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

[scary_music]

"Ibuki feels so bad! She never asked for this! Ippo-chan, Ibuki will be right back!"

She quickly runs off and, soon enough, is back with a wet rag.

"Here, here, let Ibuki clean that up for you! She'll be gentle! The gentlest!"

She leans over Ippo to carefully wash his face.

[windgod]

"Really...it's fine, I can..." and then Ibuki was dabbing his face with a wet cloth. He really wasn't going to be able to get a word in edgewise here and since he was still a little dizzy...it was probably for the best that he just let it happen.

[scary_music]

"Is it working? Is it?" Ibuki asked while still cleaning Ippo's face, "Does Ippo-chan feel better? Ibuki's not accidentally drowning you, is she?!"

[windgod]

"I think the bleeding's stopped at least...I should be fine." he said, finally sitting up. He noted that he didn't feel like throwing up anymore, so he took that as a good sign.

"Sorry about that...I should have been paying more attention."

[scary_music]

"No, no, it's Ibuki's fault!" Ibuki insisted, "She's the one that came up with the terrible plan! It was barely a plan! It was more like an improvisation! The worst improv!"

And... Ippo might notice a thin trail of blood creeping down Ibuki's forehead underneath her bangs.

[windgod]

Without a doubt, Ippo saw the line of blood and reacted without thinking, moving over and leaning over Ibuki's head trying to see through her hair.

"You're bleeding...! Just...stay still okay, let me see." Head cuts are serious business Ibuki, he's a boxer so he knows this better than most.

[scary_music]

"Huh? Huhhh? Ibuki's bleeding?! Was she sniped?! Her hair is going to be ruined!!"

Ibuki started to fidget a bit as Ippo started to look through her hair. The damage wasn't nearly as bad as Ippo's, and the trickle was already slowing by the time the boxer was looking at it.

[windgod]

It definitely wasn't a bad cut at all...very small in comparison to the gushing mess his nose had been, but he still knew better than to leave it alone. With permission, he took the clean end of the wet rag she'd used on him and carefully cleaned out the cut, making sure to get it out of her hair as well...just as a courtesy and cleaned up her forehead for good measure.

"There you go...I'm just glad it wasn't that bad. Let's...not do that again anytime soon, sound good?"

[scary_music]

"Right, right. Ibuki doesn't want a head sprain or anything like that."

She absently rubbed her head after Ippo was done.

"Ooh, Ippo-chan, you're so thorough! Ibuki thinks you got it all out! Her hair gets to stay fluffy! Thank you!"

[windgod]

"It wasn't any trouble...it'd be terrible if your hair got ruined because of me."

To be fair her hair was really well taken care of and it'd be a shame to have the dye job get messed up because of the blood. It just helped that Yagi had taught him a thing or two about corner work and tending to boxer's with cuts...it was surprising how versatile all his boxing knowledge was when applied to other things.

[scary_music]

"Ippo-chan, Ippo-chan, how many times does Ibuki have to say it?" Ibuki chided, "It was Ibuki's plan, so it's her fault! It was Ibuki's plan, so it's her fault! It was Ibuki's plan, so it's her fault! It was Ibuki's plan, so it's her fault! It was Ibuki's plan, so it's her fault! It was Ibuki's plan, so it's her fault! It was Ibuki's plan, so it's her fault!"

She's... going to keep going for a few minutes. Or until Ippo stops her. Maybe.

[windgod]

"S-sorry, I get it!" he said, waving his hands in front of him as if he might get lucky and hit an off switch somewhere. He got the feeling that the whole word in edgewise thing was something he wouldn't be getting often with Ibuki...she had a way of dominating conversations in a way even Takamura couldn't match.

[scary_music]

"Good, good..." Ibuki nodded, before letting out a sigh, "Aaahh... it's too bad, though! Now we can't do the band practice Ibuki was thinking of! Ibuki ruined her plans for the day! She sabotaged herself!"

[windgod]

"Well...there's still tomorrow, right? We can just do double practice to make up for today!" There's that enthusiasm, it was better to be safe than sorry with both of them having just smashed heads, but by tomorrow everything would probably be okay to get going on that.

[scary_music]

Ibuki nodded in agreement, "Yes! Double band practice tomorrow, to make up for Ibuki's sabotage!"

From a certain perspective, it's like Ibuki's putting on more pressure on her band mates for something that's her fault...

[windgod]

"Alright!" he said, slamming his fist into an open palm. He looked awfully motivated for something he wasn't even equipped to do, but if Ibuki had some sort of plan in mind then he could definitely trust in that, right?

[scary_music]

"Oooh, Ibuki and Ippo-chan are having highly motivated feels! It'd be a waste to let them waste away to wastefulness when they could be wasted on something more non-wasteful!" Ibuki realized, "Okay! Ibuki will figure out something more gentle! Ippo-chan, give Ibuki your hands!"

Without even waiting for Ippo to move, she's already grabbing one of his hands.

[windgod]

"I...uh, okay?" At this point, Ippo figured it would just be easier to let things happen as they were going to happen rather than question anything Ibuki did. Questions lead to headaches and he could do with one less of those, so he relinquished his hands to the musician and let her do as she saw fit.

On that note...it did feel nice to hold someone's hand. Not that he'd say that out loud though.

[scary_music]

"Hmmmmmmm.........."

Ibuki was just... sort of playing with Ippo's hands. His fingers, specifically. Bending them (in the way they're supposed to bend), pulling lightly on them, and bringing each one close to her face to inspect them closely...

... somehow, she ends up (accidentally?) making Ippo flip her off when she inspects his middle fingers, but she doesn't seem to notice what she did.

[windgod]

What is even happening right now? Ippo couldn't have told anyone even if they asked...he was literally sitting on the ground and having a girl with multicolored hair play with his hands...accidentally using said hand to flip herself the bird. He couldn't really tell when she was looking for, but all she would find was that his fingers felt supple, yet sturdy and carried a roughness that denoted years of hard, physical work.

Really, they were working man hands; hopefully she could do something with them though.

[scary_music]

"Okay!" Ibuki suddenly declared, putting both of Ippo's hands lightly on her own head, "For band practice today, Ibuki is evaluating your head massage skill! If you do well, Ippo-chan gets one, too!"

[windgod]

Well...that was sudden? He'd had practice in massages...both in helping his mother after a hard day's work out on the boat and with learning from his warm-ups before a match, so it wasn't like he couldn't...but why?

It wasn't as if he could back out of it now, and he definitely didn't want Ibuki to be disappointed...so he decided to at least give it his best shot. He remembered that you were supposed to give the area you were massaging light touches first, to make the nerves more receptive to being touched, so he took a few minutes to gently run the tips of his fingers in slow circles around Ibuki's head, all the while making sure to avoid the cut...it'd defeat the purpose of the exercise if he just went and made her hurt more.

Once he was satisfied, he actually began to apply gentle pressure and continued to move his hands in gentle circles, alternating between lightly pushing down and the light touches from before. He sure hoped he was doing this right...

[scary_music]

Unfortunately, Ibuki was a bit of a squirmer when trying to sit still, so she'll be... well... squirming as Ippo massages her head.

"Uwah~ Good, good~" she said happily.

... hopefully her squirming wasn't throwing Ippo off too much.

[windgod]

Not at all, at least not enough for him to accidentally push too hard or get into her cut. Catching 8 falling leaves with jabs was a far harder prospect than one squirming person, and if he could do that, then a head massage was definitely doable.

"You think so? I'm glad."

[scary_music]

She laughed happily, gently removing Ippo's hands from her head after awhile.

"Okay, okay! Ippo-chan did a really good job! Now it's your turn! Here it comes! Ibuki's special head massage technique approaches!"

She puts her hands onto Ippo's head, and gently started applying pressure. With her natural finger dexterity, she easily managed a relaxing massage.