"3500"
"What?!" Oc shouted in shock, drops of nervous sweat dripping down her brown skinned face.
"That's her threat level. My Collector allows me to read them from people. As we stand here, we're facing someone with a threat level of 3500."
"A...and what's my threat level?" Oc asked King, very nervous to receive an answer.
"Uhhh...80..."
Oc dropped to the ground in shock. She couldn't believe she was so weak. She'd heard the average human had a threat level of 10, but to have hers be this low was just depressing.
Meanwhile, I looked at the giant dog and walked on.
"Spike! Are you insane?! Her threat level is, like, double yours! You don't stand a chance against her!"
"Who cares?" I said to him, while he looked at me with frightful awe in his eyes. Oc watched me too, totally entranced by what I said.
"I don't care if her threat level was 3000 or 30,000 or even 300,000,000!! I'm still gonna get my whale back!" I shouted, causing our trio of adversaries to laugh at me, including the dog, which let out loud barks of amusement.
They thought I was a joke.
They thought wrong.
I rushed at the giant dog at breakneck speed, and as I got closer, she raised her gargantuan paw to crush me. Luckily, I was two steps ahead.
Jumping ahead of her attack, I dived straight toward her. With me coming in quick, she opened her large mouth to reveal a set of sharp yellow teeth covered in drool.
Exactly as I planned.
In the blink of an eye, I was in her mouth, and making sure I made my body as streamlined as possible, fell directly into her throat.
Before I went down, I saw King give a look of absolute fear at what I had done. However, what really caught my attention was Oc.
She looked at me with a nervous look on her face, accentuated with a grin.
She knew what I was planning.
The trip down her esophagus took little to no time at all. Once I was in her stomach, that's when I saw King wasn't bullshitting me.
Just like the first time I was eaten by the space whale, the stomach's interior was massive. Although the walls and floor were still made of tissue and guts, it was still way bigger than it should have been.
But now wasn't the time to dwell on that.
I walked along the giant stomach chamber and noticed something whimpering at the other end.
Something big.
It was the whale.
Covered in gastrointestinal fluid and bruises all over its blubber-composed body, it was clear the poor thing had been digested multiple times, but its tough skin kept it from melting by the dog's stomach acid.
I also noticed the wounds healing at a rapid pace. That explains why the hole I made when I escaped its belly the first time wasn't there anymore. Now that I think about it, I was probably eaten on my home planet, then it must have flown back to Maria's world to rest and ate Maria once it got there. And here I thought I was on the same planet the whole time.
However, considering the fact I managed to break out of it pretty easily the first time, that skin wasn't going to hold for long. I had to get it out of here fast.
That wasn't going to be easy, though. Once I approached the creature, it gave a loud wail and turned to the side. Suddenly, it grew a pair of bird wings and flew even farther from me, and considering how huge this chamber was, it got pretty far.
I didn't have time for this. Sure, its fear of me was justified. I did create a gaping hole in its stomach, for crying out loud, but I couldn't let it stop me now. Otherwise, the stomach acid would later.
I pounced on the whale as quickly as I could, and once I got on its hot, burning back, which was that way thanks to the leftover stomach acid, I used all my strength to push it down to the fleshy ground, and in an instant, it crashed with a powerful thud.
I tried my best to restrain it, but it put up a pretty damn good fight.
And when I thought things couldn't get worse, stomach walls started releasing acid.
With all the walls flooding the room with acid, I knew I had to get this thing to fly us out of here.
This thing.
Thing...
Wait, this wasn't some thing. This was a living creature. It could feel happy, sad, angry...it could feel so much. And from what I've seen, it can feel fear.
What was going through its head? One minute it had its meal burst out of its belly, and the next, it had that same meal try to ride it like a ship. Next thing it knew, it crashed onto a weird moon and was eating by a lady who could turn into a dog.
This whale couldn't catch a break!
As the whale struggled to break free of my grasp, I knew now what I had to do. This wasn't some vehicle or machine. It was a living creature.
And I had to treat it like that.
I pulled my red sunglasses down, something I hadn't done since I was a little pup, and looked the whale dead in its black, head-sized eye with my crimson red eyes while the stomach acid approached us slowly.
As I looked at the whale, its movements became less and less erratic. Its breathing less ferocious, and its gaze less fearful and angry, but more scared and confused.
No words were spoken, no sounds were made, but we communicated. A dog and a whale. An odd pairing, but a pairing nonetheless. With a look, I finally managed to calm it down.
How, you ask? Well, I simply told it to calm down. Not with language, but with pure instinct. With my eyes, I told it one thing: "I am not a threat. Calm down."
With the whale finally under control, now came the real problem: the acid. Luckily, my avian friend knew what to do. It sprouted its wings again and soared high above where the acid could reach.
However, there was still a problem: the thick outer wall. I knew in order for us to escape, we needed to blast right through it.
I jumped off the whale and charged my fist, giving it a blow powerful enough to break right through.
I spun my arm as many times as I could before reaching the wall and giving it a tectonic blow that sent shockwaves through the entire stomach chamber.
Only for it to do jack shit to the wall itself. What was worse was my arm was stuck to the wall, and pulling me in.
As the wall pulled me deeper and deeper, I remembered I had another arm ready to attack.
An arm made of bubblegum, of all things. But I was sure as hell gonna use it.
I punched the stomach wall with all my might. Well, at least I thought I did, when it turned out that my gum arm didn't even move. I tried to wiggle it. To make it respond, but nothing.
That was weird. It worked just a few seconds ago, and now it was messing with me.
Shit.
This was the worst time for this. Now my whole face was inside the wall, and my back was next to follow. My gum arm was all that was left before I was fully sucked in.
I tried my best to move, to fight back, but my arm didn't respond in the slightest.
Suddenly, I heard a muffled sound.
It was the whale.
It was calling out to me. It knew I was getting sucked in, but it was still coming. Well then, you stupid arm of mine, are you gonna stay limp while this poor creature gets digested?
But it was still limp...
What the hell? What was I gonna do now? My whole body was absorbed by the wall, and my arm was getting sucked in deeper and deeper, and I had no idea how I could get out of this. But that didn't mean I...
I tried again.
One...
Last...
Time.
I slammed my gum arm into the stomach wall, and then...
Something happened.
For a brief moment, there was a smack crack sound, then a slight puff, and then, out of left field, my arm popped!
I thought if my arm were to ever pop, it would just get some gum everywhere, and that would be it, but I was wrong. It turns out my arm had been storing my attacks inside it the entire time, and finally, with one powerful explosion, let out all the impact into the stomach wall, causing it to collapse from the inside out.
Once the whale saw this, its speed doubled, and in a matter of seconds, it got to my location and slammed into me. And I gotta say, I was a pretty lucky bastard because a second too late, and I would've been absorbed completely.
It slammed into the remains of the stomach wall with an open mouth and bit off a portion of it. The portion that almost sucked me in.
I've never been so glad to be eaten.
Once I was in the whale's mouth, I forced my way out of that fleshy wall, and in a moment, I was free. I got a good look around and realized along with the usual things you might find in a mouth like the teeth and tongue, there was also a pair of holes.
I peeked through the holes and saw nothing but a reddish-brown tunnel. That's when I realized these holes were the whale's eyes.
And when I realized that, I saw something getting closer and closer. A light at the end of the tunnel. A small one, but enough to tell me where we were going.
Looks like we're getting the hell outta here.
The end, FOR NOW....