AUTHOR'S NOTE: thank you Anonymous Guest for the review!

Also, as with previous years, I will be taking a break for December, so this will be the last chapter of 2021. Thank you everyone for your support, I hope you all enjoy the last few weeks of the year, and I'll be back in January!

Chapter 171: After.

"The news sickened him and he knew that if he replied now, his manner would be somewhat frosty."

-BlazeRabbit, Thlaylirah

-"Egad...what a large tunnel!"

-"Quiet, Pinky. I'm trying to focus."

-"Oh. Sorry Brain."

Pinky and the Brain were walking through the tunnels at Watership Down. Brain was holding a laser scanner, which he pointed in all directions. In order to get accurate results, he had to stay focused on his task, hence his request for Pinky's silence. But Pinky, predictably, soon spoke again:

-"What are we doing here, anyway? Narf!"

-"In order to obtain General Woundwort's cooperation, he asked for this warren's destruction. I have to make a 3D map of all the tunnels in order to compute weak spots in the structure that could then be efficiently demolished to cause a complete cave-in."

-"Egad Brain, brilliant! Brilliant! Oh wait, no...what if the discovery of the fifth water prevents Brindle from ever figuring out what went wrong?"

Brain would have smacked Pinky for asking such a ridiculous and nonsensical question, but both his hands were occupied with holding the laser scanner. As he pointed it towards one burrow, he noticed some unusual readings.

-"There is an unexpected surge of tachyon decay radiation coming from this direction."

The two mice stepped inside the burrow, just in time to see the portal re-open. Hannah was the first creature go to through it, landing in front of the other two mice. She soon got up and stared at them.

-"Git avay, ze rabbeets are coomin!"

She grabbed Pinky's hand and pulled him out of the burrow. Brain, meanwhile, had not understood what she had said, and therefore remained standing where he was, to analyze the anomaly. Moments later, Hazel was thrown out of the portal; Brain could only watch in horror as the rabbit, unaware of his presence, landed directly on top of him. The other rabbits followed, one after the other; nobody had the time to move away before someone else landed on top of them. Trill and Warble were the only ones able to escape unharmed, simply flying out of the portal, and perching at the burrow's entrance. Bigwig was the last to crash on the pile of rabbits, after which the portal closed itself once again.

-"Some of you are probably about to complain about this weird dream you just woke up from," Fiver said, attempting to crawl out of the pile. "I am here to tell you that it wasn't a dream. That is all."

-"I don't care," Bigwig said, hopping off the others. "I really don't care. I just never want anyone to call me 'plump rabbit' again."

-"Did someone say 'plump rabbit'?" came Hawkbit's voice, as he and Dandelion, alerted by all the noise, arrived at the burrow's entrance.

Bigwig would have smacked him in the face over that comment, but he after his deep space adventure, he felt exhausted.

-"I'm going to my burrow, and I'm going to get some sleep. Unless you want to feel my claws on your face, you shall never speak of this incident ever again."

-"What incident?" Dandelion asked, just as confused as Hawkbit. "What are you all doing in this burrow?"

-"Dandelion, you like stories," Vilthuril said. "In the morning, I'll tell you a story, that you will probably enjoy quite a lot."

-"That sounds awesome, but why wait until morning?"

-"Because we're all exhausted," Spartina said.

-"Have we missed out on all the fun?" Hawkbit asked, suddenly disappointed.

-"You have a weird idea of fun," Silver said.

-"Seriously, though, what happened?" Dandelion insisted.

-"We'll tell you in the morning," Vilthuril repeated.

-"Yes, we'll tell you in the morning," Hazel said. "For now, I'm sure we're all anxious to get some sleep."

Hawkbit and Dandelion were not the only rabbits alerted by the noise. At that moment, Hyzenthlay arrived at the burrow's entrance; upon seeing her, Holly smiled.

-"Hyzenthlay, you're alive!"

-"Yes, I am," the doe replied. "Why wouldn't I be?"

This was an awkward situation for Holly. Hyzenthlay had met a tragic fate in the other universe, and he did not wish to tell her that, worrying her for no reason.

-"...elil could have come underground and snatched you in your burrow?" he improvised, unconvincingly, leaving Hyzenthlay somewhat confused.

-"I appreciate your concern, but that's highly improbable. First, they would have had to make it past Clover and Flora above ground, and then..."

-"Oh, that reminds me!" Bluebell suddenly said. "How long have we been gone?"

-"It would be about time for a change of guards, if that's what you're thinking of," Hyzenthlay said.

-"Come on, Blackberry, let's go!"

-"What are you talking about?" Blackberry asked.

-"I asked Hazel to let us have second watch!"

-"You didn't tell me that..."

-"Well, now you know! Oh, it's going to be wonderful, just the two of us, and the moonlight..."

-"...and the elil."

-"Come on, we mustn't keep the first set of guards waiting, I'm sure they need sleep."

-"I need sleep too..."

-"You can sleep later, follow me!"

-"Uh..."

Seeing the futility of arguing further, Blackberry was left with no choice but to follow Bluebell above ground.

As the other rabbits scattered back to their respective burrows, Hazel and Fiver kept a close look out, to make sure everyone was accounted for. They were pleased to see that everyone who was in the runabout had made it back to the warren, with the exception of Vervain. That was probably a good thing: if he had arrived through the same portal, he would have found out the warren's location in the process. They would have been forced to keep him imprisoned, or perhaps even kill him, so he couldn't run away and reveal this closely-guarded secret to Woundwort.

Soon, Hazel and Fiver were the last two rabbits in the burrow; while Brain was there too, he was still unconscious, and did not hear the brothers' conversation.

-"Fiver, we need to talk about something," Hazel said, turning towards his brother.

-"Is it an emergency? I'm feeling really tired, Hazel."

-"It's fine, it can wait until morning."

-"Thank you. Good night, dear brother."

After one last nuzzle, Hazel went back to his burrow, like everyone else had done before. Primrose was already back there; it appeared that the kittens had slept through the entire ordeal.

-"How are you doing?" he asked.

-"I'm...confused," the doe replied. "Fiver said that the adventure in the stars is not a dream?"

-"That is indeed what he said, and I can confirm he was telling the truth. I hadn't realized you were there until just before we came back. I hope you didn't suffer too much..."

-"To be honest, I don't remember much of anything over there. There was an evil tree, and...I might have told someone I love them? I don't even remember who it was...I clearly wasn't in my right mind. I'm sorry."

-"Nothing to apologize for. Like you said, you weren't in your right mind at the time. None of us were."

-"It's only you I love."

-"I love you too."

Hannah and Pinky spent a while in the tunnel outside the burrow, waiting for the rabbits to leave. Pinky was dreadfully worried about his friend Brain, but could not go to check up on him until everyone else was gone. Hannah, meanwhile, was pleased to meet another mouse; she had not interacted with other members of her species since Frith's Eve. However, she quickly realized that this was no ordinary mouse. For one thing, his white fur would make him easy for predators to spot; if he stayed outside too long, he would no doubt be quickly killed. As Pinky spoke, she discovered even more unusual things about him. He seemed very knowledgeable regarding human technologies, as well as the concepts of "narf" and "troz"; despite Pinky's attempts at explaining these weird words, Hannah remained very confused. Additionally, Brain seemed obsessed with trying to take over the world. Hannah could not understand why anyone would want this. She had seen on more than one occasion the toll leadership had taken on Hazel; no doubt ruling over the whole world, as opposed to one small warren, would be so much more stressful.

Once all the rabbits were gone, Hannah and Pinky were finally able to venture back inside the burrow. Brain was still lying on the ground, seeing stars; Pinky helped him up.

-"How are you feeling now Brain?"

-"This pain is definitely going to linger." Brain looked around him; the laser scanner had been smashed to pieces by the rabbits landing on top of it. Not only would it take a long time to repair, but the device's memory card was broken in two, destroying all the data obtained so far. He would have to start all over again. "Come, Pinky. We must head back to the mobile lab to prepare for tomorrow night."

-"Why, Brain? What are we going to do tomorrow night? Narf, it's going to be the same thing we do every night, isn't it?"

-"Actually...no," Brain said, picking up the remains of his equipment. "We're coming back here to take another set of measurements. Hopefully it will be less crowded then."

As Pinky and the Brain walked towards the nearest exit, Hannah went back to her burrow. She was looking forward to the two other mice's return, to get to know them better.

The Server had spent a long time buried underground, exposed to the elements. The internals were heavily rusted, and the rapid spinning of the fan caused the pebble inside to jam the mechanism. The fuse at the house blew, shutting down the machine; if that hadn't happened, something might have caught fire.

Orchis was staring at Vervain. Ever since the Server had been turned back on, the bearded rabbit appeared to have fallen into a deep trance. Even now that the machine was off again, Vervain still stared at it, paying no attention to Orchis' words. It was now time to attempt something drastic: he pressed the floppy disk eject button. This mechanism relied entirely on springs and gears, and was therefore still functional despite the lack of electrical current flowing in. The slot was full, and the disk hit Vervain between the ears, bouncing off and landing on the ground further away. This was what it took to bring Vervain back to reality.

-"Wh...what's going on?"

-"You were hypnotized."

-"I was?" Vervain concentrated all his thoughts on lifting Orchis off the ground, but nothing happened, confirming that he had lost all the new powers he had used in the other universe. "Oh, what a shame...anyway, ORCHIS YOU IDIOT! This isn't Nepenthes, this is Silver-Inlé!"

-"Oh...I was always confusing those two when I was younger, I was afraid I might make a mistake like this. I'm sorry."

Vervain lowered his head. Shouting at Orchis had not been satisfying as he had expected. It had offered no meaningful benefits: finding Chibiscuit, or the outsiders' warren, still seemed to far away.

-"Let's get the Inlé out of here."

-"It's late, the elil are out hunting," Orchis pointed out. "We should spend the night here, our scents will be masked by that of the Server."

-"No. We're leaving now."