Day One: Morning

[Bujin]

"You know..." Bujin started to talk for the first time in a while, "This is getting to be a bit tiring."

The midget was carrying the relatively large cube around like a person would carry around a baby. This made him feel a bit awkward, but he couldn't really think of a better way. However, after carrying it around for hours, his arms were starting to get tired. Besides, it was a pain having to peer around the edges to see where the hell he was going. Setting Rae down momentarily, he paced around in wonder as to what way he should have been doing it in the first place. He sat down on top of the cube – eating usually helped him think, and he hadn’t done so in the duration of the contest so far.

“It’d help if you had legs,” he mentioned to the side, sort of bouncing ideas off of himself as he consumed a portion of his bread rather quickly. “But, then again, even if I gave you legs, there’s not much you could do with them. No offense…”

He looked down at Rae as he finished saying that. It did nothing.

“Oh yeah. Right,” he conceded before continuing to ramble on. “Anyway, I could just kick you around, but…nah, I guess not. Besides, you’re made out of metal. Damn, there’s really no other way…”

He continued to eat as he continued to rant. Sadly, he had garnered the reputation over the years as being a person who can’t stop talking. Before he noticed, he had eaten much more bread than he wanted to. Groaning at the prospect of having to ration…well, rations, he packed it away and placed the duffle bag on the ground next to Rae. After a while, he began to look at it longingly again. It took every last bit of willpower he had left to get up again.

I really have to learn how to hunt, he thought to himself despairingly. Or materialize food. Whichever is more realistic.

Then there was still the issue of carrying Rae around, too. The duffle bag was out of the question because the bag was about to burst open already – it was inherently too small, and at the rate he was eating food compared to what food he gained, he would need to conserve energy at any cost. It was frustrating, in a way. Rae was more like a pet than a weapon, and yet normal pets could actually move. That’s when it hit him.

***

The makeshift leach was working fairly well – better than Bujin expected, considering it was made out of a branch and seaweed he found on the shore and it was dragging around a gigantic block. Bujin looked back every once in a while at it to see how it was doing – it was a bit dirty and scratched up as it was being dragged through a variety of terrain, but it was doing fine. He snickered darkly at his own genius – nobody would have thought of this.

Off in the distance, a shadow loomed on the horizon. He gripped the leach, preparing to do…whatever he was going to do if he met another competitor. The shadow grew closer, its advance menacing. However, the new sunlight divided the shadow, revealing a harmless deer. Bujin breathed a sigh of relief – possible death was going to have to wait.

“Aww, it’s a deer,” he laughed. However, he let his eyes slowly roll over to the side when he realized what that meant. “Kill it!”

Lacking any sort of discernable plan, he gripped the leach once more. Flexing his biceps, he swung the block as hard as he could. The metallic object cracked the animal over the head, dropping it in an instant. The midget chuckled to himself as he watched the blood seep out of his victory. As he crouched over it in preparation to gather some food, something struck him.

“Why was it so far out here?” he asked himself as he looked around. The forest was a normal place for an animal such as a deer to be, and this was no forest. Something must have scared it away. Bujin made a mental note to save the food he gathered, as the area ahead would surely be lacking. It was an area that was much more…bleak than the one he had just exited, and a place that he was used to from last year…