Rise of the Guardians
Traverse
Chapter One: Setting Fear Free
The two of them were jumbled together as the feline hissed in rage. "You stupid moron! Get yourself in control!"
"Like you were doing so much better than me! Get your butt off of me!"
The girl spun onto her heels. "You.. You.. Unlucky rabbit!"
"Now that is below the tail, Aegis!"
"You started it, Trek!" That cat stamped her foot. "Now where are we?"
"We're.. uh… not where we're supposed to be.." Trek's ice blue eyes turned lighter as the two gazed around the darkness and flitting shadows. "I think we're in a lair that we're not supposed to be in.."
"Crap! Let's go, let's go!" Aegis pranced around, her ears back in terror. "Before anything else goes wrong!"
"Fine!"
They high-fived and disappeared from the lair of the Boogeyman as Pitch ebbed out of the shadows. The duo had left by a different route, living the one they used to enter wide open. His smile slowly spread across his face as his face crinkled and his eyes fell half-shut with delight.
While the two had difficulty trying to get where they were supposed to be, the mixed family of bunnies and kitties were rising up from their long sleep. Faustine started to clean Axel around the ears as Axel slowly awoke, leaning toward his mother with appreciation.
"I wanna bath!" Princessa begged. "I'm next!"
"A bunny should be next!" Thump protested.
"Let Dad clean you," Princessa told her sister matter-of-factly.
Bunny winced. "Let your mother do it. She's better at it."
"You're telling me, you bite," Axel muttered as his mother finished cleaning him.
"You're all getting old enough to groom yourselves," Faustine told her children. "This is just bonding."
"Plus it keeps you quiet for a little more time."
Faustine glared from the side at Bunny who grinned at her.
"Funny, smart guy." She huffed as Hop was rubbing anxiously against her. "All right, all right, you're next!"
"Yea!" Hop settled quickly. "I wish I could purr!"
"Let me do it for you," Hitch offered as he leaned against Hop and started his motor going. Hop giggled at the comical look on her brother's face as Axel rolled his eyes and jumped off the bed.
And found himself slipping around paint. "Hey! Who made this mess!?"
"Who's been in my paints?" Bunny demanded but his children nor Faustine had any paint residue on them. He was also pretty certain that they all had slept hard.
"Oh, my God, Trek, you look soooo ridiculous!"
"I look.. Hey, how about looking in a mirror, you stupid dog!"
"Cat! CAT! I AM A CAT!"
The two of them found themselves scruffed hard in Bunny's hands.
"She started it, I swear she did!"
"I did not, you start everything!"
"I'm not the one bitching!"
"AUGH!" Aegis waved her arms toward her brother angrily. "Let me at him! Let me at him! You unlucky bunny! If you hadn't messed with the coin, we wouldn't be in this mess!"
"You joined me!"
"I had no choice, you forced me!"
"YOU CAN'T FORCE A CAT!"
Bunny had enough and threw them in opposite directions. "My head hurts."
Hitch was wiggling away from his mother, who was trying to finish cleaning him. He clawed desperately at the bedding.
"Thump, a little help!" Hitch squeaked as his mother bit into his scruff.
"My turn, Mama!" Thump shoved herself between the two as Hitch dove off the bed and ended on a roll next to his father. His head spun as he saw several strands of silver thread.
"There's a lot of thread, Dad," He tugged on Bunny's arm.
"Yea, I thought there would be." Bunny swiveled his head back and forth.
"What's it mean?"
"It means that these two aren't doing a very good job in controlling… GET OUT OF MY CARROT PATCH!"
Trek tore out of it, his cheeks full of carrots. "Um sawwy!" He climbed up a tree with the grace of a cat and took a hard gulp. "I'm so hungry!" He wailed.
"You're hungry? You're hungry?!"
Bunny held his head tightly.
Aegis sneered up at the tree. "I'm starving! And there's no mice here!"
"You're not looking hard enough," Trek muttered.
Aegis completely collapsed in exhaustion and all the dramatic prose she could muster with the exhaustion.
"All right, now that you're worn down, how did you get into my Warren? Where are you from? Who are you? And how do you know how to do time travel?!"
"We don't. If we did, we couldn't be in this mess," Aegis continued to glare up at Trek.
"You agreed to come!"
"It doesn't work with just one!"
"ENOUGH!"
Bunny glared out darkly, feeling very drawn out. "I want answers NOW."
Aegis turned to look up and spoke sharply in a strange language.
"Oh, crap…" Bunny muttered softly.
"Daddy, what are they saying?"
"They're too soft for me to understand but I know that language. It's mine."
"Yours?"
"Yes, Rabbit-speak. We used it as a way to communicate without giving away where or who we were."
"So how do these two know it?" Faustine whispered loudly, having snuck up behind her mate and son.
"Because they're ours."
"Ours?" Faustine was skeptical.
"Yes, our children. From the future."
"Hey!" Trek became indignant. "You can't say that!"
"Why not?" Aegis asked him coldly.
"Uh… we were not going to ever reveal it… right?"
"Oh, yea, they can't tell… well, he can, she… maybe not."
Faustine was the next to become indignant. "Hey! Don't insult your future mother!"
"Future?" The five all piled forward, eyes bright and expressive. "Little brother and sister? Just.. The two of you?" Axel was disappointed.
"We, sir, are special," Aegis puffed out her fluffy chest. "We can manipulate time and space. That is, if someone KNEW HOW TO DO IT!"
"It's not me, it's you!"
"Dad, they're loud!" Axel tugged on an long arm.
"And they complain a lot," Princessa scoffed. "Even more than me!"
"They're just having a spat," Faustine said soothingly.
That spat turned out into a battle as the two began to violently wrestle. The more they fought, the more obscure and twisted the area around them became.
"What's going on?" Thump hid behind her mother, Hop doing the same.
"It's.. like looking into a kaleidoscope," Hitch breathed. "It's so pretty…"
"No, it's not pretty, it's extremely dangerous!" Bunny huffed and swung his arms apart. He literally tore the space between the two, halting the partially drawn portal and made it diminish into nothing. "This is why you're stuck here! You two cannot get along and until you do, you are trapped here!"
Bunny paused heavily. "Though, it shouldn't have to take both of you."
"Yes, it does," Aegis dug out her coin from her collar. Or that is, a half of a coin. "We were born with one half a coin."
"WOW." Faustine's eyes took up her entire face. "That's so cool!"
"Let's get some things straightened out before we start having a complicated conversation." Bunny pointed to Faustine. "And it's not 'cool'!"
"Well, obviously you don't know what it means." Faustine muttered, crossing her arms and pointed her nose away.
"I think introductions are in order," Bunny said pointedly.
"Oh, oh! My name is Axel! This is Hop, Thump.." Axel winced as Hitch slapped the back of his head. "What was that for?!"
"They already know us!" Hitch pinched Axel. "They're our SIBLINGS, remember?"
"He has a point. You always were a little clueless." Trek smirked at Axel.
Axel's eyes narrowed as he hissed at him.
"NAMES!"
"God, yes, fine," Trek snapped, fluttering around in distress. "It's nice to know that you still sound the same in our time with all of your shouting."
"Will you shut up?" Aegis shoved her brother away. "I'm Aegis. Genius here is Trek."
"That's a pretty name," Faustine clasped her hands with delight.
"Thank you." Both of them said at once.
Faustine continued to beam while the two looked at each other darkly.
"Why are you here?" Bunny asked, holding his head as the start a headache began at the back of his head.
"Umm… Well, I'm certainly not at fault," Aegis began.
"Twitch."
"Unlucky."
"WHY ARE YOU HERE!?"
The two backed away from the enraged bunny. "We.. Sort of made a mistake. We kind of don't have much control." Trek tried to smile as charming as possible.
"I wasn't going to do anything but he begged and begged and I couldn't get him to shut up so I agreed that we could try a trial run… without, uh… Dad's help." Aegis, too, tried to smile as charming as possible. "It was supposed to be a teeny, little travel and we kind of jumped.. All over. I mean, all over.." She dragged out the last two words.
"Like where?" Axel asked suspiciously.
"Let's see, I think we ended up in the 1600s, um, somewhere in San Francisco after a really bad earthquake, then here, then somewhere dark and creepy like the Boogeyman lived there, annnnnndd back here again." Trek counted off his fingers.
"Did you say 'Boogeyman'?" Bunny was very still, his voice low.
"Yea, it was cold and damp and dark and it reeked of fear and I thought I could see dancing horse shadows on the walls." Trek added.
Aegis was ebbing away from Bunny, his eyes wide and expressionless. Trek seemed a little clueless but the next question set him right.
"Did you close your portal?" Bunny asked it in a near-whisper.
"Did we close our…uh…sure, I'm sure.. We did.." Trek turned to have Aegis back him up as she looked away, rubbing her head. "Oh, crap."
"Ah, shit."
"BUNNY!"
"No, no, no, no, no! Damnit all to Hell!"
"Ohhh, Daddy's saying bad words!" Princessa shouted.
"I'll get the soap," Axel said gleefully, tearing away from the group.
"Do you know what you've done?" Bunny shouted, shaking his paws at the two. "You've left him with an escape? The children are going to be in danger!"
"Or you."
Bunny swiveled an long ear to Hitch. "Excuse me?"
"Umm…I have a gut feeling that it's not going to the children. I mean, you and the Guardians kind of.. Screwed him over, right?"
"One, don't talk like that. Two, no, we didn't."
Bunny caught the stare from Aegis and Trek. "What?!"
"Yea, I agree with Hitch. He's pretty much always right." Trek said finally.
"And Axel's always wrong," Aegis smirked.
Faustine was frowning. "Wait! There's an actual Boogeyman? Does he look like Death?"
"No, Death is someone else." Bunny muttered. "I need to go talk with North.. But first…"
His hands fell on top of the two as they shimmered in silver which transferred to the two. "Until you two learn how to control the space-time continuum, you are bound to this time, this place, and to the family."
"But.. I want to go home!" Aegis cried.
"I had a really pretty date planned!" Trek fell on his knees, begging his father. "She's such a little thing! I was sure to get lucky!"
"You unlucky bunny!"
"You twitch!"
"Oh, my god, Faustine, watch them please and try not to.. I don't know, entice them more?"
"Why would I? It's too early for this type of fighting. Plus, I need to eat."
"FOOD!" Faustine was overcome in the two's arms as Bunny rolled his eyes and left with a snort.