Bunnygirls

by Simon Archer

  “That is a shame.” He clucked sarcastically in his posh accent, waving a hand to his bodyguards. “I would have hoped to do this peacefully, but it seems that you’ll be forcing me to exercise the barbarism you have accused this city in dealing. It is just as you said: you are at quite the disadvantage here.”

  The two bodyguards stepped up, looking down on me in an attempt to intimidate and terrify. I pushed Hopper into my crowd of Wolves before they had come up to either side. If I had to, I was confident I could kill both of these saps in a flash, but that would mean starting a fight, and I still could have put that off, just as long as I coaxed that official challenge from this bastard. But how would you have provoked a man to fight to the death when they’ve claimed to have been bound to a wheelchair? I had to get him out of it, but the whole thing bothered me. Why the fake wheelchair in the first place? There’d have been no way to keep a noble title if he couldn’t still have fought in challenges. And if he really was wheelchair bound, he had to be an amazing fighter otherwise. What the hell was his game, and how could I have gotten him to show his hand?

  “I will give you two options from this point.” The winter-colored Wolf spoke confidently. “Surrender quietly, and we promise only to harm you and your following just enough to still keep you breathing for a time, perhaps recovering from your wounds in a few weeks. Resist, and such a promise is null and void.” The last sentence dropped the posh accent entirely as his voice deepened in his anger.

  “To be perfectly clear,” I formally disclosed a drawn-out disclaimer, “we’re all to understand that this current state of affairs in no way reflects your recognition of the lordly status of any individuals threatening or being threatened or at this time, and therefore will not be treated as any sort of formal challenge or confrontation, meaning that any damage inflicted by anyone during the scuffle is considered nominal? And we all are witnessing that you are the one starting this unprovoked aggression?”

  “There you are with your flippant tongue again.” The tunnel-visioned lord sighed out his purely cockney accent as he brushed a hand on his head. “In fewer words, no, I’m not challenging you, nor am I obligated. This battle is meaningless, and I will gladly throw out the trash dirtying the streets if it so suits me, even if it’s just lying there stinking up the place.”

  “Perfect.”

  With two shots, the pistol I had prepared during my deliberately long speech rang out through the streets. The two bodyguards were convulsing on the ground from the electrically charged magic bullets before they knew they failed to start fighting and lost in one fell swoop. As quick as I pulled it out, I put it back into the holster, looking upon the twitching bodies. They were still alive, with their strangely thick necks, and I considered capping the two of them right then. Thinking about it, when I took Timberpine’s property, I could force these two to any job I wanted to. That felt more satisfying.

  “Are you always so lax in handling your property?” I addressed Timberpine again. “Seems like a very unwise policy to have. You never know what’ll happen if you’re not watching carefully. But who am I to argue? You’re must be the more qualified one, being the one leading the group with all of their members still… standing.”

  That got a growl out of him. Timberpine’s white ass was shifting in the wheelchair seat, ready to pop like a balloon. Another quip right now would just keep the pressure building up without exploding, so I couldn’t just rifle off more. He was smart enough to see through that and stop acting on emotion. I’d lose all of my progress. I needed something to agitate him again, stab right at his pride and force a challenge out of his mouth. That having been said, Timberpine was on edge and might try something drastic. My guard was up for anything. That was some fortunate foresight, too, since Timberpine popped a gasket harder than any embarrassed rage I’d ever seen.

  And by ‘popped a gasket,’ I mean ‘conjured a magical maelstrom out of nowhere.’

  17

  As subtle as it was expected, a howling icy whirlwind tore through the market square, centered on Timberpine and his wheelchair as the veiny Wolf summoned it with a swipe of his hands across his lap, as if he was brushing dust off at us. The rushing gusts pulled at me, drawing me towards the snowy lord, now much more literal. Soon enough, all kinds of debris had picked up inside the pale tornado, like pieces of store carts, tables and chairs, and anything else that was unfortunate to be near Timberpine and light enough. The debris raced around in circles around us, crashing into Wolves as far as thirty feet away as they cowered at the sight of the lord’s tantrum.

  Caught up in his arcane moment, Timberpine lifted his arms and rose into the air, as if being lifted by invisible angels, or demons, rather. The cloth over his legs had long since disappeared, showing the mangled and knotted wood pegs sticking out of hairy stubs he was hiding. The peg legs were more like wizard staves out of Lord of the Rings or something and had five charms lining up down each one, which pulsed chaotically with light as they generated the massive storm around us. A cyclone manifested beneath him, cloaking the wooden staves and crawling up to his stomach.

  I felt Hopper press up against my shoulder, her cloak catching more wind and pulling harder on her. How was I ever supposed to anticipate that something like this would have happened? Yes, I knew about charms, but I didn’t know what the hell they did except attach to things to enchant them. With the new sudden storm problem, I was forced to make some quick decisions. Timberpine seemed to be still in his ‘storm-saint’ moment, so I capitalized on the distraction.

  Strategies were abandoned and formulated in a split second as I unbuckled the brooch hook of her cloak, sending it flying into the whirlwind and exposing Hopper. Thankfully, it was much easier for her to move around with the tinier surface area of her narrow frame. With the pistol, I fired thin strands of electric magic into the air wildly, hoping to break the shock on bystanders, no pun intended.

  “Get out of here!” I shouted over the storm to the nearby people, specifically the Rabbit slaves.

  The Wolf slavers were free to listen, but I didn’t quite care what happened to them. Having judged this wasn’t a time to wait for responses, I started shooting at the feet of Wolves, prompting a more immediate danger to get them moving with zapping sparks. Dropping chains and weapons, the Wolves bolted out of sight, followed quickly by the hare servants, carrying their chains with them as they shuffled off.

  “Y’all get out of here, too!” I shouted to my people. “Make sure the Rabbit slaves are safe from all of this.”

  “But what about--?” Hopper started to shout a concern about me.

  “Do not make me shoot at your feet, too!” I pushed her out into Foxhound’s arms as the group moved away from Timberpine. “Take her and go!”

  Obedient to the last, my Wolves did exactly what I ordered.

  Now, free of any distractions or lives risked, I returned my attention to ‘tornado Jesus’ and his torrentially insane idea of a reasonable response to anything. He was still basking in the majesty of his own magical might, allowing me ample time to line up a shot. Hoping that this fight would actually be this easy, and adjusting for wind, I fired straight for his head. Somehow, by more magical nonsense that I was itching to pitch a fit about, Timberpine dodged the lightning enhanced bullets, sliding in the air from side to side in blurs of motion. The maniacal laughter did not help calm things down.

  And for the record, I would have hit if he had just stayed still.

  “Vermin!” Timberpine roared through the storm, not even bothering with the theatrics of speech anymore. His speed made it sound like the voice was coming from the vortex itself. “You think you have trinkets? You think you have power? I am power! You will bow down before your betters, and when I’m done mangling your body, I’ll turn your bones into a decoration for my throne!”

  Oh, good Lord, he called the wheelchair a throne.

  I caught a blur bouncing out of the corner of my eye, jumping back just in time to stay out of the way of the ins
ane. Like a meteor crash, Timberpine’s shoulder met hard stone as he swooshed past me, tumbling back into flight. I fired two shots, one flying away in the wind and the other zapping into his flesh. Not immediately stopped like other Wolves, Timberpine manically scratched at the shocking bullet in the wound on his back, tearing through his fine coat as he did so.

  “Insolent rodent!” He quickly tried to get the lightning bullet out of himself as he bounced and flew. “How dare you attack me with your rodent weapons!” You know, at one point, I was going to have to correct everyone on that whole “Rabbit-Human” identification dilemma everyone seemed to have on this world. Sometime after fighting the crazy Wolf wizard, though.

  He blurred out of sight again, only coming back into view at a split second to strike again. Another close dodge and another meteor slammed into the ground, cracking the stone road as he tumbled in the air again. Both shots from my gun hit this time around, but he still bounced back from the shot to claw at the wounds and disappear.

  “What makes a Wolf want to cut off his own legs and get magic wands?” I asked into the noise, knowing full well the real answer from Hopper’s story.

  “My legs were taken!” He shouted from the blurred nothingness. “By your fellow rat slaves! But when they tried to break me down, I rose higher than ever!” Way to play the racist victim, Timberpine. I would qualify ‘smashing the legs of an assailant actively looking for you after learning they were planning to kill you beforehand’ as an act of self-defense, not a malicious plot. Call me traditional. Another crashing slam attack, with another dodge, and another two rounds in his back. I was so glad I didn’t have to worry about counting bullets in the magazine.

  Bit of a wrecking ball, this one. While it may have seemed like I was poking the bear wizard here, there was a method to the madness. The blitzing speed was telling me he wasn’t in full control of how he moved. That was why he was taking so long between strikes at his speed. In a calmer fight, he’d probably have ended it by now with some reduced speed fly-bys, but prideful little Timberpine just had to make an example of the mouthy “Rabbit-slave-turned- wannabe-lord” with a full-power display he didn’t have the skills or willpower to handle. He wasn’t thinking at all anymore, and if he was crashing around, maybe I could have made him crash in my favor.

  Taking out the machete, I quickly ran over to one of the sides of the road, heading toward the alleyway between two buildings. The wrecker Wolf came at me again, but this time I was ready. With a bit of lucky timing, I slashed and zapped the bastard, tearing at shreds of coat now as it pawed the wounds I made.

  “Your kind is weak!” He searched his bleeding injuries for the bullets. “You are frail. You deserve to be whipped and eaten as our superior whims deem fit! Why do you resist the natural order?” Natural order, my proud Tennessee ass.

  With the period in between Timberpine’s tornado tosses, I made it into the alleyway, positioning myself just inside, next to the wall. A switch from the pistol to the shotgun made the window just that much smaller for my plan, but I was more than fast enough to accommodate.

  Timberpine made one more crashing attack at me, apparently not having learned his lesson any of the other times. With the wall there between the furry bolt and crashing into the ground, he ricocheted off, bouncing back and forth between the two walls of the alleyway with his massive inertia.

  With my prey caught in my trap, I unloaded all six magic fire rounds into the beast, lighting him aflame and blasting lead into him. The flames singed all of his white fur to smoke, with only his light pink skin, charred flesh, and bleeding wounds remaining underneath the few wisps that survived the fire. He was less a terrifying Wolf noble with magic powers as he was now a gross pile of flesh shaped vaguely like a naked mole rat with sticks for legs. He rolled around and whimpered as the fire spread to the wooden objects around him, trapping him in an inferno cage.

  How the hell was he still alive? He wasn’t completely fine, but he had enough breath in his lungs to keep crying after taking six shotgun rounds point blank. The question was: was this a Wolf thing or a wizard thing? I was betting more towards the magical cause simply because every other Wolf has been significantly easier to shoot to death. Either way, I kept putting pistol rounds in his head as I moved over to get his legs, in case I was missing some sort of healing magic charm on him. With the fur gone, everything that happened to him was laid bare, the slashes and gashes, the pellets, the bullets.

  Really, the smell was the worst part, a mix of burnt hair and charcoal, when you couldn’t hold your nose, with one hand to hold the leg down and another to cut the leg off, hacking away at Timberpine’s flesh stump. This was by far the grossest kill I’ve ever had to be a part of for a beast. I was fairly mentally exhausted, if not physically.

  And we weren’t done yet. Timberpine was just the tip of the iceberg, we discovered, and the Baron was the big threat. If my property was in his domain, he was a problem that needed solving. It was only a matter of time before he decided I was an enemy, too. I might have been already. Who knew what magic tricks he had up his sleeve?

  But, all things considered, this was an excellent nobility kill-and-claim. The material rewards alone were worth the whole ordeal: a few more charms in the toolkit for when we get someone who knows charms, a huge boost to the Wolf soldier count to, probably a lot of Rabbits out of Wolf abuse, and a proper home base with supplies. The fact that it was Timberpine was just a fantastic bonus. Needless to say, it was a fittingly pathetic end for a racist megalomaniac like him to burn to death.

  He did not burn to death, however. In fact, burning just pissed him off. The magic leg charms changed to a ruby red, commanding the fire spreading through the wooden scraps of boxes to rise and stretch onto Timberpine’s back. The fire poured inside the bullet, pellet, and machete wounds, along with the severe claw gashes Timberpine was inflicting on himself. The pink blob hound shrieked as the flames flickered off in tendrils around him. The dozens of tendrils picked him up, whipping him away from me, and taking the halfway done stump with it. Like a spider, the tendrils floated him around the space as they suspended him in the air.

  I would just like to point out that Timberpine’s whole magical signature before had been storms and flying, and the fire was supposed to be neutral. All the charms were glowing, so he wasn’t hiding some kind of fire charm I didn’t see. The shotgun should have worked. This fiery hellhound malarkey was some bullshit. I could only have assumed that this was some sort of overcharming recoil or the built-up decay from overusing them in one go.

  Either way, there was a lesson to be learned from this, and it was that charms were dangerous as a rattlesnake if you didn’t treat them right. You either played it safe, or you ended up like some kind of mutilated demon-looking mole rat creature with no legs. To be fair, some of those were unrelated, but the description was not unwarranted for how much of an asshole he was.

  “Vermin.” Timberpine wheezed out, the breath from his lungs rippling the air around its mouth with heat. “You are all vermin. We were like fathers to you, raising you in our own homes, watching you grow century after century. Yet you seek to steal our rightful place above you. You are all ungrateful and must be taught respect. The memory of the dead will teach the few that remain, for however long it lasts.” Ominous. Timberpine was losing it. But, I made a mental note of the phrasing and word choice, mostly because there were some things starting to click together for me.

  Like my dad always taught me, a yapper needed a tapper from the zapper. Okay, he never said that, but he did teach the art of reflex and initiative. A chatty demon dog was a demon dog begging for more bullet holes. Which is what I gave the monster in spades with the pistol, taking full advantage of the endless magazine. But, in classic ‘magic likes to cheat for no good reason’ fashion, the bullet holes turned into more nodes for fiery tendrils to wiggle out of. I guess I should have seen that coming.

  As the machete came out, Timberpine’s fiery tendrils stretched out from his wo
unds, tickling the walls as they moved the body into the air, above my head like a red jellyfish from hell. I threw my fancy new lord’s coat to the side since I knew what I had to do to finish this quick while he was still here near enough to the ground. And it required not caring about what happened to my body for a couple of seconds.

  Ho, boy, this was going to hurt.

  Tensing my muscles and praying that this would be quick, I dove into the strands of red flame, fully embracing the searing pain and groping tentacles latching onto me. I snatched the peg of the stump already hacked into, shielding myself from as much of the infernal carnage as I could. Timberpine’s hands tried to reach around to my overall straps, but the fire’s chaotic fondling burnt through them before he could reach in time. His arms stretched down below itself like a monkey through the bars of a cage, big pale appendages with black claws slicing up tiny cuts to the sides of my head. With one hand holding the wood leg steady, I chopped at the rest of the stump in rapid succession, quickly twisting it off as I ignored the pain.

  “You aren’t worthy to even pretend like a lord, dungrat!” Timberpine tried to taunt me, in the middle of all of this sorcery nonsense. “Your filthy hands stole your lordship from a weakling, a theft in the night, no doubt! How could a Rabbit have ever dreamed of having any worth is spit in the eyes of every packborn Wolf in the Great Burrow? You are a lowborn. You are a meal! You are garbage! Learn your place!”

  Because the fashion choices I made today were the important issue right now, obviously.

  “Boy, you are one crazed-up loon,” I said with the final tug, chop, and twist to rip the leg off.

  The fire tendrils stopped groping me, thankfully, pulling Timberpine’s body away as I held the wizard leg. Looking at the runes on the charms, the first and only thing I noticed was the red light from the charms growing brighter and redder very quickly. I took that as a bad sign, throwing it as far away into the air as possible, in the direction of the ocean bay. I guessed that would have been furthest from where any people were. High in the air, it exploded in a ball of swirling wind and fire.