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

[windgod]

"Take your time, decisions like that shouldn't be made quickly anyways." After all, something could come up later down the line that she needed help with and then could call on a free favor. Not that he'd say no even if he didn't owe her a favor...but it just kinda made sense like that.

[scary_music]

"Be prepared, Ippo-chan! Who knows what Ibuki may come up with!? Not even Ibuki knows! It's a complete mystery!"

She considered the rabbit for a bit.

"Hey, hey, do we really have to put it in the pen? Maybe you could adopt it, Ippo-chan! You'll be a bunny daddy!"

[windgod]

He looked a little surprised at the suggestion, but he did consider it for a few seconds before he shook his head.

"I don't think that'd be a good idea, honestly. I've never really had a pet before, and I don't know the first thing about rabbits. I'm sure if we ask Colin though, he can help us make some kind of special rabbit housing that they'd be happy with!"

[scary_music]

"Ooh, that's good thinking, Ippo-chan! Colin-sama-chan could make them a high tech rabbit house! With special voice and facial recognition security devices! And comfy chairs!"

[windgod]

"That...would be pretty cool no matter who it was for." he said, putting a hand to his chin in thought. Now he wanted a cool house with voice and facial recognition security...and comfy chairs. Why hadn't he thought about this sooner?

[scary_music]

"Security cameras that spray paint intruders! Robotic arms on the bed to draw on the faces of unregistered users! Little mouse droids that get underfoot of burglars and make them trip while they're trying to sneak around!"

[windgod]

"Wall-mounted defense turrets that fire tennis balls at lightning speeds! Snake droids that wrap around burglars after the mouse droids make them fall! Mirrors that show scary faces if uninvited people look in them!" Ippo why.

[scary_music]

"Oooh, oooh... the defense turret sounds really scary! That one would hurt, really bad! Let's replace the tennis balls with nerf darts!"

Of course, nerf darts wouldn't really do much to deter a burglar...

[windgod]

"Hmm...how about nerf darts that weighed down burglars when they stuck on to them?" How even would that work? He didn't know, but he figured Colin could probably figure it out.

[scary_music]

"Ooh, if we want to slow them down... glue guns! They get sprayed with white and sticky stuff, and then they'll be embarrassed to go out in public, too!"

[windgod]

"You have a point! That would really slow them down, and then everyone would know they were up to something bad!" Ippo you're too innocent child.

[scary_music]

"That's right, that's right!" Ibuki wasn't going to elaborate, "And then Anyan-chan would thrown condoms at them!"

[windgod]

"...Wow. That might be...a little too cruel though, having condoms stuck to you like that."

[scary_music]

"Hmm... maybe, maybe! This has gotten too lewd for Ibuki!" Ibuki looked at the rabbit Ippo still had, "So, so, we're just leaving Bunbun-chan in the pen, then?"

[windgod]

"Just for now. We'll definitely come back for him though, right?" he said, giving the rabbit another pat on the head and a smile.

[scary_music]

"Right, right! Have fun in the pen with the other Bunbun-chans, Bunbun-chan!"

Then she actually looked at the pen, and...

"... There's no other Bunbun-chans in the pen. How lonely!"

[windgod]

He looked and saw that indeed, there were no other bunnies in the pen. Was anyone else even really trying?

"Huh...maybe we should go get some more so he'll have friends?"

[scary_music]

"Right, right, Ibuki agrees! Nobody likes to be alone, right? Well, some people, maybe, but certainly not Ibuki! That's the worst!"

[windgod]

"I'm not really a fan of it either..."

He'd spent far too much time alone to go back to it now, and he certainly wasn't going to subject his bunny-friend to that either. So, he set him down in the pen and started looking around for the nearest bunny to go snatch up.

[scary_music]

"There, there's one!" Ibuki quickly spotted another rabbit, "Same as last time! Ibuki will try to make Bunbun-chan run to you!"

[windgod]

"Alright!"

He steeled himself and got into a more tensed stance, looking to move quickly so he could snatch this one up more easily.

[scary_music]

Ibuki circled around the bunny, making sure not to spook it until Ippo was on the other side, and then...

"BWAHHH!"

... Ibuki's battle-cry as she ran for the rabbit might have been a little too enthusiastic. That rabbit is certainly spooked, now.

[windgod]

The rabbit, as one might expect, panicked and flew off at the noise...away from the two of them like it had hitched a ride on a spacecraft. Ippo just...kind of stared as it flew off and blinked a few times. "I think you broke it Ibuki."

[scary_music]

"O-ooh... oops!" Ibuki said lamely, "Ibuki thought Ippo-chan would be like... HYAH! Burst of speed! And the rabbit would be in the pen! Ibuki was too enthusiastic! Poor rabbit!"

[windgod]

The rabbit eventually came to a stop a good distance away, and once it found some grass to nibble on, it didn't look any worse for the wear. Still, Ippo had never seen any animal move like that before, it was almost inspirational for someone who liked to move fast himself.

"I guess I'll have to get a lot faster if we're going to catch any more rabbits." he said, rubbing the back of his head as he tried to come up with a better plan for all this.