This is Bryan Hall's introduction story to the world of alt.devilbunnies. I had nothing directly to do with this. Nor did he consult me for help. So why is it linked in my stories page? Well, so that you, the reader, will have a background for The Education and, because Bryan got hooked on alt.devilbunnies one day while netsurfing and reading these very pages. It's the fault of my homepage that he is now a part of the alt.devilbunnies phenomina. Read on and learn the early background to Brightspot. Posted originally 23 February, 1997. The only alterations I have made is the removal of the paragrah indentation (I haven't been able to get html to keep them yet) and the addition of a blank line between paragraphs for ease of reading.
© 1997 by Bryan Hall. Reprinted with his permission| One | Two |
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| Three | Four |
I opened my eyes at five thirty in the morning, the ghosts of a dream dissipating in the morning light. Again, without result, I tried to make sense of the fleeting fragments, now nothing more than scattered images of a forest setting.
Probably nothing more than contemplating the days labors. For today, I had hoped to finish the work I had begun two years previously, and gather the last of the data for my Masters degree in Wildlife Conservation. As a study, I had taken the local deer population in the woods surrounding the Volo Bog area. Something had seriously perturbed the population, and I had hoped to discover the cause. Deer that should have lived many more seasons had mysteriously disappeared with little trace. If I was lucky, I'd see a scrap of bone, or a small bit of hide.
Morning tasks completed, I prepared to leave my apartment to walk the five miles to my study zone. Without realizing it, I had taken the staff that had been in a place of honor for over seven years. This staff had been given to me over seven years prior by my Grandmaster. Exactly twenty four hours before both he, and his family, had disappeared without trace. The staff had not been moved since that time that I had first taken it home after obtaining my fifth degree blackbelt, and the significance of the event was not lost on me. My Instructor was watching over me, from wherever he was now.
I leaned somewhat heavily on the Ironwood staff.. it could bear my 6"4 260lb frame with ease, and more. The five miles passed quickly, with my mind drifting back to my time of instruction, and to my instructor's daughter, Aliera. With a smile, I embraced what could not be, for she was gone as well. For a time, we had both hoped that her father would see his way fit to permit a relationship between us, and indeed, had seemed approving. But then they had gone, leaving him with his memories and the staff.
However pleasant the memories, they had to be put aside. There was work to be done. I checked the recording sensors in what I had termed Zone One. I'd put a salt lick there, hoping to use that as a central gathering point for the deer. There were no deer, but there was another scrap of bone. I went over to the sensor that was closest, and sighed at what I saw. It had been destroyed. Looking more carefully, I discovered that the sensor had been modified rather heavily. The exterior was left untouched, but the circuitry on the inside was radically different. Bright blue, green, and pink processor chips had been grafted on to the sensor's accumulator tubes, and to an ultra-thin strand of wire that had been well hidden on the trunk of the tree. I frowned, because this arrangement meant that someone had spliced into my recording devices, and sent the signal somewhere. The only reason I had found the antenna at all, was that I could follow it from the sensor's innards. Other than that, it was totally invisible.
This was strange.. since the wire was so thin, it couldn't stand much of a signal being sent through it. If that was the case, then the receiver couldn't be all that far away. Looking around, I wondered what could possibly be in the woods that would need an infrared sensor net. Shaking my head, I started opening sensors in this zone at random. All were spliced. All had the peculiar brightly colored chips in the circuitry. Buntel(tm)? Who the heck were they?
Two years worth of work gone. With the sensors compromised as they were, I couldn't trust the data that I had gained. There was simply no way to tell if the spliced circuits could both transmit and receive, and therefore all data must be treated as false. The least I could do is to check to see if I could discover what had done this, and pass that information along. My Master's Instructor was a decent woman. She'd understand why I had to start over.
Shrugging phlegmatically, I walked further into my testing zone to see what might have done this.
It was in the very center of Zone three that I saw what would change my life forever, but I had HEARD it at the edge of Zone two. People were shouting.. and it sounded like I heard fighting. I continued cautiously, uncertain as to what I had come upon.
From my hiding place behind a tree, I saw what appeared to be an axe-wielding man swinging at a small rabbit, that was cowering at the base of a hollowed out tree stump. With a yell, I broke cover, bringing my staff into attack position, but I was too late. The rabbit caught the axe mid-chest, and expired immediately.
The man turned towards me, and yelled something about being a symp, which at the time, I did not understand. He charged me with his axe, and took far too wide a swing. I easily deflected the axe, and struck him three times in the chest to rob him of breath, and once lightly on the side of the head to remove consciousness. I looked down at the stump, and saw that there were three more tiny rabbits looking very frightened. As well they should, as the axeman had just executed one of their siblings. I whispered down to them, trying to assure them that I would not allow them to be hurt. They seemed to understand, and tried harder than ever to make themselves inconspicuous. They were so cute, and so terrified, that I could have done nothing other than defend them. I thought it strange, that people would be hunting rabbits with axes, but then there are all types of humans in this world. I was disgusted with the majority of them, especially after such a wondrous display of cruelty to a defenseless animal. It was only a bunny kit, and the person had hacked it to bits with reckless glee!
Then the gravity of the situation was presented to me. Five more axe-wielding loonies broke cover and advanced towards me.
"You're surrounded, Symp. Give it up. Your bunny masters can't help you now!"
I looked at the speaker. He wore the rank insignia of a Lieutenant, and his nametag proclaimed him to be Crenishaw. "LT... Bunny Masters? Have you been partaking of wild mushrooms?"
Lieutenant Crenishaw shook his head. "All right, Symp. We'll do this the hard way."
The LT and his men (correction.. two of the five were women) advanced, with their axes held defensively before them. The whimpering of the bunny kits stiffened my already strong resolve, and I made my decision to make my stand there.
Then it happened. As I began spinning my staff in a complex defensive pattern in front of me, I felt someone place their back against mine.
"Who are you?" I asked tersely, not for an instant taking my eyes off of the advancing LT.
A soft, feminine laugh greeted my query.
However, further questions were unneccesary, as the staff she wielded held all the answers I needed. The pattern I wove was actually one half of a two person kata. Two people, back to back, could utilize this pattern to provide near total coverage on the sides, but only if the two were in PERFECT synch. TICK-TICK..TICK-TICK.. the sounds of the very tips of our staves connecting at the sidemost parts of the swing identified her to me immediately. There was only one person I had ever been able to do this with.. and she had disappeared seven years ago.
Joy erupted within me, for Aliera was back! The soldiers were slightly disheartened by the feral grin that must have been on my face, for Aliera was back, and she and I were defending something I felt was worth defending. Together, we were unstoppable!
The soldiers found this out with startling rapidity. The first soldier to cross my path was bashed seven times in the blink of an eye, and fell unconscious to the ground. The second and third were more devious, and tried to attack from the sides. That was not a good idea, as the side attacks allowed Aliera and I to strike multiple times. They fell, but not before I had taken a glancing blow to my shoulder. It was my fault, really... I hadn't done this defense for an extended period of time, and had never thought to try it with Aliera against a bunch of axe-wielding loonies. I had slipped in the pattern, and luckily for me, I had taken the blow instead of Aliera. She'd have hurt me if she had taken it...
The fourth soldier and the LT drew Super-Soakers of all things from beneath their uniform coats!
"Take this, Symp!" and fired a stream of liquid at me.
Unfortunately for me, it was Vanilla extract, something I had a lethal allergy to, if I consumed it. Externally, it would cause nausea. The Vanilla had the expected effect, so I threw up on the fourth soldier and the LT. In their startlement, I quickly knocked them both out.
This was a good thing, because I was quickly becoming dizzy from the effects of blood loss from my arm, and from the Vanilla. Aliera must have finished off her opponents, because she stepped away from my back as I sank to one knee. Gasping for breath, I wheezed, "Sunfall (my pet name for Aliera) .. don't leave! Please!"
I stood up shakily, and turned to face Aliera.
For the first time since I had started studying my martial art, I dropped the staff in surprise. All of a sudden, I was facing someone who HAD to have been Aliera..except she wasn't HUMAN! (See the bunnygirl.gif in the pictures section of the alt.devilbunnies homepage for what she looked like) She was.. a RABBIT?!?
She leaned on her staff and gazed cutely at me. "Together again
I picked up my staff, and then saw past her. A good thing I had my staff again, because I would have ended up face down in the dirt if not for it. Fourty bunnies in ARMOR?!? were standing behind her. A rustle behind me showed fourty more.
"Uh-oh.." was pretty much the limit of my vocabulary at that point in time.
Sunfall threw her head back and laughed, wholeheartedly. "Oh, Brightspot.. you're so *CUTE* when you do that!"
"Buh? Uh.." I stammered.
Sunfall tilted her head to one side, and seemed to gather the very essence of cuteness around herself. My heart melted, and all I wanted was to never leave her side.
One of the armored bunnies stepped forward, and I took a defensive position again. The bunny held it's arms to the side, showing that it was unarmed.
"Ah, Brightspot. No need to defend the kits now, for that is their caretaker," Sunfall said with a sparkle in her eye.
I backed away from the stump, and the armored bun quickly gathered up the three live kits, who were estatic to see their mother again. She looked around, obviously looking for the fourth.
"I'm sorry.. I wasn't fast enough," I said sadly, as I set the staff down and picked up the tiny corpse of the fourth bun. The heartrending cry of the caretaker spooked me as much as when she crushed the skull of the soldier that had killed the kit.
I reeled backwards, and my stomach promptly emptied itself of the remainder of it's contents.
Sunfall quickly averted her eyes as well, as she never had liked violence for vengeance's sake either. It was completely understandable, that the caretaker would want revenge, but to see it performed so graphically..
I looked over to Sunfall. Sunfall looked at me, and again, she was all I could see. My world narrowed down to her. My work was forgotten. The human corpse was forgotten. Even Sunfall's new bunny form was forgotten. Only the fact that she had returned remained.
That proved to be my undoing. For while her gaze had held me fast, the forty armored troopers came from behind and knocked me over. While the spell of Sunfall's eyes had been broken, I was now being mobbed by over forty opponents. Long odds.. far too long.
"Be very careful with him,
"Sunfall," the caretaker bun said as she withdrew a syringe from a utility pouch. "Why does this human fight so hard for us? He's an enemy!"
The fourty buns who had been behind Sunfall surrounded us, reducing the chance of escape to well beneath the zero it had already been.
Sunfall shook her head slowly. "He's no enemy. He's one of us, in spirit. By the will of the Mentat, he'll be one of us in body as well."
The jab of the needle swiftly removed all fear, and sent me to dreamland with the sensation that I was safe, warm, and among friends.
I came to in a hospital room of sorts. Everything was done in warm pastel colors, with the general sensation of being rather fluffy. I had been restrained on the hospital bed, but was not uncomfortable.
Sunfall was sitting on a chair next to the bed, and had been holding my hand the entire time I was unconscious. Her adorable face was marred by lines of concern that seemed so completely out of place, that I blurted out a rather odd question given my circumstances. "Sunfall.. what's wrong?"
She smiled briefly. Too briefly. "Brightspot.. I am afraid.
"Afraid? Sunfall, *I* should be afraid!"
A tear ran down her face, and she shook her head slowly. "No.. I am afraid." Before I could interrupt, she continued. "I am afraid that we will part again."
"Why should we part?" On this, my heart was certain. It would do us both grievious harm to part again. We must be together.. always.
"Because
And for the first time ever, I left her speechless. "So?"
She let go of my hand in surprise.
"Wha.. what?" Sunfall stammered.
With a sardonic smile, I said, "Ah, Sunfall! So *cute* when you do that! But to answer your question, to stay with you, I would gladly become like you."
She locked me in her gaze again. Sunfall also shook her head in surprise. "This is a dream!"
I rolled my eyes. "At risk of beating an already deceased cliche, sometimes dreams come true."
A bun entered the room and handed a small refrigerated box to Sunfall. "With the Mentat's regards, Sunfall," the bun said.
Sunfall looked at the bun. "Dismissed, TechBun. This is private."
The TechBun shook his head. "
Sunfall nodded. "Agreed
I smiled, as the TechBun administered the shot.
After twenty minutes, the TechBun released the restraints. "This strain of the BunnyVirus is one
of the safest we have. But it will take a considerable time to effect a transformation. Take it easy,
Brightspot
I hugged Sunfall for all I was worth. I looked over her shoulder at the TechBun. "I promise," I said.
"
Sunfall was crying. She wrapped herself in the essence of cuteness again, and looked at me lovingly. "You gave up your whole life for me! How... why.."
"Because, Sunfall. It's a completely new start.. a *completely* new start! Literally. New body, new place, new circumstances.."
"
"Well, since you asked.." I looked at Sunfall, and read in her eyes that she was expecting me to say something sappy and sugary. With a decidedly evil grin I said, "Well, most of all, my Masters Thesis SUCKED!"
Sunfall grabbed a pillow off of the bed and proceeded to beat me with it until the TechBun came in shaking his head. He ushered her out, and threatened me with the restraints unless I got some sleep.
Sunfall left the room laughing, but threatening to hit me with the pillow again. I smiled, and complied with the demands of the TechBun.
I settled down in the bed, and the lights automatically shut off. I fell asleep, to the pleasant thought that Sunfall would be nearby when I awoke, and that we were in for some rather interesting adventures.
Such is the story of my beginning.
----Brightspot