Camping Trip


“You sure you’re going to be okay out here alone?” the burly Native American man asks as he pulls his beat up old pickup truck off the side of the road so his passenger can climb out.
“Please, just because I’ve got a job in a far off land, doesn’t mean I don’t still know these woods better than you ever will, Running Bear,” she smirks back, the glint of fang in her grey and black furred face unsettling to anyone that doesn’t know her.
“You can call me Jim you know,” he chuckles back, knowing that it’s not just an idle boast on her part, as he watches her slip from the vehicle and stretch, the four spider like limbs she has held closely folded to her back while inside finally given the chance to relax from their clenched together posture.
“Sorry, slipping back into old habits I guess,” she tells him, as she reaches into the open cargo area for her gear.
“You’re forgiven, Thunder Runner,” he smirks back, watching her settle the satchel over her shoulder, before reaching in again for her walking stick, and small rucksack. “You sure you’ve got everything you need?”
She grins, both at the name, given to her for her enjoyment of running around outdoors, and for the pattern of her fur, which resembles lightning bolts. “And a few extra’s like a satlink radio, and a GPS beacon,” she returns. “And if I’m supposed to call you Jim, you get to call me Rain, it’s only fair.”
“And since when do you worry about techy gear?” he laughs.
“Since I started having to worry about people other than myself out there,” she returns. “Playing guide to cityfolk that don’t know a damn thing about woodscraft has taught me that it’s a good idea to have an expedient way to get them back out of the woods when they break their leg because they were too busy watching my ass instead of their footing.”
“And it’s generally a bad idea to punch out the guy paying you, before he does so,” Jim grins back, stifling another laugh.
“That too,” she chuckles. “See you in a week.”
“Same time as now, one week,” he nods in agreement.
“See you then,” she waves, before vanishing into the underbrush.
“That woman takes a quarter of the gear for three times the duration of most of the guys I know,” he smirks to himself as he spins his truck around and heads back down the fire road that is the only way to gain access this deep into the woodlands of northern Michigan.

“It’s good to be home,” Rain grins to herself from the top of one of the tallest trees in the area, taking a big breath of the fresh air, and sighing in satisfaction at the lack of vehicle exhaust. “I’ll have to see if Hiabashi-san would agree to letting me bring some of the students out here for a week…Have to be based on performance in class though. Which means I can predict the results already,” she finishes her monologue with a smirk.
Launching herself from her perch, she uses her additional limbs and exceptional agility to bounce between trees until she lightly drops back to the ground to collect her walking stick, and rucksack. Looking back up, she mutters, “Getting rusty, almost missed a couple of those handholds.”
“Let’s see, the Poplars should be thataway,” she thinks as she sets off again, sticking to the ground for the most part.
A half hour later, and several miles away from her last stop, a loud “Caw” brings her up short.
“Well hello there my loudmouthed friend,” she smirks up at the bird, her keen eyes spotting the nearby nest. “Thank you for volunteering to supply the feathers for my arrows.”
As quickly and silently as the spider she so resembles, Rain scales the tree, using the rudimentary “bug eyes” atop her head to check on the bird and nest, before sticking more of her head around the trunk for a better look with her “normal” eyes.
“No eggs,” she thinks, quickly checking things over. “This time of year, that means you’ve either lost your mate, or didn’t manage to attract one. Either way, it means I don’t have a reason to spare you.” And with that thought, she ever so slowly eases her right arm around the trunk until she can properly aim at the bird. And with a wet splat, and a litany of outraged noises, the crow finds itself trapped, webbed to the branch.
Swiftly moving forward, Rain deftly snaps the birds neck, silencing it, before pulling it free of her webbing, placing it, and several additional feather she plucks from its nest, into her satchel before heading back to the ground.
“Well, that’s lunch, and some of the materials,” she nods to herself in satisfaction, before getting her bearings and setting off once more.
“No time to cook, not if I want to make it to my old campground by dark,” she thinks later, as she draws the crow from her pouch, biting it, before returning it. “Thirty minutes at the most, if I remember right for something that size,” she thinks, spotting a large Willow tree near a small creek. “And I can spend that time shaping my new bow,” she grins to herself as she quickly scampers up the tree, looking for a suitable branch.
“There we go, that should do nicely,” she nods, pulling a large hunting knife out of her satchel and proceeding to hack off the targeted tree limb. “Oh yeah, should have a minimum of a hundred pounds on the pull,” she grins as she attempts to bend the branch. “Too bad it has to be so thick though. But every time I try to use Poplar it breaks…” she muses, as she once more returns to the ground, and sets off, deftly using the blade to strip the branch of leaves and twigs, before working on the bark as well.
“And there is the Poplar grove,” she grins, spying the hardwood trees nearly an hour later. Once she is among them, she once more removes the knife and begins selecting sapling branches growing from the larger trunks. “You, and you, and you…..and you. Shouldn’t need more arrows than that, and if I do, I’ve really lost my touch,” she says as she quickly strips the leaves from the green wood.
After a few minutes of work, she reaches back into her satchel and removes a small leather bag. “And the kids wonder why I was making arrowheads on all those outings while I had them collecting other stuff,” she grins to herself as she removes four broad stone arrowheads before replacing the bag. It’s the work of a few moments for her to attach the “business end” to her arrows, but a bit longer for her to lay in the fletching from the ravens feathers.
“Now let’s see if I’ve still got it,” she mutters, after stringing her new bow, sighting down one of the arrows, and picking a half rotted stump as her target.
The arrow flies true, and with a hearty “twang” on the metal bowstring it is buried nearly halfway through the stump, the sudden intrusion spooking a rabbit that had been hiding out.
“Sorry fluffy, but you’re dinner,” she remarks, quickly snatching a second arrow and letting it fly, the force of the shot pinning the unfortunate animal to the ground before the shock finishes it off, it’s high pitched death scream sounding much like a woman’s shriek of terror.
“Really getting rusty,” she mutters as she frees the animal from the ground, noting that while she had aimed for its forward shoulder, she actually ended up taking it near the waist. “Good thing I’ve got a week to get back into shape.”
Quickly field dressing the carcass, before dropping the rabbit into her satchel, she then carefully maneuvers her additional limbs around so she can sling the bow over her shoulders, before placing her arrows into the satchel so they stick forward as if being kept in a quiver.
“Now to haul my stripy butt over to the river and pick my campsite,” she mutters, looking up and noticing how much of the day she’s already burned through.

“Damn, I didn’t realize that there had been a storm bad enough to take this monster down,” She mutters finding her former favorite campsite, once beneath a huge Oak tree, is no more, the tree itself having been snapped off, the jagged remains sticking up from the stump, while the rest fills the majority of the clearing, several lesser trees near the edges having been taken down as well, or had their canopies brutally pruned by the former giant on its way down.
“Well, let’s see if I can get one more trip out of you,” she says to the remains of the tree, carefully removing her equipment and placing it in a neat pile well clear of what she plans to do.
She then gets a good running start and launches herself at the fallen part of the tree, aiming for where the last few bits of bent and twisted wood connect the two. Both feet solidly connect in a double dropkick, before she sinks her claws in, ending up “standing” sideways on the fallen trunk.
“Don’t think I’ll sleep under it, but it will make a nice wall for a lean-to,” she nods to herself.
Lightly hopping clear of the trunk, she quickly brings her gear over to it, pulling a small tarp out of her rucksack, and using a handy rock as a hammer pounds a few metal stakes through the various holes across the top to secure it to the trunk, before completing the process by anchoring the rest of it to the ground.
“Even faster than those little dome tents,” she grins to herself after she finishes. Placing her gear under the shelter, she then uses her spider limbs to claw out a fire pit from the grassy turf.
“Little bigger,” she mumbles, acutely aware that carelessness on her part will result is a very large fire, given the amount of deadfall branches laying around.
Once that is done, she begins collecting said deadfall, and finding a broken limb large enough around to make a good seat, she drags that over as well.
“Now to get started on dinner, before I lose the last of my light,” she grins, using a flint striker to start the fire, and then setting up a spit to roast the rabbit on from some of the wood she kept for such purposes.
Once the rabbit has been cooked and devoured, she takes the time to just sit back and stargaze.
“It never ceases to amaze me how much city lights ruin this view,” she sighs in contentment the glittering stars above so much more vibrant that what can be seen with all the light pollution from even the smallest of towns.
When she starts to feel the nights chill settle in, she removes her blanket from the rucksack, unrolling the microfiber into a much larger piece of material than would be expected to fit in such a small bag.
“While I’m hardly reliant on it, technology does have its uses,” she smirks to herself, laying the blanket down, before moving back to her fire and carefully banking the coals so that she can easily stir them back to life in the morning. With that done, and one last look around to insure she isn’t forgetting anything important, she scampers back into her shelter, and lays on the blanket, pulling the remainder up and around herself, before quickly dropping off into the light sleep that will allow her to instantly awake should anything “odd” impinge on her senses.

Awakening with the dawn, Rain collects her satchel, and a handful of “roasting sticks”, before heading off to the river.
“Hope the D.N.R. doesn’t happen to catch me,” she smirks as she quickly strips down before wading in, her breath catching as the cold water touches certain parts of her body. After a quick rubdown that is as close as she can get to a bath out here, she heads back toward the bank, stopping about knee deep, and keeping herself perfectly still, until the fish forget she’s there, once more swimming near her. Striking fast enough that all anyone would be able to see is a sudden blur of motion, she quickly has a fish speared on each spider claw. “And that is how we do breakfast in the deep woods,” she grins, heading back to her clothes.
Carefully laying her food in a pile, she quickly uses her hands to squeegee as much water out of her body fur as she can, before twisting her hair like a dishrag to do the same. Then she dresses, and collects and prepares her bounty before heading back to camp.
“This is starting out to be a pretty good trip, all things considered,” she muses, after throwing more wood on coals, and coaxing the fire back to life so she can cook her fish.

Several uneventful days later, Rain is startled awake by a loud grunting, and the sound of something pawing at the spot where she has been burying her garbage. A growl of frustration greats her as she silently slips out of her shelter, and atop the fallen tree.
To discover the biggest black bear she has ever heard of in these parts on the other side, snuffling the ground, the excavated garbage pit laid bare behind it.
“This likely won’t end well,” she thinks as she gets her first good look at the animals face, noting the burning red eyes, and flecks of foam near the corners of its mouth. “Not well at all,” she says aloud as it notices her, and rears up on its back legs, roaring at her.
When it take sit’s first swipe at her, she easily vaults overhead, landing lightly behind it, far enough out of its reach that’s it will have to drop back down to charge back into attack range.
It roars at her again, and does just that, not even taking a moment to process her speed.
“Oh be quiet, you’re ruining my morning,” she grumbles back at the animal. Her hands shooting forward as the spinnerets in her wrists unleash gobs of webbing that trip up the bears charge, slamming its chin into the dirt and stunning it long enough for her to use more webbing to muzzle it, before completely encasing all but it’s head.
“You, have just forced me to cut this trip short, jerk,” she growls at the beast, before hopping back over to her camp, and going after the electronics in her rucksack,
Taking up the pack, she returns to a position atop the tree where she can keep an eye on the bear as it struggles to get free of her webbing. Carefully removing the GPS beacon, and the Satlink communicator, she finally draws out the last piece, and old heavy duty walkie-talkie.
Quickly adjusting the frequency, she checks the power before transmitting, “Ranger station 531, anybody awake yet?”
There is several minutes of silence, before an surly voice returns, “This is 531, and this better be a goddamn emergency, I haven’t had my coffee yet, over.”
“You and me both,” she chuckles back. “But I thought you might like to know I have what could very well be a record setting black bear about ten feet from my camp, and I’ve got the feeling the big goon is rabid, over.”
“Jeezus, what are you doing that close to it?” the ranger squawks back.
“Relax, it’s currently restrained, and if need be, I’ll tranq it, but if it IS rabid, I’d rather not resort to that,” she returns, quickly coming to the conclusion that she’s talking to a newcomer to the post since her last need to call in to them.
“This is 531 Mobile, is that you Lightning Stripe?” a new voice comes over the radio.
“I was starting to wonder if you’d retired, Harrison,” she grins back.
“It’s my turn to sleep in a real bed, as opposed to the cot,” he retorts. “I just got in the truck. So what’s going on, you never call unless it’s a major issue.”
“She claims she’s got a record sized black bear, restrained not ten feet from her camp, and suspects it’s rabid,” the first voice chimes in.
“Well shit, that definitely qualifies,” Harrison sighs. “How deep in the brush are you, Spider Legs?”
“Deep enough that you are not getting to me with a truck and trailer,” she smirks at the radio.
“Big surprise,” he chuckles back.
“However, I am fairly close to a lovely little creek, and my camp is based on a huge fallen Oak. Either way it should be easy to get a helicopter to drop a travel box down,” she informs them.
“Well, there’s that at least,” Harrison answers. “You still on 2573.61htz?”
“Damn, Harrison, I didn’t give you credit for being able to remember that,” she returns, impressed.
“I didn’t, but I made sure it was listed on the placard of things that get an emergency response from us up here,” he retorts with a laugh.
“Triggering the beacon now, when can I expect you?” she laughs with him, activating the GPS beacon.
“Within the hour I think,” he returns. “I can divert and hook up with the chopper before Mack finishes his preflight, see you soon then, over and out.”
“One last thing!” she calls quickly before the connection can go dead.
“What is it?” the first voice comes back.
“Could you get a hold of Jim Runningbear, and tell him he doesn’t need to pick me up at the time we agreed on? I’ll hitch a ride back on the chopper,” she tells him.
“Who are you lady?” the ranger demands, still not understanding why the senior ranger was so willing to take everything she said at face value.
“You see that picture on the wall to the left of the radio stand?” she asks him, positive this hasn’t changed since the last time she visited the station.
“The one with the newspaper clippings about the lost hikers?” he returns.
“That’s the one,” she smirks. “Now think about the names Harrison called me, and figure it out. Over and out.”

“The names he used,” the ranger mutters to himself as he takes the picture off the wall for a closer look. Spotting Rain near the edge of the shot, he quickly re-reads the old article, stunned that he’d been so short with someone like that, but at last understanding why Harrison was willing to bend over backwards for her.
Putting the picture back so he can make her call, the headline reads, “Lost scouts rescued safely, thanks to local kaiju-morph.”

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original art by Marauder

character colors and story by me