I'd like to phone a friend [Open]

[bringinghopewithme]

WHO| Bunnymund and whoever you are.
WHAT| Bunny tries to get help from below, by contacting a local Earth spirit. His attempts are failing to yield results.
WHEN| As soon as he got out of the Training Center into the city.
WHERE| The park at the center of The Districts shopping center.
WARNINGS| Child-friendly swearing, attempted magic.



A giant rabbit lighting fires in a park draws attention. Which is all the more frustrating for Bunny, since he SHOULDN'T be drawing attention, no matter what he does out in the open like this. Every adult who stares at him with open confusion hammers home just how wrong something has gone, that whoever's in power in this city has the ability to suppress him into as close a state to mortality as he's been in many hundreds of years.

He could grumble about his situation, but that would get in the way of trying to get help. So he ignores the stares and keeps at work. His work, so far, is a hole in the ground, a pawful of pulled grass, moss, and flower petals stolen from various topiary on his way in search of the most natural place he could find in the midst of the city. He strikes a shard of flint he uncovered in the digging of the hole against the metal of his communicator, lighting a fire in the dry moss on a patch of earth he's cleared of grass, and dropping the flower petals onto the heat.

The way he kneels over the smoldering plants has all the look of a ritual, and the words he intones over them in a language that hasn't been used in the Capitol in much longer than 75 years do also.

All his kneeling and chanting isn't yielding much, though, to his frustration. With a growl, he jumps to his feet over the smoking flowers, still looking at the ground. "I know you're there, and I know you can hear me! You might not recognize me, but I'm close enough to being one 'a yours and I need your help. Wake up."

Still nothing. He stamps the ground, impatient, and growls again as no hole opens, no flowers grow, nothing happens except that he garners a few more bewildered looks from the humans who shouldn't be able to see him.

"Strewth."

Comments

[paidinbeer]

A groan from just beyond the bushes was his response, followed by the sound of something moving...something big.

The bushes rustled and a thick hand with fat fingers came from the leaves and branches and planted itself on the ground. It seemed to be made out of stone and covered in pebbles.

With another grunt and groan the fingers dug into the dirt and then relaxed their grip slowly. Whatever was in there wasn't moving fast.

[bringinghopewithme]

That looked like a response. Far from being alarmed at all by the presence in the bush, Bunny grinned in triumph. "Hah. There we go."

He loped over, pushing the branches aside, frowning down at the stone-hided person lying there.

"I don't recognize ya. Local spirit?"

There was so much pollution still thick in the air that it didn't surprise him the local spirits were this sluggish. He reached down to try to pull the rock spirit to his feet.

"C'mon big fella, up 'n at 'em. I'm in a hurry. Who's being called a god 'round here?"

[the_marshal]

It said quite a bit about the Capitol, and just how long Wyatt had been in the city, that the creature he encountered in the park while out for a walk in the fresh, spring sunshine was not the first giant, talking rabbit that he'd seen.

Granted, it was no less strange, but it did offer him experience enough to be careful as he approached.

While the rest of the crowd whispered and gawked, he addressed the beast - in that smooth, easy drawl he was famous for.

"If yer tryin' to reach someone in particular," he offered, pointing at the communicator the rabbit held, "Ya might try that little box there. It's better for more than jus' a striker."

Though, to be fair, he'd never known you could do that with it too. He filed that away for later.

[bringinghopewithme]

Bunny looked up from his offering fire, rising from a crouch to his full upright height as he sized up the approaching human. Now that he was mortal enough to be seen by them, his instinct was to be wary around the adults who approached him - but this one was keeping his distance enough that Bunny didn't see a need to fight or flee. Instead, he chuckled, his laugh equally a drawl, but the accent was from the other side of the world.

"Mate, you can't reach who I'm tryin' to reach on that box."

Still, the locals, even the mortals, would know more than he would. If the Grandmother Earth he knew from home did not have an analogue here, or at least, one who didn't heed his pleas, maybe he'd have better luck using local names.

"What do people call their gods around here?"

[asklepian]

"Are you alright?"

Julian wasn't staring because the being in front of him was an oversized bipedal rabbit. Being in Starfleet meant he was used to seeing all shapes and sizes of people, he just...wasn't used to them yelling at the ground.

He glances around at the people staring, rolls his eyes, then comes closer.

"I hope you don't mind being the center of attention. They'll move on in short order, I'm sure."

[bringinghopewithme]

Bunny gave Julian a look of disbelief.

"Just bonzer, mate, why d'you ask?"

He turned back to his smouldering offering. "They can look. I'm not trying to get THEIR attention."

He stamped the ground again, growling when nothing happened.

[acroodawakening]

His first instinct upon seeing a giant rabbit was 'ooh, dinner,' and hiding in a bush, but the fact that it - the fact that he was talking quickly chased that line of thought away. Still, it was a strange thing to see, a giant talking rabbit, digging a hole in the middle of one of the parks Guy sometimes hid out in to find respite from the urban world.

One the one hand, he wanted to say hello, but on the other, he could only stare in rapt fascination from his hiding place, not wanting to break his silence in case the rabbit man stopped doing...whatever he was doing. He wanted to figure out what it was first.

For someone with sensitive ears, though, the sound of quiet breathing and the slight rustle of leaves wasn't impossible to hear.

[bringinghopewithme]

"They didn't take my hearing, y'know."

He had resumed chanting, but he stopped and stood up at the sound of rustling in the bushes.

"C'mon outta there. I don't like bein' watched."

And he DID like to know who was keen on watching people while being unseen. After all, someone here had been watching him long enough to find him interesting without his notice, and it had gotten him stuck here with only a fraction of his power.

If the watcher ran, he'd just have to run them down. They'd taken most of his speed, but left him more than enough to catch a human.

[swedeandlow]

It was the smell of smoke that caught Wallander's attention first, and then the sight of a very large rabbit that held it. He knew who Bunnymund was, of course - it was his job to know every tribute that arrived, as soon as they arrived - but he was still surprised to see the attempt at arson.

"Stop!" He called out, putting up a hand as he ran over, breathless and out of shape. "Stop, stop, you can't-- You'll set the whole place up, there hasn't been enough rain. Put that out."

[bringinghopewithme]

"Yeah, and whose fault is that? Last I checked, I wasn't the one who threw this whole environment out of balance!"

With the rant out of the way, Bunny rolled his eyes.

"I would never start a wildfire. I'm a nature spirit. Your government took my power, but they didn't take my know-how. Now what do you call Grandmother Earth around here?"

[capitolprivilege]

The young man who watches Bunnymund work looks fascinated and delighted by the whole process. He doesn't speak, though. He listens and watches in rapt silence -- until the ritual fails, and the rabbit throws his fit.

Then, Stephen clears his throat.

"I don't mean to interrupt," he says cheerily, "but I'm very curious about what you're doing."

He just spoke to a giant rabbit. With any luck, the giant rabbit would talk back to him, and he would be talking with a giant rabbit. Bless the Neverending Quell -- it let Stephen meet the coolest people.

[bringinghopewithme]

Bunny whipped around to look at Stephanus

"Oh you're very curious, are ya," he said, sarcasm laying on thicker with every word. "Right then, I'll tell ya - I'm beseeching Grandmother Earth to wake up and open a gaping hole beneath whoever's bloody ace idea it was to draft me for a death match, and drop 'em straight into a pool of molten nickle."

The coolest, right Stephanus?

"Only problem is -"Bunny's gestures had been growing wilder, his rant louder, and he gestured to the ground - "Whatever you people did to your world was so bad, either she's dead, our she just isn't bloody interested in helping someone who brings joy to human children!"

[retrieverchef]

Eliot raises his eyebrows at the giant rabbit, kneeling by the remains of a fire and muttering. It's got to be a new Tribute. He walks over, hands in his pockets. "Magic don't seem to work here. Not for us, anyway."

[bringinghopewithme]

"Who's 'us?'" Bunny responded, pointedly. "Last I checked, they'd made me mortal, not human."

He returned to attending his fire again, drawing a circle in the dirt around it with one claw and infringing symbols around it. The easy ways weren't working - it was time to break out the spiritual big guns.

[lake_effect]

Jack can't believe why he's here.

This is against everything, everything he went for, before a Guardian and after. It was beyond frustrating that just when he was given his purpose, he was thrown into here. There was a game being played, and he was the scapegoat. And needless to say, Jack wasn't exactly happy about that.

He never saw Bunny digging a hole and asked someone other than the Moon for help. For a while, Jack stood there, feeling naked without a staff to lean on, or to even hold. He doesn't speak until he straightened up, patting the ground with a big foot. Oh, Bunny.

Jack approached him then, walking through the grass with his bare feet. "Have you tried talking to Man in Moon?"

[bringinghopewithme]

At the sound of Jack's voice, Bunny jerks to attention and away from his fire. For the first time, he's visibly shaken.

"Strewth, Jack, they got you too?"

He bounds over, crouching in front of Jack and raising his paw to squeeze quickly through the winter spirit's hair in a practiced gesture of affection as he glanced Jack over, protectively, for signs of harm. "You all right, mate? They didn't hurt you?"

They hadn't hurt him - not deliberately, anyway, but he had fought back enough in the Training Center to require suppression. They'd done him no damage, dealt him no more pain in the process than was needed to get him to stop, but whatever they do to him - it's another matter entirely, if they've done the same to Jack.

[celebrityskinned]

Venus is in the park too, although for different reasons. It's the first really warm day of spring, and coming from the humid South by way of sunny California, she's more than happy to welcome the sun. She out there in practically a bikini, absorbing the rays with oversized sunglasses and her hair tied up in a flowery bandanna. The metal of the pendant around her neck is warmed by the weather, and she likes that.

She's not really shocked by the giant rabbit. After all, she knew some guy named Surrender Monkey who was a sentient ape back home, and they have a anthropomorphic turtle among the Tributes. She walks up and settles down on the grass, sitting with her legs crossed, and sets her big styrofoam cup of diet soda on the ground next to her.

"You look pretty frustrated for someone who's successfully made fire."

[bringinghopewithme]

"The fire wasn't the point."

He could have bragged that he could make fire as easily as breathe, but now was really not the time.

He glanced at Venus, considering whether or not she struck him immediately as a local, and couldn't reach an immediate conclusion. Still - the floral prints were nice. Almost nice enough to make him overlook her use of styrofoam.

"Nice bandanna."

He delivered the compliment with a frown, but it seemed to be genuine. Mostly because it was.

hello bunnymund have a mortal child/teen for once (but an alien one)

[sleeplessinalternia]

A giant talking hopbeast.

Really, after everything he's seen here, the giant talking hopbeast isn't even that weird. Still, as he watches the hopbeast dance around and rant and rave and make a really crappy fire, one question bubbles up in Karkat's mind:

"So, are you like from the same world as Donatello or what?"

[bringinghopewithme]

"The artist?"

When Bunny sees that the kids asking the question isn't human - or had had a lot of plastic surgery, he friends. "Yeah, why? Fan of sculpting?"

And how did the kid link him to an Italian sculptor from so long ago? One question at a time.

[hanssome]

Hans is sort of adapting to the fact that this place is constantly throwing him curve balls. It's not easy staying on your toes all the time, but he's started to figure out how to go with the flow of things and not lead on to some of his less favourable traits and tenancies.

He's seen a lot of strange people and a lot of strange creatures brought in as tributes, but a giant bunny hadn't exactly been something he'd counted on seeing. Especially not a giant bunny lighting fires and talking to the sky. As far as oddness goes, it takes the cake, but thankfully it's left his pretentiously flavoured coffee safe in his hand so he can sip it as he watches the rabbit move around.

"Is this what they call performance art?" He finally calls out, all smiles and good-natured charm as he awaits an answer.

[bringinghopewithme]

Bunny throws Hans a sneer that says he is immune to charm. (He's not, but he's good at acting like he is.)

"Listen mate, when I'm making art, you'll know it. When I'm trying to call for backup? This is what it looks like!"

His frustration having built, he groans loudly and rolls his eyes before going back to his fire

[halfa_hero]

That...was a very big bunny. Of course, Danny had seen weirder, so he wasn't going to comment on it, but still. Very, big, bunny.

"If you're trying to do some sort of mystical mumbo-jumbo thing? It's not going to work."

[bringinghopewithme]

"There's no reason any Earth spirit here shouldn't have noticed me by now," Bunny retorted. "They made me mortal, not invisible."

But there was no denying he wasn't having any luck. It was becoming difficult not to get frustrated over that.

[polyturtle]

"...So, uh..."

And then, there was a turtle standing across from him, staring at the smoldering pile of former flowers and dirt. For a second, Don had thought it was Usagi, but as he'd gotten closer, he had realized that the rabbit was far too tall to be Leo's friend. No point in hiding, and...besides...

"What are you doing?"

[bringinghopewithme]

He'd have answered to the name, but he'd also have responded in (heavily accented) Japanese.

Bunny glanced up, and immediately taking Donatello for a spirit, relaxed inn slight relief. "Calling Terra. Or whatever she's called 'round here."

He looked steadily at Donatello as he spoke, frown deepening as he was unable to place a name with the humanoid turtle. "I don't know you. You local, mate? What do they call Grandmother Earth here?"

[letthemburn]

Iskierka is, at least, not another human. That said, it would be more than a little inaccurate to say that she isn't staring, a little. She knows what rabbits are, but the ones she's used to are a good deal smaller, and also significantly less able to talk.

"Whatever you have meant to do, it's ever so likely to not work."

Just the same as her flames, and she forgets, a little that not every newcomer to the Capitol is willing to tolerate the presence of a dragon. Even if she is so much smaller than she really ought to be.

[bringinghopewithme]

Bunny looks from his work to Iskierka, with a reaction that says he's seen dragons before. If he's bothered, he's not showing it. Much.

He sizes Iskierka up quickly and crosses his arms, standing at his full height, maybe with just a little too much swagger in the motion not to betray that his first instinct in the presence of a predator of her scale is fight or flight, not friendly conversation. "Well, they ARE creative about their abductions, aren't they?"

Obviously, since he's there, but a dragon too? The gamemakers really ARE determined to have a variety to their gladiators.

[googledox]

The giant lagomorph didn't phase him at all. He'd seen plenty of aliens not that different from Bunny - the mammalian Orandans, for instance.

His team-mate was a giant snake, for goodness' sake.

No, what gave him pause was the smoldering flowers and the stamping around and pleading with someone invisible - oh. Oh no, was he really?

He laughed a derisive laugh.

"Are you trying to summon something? Do you really think a world like this has forces like magic? They don't even have a metahuman population."

If either existed, someone might have had the power to overthrow the Capitol by now.

[bringinghopewithme]

"They have an Earth, it stands to reason they could have an Earth Mother."

Bunny threw the green kid the dryest look he could, narrowing his eyes slightly as he tried to determine - no, there was no determining about it. This kid couldn't be a spirit if he was ruling out spirits entirely.

Local, then? He was obviously arrogant enough.

"Besides, whatever a metahuman is, it's London to a brick my world doesn't have any, and we're not exactly crawling with spirits, but Terra could still drop this whole bloody prang of a civilization into a river of lava if it was there instead 'a me being here."

So there, green kid. Bunny leaned over and began scratching more runes in the dirt.