Otherwise known as: I had to make 444 words on #4thewords to keep up my streak, and I didn’t want to write anything else…

First to @dahob’s prompt here and second to Rix’s prompt here

On some level, it was a fascinating study in closed genetic populations. This little island had been cut off from everything else since the End Wars. The bridges had been blown, the waters had become impassible, and a series of bad explosions of magic meant that most people didn’t even remember that it existed.

If a Finder hadn’t targeted it as holding useful resources, it might have gone another seventy-five years before anyone noticed it was there.

As it was, the island had a small population that seemed entirely to consist of rabbit-Change fae. They were very rabbity, more so than any other rabbit-Changes the team had ever seen. And they were very definitely at war.

As far as the team could tell, the striped-looking rabbit people were fighting with the pointed-like-a-Siamese-cat rabbit people over territory rights on the ruins of the single large town in the center of the island. It had gotten quite violent, from the blood and the bodies and the missing limbs, and they hardly noticed the team’s arrival.

Since the team’s goal was at the side of the island, not the center, they were tempted to just let the rabbit gang war continue, but, seriously, there was too much interesting information to be garnered, so they grabbed one of each and hauled them off to get some information.

By the time they left, they’d identified five of each breed – turned out there were sub-breeds – to kidnap, and had even done a little bit of peace-making in the gang war. There was much more to be had from this tiny island, but they had their own war to fight first.

“Seriously, what are you doing?”

The Mara had purple-red wings and looked to be almost as short as Luke. Male, golden-skinned and golden-haired, they stooped into a dive and landed directly in front of Conrad. “You call this a battle plan?”

Conrad looked the Mara up and down. “I’m sorry, you are…?”

He was in no mood to put up with pureblood bullshit. His wife and kids were half a country away, where he couldn’t protect them, and he was fighting would-be gods with the weapons at hands, which might as well be sticks and stones.

“Piotr, called Catapult. You need better weapons.” The Mara bowed deeply. “Just so happens, I’m a weapon.”

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