“Wow. You all must live a hella long time.”
White cleared his throat. “Their view of what years are is far quicker than ours, My Queen. In our terms, it would be just over forty-one months.”
“So not even three and a half of our years? Wow, he’s in his first term as President for our world. And doing as crappy a job with it as I’ve ever seen.”
“You have insulted me for the last time,” Johpunnt said. “All of you, prepare for my order to kill them!”
The rabbits all squatted, presumably in preparation to leap onto us the moment Johpunnt gave the word. But before they could do anything there was a scream. A bird’s scream. Several of them, actually. And I knew the voices.
Peregrines appeared out of nowhere. Only, not nowhere. They’d been in Len, Kyle, Abigail, Siler, and Kevin’s arms and, as they flew out of said arms, the people appeared. Presumed this meant that Mossy and Mahin had stayed in the shuttle with Chuckie.
Bruno was shrieking in Peregrine, and what he was saying was that any rabbits that thought they were going to leap onto me and the others had another think coming.
But that wasn’t all. “Look!” Clorence shouted. Looked around and realized that Clorence was looking behind us. Turned to see one of our shuttles swoop in—well, the hole was more than big enough to let it in, as were the doors to the throne room, and the cavern was ginormous. The camouflage had obviously worked well enough on the way in because I didn’t see a ton of Johpunnt’s troops coming in.
The shuttle didn’t land but, as my music changed to “Here Comes The Hammer” by MC Hammer, the door opened and Adam, Rahmi, Rhee, Tito, Naveed Jeremy, Jennifer, MJO, and Gadhavi all jumped out and landed around us. Figured Hamlin was flying the shuttle with Bellie as copilot. Go Backup Auxiliary Team. They all had weapons ready, though only the princesses had weapons that our enemies seemed to recognize as such.
But that wasn’t all they had. Because more were coming out of the shuttle. Rabbits, our rabbits, twenty of them if there was one, and the least weasels. Only they weren’t small. All of them were at least as big as Algar, maybe bigger, the weasels in particular.
“So, I see the least weasels have become the most weasels. Go team. And Orange Scourge, I presume.” Figured that this was how the animals on this planet had managed to survive and grow larger, too.
“Did you know,” Tito said conversationally, “that a pack of least weasels can take down a full-grown sheep? On our world, that is. I mean, here, on this one, with the size they are, I’m pretty sure just one weasel could take one sheep. Maybe more.”
“Nice!” Turned back to Johpunnt. “This, in our world, is what we call a Mexican Standoff. No one can advance or retreat without losing position or safety. So, Johpunnt, before you give the order to attack, I’d like to give you a chance to reconsider your position.”
“There is nothing to reconsider. You have never faced enemies such as my troops. They will rend all of you and then we will feast on your flesh.”
“You’re herbivores,” I felt compelled to point out.
“Only when we have no meat to devour,” Johpunnt said.
Looked at Telzor out of the corner of my eye. He looked kind of sick to his stomach. “Telzor,” I asked quietly, “is that true?”
“In the past we have been . . . required . . . to eat the remains of our enemies. It is not something most of us relish doing, but it is required.”
“By whom?”
“By our laws, the laws given to us in the distant past.”
“Yeah, about that. It’s not the distant past anymore. I think it’s time for you guys to come into the current future.”
“I don’t see how that will happen,” Telzor said, somewhat sadly.
“One question. How do your laws of succession work? As in, should one of us manage to kill the Mad Lord there, will we automatically be in the middle of a gigantic war, or will we rule this world?”
“It depends on who would dare to kill the Mad Lord. Normally the next chosen would rule, but we have not had such a birth yet.”
Meaning no one else had the Neon Orange Birthmark. Oh well, that could make things easier.
Considered how best to handle this. Well, I was the Warrior Queen, but that didn’t mean that I was required to fight fair. Superman and the Flash were on the blue planet, Batman probably would approve, and I was only Wonder Woman on Bizarro World. Here, in my universe, I was Wolverine With Boobs. And Wolverine was very willing to cheat if it meant saving the lives of a lot of innocents and grunts who were just forced to be doing their distasteful jobs.
My music changed to Panic! At the Disco’s “Crazy=Genius.” Nice to see that Algar agreed with my plan.
“Rahmi, Rhee, two things.”
“Yes, My Warrior Queen?” Rahmi asked eagerly, sounding like she’d been waiting forever to address me this way and was overjoyed that the time had finally come.
“One, is that if things go as they usually do, figure you’re going to really be having a great time.”
“What is two, My Warrior Queen?” Rhee asked, sounding even more eager and thrilled about using this title for me than her older sister. Well, their mother was the queen of her world.
“Two is that if things go as I’m hoping they do, I’m sorry.”
Flipped my gun into my arms, aimed, and fired.
CHAPTER 104
DIRECT HIT. I was good with this thing. Shot again, several times, just in case. Hit my target every time.
Cages fell and slammed onto the ground. All the rabbit shock troops, other than the few around us, were trapped and it looked like no one had gotten smooshed, either.
Didn’t wait for the reactions. Instead I ran and did a flip into the air. Lilith gave me an assist and I sailed onto the dais to land perfectly in front of the throne. There were a hell of a lot of gasps from the audience, from my team included. Had no time to be impressed myself but planned to revel in the moment later.
Stood eye to eye with Johpunnt. He was less impressive up close. Put the point of my gun to his chest. “Surrender.”
“Never. You will have to kill me.”
“Dude, you seem to think that someone named the Warrior Queen has trouble killing people. I find that funny. Almost as funny as your hairdo.” My team snickered.
Kept the gun on him but turned to the audience. Had a great vantage point in that I could probably hit every one of the scary rabbits the cages didn’t get from up here before they could attack. But that would send the wrong message, particularly since I saw a lot of sheep, possums, and cows crowding in through the doorway to see what was going on. The rabbits in the cages were trying to lift them. Figured they might succeed.
“You don’t have a lot of time,” I shared with the room. “Your sun is dying and your solar system is in the Deep Black where, soon, no one will ever find you again. We came to help you.”
“She lies!” Johpunnt shouted. “They came to conquer us.”