frozen

There's a giant fuzzy tidalwave of serious bionic pain bearing down on me. I spin and run like hell (on all fours no less!) back towards the fire escape, but there's a line of gaslamp bunnies already waiting for me haunched up in a row, all fuzzy wuzzy cute except for those steel uppers and beady radioactive eyes staring at me like I'm a giant carrot. These lop-eared rodents are hopping circles around me! I draw on what little magic I already recovered and hurl a Void bubble as they stretch out their shiny claws and...

...freeze in midair?

Yeah. All of them. Just floating. Lines of bunny drool trailing from their carnivorous bunny mouths. Even their gas flames in their little glass tummies are frozen in place. Except for the one that was caught in a Void bubble the size of a Caledon football. It's scratching furiously at the inside of the bubble, trying to get out.

"What the...?" If I had Qli pouring time-energy into me maybe I could pull something like this off. But my powers don't work that way!

So I carefully slip out from under the bunny-avalanche and look around. I still see the neon signs of Seraph City blinking in the distance. I look up and the stars are twinkling, probably from the clouds of exhaust from the airships. At least I know I didn't freeze this whole freakin' dieselpunk world.

Ah, there's Wren. She's frozen too, just like her pets. She's pointing towards where I was. But she's got this surprised look on her face? She's not looking towards me at all. She's looking up at...

OH. HELL. NO.

smackdown

I kinda like this Seraph City, once you get over the exhaust fumes. But you really gotta watch your step. It seems anybody who's anybody has a horseless carriage and drives like a maniac! But the clubs! They got these crazy new kinda sounds called jazz and swing...wow, how do I even describe them to a Caledonian?

But anyway, at dusk I was struttin' down the street in my new black pinstripe suit and matching fedora en route to the next juke joint when I hear this girl shouting,

"PAPER! GET YOUR NEWSPAPER!"

Aw man, what a letdown. Of course, they would still have urchins in the future. Just look at her in her white blind-glasses and blonde ponytails and her smock glowing from the light in her...WAIT A GODDAM MINUTE!!!

She saw me alright! She ripped off her glasses and smock and dashed for the alley. I bolted after her. Yeah, she's still small and probably knows this city like the back of her hand. But I'm a neko. She covers her light, but I can still see in the dark. She hurls garbage cans at me (note to self: Mason hydraulics) and I leap over 'em.

"You almost cut my FOOT off you psycho little BRAT!"

"That was FIFTY YEARS ago! Get over it!"

"For YOU it's fifty years! I've still got the STITCHES!"

I turn the corner and it's a dead end. She's not there. Then I hear the clatter of the fire escape above. She's zigzagging from one level to the next. I'm jumping from railing to railing. I reach for her ankle as she hoists herself over the rooftop. I grab her ratty old shoe which slips off in my hand.

"WREN! I got a nine letter word for what I'm gonna lay on..."

I land on the gravel of the rooftop. She's standing there, her heart burning under the night sky, her beady eyes glowing a reanimation green...no wait, that's the bunny on her shoulder. And a bunny on her other shoulder. And the dozen at her feet. And another twenty behind her. Here comes another hrair of them. She's surrounded by what, a hundred...gaslamp bunnies?

They've got shiny teeth. Razor-sharp steel I must assume. Aw crap, the claws too?

"Hey..." I chuckle, "Y'know...fifty years is a long time..."

She just points at me.

"GET 'IM!"

Now if I was Doc Mason I'd write something like, "as one, the leaping legion of lepuses advanced upon me" but really the only words that came to mind were "OH SHI--"