Chapter Text
If you asked Manny Carlson about his life he’d feel it’s fairly average, well as average as life for an anthropomorphic Carolina mantis trying his best to make it in society actually is on a daily basis. Early on in life he grew up with only his mother present, he never had the chance to really know his father and had to deal with the occasionally nasty rumor that his mother was the cause of his untimely demise, Manny tried his hardest to ignore these claims every time they were whispered. Working as a pizza delivery boy wasn’t exactly the most exciting of jobs, but honestly he preferred it being a sort of quiet life for the most part. Everything today seemed to be just average as usual as he liked it, until suddenly it wasn’t. He had just finished the usual shift of deliveries and was making his way to return the vehicle and get home so he could turn in for the night when the tires of the vehicle he was in suddenly popped after making contact with a set of spikes laid out in the road, camouflaged so that even with headlights they would not easily be visually detected until it was already too late. The mantid was already panicking once all movement stopped from the damage, the vehicle belonged to his workplace after all, but that was quickly forgotten in favor of the small red lights suddenly shining onto his body, some kind of laser sight. In that moment his nerves began to truly spike as he quickly got out of the car and took off into the tree-line on the side of the road, a desperate attempt at escaping whatever seemed to be responsible for the appearance of a set of road spikes in the middle of nowhere. As he ran he swore he could spot a second set of headlights on the road from a different vehicle, one that appeared to be pulling over right next to where he ran into the wilderness.
Now, as a mantis Manny should have been capable of fending for himself in dangerous situations pretty well, but fate had not been kind to him in terms of the defensive mechanisms his kind normally relied on to escape an oncoming threat. The bladed edges of his arms weren’t exactly as sharp as one would expect so they weren’t too useful at inflicting any real damage, his notably timid-leaning personality made him more likely to flee from a confrontation rather than stand his ground, and then there was the biggest offender : his wings. Normally flight was an advantage that male mantis had as a result of their smaller size, but this did come with a catch in requiring two sets of wings in order to achieve true flight. Manny only ever had two wings of four his entire life, both him and his mother thought they would eventually come in as he got older but that never ended up happening, effectively rendering him flightless for his entire life. Without flight the most he could do was run and hope that his green coloration would allow him to at least disappear into the surrounding foliage and shake off whoever seemed to in the area. Unfortunately for the pizza boy it seems his idea was for naught as he could hear footsteps and shouting, while it was too far away for him to understand it Manny already got the picture, they were actively chasing him down. Manny thought he was possibly going to shake them eventually only for that train of thinking to be crushed as a net suddenly whizzed past him, barely missing a direct hit only by a few mere inches. His thoughts became overrun with more anxieties as he kept running, why were these people after him, what did they want with him , was his mother in danger as well? He was so caught up in his worries that Manny didn’t notice when a red dot lined up on his side before a sudden sting hit his body, causing him to flinch and lose his balance. He struggled before managing to push himself back into a standing position only to notice a now present small metal object lodged directly into the side of his body, one that was now injecting some kind of chemical right into his bloodstream.
After the dart had made its way into his side Manny found himself growing increasingly woozy, stumbling back and forth as he struggled to remain standing upright. His vision slowly began to blur and his hearing became muddled, leaving him barely able to comprehend what was going on by the time he finally toppled onto the ground, then if things could not get worse in his current situation a bunch of shapes began to surround him. The mantid couldn’t tell exactly what he was looking at with how blurry his vision was due to whatever drug had entered his system but he was fairly sure that these were in fact human beings surrounding him at the moment, and they seemed to be wearing some sort of armor… at least he was pretty sure that was what was actually going on here. The next thing he knew the people surrounding him had grabbed his body, carrying him into the back of one of their vehicles before a group of them then began to secure his body onto a gurney of some sort. He still could not fully make out what these strangers were even saying, but given all the effort that seemingly went into trying to just get him in this state he could guess the topic of their discussion had something to do with him. Before he could ponder on what was happening any more a mask was then slipped over the face of the humanoid insect as some of gas filled his airways, making him feel even stranger than he already was feeling because of that dart from earlier. The last thing he could see before blacking out was the door to the back of the vehicle he was in being closed before it began driving off as he passed out into nothing.
In the aftermath of that day of usual delivery work, Manny Carlson would suddenly find his situation vastly changing as he was thrust in a place he was unprepared for, and no hide or hair of him would be found by the public for a long, long while. His life was only set to become far stranger, and far more stressful, in his near future.