Time went on as flies. More sex, more exploring, and more fun. But finally, both you (Jacob) and Samantha slipped up.
First was you on a man's sleeve outside. You felt complacent about it, they didn't show any signs of knowing you were there. But they did, but you've gotten out of the way when they made the motions to slap you. This time you didn't, they were too fast. You got squished, and it hurt.
The experience was alien. As you felt pain (well, as any house fly could feel "pain) you felt like your body was also flatten, crunched, and warped in the way it should being squished, including feeling some insides come out. But you were not dead, and the pain went away as quickly as it came. Your senses were warped accordingly, but with some confirmation from Samanatha, you were brushed off and fell to the floor. The impact didn't yield any pain, but you couldn't really move while you were in this state. You were left alone after this, as you were just a tiny, dead fly after all, but soon Samantha came to your rescue and moved your body the best she could to an inconspicuous area. You found that you could drag around each other as needed, even carry with short jumps, but each action was substantial effort. You could only imagine the odd sight that would be a house fly "rescuing" another.
After some telepathic talking that you were relatively "okay", you wondered if the supposed "safe-traits" that you had would eventually bring you back to health. You didn't seem to be getting better, so like with the telepathy, you made a mental motion to get better. It worked. More then a few seconds but nowhere near a minute, your body came back into shape painlessly and you were good.
You reported this incident to Marshall Bob as soon as you could, and he was glad the Safe-Traits kicked in. The reason why you didn't recover as soon as possible as "Playing Dead" is something built in to avoid suspicion, coming back to health would be better done another time. Being dead or heavily injured without pain was just a contingency, but really pain avoidance and toughness could be activated before getting injured, hence the initial pain at the beginning. With some advice from Bob, you and Samantha practice using your safe-traits, including some eye poking and limb breaking, although the latter you definitely avoided trying to experience any pain in the first place.
Later on Samantha had her own issue. She got herself got in a spider's web inside one of the hotel's walls. She later explained that despite our previous practices and cautions, for some reason this particular web wasn't in sight. I wasn't nearby at the time, although we learned to do check-ups if we split so I was searching for her at some point. Either way, she was stuck in a web and dealing with a coming spider.
It was a black widow and Samantha couldn't figure out how to get free, so she stopped struggling and activated her safe traits. By the time the spider got to her, she felt like a living statue, and probably felt the same to the spider with the way it was trying to interact with her. It added more webbing to Samantha here-and-there, and attempted to bite her. Samantha could feel the motion, but luckily she didn't feel pain nor felt like the bite did any damage, much less puncture into her body. The spider was obviously confused, if still robotic about its attempts to eat Samantha. Eventually, I found Samantha and waited for the spider to go away, and with some careful struggle and use of both our Fly Spit, I freed Samantha.
Both these experiences and more talking with Marshall Bob lead us to develop ways of doing rescues, survival, and first-aid techniques not only as flies, but as insects and small animals that would be used later on. Bob was so thankful for our eagerness and cooperation with the Witness Protection program so far, and gave us a heads up something may be coming down the line since we very comfortable and experienced in our forms so far...