thebastion | Day 253 | OPEN | Bunnygeddon: Rise of the Leporidae

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Day 253 | OPEN | Bunnygeddon: Rise of the Leporidae

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.

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A soft snort.

"Okay I'm exaggerating. It's probably more like 50%. And I'm not constantly thinking about it, but when you get dressed every morning and see the clothes you like and want to wear but can't? It's not exactly the best start to the day, and working five days a week means a lot of bad starts."

Zuko continues to be unimpressed. "I don't get it. Is there some kind of special meaning in the clothes you want to wear?"

He doesn't seem to wear anything special as far as she's seen. Most people don't. Frankly, Zuko is probably pickier than most people in the Bastion with her insistence on wearing the same color scheme.

Tanktops and cargo shorts with that Horde belt is about the size of it for Rob. Reasonable comfort in what to him is an overly-warm climate and not wanting to take a second belt from their supplies when he already has one, respectively.

"They're the clothes I want to wear."

Or rather, like here, the clothes he wants to wear that don't make him feel like everyone around him is judging him.

"Clothes aren't the big thing though, they're just easier to explain. It's... it's the whole... everything. Having to constantly be who everyone wants and expects you to be, without the chance to figure out how much of that is you. ...I know what it feels like but it's hard to explain exactly what I mean."

This, Zuko can understand better. It was never 'everyone' with her, it was what her father expected, although if he expected something, then everyone around him did, too.

"You don't have to be who everyone expects you to be, if it's not who you are or who you want to be. Yeah, someone's going to be disappointed or even angry about it. They still don't get to choose for you."

"Knowing that's true is one thing, but knowing that you're going to have people you care about judging you if you do something isn't the most encouraging feeling."

"No, it's not. But I've learned that someone who judges you for being who you are? They're never going to be happy with you. They're a waste of your time."

Rob's silent for a moment, because some of the people he's thinking of are, as far as he's concerned, very much worth his time.

"They could also have been taught by society that something's not 'normal' and haven't had to form their own opinion about it before."

If Rob had said 'right' instead of 'normal,' Zuko might have understood it perfectly. She knows her country did a lot of brainwashing about the war, but...

"Not normal? Like what do you mean?"

Rob probably could have said "right" instead and gotten his point across, but he doesn't consider what he's thinking about to have a moral aspect per se (though other people might). He's aware that from his culture of origin's point of view some of what he's thinking about would be considered "weird" though. He pauses again, this time to try and figure out how to explain what he means.

"'Not normal' would be anything that isn't what most people do. Like... Where I'm from, a man having long hair isn't 'normal'. Other cultures, other times, sure. But not where and when I'm from. It's common enough that it isn't usually worthy of comment, but it's not 'normal'. Most men have short hair, and some people look down on long-haired men."

He reaches up and tugs on his septum piercing.

"This isn't normal either. People might not say anything about it when I have it in most of the time, just to be polite, but if I tried to go to work with it in or to some formal event, there would be complaints. I'm far from the only person with one, nor is it as big as some of the ones I've seen pictures of, but it's still not 'normal' and draws more attention from people.

"If I were to like, tattoo my face? That wouldn't be normal at all where I'm from. It'd be 'weird' or 'deviant' and people would be staring at me constantly while trying to pretend that they weren't, possibly even actually saying something about it rather than giving silent disapproval.

"...I'm not sure I'm explaining myself very well here. Did any of that make sense?"

"Sure. You've explained that you're incredibly sensitive.

"It must be convenient to be able to change all that if you want to." Unlike, you know, a scar that covers half your face.

Rob... well he was kind of aware already that he's overly-sensitive to the opinions of others, but to have it shoved in his face like that...

"I-I guess?"

He doesn't know what to say in response, nor has he made the mental connection to Zuko's scar yet. His face is stuck partway between surprise, pain, and neutral, as he's temporarily lost track of the mental process that updates his facial expressions.

"I'm sure it's tough getting a few stares over a nose ring. Struggling not to cut your hair because people look at you funny.

"People are always going to be staring at me. This--" Yeah, she's going to point at it. "--isn't something I can just take off. I don't know what you all think, but any firebender figures it means someone bested me. You want something hard, you try being a thirteen-year-old kid trying to gain any respect from your countrymen."

Now Rob makes the connection, but it's too little too late. Forget verbally retreating; he takes a step backwards midway through Zuko's speech with a look reminiscent of a deer caught in headlights. Part of him wants to run away to escape this situation and part of him wants to stay and try to apologize, the internal conflict resulting in him freezing in place. He's very much aware that he screwed up here, though his frantic replaying of his memories hasn't pinpointed exactly how yet, but from his impression of Zuko so far he's of the opinion that attempting to apologize will just make the situation worse, so he has no idea what to say. Add Zuko drawing attention to her scar and now he has no idea where to look either.

So his response is inaction, frozen in the posture of having just taken a step back, eyes moving rapidly as his gaze whips across Zuko's face, with a mix of wide-eyed fear, confusion, and panic on his own face.

Zuko is... not used to people looking at her like that. She never exactly instilled fear in her men. Her anger might have surprised them sometimes or made them step a little quicker. It never froze them. That was something Azula did.

But she's not even being that scary, is she? Zuko takes a step back herself and folds her arms.

"What I'm saying is grow a backbone. If you want something, then go after it. You don't have many obstacles, if there even are any besides yourself."

Most of the non-Rob obstacles were destroyed along with his entire world, so he's pretty much the only thing in his way now. At least once he can't convince himself anymore that his world isn't actually gone. And of course the ever-present issue for him remains: understanding something intellectually but being unable to apply it to the real world. Zuko saying it like that doesn't seem unreasonable to him at first, but his head almost instantly fills with objections to the idea that it's really that simple. But he doesn't feel like voicing those thoughts would be taken well, which leaves him with little else to say.

"I-I guess."

"You guess? That's all you have to say? Doesn't it even make you angry that someone's calling you foolish?"

Especially when that someone is years younger than him. Not that Zuko hasn't always challenged people older than her, but she was born into a position of some authority. A position that counts for nothing here. Average people are supposed to respect their elders. Some part of this has to be offensive to him--not that anger is the healthiest thing in the world, but she's sure it's better than retreating. He can't even commit to agreeing with her.

If it's possible, he seems to deflate even further, and his voices gets even softer and quieter.

"No, cuz you're probably right."

Something about his body language and demeanor subtly changes, and for a moment he's not a depressed and self-loathing 25-year-old man but instead a lonely child holding a dead rabbit in one hand and looking like he's going to cry once he leaves. Then he's back to looking like himself.

All right, apparently she just made this worse. She's not sure how else to deal with it when he's being so frustrating. What would her uncle do?

Probably not yell at the guy, for starters. He'd probably also have some kind of proverb to contribute that she wouldn't really understand but that sounded reassuring if you were in the right mood.

...yeah, Zuko is terrible at proverbs. Maybe she should just let this be already.

"Well, you figure out on your own whether I am or not. It's your life."

"...Yeah."

Yeah to what? That he should figure it out on his own? That she's right? That it's his life? All of the above? What?

...No there's no elaboration here. He's making motions towards leaving now.

Zuko won't ask for an elaboration either. She'll go back to whatever she was doing and leave him to... deal with that rabbit finally. Maybe he needs his space now. Her uncle always knew when to give her her space, but Zuko's still prone to picking arguments.

He's dismissed then? He's quite willing to depart from this conversation, and does so.

Once he's alone though, he'll end up crying a bit, both because he knows she's right and feels like a failure for his inability to act on that knowledge, and also because once again, after a lifetime of trying to avoid situations like this, he's accidentally offended someone with a poorly-thought-out comment and that someone probably hates him even more now. It'll be a few days before he shows up for training again.

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Day 253 | OPEN | Bunnygeddon: Rise of the Leporidae

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