“Well… At least I now know why they don’t have dicks or slits…”

The shock of the scene that he had just witnessed caused Kain to utter his first spoken words since he arrived at the strange floating island which happened to be very embarrassing to him, as he always tried to rein in any ‘crude’ language . He was also so shocked throughout the whole process that he only belatedly realized that they had eaten the corpses of their fallen comrades after they finished their… what could only be called ‘reproduction’. Kain was silent for a long while before he finally regained his bearings and decided to head back to the beaten path. On the way, he tried to process what he had just seen.

‘So… they split in half when they reproduce… What, are they single celled organisms that split off with mitosis? Or are they like earthworms in the way that they can regrow a head or something and they just do that to reproduce? … Alright I need to calm down. What is certain is that they will essentially never go extinct unless something extraordinary happens. They don’t have external sexual organs because they don’t need them, they just split off into two identical beings. Well I can count my lucky stars that I was fortunate enough to have my first encounter with them to be with a stray. I would have been ripped to shreds if a pack of those things showed up. I can barely kill one after a pitched battle, there is no way I would stand up to a gang of those things and not get pulverized. Also… I guess even those apes can have powers like that rabbit. They can also set it on fire, so I guess they win in terms of destructiveness.’

At some point, he returned to the path from which he strayed and decided to move a bit more quickly than the last few miles of travel so he could avoid any roving gangs of green apes. He therefore continued on for a long while more. He eventually decided to rest under a tree near the trail and take a short rest. He needed to find a better place to sleep, as he did not want to become monkey food anytime soon.

After a while of laying back with his eyes closed, he heard a quiet rustling in the blue bushes to his left. He had been funneling energy into his ears ever since he had rested so he was alert in case of an ambush, so he was ready to meet the assailant. His eyes snapped open and he jumped back a few feet, and raised his rifle, ready to meet the attacker. What emerged from the bush was not a ravenous ape ready to eat his spleen, but a familiar rabbit. The rabbit, which Kain had thought about after the green ape situation, still had its swirling markings. Yet, its color was now very different. It looked blue, but Kain could slowly see a red color taking over its fur. While the colors clashed on its fur, the rabbit was walking with a limp, making it look either injured or drunk. Kain still did not let his guard down, however, as this was the same rabbit that was able to drive him off long enough for it to escape.

The rabbit limped and staggered around, as if looking for something. Its demeanor changed once it saw Kain, however. It began to rush at Kain like a starving wolf looking at its next prey. It jumped at Kain while unleashing a foggy cloud to blind him. The rabbit only met air and ground, as Kain side-stepped the lunge before the fog was even sent toward him. The rabbit, realizing that its attack did not work, tried for a more stealthy approach. It dashed into the trees and began to send clouds of fog around the battlefield while jumping from tree to tree. Kain was unable to keep up with the rabbit, as he still dodged the clouds that approached from all sides because he did not want to test if they were poisonous. He also noted the fact that the clouds did not dissipate when they landed, but instead would accumulate and spread. Clearly the rabbit was trying to catch Kain in its clouds to either blind or poison him.

‘Like I’ll let it be so easy…’

In response to the trap being set up, Kain bolted to the forest, coincidentally in the same direction he intended to head after he rested. In a brief glimpse of the rabbit Kain saw through the trees and mist, it almost looked like the rabbit’s eyes went wide with surprise at the fact that its prey had figured out its trap. The bluish-red rabbit began to chase after Kain with a passion. It somewhat reminded Kain of the killer rabbit from the movie about some quest for a divine goblet or something. Kain could not remember the specific movie at that point because he was running away from a rabbit that was looking at him like he was a ball of lettuce ripe for the picking. He dodged trees and branches and roots and stones and creeks and everything else that could be found in the forest. At one point he turned back and saw the rabbit giving chase, dodging the obstacles just as well or even better than Kain was. The chase continued for a long time, so much time that Kain could not keep track anymore.

He was getting tired. He had been moving all day and he just wanted to find a good cave that he could sleep in and rest. With that thought in mind, Kain decided that it was high time that the hunt ended and he found a clearing along the way. He dug his feet into the soil and slid across the clearing, kicking up a blue shower of bluish-brown mud and blue-green grass. When facing behind him, he saw the rabbit clearly again after being only able to catch blurry glances of it throughout the chase. The rabbit looked much worse for wear. Its normally blue eyes were bloodshot in a surprisingly red color, considering that it was from this strange otherworld. As well as that, its fur was pulsing a red color, with its markings going darker upon each pulse. The creature was breathing heavily, panting with labored breaths as it showed its white teeth. They were actually dull, despite the fact that the thing wanted to bite Kain since the beginning of the charade. It began to eye Kain as it slowly took a threatening stance, ready to charge at any moment. The image would have awakened the primal instincts in any human were it not for the fact that it was a bunny rabbit the size of half of a basketball taking the stance.

In response to the stance, Kain took a stance that let him keep his guard up while taking Dea out of its sheath while laying Grand aside. The rabbit was simply too quick and speedy to fight with a rifle. It would have taken a rifleman of superhuman calibre to hit the rabbit which Kain technically was. Though despite his ability to strengthen his eyes, he was still unable to slow down his perception of time, meaning that he had no chance of landing a shot on the creature. Time seemed to pass slowly. 1 minute. 2 minutes. 3 minutes. Before 4 minutes passed, the rabbit lunged, again shooting a cloud of fog at Kain. Kain simply sidestepped like he did the last time.This time however, the rabbit lunged at the spot that Kain would be if he sidestepped. Kain was blindsided by the rabbit, which had a surprising amount of force in its lunge. He was knocked over and the rabbit came with him. Dea was knocked out of his hands and he tried to grab the rabbit and wrench it off of his side. He pulled and found little resistance from the teeth of the rabbit. He pulled the thing in front of him and saw the rabbit limp in his hand. Its eyes no longer had the lustre that made it feel alive and it gave off the vibe of a death row inmate. Its fur was pulsing more and more red now, but the blue became brighter and brighter for every pulse. Kain could feel that the rabbit was becoming cold and its heart was slowing. Kain, against his own better judgment, lifted a finger toward the rabbit's mouth. The rabbit, seeing the finger, regained a look of life in its eyes and began to try to bite the finger near its mouth. It was too weak however, as even when it did get to the finger, it could not generate enough force to puncture Kain’s skin.

Kain looked at the desperate rabbit with a look of pity. Obviously it needed his blood or flesh or something. It would not have put up such a struggle were it not for the risk of death. Kain knew this. He, again against his better judgement, grabbed Dea from the few feet away, where it was flung. Dea was brought up to Kain’s finger and drew a short slash across the tip. The eyes of the rabbit became ravenous as it saw the blood flowing from the wound. It struggled to move forward, not that it meant much. Before it could struggle harder, the wounded finger was shoved in front of the face of the rabbit. It took not even a second to come to its senses, as it began to drink the blood coming from Kain’s finger. It drank and drank, until it eventually began to shudder. Kain watched the red fur begin to pulse even faster. It began to glow at every pulse, and the blue color began to lose lustre. Eventually the fur became purely red, without a speck of blue. The patterns on its back became a lighter shade of red, while its eyes became the same red that could be found in Kain’s eyes. Kain felt the heartbeat of the rabbit quicken and quicken as its body temperature rose, until its heart calmed, beating at a healthy pace when its body temperature stabilized. Once Kain felt the rabbit’s heartbeat calm and it’s body gain a healthy warmth, he was left with a red rabbit in his lap, now sleeping.