Tanner slowed to a stop and leaned heavily against a tree. He listened to the quiet serenity of the forest around him, contrasting harshly against his heavy, ragged breathing. Completely and utterly undisturbed by his presence, like the whole of nature knew it was a Saturday morning, a time for relaxation, and here he was running for his life from…

Nothing, actually. Eterna Forest was a peaceful place, and Tanner often used the trail running through it for his morning jogs. That didn’t mean he was unmotivated by fear, though. In fact, the very opposite was true.

The reason for Tanner’s unease was simple: He was a human. Everyone knew that humans were one of the weakest species on the planet. Sure, some were gifted with Psychic abilities or Fighting prowess, but not Tanner. He felt that he had to exercise daily to even barely keep up, lest some hungry Bug decide that he was only a String Shot away from being its dinner.

It wasn’t just wildlife that made him feel threatened, though. It was harder to get a job when you couldn’t pulverize solid stone with your fists, and easier to get mugged when the guys doing it could shoot lightning out of their cheeks or their tails or wherever. He saw himself as scrawny and weak, and he was sure everyone else did too.

Tanner continued his jog, each plodding step propelling his body forward and his mind back into more thoughts along those same lines. He passed by an Eevee having an emotional moment with a large, moss-covered rock, reaching out a hand to it slowly, clearly ready to evolve. The brief distraction almost made him trip over a strange, glowing plant, but he regained his footing without issue and pressed on, leaving the Herba Mystica thoroughly ignored. There was no time for such things!

His body nearly at its limit, Tanner finally noticed that the light around him was somewhat strange. Slowing his jog to a walk felt called for, as though the background music of his life had faded to hushed silence. The road ahead sparkled, and at first Tanner thought someone had shattered a glass bottle and left the shards scattered about. Closer inspection revealed bits of colorful crystal embedded in the ground, though…

One such crystal lay in the shape of a four-pointed star, beautiful and symmetrical, its surface seeming to give off multiple overlapping colors at once without blending them… Like a reddish-blue that isn’t really “purple”. Tanner recognized the object as a Star Piece and smiled, pocketing it after admiring its cosmic charm. They sold for a high price in shops, after all!

Returning once again to his jog, Tanner tried to ignore the warmth in his leg the same way he ignored all the other oddities of the day. Since when were his sweatpants so tight? Why was each footfall feeling so much heavier? No, it didn’t matter! He needed to push his body more, and no amount of unusual tingling or stuffiness could stop him!

Tanner reconsidered this macho attitude when his right foot hit the ground and the shoe surrounding it exploded.

Time slowed down as he fell. He looked down at his foot and saw something large and round and furry wearing the remains of his shoe, with the exception of the sole, which was hanging freely and flapping about. The fur was cream-colored, but he glimpsed pink pads on the underside of what he now understood to be his own foot, transformed into a paw. Tanner twisted himself around mid-fall to get a better look… and then, after an entire second and a half, he finally hit the ground.

Something cushioned his fall so much that he actually bounced a little before coming to a stop. More of that curly, cream-colored fur blossomed along his legs, over his ass, and generally covered everything up to his waist. Its volume kept growing and growing, bunching up under his sweatpants and spilling out from over them, and his tingling ears picked up the seams at his hips bursting with unusual clarity, making him yelp, no, squeak in surprise.

Were his legs growing thicker, or was it all fluff? Tanner dug his fingers into the curls and shuddered at how soft his new coat was turning out to be. He kicked his left leg as his foot pushed out at the sides of his remaining shoe, the toes swelling and rearranging while the growing paw pads pressing into their confines nearly overwhelmed his senses. Finally, it gave, and this time Tanner got to watch the inexorable destruction at the metaphorical hands of his very literal foot, sock and shoe alike torn asunder, their wounds bleeding creamy fluff, their corpses sprouting his wiggling toes like mushrooms. Needless to say, the relief was immediate.

A smoother chocolate-brown coat began to grow over Tanner’s torso, the feeling making him shudder once again. His understanding of the changes to his legs grew as he continued to prod at them, and he groaned as he realized that only a tiny fraction of their added thickness resulted from any increase in muscle mass. And the muscle that was there didn’t feel strong, either… It was too soft.

He frowned at that, realizing it was pretty strange that he could tell all of that from touch alone, and then yelp-squeaked again when he lifted his hand and spotted the bloating, pinkening skin of his palm and fingertips. Like his feet, his hands were becoming larger, rounder, and softer, with thick digits that seemed to blend together into mittens when he lined them up and held them still thanks to their fur. Similarly, it looked like he didn’t even have wrists anymore if he pointed his hands straight forward from his arms. The fur simplified, smoothed, and rounded his silhouette, but mercifully left his dexterity mostly intact… though adjusting to these new hands would likely be a hassle.

Okay, his ears were definitely huge now. They’d been growing this whole time, and now sat shamelessly atop his head, their tips bearing puffs of cream fur while the rest of their length sported the smoother brown coat. Tanner could hear so much… The newly grown, spherical tail wiggling beneath him, the gentle pops of his skull’s form shifting slightly, the initially rapid but finally decelerating pounding of his heart… Things were calming down. He was okay. This was okay.

As he removed the now-unneeded and recently-ruptured garments from his legs and feet, Tanner reflected on his situation. The surface level was obvious enough: He’d somehow evolved into a Buneary. Evolution wasn’t completely unheard of in humans, but it was astoundingly rare, to the extent that he wasn’t sure he really believed in it. It also didn’t take a genius to arrive at the conclusion that the Star Piece was what did it. Stones and crystals and the like are frequent evolution catalysts, after all. Come to think of it, crystals and light seemed to be common denominators for all kinds of strange phenomena… but such conspiracies weren’t Tanner’s concern.

What he did find concerning, however, was the nature of his new form. He’d become so cuddly and soft and cute that his clothes didn’t fit right anymore! He wasn’t a weak human anymore, sure, but now he was just a weak Buneary instead! The ears were kinda cool, and he knew they could be rolled and unrolled with pretty astounding strength, but unfortunately everyone else knew this too. “The Buneary ear punch thing” was mocked as one of the most telegraphed attacks of all time, requiring the user to angle their head towards their target. It was better than nothing, but…

If Tanner could’ve wished upon a Star Piece, he definitely would’ve picked something else.

The thing glimmered in his handpaw as he trudged back to his apartment in Jubilife City. He couldn’t help but glance down at it every now and then. It really was quite beautiful… and the money he’d get for it would certainly be a boon… but it was bittersweet. Purple and green, at once. Or was it gray? Or was everything else gray, and it the only thing to dare to be silver?

His ears twitched as they picked up a sound from a few blocks down. No, not just a sound… A melody. A street performer, who Tanner had never noticed before, but whose art had finally reached him. Something clicked, and he knew what he had to do.

Three years later…

“It was hard to part ways with that Star Piece,” Tanner told the interviewer. “Really hard. That little gem saved me. But I needed the money to buy a guitar, and as soon as I did my life turned around. Turns out I’m pretty good!”

“When you say it saved you,” the interviewer pressed, “you’re referring to your transformation into a Buneary, correct?”

“Oh, no, no,” he replied, laughing. “I called the song that as a joke! It’s sort of a fakeout. ‘That Time I Turned Into A Buneary’ is what it says it’s about at face value… It’s why I made the title so longwinded and on-the-nose, y’see…” He had a faraway look in his eyes, and his tone softened. “But it’s actually even more literal than it seems. It’s about the time I transformed… The circumstances of the event itself, not just the outcome of being a Buneary. It shook things up, and caused me to discover my true passion. Gave me… ears to hear, if you will.”

The interviewer looked puzzled. “Do you… not care for being a Buneary, then? You’ve spoken before about the distaste you had for being human…”

Tanner snapped back to attention. “Ohh, it’s alright, I guess!” He laughed. “The ears certainly helped me get into music a little! But, to tell you the truth, I could’ve done all this as a human too. The shakeup was the crucial thing, not the specifics of the transformation. I’m not a Buneary, or a human. I’m a musician! A musician with very comfy legs, big ears, and one hell of a story to write a song about!”