The roof of 75 Godiva, Saturday morning

[vdistinctive]

Eliot had come up to start working on his garden for the season, but got sidetracked. First by what sure as hell felt like an impact tremor (it was a very distinctive variety of earthquake). And then by the fact that his usually largely unobstructed view of land along the horizon line in the direction of Baltimore was now a largely unobstructed view of absolutely nothing along the horizon line.

"That don't bode well," he grumbled. "That don't bode well at all."

[can be open, sure!]

Comments

[geniuswithasmartphone]

A great deal of impassioned and frenzied swearing came from inside the house. "Eliot! Eliot!" Hardison yelled, sticking his head out of the window to yell up to the roof. "Eliot, everythin' is gone!"

[vdistinctive]

Eliot rushed down the stairs. "What? Did it just disappear? How did — Hardison, nothing's missing."

He'd been expecting suddenly empty rooms, here.

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"No, man, no!" Hardison said, cradling his phone in his arm like an injured animal. "The networks! All of 'em! No phone service, no internet, like almost no communications at all! It's all gone!"

[vdistinctive]

"Dammit, Hardison!" Eliot scowled. "I just ran down three flights of stairs thinkin' the furniture was disappearing. Of course the networks are down. The mainland's gone."

[geniuswithasmartphone]

Don't be silly, Eliot. The Nothing happened years ago.

"The mainland's gone?"

[vdistinctive]

"Well, I ain't checked the other side of the island," Eliot noted. "But yeah, there's nothin' but water on the horizon out there."

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"Where did it go?!"

The questions this island made him ask.

[vdistinctive]

"Wrong question," Eliot said. "Where's the island gone? It's a whole lot more likely to go wandern' than Baltimore is."

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"There is," Hardison said with a finger raised, "somethin' deeply disturbin' about livin' on an island that likes to go for walkies."

[vdistinctive]

"No kidding," Eliot said. "You notice the impact tremors?"

If he didn't, Eliot was going to want to throttle him. They weren't exactly subtle.

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"Nah," Hardison drawled. "I was so bereft at the loss of the internet that I failed to notice the ground literally movin' beneath my feet."

[vdistinctive]

"You would," Eliot grumbled. Before he could say anything further, though, he was distracted by Val barking her head off at the front window. He went to go see what was the matter and —

"Huh."

That was a very large rabbit.

[geniuswithasmartphone]

Hardison also looked up. At the very large rabbit.

"Eliot," he said, with remarkable calm, "I think we're bein' invaded by giant bunnies. I don't even know how to respond to this."

The rabbit noticed Val's barking and retaliated. By throwing a giant Easter egg at the window.

"...Not a fan," he decided, watching a truly substantial amount of yolk and albumin slither down the glass.

[vdistinctive]

Well. At least it hadn't blown up and smashed the window?

"I really hate this island sometimes."

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"Look, I ain't about to go pointin' fingers about whose fault it is we're on this island to begin with..." Hardison said. Pointing at Eliot.

[vdistinctive]

Eliot rolled his eyes at Hardison, then went to see if he could shoo the rabbit away before it started trying to dig at his foundation.

He barely started out the front door before the rabbit charged, and he even more barely got the thing closed again before the rabbit smashed against it. The door rattled hard in its frame as Eliot threw his whole body into keeping it closed.

"Right, these ain't just normal rabbits on growth hormones."

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"The egg ain't give that away?" Hardison demanded, his shoulder also pressed against the door. "What the hell is wrong with this island?!"

[vdistinctive]

The door shuddered again, and Eliot wished for the first time that he hadn't gotten rid of the iron bars he'd installed during Gaunt's reign of terror.

"Dunno. Maybe it thinks we all need to be more proactive celebratin' Easter."

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"I will dye eggs this afternoon!" Hardison shouted through the door. "An' hide candy for Parker to find!"

The door just shuddered a third time.

"Dunno if that's it."

[vdistinctive]

"This door ain't gonna hold up to much more of this," Eliot observed. He was giving serious thought to starting to keep a sword handy in, like, an umbrella stand by the door. "If I run out there and try to get this thing away from the house, you gonna tell Parker I was being stupid?"

It wasn't like they could let it keep trying to smash their door in.

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"Probably," Hardison sighed. "So you'd better gimme somethin' equally stupid to do so I got a reason to keep quiet."

[vdistinctive]

". . . Research rabbit repellant?"

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"With my vast rabbit resources I got on hand here?" Hardison asked.

The internet was down, Eliot!

[vdistinctive]

"You asked for something stupid." Eliot smirked at him, then grimaced when the door shuddered again, and made a horrible cracking noise. "How about speakers? Maybe we can drive it off if we give Val's volume a boost."

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"Stupid, not impossible!" Hardison protested. "...I could do that though. The speaker thing. You gonna be good with the door by yourself?"