Fuk Oh Nah Isekai?!?
(Fukona Isekai?!?)
不幸な異世界
"An unfortunate trip to another world"
The sky above was still cloudless and a deep vibrant blue that almost seemed to leave the glowing field of an afterimage seared into Jack's retina if he stared wide-eyed into that azure emptiness for too long. The previous winds were stilled now, leaving only an occasional light breeze that barely stirred the leaves on the trees that grew thickly on the hillside. With the air calmed, Jack had opted to embrace the ruggedly awkward, tall, dork and handsomish, not-creepy-at-all-older-man-nudist vibe he had discovered. Jack found himself sufficiently warm just from sitting in the pale, bright sunlight and avoiding the shade. Even though neither Jack nor Cal could recall any details of where they came from, both agreed that the sun in the sky above them was smaller, paler, and much brighter than the sun should be. Jack could certainly tell that it was hotter than he seemed to expect, because even though the air surrounding him was cool, sitting in direct sunlight without a breeze warmed him enough to begin to lightly sweat along his scalp and the back of his neck that was covered in his long hair.
Jack did look much more put together, or at least much less crazed and desperate, now that his hair had been washed and roughly combed with his fingers, removing the previous sticks, leaves, and putrid shadowhound bits. He held himself with a casual grace and assuredness, his back was completely straight while the rest of him relaxed, despite sitting bare-assed on a patch of rocky dirt that was far from accommodating. The mildly wry smile on his face spoke of a tired, patient, and thoughtful individual. The lines on Jack's face spoke of a kind, lolder man who laughed and smiled frequently. His one working, normal eye glittered with mirth, while the bizarre pink-on-red eye somehow didn't seem to really belong to the man it was occupying. Despite the obvious look of relaxed happiness on Jack's face, the way his eyelids trembled almost imperceptibly, when his eyes narrowed for a smile, spoke whispers of sorrow. The way his gaze was somehow always deeply piercing, no matter how relaxed the rest of him was, revealed echoes of a weary, wary vigilance.
Cal was the same adorable, fluffy white rabbit with splotches of dark bluish-gray splotches around his eyes, and then speckled onto his cute little white bunny ears and streaked and dabbled in messy line from his shoulders to the base of his tail. Having at least some lion's head rabbit heritage in his ancestry, Caliburn Attenborough, Lord of Caerbannog proudly sported a regal and floofy white mane of luxurious white long hair along his cute little bunny neck, shoulders, and the area between his ears on the top of his head. Currently, the normally pristine white fur that surrounded his mouth was stained bright red, as if he were wearing lipstick. Combined with how the dark patches of fur around his eyes gave the impression of him wearing hardcore-sparkly-goth-vampire levels of eye shadow, and with the way his 'elegant and dignified' mane was fluffed up from Jack's petting, Cal projected an aura of gravitas that was far removed from his intended self image. At that moment, Caliburn Attenborough, Lord of Caerbannog convincingly passed for an aging trophy wife whose bi-weekly full makeover had been interrupted by either a natural disaster, or a need to speak with the manager.
Jack and Caliburn Attenborough, Lord of Caerbannog were sitting in front of the ice cream truck, eating bomb pops together. Jack was using his left hand to hold Cal's tri-colored popsicle down where the rabbit could reach it, while trying to not laugh long enough to eat his own.
"Owe! Owe! Ice is stabbing my brain!"Cal desperately complained in a loud telepathic howl that stabbed into Jack's brain, causing Jack to stop laughing and poke himself in the face with his bomb pop when he tried to grab his forehead.
Having nearly put out his one remaining working, non-alien-pink eye, Jack confusedly raised his hands, and helplessly tried to figure out how to wipe the sticky popsicle juice off of his face. During this time, Cal fully recovered from his first experience with brain freeze, and started laughing in return at his friend.
"Hey! Put that back down where I can get it servant!" Cal playfully demanded with mock seriousness before proceeding to lecture Jack on the finer points of etiquette and popsicle eating. "Yes, servant you put it in your face, but not *on your face!* Just remember to swallow, hold on I'll get you a towel, oh, nevermind."
Cal abruptly paused for a moment before continuing on.
"Well, I guess that works. Have you always been that good with your tongue? You know you really shouldn't do that in public."
Jack finished licking the popsicle juice off of his right forearm that he had used to wipe his face before squinting sullenly at the rabbit and threatening reprisal.
"Ingrate! You know, I could very easily just drop this popsicle, or throw it into the bushes, and let you lick the dirt off of it."
Jack paused for emphasis before supplying his crude, retributive punchline.
"That's right, lick it clean."
Cal ducked his head in surrender before responding.
"Ok, I'm sorry. But it wasn't very nice for you to laugh at me like that when I was in pain Buddy Friend Jack!"
"Hey, Buddy Friend Cal, that's just brain freeze. It's what you call natural consequences for eating a popsicle too fast. Besides, you don't have to share the pain and yell straight into my brain every time something unpleasant happens. Come on man!"
Jack explained and then pleaded with the rabbit.
The two friends lapsed into silence and uncomfortable rumination has they sat together and finished eating their bomb pops. There was a moment of tension shared between them once they both finished and looked around expectantly. The old man had presented them with the popsicles upon their return, and ominously informed them he would be back once they were done to finish their business, whatever that entailed.
As they began to wait, Cal hopped over and snuggled up against Jack's bare thigh, fluffing himself up into a floofy ball of fur. Neither of them seemed to care anymore that Jack was naked. Jack reached down to begin petting his friend's forehead the way Cal liked, soothing them both as they listened to the distorted drone of ice cream truck music coming through the nearby loudspeaker. The sweet frozen treats had helped cool Jack down just enough to perfectly enjoy the sunlight, and the endorphins from the sugar took the edge off his stress and helped him relax. As his mental and emotional guard dropped, he stared at nothing while petting Cal's head, losing focus as the unnatural emptiness of his own mind was filled by the ice cream truck music.
"This old man, he played one, he played knick-knack on his thumb."
Jack began faintly singing along under his breath to the hauntingly familiar tune, unaware that he was doing so.
"This old man, he played three, he played knick-knack on his knee."
By the third verse, a feeling of intense and painful sadness stabbed up in his chest, a sense of loss and abandonment that he was completely unable to understand or explain.
"This old man, he played six, he played knick-knack on his sticks."
Tears were pouring down Jack's face and he choked out the words of the song in ragged sobs that expressed a deep and old, old longing for something that he couldn't even remember losing.
Cal had stopped snuggling and perked up to stare at Jack with a mix of awe, confusion, and concern for his Buddy Friend.
Nothing had changed in their surroundings, the sun, sky, trees, dirt, leaves and occasional faint breeze we're all still exactly the same. The ice cream truck's cheap loudspeaker continued to play the same distorted music that Jack started singing along with.
"Had that song always been playing?" Cal asked himself.
"No, that's the only thing that has changed." The bunny decided to himself.
Through their shared link, Cal could feel the bitter cold and aching heartbreak that had split opened like an abyss inside Jack, despite him not even being able to understand what loss he was mourning. The bunny tried throwing his own love, affection and appreciation back through the bond to comfort and support his friend, but it was like a squirt gun trying to compete with a fire hydrant. His efforts were completely washed away by the torrent of raw, ulcerated grief. Cal stood in the face of it unbowed, resolutely clutching to their shared bond as he rose up on his hind legs to rest his little front paws on Jack's arm. Jack had ceased his singing and started humming occasional pieces of the tune along with the loudspeaker, while he rocked himself in a self-hug, his now much quieter crying further muffled by his arms.
Caliburn Attenborough, Lord of Caerbannog, Best Bunny Buddy felt the disturbing and discordant disconnect between Jack's original gasping sobs and his current whimpering. This was emphasized by his friend's feelings that were psychically blasting Cal in the face, as if he were staring point blank into the exhaust of a jet turbine.
After everything the man had endured and laughed off in these last few days, while desperately clutching the rags and tatters of his sanity, Cal wondered what about this song could possibly have crushed Jack so thoroughly. And yet, Cal knew there would be no explanation or trace of sane normalcy to let either of them make sense of their existence, just like there hadn't been for anything else in this bizarre nightmare.
"This song was played by his first stuffed animal, that his mother put in his crib. It had a little device inside like a wind up music box. He's kept it with him everywhere he's moved his entire life, always safe in a box somewhere."
Without removing his paws from Jack's arm, Cal slowly turned his head to face the strange old man's dispassionate, gravelly explanation. Cal found he was barely able to move, despite the blossoming inferno of rageful protectiveness for his friend that had ignited in his little bunny chest.
The interdimensional hippie sadist noted and dismissed Cal's impotent anger with another bemused glance before continuing on with his rattling monotone monologue.
"Anytime he takes it out, he wants to be able to hold it and feel comfort, and feel loved, but instead all he ever feels is the bitter absence of neglect. Every time he hears this song, it wakes up that tiny, frightened, and sad child inside of him who just wants the mother that isn't going to be there for him, which is exactly why I picked it to start the process."
The old man visibly inhaled and exhaled, his sigh the first physical utterance he had made. He closed his eyes, intertwined his fingers and stretched his arms out, cracking his knuckles. He rubbed his hands together before opening his eyes and placing both hands on Jack's head.
"You might want to step back, Lord of Caerbannog, and I recommend the lying down as well. I'm about to temporarily reopen all the closed vaults in his mind, even the ones he's closed himself, so that the whole of him hears and understands my full explanation of what is going to happen to him and why. Don't worry, I will be pinching off the flow from him to you in that little bond of yours, so that you are still sane enough to understand for him. Your understanding will flow back into his subconscious through the bond to fill in the missing pieces for his soul to chew on before I complete the integration of his shroud into the empowerment the punitive spellform."
Caliburn Attenborough, Best Bunny Buddy felt his scalding rage fight off the chill that tried to invade his veins as he struggled to understand the implications of what he was hearing from the Interdimensional Hippie Sadist.
"No, fuck that!" The brave and resolute ball of fluff corrected himself "from now on this guy is Bleeding Constipation Prolapse Dick™!" Cal tried to project the insult directly into the old man's head as intensely and forcefully as he could manage, but it felt like he was trying to yell at a mountain that couldn't be bothered to notice him.
Cal refused to be discouraged, and instead of trying to once again push his feelings through the bond to compete with Jack's own, he reached out to try and willfully tear his bond with Jack fully back open. Whatever the old man had done to suppress the flow from Jack to Cal, the righteously rabid rabbit was able to forcefully pry it back open with his inflamed will. A hair's breadth of a moment before the blockage surrendered to Cal's assault, Cal felt the soul quake as every barrier in Jack's mind shuddered open at once and his harrowing began. In that hair's breadth moment, the heroic bunny could have chosen to pull back and shelter his own self from the torment he was about to release, but that was not what Caliburn Attenborough, Rabbit Lord of Caerbannog, World's Best Bunny Buddy would do.
Cal unreservedly drank deep of his friend's anguish and insanity, sucking as much of it into his little bunny being as he could. He opened his heart and mind wide to welcome the incomprehensible, horrid flagellation that poured into him from his beloved friend. Caliburn Attenborough, Rabbit Lord of Caerbannog, World's Best Bunny Buddy let the invading pain scour his being, but resolutely held onto his intent. Cal took the whole essence of the torment pouring into him and used it to fuel the still burning inferno of protective wrath raging inside of his fluffy little bunny chest. As Cal stoked the furnace of his fury with Jack's pain, he made a decision. Even as awestruck as he was by how white hot his inner immolation was growing, he realized it could not compete with Jack's lifetime of pain and trauma.
Recognizing that he couldn't use his anger to shelter his friend, he did something else with it that was much more shrewd and impressive. His little bunny soul was full to bursting, but that did not stop him. Cal once more drank deep of his friend's soul-stripping flagellation, then he emptied himself by shoving the full force of his wrath and torment into a single psychic bunny scream castigation of the old man, in defense of his buddy.
"DON'T YOU TRY TO HURT MY BUDDY MOTHER FUCKER!"
Caliburn Attenborough, Rabbit Lord of Caerbannog, Jack's Best Bunny Buddy channeled it all into his quote of the words that Jack had screamed when he had selflessly leapt to Cal's defense.
The little rabbit was a fluffy, adorable and inconsequential prey animal. He also happened to be an inconsequential prey animal that someone or something had foolishly given psychic/telepathic powers and a soul connection to a living battery of human existential suffering. This allowed the fluffy little rabbit to catch Bleeding Constipation Prolapse Dick™ completely off guard.
Cal's empowered psychic assault slammed into the old man's mind like truck-kun enjoying a drunken bender on a high-speed expressway.
This was a multiverse spanning, unprecedented victory that surely heralded the ascendancy of the Lagomorphic Overlords.