A creature rushed out of the thick vegetation of the jungle, its movements unburdened by its surroundings.

It used its claws to cut through the vines and bushes like a knife cut through butter.

Jimmy heard it rush towards him. He heard the commotion, a barreling boom of sounds that could not have escaped unnoticed regardless of how precise the creature was.

He swiftly looked at his right, and saw the head of a red-scaled reptile rushing towards him. Its head was as big as his torso.

It was a dinosaur, no doubt about it.

Instinctively, he went right past his attempts to tame it, and tried to explode its heart.

However, he hadn't even tapped into its heartbeat yet, and the dinosaur was ten feet away from him, rushing forward at top speeds!

"Fu…" He held his breath.

Jimmy was quite sure he was going to die, right then and there. At the back of his head, he couldn't help wondering if the impending sense of doom he felt more than three weeks ago was related to this encounter, awfully miss-aimed.

He closed his eyes, unwilling to accept his death, but yet, there was nothing he could do about it.

Jimmy kept his eyes closed, his sense of hearing muffled by the surge of adrenaline.

Three seconds later, he opened his eyes again, curious to see what God he would meet this time.

To his shock, the dinosaur that was supposed to end his life, was dead. Sandwiched out of course, to his far right.

"What the hell happened?" He blurted.

"Motherfucker tripped," Anna answered.

Jimmy could not believe what he was hearing, so he went to inspect the carcass.

Just as Anna said, the dinosaur appeared to have tripped, regardless of how elegant its moves had been prior to its demise.

It had tripped, and clashed headfirst into an arm-thick branch. The branch was broken in the middle, so either this red-scaled beast had broken it during the crash, or a dinosaur had broken it in half earlier on, revealing a pointy end.

Either way, the combination of the beast's clumsiness, and the neatly positioned branch saved his life! He avoided death once more.

As he observed the beast further, he couldn't help laughing. He lost his marbles every time he looked at the beast, and its twenty-foot body squished in place like an accordion!

"Hahahahahaha!" He slapped his knee.

"I hate this darn jungle," Almara said. "Do you see why we live in the lake?"

"Yeah," Anna said, and as she looked at the carcass, she added, "I don't even recognize what species this is. I wouldn't be surprised if it's an undiscovered species."

"Discovered?" Almara parroted, "This is a Red Long Clawer. We've seen plenty of them, so they're not new to us."

"Creative name," She remarked.

"This is not the time to mock me," Almara said, "We name them based on what we see. That's the best way to do it."

"I'm inclined to not trust your senses," She added, "Not that I don't enjoy looking at you, but why are you naked in a jungle?"

"Oh, right," She smacked her forehead, and her breasts bounced along. "I forgot that humans like to wear clothes."

Afterwards, she put the two of them through an uneasy scene. Her body started deforming, melting as if she was a snowman at the face of a scorching sun.

Her body reached a near liquid state. It looked like a puddle of flesh, her feet cruising around the puddle as they deformed last.

Then, the puddle expanded. The delicate color of human flesh shifted to a hard, scaly exterior. Tough, and immune to the endless scratches that the jungle would otherwise put her through.

Within a whole minute, she shapeshifted into a dinosaur. Granted, it did take her longer to shapeshift than some of the more experienced shifters within her tribe, the results she achieved were still decent.

Almara turned into a three meter, or nearly ten foot tall dinosaur! Her scales, dark green, matching the general color of the jungle. Her legs trunky, and her head big enough to send apex predators weeping.

"Nice!" Anna celebrated, "River Fatty, right?"

Almara nodded. Anna, in her infinite wisdom, was confused as to why Almara didn't answer her back, but then she remembered that dinosaurs didn't have vocal cords. They also couldn't speak the tongue of the cavemen, even if they tried, she assumed.

"You could've turned into a dinosaur all along?!" Jimmy exclaimed, pissed off beyond measure. "I've been walking on my toes to avoid scorpions, for fuck's sake!"

Almara didn't care to win his favor over. She barely even looked at him, and waited for the two of them to climb over her back.

Once they did, she started walking through the jungle, using her jaws, and awfully big head to either push through branches, or knock a few small trees down all together. She was aware that Jimmy was paranoid, and even scared of what might be hidden up in the trees, so she exerted herself to make the ride smooth for him.

Ten minutes into the ordeal, Jimmy was only slapped by branches twice.

Anna, on the other hand, grabbed a few arm-thick branches and broke them in such a way that she turned them into wooden spears. She only brought three stone spears down here in the underworld, so she wanted to have a few weapons she didn't care to break or lose. She fashioned herself five wooden spears, and held them on her lap as if they were firewood.

"Wood worked well against that red motherfucker," She huffed.

"I didn't think you'd come down here to hunt," Jimmy chuckled.

"I'd love it if I could do some research, but we have to assume the bastards down here are extra violent." She expressed, "Though I hardly understand the ecosystem here, I don't think it's a place for sweet little herbivores."

"No kidding," He said.

Anyway, they continued bashing through the jungle. Almara, knowing that Jimmy wanted to see the city, started heading south-east, which was nearly the same way they came from.

The city was stashed somewhere at the edge of this massive jungle, and it was several days away from her home lake, but she was experienced enough to know that if she kept heading towards the direction where the edge of the ceiling of this massive underground world was visible, she'd get to the City of Fik eventually.

The name sounded funny to him when he was reminded of him during the first minutes of their trip in the jungle, but he was willing to give it a peek.

As the recent events had it, any inkling of good technology Jimmy could get his hands on within a relatively close distance, could be stashed somewhere within the city. He didn't know just how advanced the city here was, and he didn't have high expectations either, but since the bunker back home was blown into smithereens, he was hoping to find anything that would make this life of his a little bit less mundane.

"We're gonna try to figure out if these city folks are mixed up with the dinosaur attacks," He said to Anna, "With pyramids involved, we have to assume someone there is up to some weird shit. Alien, possibly?"

"Are you hoping the pyramids were built by aliens?" She asked, "You're starting to sound like those conspiracy nuts from back home."

"No, I have a solid assumption," He said, "I don't recognize my theories as facts, but humans haven't even invented the wheel yet. If those city folks are any worse off, then of course I won't believe that they built the pyramids. Dinosaurs couldn't have built them, so, aliens."

"Let's not assume that all dinosaurs are stupid," She chuckled, "If you're a good theorist, you have to admit that there is a slight chance of us running into a dinosaur with a lab coat, or a monocle."

"You're practically a Paleontologist, and you think we'll run into a dinosaur who's also a scientist?" He asked helplessly.

"Just as much as I'd believe that we'll see a unicorn. The chances are low, but never zero." She said, "Two separate birds shat on me so far, and they're not even supposed to exist yet, so we have to assume that every creature here had the potential of evolving into something entirely different to what we're used to over the past few million years. It's an isolated territory."

"I have to agree with you on that," He said, "But I hope to God we won't see a reptilian scientist. I've watched enough horror movies to know that they're not as helpful as we want them to be."

As the two of them indulged into their 'intellectual' conversation, Almara did the dinosaur equivalent of scoffing at them as a response. Their conversations pierced through her ears as a 'jungle' of words, and it didn't help that they used words that were foreign to her. She was surprisingly irritated every time they mentioned the word scientist, as it sounded like one of the flavorless fish that could be found in her home lake, which were called Slippery Fish.

Hardly similar, but her current dinosaur brain said otherwise.

Despite the hospitality she aimed to provide towards her guests, one of which she saw as a hero, she debated if she should throw them up a tree. Assuming there weren't venomous snakes up there, she saw this as a good idea, but she resisted from doing so.

"Be nice…" She kept repeating to herself, chirping away like a broken flute.