game's world into as many shards of a exploded bottle. The first two days she was allowed to sleep and lounge around her new home peacefully getting the Gruzzer slices whenever they were served at the kitchen and even swiping a tiktik on a stick, but on the third day Noah's barely comfortable relaxation was rudely ruined by two of the villagers coming to help find her a task to do around the village.
This was when Noah's more lazy side truly started getting her a negative reputation and earned her the new looks she now often received. Simply put on top of not knowing how to take care of Gruzzer cattle or having to harvest the small patches of black cornels Noah simply did not want to put in the effort, she hoped that something like this would happen for the sole reason to avoid work and now she had even harder work to do. At first they tried to get her to help feed the Gruz mothers, that ended when she fell asleep on top of the large non-sentient bug without completing any of the tasks, next they tried to get her to help harvest the black cornels but she ended up wandering off and eating the cornels not only she harvested but also some the other villagers had harvested. This would become a theme, the only reason she wasn't kicked out the first two times was because hollownest bugs didn't seem to kick out their neighbors (well at least in the crossroads) and because Noah despite her laziness was a joy to talk to be it child or adult. The final task they tried to assign to her was to simply collect water from the well and bring it back, simple enough and the well was a good distance away that maybe she could've get away with a nap.
Noah really did not want to carry two buckets of water, especially with the shoulder method. Saying carrying water was hard was a understatement, Noah nearly gave up just thinking about it when she reached the well. But realizing this was her last chance to prove useful she slowly lowered the buckets down and brought it back up groaning and muttering complaints the whole time. The fist bucket was placed nearly full but apparently it had dragged against the wall bringing some odd blue yellow spotted mushrooms with it. After a quick smell test Noah deemed the water fine and tosses the next bucket over. She was already tired of this, just because her new beetle body strained less than her old human one doesn't mean Noah liked this hard physical labor any more than before.
"Ugggghhhh," she groaned at the echoing splash indicating it was time to pull it back up. Noah was so caught up in her own grumbling that she failed to notice the second quieter splash, grabbing the chain unaware.
Lacking the firm grip of having multiple fingers, her hook-like claws even differing from many bugs in Crossroads, meant Noah had to find a new way to get a better grip on the chain hooking within and around the gaps in the links. Once she felt that her grip was secure enough and with a sigh she tugged at the chain only to find herself pulled forward when she was getting ready for a second tug.
"Oh for fucks sake!" Noah rebalanced herself planting her legs firmly on the stoney ground as she attempted to once again pull the bucket up harder. This was significantly heavier than the first. It must've hit the same mushroom patch as the first, though this time it seems far more fell in. Even with her grunts and muttered complaints Noah was making some progress until she suddenly stopped
This is just not worth it
Noah already had a full bucket which she knew was enough and if they needed more for that stupid elephant faced bug they can send someone else! She'll just say the other bucket got stuck and despite all her efforts wasn't able to pull it back up. Yeah, yeah that'll do.
But just as she was about to let the chain go, and see if the kitchen had any grilled gruzzer left, Noah's mask began brightly glowing.
"Ah! WHY!?" Noah tried to look away from the blinding glow right in front of her eyes, which of course failed. But after a second the glow slowly dimmed allowing Noah to recover from what had to be a flashbang, and see a faintly red trail leading down into the well. She just stared blankly for a few moments before a groan escaped from her mandibles and with no small amount of grumbling started to pull up the annoyingly heavy bucket. With a final pull Noah finally saw the bucket rise...and tip over the edge of the well spilling all it's contents. Great, just great!
Just as she was about to leave after a wasted effort Noah felt something bump against her leg. Looking down if her eyes could go any wider they'd be practically bursting out of their sockets. A small blue snail shell decorated with winding wind carvings and various spirals present within the shell itself, her mouth hanged open THIS WAS INCREDIBLE! But that still didn't explain why her mask-
"Ohhhhhhh! It's a charm detector! Okay that explains the notches," she said to herself with complete confidence, drastically misunderstanding what just happened.
With a giddy little tapping and clapping Noah reached down picking up the charm, it was surprisingly light outside the bucket and was more like a pin than the round balls she always envisioned them as. Not completely thinking it through she placed the charm into one of the many notches along the spiral of her mask, immediately Noah started feeling weird as starting from the Charm's placement going along the spiral of her mask and going down throughout her body glowing white vines slowly consumed her. Of course like any reasonable person she began to panic
"WAIT WAIT NONONO! SHIT WHAT DOES THIS EVEN DO!?" Noah began flailing her arms and legs as she began to float trying desperately to touch the floor even spreading her wings in her panic, was this a levitation charm? A shifting charm like shape of Uun? As she floated one place came to her mind
I knew I should've stayed in bed!
As this thought formed Noah's body suddenly glowed brightly and morphed into pure Soul quickly shooting back towards the village
In what felt like a instant she was standing on top of her bed, frozen in place not even taking a breath. Slowly Noah looked at her surroundings. Her cluttered table? Check. The misaligned chairs? Check. The empty book shelf where she attempted to use the stone tablets? Check. The small pile of three stone tablets that she tried and gave up carving? Check. The cupboard that she hoped had some food from the kitchen left? Check. Okay this was defiantly her home.
After her adrenaline faded Noah collapsed on her bed in a sudden bout of genuine exhaustion, not laziness. It didn't take long for Noah to hate this feeling, this was expressly why she refused to put in "too much" effort, actual exhaustion was TERRIBLE
It had to be that weird teleportation, of all things why did it have to present itself in the most nerve-racking way!? At least this confirmed that she had SOUL which was absolutely amazing! She could use spells! And- wait how was she even able to focus to use the SOUL in the first place? Did the charm have some left over? Was it her mask? Wait didn't the snail shaman use like spiral focus? Did she do that? Or was she just able to focus this whole time-
Before Noah could finish her spiraling thoughts her tiredness got the best of her casting her into a deep sleep.