The eyes of a lion scanned the jungle, focused on the kill. Or maybe a wolf’s eyes. That seemed like a closer fit. Although wolves weren’t native to the Shikijiman jungle, so maybe a tiger. Or a panther. Yes, a panther seemed best. Pechorin was watching with a panther’s eyes as he stalked a flock of nene birds through the undergrowth by fleeting glimpses of their red-green feathers. The panther waited to pounce.

The only trouble was that, unlike recognized enemies, his guns did not automatically lock onto animals that could be killed for food. He was left with nothing but his own shooting ability. Closing an eye, leveling his two pistols, and sticking out a tongue, he brought two nene birds into his sights.

Lizards, insects, birds, and small mammals scattered in every direction as two bangs broke the tranquility of the jungle. These twin explosions completely destroyed a rotting log, leaving the nene birds several feet away completely unharmed, if a bit rattled. They took off in flight. Adapting on the fly, that sleek black panther fired wildly into the sky while similarly hit nothing.

Elsewhere, a small, mobile clothing-store mannequin decked out in purple silk and lace was locked in combat with the jungle in a man vs. nature exhibition match.

“Putain!” Sofiane said, spitting out something that he hoped was not a bug.

His sword, a cheap one stolen from the evidence locker after his original rapier had been tossed into the void, did not make a very good machete. At most it pushed the vines and branches and bushes around, but this still left plenty of opportunity for a snake or bug or—gods forbid, his worst nightmare—a spider to crawl onto him.

“Argh!” he yelled, swiping at just such a spider who, having met its match in Sofiane’s refined dueling instincts, immediately transformed into a leafy branch.

He pointed his sword at the offending tree. “Do not try that again.”

Sofiane continued on his quest to tear the entire jungle to ribbons, one ineffectual slash at a time, until the whole thing was laid bare to him. This was such an intensive task that he forgot the side-quest attached to the jungle-destroying. It involved flower petals, or something.

As he tried to recall why exactly he was doing this, Sofiane’s finely-trained eyes beheld a real, honest-to-gods, no-bullshit-this-time spider. The vile thing was bigger than it had any right to be, with spindly yellow-and-black legs and a hairy red body. It was as large as Sofiane’s hand and its web stretched between a flowery bush and a vine in an ominous spiral of hypnotic repugnance.

Upon seeing it, Sofiane let out a battle cry that would make Shuixing’s squeaks sound ferocious and slashed. Hacking, chopping, stabbing, and mincing, Sofiane took apart the spider, its web, and everything in a five foot radius. A minute passed before he dropped out of his violent fugue state. The good news was that he had found some red hibiscus petals. The bad news was that they were now red hibiscus confetti.

Shuixing, meanwhile, was fighting a similar battle against nature but on the losing end. The jungle foliage conspired to rip her glasses off her face while the vines lay traps for her to stumble into and get entangled in. She didn’t mind the creepy-crawlies. It wasn’t like they could deal damage to her. But she was not in the habit of doing things like “focusing on her surroundings” and “looking where she was going,” which took brain space away from important things like, “intensely ruminating on the nature of reality.”

After her third time becoming a victim to a tangle of vines with a sense of comedic timing, she let out an aggravated groan.

“Why can’t you find your own damn mangoes!” Shuixing said.

“Cuz I’m the chef,” Natsuko replied from their campsite which was only about fifty feet away.

Shuixing blushed, not realizing her friend was in earshot. She mumbled an apology and continued on her search for mangoes. After several more minutes, she eventually found a mango tree with some yellow-ish, slightly shriveled mangoes on it. Sick of stumbling around the jungle, she decided these would do. She whacked the tree with her rod until it gave up its bounty. Most splattered in the dirt, but a few were intact enough to bring back to Natsuko for cooking.

The other two returned at about the same time holding their own trophies. Pechorin held up a small river fish riddled with about ten bullet holes and Sofiane displayed a pile of minced hibiscus petals in his palm. To this Shuixing added her unusually squishy mangoes. Natsuko stood over the pile of ingredients with her hands on her hips.

“This is…”

“Look, if you wanna go wander into a spider web, be my guest,” Sofiane said.

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Natsuko gave him a look of confusion and then turned to Pechorin holding his catch.

“Fish,” he explained.

“Yeah, I see that, buddy,” Natsuko replied. “The birds were a little hard to hit, huh?”

“Fish fits the season better.”

“Uh-huh.” Natsuko brought a mango up to her nose for a sniff and they smelled right to her. “Well, at least Shui understood the assignment. That’s alright, I can work with this. I’m just that good of a chef.”

While the others were off finding ingredients, Natsuko had built a small fire pit with kindling in the center of their camp and a spit over it. From the spit hung a metal helmet lashed to vines.

Sofiane pointed at it. “Where’d you find that?”

Natsuko huffed. “Listen, you want food? Then don’t question how I’m getting around our sudden resource constraints. Just accept that I have a spare helmet somehow and move on. It’s not like it’s a huge deus ex machina, it’s just helping me cook a meal.”

“What? That raises even more questions!” Sofiane said.

“Well then lower them again! It’s not any less ridiculous than the cooking process.”

To demonstrate, Natsuko began the cooking process. This involved tossing the perforated fish, the hibiscus shreds, the squishy mangoes, and the Kaji-vine into the pot, stirring it for just the right amount of time, and pulling out a plate of sashimi that, stranger still, actually looked appetizing. The river fish was an enticing marble-white offset by slabs of spiced mango tied together with wilted Kaji-vines. In the corner of the plate lay a pile of shredded hibiscus.

“Wait, those stupid flowers were just a garnish!?” Sofiane said.

“Duh. Any halfway decent chef cares about their plating,” Natsuko said.

At the mention of plating, Sofiane only just now noticed that whenever someone cooked a meal (any meal) a plate was created from thin-air for the finished product to be displayed on. It was something that made complete sense to him right up until this very moment.

“Hey wait, the plate…”

“Yeah? Magic plates, what about ‘em?” she said. “You’re only just now noticing?”

“Why does… wait, you already noticed that?”

“Man, I don’t know, just eat your damn sashimi,” Natsuko said, setting the plate down on a rock.

They all chowed down on the sashimi and everyone but Natsuko immediately noticed something was amiss.

Sofiane stroked his chin. “It’s really good, but there’s just something…”

“Off?” Shuixing said.

“Anomalous?” Pechorin added.

Natsuko scowled. “First you break my bottle, then you call my cooking anomalous… when have you injured me enough, Pech?”

“It’s not bad,” he said. “Just anomalous.”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s probably just the Kaji-vine. It’s got MSG in it.”

“What the hell is MSG?” Sofiane asked.

“Again, I don’t know, it’s just got it in it. Stop asking dumb questions.”

With no more dumb questions to ask, they finished the sashimi, drank some river water because diseases only existed in story events, and felt at least a little better about their dire circumstances. Not long after finishing it, however, Shuixing started to feel a little wavy.

“Hey, Natsuko?” Shui said, standing over her friend who was propped up with her back to a rock and her hands behind her head.

“Yeah?”

“I think I know what was off about the mangoes.”

Pechorin and Sofiane had also figured it out. The former had started composing poetry to himself and the latter was laughing to himself about spiders.

“What’s that? They smelled fine to me,” Natsuko replied, feeling perfectly fine.

“I think they might have been fermented.”

“Oh shit, really? Where’d you find them?” Natsuko said, hopping to her feet.

“Natsu, when we left Vermögenburgh, you said you’d cut down on the drinking” Shui said.

“This isn’t drinking, this is eating!”

Shui shook her head and with her teacher's voice said, “I’m not going to help you find more mangoes. It’s bad enough seeing my friend waste herself normally, but we’re being hunted right now and we need you sober and focused. I’m putting my foot down. No more alcohol!”

Natsuko raised up on her tip-toes to look Shui almost in the eye. “If you don’t want to tell me, I’ll go look for them myself.”

Natsuko stomped off towards the treeline.

“Natsu, wait!”

Shui moved to follow her friend, but moved just a bit too quickly. The one mango had been enough to disorient her un-acclimated nervous system and when she turned around, she kept turning and turning and turning until her face turned into the moist dirt. When she looked up and adjusted her glasses, she realized there was a sizzling sound coming from behind her. The source was a smashed vial of acid where she’d been standing a moment before.