The Drop

Rico was deep in hypnosleep with the rest of his platoon. Next to him in the hypnowarren slept his two best friends in the Mobile Sugaring Corps: Ace and Dizzy. Dizzy had also joined the Mobile Sugaring Corps, the hoppers, for Rico, or at least, that was what Johnny thought. She was a good friend, but Carmen was always on Rico’s mind.

His fur had been carefully scored with “Sugar From Above!” that all of his platoon mates had done after boot camp was done. The words were inside two large rabbit ears shaped like twin lightning bolts.

He had learned how to work a PowerHopper and had proven to be deadly on the battlefield. The PowerHopper acted as his full and only combat gear. It augmented all of his senses, kept him well informed, increased his strength and speed, monitored and adjusted his chemistry as needed, and had mountpoints for any number of deadly weapons from his House technologists.

The notches on his ears, one for each successful high value target kill, counted at least four by now. A fifth notch would mean he was an ace. Few bunnies made ace, and his friend was unfortunately named. Ace’s ears were un-notched even after several drops. He was a fine hopper but Rico wasn’t sure he’d survive the war with House Molar. Dizzy slept with her three notches and was known to be one of the fiercest in the entire platoon.

As they slept, the mission plan was burned into their brains via hypnosis. Rico couldn’t sense the hypnorage modules being inserted as trigger words into his psyche. His buck teeth gritted as the targets were implanted. Failure to meet his objectives meant deep pain from his training and chemistry. Total failure often led to heart attacks due to the extreme pain of unreleased hypnorage or other chemicals used to keep their combat effectiveness high.

Suddenly, he felt his boot instructor’s reveille commands pushing everything else out of his mind. “Get those cotton tails fluffed and those ears licked back! UP! UP! UP!” Johnny felt Sarge Zim’s voice from boot camp pervade his hypnosis. His body started to move before his eyes fully opened.

His vision systems were finally warmed up and his body was already at attention due to the sugar stims flooding his bunny bloodstream. Rico’s irises widened in readiness for the rage energy levels to start to engage.

Rico’s vision cleared to Razzcat’s feline face screaming, “UP! UP! UP! Line those fluffy asses on that orange line!”

As drop commander, Razzcat looked over his charges with a cold eye for weakness; one by one he carefully inspected each bunny in their powered skins, “My oh my. I think we have a group of for-real ready-to-HOP fuzzy-faced bug-smashing rabbit heroes up in here do we not!”

“ON THE HOP! WE DO THE DROP! HOOYAH!” yelled the team in unison.

Each bunny stuck out their arms and lowered their ears. The PowerHopper armor was assembled over their bodies by hard working squirrels. The squirrels quickly used impact hammers to install each rabbit into their PowerHopper.

Rico looked forward with no expression on his bunny face as his bright pink armor enclosed his body. Troopers were encouraged to customize one half of their kit and leave the other the bright yellow from the factory. Rico had decided to paint both sides: one pink and one black. His tag sign read “GoodAndPlenty” under his name.

“We are hot over Oral and ready to drop!” yelled their feline commander as he watched the installation proceed. He pulled a squirrel aside and asked about the RedVines red/black mixture settings on one of the rabbits in back. They made a quick adjustment and the cat was satisfied.

Johnny’s pre-hypnotic briefing was activated by Sergeant Razzcat via his clawpad. The images flooded Rico’s desire centers attaching to targets and pain to failure as needed. His platoon’s pre-rage mantra was executed and the team was ready to drop.

“Ah yes. I can just smell the sugar off of you all. Those bugs will be so very sweet after they meet my crew. WHO ARE YOU!” yelled the Sergeant at his platoon.

“RAZZCAT’S FUZZBUTTS! FUZZ! FUZZ! GRRR! GRRR!” yelled the troops in unison as they moved to the launch tubes in a quick march.

Dizzy’s armor was red and yellow with “BitOHoney” on the side. She sneered at Ace and Johnny, “I am so ready to glaze some fairies! LET’S GO!”

“LET’S GO GO GO GO!” yelled the entire platoon in response.

Ace managed to stay upright and hopped behind in his green and yellow, “Mountain Don’t” armor.

Each rabbit stood in line and would step into a pair of circles that led to the launch tube entry. As each stepped into a circle, the trooper would yell “BASKET!”

The green aluminagrass weaved around the chocosteel eggs that fully encapsulated each armored rabbit. The entire basket was then shot from the starship as if each bunny was a bullet aimed at the surface of Oral.

Dizzy yelled over to Rico via electroear. “SUGAR FROM ABOVE!!” Rico virtually saluted his wingmate in response as they both were shot from the ship’s launch tubes.

Ace and the rest of the platoon followed their vanguard. The basketjets drove the rabbits downward at extreme acceleration using hot brown sugar plasma. Their armor started to feed BunUrge automatically into their rabbity blood to keep them sane under the incredible pain of massive g forces.

“HOT DAMN! THAT’S ONE BIG OLE HOP! YAHOOOO!” yelled Ace over the full electroear network.

“KEEP THE COMMS CLEAR, PRIVATE DON’T,” countered Razzcat quickly.

The aluminagrass weave and chocosteel egg shell ablated as the rabbits entered the atmosphere of Oral. The flakes offered free chaff to throw off any bug inbound countermeasures. That didn’t stop the winged masses down there from firing wildly at anything they saw.

“One centimeter until we impact on the surface,” said Razzcat over the comms.

Bone pellets could be heard smacking the outside of Rico’s basket but nothing penetrated. Just before impact to the Oral planetary surface, his egg filled with CadburyGel and the entire package slammed into the pink surface. The gel sloughed off and Rico immediately fired his high hop glute jet towards his first target. His ears flew back as he launched himself a millimeter in one soaring bound.

Rico’s hypotraining fired his j-bean beam set to green lime at the first wave of fairies he saw while in mid air. The tartness cleaved six bugs into twelve parts.

A huge wave of fairies saw the heroic rabbit and started to run towards his pink and black mech. Dizzy warned Rico of the inbound fairy wave, “Looks like they’ve brought knives to a gunfight, Rico.”

Rico was annoyed at the distraction and unholstered his jordan-candyshell-almonator from his shoulder mount. The pastel stream of chalk-like pellets made quick work of the sword wielding natives. The hard shells broke through armed fairies like a hot knife through foie gras and the wooden nut had the fairy-stopping power needed for a day like today.

The PowerHopper’s autoloader created new shells for his weapon and he reholstered it over a large pile of fairy wings and other parts.

“Where’s the primary target? This is feeling GREAT!” yelled Rico to Dizzy. Dizzy relayed from Ace and Razzcat the current intel provided from the heroic spy Noah, a fairy “ortho”. The fairies had all kinds of nutty ideas about Enamel, the primary product of Oral, this pink hell hole of a planet. An “ortho” believed that Enamel needed to be “straight” and “braced for change”. Johnny always thought that was just nonsense from a tired, failed race of people.

Razzcat saw his key fighters near their first target and activated the first leg of their war plans.

Razzcat engaged Rico and Dizzy’s sugar levels to Halloween level “NIGHT OF” and gave them release targets of the tribal elder called the Dentist, his whore and their child. “Be careful hoppers. These fanatics are surprising,” said Razzcat.

Rico acknowledged between gritting buck teeth, “Aye aye sir, ON THE HOP!”

Dizzy and Rico’s high hop glute jets fired and the pair leapt a full two miniklicks before landing. The downward impact of their bladed legs and long ears into the masses of bugs created a force wave that pushed the rest of the masses outwards. The two hoppers’ hypotraining combined j-beams of watermelon and raspberry in sweeping arcs to clear out any stragglers who survived their shockwave and sharp steel.

Dizzy looked at the hive made from raw enamel. It was a collection of molars made of the hard white material. The bugs would hide in the crevices and try to snipe a bunny from hiding. They’d need to be careful in here. Their hopping advantage would be at a minimum in these tight spaces. Dizzy looked concerned but her hands shook from the rage levels. Sarge Razzcat back in the rear read her telemetry over tailnet and downed her RedVine feed to red only and no black. He hoped that would keep her well motivated, but too much black could lead to black eye syndrome. Few troopers recovered from a black eye.

“We need to get into there, Johnny? That doesn’t look safe,” said the hopper to her lead. The sarge had overcompensated and pushed her black up a bit more. The lethal ladybun’s eyes narrowed and she said, “We need to get into there, Johnny. Now.”

Rico asked for some pixie sticks and he blasted the sugary gas into the spaces between the enamel to smoke out any hidden bugs. He offered, “Just keep clearing them out before we go inside. We’ll smoke out the hiders and then, let’s just get creative until we find the big chief bug back there!”

Dizzy smiled and picked up a purple pixie stick while Rico stayed with the classic pink. They moved in careful cover blowing the fine gas into each hole they found. A small fairy ran from cover and Rico neatly j-beaned it with strawberry and the pipped explosion was nice and ripe. Dizzy smiled and said, “I thought you didn’t like jam for breakfast!”

Dizzy then shot her flaming marshmallow-palm plasmathrower at a cowering batch of fairy men hiding from the fight.

Rico countered, “I thought you didn’t like toast!” as he sliced open a rushing bug with his left earblade.

Ace called out in warning, “Look you lovebirds. Cut the chatter and get back into the game! Clear that grouping of bugs that are guarding the Dentist. You can see him. He’s the one with the bloody sickle and white mask.”

Rico used his carrotsight and saw the masses around the white-masked fairy. “Time for some rabbit tag team. Dizzy, get the mortar ready.”

He called out the range and distance to Dizzy as she set up the egg mortar. Dizzy made the final adjustments after another quick confirmation via her carrotsight and gave Rico the paws up. He dropped the pink and green chocosteel egg down the tube, and slapped Dizzy on the shoulder.

“Egg in the tube!” he yelled as the egg launched upwards immediately after. Dizzy and Rico watched as the mushroom cloud blew up the radicalized death squad of the warlord into a fine mist that rained over the two hoppers. Rico noted, “There’s just something in the air this morning and I can just taste it!”

Sarge Razzcat joined the two hoppers as they made their way to the impact site. There was a large pile of bug bodies. They had all sacrificed themselves to save their witch doctor. The troopers dug through the blue flesh and purple insides.

“Man, I always wanted to have breakfast together, Johnny, but I just lost my appetite. How many bugs are there anyways? Have we killed them all yet? Where’s my flyswatter!” Dizzy laughed as she worked.

They finally unpiled enough corpses and found the Dentist covered in purple. They had expected him to be drugged by Noah and were not disappointed. The old fairy was barely able to make any sense.

“Rabban? Rabban?” the witch doctor moaned.

“You mean Razzcat. It’s listed here next to my smiling face. Let me lean in and show you it, kind doctor,” said the feline sergeant as he pulled up the old fairy from the pile.

“Where is your whore and whelp!” yelled Razzcat at the dazed fairy. The fairy looked at the cat oddly and asked, “Come a bit closer and I’ll tell you, fine beast.”

Dizzy warned Razzcat, “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Sar—” as the cat walked closer.

The fairy then bit hard on his front tooth and a plume of poison gas shot out towards Razzcat. The feline gasped in terror as the gas took immediate hold.

The cat screamed as his blood coagulated in his throat. The fairy smiled as he too passed in a violent set of spasms.

“RAZZCAT!” yelled Rico as his mentor was now very dead. The hypnosis-driven pain of only partial mission success started in earnest. The pain of losing his mentor and teacher was naturally earned.

“Damn it. I was having such a good day. Why did he eat it today?” said Dizzy to her friend.

She looked at Rico, “I think you’ll have to step up. Nobody will follow anybody else but GoodAndPlenty.” She tried to get him to smile, and he gave one in return for trying to help. He took the chevrons off his mentor’s body and power slapped them on his shoulder.

“Fuzz it. OK. Has anybody found the kid or that bitch in this mess?” said the new leader of the Fuzzbutts.