IN EVERY MUSTELA TEXTBOOK (THAT HAD NOT BEEN BURNT TO ASH) THERE IS AN ARTICLE THAT SAYS ROUGHLY THE SAME THING:

Millenia ago, before the planet Driew was populated with the first ape-beings, there was a small planet called morph.

Small, of course, being relative to the undefinably large universe in which the planet was located.

Morph is a great deal older than Driew, and it had no trouble populating itself with organisms. In fact, Morph was almost identical to Driew in the fact that they both had all the essentials of a healthy planet: water and oxygen and politicians. The only true difference was that Morph did not evolve apes.

Rabbits had not originally been smart or evil. In fact, they were very much like what Sodriew imagine them to be: cuddly, harmless prey at the bottom of the food chain. However, on Morph, no true predator emerged. Whenever one promising stronger animal began to fight to the top, some disease or difficulty always wiped it out. At one time, it was volcanoes. Another was flooding. Rabbits survived only because it, like most other small animals, was all over the planet and there were simply too many of them to go extinct.

Eventually, the simple herbivores became the ones to evolve, and rabbits, due to their reproduction speed, populated much of Morph. Slowly, as they realized their power, rabbits began to kill off all the other fast-reproducing herbivores that threatened their dominance. Of course, with no other animal to kill them, rabbits began to overpopulate and exhaust their home planet’s resources. Naturally, to preserve their species, they began sending bunnies and hares—the more expendable animals of the Lagomorph order—to discover and colonize other potentially habitable planets.

At first, the animals only immigrated to other planets. It was not something out of the ordinary. Many planets became easily crowded, and there were, in fact, many planets known as “hotels”. These planets were specifically designed to house multiple species from similar planets, and many provided different artificial environments so a greater diversity of animals may come. These hotels gained more popularity and began collecting fees in exchange for their land.

The rabbits were happy with these hotels and other temporary planets for quite a long time. Their planet began to breathe again, and those pesky hares (who were rumored to be jerks) were finally out of the justice system and stopped starting all the protests. Slowly, as the other species began to edge out of Morph, Morph began to consist only of rabbits. Leaders were elected, and minor wars were fought for the usual political, religious, and practical reasons.

These rabbits were once surprisingly pleasant. They were polite and well-mannered; largely because they feared the other predators that could easily destroy them. Rabbits were seen as “poor things” to be pitied on Pylo’rox, and Mustela would often have rabbits clean and do insignificant tasks at their homes.

Unfortunately, rabbits had an unusually fast reproduction rate. Soon, these hotels, designed to house only a few million of a species at most, began to fill up and overflow. Planets, such as the Mustela’s Pylo’rox did not have enough resources to keep the rabbits. They began to urge the animals to move, and when they refused, violence broke out. Even worse, hotels and other planets blacklisted them, and their already dangerously large population had nowhere to go.

As a result, like a cornered dog, the animals fought with all they had. With no direction to flee, the inherited calm and peaceful herbivores became the most feared and ruthless soldiers. They had no shortage of weapons. Rabbits are surprisingly smart, and the leaders had already foretold the violence. Rabbits dropped their contracts and began invading planets blindly, regardless of species. Many planets perished, which included Pylo’rox.

Of course, some places did try to form allies and team up to defeat the evil animals. But like all realistic teams, betrayal was common. They soon found themselves fighting each other more than they fought the rabbits. They fought all for the same reason, the only true motivation for war: resources.

As galaxies turned on each other, the rabbits sprang in and fought each planet at it’s weakest. They spread like disease, encompassing and overpopulating newly acquired planets at an alarmingly fast rate.

That’s when they realized the genius of targeting new planets. Ones that were still reasonable fresh and full of undiscovered treasures. These planets had not yet been covered by the trademark black smog that hung over every other inhabited planet. And these new planets did not have too many harmful machines that could potentially make even the smallest of dents in the rabbit population.

The first victim was Driew.