Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Nineteen

"How much has your lover bunny told you about me, Miss Team Lead Flopsy?" the arrogant grey rabbit asked, then laughed. "Oh yes. You can't answer me. Well," he said, with exaggerated politeness and an precisely executed crouch. "Allow me to introduce myself. I am Bunnicula, vampire, and now in charge of Bunniption Base and all of your people."

Flopsy shuddered where she sat hunched into a caricature of a crouch. The grey rabbit had bodily picked her up and dropped her beside Earry. The two were still incapacitated, paralysed by the shrill piercing that the grey rabbit didn't even seem to notice. His voice, which also seemed to ignore the sound, cut through the keening sound without trouble, almost countering its effect as he spoke.

She could feel the power pulsing from and through him and huddled closer to Earry - but felt no response from him. HIs poor ears, she thought, and waited. Surely there was something more she could do. This seemed the perfect opportunity for the plucky detective and his persistent police friend to pull out the stops and achieve something - anything. Flopsy reached for the narrative strength that had helped her with the other elder archetypes, but couldn't even sense its remnants.

Harey and Hopert's efforts had no power here.

Flopsy shivered, pulling her ears a hint more closed - but the sound drove into her, striking even more truly now that she had lost her hidden hope for justive to prevail simply because the story said so.

The grey rabbit laughed again. "That's right, my dear! There is nothing you can do against me, although I must admit it has been amusing listening to your darling Earry try to pretend he has no affection for you during his council reports on the efforts you have done for other endeavours."

Flopsy closed her eyes. She didn't want to listen to this. Affection? Whatever there might be was just team-based, nothng more, wasn't it? And either way, she wanted to hear anything there was from Earry - not this sharp-tongued vampire. And yet, while she had no interest in listening to what he had to say, the rabbit's voice seemed to offer a hint of relief from the piercing sound, so for Earry's sake she wished he would continue. Besides, as long as he was talking, he wasn't hurting them.

"Dear me," Bunnicula said in jolly tones. "What can be taking them so long? Tell me, Miss Flopsy, have you ever heard of the cleaners? Your friend here is one, although," the grey rabbit's ears twitched in amusement, "it seems that today it is his turn to be cleaned."

Bunnicula examined Flopsy's lack of reaction.

"No, I think not. They perform a very necessary service, Miss Flopsy, and one which should be applauded, but as it is, here in Bunniption Base, we hide it away as if it were shameful! Can you imagine?" The bunny shook his grey head.

"In fact, Miss Flopsy, your team performed a cleaning service for me just this afternoon. Very useful, actually. I hadn't planned to send anyone after the sergeant until after this month was over - let the old fool have his time to shine and then die happy, yes? - but your choice suits my purposes much more neatly. Very tidy. After all, I now have all the excuse I need to go public as the sole leader of the rabbits, for I can point to this deadly conspiracy, this killing of our valiant combat commander, and say how vital it is for us to have a wartime leader.

"And because you and Earry are here to confess..." Bunnicula let his voice trail off and Flopsy quailed inside, the guilt she had felt over her orders to Harey and Hopert turning into anguish at having helped this evil creature. The shrill shrieking was getting into her head and she tried to think how he could possibly know, but it was too hard. Somehow he knew; surely that was enough. Too much.

Bunnicula laughed again at her evident discomfort, and hopped the length of the space and back again. Oh no, thought Flopsy suddenly. From her new perspective at the foot of the room, she realised what the room was: not a room, but a coffin. What little she knew of vampires told her that this made the space his restful solace, his own home ground, and again she shivered. No wonder her team had no power here.

Oh, how she wished her friends with the vampire hunting narratives were around. Dear Buffy, named after the human TV show star she had helped create; humourless Torg, who tended to hang around web comic creators more than text authors; sweet small sparky Buns, who carried a stake with her on a thong around her neck. All of those had been victims of the previous year's National Novel Writing Month - or so she had been told. Flopsy held her face still, tight, as she felt sudden anger at the knowledge that her friends had probably fallen victim to Bunnicula's "cleaning" crew.

Flopsy felt anger rising in her, and helplessness, and - the room changed.

For a moment, she couldn't put her whiskers on it. The shrill sound continued to pierce, and Bunnicula was still laughing maniacally while hopping around, and Earry's still frame remained tense and immobile. She herself hadn't moved, yet Flopsy was certain something external had changed.

So what was it?

The energy. While Flopsy had been able to sense it before, pulsing around and into Bunnicula, seeming to fuel him and possibly increase his inane laughter, that pulse had disappeared.

If only - she felt for Harey and Hopert's narrative again, despairingly, but there was nothing there. Earry then, or his narrative - didn't the spy always get the bad guy in the end? She tried checking the inner sense of Earry that she had used to find him here, but could only sense his closeness and a clear awareness of danger and inner echo or resonance with the shrill noise around them. Nothing.

No comforting sensation of narrative enveloping her, taking her into her needed role, as there had been when she began answering the questions posed by the elder archetypes. No awareness of the needs of the story, of what she must do in order to get to the next stage of the plot.

She was a team lead. She was supposed to have people who could help her, people she could manage, people she could lead. But here she was, on her own, and there was no role for her to play. Nothing she could do.

Nothing.

Except, of course, for invoking her own narrative.

She was on her own. Yes, Earry was with her, but he wasn't doing anything, and certainly wasn't up to saving the day. Her team couldn't help her: Alfalfa was probably in the midst of his own troubles, and Harey and Hopert had done the best they could just to get her here. The elder archetypes certainly weren't going to solve anything. They were the ones who had gotten the plot bunnies, including specifically one team lead Flopsy, into this mess.

If this wasn't a case of abandonment, Flopsy didn't know what was.

Flopsy steadied herself. She had been shivering too much. She was no frail little thing, unable to handle any little thing that might come up: she was a team lead. She was one of the best team leads in the business, and that was not something a plot bunny got to be unless she had some steel at her core.

Yes, she felt her ears reverberating painfully to the shrill piercing. Yes, she felt her heart breaking at Earry's continued immobility. Yes, she was in the coffin of a crazed vampire plot bunny.

But the rest of the plot bunnies were counting on her, and she had a time limit. The cleaners were coming, Bunnicula had said.

What was the motto of that National Novel Writing Month thing again? Flopsy was sure she had heard it when she was monitoring the Office of Letters and Light... something about just needing a deadline to make anything possible.

Now was not the time. She had a deadline, but she didn't know what it was, and she didn't know what to do. How did you defeat a vampire?

There was the stake through the heart option, which was classic, but she didn't have a stake, nor any good options for making one. Besides, what kind of stake would be impermeable for a plot bunny?

She was similarly suffering from a sore lack of holy water, nor did using daylight to disintegrate the vampire seem plausible. He had been outside plenty of times - all the greys had - but perhaps the light of Bunniption Base lacked some critical ingredient for the process, and the greys never left the Base. Or perhaps the bunny's fur offered him protection.

But then - in both cases Bunnicula's status as a plot bunny was helping counter his vulnerabilities. Perhaps instead some vampire trait could be exploited as a plot bunny's weakness, or perhaps she could target him as a plot bunny instead of as a vampire... And now, with whatever had happened to cut off his power source - he still hadn't noticed, Flopsy noted: he was still hopping in circles and laughing madly. Perhaps he had short-circuited? - his vampire side must be weak.

Stakes. Of course.

Flopsy straightened up from her huddled crouch, though she kept her ears tightly curled, and pounced.

Bunnicula wheeled on her, laughter silenced mid-ha, grey fur fluffing with aggression, ears standing straight up - but she hadn't pounced on him, or even tried to reach him: she had pounced to Earry's side, and was wrestling to move him.

She was small, but Earry was smaller. Flopsy drew on her narrative: she had to be able to do this, she knew she did, there was no one else, and besides, it was her own story. She would prevail. "I bet," she whispered. "I bet I can do this."

Then her paws somehow took a better grip, and she was carrying the small white rabbit, who now curled into a ball as if he were a hedgehog. Oh Earry, Flopsy thought, her heart aching for him, and she admitted it, finally: she loved him - but this was it. She had no time. Bunnicula was laughing at her again, and readying some attack. He had to be; that was his own narrative. Attack attack attack. That's why he had been chosen. There was no time! She had to do it now.

"I bet Earry," she said, stronger now, but still not audible even to herself with the incessant shrieking still filling the air. "I bet Earry, my love, my heart, that I can do this."

Bunnicula turned to her, raising up onto his haunches, and looking as if he were ready for whatever he was going to do - she couldn't let him - she threw Earry at him. Somehow her little rabbit arms did exactly the right thing, somehow her legs provided her exactly the right leverage, and she felt her own narrative course through her veins in a way it never had before when she had called on it to lend her strength.

The small white rabbit flew through the air, reaching Bunnicula at his chest level, exactly as she had intended - and then Earry flew right through Bunnicula, exactly as she had expected. They were both plot bunnies: they would both become immaterial automatically.

Except for one thing.

Plot bunnies were vulnerable to puns.

They were literary creatures, from the very beginning. While they were now branching into other media, literary techniques were very real to them. And Flopsy had just turned her love, her heart, into her stake in a bet, and thrown that stake through the heart of Bunnicula. His plot bunny side made the stake real, and his vampire side made it fatal - immaterial or not.

Silence fell, and in that sudden absence of volume, the pain of enduring the constant shrieking hit Flopsy suddenly. She fell, stunned, and stared at Bunnicula. She could see no sign of Earry.

The coffin flooded, suddenly, with words upon words upon words, black and red and printed in a Gothic typeface, barely a millimeter thick but so many hundreds and thousands that they rose in a cascade to jam the coffin to its brim. All the words ever written under the influence of Bunnicula, Flopsy thought sadly, scrabbling through them to find poor Earry. He wasn't a vampire, surely he would live...

But that was the quirk of her narrative. The protagonist would rise up against whatever threat was there, but the very means of her victory would mean a severe loss.

There were no words from Earry, but neither was he there. Flopsy felt within - nothing - no sign of Earry.

What had she done, she thought despondently, kicking at some of the letters, but they fell right through her. There was no space for her physical form in the coffin any more: she was immaterial.

She'd killed him; she supposed she needn't disrespect his legacy too.

Flopsy sighed softly, then headed back to the tower of the elder archetypes. Now she had prevented the takeover by Bunnicula, but what about his "cleaners"? And the novelists? And where was the energy from brain carrots going now?

As her mind teemed with questions, Flopsy forced herself not to think about Earry, but the question remained, burning beneath her calm exterior.