Walking up the winding tunnel that connected the village cavern to the surface Seinu hummed softly to himself as he clicked through his research notes, the text scrolling across the inner surface of his visor. He stopped mid-step and sniffed the air, looking around the tunnel and trying to place the scent he was picking up.
“Oh… it’s ice,” he looked up the sloping cavern floor and tapped the side of his visor, “Start new diary file,” the record icon flicked up and Seinu resumed his trek toward the surface.
“Hello everyone, so it’s the end of my second week as a vampire bunny and the sixth week since we arrived,” he paused and held up one of his fuzzy silver paws, wiggling his fingers, “It’s weird… I’ve adjusted to this body quite well but the way my front paws work is still fascinating to me and yes I call them paws you see their structure is so very different to avali wing-hands.”
He turned his paw over, showing off the purple paw-pads nestled amongst the very, very thick covering of fur, the small stubby fingers tipped by little claws, “They are… amazing and you see… well no I don’t need to stand here narrating about them, you’ve seen the videos you've seen how they work but it's fascinating.”
He lowered his hand and looked around the tunnel, “So this is the entrance tunnel, I'm actually walking past various storage rooms and even a few individual family caves but you'd never know just by looking," the bunny held up both hands and stopped walking, "I know you want to see me open a room but I can't, it'd be rude and I'm not about to broadcast their primary camouflage and security system to the whole Nexus. Besides, there’s nothing of huge importance for anybody who isn’t a bunny; the storage rooms from what I have learnt contain material collected by foraging parties; some long lasting fruit they managed to carry back home whole, or some soft material akin to straw that they can use to make beds for newcomers, repair existing ones or things for general usage like hat making material."
Seinu resumed walking, "Anyways, I will tell you what I'm up to today, I’m on my way back to base-camp to pick up some more advanced tech. There are a few things I want to scan that my visor can’t handle and it’d be good to see everyone.”
Pausing in the entrance to the village Seinu let his eyes scan over the empty snow-field outside, letting his visor get a good recording of the glorious view. There was a small, snow covered clearing with several sandstone outcroppings and tangled sprays of ferns and long leafed vines. Looking at it there was no indication it hid the entrance tunnel Seinu was standing in. After a few metres the forest resumed, the Cinati trees and then the sandstone mountains rising high in the distance. He sighed happily at the sight then continued speaking, “It’s been a fascinating time, I’d say I am pretty integrated into the village now and I’ve gotten used to this body and its quirks… heck I could smell the ice and snow from like half a mile underground and that was just… normal.”
He peered around at the twilight gloom outside, “Oh the sun is setting, well time doesn’t mean much when you live underground.”
He paused to let his visor pan across the view again, letting the recording catch the changing view as the sun sank toward the horizon. Whilst it was busy setting the vampire bunny started breathing deeply, sorting through all the scents and sensations he could detect, listening quietly with his ears to the world of Babupekkakerok at sunset. It was a glorious sight to his eyes, the clouds to the east were surrounding the brilliant ochre orb that was the sun as it seemingly hung above the tips of the mountains. Due to the way the world rotated the sun rose in the west and set to the east and the way the red supergiant’s light refracted through the atmosphere there was a very light green tinge to the sky as the sun began to set. The colours streaming out through the sky were glorious; that green tinge to the sky was accompanied by yellow, red and orange lances that set fire to the swirling clouds and painted the pristine snow on the upper slopes of the mountains in a kaleidoscope of wondrous colours.
It was beyond pretty and Seinu was content to just watch the overlapping colours as they moved across the landscape. As the orange orb dipped behind the mountains deeper, darker colours slowly bled into the effect, blues and indigos with stripes of the orange and yellow slowly becoming thinner and narrower as the darkness of twilight crept across the snow fields.
Seinu sighed and sat down, recording and watching the scene, he was in no rush to get moving, “That is glorious,” he murmured, “I know the visor recording won’t show this to you all properly… but when I upload it accessing the actual visual memory from this, you’ll see that this sunset through bunny eyes… will change your life.”
Standing up Seinu peered around cautiously and inhaled again. “Ok, time to go to the base-camp, the sun has set and twilight itself is a dangerous time to be outside; bunnies avoid sunset and sunrise," Seinu said, "While night-time is slightly more dangerous as there are nocturnal predators, some foraging groups prefer going out in the dark because hiding is much easier. Their enhanced vision may not be as powerful as during daytime, but it proves to be an excellent asset when working along with all their other powerful senses.”
He looked around and took another deep breath. “It helps of course that living in the semi-darkness of the caves also helps bunny eyesight adapt to operating quite well at night. Under the light of the two moons here we get a little bit better illumination then we do in the caves,” he paused to sniff, then sniffed again, “Though I can’t smell anyone right now or I’d show you a night foraging party… but I am sure we’ll spot someone as we head to camp.”
Seinu started off across the snow, half conscious of the way his tail started to swish and brush back and forth behind him, “That reminds me, watch this, Vampire Bunny tails are extremely dextrous, switch to rear-view recording.”
Seinu strolled along, slowly, moving from shrub to shrub in short scampering bursts of movement. Letting his tail do the work, recording it for his records as it swept out his tracks, he’d gotten a lot better at it since he last walked this path. After about a hundred metres Seinu had pretty much stopped thinking about the journey; scampering from shrub to bush to rock, moving in quick, sharp bursts, skittering from cover to cover like he’d been taught, not resisting the instincts his short bunny body wanted to employ.
He left his visor recording, wanting to capture the journey back to camp. It was nice out and at each piece of cover he stopped to listen, to feel the atmosphere and smell, eyes watching for everything. It was a nerve wracking way to exist in the world, so very different from the confident swagger of an Avali. After all, if a predator jumped a space raptor from Avalon they’d get a flechette round to the face or an aerogel blade slicing them in two.
Seinu didn’t have either of those with him, scampering through the thick shrub covered, snow coated landscape for the all natural experience. However, he was about two thirds of the way back to the camp when everything went side-ways: The dark sky suddenly exploded into light as a sheet of bright blue-white lightning lanced between the clouds. Seinu froze and stared up in shock, pausing mid-way between two pieces of cover and then he let out an instinctive ear-splitting shriek as a peal of thunder tore the silence of the forest apart in a low, rumbling boom practically right on top of him.
He hurled himself behind the nearest rock, face-planting in the snow and whimpering as another peal of thunder screamed across the heavens. Lightning was flickering across the clouds almost constantly, turning the world into a sharp black and white flickering nightmare as the thunder boomed and growled and grumbled like a chorus of screaming bunnies.
“S-Screaming Snow!” Seinu whimpered as he clutched his ears and looked around in alarm at the roaring landscape. It was terrifying, he needed to get out of the open and just run for it, darting across the snow in a straight line for an outcropping of sandstone he remembered being nearby. Seinu fled on all fours, racing across the snow as hailstones started to rattle out of the sky, chunks of ice clattering against rocks, striking trees and rattling bushes, adding a whole new layer of noise to the already cacophonous screaming coming from the clouds.
It was overwhelming and terrifying in a way Seinu was not prepared for, and it went worse when a Cinati fruit hit the ground nearby. It detonated like a bomb going off, fragments of shell, fruit and juice splattering in all directions. It was only the first, soon more of them were dropping as the wind and hail knocked the ripest fruits off the branches. One of them landed practically in front of Seinu, soaking him in a wave of sticky dark red juice. If he hadn't been screaming in terror he'd have stopped to comment on how the force of the impact reduced most of the fruit's flesh into a liquid that splashed out to soften the ground for the seed inside.
Normally, as an Avali, he would’ve been a lot calmer; he would’ve been talking and explaining how the whole phenomena called by bunnies “Screaming snow” was just a thunderstorm happening during snow or hail. Seinu would’ve been explaining that actual water rain was extremely rare to the point many had never seen it, and he would’ve been filming the event.
Instead he just shrieked, all his senses overwhelmed by the discordant noises and quick changes in colour and illumination caused by the lightning flashes. His voice got lost in a rolling boom of thunder as the wave of fruit juice slapped over his fur. Without hesitating he changed direction in a mad dash to get away from the dangerous tree line. He should have checked before leaving if it was safe, but he’d been so confident a quick walk back to camp would be fine. He’d not asked anyone. The fact he hadn’t been able to smell anyone setting out for the night should have clued him in that something was up, the bunnies had probably looked at the clouds and knew it meant a storm was coming but Seinu had just wandered on out into the open without checking with anyone.
It took a couple of minutes to reach an out-cropping of rock, a different one to his original destination after his crazed run. He'd lost all track of which direction he'd gone in but it was shelter so Seinu darted into the shadow between two boulders and then froze as there was a lull in the thunder. He had a moment to brush hailstones out of his neck ruff and try to scrape some of the sticky Cinati juice out of his fur. He was a mess again, if he survived this he'd need another bath but for now he tried to focus on looking around for better cover. He’d just laid eyes on a cave entrance when another peal of thunder screamed out of the night sky. He let out a piercing shriek and darted up the path, scrambling over rocky ground on all fours, fleeing on pure instinct as he barrelled into the cavern to get out of the open.
He tripped over a rock just inside the entrance, unfamiliar still with running on four feet. He tumbled, rolled and fetched up against a boulder not far from the entrance. Lying upside down he could see the outside world, thunder screaming, lightning flashing, the world coming in and out of focus as bright white light and black shadows danced across the snowfields.
Shaking his head Seinu rolled back onto all fours and fled deeper, he had to get away from the entrance. He got about five feet before something caught his shoulder, then his left foot and he tumbled forwards but didn’t hit the ground. Something waxy and sticky caught his fur, it rolled and wrapped around him, suspending him in a tangled mess of webbing.
“Wha…” Seinu shrieked and struggled, trying to bite and claw the sticky strands holding him. The flashes of light from outside let him see the web he was tangled in. It filled the back of the cavern wall to wall and he’d stumbled right into it. He was bound and wrapped and as he struggled and tried to claw his way free he tugged and vibrated the strands and made the whole web vibrate.
Something moved, no, it scuttled past the periphery of his vision. In the intermittent on again, off again bright white light of the lightning Seinu’s eyes caught something moving. The vibration senses in his feet picked up the approach and he turned his head, pinpointing with unnerving accuracy just what direction it was coming from. Lifting his head against the webbing he stared up into the face of horror, every flash of lightning brought it closer and closer like an old stop motion picture! Except this was real and was scuttling across the webbing like it was a flat road.
It was huge, chitinous, with more legs than any sane creature should have and a massive head full of sharp mandibles and antennae, along with a terrifying collection of eyes. Seinu shrieked as it moved up to him, loomed out of the flickering darkness, pausing for a second to wave its antenna over him and identify what it caught, then lunged forward and brought its mandible filled head down atop the vampire bunny.
… Crunch …
WARNING: Visor offline!
Ifelse was having a good day! Although days were an interesting concept when you were both an artificial intelligence and lived in space. They understood the concept of what a day was, the period of time it took Avalon or another planet to rotate. But they didn’t update it when they arrived at a new planet, sticking with Avalon’s standard number of hours to dictate the length of their day.
It was just one of the strange inconsistencies Ifelse had encountered since coming on-line. But it was a fun one to explore and think about! Currently the AI was thinking about many things, their thoughts and being spread out across the length of the Odyssey.
From the bridge monitoring communications to the navigational array maintaining stable orbit to the reactor controls keeping the singularity in order, Ifelse was everywhere. They were also investigating an error in the climate control system. The Odyssey was struggling with the temperature difference between the Avali snow-room where they had pitched their tents and the rest of the residential deck. It wasn’t major but if he didn’t fix it, the carefully controlled biosphere inside the Odyssey could go crazy with too much heat being pumped into the other rooms.
It looked like the temperature regulators in the walls hadn’t been installed correctly, or where the wrong spec for the temperature loads. The diplomatic suite tended to have the temperature up near 18°C (64°F) which was causing issues when the Avali quarters were around -15°C (5°F). Still it was an interesting problem and one Ifelse had been designed for, managing and guiding the Odyssey and the myriad systems that made it a safe, stable and effective starship was their thing!
Of course Taran had built them to be so much more than just a simple system management program. Ifelse was a truly sentient AI and was still learning what they liked! Like writing stories, creating music, learning about alien cultures, operating the communication system and keeping track of their crew! That was an endless task in and of itself the crew never quite acted according to logic.
Coalescing all the current info on the crew, Ifelse tapped into the logs, cameras and software at their disposal to check in on them all, it was useful to know where everyone was. Firi was in her workshop doing things to her hammer, Ifelse was never entirely comfortable having that thing on-board, what was she… they stared at what she was doing and manifested an illusionary avatar of themself next to her.
“Hello Firi,” they chirped in their friendly voice, “I can’t help but notice you have built a wave-motion plasma generator.”
“Hello,” Firi replied, not even looking up from the device she was installing into her hammer, “Shut down monitors in this room and delete logs.”
“You know I can’t do that Firi,” Ifelse admonished her, “Captain’s orders, now I am afraid I do have to…”
His programming in the vehicle bay glitched as Firi chirped a series of codes and he found themself archiving the encounter, “Firi! You know Selenu is going to find this log as soon as she gets back!”
“She’ll try you mean,” Firi grinned over her hammer at the AI and they pouted, putting their little front paws on their hips, “And you can’t help her.”
“I’ll find a way,” Ifelse grumbled in a good natured way, “She nearly found the last one, I am getting better at dropping her hints.”
Firi laughed and hefted her hammer, “She is, I’ll have to review the game, you are developing some real sneaky code run-arounds Ifelse.”
“Well it is thanks to you…”
As Ifelse continued conversing with Firi, the two of them sparring about her attempts to hide her crazy projects from her sister, the AI manifested another copy of himself in Taran's room, sending a soft chime ahead of themself first.
“Hello,” they chirped at their creator Taran, “Sorry to interrupt but I just received a reply to your query about the old Earth devices you acquired from the villagers.”
Taran was playing a game on his NES, which was an archaic machine! It had no wireless access ports at all, it was a mysterious device to Ifelse, one seemingly built just to play these games on. The current game was a strange multi-level of what was supposed to be coloured ice made up of blocks. Taran was a sprite in what the AI could call a “blue parka." They had a mallet and were leaping up to smash the ice and the monsters walking back and forth atop it.
Ifelse had seen the high graphics games they had available yet Taran would spend nearly as much time playing this as he would modern games. The AI hadn’t quite worked out what the appeal was, yes, but as long as they were happy they could take Popo and Nana on an ascent to victory as often as they liked.
"Oh great news," Taran paused their game and started accessing the data in the message they had received. The teal and orange Avali moved to his private workbench and started to review the ancient instruction manuals and construction blueprints.
"Does the data contain the information you need?" Ifelse asked curiously.
"Oh yes," Taran smiled, "With this I can restore these machines to full working order, it'll be fun."
"Very well Taran, I'll leave you to it, if you need me I'll be just a call away."
Withdrawing their awareness from Taran's room the AI left their creator to their retro machines and focused their primary awareness on answering an in-coming call from the Captain. As they were loading up the call the AI became aware that Seinu’s visor had flipped from upload to live feed. Ifelse checked the incoming data from the planet below and saw that indeed the GPS locator in Seinu’s visor was now updating in real-time and he was on the move between the Bunny village and base camp. The weather was looking a bit un-fun, Ifelse hoped he didn’t get too snowed on during his walk back.
“Hello Captain,” Ifelse greeted Selenu as the live feed to her personal ship connected, “How goes the great Oort Cloud exploration?”
“I am about to start,” Selenu chirped. The video of the lime blue Avali showed her snug in the cockpit of her ship, “I just wanted to get a real-time scan of the rock field ahead of me before I go in there.”
“Certainly,” Ifelse checked the beacons around the system’s Oort cloud, “All beacons are on-line, transfering live map data to you now.”
“Thank you,” Selenu smiled, “It's good to feel useful, I don’t have anything else to do whilst Seinu is settling in down there, helping out with the survey is practical work, how is everyone?”
“Taran is repairing old Earth machines, Ki is asleep, Firi is working on her hammer and Chantelle is still surveying a moon around the gas giant,” Ifelse said with a tolerant smile, “I will keep a live monitor on you, if you need anything let me know.”
“Great, see you soon,” Selenu signed off and Ifelse watched on the scanners as the captain's vessel leapt off at speed. Whilst they were doing that they received a small alert from Mobile Geological Lab 4 and shifted a portion of their primary awareness across the system to the sixth moon of the gas-giant.
Manifesting an avatar of themself above the circular coffee table in the lounge they pulled up the most recent data from the lab. They had of course been aware of it, the lab was part of the Odyssey's geological survey suite but had been running autonomously but now there was a silent alarm so Ifelse let its data percolate up into their primary routines.
“Oh… again, I see,” they smiled in a fond way and turned around to look up through the open shutters on the roof. Outside the alien sky was clear and full of stars and the brilliant ochre and green bands of the Gas Giant. They then turned their fond smile on Chantelle. She had fallen asleep at the desk again, burning the midnight ammonia long after they should have gone to bed. The blue and white Avali had left a note about this situation and it was nearly a daily ritual at this point.
“Chantelle,” Ifelse chirped softly, padding over to gently nudge her with their hard-light hologram, “Chantelle…”
She stirred awake and chirped then shook her head, pushing back her ears, “Oh, thanks Ifelse…” she stood up and stretched, “Shouldn’t sleep at my desk,” she patted their avatar on the head as if they were a real animal and that was nice, “Can you close the shutters and hmm set an alarm for four hours please.”
“Alarm set, sleep well Chantelle,” Ifelse let their primary awareness leave the lab and set its autonomous systems to monitor things
Satisfied their charges were all safe and secure, Ifelse paused for a status review of the crew, a portion of them was still arguing with Firi, another was watching Selenu in the Oort cloud, Ki was still asleep and not in a drunken stupor for once, a natural healthy sleep. Chantelle had also dozed off and with the ship ticking over nicely, Ifelse was able to settle down and switch their primary focus toward one of their personal projects. All the while data sleeted around their awareness, system diagnostics, reports and system status information. All of it was part of their autonomous routines working and cataloguing, semi-sentient portions of their mind and sub-processors making decisions. It was a good day and Ifelse had time to start putting together a new song. They'd just assembled a line of notes when an alarm went off pulling their primary focus back to the info-feed from Seinu’s visor.
“Oh dear,” Ifelse was caught off guard by this emergency code and assembled themselves a virtual bubble, forming their avatar in the middle as they pulled up the last packets of data from the visor. There was no need for the virtual space, the AI could review the data without it but they found it helped them focus on emergency tasks and it was nice to manifest and not just be data, it made things feel more real. When working on something like this it helped focus his primary thoughts to be able to interact in a tactile manner with the data.
The visor had dropped off-line abruptly, there was no carrier signal at all which had triggered the alarm. That shouldn’t be possible, even if the synthetic Avali had gone back into the village to avoid the storm covering the land it would have gone back to periodic update mode.
“Oh this isn’t good,” Ifelse muttered to themself, the final upload from the visor had been a partial emergency squawk. It had never finished sending it before all data dropped so Ifelse went back a few seconds, extracting the info that had been being uploaded.
There wasn’t much useful data, just standard stuff, an archive of his latest video diaries, bio-synthetic monitoring info, interface controls between Seinu’s synthetic body and the visor. The physiological data showed he’d been suffering stress but quite frankly a Vampire Bunny being stressed wasn’t news! But the visor was definitely offline which meant Ifelse couldn’t track Seinu at all and that was bad. While Seinu’s visor couldn’t send much data from the deeper caves, that would required the visor to move in that direction and then move out of range. This time the visor information disappeared all of a sudden while being on the surface, and that was a red flag. There was a feed from the visor’s camera so the AI pulled the last complete image it had recorded out of the stream and threw it up into his virtual space.
“What…” Ifelse tilted their virtual head, staring at the image, it was dark and it took a moment for the artificial Jakub to work out what they were seeing! It was a bug, with huge serrated mandibles spread wide, mid lunge toward the camera, “Oh hell…”
Ifelse dropped out of the virtual space, the whole review had taken less than two seconds and the AI raced ahead of Firi’s own monitoring systems. She kept tabs on her family and their wellbeing but in this instance Ifelse beat her programming to the punch. They scrubbed everyone's privacy settings, dropped a virtual avatar on each member of the crew no matter if they were asleep, working or building doom hammers and announced their arrival with an alarm followed by the pronouncement.
Warning: Emergency Upload from Packmate Seinu's visor. Signal interruption is terminal: Visor Not Responding, all telemetry has ceased, this is a code one emergency: Packmate in Danger.
That got their attention, everyone’s eyes turned towards them and Ifelse dedicated more processing power to hold five conversations at once. Their nice quiet day was about to get very busy, very exciting and Firi was on board and Selenu wasn’t… oh yes, it was going to get messy.
With a start, Seinu sat bolt upright and grabbed his head, it hurt so much and he felt woozy and confused. The last thing he properly remembered he’d been struggling in a web and then… then… lightning flashed and in the stark white light he saw the bug. It was lying on its back and half its head was missing as if it had been fried at close range by a blast of lightning.
Groaning, Seinu rubbed his temples then froze, his fingers pressing against smooth synthetic skin. He ran his hands down his body and found that from the neck up his body was flowing, shifting purple slime. It was gently finishing the job of reconstruction… his ears solidifying and fur creeping out to once again disguise him in fuzz.
"Oh no… oh no, that isn't good," he pulled his hands away from his head, muzzle scrunched up as he tried to remember and then spotted something sparkly and orange in the next flash of lightning. It was a piece of the crystal from his visor and there next to it a twisted section of the frame and… as the next flash of lightning went off Seinu backed away from the corpse! A large chunk of one of the ear cushions was nearby, clearly bitten in half! The bug had caught him in its web and bitten the head off! He remembered it now, those mandibles lunging at him and when they squished around his slime like flesh and shattered his visor, Seinu's operating system defences had kicked in with an emergency response and electrocuted the sack of shit!
Of course that explained why he had a head-ache, his gelatinous body had reconstructed itself but the memory, the pain he was feeling in his head was mostly likely caused by the discharge of energy. This was not a good thing, that sort of defence response used up a lot of his stored power reserves and then he'd had to replicate enough new slime to fix his head; Unhelpfully his body had kept the memory of him being eaten alive!
“Oh no… No no no!” Seinu whimpered, “How long was I out for I…” and then froze as the next lightning flash showed him something moving! Another bug… as big as the first one and coming to investigate.
Seinu screamed and bolted out of the cave, running out into the whirling snow, hail and thunder on all fours. He didn’t stop, didn’t look, just ran, plunging down the hill before he tripped over a rock and tumbled head-first into the dell at the bottom of a Cinati tree. Groaning, dizzy from what had happened and confused, Seinu thumped his head, “Give me access,” he shouted at his head, “Come on… this is an emergency!”
The only thing he got was the same message he always got since he’d woken up in this form and tried to access his usual command system,
“No!” Seinu whined and whimpered, “This is an emergency, come on unlock, unlock!”
Staggering to his feet as the words faded away, Seinu stumbled through the snow, moving away from the Cinati tree. In a storm like this he was half expecting a fruit to fall out of the sky and just squash him. No, wait, that had already happened, that's why he was covered neck to toe in a sticky layer of gooey red juice. Thankfully it seemed like the loose fruit had all fallen so that danger had passed, but he had no idea which direction to go in. Everything was dark or starkly lit for a second by the lightning and the only thing he could smell was snow, ozone, Cinati juice and his own fear.
Stumbling forward he landed on all fours against a steep bank that led up above him. He stared for a moment but decided against trying to climb it in this snow then turned left and walked along it and got about three feet when…
SNAP
Something lifted out of the snow on either side of him, two oval shapes looming up out of the dark with interlocking fronds at the top that swung around. Seinu let out a startled shriek of alarm as the two thick, spongy walls of the plant crushed him between them. It happened so fast, snow was thrown everywhere as in seconds the snapping plant slammed shut around him. Squirming desperately Seinu managed to brace himself against the crushing weight of the slick plant walls, head tilted back he could see up as the fronds on top wrap against each other, drawing the two halves together, helping to seal it shut.
“Snapping Death,” Seinu whined, struggling to get his legs under himself and brace harder. He’d been shown some of these from a distance, plants that could snap up a bunny (or local wild-life) and digest them! They grew mixed in amongst the rest of the local flora, hidden under the snow or under the spreading leaves of fern-like bushes waiting for the unwary to step on them!
Whimpering, squirming and scrabbling against the gooey walls of the plant, Seinu could feel them trying to squish shut the final few inches, to seal him inside a tight cocoon of living flesh so they could quietly and calmly digest him alive! Already the walls pressing against his back and paws were getting slick, beginning to ooze the acidic sap that would if he allowed it melt him into plant food.
“No… no no no!” Seinu whined and kept struggling, pushing against the plant, squirming and digging the claws on his feet into the slick flesh of the plant until he was able to get purchase. The slick flesh of his prison carried on trying to crush him but the Vampire Bunny poured all his strength into not letting it. He was literally standing on his claws, wiggling them to create divots in the plant he used to leverage his body against the trap. This took all the force his body could muster, holding himself tense, muscles straining to keep his claws in place. This allowed him to form a very small hollow where he could slide his legs up, dig his claws in again and climb, forcing himself higher up the plant. Each inch of progress required the full strength of his bunny body; he'd never really appreciated the strength hidden beneath his fur, bunnies were small balls of muscle and right now that strength was the only thing giving him a chance at survival.
Thiln had taught him, if you ever get caught in Snapping Death you had to climb higher. The closer to the top you could get the more leverage you could muster to force the interlocking fronds apart. It was hard though, so hard, Seinu hadn’t been prepared for the physical struggle, he’d already been half exhausted after his body zapped the bug that bit his head off now he was having to fight a plant!
Whimpering Seinu sagged and the plant squeezed in, the walls of slick flesh moving closer. The tiny cavity of space he’d made for his body grew more restrictive, the walls of the plant threatening to squish shut and seal his fate.
“No,” he shouted and pushed out with his arms and legs and scrambled desperately to pull himself up. It was so hard, he struggled, clawing his way up inch by inch, fur slowly becoming slick and soaked in the gooey sap oozing out of the plant’s flesh. It tingled which wasn’t a good sign, it smelt… really nice too, a thick, gooey, soporific sort of scent that encouraged him to close his eyes and go to sleep.
“Fuck off,” he shouted at the plant and managed to claw his way another inch higher, “Fuck off, fuck off, fuck off,” he repeated the mantra, tears rolling down his cheeks as for a good thirty to forty minutes the slime-avali turned vampire bunny forced his way up, up, up until with a wet gooey sound the fronds at the top of the plant started to separate!
Seinu had to push out with all his might and as the plant finally opened back; with a last “Fuck off you damn thing!” he threw himself forward into the snow and prayed he didn’t land on another hidden plant! Thompf… he landed in fresh snow. That snow had lessened the impact of the land, that coupled with the lower gravity meant it didn’t hurt as much as he expected. More thunder roared overhead and Seinu bolted up the bank, scrambling through the snow, clawing at the rocks in a bit of a blind panic to get to the top of the incline he’d decided was too steep to climb in the storm. Reaching the summit he fell forwards and just hugged the snow for a bit, sobbing softly before he forced himself up and looked around.
He still had no clue where he was but he could smell something… there, a fruit! Through the flicking light of the storm which finally seemed to be calming down he could see a vine laden with fresh fruit! He was exhausted, his limbs trembling and so he staggered towards it, the promise of food was too much for his tired, exhausted, traumatised brain to resist. He’d all but retreated from thinking and was operating on bunny instincts alone, tired, confused, befuddled bunny instincts that just wanted fruit! Pushing himself up onto his hind legs he reached for the alluring pear-shaped globe, took a step forward and fell through the snow into the hidden gourd buried in the ground.
He was so tired he didn't even scream before he landed with a splash in the thick gooey sap that filled the bottom of the underground pitcher plant! Above his head the thick, wide leaf that had been casually covering the top of the gourd gently curled back up into position to provide a platform for the snow to land on and hide the leaf and hidden trap from sight. Splashing around in the thick, tingling, acidic sap Seinu managed to get to the edge of the gourd and cling to the side of it, even though that action was half hearted. Some final reserve of strength and the quiet desire not to die made him dig his claws in and half pull himself out of the stinging liquid.
Looking up, the vampire bunny whimpered in despair, there was no way he could climb back out of this thing and force his way past the leaf! He was exhausted… he could barely hold himself up out of the sap as it was, he was starting to slip and the furry pom-pom on his tail was entirely soaked and dragging him down, an extra weight he couldn’t fight against. Whimpering, Seinu let his arms relax and fell backwards, floating on his back in the sap and staring up at the dimly lit underside of the leaf that covered the way out.
“Is this what their lives are like?” he asked no one in particular as he floated there, trapped inside a plant that was going to try and digest him. He had no internal HUD, no nanite-sized communication systems with which to call for help. He was just a bunny, a tired, exhausted bunny floating in the bottom of a plant that was going to mulch him… and worse, so much worse: He could still smell the fruit!
This was so unfair…