Rachael saw a group of humans, sitting quietly beside a put-out campfire. She froze, not expecting to see people here, this deep in the forest. But since most people were friendly and she couldn’t think of a reason why they would attack her, she approached them.

“Uh, hello? Mind if I stay here for a bit?”

But before Rachael could get too near, all three were on guard and pulled out some weapons that she somehow didn’t see before. The man went into a stance with a longsword, the other two girls had a bow and two daggers respectively. Surprised that they 1) Had weapons and Rachael didn’t notice them before and 2) They looked battle ready. They then, without warning, attacked her. Dagger-girl was the quickest and started stabbing and slicing using her daggers. Sword-guy let out a cry and charged while the bow-girl started shooting arrows.

Rachael ran like hell. She had basically no experience fighting and was scared to her bones. But she couldn’t run fast enough for apparently battle-trained people. Many thoughts ran through her head such as “Are they from the army?” and “Why do they have swords in the first place?”, but they all flew out when she saw how close they were.

In a moment of desperation, Rachael picked up half of a stick and stabbed it forward, luckily stabbing into the eye of the girl with the daggers. It was a brutal strike, stabbing her clean through the head. Rachael freaked out, killing someone for the first time and pulled the stick out, which only resulted in making the girl’s brain into even more of a mush.

To Rachael’s surprise, the girl’s group didn’t even react to the death and just kept on attacking Rachael as if dagger-girl didn’t even die.

Looking down however, Rachael was shocked as if the body of the girl turned into a bun-bun, albeit a slightly different one. It was one that was more streamlined and skinny and had sharper claws, kinda like a rouge-esque bun-bun.

Rachael had her suspicions now.

“Were all three of them bun-buns? They must be. What do you think, super brain?” Rachael pondered. After a slight pause, they responded.

Well, probably.

“That’s enough for me”

Rachael readied herself but she was shook as her hearing was suddenly pumped way high again. Luckily, she had a bit of experience in that before so it didn’t cripple her yet. She stood still, trying to recalibrate her senses and forgetting that she was in a fight.

Rachael was suddenly shaken back into reality as she immediately ducked down onto the cold forest floor and rolled to the side as she heard a sword coming at her. Immediately, she thanked her super hearing and super brain as they saved her already and probably many more to come.

Sigh. Get the sword guy first. He’s probably the strongest out of all the bun-bun’s here.

Before Rachael had the time to ask how a mental voice sighed, another attack came from above. It was an arcing arrow shot from the sky and was just about to hit Rachael if not for her lunging towards her left, which also conveniently sends her closer to sword-bun.

Rachael ran up to sword-bun and punched him in the gut, and shortly after another punch onto the head. She then took her stick and jammed it through the eye, since she had already seen that it was quite effective at taking out bun-bun’s of all different kinds. She then did this kind of wiggle with the stick, to mush up the sword-bun’s brain even more.

And right after that, she scrambled forwards just in time to dodge another arrow fired from bow-bun. Rachael noticed another stick in front of her so she threw it at the bow-bun, distracting it. Taking the opportunity, she charged at bow-bun and she punched as hard as she could, killing the monster.

Rachael breathed a sigh of relief as she flopped onto the ground, feeling exhausted. But then suddenly, she had an idea.

‘Since I got the mutation from eating a bun-bun, will I also get something from eating these?’

However, Rachael was reluctant at eating raw meat even when there was a chance of getting a helpful power.

Don’t worry. You probably won’t get anything bad from these. Also, I think that your chances of getting a mutation from these is about 100%. Don’t ask me why.

Hearing super brain’s ‘words’, Rachael felt much better at munching down on some raw bun-buns. She quickly scavenged some good parts of each bun-bun before the bugs got to it and champed down on them. Suddenly, Rachael felt drowsy. She had very quickly forgotten that she would black out when she’s getting a new mutation and was not in the slightest prepared. Very quickly, she collapsed into a heap on the blood-stained ground.

…

Waking up, Rachael immediately noticed some changes. First, she had a terrible, splitting headache. Second, she could see much farther than before. Third, and last, her hand turned into a dagger-blade. Very calmly and not at all panicking, she willed herself to turn it back.

After a couple of very stressful seconds, she did it. There was something very disturbing about a blade morphing itself into a palm and 5 fingers but she strangely didn’t feel very grossed out.

Rachael just stayed sitting for a while, before she decided to pick herself back up and start walking again. Where? Somewhere.