The Jungle Goddess & The Tiger Men

1.

There was no choice, was there? No. There was not.

She must cross the Valley of the Tiger Men... To go around would take far too long—another three days, at the very least. She had to reach the Red Pyramid before Prime Evil! Before he could begin his latest obscene experiment. If she was too late—but she dared not even consider that. The consequences would be unthinkable.

The Tiger Tribe would not be happy if they discovered her entering their territory again. Not at all. But they shouldn't hassle her. Without doubt, if she was seen, they would grouch and grumble among themselves—yet her passage would be tolerated, all the same. The Tiger Men were always honorable, at least in their own harsh, stubborn fashion, and their King still owed her a great favor.

Perhaps, thinking this over, she could make direct use of that fact... She might persuade him to aid her, if she went straight to him and explained the situation. Indeed, he might dispatch a fair-size selection of his biggest and best warriors, to match against Prime Evil's mechanized gorilla troops. Certainly a great help in the coming fight. But the cost...

It would mean replacing his debt to her with one to him. The King would find that pleasing, of course. Was it worthwhile?

She wouldn't know until he asked his favor—whatever it turned out to be. And he was capricious. He'd always been so. Even at his best, he retained childish, self-serving tendencies, like all kings all through history, everywhere. The more she considered it, the less she liked the thought. Soon she resolved not to take the chance. Better—and safer—to leave him and his people out of the entire affair, if she could help it.

If she was lucky, after all, and if she was quick, she might speed through their valley without them even noticing.

Anyone who had ever tried to help her fight Prime Evil had died, in the end—or worse. There had been more than a few... She knew it would be the same for the Tiger Men, if she asked this of them, and she wanted no more of their blood on her hands, no matter the reason. So she must not ask. Simple as that. They were by no means innocent or benevolent creatures, but she had finally established an enduring truce with them, and the Last Jungle was their rightful home as much as it was hers. And since she had become the overall protector of this secret realm, that meant she was their protector, too.

It was not just a job, or a calling. It was her holy duty. The souls of the trees themselves had chosen her for this, and only her.

2.

The Last Jungle exists in another dimension. Once it was part of an Earth much like our own—and like all the jungles of our own Earth, it was threatened with extinction. But in response to that pressure, the last jungle of that alternate Earth evolved a consciousness of its plight—and suddenly took action to preserve itself. As that planet's entire ecosystem was collapsing and dying around it, it was able to escape, through sheer force of will and desperation. It transferred itself—or perhaps transformed itself—into another and entirely separate reality. And it endured there, somehow. It has endured like that for untold ages.

Or perhaps it did die, but doesn't know it, or won't accept it... Perhaps it only endures as memories, or dreams. Perhaps what it actually is, is a ghost. The afterlife of a jungle. Echoes and shadows. The collected, interlinked spirits of all it once contained, before its destruction and erasure from the universe of the living...

If that's the case, it makes little or no difference. It might all be an illusion, but it seems perfectly alive and substantial to anyone within it. Things can still die there. All its creatures still hunt and consume each other, same as in every other jungle.

Jace came to the Last Jungle as a child... She had been a movie star, in her former life, even at that young age—and she was the child of two other movie stars. Hollywood royalty. They were all in a private plane, flying home across the ocean from a European film festival... There was a sudden, strange storm. The clouds that engulfed the plane were a brilliant, lurid yellow, while the lightning that struck the plane, and brought it down, was colored red.

The plane did not hit the ocean that should have been beneath it. Instead, somehow, it crashed into the Last Jungle. The moment it had entered that weird and otherworldly storm, it must have exited the skies of Earth. A rift or a portal.

Jace was the only survivor of the awful crash. She was just nine years old, when this happened.

She has now lived in the Last Jungle for eleven years.

Her arch-enemy, Prime Evil, as he calls himself, arrived two years back... A mad scientist from Jace's original reality—or at least one very much resembling it. Tinkering with alien technology beyond his understanding, he opened a dimensional rift or portal of his own and was sucked through it... but not alone.

Another scientist, who was trying to stop him at the time, got pulled in after him, before the portal closed. Her name is Carrie Brasin, and she soon afterward became Jace's best friend. Her only human friend, in fact—though it must be noted, the Jungle Goddess has very many friends of several diverse species.

Other outsiders have penetrated this reality besides Prime Evil and before Jace herself... Most arrived by accident, like they had, but some came by design, and the Red Pyramid is an artifact of one such endeavor. Its builders are long dead—their colony a failure. But Prime Evil believes the structure to be not just a building they left behind but the ship they had used to bring them to this realm. He also thinks he can take control of it—provided he can get past the dreadful demonic monsters now guarding its entrance.

Having captured Carrie, he intends to offer her to them for this purpose.

Those monsters had nothing to do with the failed colonists, far as Jace can tell. They had moved into the Red Pyramid after its makers were all long dead and gone, converting the structure into their nest. If those foul things get hold of Carrie, Jace knows she isn't strong enough to defeat them and bring Carrie back out of there. Once before she had challenged the creatures—and the fight did not go well for her. She had barely escaped with her life, that time.

She has to get Carrie away from Prime Evil before he can give her to the guardians. If only the wretched bastard didn't have such a long start on her... but Jace hadn't even realized Carrie had been taken until a mere two hours ago. Prime Evil had replaced her with an android. Again!

(Android swaps were a favorite trick of his. He'd fooled her that way over and over. Only they were never very well put together and never lasted long. This time the false Carrie had given herself away just by bumping her head on a low tree branch—her entire head had popped off her neck and bounced away across the ground!)

3.

When Jace entered the Tiger tribe's valley, she had made a mistake. A silly, irritating one. It was a minor matter. Trivial—except the Tiger Men wouldn't see it that way. No, instead this would enrage them.

It was the skins she happened to be wearing that day. They were from a white tiger. Her boots, as well. This was a serious problem, because the Tiger Men worshipped the white tigers. If they should see her running through their valley, wearing the skins of their god... they would not take it well. It would be blasphemous, in their opinion, and they would assume she had done it to deliberately offend them. And it would hardly help to say she simply hadn't thought about the implications, although of course that was in fact exactly what had occurred. Jace just hadn't noticed what she had on until it was too late. The realization of what that outfit would mean to them didn't hit her until she was already deep into their territory. And that would almost sound more insulting, wouldn't it? Than if she'd done it deliberately. It would be saying she didn't care at all about their religious standards. And of course she didn't, to be perfectly honest about it. But that wasn't good diplomacy. That was just plain rudeness.

She'd come much too far by that point to turn back. She was nearly halfway across the valley. Running all the way back out and then even further, to the closest of her treehouses (Jace had made several for herself scattered wide throughout the Last Jungle) just to change her outfit for reasons of interspecies diplomacy was absolutely out of the question—she couldn't afford the time. Too much was at stake—Carrie's very life! But she couldn't risk starting up trouble with the Tiger Men over this nonsense, either. That could easily end up delaying her just as bad, or more so. Nor could she simply trust to luck, hoping not to be spotted by any of them before she reached the far end of the valley. That was too chancy. Their valley wasn't very big, as valleys go, and their tribe had grown more and more numerous.

There was one simple solution. She could shed the skins and her boots. Then if she was seen, she wouldn't have anything on that would offend the Tiger Men. Problem solved.

Of course this would also mean she would be naked. She'd keep her knife belt on, so she wouldn't have to carry her weapon in her hand all the time, but that hardly counted. The strap fitted around left thigh, rather than her waist.

Now for Jace the Jungle Goddess, this would not be a great difficulty. It was somewhat inconvenient, and a little exasperating. But that was as far as it went. She was not the same as you or I, thanks to the life she had led. Nudity did not worry her, not even in the midst of danger. Sometimes it bothered her when her breasts bounced around too much, when she was running about or jumping. So she preferred to keep them secured tight. And despite the tough calluses on her feet, being barefoot could often be a disadvantage. Especially considering the stony ground she would need to contend with, to reach the Red Pyramid. But beyond these practical considerations, Jace wasn't troubled by the exposure of her "privates". She felt no shame in anyone seeing them or all the other parts of her body. It didn't make any difference to her. (Well, not most of the time.)

Most of us would be mortified, in her place. Imagine finding yourself in the middle of a perilous jungle without any clothes on—and then suddenly you're surrounded by eight or nine muscular tattooed savages, with spears and axes. And all of them have the heads of tigers. And those heads are not masks or helmets. The tiger heads are their real, living heads.

Most of us would piss ourselves, in a situation like that. But not Jace, when this actually happened to her.

She would have been embarrassed if they'd found her still in the white tiger skins. Because of the thoughtless rudeness on her own part that such an outfit would indicate—that would have made her feel genuinely and deeply ashamed. But having them see her without anything on at all—that meant nothing to her. (Well, again, almost nothing.)

It might have been a bit more distressing or at least off-putting for her if they were fully human. But they weren't. She felt just about no different in front of them like that than we feel if our housecat sees us naked. It doesn't bother us. It doesn't mean anything. It's just an animal and it doesn't care, so we don't care.

This is what she told herself, at least, inside her head. Over and over.

The Tiger Men of the Last Jungle are quite different than housecats, however. Much more formidable. And they are more human than tiger. Most of their bodies are human, and their brains. They think, they talk. They are people, not beasts. Most of us, despite their tiger faces, would still get shy, if people like them were seeing us naked. We wouldn't be able to stand up to them as well as Jace could. Strange as they are, they're still human enough to make ordinary people feel embarrassed and vulnerable. And they are scary. Big, hulking, looming figures. And every single one with hefty crude stone-headed weapons in their hands. We would blanch. We would tremble.

But not Jace. She doesn't allow herself; she's too tough for that. She's different than us. She's no ordinary girl. She's the Jungle Goddess!

4.

They didn't comment on her nudity. She wasn't sure they took much notice of it. They all wore nothing but loincloths, and she knew their women rarely bothered with clothes.

The Tiger Men had a rather complicated history. (Deep breath.) They were created by Prime Evil's grandfather, working for the Nazis in an alternate universe version of World War II. Actually, that wasn't quite right—their creator was really the grandfather of the alternate Prime Evil in that universe, who had kept his original name, Hinchcliffe. (That is, Prime Evil was originally Hinchcliffe, both versions, not his grandfather.) This different version was equally nuts, but his madness had taken a slightly different road. He had never transferred his consciousness into a cyborg gorilla like "her" Hinchcliffe had. Instead, he came up with a scheme to bring together half a dozen different versions of himself from different universes and combine them all into one superbeing. Except none of the other Hinchcliffe's had liked this idea. It had taken a little while, with the combat scrambling back and forth across several realities, but they had all ended up destroying each other, except for Prime Evil (the one version she happened to be most familiar with). By sheer dumb luck that final battle took place in the Last Jungle, and he, "her" Hinchcliffe who didn't like using that name any longer, turned out the sole survivor of the whole rotten bunch, though Jace had at least prevented him from using that other Hinchcliffe's invention to escape the Last Jungle afterward and invade other universes. When she wrecked that machine (the Universal X-Change, it was called), doing so had also stranded the Tiger Men there.

(Hinchcliffe, in need of minions, had earlier stolen the Tiger Men, or the formula for making them, from his grandfather with a time machine, perhaps an earlier version of his Universal X-Change. Supposedly if he hadn't done so, the Nazis in his universe wouldn't have lost WWII. Yes indeed, it was all quite absurdly Byzantine.)

After that version of Hinchcliffe was dead, Prime Evil had inevitably tried several times to cajole or force the Tiger Men to work for him in the other guy's place, but he could never bring them to heel. They fled from him, chose this narrow, steep-sided valley, and made a new little nation in it for themselves. Two or three times since then they'd ventured out in force and stirred up trouble in various other parts of the Last Jungle. But Jace had always managed to settle them down before things got too bloody, and then find a way to make friends with them again afterwards.

You could tell just looking at them that they were dreamed up by a genuine unabashed mad scientist, to be his pet monsters. She respected their ongoing struggle to transcend that fact. To create a real culture for themselves. Their women were not like their men—again, you could see the mind of a filthy villain at work, in this discrepancy. The men had normal human bodies with tiger heads... well, their women had normal heads, except all with identical facial features modeled on an old German movie star, and with furry pointed ears. And unlike the men, they all had furry tails. They were also engineered to be extremely sexually aggressive. It was clear Hinchcliffe's grandfather designed them that way for his own perverse enjoyment. Giving them complete tiger heads the same as the males must not have appealed to him. It hadn't turned him on.

Jace hadn't seen many of the women. They were few in number—one for every ten of the men—and they kept themselves secluded. They did not live with the men—the genders roved around in separate bands, only meeting up to mate, when the females wanted. Breeding wasn't easy for them, which she knew was a source of great grief for their people. They suffered many miscarriages. She wondered if they were deliberately made them that way, as a population control, of if the wretch simply hadn't cared enough about that aspect of their lives to correct the problem. Which Carrie had told her was anatomical—their bodies weren't shaped properly for children. It made her cry, whenever she talked about it. Which made Jace furious, and made her wish both Hinchcliffe and his grandfather weren't dead, so she could kill them again. But she'd make him fix the women first, if it was possible.

You couldn't lie to the Tiger Men. Their tiger noses could somehow smell dishonesty, in your sweat. And Jace knew she wasn't much good at deception, even without an extra disadvantage like that to contend with. Because she had little imagination for making up stories. She tried to tell falsehoods as little as possible. All she told the Tiger Men was that she was in a great hurry, in order to reach her friend the next day or the day after at the Red Pyramid—the Tiger Men had heard about Carrie and their special relationship, though none of them had met her yet. They said they knew of her great importance to Jace—that she and Carrie had become a "tribe of two". Jace had never thought of it that way before, but she rather liked the sound of the phrase, when they said it.

So they would have let her continue on as she wished with no further delay, except she made the mistake of mentioning Prime Evil. Because of course they asked who or what was threatening Carrie, and Jace couldn't think of a good way not to answer without appearing suspicious. And after she told them, the whole group insisted on accompanying her. They wanted in on the fight. It was just as she feared would happen—they saw this as a grand opportunity. Eager to face their old enemy again. But Prime Evil had made significant advancements, since the last time he tried taking control of them... After finally giving up on the Tiger tribe, he'd created a new and more dreadful fighting force using captive mind-controlled gorillas. "Gorilla warfare," Carrie had said, "Literally. Very funny." Jace hadn't understood why she said that—Carrie had tried to explain the joke, but only made it more confusing.

Prime Evil only had a dozen of his new pets, so far, but they were all enhanced with robotics to make them stronger and faster, and they'd been trained to use guns. Jace didn't think the Tiger Men would be much help against them—not even if she had the entire tribe with her, rather than just this one hunting group of eight or nine. No, it was less than that. When she made a count, it turned out they numbered only seven. But she couldn't refuse their offer, now that it had been made. They would only take that as an insult. Hotblooded warriors tend to be excessively touchy. It's probably their greatest weakness.

She was stuck with them.

Well, if there was no getting out of this now, they would make useful allies, to a degree, just as she'd considered before entering the valley. The group could provide a distraction, at any rate. Keeping Prime Evil occupied while she got to Carrie.

Yes, this was a cold-blooded way to think of it. All the same, it could work. She knew the Tiger Men would all get slaughtered in the process, thanks to the gorillas' guns. That seemed unavoidable. It would probably be a very short affair.

At the same time she knew they wouldn't mind giving up their lives like that. They would consider it a good way to go. Jace wasn't sure that would be much consolation. In fact somehow it made her feel even worse about it. And Carrie wouldn't take it any better. She would be furious if Jace let them sacrifice themselves for her. Jace could picture the look she'd get on her face. She could see it in her head in vivid detail.