------------------------------------------------------------------------ Midnight at CWRU Newsgroups: alt.devilbunnies From: adm4@po.cwru.edu (Aaron Mandelbaum) Message-ID: Date: Tue, 6 Sep 1994 16:33:56 GMT Organization: CWRU Aaron sits at his computer, trying to finish his latest assignment. Rather, trying to make himself finish it despite a growing feeling that the effort is wasted. Every few minutes, he glances at the silver furred squirrel watching him from its perch on his dresser, but the sinister rodent adamantly refuses to evaporate, remaining infuriatingly real despite Aaron's best attempts to deny it. It only scurries out of sight if someone else enters the room, but even then Aaron knows that it's still there, either wedged behind his tapes, or possibly curled up in the green bag he keeps his toothbrush, etc. in. That last possibility disgusts him, but what can he do about it? There's one thing he can do about it, but his altered hockey stick is stashed under the bed, out of sight of any former owner that may come looking for it -- he'd grabbed it out of necessity that one night, and the squirrels had since made some changes that, while making it much more useful as a weapon, ruined it for hockey. He promised himself to buy... whoever it was a new one, if he ever had time, and if the squirrels would let him go anywhere without constant surveillance, or as they called it, protection. Ever since he'd he'd helped them in their attack on a devilbunny warren, they hadn't left him alone for an instant. Apparently, Loren didn't buy that all five of his silver-furred cronies that had been present had been tragically killed in action, and held Aaron responsible. Which he was, in a very direct way -- he had killed them. So now there was the watcher on the desk, the three hiding in his closet, and the two hidden in the pile of shoes and sports equipment dominating the hall. All of them armed not only with lasers, which weren't immediately fatal, although the burns hurt like hell, but with radios that connected them to UCirc and Loren, and could bring the wrath of an entire warren down on him. How long before they got tired of watching him and decided to... take care of him? How long could he afford to wait before making a break? Not an entire semester, certainly. No, doing his homework was solely for the benefit of the squirrel behind him. A good thing, too, because he wasn't able to concentrate at all. Suddenly, his train of thought (or is that called brooding?) is broken by a commotion in the hall. The squirrel on the dresser looks at the door, but it remains closed, and the noise has stopped. It chatters softly at the radio on its chest (actually a combination radio/translator/printer, with a small control pad that can be used to type messages when noise was not a good idea -- apparently Squirrel had fewer letters than English, because there are only nine keys) and the closet door creeps open, and the squirrels inside bounce out, landing on the bed. The squirrel on the dresser hands Aaron a note. "Open the door, quietly," it reads. Aaron looks back at the squirrel, and thinks... He's in radio contact with the rest of the squirrels, so if he doesn't know what's going on something must have happened to them. That means... "Devilbunnies," he whispers aloud, a chill of fear cutting through the general anxiety that had been his company for days. He reaches under the bed and grabs his stick, takes a deep breath, and slowly opens the door. Nothing. Aaron slowly steps out into the hallway, and prods the shoe pile with his stick. No movement. What happened to the guards? He doesn't hear the three from the closet follow him, but he does see them as they pass him and spread out to search more thoroughly. The one from the dresser, obviously the leader, crawls up his leg and perches on his shoulder. One of the squirrels turns the corner to the bathroom, and with a high pitched sqeak comes flying back to against the wall. Aaron backpedals in the narrow hallway, trying to get to a place with enough clearance for a good swing. A furry figure leaps from behind the corner, and the leader of the squirrels jumps from Aaron's shoulder to attack! But that's not a devilbunny! The red squirrel (okay, brown and gray, but called red) meets the silver's attack, catapulting him into the door to the 3rd floor lounge. Skull meets wood with a sickening crunch, and the assailant grins at him. The last two guards come running, but the red squirrel draws a pair of lasers and fries them both on the first shot. As the last bodies crumple to the ground, it looks at Aaron, still holding his hockey stick, trying to decide whether to aid his now deceased captors. "Come on," it squeaks, "We've got to go now!" "Wha..." Aaron grunts, trying to sort everything out, "Who..." "Sylvie," she says, "And you're Aaron. Some friends of mine saw what you did at the devilbunny warren, and we figured you could probably use some help." When he didn't respond, she adds, "Are you coming?" "Yeah -- yes! Just a sec!" "No time, come on, Loren's probably already sent a patrol, and this building is like ten feet from the warren entrance. We've got to go now!" "Who are you guys?" he asks, following her to the lounge window, which is open, the screen lying on the floor. A thick rope is tied to the couch and hangs out the window. "We don't have a name," she answers, pausing to talk on the sill, "But there are a *lot* of squirrels in UCirc who don't like what Loren wants to make us." With that, she scurries down a rope to the ground. Aaron struggles, and manages to awkwardly get out the window, drop his stick to the ground, and climb down the knotted rope. When he reaches the bottom, Sylvie fires with one of her no doubt stolen lasers, and burns through the rope near the top, dropping the bulk of it to the ground. "That should slow them down for about twenty seconds," she remarks, leading the way across the parking lot. "Wait a minute," Aaron says, following close behind, "Do you mean you're with the Devilbunnies?" Sylvie looks at him, shocked. "Of course not!," she answers, "We'd like nothing more than to see those bastards, that fooled us into allying with them, only to turn around and try to enslave us, fry under a hail of lasers. There is no doubt that they ARE a major problem, not just to us, but to the world as a whole. "But Loren would have us become our enemy. We've already embraced their technology, and Loren would have us sink to their level of morality, if not beyond. That warren he ordered attacked was NOT a threat." "But isn't hurting the enemy in any way possible a good thing?" Aaron asked, agreeing with her but arguing anyway, out of habit. "We were studying that warren because they appeared to have no contact with the rest of the devilbunnies. There are a lot of warrens like that. Loren says we should wipe them all out, because they are unnatural and upset the balance of nature, but even if that's true they can be fit in somewhere. Gaia is adaptable, and once they are under control.... if we can ever get them under control... I -- we -- are sure that there will be no need to kill them all." "So you just want to enslave them, right?" Sylvie stops to glare at him. "Or make peace, if possible." She recovers her composure and continues. "But the current DB leaders ARE evil, and some even admit it. They can't be trusted, and I'm... we're not about to forgive them for what they did to us, and for what they did to squirrels elsewhere, Gaia help them." She starts moving again. "But first, we have to get rid of Loren, once and for all. We stuck our necks out for you, coming after you like this, and now he won't rest until he finds out who we are. Most of the squirrels in UCirc feel the same way, even if they aren't officially members of our orginization, but it's only a matter of time, unless we strike now!" "So what do you want me to do, walk into the warren, demand to talk to Loren, and chop off his head?" "That would work nicely, actually," she said, "It's *so* much better than my plan." -- Aaron Mandelbaum (Who always thought the three kinds of dragons were flamers, smokers, and steamers :P) (Or was that red, white, blue, black, green...) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Usenet Web 1.0.3 (development) / webmaster@netimages.com