Chapter 14 - Overkill

The day came at hand. Apart from a lullaby of breezes, no sound was heard at the camp of Hopper and Chompy. The rabbitmen washed their faces, a soft look in their eyes, grateful for the sleep, but sad that it had to end. The rabbitmen prepared their equipment, packing their bags for another day of hard labor, with the frogmen doing the same. JD, the duckman, was still sleeping, snoring with a ‘quah…’ every other second.

‘JD,’ Chompy said, peeping into the tent.

‘QUAH!’ JD shouted, pushing himself up. ‘What time is it?’

Chompy gave an awkward smile, scratching the top of his head. ‘Around six in the morning. The sun has risen. The torches had somehow fallen in a puddle. We can’t light them anymore. May we borrow your MagiLamp?’

JD blankly stared at him before drifting his gaze away to the empty corner of his tent. His mouth opened without a sound. Chompy waited for him to speak, and when it seemed he had frozen in place, Chompy asked: ‘JD?’

‘Huh!?’ JD said, returning to Terra Two. As Chompy was about to repeat himself, JD interrupted: ‘Five minutes!’ swiftly putting the blanket over his head. ‘Use whatever you need!’

With a sigh, Chompy got the MagiLamp and returned to his coworkers, eating breakfast before heading out to the mines as the frogmen went west to their own. The rabbitmen were actually happy that the torches had gone defect. The MagiLamp is charged with magical light and doesn’t radiate any heat, something they really appreciated.

They’d been here for weeks already, so the mundane walk to the mine had become ingrained in their system. Two of the twenty-four rabbitmen remained at the camp, cleaning the dishes in a clay pot that magically kept filling with water every time they emptied it. Hopper and Chompy went with the main group to the mine, with Hopper noticing something the others hadn’t yet.

‘Awful lot of leaves and branches have fallen down, don’t you guys think?’ he said. The others saw it too now, but without thinking much of it, one replied:

‘The wind must’ve sent a few hits during the night. The torches had rolled into a puddle as well.’

Hopper looked up and around him. ‘I didn’t hear a wind during the night. Did any of you?’

‘Honestly,’ Chompy said. ‘I was completely knocked out…’ The others shook their heads up and down as a couple replied with ‘yep’ and ‘yup.’

Without further ado, the rabbitmen entered the mine, leaving two outside to watch the entrance. They began their song, chipping the rocks one after the other. The MagiLamp was placed in the middle of the mine. The light, although it had a source, seemed to illuminate the entire mine equally, not casting the slightest shadow, as if the light went through their bodies and cast every corner of the mine.

‘How much a difference magic makes…’ Chompy thought. ‘It’s incredible.’

But it wasn’t the time to think. It was the time to let your mind drift away as you chip-chip-chip. And they did, with the hours fleeting with every broken rock.

The singing and the crashing of their axes on the stones enveloped their mind, not noticing a thick liquid streamed down the mine. Not until it hit the side of Chompy’s foot. ‘Huh?’ he thought, stopping mid swing to look at the mine’s entrance. It was still morning, but the already dim light shining in from the entrance got even dimmer. When he saw the shadow of a ball drop down, blocking its share of the entrance hole, a feeling of dread rushed through Chompy’s back as his eyes shrunk and his throat dried out.

‘ENEMY! ENEMY! WE’RE BEING ATTACKED!’

All the rabbitmen halted their work, instantly going into alert-mode as their heads turned up to the entrance and the brown liquid dripping down from it.

‘Took them long enough,’ Kuno thought, laying steaming poos like he was the Easter Bunny, with two rabbitmen knocked down beside him. ‘Let’s give ‘em another dose. This time I don’t have to be gentle.’ He took a deep breath, thinking back to the time he ordered that weird fish at three in the morning. ‘Doo-Doo River:

Steatorrhea!’

A flood of light brown poo bursted out of Kuno’s bottom, covering the whole of the stairs leading to the surface. The rabbitmen tried to sprint towards Kuno, using their strong legs, but this oily substance sent by the silhouette upstairs caused all of them to slip and fall into it.

‘What is this!?’ Hopper asked. Although it was human excrement, to buy himself time, Kuno had made it odorless, allowing him to place the first layer of the Doo-Doo River without them realizing.

With the rabbitmen desperately trying to climb up the slippery stairs, Kuno continued pooping, trying to seal the entrance as much as he could, still keeping an eye out for his enemies downstairs.

The whole mine had turned into a Japanese game show, with the rabbitmen continuing to trip, causing everyone behind them to fall as well as their buddies tumbled downward. If only they were having fun.

‘Damn it!’ Hopper said, covered in poop as he looked around him at the rocks. Seeing a way to cover major ground, he hopped on the wall and then off his fallen friend to cover two-thirds of the stairs. He gently kept his balance as he moved forward, with Kuno slowly laying more and more bricks on the wall.

‘That one’s getting pretty close,’ he thought.

Hopper looked up, seeing the back of Kuno, confirming it was a human who was doing this. He spread his arms out to keep his balance, but he wasn’t prepared for what was coming next.

‘Yeet!’

Hopper looked up at the foreign cry, seeing his unconscious ally tumble towards him. He had time to react, but not any idea how, and after a second, his friend swept him up from his feet as his face splashed down on the poop and he slid down after him.

‘Fuck!’ he shouted, with Kuno’s words echoing through the mine: ‘Got’em.’

A minute later, Kuno threw the other body after the rabbitmen, even though no one was getting close. Hope slowly faded with every brick Kuno shat out. When there was only a small hole left, they stopped moving, just staring at the hole, thinking they were getting buried alive.

If Kuno would leave it at that - in time, the river would eventually seep away, and the rabbitmen would notice the wall is just made up of shit, easily digable with their pickaxes. But Kuno knew that and came up with a plan he might be too soft to pull off.

‘4 minutes 18 seconds,’ Xiuying said. ‘While Yuki keeps getting faster, you keep getting slower.’

Sarah held her belly as she laughed, sitting on top of a hogman with his entire face melted, the fluids inside his eyes slowly dripping out in the smoking camp his dead body lay in. The whole camp and the area around it were laid to waste, the searing acid still eating away at it as Xiuying and her party went over the event.

‘But who was having more fun?’ Sarah asked.

‘I’m not even going to ask if you were trying to be fast after seeing what you did,’ Cara said, sweating due to the sight before her eyes.

‘So crude…’ Yuki said, displeased with the way Sarah handled it.

‘Seven of them survived, and they were able to Gather them again,’ Xiuying said. ‘Good chances of you becoming Yuki’s sparring partner for the next week.’

Sarah’s smile dropped as she jumped up off the body. ‘Wait-wait-wait! You didn’t tell me we were doing it for that!? C’mon, I-I need time to fight, my motor needs to be warmed up… And what if they escaped? The Soji empire can collect their souls, anyway. Who cares about a few months earlier!?’ she said, glancing over at Yuki afterwards. Yuki gave a small bow and, although she portrayed no emotions, Sarah knew she was smiling from the inside.

She dropped her shoulders, accepting she had fucked up. When her eyes saw the exposed skull of the hogman, she spit directly in its eye: ‘Why weren’t you stronger, you piece of shit!?’ she stomped its head until it cracked. ‘Fuck-fuck-fuck you!’

Xiuying looked up from her glasses and walked over to the tantrum-throwing Sarah. Upon reaching her, she immediately slapped her face with the back of her hand.

Sarah grabbed her reddened right cheek, brows risen, eyes like two full moons. ‘You good?’ Xiuying asked. ‘Yes, ma’m,’ Sarah said like a well educated German Shepherd.

Xiuying put her hand on her other cheek, bending her knees to look her straight in the eyes. ‘I’ve seen people like you before, sweetheart. You can’t go doing what you want with your enemies. Be fast and efficient, you owe them that mercy. There will be a time you’ll have to join the common folk again, so don’t lose too much of yourself in the war. Take it from someone who has been in one before even getting here.’

‘Aye, captain. Understood. Yup. Yup,’ Sarah said, as stiff as a board.

‘Good,’ Xiuying replied, standing straight again. ‘I owe you girls a lunch break.’ She looked around her at the horrid state Sarah had left this place in. A body fell from a tree, splashing its half melted torso on the floor upon impact. ‘But maybe not here…’

Kuno placed his backpack down in front of him. He exhaled a sigh of concern for both himself and the rabbitmen stuck in his deadly trap. ‘This is war,’ he thought. ‘This is war… but is it mine?’

He turned around and looked at the rabbitmen, among them some who still tried to escape. Kuno shook his head, and pooped out another ball, with now only a 2 by 2 feet hole left. The others stared at Hopper and Chompy, who still had the will to fight in them.

‘You bastard… I’m gonna gnaw your head off!’ Hopper said.

Kuno placed his bum in the hole, blocking the daylight completely. ‘It’s survival, Kuno…’ he thought to himself. ‘They’d kill you if they had the chance…’

He took a breath and closed his eyes. ‘I’m so sorry…’

‘Stun Dung + Fart Cloud.’

A marble like drop flew into the mine, splashing near the bottom of the stairs, immediately causing all the rabbitmen to gag and move away from it. What followed was a gust of odorless flatulence, blowing into the mine. Hopper and Chompy felt the full brunt of it, the heat going through their fur and touching their skin. It was a strong wind, steady too, going on for minutes on end. Hopper and Chompy had made it halfway through, but they were too tired to continue on. It wasn’t just the exhaustion – the smell made their eyes tear and they had to take short breaths due to the disgusting smell. The climbing, the falling, the stress, they all took their toll.

When the fart suddenly stopped, everyone stopped moving, like they could feel the end was near - silently watching the darkness upstairs.

Kuno dug into his backpack, still sitting in the hole. Both his eyes watered, tears beginning to stream down his face. ‘This is so fucked…’ he said out loud, the pitch of his voice high as he bit his bottom lip with the snot running down his nose.

He took something out of the bag and stared at it. ‘These people did nothing wrong… but… but… I must…’

He shoved the box open, taking out the weapon of destruction. His hand shook as his fingers pinched the final item to finish his plan

– a single match.