Despite stomachs being generally optional, the lunchtime rush was eternal, the restaurant blocs and faculties in the Big Data always became flooded with hungry employees. Even when it came to the two big rival metasectors—Thoughtbase and the Worker’s Paradise—all pretensions of mental or physical superiority (respectively) was cast aside for that little lunch hour. A holy time of consumption as old as civilization itself. During this period, any business still operational charged double for working through said time, despite the employees working these shifts usually having no stomachs of their own (hell, most were required to be literally gutless). Steppenrazor LLC, a lithe little glossy merc club in downtown Centerzone, had a few mercs and breakers on standby just for these hours, being the only ones there when the office cleared out for lunch. Two of them, a scarred, armored dreadlock empress hardgal in full combat gear by the name of Mackie “the Blade”, and a gangly breaker half consumed by his gear named Tokes Malloy, twitched at the incoming message chime, with the latter chuckling at message’s contents as they filled their interfaces in an unreadable script typeface:

“GREETINGS OH GREAT DWELLER OF THE WILDLANDS, I AM FRAU LEPUS, THE REAL FRAU LEPUS, MIND, THE MOST HIGH RANNKING FRAU LEPUS RPER IN THE WHOLE GODDDAMN LAND, AND I HAVE NEED OF YOUR SERVICES. I NEED SOMEONE TO PUT A BUNCH OF HOLES INTO A BITCH I REALLY HATE. THE BITCH IS TRYING TO GET PAST ME IN RANK AND HAS THE AUDACITY TO CALL HERSELF FRAU LEPUS, HENCE MY CURRENT HANDLE. HER NAME IS ANIKA JEERS AND SHE USED TO BE MY EVERYTHING. MAKE HER SUFFER IF YOU CAN, SHE MIGHT TRY AND TAKE YOU WITH HER. IN CASE JUSTIFICATION IS NEEDED FOR WHATEVER LEGAL CRAP SHE TRIES IN RETALIATION, I’LL JUST STATE THAT SHE HAD THE AUDACITY TO BREACH THE CAREFULLY WRITTEN RULES OF THE KANINCHENBAU TO NEVER SHIP INCAPATABLE CHARACTERS TOGETHER WITHOUT A PROPER AND DETAILED REPORT AND EXPLAINATION AS TO WHY THEY WOULD EVEN BE IN A RELATIONSHIP, AS SPECIFIED IN THE KANINCHENBAU CHARTER, BUT THE BITCH COULDN’T DO IT, SO SHE AND HER LITTLE POSSE MUST BE PUNISHED! MAKE HER SUFFER PLEASE. ATTACHED IS THE PAYMENT. THANK YOU IN ADVANCE.”

“What the fuck?” was Mackie’s response.

“Oooh, the Kaninchenbau,” Tokes replied, fingers working at the keyboards. “Lotsa members, real righteous. Network man, get us some regulars.”

“Man…” Mackie moaned. “Shipping?”

“Bunny Baron fandom term,” Tokes explained. His voxbox buzzed, very near crapping out. “My networks show that the ‘The-Real-Frau-Lepus-1138” is a Thoughtbase co-op tech named Jesiah Le. Tried to change her name 50 times. Anikka Jeers is the head of a rival sect called the Neues Kaninchenbau. Broke off from the main one last cycle. You watch the show?”

“No,” Mackie replied bluntly. “Got my own world to worry about...”

“You might wanna watch the show, get some brownie points,” Tokes explained. “Even just knowing a bit can get us further with these big fanclubs.”

“I thought Collander did this shit…” Mackie muttered irritably, fiddling with her fingers with her trusty combat knife as she reclined in her chair.

“He does, but he’s a Magnus Midnight guy,” Tokes explained, voxbox still buzzing. “Those two groups don’t play nice together. Maybe the Mouse folks, sure, but not Magnus.”

“Christ, they paid up front...”

“Yep.”

Mackie sighed, rose from her seat, and made her way out. “Fine but you’re buying a new voxbox first thing. Damn voice is making my ovaries vibrate.”

“Noted,” Tokes replied. He called out to her as she approached the door. “Remember to network, man! Watch the show! Score us some brownie points!”

Bunny Baron was a popular animated feed show that centered on the adventures of Bunny Von Rictofen, an anthropomorphic rabbit in a flying helmet, and his friend, Enrich Houndog (a big dopey anthropomorphic hound dog pilot, obviously) and Frau Lepus (a pretty little anthropomorphic girl rabbit dressed like an innocent village girl), his girlfriend, and their adventures in the trenches and skies of Edenland (some sort of world like Germany circa World War I), along with a never-ending war against the uniform wearing albino raven Kaiser Steiner and his minions. Among the most notable of Steiner’s minions was Screaming Udet, a flying squirrel pilot that served as Rictofen’s rival both in combat and for Lepus’ affections…also Shark Goring, Udet’s friend who wanted to try and compete for Rictofen’s head… and there were a ton of other weird and strange characters that seemed to fill up page after page on the little encyclopedia feeds Mackie skimmed through… She dipped into the community feeds and forums as she made her way through the Transport Loop’s lunch crowds in a company hopper on the way to the target’s location in Centerzone. Seconds into looking, she found a pinned post advertising the 50 best introductory episodes to curious newcomers and opted to play a few to see what was what. The rest of the community forum consisted of just image and video feeds, as well as a spectrum of subcommunity pages consisting of a world Mackie knew little of:

Various shipping factions centered around combos named with sloppy portmanteaus localized in various containment threads; galleries of artist renditions of hypothetical relationships between two charters on the show, wholesome, romantic, explicit, and everything in between—countless coupling combos of characters with an accompanying dissertation on why the coupling would happen; a spectrum of fanfictions, and documentations of shows of faith for the IP—continued attempts of fans recreating themselves as characters on the show (body mods, custom surgeries, recreations or approximations of characters as automata to be transferred into—numerous legal and public transgressions in the name of the show:

A pair of particularly enthusiastic parents officially named their newly commissioned child Kaiser Steiner and valiantly fought an ultimately futile legal battle against the Copyright Corps to keep the name, eventually settling for Kaisr Stnr. One of the cast members of the show appeared at a local convention and left a bottle, there was a brawl over it, the victor presenting the bottle to a camera despite her bloodied features. One such fan had a blurry image of the show’s writing room, having managed to sneak into the Department of General Media & Entertainment and snap a photo seconds before being tackled by Sector Security; countless clues (real or otherwise) of the coming storylines were gleaned from the blurry photo for months after. A team of individuals attempted to kidnap a particularly adored member of the cast in order to obtain genetic information and gestate a series of illegal clones of the person, however the cast member’s security team had thwarted and destroyed the culprits. Numerous fans attempted to contribute funds to crack pot laboratories throughout the Big Data to create living versions of the characters to be kept as pets or in community zoos, however, most of these efforts were fruitless or, in one case, resulted in several manmade abominations wiping out these laboratories out with the Copyright Corps coming in to clean the mess up. There were also other hits on a myriad of people, including members of the same fandom or members of a rival fandom or critics of the show, dust ups between hired guns and coordinated attacks and terrorist bombs, usually the result of some slight to the characters or the show. And more—much, much, much more.

Mackie sat through 20 episodes in a disinterested fashion before arriving at her liaison: A Watcher, a dayglow surveillance tech eating at a local greasehole barely greeted Mackie as she slipped into the seat across from him and exchanged close-ranged encrypted signals for easy transfer of fresh data on the target. As usual, the info had been fairly thorough:

There was footage and pictures of the target moving about the city, some old, some new. Jeers was originally a mousy secretary from the Department of Records & Census, but only twenty years later became an upstanding pillar of the community, marking this physically by getting her head replaced with that of Frau Lepus’ in a nice mixture of cartoon tinged with photorealism. Expensive, no doubt. The others in her group (and others) weren’t quite as smart with their money or choices. Some were full beast, some half, varying levels of competency in construction and sculpt quality. One had been botched into a freakish monstrosity, vague approximation of an animal, some didn’t seem to resemble any of the characters on the show unless you knew the character’s accessories and details by heart; indecision created horrid amalgamations of various characters. The stylized ones worked better, less uncanny valley than the photorealistic ones. Paying for copyright permissions also helped. Some of them simply became their own original characters, most of them were simply amalgamations or composites of previous existing characters, or barely legal copies of existing characters, walking bootlegs, carefully edited and altered to avoid prosecution…

Mackie thanked the Watcher wordlessly and made her way back onto the streets, making her way to the top of the artificial skyline. Special licenses and a small bribe got her into a sizable building across the ‘street’ from where her target was located. She made her way to the roof, already equipped with a custom scoped rifle she referred to as her “long lover”. She trotted out onto the roof overlooking the jumped parasite architecture formed ‘surface’ of Centerzone, glad the television sky above was set to ‘lonesome night’, and took her position at a corner near some air conditioning units. Across the way was a premium building of long glossy obsidian, some sort of rec center normally reserved for executives or managers, now rented out by pooled funds from the Kaninchenbau. Already set up, Mackie gazed across through the scope: The target was in some rented penthouse with her flock, performing some rituals under a large skylight, right in the open like sitting ducks. The group was frolicking, running around, dancing around a shrine of merchandise—t-shirts, action figures, dolls, toys, costumes, appliances, weapons, drugs, equipment, sex toys, shoes—some held yellow smoke bombs, mustard gas simulations, trailing behind them, some were burrowing in their own small shrines of softness, cutting holes into the carpet… Mackie watched them, filtered through the smoke for the target, finding Anika Jeers presiding over the whole thing off to the side like a priestess, master of ceremonies, hands in the air, chanting something, eyes rolled back in her skull… Mackie lined up the well paid bunny head in her sights when there was a sharp whistle of something coming at her.

Reflexes kicking on, Mackie contorted to the side quick enough to avoid the blade flying at her, jumping back to gain space as she did, finding a short black figure standing a few feet away, barely visible in the soft roof lights, full black camo, distinctly bunny shaped, wielding some sort of bladed truncheon. A shrill, cartoony voice screeched as it lashed out:

“Für den Kaninchenbau!”

Mackie dropped her scoped rifle and parried the blade with her knife, dodging the little bunny creature as it leapt at her. With a smooth, practiced motion, she retrieved her sidearm (termed her ‘short lover’) and tried to plug the little bugger, but it quickly bounded out of sight among the numerous pieces of air conditioning equipment on the roof. She paused, waiting, listening, hearing the soft padding of rabbit feet on concrete, coming closer—Mackie quickly turned and parried another flying blade, firing at the rabbit with her gun, who had only managed to narrowly bound away again, bouncing into the rooftop equipment like camo blur. Time running low, Mackie tracked the bugger, tuning into the world around her when the assassin came around for a frontal assault, to which Mackie snapped to attention and drilled the creature with several shots. Mackie dodged out of the way as the bunny guard kept going, flying over, bouncing off the roof and over the edge.

Time almost up, Mackie, dashed to her scoped lover and took aim again, finding her target quickly. Instead of being lost in religious fervor, Jeers was staring at Mackie straight through the scope, knowing, probably tipped off by the death of what was no doubt her bodyguard. Oh well. The rabbit gaze was blown away, along with most of her head, when Mackie pulled the trigger, following it up with blasting as many of the marked ones as she could. Naturally, she went for the ones Toked had ensured could afford the birth machines beforehand or had good insurance and went for clean head kills. New brains made old ones redundant, so she exploded just those. Professional courtesy. Not to mention a Steppenrazor guarantee. Those of the flock panicked and ran around hiding in the little makeshift burrows or under tables or chairs…The pandemonium made the task of shooting the targeted ones almost fun. She caught a copy of Lothar, Baron Bunny’s braces wearing brother as he poked his head out from under a table, blowing it apart with a smoothly placed shot… Another Lady Lepus, this one cartoonier, simpler in design, standing in a panic over Jeer’s corpse, turned to run, instead turning into a body dive when Mackie exploded her head all over the panicking flock members… a hiding version of Screaming Udet was identified behind the surface of a cheap table, through which a shot was promptly put through, blowing the flying squirrel’s helmeted head apart… A particularly well done version of the main character had tried to get to the door, ducking and diving to get across the conference room, in and out of cover, only to take a slug in the top part of the head, blowing an ear off along with a chunk of the head, sending the body crashing over a nearby table of Bunny Baron juice boxes… she almost regretted blowing that well sculpted head apart… and another head, and another head and another head… Soon enough, Mackie had gotten all the marked ones, catching the last, a big dopey parody of a hound dog as he tried to bound out, blowing his head apart when he was at the doorway.

Five minutes later, Mackie was in the company hopper heading back to base, already getting a response from the client:

“YES! THANK YOU! YOU DID FANTASTIC! NOT QUITE AS BRUTAL AS I WOULD’VE LIKED, BUT THE FACT THAT YOU DID THE JOB EVEN WITH THE BODYGUARD MORE THAN MADE UP FOR THAT. THANK YOU. OH, SORRY ABOUT THE BODYGUARD BY THE WAY, I SHOULD’VE EXPECTED HER TO DO THAT. ANY WHO, THANKS AGAIN AND I WILL DEFINTELY CONTACT YOU AGAIN. ALSO, I COULDN’T HELP BUT NOTICE YOU ALSO HAVE A BACKLOG OF EPISODES ON YOUR ACTIVITY LOG, MAYBE YOU’D LIKE TO JOIN OUR LITTLE GROUP FOR MORE GUIDANCE? JUST A SUGGESTION! THANKS AGAIN.”

“Nicely done, man!” Tokes called to her when she waltzed in, looking very in place with the lazing mercs and jittering breakers strewn across the glossy office. “Keep it up and we might just move this humble little outfit of ours up!”

Mackie plopped down into a seat with a sigh.

“How many of these people have you dealt with before?”

“Too many. Good money though.”

Mackie settled in for the day, putting on another list of Bunny Baron episodes, intending on a comfortable binge, when another notification chime came in, bearing the name “The-Illustrious-Frau-Lepus1137.” Her message was thus:

“Good evening, Miss Contractor. According to my intel, you were the one who helpfully killed my bodyguard and blew a hole in my head earlier today on the dime of my wayward former partner Ms. Jasiah Le. Normally, I would be mildly uncomfortable with the idea of contacting you, but you were so gracious to leave most of my body intact during the assassination, along with many of my friends, that you’ve made the blow to me considerably more thoughtful on your part. Therefore, using our salvaged capital, we propose a contract for a retaliatory attack on Ms. Le and her cronies and an invitation, due to your recent activity, to join our sect, The Neues Kaninchenbau. Full payment is attached. Thank you in advance and thank you for your eloquent business etiquette.”