Bunnymund (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bringinghopewithme) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thecapitol2014-03-22 07:22 pm
bringinghopewithme) wrote in thecapitol2014-03-22 07:22 pm
I'd like to phone a friend [Open]
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."
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."
no subject
"You want to offend me, you're gonna have to come up with something other than childish,," he nearly laughed. "I'm the Easter Bunny. A Guardian of Childhood. Nothing could be more of a compliment."
There were definitely people - probably this kid - who would think that was laughable. But one would have to be extremely blind, or at least incredibly socially unaware, to miss how much pride he took in his title, his life's work.
"And magic has perfectly logical rules," he said, turning back to his work - "for anyone smart enough to understand it."
Little did Bunny know the can of worms he had just opened.
no subject
It took him a moment but then his face immediately snapped into a frown. For someone who'd been mocking Bunny for being childish, it was a very childish frown, like a kid realizing they'd been given the wrong flavor of ice cream - their least favorite.
"I know the Earth custom." He'd learned about it during his time in the 20th century. "A little fuzzy rabbit cavorts about and supposedly leaves confections for the world's children in the course of one day without any apparatus for time travel. I know the multiverse is infinite but that's too ridiculous to be real anywhere."
no subject
His extraordinarily sarcastic, hugely false grin dropped, as he re-fixed Brainy with his dryest look. "Kid, believe me, I'd love it if a nonbeliever like you couldn't see me right now, because that would mean I hadn't been brought down to mortal and wouldn't have to get Terra's attention to do something about this bloody mess, but you can see me, and much as I'd rather I could leave you with your illusions, obviously nobody here is getting what they want. Especially since what I want right now is to be left alone to work."
And he crouched down, resuming drawing the runes around his fire. They were proper runes, all right, and to someone with no comprehension of their meaning, they looked as solemn and spiritual and mysterious as runes could look.
It nicely masked the fact that they basically said the Guardian language equivalent of "GRANDMA, PICK UP THE PHONE. GRANDMA. PICK. UP. THE PHONE."
no subject
"You're not going to stop them that way."
There was an edge to his voice that was oddly sincere, as if he was telling him not to waste his energy because his energy was something valuable and not worth wasting.
More smarm and condescension was layered on to compensate.
"There's no magic here, there are no humans with natural superpowers, and all the powers of the Tributes have been suppressed."
Except for his intelligence, of course. Apparently Panem scientists weren't up on their Coluan neuroscience - a field that even most Coluans weren't intelligent enough to become experts in - to realize how much of a threat it posed. Who'da thunk?
"Their power over the districts and over us is absolute and no act of god - any god - will change that if we're in a place where no gods will hear us."
no subject
Why was this so hard for people to grok? He was the Easter Bunny. He was a nature spirit of life and rebirth, who was presided over by the only two spirits left who had existed before everything else that lived on Earth, because one of them was the mother of everything that lived on Earth, and one of them WAS the Earth.
"I guarantee nobody here is more likely than me to get a god's ear -" he considered his knowledge that a supposed Angel of the Jehova was here, and reconsidered. "A nature deity, anyway. I'm the best bet for ruling out that possibility."
And it was looking more and more like the possibility was nearly ruled out. But Bunny was too long-lived to give up with just an afternoon's work.
He glared at the kid, as if he were the one keeping the earth silent. "So how about you let me do that?" he paused, processing some of the kid's other words. "But first. Are you suggesting to me you're not from an Earth at all?"
Aliens? Now that was interesting. He knew the Sandman was from another planet, another dimension even, but Sandy was far from usual, even as spirits went.
no subject
Duh.
"My native planet was Colu. It was a world known for its technology, educational institutions, and repositories of knowledge."
Was. Past tense.
no subject
No, he didn't miss that. And he made it obvious he hadn't missed it.
But he didn't pry. No wonder the kid was being such a little . . . piece of work.
"I'm sorry."
The flash of sympathy in his expression was all too knowledgeable. But if he was going to say more on the subject - it was going to be after some more, less mocking, conversation.
no subject
"Multiversal calamity. Multiple universes were destroyed. My team and I barely escaped with our lives."
He carried on, "It wasn't that much of a loss. My homeword was...less than hospitable to me when I was growing up. I found places like Earth far more welcoming."
He quickly changed the subject.
"What you're doing is a waste of your efforts. The Capitol is exploitative. If they can suppress magical power, they'd be able to detect it. If they can detect it, they'd have detected any magical beings native to their world and either destroyed them or harnessed their powers for their own use. It would be better for you to focus on the material. You said you're a Guardian of childhood; there are still children forced to fight in the Games. They would benefit from your focus far more than this futile effort would."
no subject
That convinced him. He jumped to his feet, suddenly livid.
"They throw kids in this? What d'you mean still?"
It wasn't that his efforts to contact local spirits were through - or that he hadn't heard loud and clear that Brainy's homeworld hadn't been kind to him. It was that the idea of children in these games was so horrifying, it put everything else on the backburner.
no subject
"The ruling regime, known colloquially as the Capitol, used to force children into gladiatorial death games as a form of intimidation to the outlying districts they rule. It was a measure to control them after a failed rebellion. Approximately 1748 children have died since the institution of the Hunger Games."
Strange, that he knew close to an exact number.
"After 75 years of control, open insurgency was threatening to start so the ruling government started abducting individuals from alternate dimensions to play in their games as a show of power instead if the district's children, using an unknown means of reviving some of them from death each time. There are still several children forced to fight in the games, though they're not from alternate universes and they're revived in most instances."
He wanted to see him get angry. He wanted to see the depths of that anger and whether or not it could be controlled enough to serve his purposes.
no subject
That one moment of horror, he let himself feel. His paws were clenched, shaking, and as he inhaled, the horror turned to hot, overpowering fury.
At least - if he were a little less ancient, a little less schooled in the feeling of horror and anger, in turning it into a force to give him power, not make him lose his mind - if he were mortal in truth, it would have overpowered him.
But all that happened as he finished his deep breath was that his tightly clenched paws released, and the look he gave the green kid with the terribly accurate numbers was one that had been seen by others before - only, for those others, who were the subjects of bad news and not the deliverers, it was usually the last look they ever saw.
"I'm gonna enjoy seeing this empire fall," he said, grimly, without the slightest trace of enjoyment.
It was the sort of tone that added, "and it will fall."
no subject
He added, with a touch of disdain. "While I find the use of children in this whole affair...distasteful, their overall ploy has been effective in still demonstrating their power to the districts without arousing their ire any further by using their own children. Those Tributes who openly oppose the Capitol often find themselves not being revived or evenly publicly executed, depending on how overt they are."
He shook his head.
"Personally, I plan to give the Capitol whatever they want, in the hopes they find a better use for me outside the arena. Compared to places I've been this place is hardly any worse. If you don't intend to do the same, you would be wise to at least keep whatever misguided sentiments of rebellion you have discreet. You'll live longer that way."
Bunny would note that he didn't tell him not to have them.
no subject
It wasn't escaping his notice in the slightest that the kid, while cantankerous, was giving him good info.
'Misguided' sense of rebellion aside - where WAS this kid's hope? Probably beaten out of him by whatever places he'd been that were worse than this.
The kid was snide, but if he'd already been through worse than these 'arenas . . .' Bunny could let a little snideness slide, in that case.
He thought for a moment, frustrated. Bringing hope to these kids with everything he had was going to be hard, if he was to keep his rebellious thoughts quiet. He didn't have much more than his words to bring them hope with just then.
He'd just have to find a way. Powers or not, help from other spirits or not, giving in wasn't an option.
"Noted." He paused, considered commenting that the kid had been a big help, and thought better of it.
"In that case, who've I gotta kill to get a couple'a carrots 'round here?"
Might as well get into the spirit of the undercover work sooner rather than later.
no subject
(No, it wasn't at all.)
"There's a produce market several blocks that way." Brainy gestured a hand lazily. "If you want to avoid the overly rich food and animal products."