Borderlands: Unnatural selection

I had to admit that this place had colors if nothing else going for it. Vibrant reds, blues, greens, yellows and I even saw some purples in a couple of the local flora. The fauna were also something else like you could see the leaps in evolutionary directions they took and as I got more familiar with the environment WHY they took them. For example a good many creatures I had seen had some form of greenery growing on them and were omnivorous. As it turned out the Prowler was not an exception at all, in fact I had seen three creatures including that one that had the greenery growing from them.-

{Prowler

Lifeforce: 492 units

Traits: [Symbiosis(plant)-Uncommon grade]- 1000 units, [Predatory muscles-Common grade]- 500 units, [Barkskin-Uncommon grade]- 1000 units, [Bond dependence-Trash grade]-50 units, [Keen nose-Common grade]- 500 units.}

{Charger

Lifeforce: 735 units

Traits: [Symbiosis(plant)-Uncommon grade]- 1000 units, [Bond dependence-Trash grade]-50 units, [Barkskin-Uncommon grade]- 1000 units, [Tough skin-Common grade]- 500 units, [Hard teeth-Common grade]- 500 units, [Poor vision-Trash grade]- 50 units, [Keen hearing-Common grade]- 500 units.}

{Woemp(pronounced woah-mp)

Lifeforce: 1155

Traits:[Symbiosis(plant)-Uncommon grade]- 1000 units, [Bond dependence-Trash grade]-50 units, [Thick skin-Common grade]- 500 units, [Sturdy muscles-Common grade]- 500 units, [Poor vision-Trash grade]- 50 units,[Keen hearing-Common grade]- 500 units, [Poor smell-Trash grade]- 50 units, [Bloodthirsty-Rare grade]- 5000 units}

If the Prowler was a feline with bark covered skin and vines growing from it the charger was the same thing except in boar form and like twice as big. I don't mean just fatter either but in all regards, taller, wider and longer. They also had a wicked sharp sense of hearing but piss poor vision. Their teeth were also much thicker than usual and darker as well as possessing two long sharp tusks.-

From my second encounter with a Prowler I took the lifeforce, [keen nose] and [Predatory muscles] traits before leaving the dust behind. My encounter with the charger though netted me the lifeforce, an extra [Tough skin], [Hard teeth] and [keen hearing] traits. I killed both with headshots. As it turned out shooting something in the face tended to kill it pretty damn fast, who knew? My encounter with the Woemp was unpleasant though as there I was walking through the forest/jungle and then out of fucking nowhere above me a fucking inbred gorilla monster thing decides to down smash my ass like it's WWE.-

When I say inbred I don't mean that as just an insult(it still is though) but rather that this creature looked like it should have been shot at birth to put it out of it's misery. General body shape wise it was basically a gorilla, hairy body, thick arms, short legs and a round-ish head = Gorilla. The similarities ended there as it had a big jutting bottom jaw that was larger on one side than the other. It was cross-eyed with one eye being bigger than the other and that one big one small freak show shit continued with it's limbs.-

As far as it's bonded plant was concerned it had a whole ass red fern growing out of the center of it's back. It also reeked to an unreal degree and had flies swarming around it from what looked like caked on blood it never bothered to wash off. The species from what I could tell had traded it's vision and sense of smell for extremely acute hearing that it used it's massive right arm to ambush stuff with from above when it hears something below it.-

Apparently it also wasn't used to the idea of shields since after it broke mine(bitch hit like a bus) it seemed to think I was dead and got my gun pressed against it's lower jaw when it flipped me on my back to try an rip open my soft belly. Admittedly the first shot through the head was enough but I was so pissed that I unloaded the cylinder into it. At the very least I can say the lifeforce made up for it as it had a nice chunk ready for harvest though I spent most of it immediately on [Thick skin] and [Sturdy muscles].-

I didn't really have a choice as the noxious beast died on top of me and I couldn't move it's corpse off me and had to get corpse dusted to get free. Needless to say I opened my house up directly afterwards and took a shower to try and make the smell and feel of it go away. While I was nice and safe in my house I began messing with my stored traits. As it turned out traits stacked if I got more than one of the same. It was massively diminished returns though as I estimated when the second [Thick skin] stacked with the first I had the effects were much less prominent, maybe a quarter better at MOST.-

I also fused [Sturdy muscles] and [Predatory muscles] for 1000 units to get [Alpha muscles-uncommon grade]. Surprisingly [Hard teeth] was automatically fused for free into [Dense bones] which I suppose made sense considering teeth are bones. It was basically a sub-trait of a trait I already had so my powers just fused it into the main trait like it was already a part of it. Still I some stronger teeth out of it for free so not gonna complain about a good thing.-

I also fused [Tough skin] and [Thick skin+1](stacked trait) to create [Armored hide-Uncommon grade] for 1000 units. I had this idea that since I had enhancement traits for my skin, bones and muscles all in uncommon grade that I could fuse them together to get a comprehensive full body upgrade trait. It didn't work though as I sort of felt like I was missing one last piece to tie it all together.-

'I need an uncommon trait for my organs maybe?' I pondered but shrugged in the end as I wouldn't know until I got whatever I was missing.

One thing I can say for absolutely certain was that integrating so many different traits into my body at once is not something I ever plan to fucking do again. It was a bloody horror show as my skin sloughed off entirely while my muscles writhed and expanded in the open air as new skin grew over them. At the same time my ears and nose bled internally as the associated senses got an unnatural upgrade. The transformation lasted only a few brief moments but was downright traumatizing and left one hell of a mess to boot.-

"Ugh, Never going to do THAT again. Fuck I could really go for some steak and potatoes right about now." I complained as my stomach felt like it was eating itself.

Ignoring my "Discards" and blood soaked clothes I shambled over to the food printer thingy and the cursed when it refused to make food since it was still recharging. I grimaced and ate my leftover cooked meat from the first Prowler I killed and cooked. It was dirty and soaked in my own blood but I NEEDED food and knew better than to be picky when desperate.-

It was not nearly enough but I didn't at the very least feel like I was digesting myself, just very hungry. With that relief came the zoning in of all the changes I could literally feel and see. For starters my thirteen year old form looked like it had been taken from a child body building magazine. I didn't have more than a bit of baby fat on my body with all of my muscles being well defined and proportionate to a freakish degree. Kids my age WEREN'T supposed to be this cut, it was unnatural and wrong but here I was the walking definition of the word unnatural.-

I mean I had a list going at this point of shit that fell under the unnatural category that applied to me. I died and then came back, I was a twenty eight year old soul in a thirteen year old version of my body, I had superpowers, And now my body was impossibly jacked for an thirteen year old. I had no doubt that at some point this list was going to get long as shit, mostly because of my powers if I'm being honest.-

On the bright side though I no longer felt heavy and sluggish but rather light instead, amazing what them roids will do am I right? I suppose another thing worth mentioning was that my sense of hearing and smell were driving me crazy. Every sound was amplified and my nose stung with the coppery scent of all this fucking blood. I could pick up other faint smells but the blood was really overpowering everything else right now. An interesting thing I suppose I should point out was that my skin still looked normal and texture wise was the same but hard rather than squishy.-

Like it felt like normal skin but simply didn't give all that much when you pressed on it. In a way it sort of reminded me of alligator or crocodile skin. It wasn't all great though as I was losing lifeforce faster than I was accumulating it but it was one of those damned if you do, damned if you don't type deals. My whole power was about improving myself by stealing and making my own the traits of other things. It was literally just how it worked and at the same time it wasn't was if the traits I was saving up for from the Seraphs were going anywhere.-

So while I was spending lifeforce faster than I was getting it at the moment that would change once I got to a point where common and uncommon graded traits weren't all that appealing anymore. Right now I was still fresh and new to this power and in the process of building up a foundation I will work off of for the rest of my life so naturally I wasn't going to skimp out and regret it much later when I could have REALLY used these upgrades.-

'Ugh, I need another pair of clothes. These are ruined.' I thought with a grimace once I was done checking out my changes.

Unfortunately unless I wanted to hunt through the the forest/jungle outside my house naked these clothes were staying on. If I could find another Woemp and NOT get ambushed this time I could probably skin it and feed it's skin to the creation thingy in the crafting room to get a decent set of leather clothes. I'll also feed my current clothes to it to use as liner to keep the leather from sticking to my dangly bits.-

'First though I should probably get these "discards" out of here before they start rotting and stinking the place up.' i thought with a sigh.

With a lack of cleaning equipment on hand I was forced to pick up the discards by hand and throw it out before using one handful of water at a time to try and clean up the blood on the floor. It was a pain in the ass but I got most of it out the portal to my home and was only left with a slight pink hue on that part of the floor that I'd work to remove later when I had actual cleaning supplies.-

I also took a quick shower while dressed to get out as much blood as I could from my clothes before leaving my house soaked. If anything the fact I was dripping wet actually worked in my favor as this forest/jungle was hot and the water evaporating off me helped cool me off a little.