They Must Be Stopped
The critters’ preparations took almost two months. The committee spent a large portion of that time carefully disseminating the information without inciting a panic. More time had to be spent manufacturing evidence to support alibis and cover stories so as not to tip Fluttershy off.
The squirrels had proven invaluable in this with their ‘booming economy’. Fluttershy had been so proud of all of her little critters that had been hired for long-term “luxury tunneling” contracts or to move close to their families.
Angel knew, for all his faults, that Fluttershy would have been destroyed if she knew that they were actually mobilizing for war. By the end of the first month, a tenth of the local critters had volunteered and moved out, with almost another quarter of them in line to follow.
Some of the first intelligence they had gathered regarded positions that were not occupied by the bunnies, and it was in the one such region closest to the Whitetail Woods that the critters were gathering their forces. With only a few hawks on patrol, no bunnies made it close enough to suspect anything.
The critters had gathered their friends and families, bolstering their forces even more. The squirrels had set up arrangements with several bee populations to supplement the critters’ food supply, though they quickly found that the honey traded for more rations than if the critters ate it directly. The squirrels were also largely responsible for running their supply network, travelling under the protection of various birds of prey.
At the end of the second month, Constance and Angel agreed that they had waited long enough. They had arranged for Fluttershy’s discreet protection while Angel encouraged her to get out of the house more often as a decoy, which Angel was surprised to find didn’t sit well with him at all. Her continued protection couldn’t be guaranteed, though, so they had to act first.
That day, Angel told Fluttershy that he was going to go on a trip to the Whitetail Woods to take part in a family reunion, which was technically true in that he would be meeting with whatever relatives he had and then some.
Fluttershy ruffled his fur and packed him a bundle of treats for the trip.
The plan was set. Constance would keep things organized from behind the lines, and Angel would be directing the charge near the front. Angel surveyed his troops. Beyond the common mouse, chipmunk, and beaver, they had a small contingent of the more predatory critters, especially ferrets and badgers. Angel and Constance planned to take full advantage of their army’s diversity and had insisted on several training exercises to establish adequate protocols in the absence of direct orders.
Negotiations with the racoons of Ponyville had come together only recently, but the mice had wasted no time fashioning armor and weapons from the cardboard and metal scraps that they had produced; they supplemented their arms with bark and sharpened sticks from the beavers.
The critters were as ready as Angel could expect.
He called to start their march to the Whitetail Warren.
The battle had started an hour ago at most. Angel felt pretty good about their chances; the first couple of minutes had been slaughter. Constance’s birds had picked off most every bunny posted on the surface before the army had come into view. They had no idea what had begun when the moles started opening up new entrances into their tunnels.
That wasn’t to say there hadn’t been losses; Angel had reports of several of the leading badgers being overwhelmed, at least one cave-in with critters still missing, and he was on his way back to the front lines – an entire team of critters was reported to be pinned down near the heart of the warren – with a division of armed mice.
Blood pooled in the tunnels and the number of bunny corpses made navigation difficult through some of the smaller ones. The tunnel-maintenance crews had been doing their best reinforcing and cleaning the tunnels, but the side-tunnels could only hold so many bunnies.
On his way through the tunnels, a small runner-mouse caught up with them and reported Constance’s estimate that a third of the critters had been lost or wounded. Angel told the mouse that they controlled nearly half of the tunnels, they were fighting their way to the Whitetail tetrumvirate, and if they apprehended the leadership, many of the remaining bunnies would surrender. The little mouse nodded and scurried back to the surface.
Angel and his team arrived at the scene of their pinned-down comrades. The lead group, given the importance of their objective, had been assigned two badgers and several hedgehogs; Angel had hoped they would fend off the bunnies with impunity, but the badgers had bloodied legs and coats from numerous vicious bunny bites; without the protective barrier that the hedgehogs had formed, Angel feared things might have been worse.
The tunnel had opened into a larger space, one which dozens of bunnies swarmed around in, with dozens more behind them. On the other end, it appeared that several of the tunnels had been collapsed, probably intentionally. Angel brandished his own weapon – a fork missing one tine – and the mice charged. With the critters tightly packed on both sides, the next minute was the bloodiest that Angel had ever seen.
Angel met with Constance after they had secured the farthest corners of the Whitetail Warren. She reported that just over half of the critters had suffered an injury and that dozens were still missing in action. They made arrangements for many of the fighting critters to help with search-and-rescue.
Angel acknowledged the losses and assured her that the Whitetail Warren was in ruins; even if they regained autonomy somehow, they had been set back years in their technological learning after so many of the knowledgeable bunnies had died in the fighting.
The next couple of days were spent picking up the pieces. Lost critters were still turning up periodically, though not all of them were survivors. Angel had spent most of his time with badgers and ferrets behind him, laying down his wishes to the remaining Whitetail bunnies. He found that, in their eyes, his demonstration of leadership and – prior to his original departure from the Whitetail Warren – his ruthless backstabbing had slightly tempered their hatred with some respect. Angel figured that the bunnies most willing to cooperate were following their survival instincts.
It occurred to Angel that this would be his best opportunity to seize control of the Whitetail Warren. With the critter army backing him, installing himself as their leader would be almost trivial, and the thought of having an endless supply of ruthless minions to execute his every whim – or enemy – was an intoxicating one.
But that would mean abandoning Fluttershy.
In the end, Angel decided his interests were best served by setting up a proxy to rule the warren in his stead. While minions would have been nice to have, all he really needed was a way to keep tabs on them and make sure they never caused problems for him and his.
To be sure, he made it clear to everybunny that there wouldn’t be any survivors if they gave him the slightest reason to think they were up to something again.
Fluttershy gave him a nuzzle as soon as he stepped through the door. She asked if the family reunion had been enjoyable. Angel nodded, and said that he had been able to catch up with a lot of his old friends too.
After that, Angel gathered several of the bunnies that he had follow him from the warren and sent one of them to fetch the three bunnies in the cottage for a little chat outside. Before long, they were before him. Angel told them that he wanted to thank them for keeping a close eye on Fluttershy for him over the last few weeks and that he had a gift for them. He reveled in their confused expressions.
Angel waved one of the other bunnies over, who was carrying a small cardboard box. He took the top off and presented its contents: a bunny’s foot, which he explained was from one of the tetrumvirate leaders. He told them that it hadn’t done its first owner much good, but he hoped that it would bring them much luck.
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A strange blend of hilarious, adorable, and hellish. Angel always makes for a great protagonists in stories of nature red in cloak and dagger. The avoidance of direct dialogue is pretty flimsy, but it doesn't detract from the overall excellent quality of the story. Thank you for it.
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It may not have been useful as a writing exercise in the end, but it was probably the easiest way not to muddle up the story with the explanation of how all of their communication works.
Thanks for the praise.
Brilliance. Sheer Brilliance.
I enjoyed this. It was fun (in a dark way), it fit Angel’s character fairly well, and I’m always a sucker for an Anti-villain who puts his talents to a productive end.
I didn’t mind the lack of dialougue. I thought that just having descriptions about what was being said worked just fine for a story about small critters. It makes sense in the context of the story, so I can’t (and won’t) complain about it.
However, I do want to know the story of the four-way civil war that Angel kicked off. I mean, how does one
manBunny kick off a war between not two, not three, but four different factions of an entire species?9393988
After that thing that hawthornbunny said, the core idea for this story was simply "Angel pisses off a bunny tetrumvirate".
I think having more factions just made it easier for Angel. Tensions already existed, else they wouldn't have been separate factions, and the factions were probably equivalent in size/power. With 6 different individual relationships, he's just gotta pluck enough of those strings to incite any one of them to try and take advantage of any other one of them; from there, any concerns about an upset in power (if one side wins that conflict, they become a danger to the other two faction) would probably escalate the war to its maximum scale fairly quickly.
I think Angel might have had some power in the original bunny organization, likely from as neutral a standing as was available at the time, and he used that to facilitate the inopportune leaking of secrets and probably the odd assassination or two. Nobunny who wasn't a part of that learned that Angel was behind these events until after the war had started. Those that were involved probably betrayed Angel for their own gains during the war, which is the biggest and final reason that he abandoned the warren and harbors exactly zero trust for other bunnies.
Some of those bunnies are probably the ones who ascended to form the unified tetrumvirate.
After that, as far as Fluttershy would have been concerned when she first met him, Angel looked like any other helpless critter who hadn't been having a very good day.
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I was just kidding for the most part. Evil bunnies just makes me think of that though.
Read Watership Down.
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THIS IS MANDATORY
Fun and very different.
I must protest about this Redwall fanfic! There aren't nearly enough lavish descriptions of lush, sumptuous feasts.
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You did.
Can't remember from where exactly I found this story (i had like 10 tabs open a bit ago, this had to have shown up in the "related stories" of one of them) but holy hell did I find a gem here. Know that I really liked this story and that I cannot find a way to say how without going into a rambling rant, it's that entertaining.
I will say that I don't mind at all that there is no actual dialogue, the explanations due to [animal chatter] were good enough, and how you turned Constance into an actual character was damn cool.
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As it happens, there have been several likes in the last week alone (after a long dry spell), but I see that it has also been featured in a group; although I don't know when that happened, maybe those two things are related.
I appreciate the comment.
While I wrote this, I thought I was writing something clever, or at least interesting. Now? I still think it is, but it wasn't terribly well-written for what it is. If you like how I handled the ideas at play – writing quality aside – I have written a couple of other things since then that I think are neat. I'm also going to dust off some documents and see about growing that list sometime soon, but that idea hasn't stopped me from procrastinating on writing before.