“Oi!
C'mere ya little ankle bitah!” Easter Bunny laughed as he scooped
his youngest from the floor and swept her up into his arms. The
little bunny giggled as she squirmed in his grasp and the sound set
his heart alight. “Now,” he whispered conspiratorially, “Go
find yer brothers and give 'em a bop on the head, just like yer old
dad taught ya, eh?” She laughed and sprang from his arms with new
speed and determination. Bunny laughed again when she vanished into
the adjacent room and he heard several loud thunks and cries of
surprise.
“Anata wa hontōni kanojo o
hagemasubekide wa arimasen.”*
Bunny turned and felt his spirits soar
even higher. “Waifu!” he exclaimed and raced across the room to
sweep the new arrival into a passionate embrace. They laughed as
they fell into together and had only a moment or so before a deluge
of their kittens swarmed them.
“Mommy!” they cried in unison and
fell to talking over one another in a rush of comments, complaints,
and questions. She laughed again, a light, twinkling sound.
“Shoo!” she said in a mock serious
tone, “Anata no mazushī hahaoya ni isshun o ataeru!” Most of
the children scattered off again into the small house, chasing each
other with boundless energy.
“How was your trip, love?” Bunny
asked as he took her coat and hung it upon the hall tree. She grew
moderately more serious and snuggled into him.
As they touched noses, she said
quietly, “Anata nashi de sora, watashi no ai.”
Just then, the front door of the little
cottage burst open and a chill wind rushed through the room. In the
midst of Springtime, snow swirled and obscured the threshold. The
children screamed and bolted for the back room while the adult
Bunnies sprang apart and fell into a battle formation. For a moment,
there was naught but silence in the house apart from the small, quiet
whimpers of the kits huddled together for safety.
In that deadly quiet, Mrs. Bunny
swiftly slid her katana free of its scabbard set at her hip and Mr.
Bunny produced a bladed boomerang from thin air. They waited,
blocking the path to their kittens. There was the faintest jingle of
a bell, the sound of a few long strides of footsteps crunching in the
new snow, and then the door was filled with the billowing crimson of
a thick fur cape being drawn rapidly from thin, elegant shoulders.
Mrs. Claws stepped through the door
like a runway model. Like she owned the place. Her cape slipped
from her long delicate fingers and magically floated over to land
atop the hall tree. The snow continued to pile in behind her. She
smiled suddenly and there was nothing welcoming or polite in that
smile. From head to toe, from wicked smile to knee high boot, Mrs.
Claws was cruelty personified. “Bunnies!” she exclaimed with
mock warmth and sincerity, spreading her hands in dramatic greeting.
“What the hell do you want, Claws?”
Mr. Bunny spat, not relaxing his stance.
Claws looked hurt and mock pouted.
“Oh, poo, you beastly old thing. Is that any way to greet an old
friend?”
“We aren't friends, winter witch.”
Mrs. Bunny spoke in equally aggressive, if heavily accented, tones.
“Now, that is a shame,
darlings,” Claws responded as she meandered about the entryway,
pretending to take the place in. She glanced back over her shoulder,
through the curtain of her fiery red hair, as she said it, that cruel
smile firmly set back in place. The Bunnies tensed. “And here
I've come bearing gifts.”
The front window exploded in a shower
of glass and a hooked, cherry red ornament ball sailed through the
now open space. Mr. Bunny saw it first and reacted without a
moment's hesitation, sending his boomerang careening into the
projectile. The two objects collided just at the level of the sill
and the ornament exploded in a hellfire of red and green glitter.
The first elfin commando through the window caught a lungful of the
stuff and went down in a coughing heap. He leapt across the room and
yanked two more through the window, smashing their skulls together,
before the order was called for them to fall back.
Mrs. Bunny, for her part, never lost
focus on Mrs. Claws and she sprang forward, her katana slicing
through the air in a deadly arc. Claws, true to her name, rapidly
grew her fine, delicate fingers into disturbing, sharpened claws and
went to meet the blade. The katana bit into her flesh but the
elongated, gnarled bones of her fingers caught the edge and held it.
Blood spurted as the warrior hare slid her weapon free but she was
too slow to block the other claw as it came up from underneath and
sliced into her guts. Shock spread across her features as Mrs. Claws
stepped in real close and whispered in her ear.
Mr. Bunny turned and saw his wife's
predicament and screamed with unbridled rage. In his distraction, he
didn't notice the elfin commandos outside line up and take shots at
him with their small blowguns. The poisoned darts sank into his fur
and flesh as he began to barrel back across the room. In his fear
and anger, and in the throes of adrenaline, he did not even notice.
Nevertheless, the poison took quick root in him and he was stumbling
by the time he made it to within striking distance of the winter
witch. She slapped him aside with her bloody claw as she dug the
other one further into his wife. The katana slipped from Mrs.
Bunny's grasp and it hit the floor about the same time he did.
Groggily, he strained to wrap his paw
around the tsuka of the sword. As his paw fell upon it, Mrs. Claw's
black boot fell upon him, crushing his bones beneath her heel. She
laughed, a high pitched, grating sound, and let Mrs. Bunny slide from
her grasp to the floor next to her husband. They lay together, their
noses almost touching, tears and blood matting their facial fur.
Mrs. Claws towered above them and cackled even harder.
Bunny lifted his head and gazed past
his wife. “Run,” he told his precious children, “run fast.”
But his vision was blurry and blood had seeped into his eyes so he
couldn't see the ring of commandos that had surrounded the small
drove.
“Oh,” Mrs. Claws stopped laughing
maniacally with the suddenness of a true sociopath, “What's that?
Run? Oh, dear, you really don't understand yet, do you?” The
cruel amusement had not left her tone, however, and Bunny's eyes
widened in realization.
“No, please!”
“No, please!” She mocked.
He beat his free fist into the floor in
frustration, struggling beneath her unusual strength, before looking
back up at her, hatred burning in his eyes. Just for a moment, her
arrogant smile faltered in the heat of that enmity. “Why do this?
It serves no purpose!”
And here the winter witch's true visage
surfaced. Her beautiful features contorted in rage and disgust. “No
purpose!?” she screamed at him and ground the bones in his paw.
“No purpose? You stand in the way of all we are trying to achieve,
you filthy little animal! We bring the gift of death across the
breadth of the BrikVerse in the dead of winter and you wipe it all
away with your curse of rebirth in the bloom of spring. We are the
natural--”
Her diatribe was cut short as Mrs.
Bunny suddenly sprang from her position on the floor, screaming in
pain and anger, and pulling her wakisashi free as she struck in a
blinding flash. Her short blade dug into Mrs. Claws classically
perfect features and scored a deep, long cut that obliterated her
left eye. Claws screamed and retreated from the blade but Mrs. Bunny
had already broken away in the opposite direction. Her arm blurred
in a flurry of motion and, in a matter of mere seconds, half a dozen
dumbstruck commandos lay dead with shurikens buried in their brains.
The mother hare reached her children and began to herd them.
“Oh, no, it's too late for that!”
Mrs. Claws stretched out her hideously disfigured claw and poured
forth a winter storm of epic proportions. The temperature in the
small cottage plummeted as snow and ice gathered in her palm and
sprayed out with all the force of a fire hose into the small back
room. Mrs. Bunny put her back to the blast and sheltered her
children from it but the effect was all enveloping. In short order,
they were encased in a solid block of ice. The glacial tempest she
had summoned died down slowly, the cacophony of it all fading out as
the sound of Mr. Bunny weeping and screaming faded in. Frost
crackled and settled, spreading along the walls and floors.
Mrs. Claws kicked the sword free and
walked slowly over to examine her work. She waited until Bunny had
screamed himself raw and was weeping silently. Only then did she
turn and walk back over to him. “You see, you disgusting furfig
vermin, I have devised the best possible punishment for you. The
Spell of Winter holds sway here. You won't be resurrecting your
family. Ever.” She smiled as she stepped over his prone and
poisoned body and retrieved her cloak. “I may not be able to wipe
your filth from existence but I can lock you away forever in the
Sleep of Snows.” She began to laugh wildly as she stepped through
the doorway and back out into the snow. As her footsteps and
laughter faded, the single, faint jingle of a bell could be heard and
then she was gone.
The Easter Bunny lay broken on the
floor of his once happy home, staring at his family forever frozen in
stasis. Unconsciousness came in waves. And he wept.
November 23. R. 2,016.
Bunny shook free of
his reverie and glanced around at the assembled Incarnations. As
usual, Valentine had taken point again and had mapped out a plan of
attack on the grand table they all sat and stood around. Most of
them weren't even taking the meeting seriously. It had become just
another reason to get together and guzzle Maniac Beer. Bunny could
see that Valentine was growing impatient with the gathering. The
only one who even seemed to be paying any attention was PatRock, the
sly little leprechaun, who sat sipping and watching and smiling
bemusedly.
Valentine was
attempting to get everyone focused again but Bunny had had enough.
So he said so. “Enough!”
The hall went
silent. Most looked to him with surprise, not expecting him to
participate. He rarely did. Pat looked at him expectantly, the smug
bastard. Valentine gazed at him irritated, as usual. “This is
absurd,” Bunny continued,”year after year, you idiots launch your
little 'War on Christmas' and it never pans out. Did any of you,
even for a moment, consider that that might be because it's
predictable? Expected? Or because more than half of you are only on
the bandwagon for the free booze?”
“I
suppose you have a better plan,” Valentine quipped.
“Of
course I do, you ponce.”
“How
dare--”
“Oh,
shut it, Cupid. I've watched for years as you develop these insipid,
unimaginative variations on the same plan of attack. If you want the
Claws to go down, you've got to get a little more creative about it.”
The Bunny calmly strode around the table to come face to face with
the purpling Valentine. The aristocratic Saint gripped his sword,
still in its sheath, tightly.
“Try
it.” Bunny said quietly, pitched low enough that only Valentine
could hear. But PatRock saw and hid his smirk in his mug. Doubt
flickered in the Saint's eyes. Raising his voice to the room, his
eyes still locked on Valentine's, he declared, “I'm done. I've
told you all before to strike when MFS was weak and worn out. To
break the cycle. To win. You refuse. Either because you're stupid
or because this is all just a joke to you. To BrikHell with the lot
of you. I'm going to do this my way. No more playtime. I'm going
to kill the Claws.”
With that, the
Easter Bunny turned and strode from the room, lightly fingering his
wife's Katana, already in anticipation of the killing blow. The very
one Manly Fuckin' Santa forged for her back in '78.
*Google Translate
"You really shouldn't encourage her, you know."
"Give your poor mother some room!"
"Empty without you, my love."
"You really shouldn't encourage her, you know."
"Give your poor mother some room!"
"Empty without you, my love."