Just not quick enough... (Frog)

Quickly as you can, you hop to the lillipad floating nearest the slimy water's edge and land on it. A loud splashing sound rings out as you displace the water with your landing.

Gotta be more careful! Any more **** than that and these things are likely to capsize... and there's no telling what is lurking below you in that goop...

"What's with all the got'dang ruckus!??"

From the water's edge you see the alien! He's absolutely massive, towering at least nine feet taller that you and pushing aside branches with ease that you'd have had to climbed to get over. His stomach is a pale white but the rest of his body is covered in a dark blue fluff, not unlike some sort of large blue jungle cat. Atop his head rests a sunhat and he is otherwise clad in a pair of dirty overalls and thick workman's boots. More alarmingly, he holds in his hand a proportionally large hunting rifle.

"Is you an intruder!?"

You let out a shriek in terror as he levels the weapon at you and fires! Diving to the next lillipad you can see.

No time to take it easy. The exit is ahead and you've got to reach while the cat monster reloads!

You leap from lillipad to lillipad as best as your already sore muscles can, adrenaline and will to survive this horrid alien swamp powering you to will yourself forward.

You're so close to the exit you can almost taste it, a few more leaps and you'll finally be out of this god forsake pla-

_KER-SPLOOSH!!!

_In your haste to escape you lost your footing on the final lillipad, capsizing it and finding yourself dumped into the horrible waters below.

Thick, viscous slimy warm water surrounds you, and you kick and wave your arms trying to swim but it's nearly as thick as molasses.

You see bubbles leaving your nose and mouth as you flail trying to reach the surface of the scummy swamp, painfully aware of your rapidly depleting air supply...

But try as you might, you can swim no closer to the surface... air leaves your lungs and is replaced by the awful fluid you're trapped in.. soon consciousness begins to grow dark and -

• suddenly bright light! A rush of air!!

You gasp and sputter spitting out the horrid swamp water, on the surface and able to breathe again!

Your revelry is interrupted as you feel a firm, furry hand gripped around your right forearm, large enough to wrap around it completely.

You feel yourself yanked up by the over ten foot tall blue catman who looks you over quizzically.

"Hmm... slimy... in the water... jumpin' on lillipads...why you's not an intruder at all!"

Finally! An alien in this place who's actually friendly. You'd thank them for rescuing you but you're still short on breath...

"... you must be a froggy!!"

He grins with delight.

... okay nice alien, but dumber than a sack of bricks. But someone once said something about gift horses, didn't they?

"Aww but ya must be hurt... ya forgot how to swim in tha swamp even though you's a little frog..."

He rummages in the back pocket of his overalls and pulls out what looks like a ripped up and cobbled together facsimile of the hypno-screens you've seen in the previous chambers.

"Das okay! I's got a documentary on frogs what i recorded here on my telly-vision! Hold still froggy, I'll help ya to 'member how to be a frog..."

Realization dawns on you, and before you can speak up to protest, the massive cat man shoves the screen in your face and your vision fills up with spirals from the ramshackle device.

"Hehe... you'd kinda cute... I've always wanted a pet froggy... let's get you all fixed up..."

Boing! Boing!

You sometimes remember that day when you fell jumping on those lillipads. What a silly frog you were back then!

Luckily, thanks to your kind owner's edu-kay-shun, as he called it, you were now the best frog you could be!

"Hehe, you's a sproingy little fella today, aintcha froggy?"

The massive catman sat in his dingy couch and tinkered with another piece of stolen technology he'd ripped from the Maze's walls. Technically your owner wasn't even supposed to be here, but it turns out kicking a fourteen foot tall cat monster out of a swamp was easier said than done... so the studio largely wrote off the lost tech as 'charitable donations to the under educated.'

"Hehe, hang on froggy, I'll getcha some treats!"

You loved the muggy, humid temperature of the little hovel. You loved its rickety wooden walls and damp, sticky mud floors. You ribbit happily as your owner fetches something for you, sitting with your legs splayed and your hands pressed palms first into the mud in pre-leaping position. You wear an all-green lycra body suit of some kind, which terminates just above your wrists and ankles, leaving little of your body to the imagination. Owner gave it to you to help you look more froglike, remarking at the time "I guess ya must be a girl frog!"

Your bare feet squelch into the mud as you hop around the sloppy floor of the hovel happily. Owner throws some sort of stripped animal carcass in the air which you catch with your now long and prehensiile tongue, your pupils, now resembling those of a bullfrog, widen greedily as you slurp down your slimy treat. Those DNA injectors Owner found sure came in handy for helping you catch your food... plus you were much better at hopping on those lillipads, and breathing under the slimey water of the swamp.

Owner playfully scritches behind your ears and you croak happily.

Over all, life is good. There certainly could be worse fates!

You guess that saying is wrong, after all.... it IS easy, being green!!