TERRARIUM - Round 1: Apocalypse

**reserved (should be done in 24 hours)**

Jenna painstakingly clambered up the rocks, out of the water, and onto a wooden wharf, her delicate skin stung by the cold air, her breathing siphon gasping at the sudden change in pressure. This was what it was like everywhere outside the aquarium? It most certainly was not worth it! There was nothing out here but pain and shortness of breath! She wanted to go back immediately!

And yet, she found herself continuing forward into the... whatever that big dark thing was, her limbs burning and already seeming to become brittle,
but still moving of their own accord.

<sub>sudden change in location registered. planetary triangulation: auxiliary units could not be found for connection. gis lookup: inconclusive. planetary magnetic field: present, but anomalous -- displays higher-than-expected curvature -- towards center of human habitat.

updates require maintenance, host weakening. aggression parameter incremented. fuel search protocol initiated.</sub>

Julius dashed across the street and into the protective shadow of a derelict brick building. The old convenience store must have been abandoned some time before whatever infestation was happening now, as it somehow seemed even dirtier and more worn down than the other buildings. Well, there was that, and the "Foreclosed" sign on the front door. It was incredibly dark inside. Somehow this ordinary abandoned building was managing to be even creepier than the houses burnt down by what was presumably the literal apocalypse.

A flash of movement from within the store caught his eye. He instinctively flashed back across the street before he had a chance to stop himself. Those zombie things couldn't really do any real damage, not to him at least, but goddamn did their bites hurt. Staring at the window across the street, he waited for whatever was is there to move again. Nothing. Nothing, aaaaaaand.... nothing... Maybe it was time for him to -- Oh there it is.

It took a little while for him to process what he was seeing. What was that? Its shape didn't make any sense. There was the bottom half of a fish zombie... being eaten by the empty shelves?

The "shelf" suddenly turned bright red and revealed itself to be a massive octopus, its tentacles wrapped around the zombie's waist in a chokehold-like grip, the body of the octopus forcing itself down the length of the fishman's torso, the head inflating like a balloon as it gorged itself on rotten flesh. Even as he watched, it reached the bottom, where he could hear its beak greedily clicking and scraping against the tile floor in a pile of bloody bones and leftover organs. The extra mass seemed to have already moved from its bulbous head into the rest of its body, and it was somehow even bigger than when he first saw it.

Well, the enemy of his enemy was his friend, as they said. And he had certainly had had enough quality time with this one for a lifetime. He'll just leave it to do its business. Recalling back ten seconds just in case it had seen him, he continued on further into the city.

_{fuel consumption more than adequate. installing further upgrades. additional prey noted -- cannot pursue while updating. we'll kill him eventually anyway.}

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SpoilerThe way I'm thinking the Jenna/nanobot thing works is that Jenna will have occasionally brief flashes of conciousness, but even then the nanobots are still almost entirely in control. Her/their body will become weaker, though, as Jenna's instincts kick in and she resists doing things like being out of water or attacking things that aren't her natural prey.

I'm also thinking that because I don't want to make Jenna seem too intelligent and too human, and because of the rather vague narration style of the nanobots, it might be best if a lot of the passages with her in them were narrated by another character, or perhaps I could move to doing Jenna's text color in 3rd person omniscient rather than limited.