Day 253 | OPEN | Bunnygeddon: Rise of the Leporidae

[dragonsorcsandwolves]

Who: Bunnies, Rob, everyone - feel free to thread amongst yourselves and ignore Rob in favor of the much cuter mammals
Open: Open
When: Day 253
Where: EVERYWHERE
What: BUNNIES
Format: Any
Warnings: Animal death

This morning in the Bastion is like any other at first. Early risers won't notice anything unusual, and it seems like today will be just another day at the end of the worlds.

Then the Monument is activated, and the invasion begins. An invasion of bunnies.

The rabbits are each around the size of a large housecat, come in either brown (female) or a very light gray (male), and seem to have shown up everywhere, especially where they aren't wanted. Rabbits munching away in the garden, rabbits hopping into buildings through open windows and doors, rabbits making more rabbits in places one would really rather not see such things... the list goes on.

(Okay there are probably only like ten of them at any one time, but they're getting into everything and compared to the Bastion's previous rabbit population levels this is a pretty big increase.)

The first rabbit that Rob sees confuses him for a moment, and the second makes him realize what just happened; the Monument had no way to tell whether he'd bought rabbits as livestock or as ambiance and had assumed the latter. In fact, when he goes to check the animal pen, he discovers that absolutely no rabbits have ended up there. Cue facepalm.

[1]

Rob will be spending the majority of the day attempting to catch all the rabbits and put them in the animal pen. "Attempting" is the key word here, because it turns out that it's a lot harder to catch rabbits with your bare hands than it looks. If he didn't know better he'd say that they're trolling him, acting like they're unaware of his presence as he sneaks up on them, only to leap out of the way at the exact moment he's about to grab them.

[2]

It's starting to get dark by the time Rob finally manages to get his hands around one. It thrashes and bites, but Rob manages to hold it by the scruff in his left hand and draws his knife with his right. Screw putting it in the animal pen; he's spent almost the entire day chasing rabbits around and he's dirty, sweaty, and pissed at these rabbits. He's cooking himself some meat for dinner.

He readies his knife... and stops. He's always thought of rabbits as silent, but this one's squealing loudly. Its heart is pounding in its tiny chest, and he swears he can feel it trembling as it struggles. He looks into its eyes and is surprised to see terror there. He has such a hard time reading humans, but the rabbit's response is so primal that he can recognize it as a prey animal's knowledge that it's about to die but desperately trying to keep living. His knife hand begins to lower.

I've brought creatures into this world for the sole purpose of being killed. This one hasn't even been alive a day and already I'm trying to kill it. ...Were they even necessary? I told myself they'd be a good backup to the fake meat, but there are already other animals we could use in an emergency. I was just disgusted by the idea of eating meat that hadn't come from an animal.

His knife hand hits the ground.

I'm a terrible person, and I've just wasted 200 shards. Now what?

The hand holding the still-squealing rabbit begins to lower.

I can't bear to kill this rabbit. But...

His hand stops its descent.

But what if I had to? Part of why I bought these was in case of an emergency. If I can't do this now, how can I expect to be able to do it in an even more stressful situation? I could leave it for someone else to do, but... But how can I dump something like this on someone else? That'd make me even more of a terrible person.

His knife hand begins to rise from the ground.

I wanted to be a man. I wanted to be able to hunt and feed myself. If I can't kill the prey I've already caught then I might as well just give up right now.

He lifts the rabbit back to a better height and brings the knife towards it.

I have to do this.

He places the blade of the knife against the rabbit's throat. The rabbit's struggles cease, whether from exhaustion, not wanting to hasten its demise, or the realization of the futility of going on, he doesn't know. He swallows.

I have to do this.

He tenses, preparing to draw the knife across the rabbit's throat, and closes his eyes. A moment later he forces himself to open them and look into the rabbit's eyes, feeling its frantic heartbeat through his fingers. He clenches his teeth.

"I'm sorry."

For a moment, his world is reduced to nothing but the drawing of a thin red line.

He stays there for a while in silence, holding his knife in one hand and cooling meat in the other, breathing heavily as he feels a few drops of warm blood make their way down his cheek, eventually mixing with tears as their paths converge. His mind begins waking up again, annoying him by making frivolous associations and remembering inappropriate jokes relating to the current situation.

Dammit.

Then a single sentence emerges from the chaos of his thought processes, and context appears around it. Perhaps other people would consider the idea tacky and inappropriate, especially given its source, but to Rob it was slightly calming and felt right. He stood and wiped at his eyes with one of the cleaner parts of the hem of his tanktop, then began walking with purpose in his step.

[3]

As dusk begins to fall, Rob can be seen walking, dirty and sweaty, with red-rimmed eyes, splatters of drying blood on his tanktop and face, and a dead rabbit in one hand. He looks serious about whatever he's doing, which seems to amount to brief visits to the kitchen and workshop before he returns to his cottage for the night.

Comments

3

[daughterofursa]

Zuko is on her way out of the distillery as Rob is on his way in. The sight of him is enough to give her pause.

"Tough fight?"

Never having seen a rabbit before today (although there are some species native to the Earth Kingdom), Zuko couldn't even say whether she's being sarcastic or not. Maybe they have fangs?

[dragonsorcsandwolves]

It takes Rob a moment to register that someone's speaking to him, another to mentally rewind to remember what was said, and yet another to be confused about whether Zuko's being sarcastic or not.

"After a fashion."

He's definitely quieter and flatter-sounding than usual.

[daughterofursa]

...so do they have fangs or not?

Rob definitely seems a little out of it, but Zuko isn't sure what to do about it.

"What are those anyway? They look sort of like rabaroos but smaller."

[dragonsorcsandwolves]

Rob blinks at that, wondering if "rabaroos" are chimeras like ostrich horses are, but not really up to inquiring further.

"Rabbits. They eat plants, and get eaten by... just about everything."

[daughterofursa]

Judging by the fact that Rob is holding a dead one and walking towards the kitchen, Zuko assumes 'just about everything' includes humans. It wouldn't be the first time one of them has brought animals in for food, though their resident dragon needing mammoths strikes her a little differently.

"Not a fan of Colin's grown meat?" Zuko's too practical not to eat it sometimes, but it's a sentiment she could understand.

[dragonsorcsandwolves]

"It's just wrong."

Rob loves meat and eats the grown meat all the time, but he can't tell if the off taste is his imagination or not (it probably is).

"Besides, if the building that makes it isn't getting power from the Monument we'll run out, and hunting mammoths probably isn't the safest thing to do if you aren't a dragon. Hence something small and docile. ...Unless you're trying to hold onto one."

[daughterofursa]

Any 'off taste,' Zuko has to attribute to having no idea what animal meat she's actually eating.

"I don't think anything is docile when it's threatened." That does explain his appearance a bit. "Still, I guess it's something more than fish to fall back on."

[dragonsorcsandwolves]

Only a bit.

"Yeah, that was my thought. There's male and female rabbits here, so they should be able to breed if the Monument stops respawning them."

[daughterofursa]

"Re... spawning?" Zuko is not familiar with the concept, just the basic meaning of the words. "You mean it's still making them?"

[dragonsorcsandwolves]

Video game nerd, whoops.

"So far as I know it's like the mammoths; whenever one's killed the Monument replaces it with a new one. I told it to make sure there was always a viable breeding population when it replaces them, so if something goes wrong and the Monument runs low on power again for a while we won't run out of rabbits if we're careful."

[daughterofursa]

What are video games.

"I didn't know it did that." She tries to give the mammoths their space and of course she's never killed any of the ostrich horses. "So then, there's already another.." She nods at the one he's holding. It's already been replaced? Weird.

And a little sad.

[dragonsorcsandwolves]

Ask Colin, he can undoubtedly come up with one somehow.

"I think so? I'm not sure exactly how fast it responds to changes in population, but I don't really feel like testing it any time soon."

Yeah there's been enough killing on his end to last him a while, as Zuko might be able to infer from how he said that last part.

[daughterofursa]

As if Zuko would ever think to a) ask for something recreational and b) ask Colin for it.

"Well, if we were having a feast we'd probably go with mammoth." She pauses. Maybe she should just ask. "You okay?"

[dragonsorcsandwolves]

"Yeah."

It's an automatic answer, and in this case rather obviously so.

[daughterofursa]

Zuko can tell, but she doesn't have much experience of coaxing this sort of thing out of someone.

"You don't seem okay."

[dragonsorcsandwolves]

He doesn't respond right away, unsure whether his current issue would be considered stupid from Zuko's point of view; he has no idea about her culture of origin, after all. He also isn't sure she's actually interested in talking about personal problems. He decides to be indirect.

"Have you ever gone hunting and managed to kill whatever animal you were after?"

[daughterofursa]

"...not really."

The Skyway animals she's killed probably aren't comparable to this scenario, and neither is that one miniscule fish she caught once. If Rob were talking to Sokka, he might not get much sympathy here, but Zuko's position meant she never learned to hunt.

[dragonsorcsandwolves]

"Me neither."

Rob's killed dozens of Squirts by this point, but since they vanish and drop loot when they die like some video game monster, he doesn't consider them "real". For his own mental health, he's unlikely to change his view of them.

[daughterofursa]

"I imagine it gets easier," she offers. Both emotionally and, well, in the technique as well.

[dragonsorcsandwolves]

"Maybe. Part of me hopes it doesn't though."

[daughterofursa]

Zuko frowns in confusion. "Why?"

[dragonsorcsandwolves]

"I don't think it'd be healthy to be able to brush off feelings like that."

[daughterofursa]

"I'm not talking about ignoring them," she says, still frowning. "I mean, I guess... dealing with them. This is part of the natural order of things. Any hunter has to come to terms with that, don't they?"

Maybe she doesn't know what she's talking about, but Sokka never seemed especially burdened by it. More the opposite.

[dragonsorcsandwolves]

Rob's silent for a moment before nodding slightly.

"Yeah, they do."

And he's going to have to too.

[daughterofursa]

"...you could also leave it to people who are already used to it. There's no need to force yourself if it feels against your nature." Just to put that option out there, too.