By the time Buggy and the bus driver emerged from the bus' folding doors, the rabbit was gone. Only a very distinct smear of blood 'n' bits remained, lodged in the space it had been.

Hopping along under the city bus, the snowshoe hare was quite pleased with the macabre scene it had created. The sheer level of its self-satisfaction worried Slate. Calley, he asked warily, what are you doing?[/color]

Nothing,[/i] the rabbit replied again as it dodged under a taxi cab just behind the bus. With no small bit of effort it wrapped itself into the taxi's underbelly. Finally growing tried of leaning on the horn, the driver simply veered around the stopped bus. Green lights meant go.

It was hard for a bunny to give someone the finger. Calley settled for waving an entire paw, hoping to catch the woman's attention again with the flash of white under the passing cab. He liked her style. He'd rather thought he'd like to see her dead, too.

Stupid, dimwitted bus driver slowed her down. Why, when she got him to the front of the bus the rabbit was gone. Then a cab pulled up and as it passed, Petunia saw the little paw waving.

“That little son of a-”

“-S’cuse me miss?” the bus driver glared at her.

“Not you, Him!”

The bus driver swiveled his head around only to see the back of the taxi cab driving away. DRIVING AWAY WITH PETUNIA”S BUNNY!

Petunia stomped her feet childishly, crossing her arms. He was getting away in a,… a cab.

“TAXI!” She said stepping out into traphic as another yellow cab slammed it’s breaks to a stop. Burning rubber and fish tailing on it’s way. Now that’s service.

The cab driver leaned out his window screaming something at Petunia and managing to shake his own finger. Oh that’s what the rabbit was trying to do. Petunia ignored him and ducked around the hood of his car to the passenger door. One hand shoved in her pocket, pulling out a wad of bills and throwing them all in the taxi driver’s lap. That changed his tune real fast.

Petunia climbed in and leaned out her window, pointing at the little bundle of fluff she could see traveling under the other taxi cab. “Follow that car!” she’d always wanted to say that. Well say it and actually have a reason for saying that.

“Right miss.” The cab driver said flooring the peddle. Incidentally getting behind the wrong cab. Bloody streats were filled with yellow cabs.

“No,no,no” Petunia practially jumped in her seat. “That’s the wrong cab.”

“You mena the one with the I heart NY bumper sticker?”

“No and there’s three of those.”

“This one?”

“no.”

“This one?”

“No.”

“This one?”

”No!”

“This one?”

“”NO!….. I mean yes. Please follow that car.”

Calley didn't know that he was being followed: he assumed that he was being followed. The fine young lady didn't seem like the type to give up a good chase. He was confident she was following him. Somewhere. Somehow. He would be a slightly less unnerved rabbit if he had any clue how she was accomplishing it. His view from under the cab didn't really give him a good idea of where he was. Or where she was. Ideas, Slate?

...I believe this is entirely your affair, Calley.

I believe you suck, Slate.

I believe that is a fair assessment, yes.

Arguing with yourself wasn't the most satisfying hobby. But it sure did pass the time. Except... not really. The cab seemed to be going in the general direction of the Mondragon Labs complex, to Calley's supreme delight on this little adventure. When he thought they were close enough, he simply let go of the bottom, and rolled in a high-speed highly-uncomfortable fur-tearing scuffle along the road. When he had his feet back under him, he played Frogger all the way to the side of the road. With Slate's generous aid--and barely repressed sigh--in healing him.

Things were better than the snowshoe hare possibly could have hoped: he'd rolled off at the foot of Hunter's property; a line of storage warehouses whose purpose was mostly as a buffer between lowly common-folk and the actual start of Hunter's nefarious (but entirely non-note-worthy) buildings.

The little white rabbit quite merrily wiggled through the slightly ajar door of one of these buildings. Inside... pillows were stored. And blankets. And everything else the sudden influx of refugees could ever want.

The rabbit took up a position atop a stack of toothpaste boxes to await its foe. Truly, this was the proper battleground for their duel.

Petunia had been intensely staring at the back bumper of that cab she had been sure the rabbit had been hitching it’s ride, under. Had she even blinked? Golly her eyes were getting really dry. Feeling like sand. She was finally forced to relieve some of that dry itch. Blinking, then just as if magic, the rabbit had appeared. Like someone yelled poof, and there it was.

“There, Right there!” Petunia was practically standin on her side of the cab, leaning over the dash as her right hand pointed at the white rabbit and the other hand moved for the wheel to turn it. Only to be slapped away by the cabby. Not that she cared as he, ”Follow that rabbit!” (Another fraise Petunia had always wanted to have a reason to shout for no apparent reason.)

Some how the cab driver angled his car to the curb just as the white rabbit disappeared inside the warehouse. Petunia was out of the cab without so much as a thank you, and running straight for where she saw the rabbit disappeared.

The cab drove off and Petunia stalked up to the door, pushed it open and stepped inside. A quick glance around, and she found her quarry, her conscience. “So do you have anymore tricks?” She asked the snowshoe hare. Petunia may not be the sharpest tool in the shed but she was smart to know shocking, talking bunnies could be full of tricks and secrets.

“So do you have anymore tricks?”

The snowshoe hare kept its whiskers slanted regally back towards its face and its feet held with quiet dignity in front of it as it sat atop its toothpaste mountain. "As your conscience," it began formally, "I have precisely as many tricks as you yourself."

His first trick was, quite naturally, to uncap a tube and hop on it, aiming the splatter towards the woman's face. He could not resist smugly spouting an evil villain catch-line as he did so: "Have you brushed lately, you naughty girl?"

It was warmer inside the ware house. That was a good thing. No chattering teeth if Pix had decided to take flight again. Not that the cold had stopped her before but if you were flying it was more pleasant to not be shivering while trying to fly a straight steady line. Not that lines were ever completely straight and steady.

"As your conscience, I have precisely as many tricks as you yourself."

“I still blame you for all those tricks. It’s your fault for going missing.” When ever that was… Still Petunia pointed an acusing finger at the rabbit who was undoing one of the tooth past bottles… Why would he do tha- Ohhhhh….

Petunia raised a hand to block the tooth past on slot that was,.. ewwwe sticky. And it smeared on her coat. Her coat! She liked that coat!

"Have you brushed lately, you naughty girl?"

She side stepped avoiding getting tooth past on her face but stumbling on another box, of bath soap. “No But I think you should wash your mouth out for the things I’ve recently said.” She said grabbing a bar of soap and chucking the soap at the little bunnie’s head. Smearing the toothpast that stuck to her hand on her throwing weapon in the process.

The collision rocked the little rabbit's head back. But he caught the bar of toothpaste-smeared soap, right between his little rabbit jaws. He attempted an evil chuckle.

blarph blarph blraph!

He spat the bar out, and tried that again.

Mwuah ha ha! Inspiration had struck. "I think you could use... a scrubbing!" The snowshoe hare viciously bit off a small projectile of soap, and spit it back at its thrower. Like a little living machine gun, it kept up the barrage of soapy, toothy-pastey spit-wads.

bite-SPIT! bite-SPIT! bite-SPIT!

"I think you could use... a scrubbing!"

Well Bunny man was reloading his little soapy tooth past covered bullets. Sure those didn’t hurt that much to get hit with but the fact that there were little soapy projectiles coming at Petunia and the fact she had a goal not to get hit, not her running. Scramblng to remove her coat from her arms and transparent wings.

Now you may ask how a girl like a pixy may fight a soap chunk, bullet, spitting rabbit. Why it is very simple how she would battle such a violent opponent I say. That’s right. The petunia Gardener was about to use flower power! Cooking flower to be exact.

“now you see me,-”

As she ran, having thrown her coat to the corner of the warehouse, she snagged a five pound sack of flower on her way. The top half of the paper was torn free from the rest and she flung the top half of the flower into the air, using her wings to send the cloud straight for the white rabbit. Then held the rest of the bag of flower up to use her wings to spread it.

“-now you don’t.”

Problem was She couldn’t see calley as well either. Oh so that’s what all the white hair was for on the white hare. Grabbing a second sack of flower she used her wings, immediately, darting to where he was jut firing at her, and swung the sack of flower where he had just been sitting.

Curses! Curses upon her flower power! It flew through the air in an expanding cloud of flowery doom, rapidly clouding Calley's vision and leaving him with no option.

...There are a multitude of options. For instance, you could slip out the door while both of you are blinded. Or--

To repeat: he had no option. She had forced his hand in this matter.

Calley, we created that form as a joke, and you know it.

This was no joke: rather, it was a life-and-death matter of utmost seriousness.

...I am disowning you.

Within the cloud of flower was born...

The Abominable Bunny Monster (dun dun dun)

It was an Easter-inspired shift. If Katrina was in on the fact that they could shift to more than a tiger, they would have definitely used it on her. The result of this shift? A rabbit. A very, very, very, very large rabbit. An approximately tiger-sized rabbit, in fact. Which was pretty fair, considering they'd based the original body type off of a tiger and modified the bone structure to a more suitable look. The result was an oddly slightly feline-looking lepus that was still quite distinctly...

...A giant freaking rabbit. It closed its eyes against the bug woman's stinging cloud of anti-vision, and swiveled its unholy ears. He needn't have bothered. A sack of flower rained down between his ears, streaking through his already white fur and cascading over his closed eyes. His large pink nose twitched to the left, then the right, freeing his whiskers from the powder. He arched his back and kicked off vertically, meaning to introduce the airborne menace to his alarmingly accelerated bulk.

SPROING!

Ha! That sack of flower hit it’s mark, Showing exactly how strong flower power was. The problem was that the openent had suddenly gotten a lot stronger. Petunia’s face suddenly lost it’s sadistic grin when what she had imagined squishing under the sack of flower, how had the head larger then it’s entire body. Was it just a head? The flowery powery cloud cleared, swept from her movement, showing the rest of the things body.

Biiiig Bunny!

“Holy cra-“ Smack! “-OOOF!”

Petunia was caught completely off guard when the giant rabbit leaped straight up, Connecting with her midsection somewhere along the lines. Knocking the air she’d just sucked in, out of her longs. The same force caused her, nearly silent wings, to clap and clatter at the sudden change in motion.

Even in her dazed state, something primal, deep inside her, told her to do something. The ears grab the ears. Something inside her hissed at her. So that’s what she did. Grabbing a fist full of ear she tried to pull the back of the rabbit’s head towards her, other hand clinging to the rabbit’s back hairs. Some how she managed to swing a leg over his back.

Mean while something under her visible skin, and her covered skin, started to twitch and crawl. Even wiggle, like something was struggling to get out of a soft egg.

With the flower settling out of the air and still caking the fur on his head, the white snowshoe abomination was mostly blinded. It didn't need to see to know that the rodeo was on.

Coming out of that first hop, Calley landed heavily on the floor of the warehouse. He promptly bucked; once, twice, three times. Considering the fact she had him by the ears in one hand and the fur in the other, that didn't actually feel so good. The solution was simple, though.

Calley reared back, and... fell over. Massive bunny weight crush!

(I might have to try and draw the rodeo moment.)

The Rodeo was on!

They say that when you’re on a wild bucking Bull, even though you feel out of control, time slows down. Well Unless giant bucking Rabbits were any different, Pix didn’t know what those cow boys were talking about.

Petunia’s world was immediately set in motion. The entire warehouse became a blur of up and down bouncing boxes. Not much she could really focus on, not that she wasn’t use to not focusing. She thought she was doing rather good, while the crazy bucking rabbit did his thing. Would she make her eight seconds? No way to really tell. Damn She jut realized she should have grabbed that lovely gold watch that started all this trouble.

On another note, she could have giant rabbit’s feeeEEEEEEEE!

The rabbit fell back and for a moment Pix was slammed between the floor and the extra, soft but, heavy rabbit’s fur. Her back and wings stung against the cement, but that really wasn’t going to stop her right now. Oh no. What she’d been preparing for happened. The crawling of her skin, began to look more solid then it was solid as scorpions wiggled free from around her wrists, pinching and prodding trying to get their pointy claws through the hare’s hair. Other bugs followed the king scorpion’s lead, horse flys, and fleas exited Petunia’s skin and she suddenly shrank out from under the rabbit’s weight. Petunia herself? Well, she became a flea. Abandoning her cloths, that for some reason never shrunk with her, like the cloths of Alice did when she ate the mushrooms. (Petunia was very jealous of that.) Petunia set her miniature army of fleas to hide in the rabbit’s fur. Mean while she hopped her way up to the rabbit’s head.

This just might be a happy meal after all.

(A note. I still have to research the king scorpions but so far what I’ve found are people using them as pets and their stingers are not as poisonous to human’s as scorpions.)

Calley felt a most satisfying thwump of bug girl meeting his back on one side and concrete on the other.

Then he felt things that no rabbit should ever feel. Things that no soap bar could ever hope to clean. Things that would creep and crawl and pinch and bite through his nightmares for days to come. Things in his fur. The body of the woman underneath him disappeared, and the gargantuan hare fully hit the ground. A second later, it was rolling around on its back for all it was worth, trying to squish that multitude of claws. Shortly after that, it jerked to its feet, to a running hop... and shifted, in mid-air, back to a normally sized snowshoe hare. With one noticeable difference: it was furless. It was one of the few chimera shifts Calley could do without any prior planning. Simply put, in the short-term of things, having fur really didn't matter so not having fur... didn't screw anything up. He was hoping that the sudden size difference, the distinct lack of former pincer holds, and the momentum would help him ditch his suddenly acquired groupies.

He hit the ground still hopping, not exactly eager to see if those bugs were going to do a horror-movie crawl-together-and-reform into the bug woman. She was gone, and the bugs were here: it didn't take a genius to peg the woman as a bug shifter.

She appears to have created more than one form. Curious.

Yah, curiouser and curiouser. Could we save the commentary until the fur-pulling scorpions of doom and the horse fly cloud and all the other unpleasantries are behind us?

Hmm.

Calley went out of the warehouse at top speed, using the same open door he'd come in by. Since it was winter, he was hoping the bugs weren't going to be keen to follow him. In fact, he wasn't keen to follow him: the air hit his bare rabbity skin with a distinctly unnatural bite. Calley shifted himself a fur coat and kept going, not missing a desperately retreating hop.

What happened to your goal of killing the woman?

She dissolved into a swarm of bugs, Slate.

...I do not see how that affects your goal.

That's ten kinds of wrong. I am not fighting against ten kinds of wrong. Even Hunter's powers are only about seven and a half kinds of wrong.

...Are you afraid of insects?

After that? Probably.

((ooc: Would you like to head to the Labs proper now? Or we could certainly continue our brawl.))

( Honestly I’m in no hurry, I can follow your lead. Perhaps go by what Calley’s reaction is to this post. *Tries to imagine Hunter’s reaction to a closthsless Petunia suddenly appearing in his labs.*)

Calley had rolled, squishing several of Petunia’s Scorpions. Those unfortunate soldiers of hers that now stuck, twitching what ever they could still move. The jumping down shift had been proven an asset to the Hare formerly known as Petunia’s conscience. As he moved it was very apparent that those that hadn’t been ground into the floor, were not rodeo riders like their creator. Not saying she couldn’t train them to become rodeo riders. She liked that idea.

The horse flies swooped down, collecting Petunia’s fallen army as they flew, sounding like millions of little get engines but the moment they hit the cold air, they separated, slowed, and were out of Petunia’s circle of control. Drat!

With no fur, Petunia was exposed to the elements, Just as Calley. Warmed only be the Hare’s body heat coming off his head. Warm on the bottom, no matter how warm, wasn’t enough to keep her warm form the fridge breeze created by the rabbit’s run. A few fleas managed to hold on as well, Maybe three others, that instantly went for the warmer areas, like under the rabbit’s arms and tail. Petunia however, went for the closest closed area she could. The ear. Scurrying across the top of Calley’s head, No flea’s legs had ever wiggles so fast, she hopped inside the folds of the hare’s ears. Ahhhh warms. Here she could finally enjoy the ride. Then a thought came to her, making her little twitchy flea face form the best flea smile it possible could. Oh she couldn’t resist this and a laugh tiny little buggy laugh echoed through calley’s ear. Sounding like someone had sucked helium.

“Hey Fluffy-bottom-whatsevaface. I’m your conscience now.”

> “Hey Fluffy-bottom-whatsevaface. I’m your conscience now.”

That is approximately the time that Calley determined his dashing escape hadn't worked quite as well as he'd been hoping, those last few hops. He'd seen the pursuing swarm of flies, and heard them stop pursuit.

Then he heard the laughter.

Then he heard the voice.

Oh, the deliciously something-he-would-have-said voice. The fact that he liked the way this woman thought meant he was even more afraid of what she would do to him. To his ear, apparently. He was willing to bet that she wasn't a psychic, just like he was willing to bet that compulsive urge to scratch inside his ear wasn't a coincidence.

...He felt so unclean. There was only one solution to this: shifting himself a pair of vocal chords again, he panted out (whilst hopping ever deeper into the Labs complex; he wasn't keen on seeing if that swarm of bugs was going to get a second wind), "Hey, guys--I need a flea bath. Really. No kidding. Please. Now." He really hoped the Triforce would come and pick him up, and plunge him into a cleansing bath of very strong chemicals. He really really hoped they weren't sitting in front of some monitor, smirking. Or playing poker, and not even watching the monitor.