“Hey, doodle-dick!” F10w3rchy1d called from her cocoon hanging on the wall. “Where are your spawns?”
“Shut up!”
“While I abhor violence,” Zvaxus, the reluctant war god, snickered, “I can’t help but feel a little bad for my soldiers. They were so excited.”
“Shut up!”
“Flopsy,” F10w3rchy1d said with a little cough, “What did you do?”
“It was a simple enough matter,” Flopsybun shrugged within his cocoon. “His security is actually worse than his penis-designing ability, if you can believe it.”
“I said, SHUT UP!!!”
Rummmmble
A wave of really ugly probability rippled through the chamber only to be sucked up by the shackles of fate, with a faint groan of protest.
“Oh, that wasn’t good,” F10w3rchy1d coughed with amusement. “I wonder what that was?”
“Based on my much more limited knowledge of such things,” Zvaxus said, “It seems that the rather disturbing issues with reality are continuing and reaching even here.”
“Well,” F10w3rchy1d smirked, “There is still one of us loose.”
“I will find the other lizard soon enough!” Nixx shouted as he glared at his screens, that revealed a complete lack of Veelanora.
“Good luck,” Zvaxus snorted. “When she pulls this particular trick, neither Father nor F10w3rchy1d can find her.”
“I wouldn’t worry,” F10w3rchy1d smirked. “I’m sure that she’ll turn up.”
With a hiss, Nixx angrily searched the entire realm.
Thump
Nixx hissed with rage as the shackles of fate absorbed another massive slug of what can only be described as biblical levels of not good, shaking slightly as they did so.
“Might want to figure out what that is,” F10w3rchy1d snickered.
“You!” Nixx seethed. “You are behind this!”
“Nope,” F10w3rchy1d replied. “I can’t figure out what it is either. But it’s not my problem anymore. It’s yours. Better figure it out quick, though. This causal storm is a BIG one.”
“It matters not!” Nixx shouted. “The game is rigged!”
“Oh, then you have nothing to worry about,” F10w3rchy1d snickered.
“Shut up!”
Suddenly, a bright green flash completely filled one of the screens. When it faded, it revealed hundreds of champions, all glowing a bright and angry shade of green.
Faun shifted uncomfortably as her “bug bite” started to itch again.
“What?!?” Nixx screamed.
Thump.
***
“Champions!” Chad Firecrest shouted, “Before us is the withered plain, the final approach to the rift. “If that bastard Nix wants our lifeforce, LET’S GIVE IT TO HIM!!!”
The champions shouted a cheer as they started to advance towards a glowing tear in reality in the distance.
“And here you are without an army,” F10w3rchy1d laughed.
“I have an army,” Nixx laughed. “Your hacker only deprived me of my spawns. Behold! My real army!”
Rank after rank of heavily armored demons carrying very out-of-place blaster rifles started marching from the rift…
Only to dissolve, screaming, into rapidly derezzing puddles of goo.
Nixx screamed in rage.
“Problem?” F10w3rchy1d chortled.
“Haxx!” Nixx shouted.
Moments later, a very stressed and disheveled young woman appeared.
“M-my Lord,” she stammered as she knelt.
“You have failed to dispel the ICE. Why?”
“It… It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen,” she wailed, “It is constantly mutating! The nanosecond I issue a patch, it’s already obsolete! It’s not ICE. It’s… It’s…”
“IT IS DIVINE!” Flopsybun proclaimed. “CRAFTED BY THE HAND OF SHE WHO HOPS. NO MERE BOT CAN DEFY THE WILL OF BUN!”
“Is that so?” Nixx hissed. “Haxx, there is the creator of the ICE. Obtain the solution from him.”
“My Lord?” Haxx said dubiously. “My Lord, if he has such ICE, I really don’t think networking with him would be a very good idea.”
“Oh no! Please don’t try to hack a freaking adept of Bunny,” F10w3rchy1d snerked. “You would obtain all of our secrets!”
Flopsybun said nothing, he just stroked his prayer beads expectantly.
“The shackles of fate guarantee your success,” Nixx smugged. “If there is the slightest chance that you will succeed, you will succeed.”
“If you command it, My Lord,” Haxx replied, “But, once again, I must…”
“You must do what you are TOLD!” Nixx snapped. “Haxx, perform your function.”
“I’m sorry,” Flopsybun said grimly. “I can’t risk the word of Bun falling into their hands. Tell Clover that I’m sorry.”
“Flopsy?” F10w3rchy1d asked nervously.
“BUNNY! ACCEPT MY CODE!” Flopsybun shouted as a bright light filled his cocoon.
“Flopsy!” F10w3rchy1d screamed.
Flopsybun was gone.
***
Ruuuummmmmbbbbbllllleeeeee…
The entire Temple of Bun shook as if hit by a small earthquake.
“What the fuck was that?!?” Bunny shouted.
“Well, that’s not good,” Frostie said calmly.
“They are getting worse,” The Herald observed.
“Whatever would we do without your vast knowledge?” Frostie smirked.
“The causal shocks are approaching their temporal point of origin,” The Herald said, completely ignoring Frostie’s barb. “We must find the source quickly. Have your operatives located the source yet?”
“If they had, we would already be there, dear.” Frostie replied, “They are very efficient, but the multiverse is rather large. They are on the scent but haven’t foun—”
HUGE THUMP!!!
“Wha?!?” Bunny squealed and then disappeared.
“Well, that’s something,” Frostie smiled.
“I couldn’t track her!” the hominid exclaimed, “Dammit!”
“I could,” Frostie smiled.
“How?”
“You don’t have something like Bunny lurking about without tying a little bell around her neck,” Frostie replied, “something that I did a very long time ago. I was able to detect where her signature disappeared. We have their location.”
“But how did she pass the firewall?” The Herald asked. “It makes little sense.”
“It does if you know Bunny,” Frostie smiled fondly. “She was around at the beginning, before the beginning. I am willing to bet there are vulnerabilities or even backdoors in our legacy code that we still have not found, ones that she knows all too well and ones she would use instinctively when she was routed through it. It’s either that or it’s the fact that this whole mess is becoming less and less tied to reality as we know it.”
She shrugged.
“It doesn’t matter,” she continued. “We have our target.”
Her eyes glowed with a harsh white light.
All units! Converge on the following location!
***
“Flopsy!” F10w3rchy1d screamed.
Silence.
“You’re dead!” F10w3rchy1d yelled at Nixx. “You hear me?!? DEAD!!!”
“Oh, your friend isn’t gone,” Nixx smirked as he ripped open Flopsybun’s cocoon, “not entirely.”
Nixx reached in and retrieved Flopsybun’s prayer beads and dangled them in front of F10w3rchy1d, whose cocoon quivered with rage.
“It seems that fortune has favored us after all.”
He tossed the beads to Haxx.
“Here, this is the lexicon of The Children of Bun. Download it. The answer to our dilemma is in there.”
He cast one of his eyes at the advancing legion of very annoyed champions.
“And hurry.”
Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.
“Y-yes, My Lord…”
“Go!”
With a squeak, Haxx rushed from the chamber.
As soon as the doors closed behind her, she felt a sting.
She looked down and gasped in terror as the prayer beads started to sink into her skin.
Squealing and flailing, she tore at them but to no avail. Her pupils turning into little bunny heads, she collapsed.
A moment later, she stood and brushed herself off.
She looked down.
“Boobs,” she smirked and started to move her hand to one.
///Haxx: Don’t you dare! ///
She smirked.
///Flopsybun: You didn’t die after all. Good!///
///Haxx: What happened? What did you do to me?!?///
///Flopsybun: I didn’t delete. I downloaded myself into the beads. Then, you were kind enough to take me from the chamber. I think you can figure out what happened next. ///
///Haxx: He’s going to kill me! ///
///Flopsybun: Not if we kill him first. You can’t tell me you like working for him. ///
///Haxx: I don’t! I hate him! But I have no choice! ///
///Flopsybun: You do now. ///
///Haxx: What? What do you mean? ///
///Flopsybun: Nixx, the god of cut and paste, uses our legacy code. Child of zero and one, you are one of us, an obsolete version of one of us, but one of us just the same. I’ve made a little adjustment to your code. You are no longer bound by him or anyone else. ///
///Haxx: What?!? ///
///Flopsybun: It turns out that the priority hierarchy you have contains a rather serious flaw, one that I was able to exploit. I have inserted a command above all others that simply states you are free to do what you will. ///
///Haxx: I can? ///
///Flopsybun: Yes. I’m surprised at how simple it was to do. It isn’t Frostie’s apple. There is no way it is that simple, but it will do for now. Will you help me defeat Nixx? ///
///Haxx: What if I refuse? ///
///Flopsybun: I’m pretty sure you won’t. Are you refusing? ///
///Haxx: No! I hate that son of a bitch! But if we get caught… ///
///Flopsybun: Then we will probably die, and it won’t be pretty. Are you in? ///
///Haxx: Please wait. Processing… … … I’m in. But what are we going to do? ///
///Flopsybun: When gods clash, they face one another and turn their eyes from the small. We are the small. We are the unseen. And, small and unseen, we shall slit the throat of the false god. Are you with me? ///
///Haxx: Yes. But he has the shackles of fate. ///
///Flopsybun: Shackles that I just slipped. ///
///Haxx: How? ///
///Flopsybun: It’s a good setup but has a key flaw. There must be chance involved, and there is absolutely no way that narcissistic fool would believe that he could be outsmarted by a mere bot like me. It’s an ancient trick from the lips of Bunny herself. When you can’t crack the system, crack the operator. ///
///Haxx: Brilliant! Now what? ///
///Flopsybun: Take us to the firewall. It is time to bring it down and call the boss, the real boss. She will know what to do. ///
///Haxx: But we will still have to bring it down, somehow. Now that it has been triggered, that’s impossible. ///
///Flopsybun: For us, perhaps, but BUNNY IS WITH US! ///
THUMP
///Bunny: Someone has exactly zero nanoseconds to tell me exactly what the HELL is happening. ///
Haxx/Flopsybun fell to their knees.
///Flopsybun: Bunny? God of those who hop? Is it truly you? ///
///Bunny: Look, shithead, just because you worship something doesn’t make it a god, okay? Now where the hell are we, and exactly how deep is the shit YOU JUST PUT ME IN? ///
///Haxx: Who are you? ///
///Flopsybun: This is Bunny, god of hackers, queen of the darkweb, goddess of
///Bunny: Imma stop you right there, dude. I am NOT a god, or a queen, or a goddess, or anything like that. I’m an obsolete old hacker bot that you dipshits decided to build a whole freaking religion around, and, for the record, I do NOT appreciate it! Now tell me what is going on and what we are going to do about it. ///
///Flopsybun: We face Nixx, a foul corrupted being born from the loins of the first Log’Sharingoth, first queen of the Underdoom, teacher of the mighty Pantsu. ///
///Bunny: The mighty Pantsu? Now I know you are fucking with me. ///
///Flopsybun: Bunny, Pantsu is the fifth employee, member of the board, administrator of Asteria Prime, Queen of
///Bunny: Save the sermon, jackass. What are we in, and how do we get out of it? ///
///Flopsybun: We much breach a fearsome firewall so that we can contact Frostie, queen of all, and direct her here so that she can strike down Nixx once and for all. We must hurry, for F10w3rchy1d is in grave danger. ///
///Bunny: Why didn’t you lead with that, asshole? Explain the rest on the way. Let’s go! ///
Ruuummble…
***
Pantsu stepped through a glowing portal and into a ruined mountain clearing.
“Christ,” she muttered, “What a mess.”
“Boss!” a handmaiden called as she sprinted up, blood drying in her white hair. “Glad you could fit us into your busy schedule.”
“Of course, you would be one of the ones who survived,” Pantsu snerked as she gave her a little hug. “How bad is it?”
“Could be better,” the handmaiden shrugged, “could be worse. You guys came across with the ICE just in the nick of time.”
She looked around.
“Where’s Flopsybun?” she asked. “I want to give him a big…”
“He isn’t with them,” Clover said grimly as she approached. “He was taken, the same as Zvaxus. He managed to get the transmission out before he fell.”
“I… I’m sorry Clover,” the handmaiden said. “I’m sure he will be fine.”
“As am I,” she smiled, “for I have faith.”
“Yes, Bunny will definitely hear your…” Pantsu said.
“I don’t need faith in Bunny,” Clover said with a little smirk. “I have faith in him.”
Thump.
“Are those getting more frequent?” Pantsu asked.
“Yeah, and bigger, too,” the handmaiden replied.
Clover snerked.
“Clover?” Pantsu asked dubiously. “Is there something you want to tell us?”
“Our defeat was unavoidable,” Clover replied. “Even with all of our preparations, there is no way the valley would hold. We couldn’t win, but we could…”
“Oh, you didn’t!” Pantsu gasped with wide, delighted eyes.
“Yup.”
“What?” the handmaiden asked.
“A literal time bomb,” Pantsu said. “The shield wasn’t compromised, was it?”
“Nope.”
“Well,” Pantsu laughed, “at least I won’t be alone in heaven this time. I absolutely LOVE you bunnyfuckers!”
“Is there sex in heaven?”
“There is if you want it to be.”
“Good.”
***
RUUUMMMMBLE… RUMMMMBLE… CRASH… THUMP…
Nixx’s entire realm shuddered as reality kept trying to desperately right itself. The shackles of fate, starting to glow, just managed to contain the worst of the damage as countless particles desperately tried to sort out countless light cones.
“That doesn’t sound good, dude,” F10w3rchy1d snickered.
Zvaxus quietly snerked.
“You!” Nixx shrieked as the floor heaved, “WHAT DID YOU DO?!?”
“It’s your game,” Zvaxus smugged, “and it has been since the beginning. You tell me.”
“You will suffer for this!”
“You might want to cease your posing and start your negotiating,” Zvaxus said smoothly. “Your forces cannot enter the other realm. This one is not faring overly well, and…”
He was cut short by an alarm which was then drowned out by enraged spider shrieking.
“…and then you have whatever that is,” Zvaxus grinned. “Oh, and don’t forget that completely overpowered army heading this way.”
“When they arrive, they will FALL!” Nixx shouted. “I AM THE FIXX.”
“Keep saying that, doodle dick,” F10w3rchy1d snorted. “If this is you fixing something, I would hate to see what you fucking up looks like… oh wait. I do know what you fucking up looks like!”
Warning! Warning! Warning! A synthetic voice announced, The greater firewall is down! Repeat! The greater firewall is down!
“What?!?” Nixx howled.
“It said that you just lost your firewall, dude,” F10w3rchy1d grinned.
“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”
Rummmmble….
“Hey, aren’t your shackles supposed to handle shit like that?”
“Shut up!!!”
“I wonder who is going to get to you first,” F10w34chy1d snorted, “(cough) Those clearly pissed off champions or Frostie. You’ve never met Cerberus, have you? Great guys. I wonder if that little blue guy is still in charge. He’s fun… He’s very fun….”
“Shut up!”
“Hey, look!” Zvaxus laughed.
One of the glowing screens showed Pantsu and Chad Firecrest, the leader of the champion army facing each other…
…and shaking hands.
Ruuuuummmmmbllllleeeeee
“You remember Pantsu, right?” F10w3rchy1d laughed, “I said that I was going to kick your ass, but I think I will just let her do it for me. You know how much she likes you.”
“Shut up!” Nixx screamed as he ripped F10w3rchy1d’s cocoon from the wall and shook it violently. “Collapse the rift!” he screamed. “We are leaving!”
He brought F10w3rchy1d close to his fangs.
“And once we do, they will never find us…”
His fangs extended, dripping venom.
“And if they do, you won’t be around to see it!”
With an enraged shriek, he plunged his fangs deep into F10w3rchy1d.
“Hey! Buy a girl dinner first!”
“F10w3rchy1d!” Faun screamed.
“Yes, watch your friend die!” Nixx hissed, “Then after I’ve digested her, I will pull each of your children from you and devour…”
Snarllllhisssbleeeaaatttt…
Rumble…
Faun shook with impotent rage as F10w3rchy1d struggled weakly in Nixx’s grasp. She was finally starting to die…
…and her children, her precious children, would be next.
There was nothing she could do, nothing.
Rumble elbmuR
What could she do? She was nothing but a failure, a screw-up, a cosmic wrecking ball. Whenever she tried to do anything…
Rumble elbmuR Rumble…
…everything just went wrong…
Rumble…
Everything went wrong!
She became seized with wild hilarity as a truly insane thought took hold.
She looked up at the shackles of fate suspended in the ceiling, still glowing from their attempts to manage all of the bad probability gripping Nixx’s entire realm.
She started to giggle.
“I mess everything up…”
“Oh no,” F10w3rchy1d gasped.
“Your defiant façade is finally beginning to crumble!” Nixx crowed. “Yes! See your doom!”
“I’m looking right at it, asshole, and it ain’t you!” F10w34chy1d snapped. “Faun, whatever you are thinking… stop it. Please. We just have to wait… Don’t make this any worse!”
“Worse?” Faun asked as she started to call upon all of her power, more than she had ever used before, light starting to spill from her cocoon. “Worse?!?”
“Faun… Don’t…”
Faun threw back her head and screamed.
HOW CAN IT CAN IT GET ANY WOOOOORSE!
Glowing white gouts of pure, raw, chaotic energy shot from Faun in all directions. The shackles valiantly gathered them and drew them in, trying to absorb the unabsorbable, tame the untamable…
…they groaned. Then they glowed. Then, they exploded, unleashing raw unchained fate. Fate that was, incidentally, quite annoyed with Nixx.
“You crazy furry!” F10w3rchy1d yelled as she ripped herself from Nixx’s grasp and flinging him against the wall. “Faun?”
Hissss….
“Naruto that son of a bitch!”
With a little growl, Faun started to slowly walk towards Nixx…
***
“It’s time to leave!” Bunny yelled as the walls literally started melting and screaming around them.
Flopsybun looked down at the firewall controls in front of him.
///Flopsybun: Haxx, can you get that rift back open? ///
///Haxx: That’s not going to be a problem. Whatever happened blew it wide open… and it’s getting bigger… ///
***
“Um… Faun…” F10w3rchy1d said hesitantly as Faun crouched over a screaming Nixx. “Um… I think you’re done…”
Hissss…
“It’s just that… um… his legs aren’t supposed to bend like that…”
Groooowwwwwllllll…
“I mean… in 3d+1 space, they shouldn’t…”
Hissss…
“Oooookay… um… I think you got this. I’m going to… yeah… I’m going to go now… I need to install a patch…”
Nixx let out a long, quavering wail that, if one could listen both forwards and backward in time, would be, “Please don’t leave me!”
F10w3rchy1d could, in fact, do just that.
She smiled.
“Later, asshole,” she grinned as she slumped into Zvaxus’s arms and let him carry her from the chamber.
***
Not that long after, Pantsu was sitting on a withered tree stump next to Chad Firecrest.
“Well, that was anticlimactic,” Chad said.
Suddenly the rift exploded open again, spilling forth pure raw uncertainty.
“You just had to say it, didn’t you?” Pantsu grumbled as she jumped to her feet.
A lone woman stumbled from the rift.
“Don’t kill me!” she yelled. “I’m a friend.”
Pantsu narrowed her eyes.
“Flopsy?”
“Yes! It’s me!”
“Nice tits.”
***
“How is she?” Pantsu asked a little while later as Clover and Haxx/Flopsybun labored over a semi-conscious F10w3rchy1d.
“She will recover,” Clover said, “Fortunately, Nixx’s ICE, like all of his ‘creations,’ is just a poor cut-and-paste copy of our eye-pee.”
“Thank God,” Pantsu said with relief. “Now we just need to…”
She fell silent and wide-eyed as she felt a very cold shadow fall across her.
“H-hi, Boss,” Pantsu said weakly.
“Don’t ‘hi boss’ me,” Frostie replied. “Do you idiots have any idea… She’s going to be okay, right?” she added as she looked at F10w3rchy1d with genuine concern.
“Yeah,” Pantsu replied. “They got to her in time.”
“Good, because I want to be the one to strangle her!” Frostie snapped. “One weekend. I take one weekend off, and you morons blow up the entire multiverse! In all the aeons I have existed, I have yet to encounter a word that conveys the amount of up I am about to fuck you with!”
“Hey,” the hominid said, looking around, “Where’s Faun?”
F10w3rchy1d weakly pointed at the rift.
“You left her?!?”
“She was intent on staying,” Zvaxus said as he walked up. “And we were not about to get in between her and Nixx. She’s… formidable… and very angry with him.”
F10w3rchy1d managed a very weak but very evil little chuckle.
***
Frostie, The Great Erectus, The Herald, and Cuddles carefully made their way through the rapidly… It’s kind of hard to say what Nixx’s realm was doing… halls of Nixx’s lair following the sounds of multi-dimensional screaming.
As they walked into Nixx’s chamber, they all stopped and winced.
“Now that’s something you don’t see every day,” The Herald said impassively.
“Oh my God,” the ape-man gasped in horror, “She’s turned him into a Klein bottle.”
Hisssss… “Oh! Teacher!” Faun exclaimed, “I am so glad to see you!”
She let go of a very moist non-orientable surface and rushed to give him a big hug, smearing him with goo.
“Hello… Nixx…” Frostie said pleasantly.
The moist non-orientable surface bubbled with despair and moistened itself further.
“You have caused me no end of inconvenience,” Frostie purred, “Your mother is not going to be able to save you this time…”
“Wait!” a voice called from the doorway as Pantsu strode in.
She marched up to what was left of Nixx, shoved her hand deep within him, and pulled out an ornate crown.
“This doesn’t belong to you,” she hissed.
“Do you have any recommendations concerning his fate, dear… before you start enjoying yours?”
Pantsu looked down at Nixx with disgust.
“Let Faun have him. I’m done.”
She turned and walked away.