Homeless Bunny 25

I was joking of course, much to their relief. Not that I was above humiliating them for my amusement, that was practically ninety percent of shonen martial arts training, but I didn’t want to explain to my wife how I accidentally ended up owning a strip club.

The part that would annoy her most wasn’t that I’d have my paws in something lewd, more that I’d coerced my disciples into it as well. “Corrupting the next generation,” she’d call it. Considering she placed a high premium on the Confuican virtues, she’d likely frown on such a thing.

I had a feeling Luo Hao would visit at the most opportune time to have the biggest misunderstanding possible. Really, it came with being a Campione. We were Fatebreakers, but that also meant fate liked to fuck with us at every opportunity.

I was seated in Junior’s office, on his couch with my hands politely in my lap. The twins sat at either side, leaning into me like a pair of lazy cats. They’d had their fun teasing Yang and decided that this was the more interesting drama for them to gawk at. Behind us stood Amber, who admired Junior’s whiskey collection. The not-so-innocent Maiden apparently had a taste for rye, reminded her of her uncle’s casks, she said.

I loomed over all five of my bunnies and Junior. Junior had his legs straight, arms behind his back, ass in the air, and head buried into the floor of his office. Next to him, my bunnies were likewise prostrated, though they couldn’t assume the same disciplinary position.

I stared down at them judgmentally. “Capo Cuddles, I gave you a directive. Repeat it back to me.”

“We were told to make that pig’s life inconvenient, boss.”

“And what did you do?”

“We made his life inconvenient.”

The twins snorted in amusement. Yes, arson did do that, technically speaking. I pinched the bridge of my nose. Campione couldn’t really get headaches, but it was a near thing. “By committing arson.”

“Aye, your majesty.”

“I believe I also told you to be discreet, or am I imagining that part?”

“Y-You did…”

“Explain your reasoning to me, capo. Why did you see fit to ignore half of my orders?”

“Ah, well, ya see…”

“It was my plan, your majesty,” Semifreddo spoke up. “I was told to take care of it while the capo and the others quietly took over the local gangs.”

Behind me came the sound of a heavy-bottomed glass tumbler hitting the oak table. Amber’s palm met her face as she whispered in wonder. “Holy shit, you’re really taking over the underworld with bunnies…”

“Let me get this straight. You set fire to the detective’s house while the rest of the crew… What exactly have you been doing, Cuddles?” I was a little afraid to ask.

“Ah, like Semifreddo said, boss,” he coughed a little more confidently. “We discreetly took over a few of the gangs in the local area. The brass know they’re under new management and we had to knock some heads together, but no one except Junior here’s wearing our mark.”

“I… may have pointed them towards the Scorpions,” Junior added. I leveled him with a cold, weighted glare that he could feel even with his weight balanced on his head. “L-Let me explain! The Scorpions are drug runners who move product from the pier. They recently got this new drug that’s a lot more addictive and I asked Capo Cuddles to destroy the stash.”

“We did that. We also got some intel for ya, re.”

“Go on…” I motioned.

“Well, ya see, the drug’s called the poison kiss. According to the boss of their little operation, it was developed by some nobodies called the Spiders.”

The twins stiffened like a pair of cats that had their tails pulled, fully on alert. Melanie sucked air in through her teeth. “Shit, mom’s involved in this?”

“Damn it, things are going to get more complicated,” Miltia whined. “Tianyu? Any chance you can just… go blow up Mistral or something? Pretty please?”

“No, I’m not going to wipe one of the only four major cities humans have off the map so you don’t have to deal with your mother. Remind me again, what does your mother have to do with the Spiders again?”

“What doesn’t she? She’s the leader and rules most of Mistral’s crime scene.”

“Huh, I didn’t realize you two were mob royalty.”

“It’s not really worth talking about.”

“Totes. Mom’s really cunning. She might want a slice of the Vale market, or she might be making a play for more here,” Melanie added. “It could be a problem.”

“And you want to blow up Mistral? With your mom in it?” Amber asked, mildly disturbed by it all. This was foreign territory to her.

“No, well, not actually… Look, it’s complicated, farm girl. We’re pretty sure she likes us…”

“And we're positive she had dad assassinated so she could take over the Spiders for herself,” Miltia finished for her twin.

“Yeah. She’s always about power before everything else. There’s a reason we’re here and not in Mistral.”

“Oh, that does complicate things,” Amber muttered.

I thought about it. Truthfully, besides using Don Fluffles and the Moonlit Famiglia as a running gag, I wasn’t too invested in ruling. Back home, I had a truly massive territory: all of North America east of the Rockies, with my headquarters in New York. Annie and I agreed to this because she was too busy stamping down on all the cults and divine ancestors in South America, but I wasn’t the one who asked for that much land. In fact, I first tried to reject it. After all, what use did a chef have for a kingdom?

Even a hundred years later, I wasn’t much of a ruler. Oh, Washington, DC and Ottawa were both on my side of the Rockies and that effectively let me set mundane laws and policies for the western world, but I mostly used that authority to establish federal scholarships for culinary schools or to fuck with semf-important politicians for shits and giggles.

I knew I could do more, but the governments did well enough governing themselves. The implied threat of “Fuck around and find out how fast a Campione can rip you a new asshole,” was usually enough that I didn’t need to do much to keep them in line.

If nothing else, the magical leadership was fully aware that I wouldn’t lift a finger to help them should Annie get offended because they did something stupidly corrupt. That girl had her head screwed on right, as far as my siblings went anyway, and the last thing they wanted was to have two Campione paying them personal attention.

“So…” I began, “is it so bad if we let her have Vale?”

The twins froze. “What?”

“Exactly what I said. What kind of ruler is your mother?”

“Fucking unhinged,” Melanie said. “Okay, let me tell you a story, bun-bun. Once, she wanted to snap up a few gambling dens owned by someone else who didn’t want to sell. She had his twelve year old son kidnapped and recorded a video of her forcing the boy to drink a painful, slow-acting poison. Then she gave the boy the antidote and told the man that she’d only continue to give him the antidote for one month.

“Except, that antidote was a lie. The ‘antidote’ was actually minor dosages of a poison that built up in the kid’s body. The real antidote was being dispersed in trace amounts through air vents in the room itself. Not enough to cure the kid, just enough to keep him from showing symptoms for a while even as the poison built up in his body. The father tracked the boy’s location within the week and thought he’d outplayed her.

“The moment he took his son out of the chamber, the kid started to cough blood and waste away because of the poison that hadn’t been flushed from his system yet. She forced him to hold his dying son in his arms before she finally put a bullet in his head. That’s the kind of unhinged I’m talking about, Tianyu. She doesn’t care about anything except ‘expanding the web.’”

I was silent at that. What could I say? She wasn’t the worst I’d heard of, some of the fae princes that Annie had to treat with could be fucking brutal, but the fact that they came to mind at all was telling.

I wasn’t about to hop to Mistral to wring her little neck, but…

“She can’t have Vale,” I said finally. It was a declaration, a Campione’s royal edict. “All influence from Mistral is to be stamped out, especially the Spiders and their proxies.”

“Yes, your majesty!” the Cuddles Crew replied as one.

“Does this mean you’ll be taking Vale’s underworld after all?” Melanie asked, stars twinkling in her eyes. I knew her well enough by now to know that this was what she wanted. Power. Prestige. Wealth. Influence. She wasn’t quite as ruthless as her mother, but she was ambitious nonetheless, a direct contrast to Miltia, who was largely content with letting her twin have the show most of the time.

The two were a good balance for one another. Ambition was all well and good, but I’d noticed over the months that Melanie tended to go a bit too far at times, biting off more than she could chew or more than would be worth the trouble. Miltia, on the other hand, was far more lax and tended to ground her elder sister, providing the perspective needed to take a mellower approach.

“Yes, yes it does,” I said with a sigh. “The easiest way to keep the Spiders out of Vale is to fill the power vacuum. The Moonlit Famiglia will suffice. But! There will be rules. No hard drugs. No kidnapping. No rape or sexual assault of any kind. When you hit someone up for protection money, you will protect them. Focus on clubs, gambling dens, fences for stolen goods, white-collar crime, and the information market.”

“You’re really going for the benevolent yakuza type huh?”

“Exactly. Anyone who doesn’t get with the program gets one warning. Then exile from Vale. If they don’t leave, kill them.”

“You can’t just kill people off,” Yang protested. She’d been silent until now, watching our back and forth like a tennis match. “You’re a huntsman!”

“For starters, I’m a chef first and foremost. Second, I don’t know what you think a huntsman does, but huntsmen are killers. It doesn’t matter whether it’s grimm or humans. In the end, the profession is one that exists to end lives.”

“But that’s…”

“Yang, I understand that you’re new to this, but I am already being more merciful than I should be. Truthfully, I should be sending a clear, brutal message and making an example of a few idiots so no one else steps out of line. I’m not. Giving them the choice to relocate from Vale is downright kind of me.”

“How are you going to make sure people aren’t abusing all this then?” she demanded. And, it was a fair point. Every organization had its rotten eggs, especially illicit groups like this one.

Stolen story; please report.

I snapped my fingers. From out of the shadows came sixteen pairs of eyes, shining in the low light. They bled into the shadows in a way that made mortal eyes glide across their silhouettes. “I have eyes. I’m sure someone will try to abuse my trust at some point. I’m also sure that it is a problem that will arise just once.”

“This still feels wrong.”

“I know. Because it is. In an ideal world, I wouldn’t need to take the reins at all. I don’t like this either, believe it or not. My place is in the kitchen, not at the head of a criminal empire. But if I’m doing this, I’m going all-in. Vale is mine now. Cuddles, I’m giving you a month to take over the rest of the gangs. Junior, you’re going to run the operational side of things. Leave the fighting to the Cuddles Crew.”

“You know no one’s going to take us seriously with a name like that, right?” he asked, the hypocrite. He too was wearing a set of plastic bunny ears.

“That’s fine, ideal even. You are to suppress any rumors about the Moonlit Famiglia. In fact, that stupid outfit is now your permanent uniform. Every human and faunus member of the Moonlit Famiglia is to wear a set of bunny ears, a bunny-print tie, and bunny slippers. Oh, and those bunny-shaped sunglasses.”

“They’ll treat us like jokes!”

“And what a marvelous joke it shall be,” I said with a toothy grin. Play a prank on me, will he? I was married to Luo Hao. Doni and Annie were my siblings. My sense of shame died the last time Annie roped us into pretending to be a Power Rangers knockoff. Or the time Aisha convinced Luo Hao that magical girls were divine cultivators and “dual cultivation” meant I needed to be her Tuxedo Mask expy. “While they’re laughing at you, we’ll have Vale in the palm of our hands within a month.”

“I-But…”

“Am. I. Understood?”

“I… Fine… stupid, crazy bunny…”

This was the birth of the greatest gang Vale had ever seen. It would take the world by storm, the sheer nonsense of it all baffling analysts and policemen alike. Detective Powers would be hailed as the first who sounded the siren, only to be drowned out in a sea of mockery. None save those in this room would know for sure how the gang began, but one thing was for certain:

Vale wasn’t ready for a Campione’s crew.

X

Yang Xiao Long

I was hoping that Tianyu had forgotten about my part-time job. He was busy starting a criminal empire apparently. That was fine by me, I wouldn’t have to wait tables, but the twins were vindictive bitches.

We had an hour or two before the club officially opened and they had me memorizing the menu. That was fine. The Atlesian maid outfit they squeezed me into? That, not so much. It wasn’t quite fetish gear, but the two bitches definitely knew what they were doing, and how much Tianyu was willing to let them get away with in the name of “marketing.”

“Is this really necessary?” I complained. “The food speaks for itself and most people are here to dance and get drunk anyway.”

“Yeah, but this isn’t about getting more customers,” the red one said with a vicious smirk.

“It’s about making you feel like shit,” her twin finished for her. They weren’t even pretending!

“You both suck,” I sulked as the doors opened. If they wanted a maid, they’d get the angriest maid on Remnant.

X

The night went well enough. I had trouble remembering all of the menu items, but I got the hang of it as the night progressed. A few drunks tried hitting on me but I hadn’t had to punch anyone yet. I was allowed to keep Ember Celica on my wrists, and as far as the club was concerned, anyone dumb enough to not take no for an answer from an obviously armed huntress deserved to suffer the consequences of their stupidity.

“This… This club really serves faunus?” a tall man asked. He was unlike the majority of clubbers, older and not dressed to impress. He had a set of tan bunny ears on his head that sat flat against his scalp.

“Yup, what can I get ya?” I chirped cheerfully. If nothing else, the tips were incredible. It turned out, there was very little a drunk frat boy wouldn’t do for a smiling blonde with a bombshell body like mine.

“A-And, do… do bunnies eat free?”

“They do. New rule, but just bunnies, no other faunus. What do you want to eat?”

“Why? I mean, not that I’m complaining, but…”

“The big boss is a bunny faunus. He strong-armed the owner of the club into all this,” I said, waving broadly around the club. “So? Food?”

“Sorry, I haven’t read the menu yet. I thought the sign was just a joke.”

“Take your time.” I seated him at the bar and waited for his order. I wouldn’t get any tips from him but that was alright; I could use a break from wandering around the club anyway.

“We’re feeding animals now?” came a snide voice behind us.

I turned with a scowl; Weiss was about as much racist as I could stand on the daily. At least she didn’t do it on purpose. “Hey, how about you shut the fuck up and let the man have his dinner?”

They were an odd pair, a tall, lanky man with a white overcoat and a black fedora. His ginger hair and unlit cigar was a good clue as to his identity. Next to him was a tiny woman with pink and brown hair, and a pair of heterochromatic eyes that seemed to swap colors each time she blinked. She was even shorter than Ruby!

“Hey, wait, aren’t you-” The short one leaned forward and placed a finger to her lips in an exaggerated “shhh.” “You got arrested! How are you even here?”

Roman Torchwick, the smarmy fuck, pat the midget on the head affectionately. “What can I say? It’s all about knowing the right person. Now, how about you serve someone who’ll actually tip, toots?”

“Toots?” I whispered dangerously.

“Let’s see here… I’ll have those soft pretzels, give me both the cheese sauce and the whole-grain mustard. Oh, and a negroni. Neo here will have your ice cream. All of it. And we do mean all of it.”

“Go fuck yourself, Torchwick.”

“Hey, just get the bunny some damn carrot sticks and put in my order, sugar. Ah, shit, you’re blonde. Here, let me repeat that real slow.”

“I could call the cops, you racist ass.”

“You think there’s a single cop that’ll step foot in here?”

Ember Celica snapped into place. “I’m a huntress. Punching you in the face is practically a civic duty.”

“How’d you end up working here again?” he said with a shit-eating grin. He turned and tapped his cheek. “Come on, toots, give me a kiss.”

I saw red. My hair began to float on its own, taking on a blazing hue. Then, before I could pop one right in the kisser, someone yanked me back by the shoulder.

I whirled to find the twins. Save for a matching set of bunny ears, their dress wasn’t any different from their usual garb. It was the white one, Melanie, who grabbed me.

“Nope, you’re not starting another fight here, no matter how fucking annoying Roman is,” she said.

“Totes. Just get the bunny his food,” the red one added. She looked at Roman like he was lower than the gum peeled off the bottom of her shoe. “Get out.”

Roman shrugged and offered them what he probably thought was a charming smile. “Oh, come on, what’s a joke between friends?”

“Tianyu is in the kitchen.”

It was amazing how fast his face went pale. I knew from what Ruby told me that Tianyu was the one who captured Roman Torchwick the first time, but this wasn’t the face of a man who got arrested. No, this was the face of a man who’d seen death.

The shortstack looked up at her partner, then at the twins in confusion. She signed something, fast enough to mimic actual speech.

Melanie nodded. The twins understood sign language, which was a whole lot more than I’d expected from them. To be honest, I thought they were just eye candy. She jabbed a thumb towards the rabbit faunus at the bar. “Yeah, Tianyu’s here and he probably heard Roman call the bunny an animal. You two should bail before he breaks your legs.”

I started to take other orders but made sure to keep an eye on them. The twins moved the criminal to a corner of the bar, away from the other patrons.

It was fascinating. Roman was a hardened criminal, and I’d bet Neo was the same. He was the kind of man who’d taunted the entire police force and escaped from veteran huntsmen. But Roman wasn’t scared, he was terrified.

I didn’t get it. Tianyu came in, scolded Junior, started a new crime syndicate, and then promptly fucked off to the kitchen because “that’s where I belong.” But he apparently had enough of a reputation to make Roman almost shit himself just from hearing his name. I was starting to take his whole “take over Vale in a month” thing a lot more seriously.

“H-Hey, now,” Roman said, holding his hands up in surrender. “I’m not here to start anything with the scariest bunny in the world. Look, I’m here to offer some information, alright?”

“That’s our thing. What do you know that we don’t?”

“Loads, but more specifically? Cinder’s out.”

The twins looked as confused as I felt. “Who?”

“Oh, she’s the faux-Fall Maiden,” Tianyu said. He was seated on the bar stool to our left, lounging with his head braced on an elbow.

“Aahhh! What the hell?” Roman shrieked like a little girl, putting Neo between him and the scary bunny. “When the hell did you get here?”

“When you blinked. Is that why you’re here? So you can avoid getting sucked into her pace again?”

“I… You know what? Yeah, I want out. That bitch is crazy, even for me. Neo and I don’t want anything to do with whatever she’s planning. It’s why I was keeping an ear to the ground for her, just in case.”

“Done, welcome to the Moonlit Famiglia.”

“The what now?”

Tianyu vanished. We were all looking at him but it didn’t matter. One second, he was sitting at the bar. The next, he was gone, not even one of those speed trails that Ruby left behind either. It made me laugh; Cardin still thought Tianyu was running from him.

Then, he returned just as swiftly. In his hands was a pair of pink, fluffy bunny slippers, sunglasses, and cartoonish bunny ears. He set them on the bar with a proud, shit-eating smirk.

“Your membership card comes with ice cream and a new uniform.” Tianyu took Roman’s hat before setting the bunny ears on the ginger criminal. “Wear your ears proud, Roman Torchwick. You serve a greater cause now.”

“No! Nonono. I’m not wearing that.”

“Are you sure?”

“No way in hell, bunny. I don’t care how scary you are. A man’s gotta have some dignity, damnit!”

Tianyu looked at Roman’s partner. “Free ice cream if you bully Roman into wearing all this. I’ll even give you Roman’s share.”

Neo nodded so fast her head was a blur.

“Neo, you traitor!” Roman cried as Neo jabbed his shin with her parasol.

“Anyway, back to Cinder. Cinder’s the girl who tried to assassinate Amber,” Tianyu said, acting as though that fever dream didn’t just happen.

“Look, I just came by to grab a bite and let Junior know that she’s free before I skip town. That’s worth a free drink, right?”

“Sure, but you need to apologize to that rabbit faunus. I know you act like an insufferable dick to get a reaction from people but I don’t care. Say you’re sorry.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“I could always make you wish you stayed in prison,” he said. In the blink of an eye, a bowl of ice cream appeared in his hand, only for him to hand it off to Neo.

And, to my surprise, Roman complied. It was grudging, each word bitten out like he’d eaten something sour, but he did. It was just plain weird to see. Seriously, I’d have to get the full story from Rubes when I got back to Beacon because this wasn’t normal.

Tianyu nodded, satisfied. “Good. Now, what’s this about Cinder going free? How?”

Roman shrugged. “When Goodwitch took her, they dropped her off in maximum security. Now, what you have to understand is that the maximum security prison isn’t actually in the city. It draws the wrong kind of attention, you know?”

“Makes sense. Grimm are drawn by negative emotions, right?”

“Right. Vale’s is on an island so escape isn’t usually possible. Even if you do make it out, crossing the bay will probably get you eaten alive.”

“So how’d she do it? Did she blow her way out? She should still have a fraction of Amber’s Maiden powers.”

“We’d have heard about it,” Melanie pointed out. “The breakout would have had to be quiet, enough that Vale’s Council could cover it up and keep it out of the news cycle. Most people didn’t even know Cinder was arrested at all so they’d have a good reason to keep things out of the public eye.”

“That’s true. Either Ozpin knows already, or someone on the Council is desperately trying to think up a good excuse to tell him,” Tianyu hummed. “So someone helped her? There was that queen of the grimm that Ozpin talked about…”

“Hold on, who’s the ‘queen of the grimm?’” I cut in. “That’s not a thing. The grimm are mindless beasts.”

Tianyu smiled at me indulgently. “Of course, Yang. Don’t you worry about it. In fact, why don’t you go grab that table over there refills for their drinks?”

“Don’t just shoo me away!”

“Anyway, it probably wasn’t a grimm attack either, right? That’d be too loud, too.”

“Right, that’s the thing,” Roman said. “Someone hacked their security, disabled the whole thing and let Cinder break out without anywhere near the noise she’d normally cause.”

“So it was someone on the inside? Or maybe a really good hacker? Interesting…”

“You’re… You’re not upset?”

“No? Why would I be? I mean, Amber might be when she finds out, but I think she’d be a little happy inside. You know, unfinished business and whatnot.”

Miltia scoffed. “Farm girl? No way, she doesn’t have a mean bone in her body.”

“She doesn’t, usually, but Cinder did try to murder her. You could even make the case that she succeeded. Besides, Amber’s got a lot more fire than you’d think at first glance.”

“Where is she anyway?”

“She’s in Junior’s office. The club really isn’t her kind of vibe, you know?”

“Yeah, sounds like her. So what’s the plan? Are we hunting Cinder down?”

Tianyu thought about it. Maidens were real. There was a “queen of the grimm.” Oh, and a “faux-Maiden,” whatever the hell that was, was out there, along with a hacker who could break into Vale’s maximum security prison.

I eyed the drinks on my serving tray. They were tempting. Unfortunately, not only would anything I drank come out of my tab, they were also just beer. I desperately needed something stronger to cope with this shit.

Sighing, I carried the tray to the table. I missed what Tianyu’s plan was, but that was fine. As far as I was concerned, the crazy bunny and his world-shaking revelations could stay far away from me.

Author’s Note

The Moonlit Famiglia is here and it’s even stupider than you thought. Roman is destined to be someone’s minion one way or another.

Cinder is free because Glynda can’t be watching her 24/7 and Tianyu… doesn’t care.

Thank you for reading. To reach a wider audience, and because I enjoy a more forum-like setup to facilitate discussion, I like to crosspost to a wide variety of websites. You can find them all on my Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/fabled.webs.