[X] WAKE UP

She woke up to a pounding headache and a horrendous pain in her chest. Even with her eyes screwed shut, she could still make out a blinking light throbbing in perfect time with her head. Had she gathered a bajillion fireflies all at once or something? Didn’t matter, that was prob’ly what woke her up, so Wriggle hid her face in her arms, only to moan when that somehow made it worse. She briefly considered getting up to turn it off or shoe them away or whatever, but it’d probably stop if she waited long enough. The metal floor might be cold and uncomfortable, but it was less painful than getting up.

Wait. Metal? Dirt she could kinda understand, but what in winter’s name was she doing on metal? Where even was she? There’s no way she just passed out somewhere randomly, right?

Admittedly, it was the sort of thing that could happen to most youkai. Sake and post-incident parties were the sort of crap everyone did, and half of them would eventually wake up whining about hangovers and hunching over the nearest toilet. But not Wriggle Nightbug! She’d always tried her absolute best to avoid alcohol. Because she didn’t like the taste, definitely not because she was as lightweight as her beloved bugs! And if anyone ever saw otherwise, it was because Mystia gave her a dozillion drinks whenever she ate at her izyka- isekai- restaurant!

Just so that was clear. Besides, this couldn’t be a hangover, that should be a pain in her stomach, not her chest!

… unless it was a heart attack. You couldn’t get a heart attack from those fizzy blue drinks, right? Surely Mysty wouldn’t give her so many if that was the case! Reflexively she moved her hand up to touch her chest, and immediately yelped at the pain. It didn’t even have the decency to be the same sort of stabbing pain as her chest; her entire arm felt like pins and needles, and moving it burned.

Gingerly she lowered it back to the ground, trying to massage some feeling into it with her other hand. It helped a little, but her skin felt hot, like her arm had caught a fever or something! Just the left arm too! Her legs and feet felt cold, and a probing touch at her chest revealed even that felt normal-ish, stabbing pains aside.

[X] CHECK SELF

Wriggle cracked her eyes open, squinting through a green light that was somehow both a piercing glare and too dim to see much with. The damned light was pulsing too, a nice steady throb to make her headache even more miserable. At least she could make out her arm; the glowing green line down the middle at least made that bit easy.

It took a second for the problem with that statement to hit her, and when she did, Wriggle’s eyes snapped open in horror, staring at her glowing appendage. Sure, fireflies were supposed to light up, but not that color, and not from there! The pain in her chest - had she been stabbed?! Was she leaking her glowy juices out her arm?!?

Frantically, she felt down at her chest, only for her hand to smack into something hard and smooth. Wriggle looked down at the big glowing green hexagon she’d somehow failed to notice so far. She wasn’t so dense as to miss that this was the sorta’ thing Mysty would call a clue, not when it had the exact same glow as her arm was putting off!

She shook her head. Glow later, bleeding to death now! Except… gingerly pressing around the edges of her chest, it hurt and was tender, but the sort of “you’d already hurt yourself and it’s healing” kinda tender - nothing wet or sticky about it. She wasn’t bleeding, at least. That let her calm down enough to take a closer look at her arm, which only left her more puzzled.

Even aside from the green glowing line down the center (which had little tiny hexagons flickering off it and vanishing for some reason?) her arm was nowhere near normal! It looked like it was covered in a weird carapace! Oh, it was still arm-shaped and probably arm-colored (hard to tell in this light), but she could see the actual shapes of it, like it was actually made from a bunch of triangles and squares! Even the fingers looked like they were these tiny boxes squashed together… but she could still feel them just fine. Move them around, make a fist, grab her other wrist… her hand and arm still worked. Even the pins and needles were starting to go away.

Wriggle had no idea what to make of it. Sure, growing an exoskeleton to protect her arm would be a cool bug youkai thing to do, but she couldn’t do that! What had happened to her?!

[X] CHECK MEMORIES

The girl closed her eyes as she tried to think. She vaguely remembered going to Mystia’s place with a new plan to make people like bugs, but… she’d maybe seen a Yakumo? And everything after that was blank. Had the Yakumo done something to her? That could explain… basically everything, really, but she wasn’t an idiot! Even the ice fairy knew to keep her distance; Wriggle’d never run up and try to fight a Yakumo!

…Not after the last time, at least…

A-anyway! There had to be some other reason she’d blacked out, lost memories, and had a suddenly glowing arm. She just… couldn’t think of it now with this headache, so it could wait until after she discovered where she was.

[X] CHECK ROOM

With that settled (and it was totally settled), the bug youkai climbed to her feet, trying to ignore how her head was spinning. Once she felt like she could move her head without making the room do twirls, she started wiggling her antennae as she felt for the bugs around.

… except there weren’t any. Not so much as a single housefly. She reached up to her head, but no, her antennae were still there, and pulling one down in front of her face to check revealed they were still normal, not blocky or glowing or anything. There just weren’t any bugs here. Which was both weird and really worrying, because bugs got everywhere. She should know!

Swallowing down the lump in her throat, Wriggle shook her head. This was probably some weird human building or something she’d wandered into, that’s all. So what if she could barely see three feet in this darkness? She just had to explore a bit, that’s all!

“Come on, Wriggle,” she muttered, reaching out as she gingerly stepped forwards. “Mysty would die laughing if she saw me scared from being night blind.”

Her arm glowed just enough to be a crappy lamp, and with it she could barely make out what looked like a stack of shelves at the edge of the vision. A few careful steps brought her nearby, right before she tripped over a bucket of some sort, loudly spilling who-knows-what all over the floor. She lunged for the shelves, grabbing on to the edge, and barely avoiding a full tumble. Of course, she knocked half the contents to the floor as she did so, making a terrible racket as metal knick-knacks rattled and bounced everywhere, but at least she didn’t crack her head on something.

Unfortunately, the racket she made just alerted something. A ton of lights instantly flooded the room, searing her eyes with the fury of a thousand suns. Her head pounding all over again, Wriggle did her best to blink the spots away and look around.

She was in a building, a huuuuuuuge one; there was enough room to hold a whole tournament of spellcard battles here. The bug youkai couldn’t even see the whole thing - there was a bunch of shelving around her, she’d knocked over a whole thing of screws, and then there was this long belt connecting a bunch of machines? With a bunch of… half-made, giant metal shoes as big as herself on it. Who the heck would need shoes that big? There were other belts further in the distance, but she couldn’t really see them from here - the next closest seemed to have some sort of hollow metal pipes on them?

That was already crazy enough, but then the first machine started humming as a panel of glass on it lit up. Wriggle started to tiptoe closer, jumping a bit when a really flat, bored-sounding voice started blaring from every corner of the room.

“Assembly Line TY-182 engaged. It has been - One hundred and thirty eight - days since last activation. Reauthorization required. Proceed to the terminal and identify yourself.”

Eh? She didn’t get much of that beyond “identify”, but she could at least do that much. “I’m Wriggle?”

“Reauthorization required. Proceed to the terminal and identify yourself.”

“I did! I said I’m Wriggle!”

“Reauthorization required. Proceed to the terminal and identify yourself.”

“Wriggle Nightbug? Firefly Youkai?” She asked.

“Reauthorization required. Proceed to the terminal and identify yourself.”

The monotone chick either wasn’t listening or couldn’t hear her, and that shrill voice was getting annoying fast.

[-] The machine that turned on looked important, maybe that was the terminal thingy? There were a ton of buttons near it, one of them had to shut the stupid voice up.
[-] Who cared what that stupid voice said? Now that the lights were on, she could look around and try to find a way out!
[-] She should probably hide. Even if she had no idea where “here” was, Wriggle was pretty sure she wasn’t supposed to be here… and whoever or whatever that was probably wouldn’t appreciate the mess she’d just made.