Shallan and Eszter on Acme Island (Scene - Completed)

[Karl Jak]

The dragons landed on the beaches of the island. In the distance behind them, the soldiers and sailors watched through scopes and eyeglasses. Not a single soul had opted to go anywhere closer than five knots to the island, which seemed to clearly broadcast that something was wrong there.

As they walked forward, the dragons eyed the large wooden sign that now towered over them. They drew closer, but after a few more steps, they both felt a sudden wave of nausea take hold.

Ezster and Shallan crashed into the grass and struggled back to their feet. The dragons were gone, but that wasn’t anywhere near their primary concern.

The island was no longer the barren landscape they had spotted from the shore. Thick grass had cushioned their fall, but in front of them, a mixture of mountains and forests spread out. The sign they had used as landmark now read ‘Acme, Inc’.

Shallan took a step forward and frowned before turning to her companion. “Where are w—” Her words were silenced by the anvil that crashed down onto her skull and buried her head two feet underground.

Eszter backpedaled as her eyes caught a figure standing near the tree line. The humanoid animal smiled a mouthful of partially chewed carrot before taking another dramatic chomp from his oversized snack.

“Ehhhhhhhhhhhh … what’s up, Doc?” He replied as Eszter noticed that she was now in a shadow, despite being in the open. The young woman lifted her head and mouthed most of a curse before the piano crashed onto her.

***

Characters Involved: Karakul (@Eszter) and Smaug (@Shallan Davar)

Notes: You are on Acme Isle, where all physics is classic cartoon physics. You do not have your bonds, and you have none of your actual powers as per the collars. You’ll find a variety of abandoned Acme crates filled with oversized hammers, boxing gloves, dynamite, and other props you can use to 'fight back' against the rabbit. Landscapes can vary, and sometimes the entire island will change. Maybe to a canyon with coyotes and roadrunners. Maybe to an opera house.

Enemy NPC Characters: Bugs Bunny (Bugs has all standard ‘cartoon powers’ and can seemingly manifest scenery and props at will. He’s a jagoff, but he’s not like, a vicious killer (to him, he’s just “messin’ around” despite the fact that you are both at very high risk of being casually murdered.

Length of Scene: This Scene will last for at most 96 hours

Post Count/Size: 4 posts / 4000 words maximum (for each participant)

Other Stuff: Others MAY NOT join this scene if they move along this path.

 

[Shallan Davar]

Shallan pulled herself out of the crater, a flock of stars dancing around her head like lightspren. She put a hand to her forehead, trying to clear her thoughts. They must have been muddled, she could swear that her head almost felt flattened. And storms it may as well have been, look at that slab of metal! How had she survived getting hit by that thing when the collar was blocking her access to stormlight?

She shook her head to clear it, shaking things back to normal. Having spent so much time living through Smaug's dragon-senses likely wasn't helping the situation either. Moving and acting on her own almost didn't feel real right now. Shallan forced herself to focus. She had a face, she was a real person.

A discordant tone caught her attention. A short distance off, one of Eszter's clawed hands burst up from a collapsed piano, scattering ivory keys into the air. With a growl of irritation she clambered out of the debris. The bunny was standing there with one of the most crem-eating grins shallan had ever seen.

"What can I say, ladies. A bit of Nos'Talgia is always a good thing don't you think?"

"You can talk?" Shallan was incredulous. The unmade they had encountered so far had all been raging monsters, cunning perhaps, but none that had seemed possessed of much intelligence.

"Sheesh, I spent all week working on my magic trick and talking is all it takes to impress you, toots?" The rabbit clicked his tongue, producing a top hat and cape from behind his back.

Shallan and Eszter glanced at each other uncertainly as the rabbit dramatically rummaged, somehow reaching his arm up to the shoulder in the rather small silk hat. With triumphant exclamation he pulled out a bouquet of flowers far too large to have fit inside the hat.

"I was gonna pull a magician out at first. But the anvil was plenty of irony for now!" The bunny handed the bouquet to shallan, somehow closing the ten or so feet just by leaning over towards her.

Still baffled she looked at the flowers, finding a fizzing red cylinder in the middle of the bundle of stems. She shouted in alarm seconds before it exploded, leaving the front of her havah dress blackened and sending flower petals everywhere.

"Eeeeeheeeehheeehh! That trick's gonna blow up in Arcadia!" The bunny snickered, quite pleased with himself.

Eszter growled, "Okay, that's it! You're gonna be stew when I'm done with you!"

She rushed forwards. The bunny leapt so that he was almost horizontal, twisting his legs and body and stretching off into the distance while his head stayed stationary.

"Welp! Gotta split!" He smirked. Like an elastic spring he sped off into the forest. Eszter paused in confusion, then ran on in pursuit.
Shallan coughed out a cloud of black dust, blinked the soot out of her eyes. This wasn't unmaking in any sense she was familiar with, but it wasn't any less dangerous for Eszter to go chasing on her own. She took off after the other two

515 words so far

 

[Shallan Davar]

The bunny ran with an unnatural speed, almost seeming to glide across the ground, his feet spinning circles in the air. He and Eszter were both kicking up jet-trails of dust as they ran through the woods. Shallan did her best to keep up in her havah dress, though she was having more and more misgivings about this forest.

Shallan did not consider herself an expert on trees. They were a rarity on Roshar, and even a small copse of the things would only grow in very select parts of the world. The ones here in the crossroads also seemed to operate quite differently as well. Apparently, not having to be able to withstand high storms drastically changed the strategies that a given tree would employ to stay alive. Go figure. But even though her experience with Crossroads flora was limited, she knew that the trees they were running through now were growing too thin and straight to be truly real. This was not a forest. It was someone’s idea of a forest.

The chase ended abruptly up ahead when the bunny darted behind one of the many trees. Eszter had to skid to a stop, her clawed fingers arched and eager to get her hands on him. She stepped around the tree, then frowned, glancing in all directions. Shallan slowed down as she caught up. Without stormlight fueling her muscles, she wasn’t nearly as athletic as the dragonkin.

“Where the hell’d he go?” Eszter scowled. Shallan bent over, hands on her knees as she caught her breath. She glanced up just in time to see the bunny’s top half poking from behind the tree Eszter had lost him behind. A bogglingly large wooden mallet was raised to strike the unaware dragonkin. How hadn’t she seen him? The tree wasn’t large enough for him to have hid behind…

With a world-shattering POW! the hammer slammed down onto Eszter. Shallan raised her arm to shield her eyes from the dust cloud, pushing aside several stars and spiral springs that had manifested out of the hit like some kind of impact-spren.

Shallan dove towards the grinning rabbit, tackling him before he could follow up on his attack. The two of them went tumbling end over end, Shallan’s havah and safehand sleeve proving incredibly ill-suited for wrestling. It wasn’t her brightest tactic on reflection, but there hadn’t been time to consider. The bunny was proving to be a storming slipper foe. Every time she thought she’d got a hold of him, he somehow stretched out of their tangle to wallop her again.

Their rolling ball of a wrangling match bounced down the forest path, until the bunny reached up to grab a passing branch. He pulled himself up into the tree, wiping his brow with exaggerated relief. He glanced back down, waving bon voyage to Shallan as she tumbled, disoriented and confused, slamming face-first into the trunk of an unfortunately solid tree.

“Now that’s taking tree-hugging to a whole new level!” The bunny laughed to himself, leaning one arm up against the tree he was perched in and taking an exaggerated bite of a carrot he had acquired somewhere.

A dramatic sting of ambient strings and the shaking of his tree startled the bunny out of his leisure. His attention was drawn downwards to Eszter, brandishing a gleaming axe with an ugly sneer. With one, tow, three strokes she cleaved cleanly through the trunk. The bunny gave a piteous wail, and the tree crashed to the ground with a resounding thud. Eszter stepped onto the base of the felled trunk, searching for where the bunny had fallen. She glanced up with mounting frustration to find the bunny was still air in the air.

“Happy thoughts! Happy thoughts!” The bunny shouted, frantically straining to flap both his wings and his ears to stay airborne. With a snarl she gripped the axe with both hands, raising it behind her head.

“Have this thought!” Eszter shouted, hurling the weapon end over end at the hovering rodent. To her dismay, the bunny reached out to catch the sailing weapon perfectly.

“Huh! And I always thought axes were non-migratory.” The rabbit remarked. He plummeted downwards, accompanied by the ghostly sound of a slide whistle, landing on the upper end of the felled tree. Despite its size the entire trunk bent like a trebuchet, before launching a startled Eszter skywards with another slide whistle noise. She landed amidst the branches with a crash of leaves and pine needles.

“Now let me show you goirls some real lumba-jackin’!” the bunny grinned, winding up his axe like he was aiming for a home-run batting swing.

“This one goes out to all my fans back in Imagen Nation!” The bunny swung the axe into the tree, a disc of solid wood launched clear from the trunk, narrowly missing Shallan as it sailed through the air. Eszter’s tree jolted, but landed onto the severed trunk perfectly.

But the bunny was just getting started. His backswing sent another solid wooden disc in Shallan’s direction, shattering into concerningly large splinters when it collided with the tree she’d taken shelter behind. Disc after disc began to sail through the air, keeping Shallan ducking and dodging, while Eszter’s tree began to rapidly disappear from under her. She climbed desperately as each swing brought her perch closer and closer to that rapid-fire axe. With a desperate leap she caught the bows of another tree-branch, but the bunny was already winding up for more by the time she had gotten her footing on a branch.

Eszter cursed, wobbling as her footing was once again hacked at the ankles. She rummaged about in the foliage, desperately seeking a weapon. Coming up with nothing more than a pinecone, Eszter hurled it angrily at the bunny. It connected solidly with the top of his head, leaving a welt and emitting a few more of those stars.

The bunny gave a yelp of dismay and swan dove into a nearby hole in the ground just before the pinecone exploded like a grenade. Eszter had only a split second to register what she’d even thrown before her own tree pitched over sideways, sending her tumbling amidst the bracken and bramble of the forest. Her head emerged from the sea of bushes, spitting up leaves like a spout of water. The ominous clink of gear belts behind her made Eszter turn. The bunny was waiting, seated atop a large-scale logging machine topped with what could only be described as mounted turrets, more discs of wood already loaded and trained on the dragonkin.

“Awright pal, you asked for it!” He grinned eagerly, then began to pull levers at random.

1113 words. 1628 words so far.

 

[Shallan Davar]

Shallan was sheltering amidst an outcropping of rocks, pinned down by a near constant barrage of hurtling wooden pucks. Her eyes were closed, arms held up to the sides of her head as chunks of solid wood impacted and splintered around her. Shallan squeezed them shut tighter, Eszter would come to her aid soon, surely? As the missiles continued to pound against her shelter with all the ferocity of a machine gun, her confidence in imminent rescue began to wither.

Radiant was growing impatient with their hesitance, and Veil was now relatively certain that Eszter had seen the opportunity to escape and taken it. The two of them waited with growing irritation as Shallan cowered. Why was this the challenge she balked at? She had stood firm against a being that dwarfed even Karakul, yet this fight she hid from like a frightened child?

It was because this was the first fight that was really hers, wasn’t it.

Smaug’s overbearing nature had all but required her to take the backseat in their conflicts. Beyond the usual advice or warning, she had only to watch the destruction and endure the pain he encountered. This was the first time it was up to her to handle a fight. Shallan pulled her hands tighter over her ears, trying to fight her growing certainty that she wasn’t up to the task.

Why wouldn’t Veil or Radiant take this task? They urged her to act, but would not take the lead. Could the collar be affecting them somehow? Could she do this without them? Shallan wasn’t a warrior? She was a girl who pretended to be a scholar, what was she even doing out here? Why was she even here!

Only silence answered her forceful question.

Silence? The attacks had stopped? Shallan cautiously, slowly raised her head, opening her eyes. Where had the rabbit gone? What had become of Eszter. Shallan looked about at a forest all but flattened, blinking in confusion.

“Man, and this why ya gotta be sustainable when you’re cuttin’ wood!” The bunny appeared right besides Shallan, causing her to jump, “Hold this will ya?” The bunny pressed a piece of flint into her hands. She looked down at it, watching as the bunny lit a match off the flint, then proceeded to start the fuse for a bundle of dynamite at their feet. She had only the time to open her mouth to scream.

The explosion sent Shallan flying through the air, trailing smoke. She was sailing over the edge of a cliff, She grabbed desperately, her fingers gripping the edge of the rockface. Her safehand’s cloth-bound fingers slipped free, and she swung perilously, bashing her head against the rock-side. She scarcely dared to look down, focusing as much as she could on keeping her grip.

With a slowly mounting set of strings playing from somewhere nearby, a pair of rabbit ears peered over the edge of the cliff above her.

“Boy howdy, if that ain’t a pwedicament!” The bunny was positively grinning ear to ear as he looked down at her. With an obnoxious chuckle he lifted one of her fingers free of its grip.

Shallan’s booted feet scrabbled against the rock side for some sort of purchase. The rocky stone crumbled to gravel underfoot.

The bunny lounged at the top of the cliffside, walking two of his fingers along like they were going for a stroll. He whistled a cheerful tune, then flicked another of her fingers off the edge of the rock.

Shallan’s arm screamed at her like it was on fire, her fingers dragging gouges into the earth above.

The bunny had obtained a knife somewhere and had splayed his own hand alongside Shallan’s remaining fingers. He was humming a tune to himself, stabbing the knife between both of their fingers as he went. Shallan grimaced, bracing herself for the pain. The bunny started to hum the tune faster, stabbing quicker to match, but his aim was impeccable and the knife continued to dance between their fingers, now just a blur of motion.

Shallan grit her teeth and risked a swing, pivoting her body enough to make another grab at the surface with her pouched safehand. Her havah sleeve slipped free again, bumping the rabbit as she slid past. He yowled in pain as he brought the knife down on his own hand. He held up his injured hand, waving it around as he wailed and fussed. His stomping feet kicked Shallan’s hand, knocking loose all but one of her fingers.

It clung to the rock still, somehow. Shallan hung limply, now confident that she couldn’t pull herself up, but not quite willing to resign herself to the fifty-some foot drop to the sandy ravine below her.

The bunny was setting up dominos now, arranging the line of blocks with an inhuman speed, all leading to a mousetrap that was poised above her remaining grip. Once he had stacked a sufficient number, he leaned exaggeratedly far over the first one in the line. With a wicked grin he pushed the first domino, following closely as each knocked over the next, the line zig-zagged across the rocky surface, up boulders and over downed logs. The falling dominos raced closer and closer to the trigger on the mousetrap, and the bunny followed eagerly. He paused in surprise as the domino chain failed to keep up. Frowning he went back to check on the domino that had failed to catch the next one. He cleared his throat, and the domino inched its way forwards to correct the mistake. The falling dominos raced along to spring the mousetrap onto Shallan’s remaining finger.

She had braced herself for it, but she still reflexively yanked her hand away. The bunny watched from the clifftop, but to their mutual surprise, Shallan did not fall. They both looked down then at each other. Then the bunny snapped his fingers.

“Holding on by a hair’s breath.” he pointed to a few strands of her hair that were still over the edge of cliffside, “A hare’s breath? Mmmhh, I betcha there’s something there…” The bunny was incredibly casual as he produced a pair of scissors.

“Have a good trip!’ He waved and snipped the hairs. Now gravity decided to actually take hold of Shallan, and she plummeted away from the waving rabbit.

“Ain’t I a stinker?” He grinned to one of the Syntech cameras.

1067 words. 2695 words so far.

 

[Eszter]

The legally distinct rabbit leaned over the cliff to get a better look at the falling girl, one arm behind his back and the other shielding his eyes (though not without parting his fingers to peek through). Before he could get a proper look, however, a low, bestial growl drew his attention from behind. Glancing over, he found himself face to face with a furious Eszter, a finger pointed at him in a finger gun.

“Got you now.” she hissed, retracting her index finger to scrape the fingernail against the nail on her thumb in a familiar gesture, using them like a flint and steel to conjure up a fireball. Rather than creating a tiny orb of furious flame, however, the dragonkin balked as she flicked her index finger formed and a tiny stick extended out of it. After a beat, a flag unfolded from the stick, reading ‘bang!’

She faced off with her opponent for a long, awkward moment, neither speaking up. After an eternity, the bunny broke out into polite applause, a cheeky, buck-toothed grin on his face.

“I’LL F@&$ING KILL YOU!” Eszter roared, her threat diminished by the bicycle horn that censored her cussing. The demi-dragon hurled herself forward, sprinting towards her tormentor with reckless abandon. In her fury, she found herself almost dropping to all fours, tilting forward and using her hands to practically throw herself at her victim. In calm response, the rabbit pulled a set of full matador’s garb from behind his back, donned it in one smooth motion, and presented a red sheet.

“Olé!” he declared, flapping the sheet towards her. The charging dragonkin did, in fact, seem to speed up in response, though it was more out of indignation than some animalistic draw to red. Eszter considered herself more than a little smarter than your average bull, so when she surged towards the bunny, she aimed for his centre of mass rather than the sheet. The angle of her horns meant that they weren’t too useful for goring, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to try. Worst case scenario, she was still going to smash him off of the cliff.

Thundering towards the rabbit, she finally closed the distance and launched herself head-first at him, certain that he had no way to dodge at this range. It was rather shocking, then, when she felt herself plunge through empty air and go sailing off the cliff. Glancing back at her target, dumbfounded, she caught a brief glance at her foe, his whole body bent out of the way in a C shape, nibbling a carrot with his characteristic smug look on his face.

“Mother-f@#$er…” she hissed as she dropped out of sight. Eszter dropped like a stone, focusing on the cliff face racing past. Frustrated, she put her hands on her hips and scowled. This admittedly wasn’t the deadliest opponent they had faced so far, but she would have taken deadly over annoying any day of the week. After a few moments of contemplation, the dragonkin came face-to-face with a screaming Shallan.

“Eszter?!” she shrieked. “What do we do?!”

“Huh? This is no big deal, right?” she asked genuinely perplexed.

“What do you mean?! We’re falling off a cliff!” Shallan shouted, equally dumbfounded by her non-paused attitude. “How are you so calm right now?!”

“Well, it’s cartoon rules, right?” Eszter sniffed. “I watched them as a kid sometimes but I wasn’t a huge fan… shit like this is why I never want to visit Nos’talgia.”

“What’s ‘cartoon’?” the scholar asked, bewildered.

“Oh… I guess you don’t have them where you’re from...” the demi-dragon murmured, scratching her chin thoughtfully. “Alright, just try to follow my lead.”

With that, Eszter tilted her body, adjusting her posture until she was falling spread-eagle, back-first. Shallan stared at her for a few moments before quickly following suit.

“Ok! Now what?”

Eszter didn’t reply for a while, pursing her lips in deep thought.

“Hmm.” she mumbled loudly, as if ensuring that someone could hear her. “You know, we’ve been falling for a while huh?”

Glancing at her, Shallan opened her mouth to reply, only for both women to smash into the ground, leaving silhouette-shaped holes in the dirt. Dazed but largely unharmed beyond some patches of dirt, Eszter emerged from her hole, a trio of tiny dragons spinning around her head and chirping like birds. She quickly shooed the away and gave a quick look around the area, taking stock of the situation.

Trees, trees, more trees, the barrel of a shotgun, even more tre-

Oh.

“Hmph! My lucky day!” the rabbit chuckled from the other side of the gun, dressed in a classic American hunter outfit. “Looks like it's dragon season!”

With that, the bunny nodded towards a nearby sign, clearly informing them that it was, in fact, dragon season. Eszter barely even had a moment to seethe quietly at ubiquity of dragon-slaying to appear so casually here before the gun cocked. Thinking fast, she hopped out of the hole and swiped at the sign.

“No, it's rabbit season!” she gasped. The sign spun rapidly around before slowing down, now showing that it was, indeed, rabbit season.

“Pfeh! It’s obviously dragon season!” he shot back, spinning the sign again to bring it back to dragon season.

“Rabbit season!”

“Dragon season!”

“Rabbit season!”

“What are you two doing?” Shallan asked, emerging from her hole while massaging her head. Eszter immediately perked up, gesturing wildly at the rabbit.

“Quick, Shallan! Only you can break the stalemate! Get his @£&!” she shouted. “He legally can’t shoot us both at once!”

“Huh? How?” she asked, glancing down at her bare hands.

“Just beat the @#$@ out of him!” Eszter yelled, forgetting for a moment that normal humans couldn’t crack stone with their bare hands like she could. Shallan wondered, briefly, if she could beat the bunny to death with her bare hands, but quickly realised that she didn’t need to find out. The rabbit spun the sign once more, watching it whirl around on the signpost.

“Redhead season!”

Shallan and Eszter turned to one another. The scholar’s expression was one of concern, while her companion’s was that of resigned acceptance.

“Damn.”

1031 words

 

[Eszter]

With a deafening blast and a gigantic cloud of smoke, the rabbit took a shot at Eszter. Thankfully, it shot didn’t turn her head into a mess of red jelly. Instead, she found her upper half covered in soot, her horns twirling crazily on her head like a pair of wind turbines until they settled a good 90 degrees from their normal angle.

“Hm, you know what.” the rabbit said, a look of sudden reflection coming over him and he inspected the girls. “I think these two are a little too small. Better throw 'em back!”

With that, he picked up each of the pilots by the scruff of their necks and, one by one, gave them a legendary kick to the butt, sending them flying across ACME island. The two went shooting through the woods with far more force than the rabbit had any right to hit them with, smashing through any obstacle in their path.

Shallan crashed through the branches of a tree, hitting a bird’s nest on the way through and getting it stuck around her neck like a bizarre scarf. The resident bird was, understandably, upset by this development, pecking furiously at her head. Eszter, on the other hand, shot through the trunk of a tree and scattered a collection of acorns as if they were bowling pins (with the sound to match). An angry squirrel emerged from the remains of the tree, shaking its fist and hurling one more acorn after the dragonkin. Despite how quickly she was flying, the projectile came at her even quicker, bouncing off her head with a ‘bonk!’ sound.

The pair eventually flew out of the forest, abruptly entering a more arid zone. It was, naturally, strange that a desert should be next to a forest with no gradient in biome, but that did little to phase the two. Shallan landed in a seated position, bouncing across the ground before coming to a stop, receiving one last peck from the bird for her trouble. Eszter, on the other hand, landed face-first. She screeched across the ground on her face, eventually grinding to a halt flatly, lying still for a few moments.

“This is so humiliating…” the dragonkin groaned, her voice muffled by the ground that her face was pressed into.

“How do we win here?” Shallan asked desperately, glancing around to make sure that the rabbit wasn’t about to attack them once more. “We have no weapons, and he can apparently summon whatever he needs…”

“As far as I see it, we have two options.” Eszter groaned, picking herself up off the ground. “The easy, nasty option, which I’d rather avoid, and the harder but more reasonable option.”

“Ok…” Shallan said, giving her an uncertain look. “What… are they?”

“For the first one,” Eszter said, sticking up one finger. “it’s just a theory, but we could probably get this place shut down by making a joke that really won’t age well.”

Somewhere, a Syntech suit broke out into a nervous sweat.

“Let's leave that as the last resort.” the demi-dragon coughed. “I’d rather not go there if we can avoid it… the other option we have is to beat this guy at his own game. Turn his own rules against him.”

Shallan nodded, a tiny bit unimpressed at the conclusion. She had come to that conclusion on her own and had hoped that Eszter was going to present them with a secretive sure-win solution.

“Alright… have any ideas?” the scholar asked, getting to her feet and dusting herself off. In response, the dragonkin got up as well, glancing around with one hand on her chin and the other on her hip. After gazing off into the horizon for what seemed like an eternity, she broke into a grin which rose to a laugh. Turning to Shallan, she gave her a triumphant grin with her unnaturally sharp teeth.

“I ain’t got @&#$.”

1685 words total
[/quotes]

 

[Karl Jak]

Updates:

Shallan loses a limb (Insane Injury)
Eszter takes a Minor Injury

Please post a resolution where you 'defeat' Bug Bunny. The only requirement of the prompt is that he'll eventually decide that he's done hanging out and leave (so don't murder him). He'll leave behind a present (non-explosive), and I'll share that once a resolution has been posted.

Please post a resolution within 36 hours.

 

[Eszter]

“Huh, now where have those guirls gotten off to?” the bunny asked the audience at home, scratching his chin as he stomped through the desert. Under the sweltering, angry-faced sun, the rabbit was beginning to sweat buckets, giving his forehead an exaggerated wipe and casting off litres of sweat. “Phew, I sure am cooking in this thing. Tell you what, I’d kill for some shade right about now.”

As he said this, the bunny tugged at his neck, pulling away his fur for a moment as if it were a fuzzy jumpsuit. Glancing around, against all odds, the bunny spotted a convenient spot of shade under a small cliff that had a large rock perched atop it.

“Well, don’t mind if I do.” the rabbit grinned as he zipped over and sat down beneath the shade, closing his eyes, kicking back and drawing a carrot out of nowhere. As he began to nibble on his snack, he was oblivious to the scholar peeking around the cliff before rushing around to quietly call to her ally at the top.

“He’s here!” she whisper-yelled to Eszter. Bracing herself against the rock, the dragonkin put all of her effort into shoving the boulder, digging her heels in and straining with everything she had. It would have been child’s play if it weren’t for the collar, but apparently Karl valued fair play more than the unmaking did. With a reptilian hiss, she threw herself at the rock and, with a deep rumble, it rolled just an inch away, which was all she needed to get it moving.

Once pure rage and some slightly less scrawny than average elven muscles had done their job, gravity did the rest, bringing the boulder down on the unfortunate rabbit. The stone hit the ground with a deafening thud, visibly shaking the earth with its impact. Eszter scrambled to keep her footing atop the cliff before cautiously peering over. Surely enough, the rock had landed right where the bunny had been relaxing.

“Did we get him?” she called down to her companion.

“I don’t know, I’ll check.” Shallan called back, rushing over to the boulder. As she got to it, she found herself staring at… a rock. If the rabbit had been crushed, the censors had decided that they didn’t want any gore, because there wasn’t a hint of blood around the potential murder scene. “I can’t tell. If he’s under there, the rock is hiding him… what’s left of him, anyway.”

“Trying to get under that rock, eh?” a voice asked from behind her. “I know just what’ll do the trick.”

Shallan whipped around, horrified, just in time to watch the bunny toss a stick of still-lit dynamite right in between her and the boulder. Eszter half-considered leaping off the cliff to intervene, but decided to take the safer route. After all, the dynamite hadn’t been too deadly in the past. Turning and sprinting as fast as she could down the other side of the cliff without losing her footing, the dragonkin’s stomach dropped as she heard a boom followed by a bloodcurdling scream.

Eszter hit the ground hard as she hopped off the cliff as soon as she felt the drop was safe enough but she didn’t stop for a second. She dropped to all fours from the impact and hurled herself forward, speeding to Shallan and their opponent. As they came into view, the sight was horrific. Blood and soot splattered the cliffside while the scholar lay there shell-shocked, staring paralysed at the bloody stump where her right leg had been. Another scream split the air, but this time it wasn’t Shallan or even Eszter. Instead, it came from the bunny.

“There’s been an accident! Someone call a doctor.” he screamed before twirling in place, suddenly appearing in full surgeon scrubs. “It's not everyday I get to be the doc.”

Moving fast, the bunny swept the still-bleeding girl up onto a stretcher, wheeling her nowhere in particular before deciding that this was the place that she needed to be. The demi-dragon stared, stunned at the situation for a few moments before swallowing hard, knowing what she had to do.

“What’s the call doc?” she asked as she followed after him, a clipboard inexplicably appearing in her hands to even her own surprise.

“We’re gonna need to operate, quick.” he announced dramatically, bringing out a tray and placing a series of tools onto it. A scalpel, a needle, a saw, a drill, a hammer… slowly shifting from ‘tool’ to ‘weapon’, the rabbit barely even noticed as Eszter swooned, grabbing his shoulder and leaning on him.

“Oh, Doctor, do you think you’re gonna make it?”

“I’ll do my best,” he said dramatically, pulling a chainsaw from his scrubs. “but she’s in pretty bad sha… uh oh.”

“Yeah.” Eszter growled as she took her arm from his shoulder and grabbed the back of his head before hooking her boot around and sweeping his legs out from under him. “Uh Oh.”

“Well, that’s all folks.” the bunny winked to the camera right before the dragonkin smashed his face into the ground. Without her normal strength, she failed to reduce his skull to scrambled eggs and instead gave it a few more rage-filled slams just to be sure, each one accentuated by another censoring sound effect as she laid into his verbally as well as physically.

Once she was satisfied that she had rocked her opponent’s @$#& enough, the dragonkin stood up and went to approach Shallan, though not without giving one last stomp to the back of the rabbit’s head. The situation was obviously grim, but the scholar had proven tougher than she had realised. The girl was clearly in pain, but that hadn’t stopped her from tearing off a strip of her dress and binding it around the stump of her destroyed leg, stemming the severe bleeding. Another strip of fabric was stuffed into her mouth, giving her something to bite down on, even if it wasn’t quite as thick as she might have liked.

“Eugh, arbiters…” Eszter whinged as she took a look at the wound. “Here, let’s get you out of here...”

Once the tourniquet was securely in place, the dragonkin gently put her arm around Shallan, lifting her from the stretcher and supporting her on her good leg. The first few steps were understandably shaky, Eszter almost dropping her companion a couple of times, but they quickly managed to get into a rhythm.

“Aww, that’s so sweet.” the bunny sniffed. Both girls whipped around to face him, shock and horror on their visages. The rabbit’s head had been flattened like a pancake, but besides the bizarre look he was apparently no worse for wear. As their opponent wiped one oversized tear from his eye, the pilots gave each other a glance and knew that they were thinking the same thing:

‘We’re gonna @#$&ing die here.’

The three faced off for a long time in silence, neither party moving an inch.

“Are… are you going to do anything?” Eszter hesitantly asked after an eternity, prompted by the tumbleweed blowing past. The dragonkin bared her teeth at the rabbit, lowering her head a little in a defensive stance. “I’m not gonna let you hurt her. Try it and I’ll-”

“Nah.” the bunny said, raising his thumb to his mouth and puffing into her, opting his head back into its normal shape before casually picking into his ear with his pinky. “I don’t hurt my patients. I swore my hypocritical oath.”

“So… now what?”

“Eh… I’m gonna go get some more carrots.” he said, turning out his ‘pockets’ that appeared out of his fur. From the pockets, no carrots appeared, though a small box, neatly tied with a bow, did fall to the ground. If the rabbit noticed that he had dropped his present, he gave no sign of it. “See you around, guirls.”

And with that, he turned and left, leaving a pair of stunned women watching him go.

“I’m never watching cartoons again.” Eszter grunted

“I’m never watching them at all.” Shallan sighed.

 

[Karl Jak]

Both of you receive +7 Points

You receive an item that I'll DM to one of you by tomorrow morning (probably on my lunch break tho!)