The pack-lounge was cold, the air was frigid even but for once it wasn’t giving Firi the usual sense of comfort. The air was tense; Firi huddled inside her cloak listening and trying to work out what was wrong; then it dawned on her; it was the silence. Avali rooms were never silent, someone was always chirping and yet right now everyone was lost in their own thoughts and not sharing. Someone had even silenced the wind-chimes, turning off the motor that kept them jingling inside the ship with its regulated atmosphere, it was stifling.
Taran was sitting quietly on a beanbag with Ki, the two holding hands but not speaking. Avali never sat still, usually they’d be helping one another groom loose down out of their feathers, singing softly to one another and yet there was just silence from her brothers.
Chantelle was slumped in a beanbag on the other side of the room, one hand gently petting Selenu’s leg as she stood beside her. Their pack leader was clearly distressed, yet it was a quiet distress; she was being strong and supportive and yet not sharing her worries. This was the worst thing ever for Avali and so rare even the training they’d had as kits wasn’t helping with the sense of stress. Avali packs loved one another so fiercely that having a disagreement that couldn’t be easily solved was like one of your hands fighting the other. Firi folded her cloak in half and draped it over a bean-bag whilst she waited for Seinu, her slime-bro was pacing back and forth opposite her, even in his vampire bunny shape she could tell he was agitated.
This would have all been so much easier for him if he could go back to Avali, but he was stuck, under strict orders not to change. The silence continued and Firi shook her head and took a deep breath. It had been quiet too long. They had to talk before it got worse.
“We need to…”
“Firi you…”
Both spoke practically at the same time and they both stopped. That was another issue, usually they could have just both spoken at the same time and everyone would have been able to hear and follow along. But in his current form Seinu couldn’t do that, his brain wasn’t wired for that as a bunny.
“You first,” Seinu said quietly, the silver bunny sitting down on a beanbag, “We need to solve this.”
“We do,” Firi said firmly, “Seinu, bro,” She moved forwards onto her knees and caught his hands in hers, looking into his eyes, “You need to put the rulebook down and listen to your heart…”
She glanced around at the others, “We’ve been here for… what? Three months now? We’ve gotten to know the bunnies in the villages we are visiting. Yes I am a bit too enthusiastic and ok, maybe chain-guns were a poor choice of weapons but it was fun and more importantly, we are helping them!”
“For fun? We can’t just ignore the rules,” Seinu said, squeezing Firi’s paws, “I spent months being trained on the correct contact procedures, what we can and cannot do, we are not trained in uplifting, in educating an entire society.”
“We aren’t doing that though,” Firi said firmly, “We are already interfering by just being here. What’s the point of befriending them if we just walk off into the sunset without helping them even a little bit?”
Seinu pulled his paws back and tugging at his neck-ruff, playing with the thicker fur for a moment, “Yes our presence is a disruption,” he glanced at the room, “But there is a difference between introducing ourselves, speaking to them, learning their customs and actively meddling with their way of life, imprinting our ideals and societal views on to theirs.”
“We aren’t teaching them to be avali, or to think like avali or adopt our customs,” Chantelle said gruffly, “We are just showing them useful things.”
“But how do we ensure our ideals, our views don’t override theirs?” Seinu asked, “Their whole society is still fragile after nearly being eradicated, what right do we have to impose our morals or ethics or technology on theirs? What will be lost and never developed or discovered because we interfered?”
The slime bunny pointed at Taran, “You’ve been repairing the junk and trinkets they have collected and decorated their homes with. I saw the tape player you repaired so they could hear the music on the tapes they have. Old Earth magnetic tapes, introducing new music and lyrical themes to their culture, is that too far? How are we to judge or make that decision?”
He turned to face Firi, “You fell out of the sky on wings of flame to rescue me, how has that affected the bunnies? They are impressionable and lovely and so kind, but they are vulnerable too.” he shook his head and sighed, “Now you have started teaching them how to fight with spears! That is certainly going to change them, introducing weapons, changing their behaviour and way of life as a species who do not fight back!”
“Yes, and they need to change,” Chantelle said softly, sitting up, “Heck, if they do not change, if they keep cowering in the snow they will die out,” she gestured at a wall monitor showing an image of the planet below, “Maybe a hundred years ago they were advancing, when their species was spread all around the planet, but now they are stagnating: there are less than three thousand of them covering a tiny, three hundred and seventy square mile segment of one continent."
She stood up, the blue and white Avali's feathers poofing outward in anger before wilting back into despair, her distress was evident for all to see, "Based on the most generous population growth chart I can generate, they'll have died out in another century. They lose more children every day to predators than ever reach adulthood, they lose healthy adults every day too, a 70% mortality rate is a death sentence. As they are now they have stagnated and are teetering on the cusp of the extinction curve, it's all natural science at this point, something changes to make them grow or they slam into the pages of history as a species that didn't make it."
“That is worse than I suspected,” Seinu said, “But that just makes it even more out of our league, this is way above what we came here to do, that sort of radical shake up they need is not what we are trained to provide.”
Chantelle sighed, “We do not have time for Illuminate bureaucracy to decide to interfere in twenty years time,” she gestured and a hologram of Babupekkakerok deployed from a projector to hang above the room, “This is their planet. Three continents, not far off the size of Avalon. But unlike us, they have been wiped out across entire continents by an invasion that wasn’t even their fault. The Horkers, you’ve not seen the scans,” she shuddered and hugged herself. “When we came, I ignored part of your orders. I admit I felt guilty for doing so afterwards, but I didn’t scan the planet for minerals; I just wanted to know about the planet's surface. Then I found an anomaly and I looked into it. High density calcium deposits on the surface,” her head came around meeting everyone's eyes one by one, her body trembling, ears wilting and tears sparkling in the corner of her eyes.
Selenu grasped her arm and held her, speaking quietly, “Chantelle found them, the massacre sites, she brought this to me whilst you were in the infirmary Seinu, it is bad.”
“What do you mean massacre sites?” Ki asked, sitting forward with a frown, “What massacres?”
“It’s all here in the archaeological record,” Chantelle said, “The records and stories say the Horkers were hunting the bunnies as cattle. But the record hidden under the snow tells a different story,” she looked at Seinu, “The stories you have gathered from Tri and others, those are the stories from survivors after the Horkers had started eating them.”
She gestured and the holographic map started to glow with about eighty different locations spread across the whole planet, “Each one of these is the site of a massacre, clusters of villages rounded up and killed, their remains left there to rot in the snow. There are so many of them, young, old, the remains of eggs even, just piled there…”, her sadness gave way to anger she didn’t bother trying to conceal, “I don’t think the Horkers started out eating them, just killing them for fun, and then one of those bastards probably had a bite and realised how good they taste.” She shook her head, “We have no idea why Horkers came to this planet of all places, but they found a friendly species that wanted to be nice and all they saw was that they had a place to be as cruel as they wanted without repercussions. It isn’t right Seinu, they deserved a chance to flourish, to grow but these bastards came from out of space and murdered them and their civilization for no reason.”
She pointed at the hologram, “You can berate me later for doing this, but I also ignored Selenu’s order to leave it at just scans and I went down there in person and dug them up. I went to check several of these massacre sites… Do you know what they did first? It’s all there at the centre of the rings of bones if you dig through the snow and ice, right in the middle is a hole full of egg shells. Look at these photos. And this other photo. And this other photo,” the blue Avali flicked through several coloured images of plains of snow and ice that had been dug up, revealing the horrors she had just described, “You don’t need to be very smart to see what happened here.. They gathered all the eggs together, smashed them in front of the villagers first before then slaughtering them all,” she shuddered, “Then it changes, suddenly there are just pits full of eggs but no bones… entire villages had to watch their babies get murdered in their eggs then were probably shipped off world as live cattle to be slaughtered.”
Seinu just stood silently staring at the photos, his fur fluffing up in the bunny equivalent of distress and anger. Chantelle kept speaking, and Seinu didn’t dare interrupt her. He had never seen his sister speaking this angrily, with her feathered crest quivering. “And do you know what? This isn’t even the worst… the worst is what I am quite convinced is them having fun, a sports ground if you will, it took me a while to understand it but here.”
She moved the hologram, zooming in on a coastal region, “I found several of these, small islands off the coast absolutely littered with bones,” she stared at her brothers, looking each of them in the eye as she spoke, “It didn’t make sense, they are different from the village massacres, a small rocky island with no trees or plants about half a mile from the mainland with mountains of bones under the snow or littering the sea-bed between the island and the shore.”
“I really do not like the sound of this,” Taran whispered, his ears flat against his head, “Please tell me this isn’t as bad as I think it is?”
“It is worse” Chantele sighed, resting her head against Selenu in despair, “So much worse. I found the remnants of observation posts on the shore, perfect little Horker huts from which to watch the fun and games,” she stared at the hologram, “You have to understand the context of these sections of coast-line, water on the surface is often frozen, however, the heavy amount of salt in the water lowers the freezing temperature to around -15°C, meaning that the water surrounding these islands is not frozen. In addition, the islands and the way the cliffs and surrounding coastline surrounding the "sports area" are protected from the gelid winds, giving these areas actual proper beaches, tapering slopes of rock instead of just shelves of ice so unless the weather is being particularly cruel that day they are open and clear.”
“What did they do in these places?” Ki asked in his deep voice.
She took a deep breath, her arm trembling as she manipulated the hologram projector, displaying the remains of the Horker observation post she’d dug up. “They dumped them, they dumped bunnies on these islands, without food, with no water, no way out and then dropped some local predators on the island for fun, I found enough bones of each to work out what was going on,” she shuddered, “The Horkers were literally watching the local predators rip bunnies apart on a rocky island with no cover and if anyone did dive into the sea they either drowned as their fur became water-logged, got eaten by the local sea-life or, if a rare bunny somehow made it to the shore the Horkers would be waiting to celebrate the bunnies heroism by killing them. And no, it wasn’t a quick death. Due to the bone locations and the damage they had I can assure you Horkers went out of their way to make the bunny deaths as slow and painful as they could figure out. Probably for ruining their fun and surviving, they are that petty.”
Seinu was a little bundle of fuzzy, angry, upset, outraged fur, his eyes were wide and he was hyperventilating which was something to see in a slime creature that didn’t need to breathe. He was trembling in utter outrage but before he could speak or react Chantelle kept going, staring him down.
“Before you say anything, I wasn’t going to keep this as a secret. I was waiting until you recovered so we could sit down and talk about this,” she reached out a hand and placed it on his head, brushing back his mohawk, “Seinu, their society is dead, there isn’t anything down there for us to interfere with, the closest they come to art is making hats and weaving baskets. After a hundred years, where other species would have recovered, at least in part, all they do is breed, cower, run and die. Their numbers are declining because the shock their society went through destroyed it, their culture is as frozen as those bones hidden beneath the snow”
The blue Avali sat down and stopped talking. She had never exposed something this bad, let alone so angrily. Chantelle stared intently at her brother without another word. Seinu was about to talk, when Selenu spoke up. “We have to do something. The most prominent off-world member of their species, your friend Sher, the one bunny who brought his species to the attention of the Illuminate to the point they sent you, one of their rising stars, to learn more about them; that friend wrote a song about how they need to change.”
“H… He did?” Seinu said in surprise, looking at his sister. He was still trying to digest the information bomb that Chantelle had just dropped on him without even giving him time to prepare for it. “I don’t remember that one.”
“It’s on their newest album,” the lime Avali said, “It came out a week or so ago whilst you were still recovering.
“I missed that…” Seinu said softly, he glanced around the room and shook his head, clutching his stomach with both paws, he seemed to be in a lot of physical discomfort as his Vampire Bunny physiology struggled against the hate and anger churning inside of him
Selenu took a deep breath, rubbed her muzzle then turned to their siblings, looking between everyone before she turned back to Seinu, “I understand your point of view Seinu, it was the right one when we left Avalon, but it no longer applies now that we are here and have assessed the situation,” she walked over to rub his frizzy, fluffy mohawk, “A member of this species who happened to get a proper education is able to recognize they need to change. I know your problem: how can we justify changing their way of life, their culture and society? I know that ideally we would expect the Illuminate to send a pack trained in Societal Uplift… But even if they do it, it will take years,” the pack leader crouched down and placed her hands on either side of Seinu’s head, “We both know the pace at which the Illuminate takes non-urgent business, it’ll be tied up in committees for years. And I checked. They want reports on bunny culture and bunny society and physiology to update the nexus and show people, they make no mention of not interfering.”
“T… they shouldn’t have to,” Seinu grumbled in return, leaning back to look up at Selenu and trying to find the proper words. “There are ways to do this… methods we are meant to follow; teaching them the mineralogical make up of the water they drink and how it affects their children’s fur colour is very much in the too much advanced info column.”
“I disagree,” Chantelle said, “It doesn’t affect them, it is just an interesting fact and it isn’t even a fact they themselves will read anytime soon, unless we decide to teach them how to read and write our language and then give them access to the Nexus. This isn’t going to stop them from drinking the water.” She sat forward, “Seinu… if this was a purely un-contacted species we’d not even be talking to them. But that bridge was crossed when the Horkers introduced them to space and then slaughtered them.”
“We have to interfere,” Firi said, “You can’t expect me to get to know them, or any of us to make friends with them and do nothing. Especially when the planet is so damn deadly,” she squeezed Seinu’s paws tightly, “Go listen to that album that your friend, not even a random person but “your friend” released and tell me, with your hand on your heart and your wing folded at your side, if after that, and after everything that you, yourself, went through, experiencing first hand all what they have to endure on a daily basis, if you want them to keep being ignorant.”
She let go of Seinu’s paws and stood up, “Gra and Mri were taken back to the land, as they say. But these deaths, and many, many many others before, could've been prevented. We aren’t aiming to suddenly turn them into Avali 2.0 now without wings but with 100% more hats and fluffy tails. We are trying to give them at the very least an edge and higher chances of actually surviving and coming back to their families, the families YOU have been meeting in person.
She took a deep breath, “We can help them. We will leave eventually, and when we do it, I want to know we have made a difference. I want to know that my friends will have chances to live more than a few months because they now have the means to fight the extreme dangers of the place they happened to be born in.”
“Me too,” Ki said softly, still a bit sheepily. He had never been in this kind of a pack situation, not even with his old family, and he was scared of interrupting. It had taken a bit of bravery to speak up but Taran had been quietly encouraging him for the past couple of minutes, “Everytime I've gone to help them I’ve been listening to their stories, before the Horkers arrived these Bunnies lived in villages inside shallow surface caves. Now they are a species adapted to living in deep caves, and why?”
“That's easy to explain”, Chantelle said. “From the anthropological record most survivors were children or young adults who fled into the deep caves,” she waved a hand at the screens, “Then after escaping the massacre sights they left those caves behind, the ones with shallow surface entrances and wandered the wastelands, more of them dying until they could find the deep caves they live in now,” she shook her head and sighed, ears wilting,. “All those caves close to the surface are now inhabited by giant insects like the one who attacked you or other horrors. They moved in after bunnies had deserted them.”
Ki shook his head in despair. “Their stories literally say that after being massacred, the few remaining Bunnies survived not because the Horker King suddenly became enlightened and cared about his livestock breeding to replenish numbers like he told his people, but because the remaining bunnies moved into the deep caves they live in now”. The cybernetic Avali sighed, “Horkers either couldn't fit, you’ve seen how narrow and hidden the cave entrances are, or they dared not follow them due to the deadly animals. And if it hadn’t been for that, today we would be talking about a planet with only wildlife after the Horkers ate them all, they probably aren’t smart enough to stop just because numbers are getting low.”
Seinu was shaking. He tried to rub his muzzle to calm down. “I… don’t know,” he said, “Of course I want to help them! I am living as one of them and how they live is horrible!” he shuddered and hugged himself, “I almost got eaten, three times just because I went outside in a fucking storm. They live in holes in the ground and forage for food, and yet… and yet… Somehow they are still the friendliest, kindest, caring, race I’ve ever encountered. Hell, their gentle attitude goes against everything I've studied about primitive societies, where beings tend to prioritize their own well being.”
He wiped his eyes, trying not to cry, “Chantelle is all ready to go down there and teach them how to grow a plant that can make sure they don’t miscarry an egg in early development and I don’t know if it is going too far or not.”
Firi leant forward and engulfed Seinu in a hug, squeezing him tightly and he hugged her back and stifled a sob, “Brother... what happened to you was awful, and I don’t want to diminish how you felt, but you need to understand, it is fucking happening to bunnies every day, all day long, everyday, and they just die. If you hadn’t been made of super-slime you’d have been a dissolving mush of dead bunny before I even landed.”
She nuzzled his head and chirped, “I’ve sat through the training we all had, and sure, we aren’t supposed to interfere when we're visiting species. But I want to help, we have an obligation to help, this isn’t like the textbook encounters for meeting and learning about a space-faring civilisation, this is an off the book scenario.”
Firi chirped softly, “We can’t sit up here in our ivory tower, write notes on how they are living, what their culture is like then just leave. We are all involved here, and we have been from the very moment in which we made contact. We’ve made friends who have an ungodly high chance of dying. Even if we can’t fix everything we can give them a little bit of hope. And I personally am unwilling to accept no as an answer, because if this was in the opposite direction, with us being killed all the time, we would see our "friends" inaction as lack of care. Like they don't care enough to help us.”
Seinu stood up, hugged Firi and chirped, “I want to say yes… but… I need some time,” he hiccuped and groaned, clutching his stomach, his fur frizzing and dividing further, he was an angry, fluffy mess, “This… this is too much… I have to think about all this… I am going to my room. I'll have my answer for you later.”
“Ok bro,” Taran said, walking over and hugging him, “We will all be here until you make a decision,” he placed a hand on Firi’s head, “All of us,” he took a deep breath, “We are a pack, and that is more than just family, we act as one too… but for what it’s worth, I also didn’t know if what we are doing is right or wrong, you’re the one trained in all this stuff, I just make computers.”
He took something out of his robe and pressed it, “But before you go, I have something for you all to listen to,” he glanced around the room.
“What do you have?”, Selenu asked.
“Ifelse er… hacked the Horker ship from the moment it arrived, he recorded everything they said and did on their bridge from the moment they dropped out of warp to the moment they fled, I think we all need to hear it before Seinu goes to think. Please sit down.”
Taran played the recording, and everyone stared in horror and revulsion. Nobody but Taran had heard this recording before, not even Selenu. The bunny recipe ideas actually made Seinu collapse to all fours and throw up, either because he was still delicate from being ill or because he was currently inhabiting the body of one of the bunnies the Horkers were so gleefully talking about butchering. Firi knelt by his side and rubbed his back as he finished emptying and glanced at Selenu and Chantelle, both her sister’s ears were all the way down, with their feathers fluffed up. Both looked ready to go to war.
“This is why I believe now too that we have to interfere. Imagine what would have happened if we’d not been visiting, how many more times over the years have they “Harvested a Sample” to please their king?”
“It…” Seinu made a choking sound and pressed a paw to his mouth, making an unpleasant sound in his throat as he heaved but this time didn’t bring anything up. His expression was sickly, his fur was a ruffled mess of anger and stress. “It always seemed odd to me, how fresh the memories are. Like, sure, bunnies live for ages but the fear of Horkers is so palpable, it would not surprise me if they occasionally took some bunnies from the wild even if they are not supposed to… Ugh.”
“Will you agree with us then?” Taran asked, “That we should and can continue to help improve the lives of the villagers we have met?”
Seinu staggered to his feet and stepped back as a small drone rolled over to start cleaning up the mess he’d made, “I need to think… I love you all but I need to let all of this sink in. I didn’t know you were going to flood me with this sort of horror… And I’m way too angry to think cleanly. I’m sorry, I really need some time now” he staggered out of the room and Firi sighed and made as if to follow but Chantelle caught her shoulder.
“Give him space,” she said, “That body of his is full of conflicting instincts and his mind is in turmoil,” she looked around at the rest of them and held out a hand to poor Ki who’d been watching all of this in silence, he looked close to tears at seeing them all so upset, “It’ll be ok, I promise. Seinu is good, he’ll listen to his heart and come back to us soon.”
“I am certain, as well as we know him, that Seinu is going to make the right decision”, Selenu said. “But even if he doesn’t, as the captain and leader of this ship and the pack, I have the last word. I can promise you Ki, that our friends will not be abandoned just as they are right now.
Ki nodded and walked over to hug Firi and Chantele and in a moment Selenu and Taran joined them, all of the Avali just hugging one another, taking comfort in the presence of their family, wanting to be there, to keep pushing for what they thought was right. And they knew Seinu needed time to calm down, and like he had said, let everything sink in and work it out himself.
Lying in his room Seinu turned off the holoscreen on his new visor and just lay in the soft, quiet darkness as it closed around him. When he’d first started on this path he had been so sure he knew what was right or wrong, the path he had to follow. He’d also not found the dark this comforting, but after all these weeks of bunnies stuffing him in the dark whenever he had a panic attack or got overwhelmed by alien bunny senses he was starting to find it oddly soothing. Of course the proof that “darkness is soothing to bunnies” was not a natural instinct but related to nurture and how they were raised wasn’t as comforting as it might have been a few weeks ago. Not after everything he had been through and the awful dilemma now facing him, it felt like a hollow victory now when facing the stark truth of what had been done to this planet and its people. A nice little scholarly fact to go in his reports to the Director, without meaning or purpose beyond academic curiosity.
Raising one hand to his head Seinu sighed heavily and took off the two clips attached to his temples, they held the machinery that made his visor happen and dropped them onto the ground. For once, here in the safety of his room he was going to do without his visor and just for now quietly enjoy the darkness and let himself be. It was not easy, he wasn’t quite an Avali anymore, he was a suspension of weird nanite infused organic slime. Yet he’d been raised as an Avali, his core identity as a fancy, Illuminate educated feathered space raptor had never waivered when he shifted forms before. Now though stuck as a bunny; it was hard to ignore the instincts, the culture and the history; he was as much a bunny as he was an Avali right now. Changing shape had never affected him so deeply before, that was the source of some of his hesitancy and confusion, the war inside his mind between being an Avali or being a Bunny both had different demands. It wasn’t a war he could win by arguing with his brothers and sisters, but he had to make a decision. Help the bunnies, follow his heart or stick to the rules. Rolling onto his side he tried to put it out of his mind for now and picked up the small box that Selenu had delivered as a “get well” gift. He’d not had time to open it and so to put off thinking about the heavy stuff he pried off the lid he found a stack of plastic squares inside and carefully pulled each one out.
He had a feeling he knew what each of these was and he smiled fondly, as he turned them around in his paws and smelt them. Plastics, some sort of glass, paper… It was such a Selenu gift, with hints of Taran’s influence. The bunny ordered the lights up the tiniest notch, filling the room with a dim glow that was practically all he needed to see by. Spreading out the CDs he glanced at each one, the primitive Earth technology was so quaint when he could just order these albums digitally, in fact he did own most of them already, but there was something comforting about having the physical versions. He pulled over a holoscreen and scanned each one, bringing up the description of each album from the Nexus.
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Foreigners The first album of this band was a failure on its planet of origin, with little to no sales. However, once they started playing in space, they re-released it and it sold quite well. The duration of this album is quite short, lasting less than 30 minutes, and it has a very raw, untidy sound very similar to the Earth music style named “Punk rock”. |
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Extensions The second album of the band Moumantai Motherfuckers, released in the Earth year 2013, wasn’t a huge success but it got some fans. They kept the dirty music style, but the instruments started evolving in a more “metal direction”, adding some extra instruments and clean, high pitched singing. |
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Coordinates This album was released two years after the date they wanted thanks to a problem with a record studio (an Earth type of corporation whose job is to finance, promote a bands albums and book gigs), who had sent them to play at the Horker homeland. They managed to escape, ditched the record studio and released the album by themselves with five additional tracks, one of them being the famous “Cattle” that they played at the Ultra Music Festival 57. |
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Roads of Void The band started finding their definitive sound, as this album sounds like a polished followup to the previous one. It includes heavy distorted guitars, fast drumming and the bass lines tend to be bouncy and funky, the signature sound of the band’s bassist D. This album gained success because they practically gave it away for free, and it became so popular on Earth that they were invited to one of their big arena concerts, the “Awaken Open Air”. |
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Centiloquium Coven This album was released the day before the band performed at the Ultra Music Festival, held annually on popular tourist destination Warfaisser Station. According to them the title makes no sense, they just picked random words in Earthling. They re-recorded this album in Avali Core and sold a very limited batch of copies of it in some Avali colonies; its physical version is very hard to find, because unlike the “normal” version that’s common, apparently they only printed 300 copies of the version in Core. |
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Live at the Ultra Music Festival The band released this album a few months after the concert; it contains the whole performance and it was released in both audio and video formats. The Avali version of this album gives you an online code to download extra footage of the band practising and also commenting on the songs they filled their set list with plus why they chose them. |
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Graveyard Info not available yet. Come back later. |
Seinu held up the copy of Graveyard and after a moment rolled over, pulled the old fashioned CD player Taran had restored for him out from a drawer and set the disc in. He could have just ordered Ifelse to play the album from their data-store but there was something he needed right then and that was to feel the physical connection between the music and himself.
Thirty seconds into the first song and he was glad of the darkness, burrowed under the beanbag Seinu held his short stiff bunny ears and felt scared as the wailing screams of Vampire Bunnies shrieking and begging for forgiveness filled the room. It was.. It was deep, it was dark, the whole song rumbled on the lowest end of bunny hearing as it gave voice to the “Screams of the Dead ones” and then it leapt into the next song without a pause with a loud scream and a very fast drum entrance. Sher’s voice launched into a screaming shriek, “Graveland,” a song outlining the dangers of Babupekkakerok, the dangers Seinu had experienced firsthand. He absolutely agreed with the screamed chorus chanting “This is not your peaceful home!”.
Seinu stayed under the beanbag, gripping his ears and listening to the shrieking horror as each track clicked along. It was raw, it was too close to what had happened to him down there on that accursed Death Planet with its sweet, wonderful, kind sapient bunny species, yet the sound was bouncy and made him want to move his head. The songs didn’t ooze sadness, but pure rage.
Abyss of the Condemned was next; a song about getting lost and never returning home with a deep dark implication that the journey ends with your death at the hands of the dangers lurking in nature. It was overlaid with the terrifyingly distorted shrieks of the bunnies from the first track, giggling like sweet little innocent baby bunnies whilst the lyrics sang about how you skipped your way to your doom. The ominous xylophone only made the song sound much more creepy than it should have.
Seinu could have skipped to the song Selenu had told him about but he lay there in the dark, trembling and letting each song play itself out. Next up was Fuck Off, a shrieking wail in Bunny Song filled with anger against anyone betraying the bunnies for being nice, sweet and welcoming. That was followed by Horker’s Out, a rumbling, deep, throbbing, almost painfully deep song about how after all they did the Horker’s are still out there, living happy and carefree, being cruel and sadistic to anyone weaker than them but like true bullies will fold if anyone stands up to them.
Red Hell was an instrumental piece, usually a purely instrumental song would be a palette cleanser, a soft moment to reset but somehow the whole piece just made Seinu want to cry especially when it moved onto Arc of the Covenant, a song about the beliefs held by bunnies in general. Avali as a race didn’t have a religion as such; some individuals believed in spirits or souls or something beyond death but that was it. Most of them believed in logic, science and that life was life and after it that was all, at best the self that was you would return to the universe. Seinu for all his logical wisdom and Avali upbringing had spent too long and experienced too much life as a bunny over the past two months to not pick up at least some of their belief in the Great Protector.
Suddenly, when the chorus happened, the song switched gears, an impossibly fast drumming speed racing the song ahead. It was so intense Seinu wondered if Rowi was truly playing it or if it was just a sound effect. This chorus talked about the Great Protector of the Balance. Seinu whispered a quiet desire into his paws, almost begging them to help him make a decision. It was stupid, it was silly, it was inane there probably wasn’t any Great Protector yet the bunnies believed so fervently in him and the Great Balance. He didn’t believe in praying but here he was whispering for help, you never knew; maybe someone would be listening and that was sort of the definition of a prayer.
Shivering in the darkness as the album played out, Seinu wept, for what had happened to this sweet race, and in part for what had happened to him. He had always considered that feeling pity for yourself was annoying, but he finally indulged in it in the privacy of his own room. He was only in his thirties and twice now he’d nearly died, once when his life as just another Avali kit ended and just a few weeks ago lying in a pool of acidic natural solvent that even now was probably claiming an innocent bunny’s life. He still didn’t know, deep down in the darkest part of his soul if he was really Seinu, did the cute little avali kit whose feather’s used to match his twin sister in white and lime die that day when their still living brain, trapped in a dissolving body, with no chance of saving it was consumed by experimental slime infused with Avali medical nanites? What woke up on the operating table was Avali shaped, had silver and charcoal feathers and remembered everything that little kit had experienced, but, and Seinu could never ask this question… had the person who woke up been the same kit who went to sleep as the slime consumed them. After all beneath the surface he was slime, pure purple slime all the way through, had it been him who woke up or some new life with the memories of the sweet kit who liked watching the shiny machines print things.
The exhaustion of the weighty emotional decisions, the ancient memories, the deep, long hidden doubts, the sheer complex nature of what he had to decide coupled with the emotional rollercoaster of this dark album carried him off into a daze. Not quite asleep just lying there, vacant eyed and not really listening as he lost track of the next several songs.
There was just the soothing, comforting heavy weight of the beanbag, like a giant paw resting comfortably atop him, offering warmth and strength and a place to hide as he lay in the darkness. It was warm, his mind sort of switched off as the weight of everything weighed him down and then he started back awake as a crashing instrumental song came to an end and launched into Antihope. As soon as the lyrics began he knew this was the song Selenu had mentioned. Pushing himself up onto all fours, the beanbag rolling back he listened as Sher’s voice walked him through the bleak, quiet, despairing song. It was just like his sister described it, a song where Sher pleaded for the bunnies to start defending themselves instead of running away, reminding everyone how they would lose themselves and all hope if they didn’t finally stand up and yet there. Sher’s voice was the whispering despairing sadness that made you think it was too late, that the spark of hope had already died and the bunny species would never recover from what had been done to them.
As that song came to an end, however, another instrumental started, Seinu just lay there quietly, tears trickling down his cheeks again as he realised just how right his family were. If bunnies didn’t change they would spiral down the drain into a footnote in history, another failed species, their potential crushed by the Horkers, never to recover as the fear claimed their lives.
He was caught entirely by surprise when three minutes into the song Sher started to sing. It was a glorious moment of up-beat rumbling filled with the shining glorious promise of a light, that not all hope was lost. The Vampire Bunnies are, despite everything that had happened to them a happy species, if you welcome them into your life with open arms you will gain a friend for life. Not only that but despite their fear of space, the terrors of the world they live in somehow, someway the Bunnies still love and laugh, sing and welcome all with an open heart.
Wiping his snout and standing up, the hefty warmth of the beanbag rolling off his back Seinu moved as if to press the stop button but hesitated and sat back down to listen. Hugging his knees he trembled as Sher sang his way through the Screaming Snow which had way too many cymbal crashes that sounded like thunder for Seinu to be comfortable with. But he owed it to Sher to listen to the end and as the final rumbling crash of cymbals and drums spiralled down to signify the end of the storm the next song caught Seinu entirely off guard.
Passing away, started slowly, in a style so different to anything Seinu had heard on this album so far. A ballad that soared majestically, the bass and drums weaving a hard rock style anthem around the central tenet of Sher’s guitar and his glorious voice that stood in the “speaking tone” register, not forcing it super high or low nor screaming it, even if at times his voice sounded raspy and louder than usual. He was just talking with some melody, taking the listener on a journey through his thoughts.
This exhaustion
It's driving me so mad.
I cannot stop the the flow of tears.
I have seen myself
What life
Could be for us
But we can't have it,
It was robbed from us
And we can't,
Can't have it back
Because they took it all
From us, from us
My heart is aching
I want to rest,
But I can't, I'm a voice
for the ones who aren't here anymore
If I could ask my protector for something
Just stop and think about the lives
Who now are just dust in the snow
I wish I could smile at them
And while I'm sad I fucking know
They're all smiling at me
We can look forward,
I know.
Life shouldn't be bleak,
It is
I'm still sad, I have seen
What life could be for us
All the nice things
Waiting for us
And we can't retrieve what's gone
But we can carve a new path
They slew us,
Yeah
And I'm so fucking tired,
My heart is aching
I cannot rest,
And I don't want to anyways
Our voices scream very high
For the ones who left before
For the ones who left before
If I could ask my protector for something
Just stop and think about the lives
Who now are just dust in the snow
I wish I could be in peace
And while I'm sad I fucking know
They're all smiling at me!
I wish I was strong
And I must be strong
For the ones who did leave us before
And I must be strong
For the ones who did leave us before
Seinu sat quietly in the darkness as the final words of the chords repeated the phrase “And while I’m sad, I fucking know they’re all smiling at me!” whispered to an end. There was a cover of an Earth song closing out the album, but he didn’t hear it really, his mind was elsewhere, thinking.
Slowly he pushed himself up onto his paws and turned toward the door, muttering to himself, “We can't retrieve what is gone, But we can carve a new path… yes, yes Sher we can.”
The CD player had turned off automatically upon finishing the last song. Seinu got up, and he moved to the door, right now… right now he had something to do. His nose had been telling him that there were two people waiting outside, they had been there for the last twenty minutes but hadn’t knocked. No doubt all the wailing bunny screams had made them hesitate but as the doors swished open he smiled at Cri and Cal.
“Hi,” he said in bunny song, reaching out to take their hands in his, “There is.. There is something I need to do then we are going down to the village.”
He pulled them in close, just holding them for a long moment and breathing in their scent. There was something just perfectly comforting about being with them both, their scent, their selves were lodged in his brain and just as Sher had sung, they had welcomed him with open arms, they would be his friends for life. They didn’t speak, uncertain about Seinu’s strange attitude, their scent exuding alarm and worry but he pulled them along and walked back into the pack-lounge.
Everyone was there waiting for him, their heads turning around to look at him, sixteen ears all perking his way as he stood in the opening of their family tent. He looked around the room slowly and took a moment to just appreciate each and every member of his family.
There was Taran, sweet, kind, innocently friendly, an utter dork for the nerdiest of alien trash with teal and orange feathers that made him stand out who loved nothing more than sharing his nerdy desires with his family and friends. He could retrofit a computer in seconds, he knew more about the Nexus, data-flow and computational science than anyone Seinu had ever met and the silver bunny had met big-wig packs who ran the Oracle.
Chantelle, bossy, commanding, so very smart, she knew more about rocks and planets and stellar systems than any of them but she loved them all, her rich blue and white tones adding a quiet dignity to her ability to command the respect and attention of her peers. Not to mention her utter love of virtual worlds, she had a vast collection of wondrous worlds and spent a lot of her free time ranging across both real and imaginary vistas created in the virtual spaces of the nexus.
Selenu, strongest, brilliant, with the willpower to martial her crazy family into order and unity. With her bright white and lime feathers whose biggest dream ever since she was a kit had been to explore, not satisfied with the virtual vistas of Chantelle’s dreamworlds but to set talon on the real place whenever and however she could. She had always stood by them all, ready to fire her bow and keep them all safe, who always put her dreams aside to build them into a solid pack, one of the best teams in Avali space, she had turned the pack from pure exploration to forge them into the support pack for an Illuminate Diplomat, him and still, somehow found space in their lives to explore and see wonderful new worlds.
Ki, beautiful, wonderful Ki, his deep dark despair and sadness wrapped around a core of steel and mechanical know-how that put them all to shame. He had hesitated at first, unsure about fitting in, about joining a new family, about abandoning the memory of those he had lost. Now though he had found his place, his courage, his determination. Gone was the wild Avali drowning in alcohol, now he was sober, he was together and could have been by their side since birth, he knew all of them just as they knew him and his loyalty was given without question to support his new pack.
Then finally Firi, bright with her pink feather band dividing the brilliant yellow and white, the most traditional feather colours of the whole family. Her crest woven implausibly into a pair of braids that hung over both shoulders and in the name of the Great Protector how she cared. Oh how she cared, passionately, about keeping them safe, about adventure, of not letting anyone hold her back and just embracing the world. She was smart, enthusiastic and she loved her weapons, armour and causing chaos more than any of them but she would drop it all in an instant to stand by them and help one of them reach their goals.
Seinu took a moment to stare at the floor, drawing Cri and Cal in close before he spoke. “Hello everyone,” he said softly in their private, pack dialect, the Avali words spilling from his bunny muzzle, “We’re doing it. Let’s show these bunnies how to grasp their future” he raised his head with a serious expression. “But first… before anything else, we are going to go to that fucking village and show the bunnies of Babupekkakerok the art that their fucking people are capable of creating, we’re going to put on a fucking show for them!”