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The Rabbit
My name is Rachel. That’s all I can tell- Achoo! <Coughes> Sorry. It would be too dangerous to <more sneezing, coughing> Forget it, you know the rest. I’m an Animorph.
____
Rachel was not having a good day, for various reasons. First, she had an enormous cold, the kind that threatened to expand into a seriously nasty case of the flu with each congested cough, snotty sneeze, and hazy headache.
Next, she and the rest of the team had hastily planned a raid on a Controller hideout the preceding week. Marco, in a rare moment of non-obnoxiousness, had suggested acquiring rabbit morphs, as the particular location happened to be in a weekend wilderness retreat.
(Naturally, he then ruined it with a slew of jokes about horror movies and cabins in the woods, but that’s beside the point.)
Even if they all went as birds, it would look too suspicious for Tobias to be with them and their usual morphs weren’t exactly subtle. Rachel agreed, neglecting to mention that she had yet to actually acquire said subject.
Blame it on the foggy mental conditions typically preceding a cold, homework, or, you know, the life-and-death circumstances, but with less than five hours to go, she had yet to chance upon a rabbit, bunny, or hare.
Oh, but why not go to Cassie for help? Surely her dad was taking care of some poor bunny at the farm! Simple: The word would inevitably spread to Marco and Rachel was not looking forward to Marco’s inevitable stream of “killer rabbit” jokes.
“Aw, is the big bad Rachel too scared to face a fuzzy-wuzzy wabbit?” No. Definite pass, not on the table, not even an option.
So she did the next best thing and went to The Garden’s petting zoo. Thankfully, Cassie’s mom had given Rachel a “friends and family” free pass years ago. Granted, this could also lead to teasing but she couldn’t keep procrastinating for the sake of her pride.
Hands stuffed into her pockets, Rachel tried to avoid knocking any kids over. The petting zoo was packed with exhausted parents and hyperactive children. She had already stumbled into an unusually large patch of dirt immediately upon entering and didn’t want to avoid attracting any more attention.
She lunged for a bench, earning a dirty look from a bedraggled mother and her squealing toddler. Maybe the zone would clear out after a few minutes.
___
It did not, in fact, clear out. Rachel barely had enough time to sit down and pop a couple of Ibuprofen pills before an entire birthday party arrived. She grumbled and took a swig from her water bottle, nearly upending it after someone tapped her shoulder. Please not Marco, please not Marco…
A friendly voice greeted her, unconcerned by the spluttering and choking. “What’s up, doc?”
“I’m looking for rabbits.” Rachel automatically responded, still wiping her streaming eyes with a shirtsleeve. Not Marco, then. Please don’t be a security guard…
Finally, she looked up, only to see a rabbit sprawled across the other half of the bench, casually munching a carrot and wearing a Hawaiian shirt.
What the f- No. This is fine. Everything is fine. She was hallucinating or Erek was playing a prank on her. She’d even take the Ellemist at this point.
Bugs Bunny finished his carrot, wiping his paws on his legs. “Ooh, a rabbit! Do dey have long floppy ears like dis and fuzzy cotton tails like dis?” He stood up and waggled his tail in the air.
“Yes,” Rachel croaked. “They do.”
“Never hoida one!” And with that, he gave Rachel a big sloppy kiss on her hand.
No. Hallucination or not, Rachel would not tolerate being sexually harassed, even- no, especially by a four foot tall rabbit.
Roaring, she shoved Bugs away and looked for a security guard. Surely this was some overzealous entertainer for the birthday party, although that wouldn’t explain the earthy smell or the way the air seemed to…bend around him.
Bugs gasped, a look of mock offense on his face. “Well if you’re gonna be like dat, I’ll just pack up me floppy ears and fuzzy tail and go! Pimento Beach, here I come!” He assumed a diver’s pose and and leapt off, gracefully falling into a small hole that definitely hadn’t been there before.
“NO!” Rachel also got to her feet but stumbled slightly. Her head swam. A few parents glared at her, affronted.
A security guard began walking over. “Miss, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. There’s a party-“
Rachel didn’t bother to hear the rest of his sentence. She began stomping to the parking lot. This was a mistake, Cassie would surely help her.
“Oh, yoo-hoo!” Rachel stopped in her tracks. There was no one else in the lot, save for a woman standing next to the bike rack.
The woman waved again. “I hear you’re looking for a rabbit?” Rachel squinted. Something wasn’t right. The woman was wearing a voluminous dress and a floppy sun hat. Not only that, but her figure was almost blurry, as if- Waitaminnit!
“You’re the rabbit!” Rachel blurted.
“Why, ah believe ah don’t know what you mean.” the woman drawled in an obviously fake Southern accent. “Ah say, Ah’m just a lost woman, looking for- Whoopsie!”
Bugs narrowly skipped out of the way as Rachel tried to tackle him, literally slipping out of his dress. As soon as she got back up, groaning and brushing away gravel, the rabbit jumped up again, near the woods. This time he was dressed like a cheerleader and batting his eyelashes in a disturbingly flirty way.
“Oh, wait, you’re not my usual target audience for dis gag. MAKEUP!” Bugs slipped behind a clothing rack (where had that come from?) and reemerged in the guise of an edgy “nineties teen”, albeit interpreted through the lens of middle-aged television writers.
“‘Sup?” said the rabbit, casually tossing his ears back and noodling around with a skateboard. “Wait, no, I know what your type is!”
He tossed a smoke bomb at Rachel, causing her to break out into yet another coughing fit.
When the smoke cleared, thunder boomed and a dark figure emerged from the trees. “I am da vengeance, am da night, I am da…Hawkman?” Bugs looked down at his costume. Instead of the dark clothes of a particular caped crusader, he had a rather pathetic pair of cardboard wings and a cheap metallic headpiece.
Bugs actually seemed surprised by this, outright reversing time to gather the unfurling smoke and kicking aside a tape player. “Now dis ain’t right. Den again, love is love, who am I to argue?”
Now fully enraged, Rachel began stripping down to her morph suit. This rabbit was going down. This was quite possibly the angriest she’d ever been, even taking the “Super Rachel” incident into account.
Bugs shrieked, averting his eyes. “Hey, I ain’t dat kind of rabbit, lady!”
He laughed, settling onto the curb and pulling out another carrot. “A leotard? Eh, I’m not ready for a night at de opera, Doc. Whadda maroon! Whadda chump!”
A sudden growling prompted him to look up. Rachel was gone, replaced by a ferocious, drooling grizzly bear. Bugs seemed to wilt, shrinking into the ground. A small ring appeared around one iris. “Whadda…magnificent specimen of a grizzly bear? Yoiks- exit, stage right!”
He sprinted into the woods, pursued by the bear. At this point, Rachel didn’t care about being spotted. If a walking, talking rabbit hadn’t alerted the Yeerks, then nothing would.
Unfortunately, Bugs seemed to be even more slippery in the woods. He would appear every few seconds, sometimes carrying a bullfighter’s flag or a blazing stick of dynamite.
“You can’t eat me, doc,” he wailed, “we wuz just getting to know each other! Besides, I’m all stringy and it’s duck season!”
At the word ‘duck’, he burrowed under a convenient leaf pile, just barely avoiding a nasty swipe from Rachel’s claws.
<I’m not going to eat you.> Rachel growled.
“Yes, you are!” Bugs replied, appearing from a nearby tree’s hollow.
<Am not!>
“”Are too! Dis is premium-grade rabbit meat, aged to a tender eighty-six years!”
<Am not!>
“Am not!”
<Are too!> Rachel felt the grizzly bear’s instincts rising and the rabbit suddenly looked delicious. In fact, visions of cooked turkeys were swirling around.
“Fair enough! Here, I’ve got a whole cookbook’s woith of recipes!” Bugs materialized on Rachel’s shoulder, seemingly about to clonk an oversized tome over her head.
Fuming, Rachel reared up on her hind legs and grabbed Bugs by the shoulders, shaking him. His pupils hurtled around with a rattling noise, eventually producing a small PIN. <You screwy rabbit, I NEED YOUR HELP!>
Despondently, she began to demorph. The chase had to have taken at least forty minutes and even with the afternoon’s surreal events, it wasn’t worth potentially being trapped as a grizzly bear.
Bugs started to slink away, then looked directly at the camera. “Aw, I can’t stand ta see a goil cry…‘specially when she’s a grizzly bear.”
He chanced a peek back at Rachel and winced. “Eugh! And Scholastic calls dis a kid’s series! I’ll help ya, doll.”
Rachel’s glare returned and Bugs trembled for a moment, thinking the bear was going to come out for an encore. “You call me ‘doll’ again and I’ll give you such a pinch! Besides, I wasn’t crying, I’m sick. But if you’re finally ready to listen, I need your help. My name is Rachel. I can’t tell you my last name or my friends’ names or where I’m from. It’s too risky, and we’ve got to be careful. Really careful. So we don’t trust anyone. Because if they find us…well, we just won’t let them find us. The thing you’ve got to know is that everyone is in danger. Yeah, even you.”
Bugs blinked, unfazed. “Even me? D-…Rachel, I’ve faced robots, cowboys, and Fudds.”
“Oh, no, that’s just a thing we say. Anyway, my friends and I can turn into animals after we touch them and there’s a bunch of evil alien fascists and-“
Bugs cut her off, now wearing an army uniform. “Yer fighting Nazis? I hate Nazis! I get to fight Nazis and get a neck massage?! As long as you don’t want to hug me and squeeze me and call me George, let’s do dis!”
Rachel nodded, deciding not to argue the point. “Sure, but let’s go with a handshake.” Bugs nodded in consent and she lightly grazed his glove.
Bugs yawned and after a moment, the acquiring process was done. Rachel stood up. “Guess I’d better test out the morph.”
Bugs stopped her. “Eh, before you do dat, I’ve gotta bunch of friends who might be able to help. What say you gather up your crew for a meeting? Scene break, please!”
Wait, what was that about a scene break? Before Rachel could object-
____
Several hours later, aboard the Blade ship…
Chaos reigned. All across the ship, Hork-Bajir and Taxxons were struggling against a veritable flood of rabbits, ducks, Tasmanian devils, chicken hawks and, yes, one very pleased Abominable Snowman. Other Andalites were battling it out with a Yosemite Sam doppelgänger and a tweety bird.
After every soldier was blasted, flattened, erased, or quite literally swept away by an Acme Broom-O-Matic, only Visser Three was left.
<Enough! All right, enough is enough. This is the final, the very, very last straw! Who is responsible for this? I demand that you show yourself, Andalite bandit scum! Who are you, huh?!>
Before he could transform into a nightmare-inducing fiend, Rachel as Bugs Bunny hopped up. <Listen, Dracula…have you ever had the feeling you were being watched? Like the eyes of strange things are upon you? Look, out there, in the audience…>
Trembling, Visser Three stared directly in front of him, wholly unprepared for the Lovecraftian madness. <PEOPLE! AIEEEE!!! We surrender!>
The Yeerk immediately slipped out of Esplin 9466 Prime’s body, put on a coat and hat, grabbed a briefcase, and hailed a taxi. In seconds, literally every Yeerk had crammed themselves into the car and sped off.
The cab driver briefly pulled down his cap to reveal Bugs Bunny. “Ah, a kid after me own heart! Ain’t she a stinker?”
That’s all, folks!